Thirdly, theological and finalist views of history with their pessimism agnosticism, theological fatalism, and mysticism, are not only a passive reflection of the process of the deterioration and decline of contemporary bourgeois society and culture. They serve as ideological weapons of contemporary bourgeois society in the struggle against all progressive anti-imperialist movements, and above all against the communist movement and the socialist countries.

The historical merit of Marxism-Leninism lies in the fact that, revealing the laws of socio-historical development, it exhibits the temporal nature of capitalism, setting before the working class and all exploited people a scientifically substantiated goal, viz. the destruction of the bourgeois system and the substitution of a new higher, and more just social system. The scientific and revolutionary ideas of Marxism-Leninism, together with the ideological and organizational activities of the various communist parties, the contagious example of the October Revolution, as well as other socialist revolutions, inspires the vast masses of the working people throughout the world for independent, conscious, organized, and purposeful historical activity. Contemporary bourgeois ideologists realize all this, and one of their tasks is to introduce ideological chaos among the masses, as well as demoralization, lack of confidence, and passivity, in order to divert them from the road of independent revolutionary struggle. For instance, in his book, Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte, after declaring that the goal of history is cognitively unattainable, Jaspers leaves a door open, maintaining that in spite of everything philosophy could bring us “closer” to an understanding of this goal. He believes that in creating a “world empire”, in which this “sole power would govern everybody, world peace will finally be achieved”. But it is not difficult to see behind this “divine” historical goal the earthly, mad plans of the American imperialists to create a world empire.

Wilhelm Röpke has expressed quite clearly the reactionary anti-communist nature of such notions concerning the “meaning” of history. To Röpke the struggle between socialism and capitalism which struggle determines the basic content of our epoch, is nothing but a conflict between Satan and God. After expressing his confidence that “like all Satan’s doings red totalitarianism will be liquidated”, Röpke prophesizes: “Finally, things will happen which are not envisaged in the plan of dialectical materialism for the development of history, because only God knows how all this will end”. There is no sense in refuting such prophecies, since they are an expression of wishful thinking, and they rely on the ignorance and religious narrow-mindedness of people who still believe in a God directing the progress of world history.

The progressive segment of bourgeois philosophers, sociologists, and historians reject such theological and finalist conceptions. “I have no belief in Divine Providence”, writes Carr, and he continues, “World Spirit, Manifest Destiny, History with a capital H, or any other of the abstractions which have sometimes been supposed to guide the course of events; and I should endorse without qualification the comment of Marx: History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth, fights no battles, it is rather man, real living man who does everything, who possesses and fights”. In the majority of cases, however, such a criticism is carried out from subjectivist and idealist positions, and is predominantly non-Marxist in character. According to such bourgeois writers as T. Lessing, W. Theimer, and K. Popper, history in itself has no meaning. The most pessimistically minded point out the senselessness of history and of human life. Others try to overcome historical pessimism by working out a new historical optimism which is subjective, idealistic, or voluntaristic, or in many cases irrational in character.

We may point out the popular book of Theodor Lessing, Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen, which appeared during World War I. Interwoven in Lessing’s views are the irrationalism of Dilthey’s Lebensphilosophie, Neo-Kantian apriorism, and elements of existentialism. For this reason Lessing’s views continue to have strong influence on contemporary bourgeois philosophical trends. Lessing’s enemy is not bourgeois finalism, but Marxism’s notion of history as an objective, regular, ascending, and progressive process. According to Lessing, history is not an objective and regular process of development, rather the historian creates what we call causal relations, regularity, development, and other such meanings, out of subjective experiences which are actually empty. As in the case with other idealists, Lessing identifies history with historiography, from which it follows that the only way to make history is to write it. By denying the objective reality of the subject matter of historiography, he negates the possibility of the existence of objective historical truth and of history as a science. This explains why Lessing grants everyone the right to create his own history, placing in it whatever “meaning” one pleases.

Both Heineman and von Rintelen do not take Lessing’s views seriously due to Lessing’s endless subjective arbitrariness, but in essence their views do not really differ from his. Like him they also feel that history itself is meaningless, its meaning has to be introduced from outside. The only way that sense can be given to history is in man’s struggle to realize the “basic values” of “love”, “beauty”, etc., values which have an “atemporal” and “ahistorical” character, and are, consequently, not subjectively arbitrary. Other bourgeois writers, however, feel that the “value” of Lessing’s work stems from the very voluntaristic and subjectively arbitrary views he proclaims. Thus, for instance, the well-known anti-Marxist Walter Theimer considers Lessing’s voluntarism as the most important ideological weapon in the struggle against the Marxist-Leninist view of history, particularly against its theory of historical inevitability. “Whoever shares, the voluntarist view of history”, Theimer writes, “has to abandon the hope found in the view that it is necessary to act in conformity with an objectively existing meaning of history... To insist that progress, humanism, or socialism are the meaning of history, that they are established by forces standing higher or by laws of its development, is wrong”. To Theimer, while his philosophy of history denies it all objective meaning; it does not doom humanity to a passive existence, rather it does just the opposite. “The sober concept”, he declares, “that no meaning can be found in history does not entail skeptical passivity. It is more probable that it creates a basis for the will to create a certain meaning; the lack of any definite meaning is even a precondition for this. Admitting the fact that until now history has not had any meaning does not lead to the conclusion that it shall never have a meaning. This depends entirely on the people who make history”. Thus socialism is not an objective historical necessity but an ethical ideal, which is dependent on what people wish to happen.

Marxism refutes both the older theological views of history and the modern subjectivist notions. No one has criticized theological and finalist views of history so profoundly as Marx and Engels. In their works, The Holy Family and The German Ideology they showed the utter groundlessness of all speculative idealistic views which see in history “a special sense which can be discovered”. They refuted every effort to personify history, to give it a “special character”, converting it into a “metaphysical subject of which real human individuals are but the bearers”. “What is designated with the words 'destiny’, ‘goal’,... ‘idea’ of ... history is nothing more than an abstraction formed from later history, from the active influence which earlier history exercises on later history”. Marx and Engels opposed to such metaphysical and mystical views their own dialectical materialist conception, which rejects any preconceived plan of history. “Just as knowledge is unable to reach a perfected termination in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity”, Engels wrote, “so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect ‘state’, are things which can only exist in imagination”.

For Marxists two aspects should be distinguished when we speak about the meaning of history, viz. the objective and the subjective aspects; both of which are interconnected. Further, although the subjective aspect has its own comparative independence, the decisive role is played by the objective aspect.

The objective aspect of the meaning of history, or the objective meaning of history is expressed through the existence and action of its objective laws, history has objective meaning as far as the historical event are causally determined, and are not chaotic but represent a natural-historical process subjected to objective laws which determine the successions, mutual relations, and reciprocal determinations. In other words, the objective meaning of history is identical with its immanent logic.

If the meaning of history is nothing else but the objective logic of its development, then its analysis is the major task of every scientific social and historical theory. Stressing the importance of this task Lenin wrote : “The most important thing is that the laws of these changes have been discovered, that the objective logic of these changes and of their historical development has in its chief and basic features been disclosed. The highest task of humanity is to comprehend the objective logic of economic evolution (the evolution of social life) in its general and fundamental features, so that it may be possible to adapt to it one’s social consciousness and the consciousness of the advanced and critical a fashion as possible”.

The scientific cognition of the objective meaning of history is the theoretical basis of the revolutionary and practical activities of the workers and communist movements in mapping their historical goals, as well as the means for achieving them. That is why it is not by chance that bourgeois philosophers, sociologists, and historians try to deny the objective meaning of history.

In their efforts to discredit Marxism bourgeois writers identify Marxist-Leninist teachings on the objective meaning of history with all sorts of teleological, theological, fatalistic, and irrational views. B. Croce, for instance, ranks historical materialism together with theological and idealistic philosophies which find in history a “universal plan”, or which find a kind of “logic” introduced into it by a transcendental force. Whether this force, says Croce, is called “Idea”, “Spirit”, or “matter” is unimportant. In the final analysis, it is “only a mask of a transcendent God who is the only one to invent such a plan, to make people do things, and to supervise their activities”. If such statements belonged to insignificant and ignorant critics of Marxism, one could explain them precisely as ignorance, and we would not have paid much attention to them. Here, however, we see a deliberate distortion of Marxism, since it is improbable that philosophers such as Croce and Popper fail to know that Marxism not only has nothing in common with such mystical views on the meaning of history but, on the contrary, it is their complete and uncompromising negation.

Just as our knowledge of natural science aids mankind in changing and mastering the blind forces of nature by means of its scientific knowledge of the logic of history, the working class and the various communist parties can realize their historical goals of preserving world peace, developing world democracy, liberating the dependent countries from imperialist oppression, doing away with the capitalist system, and building socialism.

The objective and subjective meanings of history are interrelated, but they are not identical. The “subjective” aspect of the meaning of history is quite different from the objective one, in that it is connected with the activities of men laying the foundations of history.

The basic drawback of all subjective, idealistic and voluntaristic views lies in the fact that they do not take into consideration this important difference between the two aspects of the meaning of history. They fail to understand the objective dialectic of both in their interrelations and interdependence, and, as a result of this, they either confuse or identify the two aspects, or they oppose them to each other.

Setting the goal and struggling for its achievement presuppose creatures with consciousness, will power, and energy. History as an objective, natural-historical process has neither consciousness, nor will power, nor energy. It is nonsense, absurd, to speak of the meaning of history in such terms. However, history is not a chaotic play of unconscious and blind forces; it is not a process which takes place automatically, but is the activities of people organized in classes, nations, parties.

The existence of historical goals is undoubtedly a necessary element in making sense of the historical activities of the characters of history, viz. social classes, systems, and political parties. Taking these facts as a starting point, the subjective idealists and voluntarists draw the conclusion that people invest history with meaning, and this meaning can be different depending on their views and aims. According to Popper, in spite of the fact that history has no meaning, we can endow it with meaning, depending on our point of view. Thus, for instance, we could interpret history from the point of view of the struggle for an “open society”, for a government of reason, justice, freedom and equality, etc. From that point of view with which we interpret history, the aims we set for it, and the meaning we give it, depend our conceptions and decisions, which in turn do not depend on any objective factors.

Neither nature nor history, writes Popper can tell us what we ought to do. Facts, whether those of nature or those of history, cannot make the decision for us, they cannot determine the ends we are going to choose. It is we who introduce purpose and meaning into nature and into history. Men are not equal; but we can decide to fight for equal rights. Human institutions such as the state are not rational, but we can decide to fight to make them more rational. The theoretical basis for this subjective and idealistic conception of the meaning of history is the contention of Popper that between facts and decisions there is a “fundamental dualism”, because “facts as such have no meaning; they can gain it only through our decisions”. Popper sees as one of Marxism’s basic errors the attempt to overcome this dualism.

It is true that neither facts nor history make decisions or set tasks. Decisions are made by people, and they set tasks, but they do not map out their historical goals arbitrarily. Popper says that people are not equal, but we can decide to fight for equal rights. But what do “equal rights” and “we” mean? “Equal rights” could mean equal rights in the ownership of the means of production, equal rights in the distribution of the means of existence, in government and in making decisions on state problems, in education and recreation, equal rights to free national, political, economic, and cultural life. History, however, does not know a single case where the slave-owning class, or the feudal lords, or the bourgeoisie fought for such equality. This is the kind of equality the oppressed and exploited have fought and are fighting for, while the exploiting classes have always tried to fix inequality firmly. The question then is why different individuals, social classes, and systems (and their political parties) make different decisions on the same problem, why they set different and opposing historical aims.

Just by posing these questions we can see the entire groundlessness of Popper’s conception. The goals individuals set for themselves are not arbitrary, subjective, or capricious, and decisions are determined by the “facts” of social and historical life, i.e. by the objective social conditions of existence. Material conditions determine historical aims, and, since the material conditions of existence of different individuals in various social classes are different, their historical aims and decisions are different. Exploitation and oppression make the working class fight impulsively (or in an organized way) against social systems which are based on exploitation and oppression. The stronger and the clearer the consciousness of the masses as regards the real causes of their social inequality, exploitation, and oppression, the more active their struggle will be for social equality. Individuals and classes which have the political and economic power in their hands and build their existence and well-being on the exploitation and oppression of others have an interest in the existence of social inequality, and that is why they fight with all their might to preserve and consolidate it.

All this shows that the “insurmountable and fundamental dualism” between “facts and decisions” is nonexistent. It is an invention, but like many other idealistic inventions it is not purely an invention, rather it is the result of a one-sided analysis, concentrating on certain aspects of human conscious activity, human cognition, and stressing their comparative independence. Men’s social consciousness, their social and historical ideas, which are expressed in their projections of historical goals, are determined by their objective social and historical life, and are a reflection of this life, though they are not always in accord with the objective logic of history.

If history and its facts were really void of any objective meaning, of any objective logic, people could endow them with any meaning they wished. But historical practice shows in an indisputable way that this is impossible, because history and its facts have their own objective logic independent of human consciousness and will power. Almost two thousand years now have elapsed since Christianity proclaimed peace among the classes, “love of neighbor”, “nonviolence”, “selflessness”; it has paid lip service to one of the ten commandments forbidding theft and plunder, but neither divine authority nor the threat of eternal tortures in hell made such norms the actual aim and meaning of history. In practice, the reactionary exploiting classes have carried out a policy of violence and plunder, of class, national, racial, and religious enmity, of wars and counter-revolutions; class struggle, then, has always been the real motor force in history. At the time when the bourgeoisie was a progressive and revolutionary class, its ideologists painted as the aim and meaning of its historical activities the struggle for the realization of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, but the practical result of this struggle was the establishment of bourgeois society, with its deep social inequality, plunderous and ruinous wars unheard of up till then in history, with class struggle and atrocity.

Nevertheless, it is a mistake to think that, between the conscious activities of men setting tasks for themselves and the objective logic of history there is a kind of abyss. When historical aims coincide with the requirements of the objective logic of history, when the means and the activity of the masses for achieving the historical goals also coincide with the requirements of this logic, then from a “spontaneous process” history turns into a consciously directed process. Only in this sense can people “introduce” meaning into history. But it is enough for this activity to deviate from the objective logic of history or to violate it, and then history will make us experience clearly that we cannot impose on it the meaningless goals of our own choosing.