Publication Details

Abstract

The Marxist thinking starts making itself felt in Slovakia as late as a half century after the rise of Marxism. Its first pioneers were, almost exclusively, self-taught workers, without any contribution or a lasting participation of intelligentsia in this movement. Some negative consequences followed for both sides. The paper points out the main problems of the beginnings of the Marxist thinking in Slovakia as it appeared in the first workers’magazines. It points out the close connection of the ideological manifestations with the concrete needs of the developing working-class movement and class struggle. It is namely the disproving of malthusian theories, the attempts at a historical-materialistic elucidation of social events and the very development of man, the disproving of religious ideas of various phenomena in nature and society, the refusing of idealistic opinions of utopian socialism, the materialistic ideas of work, of its social and in relation to the individual — also its anthropoformative function, the attempts at a class analysis of the Slovak society and a justification of class-struggle and a class conception of social phenomena; the emphasizing of social regularity and determinism, etc., that are more concretely pointed out. The author has noted namely the increase of atheistic elements. The conclusive part of the paper is concerned with a brief analysis of the ideological and philosophical activities of one of the most important pioneers and propagators of the Marxist ideas in Slovakia before the world war I — Edmund Borek.