Illusion of the epoch: Marxism Leninism as a philosophical creed
- London Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1973
- 278 p.
British thinkers have considered Marxism primarily as a body of economic and social doctrine. They have concentrated attention on the class struggle, the alleged decline of capitalism, surplus value and historical materialism. But Marxism is also, in a wide sense of the word, a system of thought and conduct comprising views about the most significant features of the universe and the principle purposes of human life.
It is this philosophy-the metaphysics, ethics and intellectual tradition inaugurated by Marx and Engels and continued by Lenin and Stalin that Professor Acton discusses in this book. Disregarding for the sake of greater clarity the historical order in which the Marxist doctrines were published, he first discusses Dialectical Materialism and, in the second part of the book, the social theories and ethics known as Scientific Socialism.