Philosophic materialism

In its popular sense, materialism refers to preoccupation with material possession--greed, in a word. This has nothing to do with philosophic materialism, the tradition to which Marxian philosophy belongs.

The earliest materialists all lived before Jesus, and all of whom regarded the material world as the ultimate reality. There were no gods or other spiritual forces behind the material reality. The ethical norms of the materialists were based ultimately on human happiness.

Holbach thought that evil is not due to human nature, but to preventable social disorders and injustices. Men in general suffer from "chains which tyrants, which priests have forged for all nations."

Feuerbach's (费尔巴哈) historic contribution was his view that man projected his ideals onto supernatural beings, whom he regarded as existing independently and having varied relations with each other and with human beings.

Because he saw in religion the projection of unfulfilled human ideals and longings, Marx did not advocate a prohibition of religion, but the creation of social condition that would more directly satisfy such ideals and longings. His often misunderstood description of religion as "the opium of the people" was not a call for religious persecution but was instead part of an argument that saw religion as a "realization of the human essence" in fantasy because it could not be realized in the real world as it existed.

Marx saw philosophic criticism as vain unless they led also to social change: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

Not only were Marx and Engels not prepared to carry materialism to the totalitarian extremes that might be implied by a mechanistic conception of causation; they were highly critical of the principle of manipulating or molding other people, even on the individual level.