Publication Details

Abstract

The propagation and popularization of Marxist ideas in Slovakia were directly connected with the development of the Working Movement at the end of the last and at the beginning of this century in the region of Hungary of that time. The attitude of our social democrats to problems of the class struggle, to the national and peasants’ question were very close to the opinions of the leaders of the second International. The leaders, functionaries, theoreticians and ideologists of the social movement in the area of Slovakia were not clean-cut in their opinions concerning problems of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They considered education and enlightenment the chief way to reach the increase of the living standard of the proletariat, they often rejected strikes and held that the struggle for general franchise was the only sensible political activity. These opinions and approaches to problems exerted destructive influence upon our working movement. They were in contradiction with the Marxist theory of class struggle and confirmed that their proponents knew little or nothing of the basic works of the classics of Marxism. There were no polemic with Marx’s ideas because nobody knew them throughly enough.