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LECTURE XLIV, April 26, 1956

Today I want to continue what I started just at the end of last hour, talking about the concept of the economic^a. The reason why this is important is the fact that we have, through Marxi^csm^b*, something which is usually called "the materialistic ^dinterpretation of history^e." And I want to say a few words about this, about the meaning of this word and about the implications of it.

First of all the word "materialistic^f interpretation of history^g" is a bad word---poor word--- because the term materialism has three meanings, and the confusion of meanings is frequently a wonderful weapon in a political^h struggle, and I will show you how this came to pass in this case. "Materialism" is basically a metaphysical term derived from philosophers like Democritus ⁱand Epicurus^j in the ancient world and their successors in the Renaissance^k and in the present. "Materialism" here means the interpretation of reality as a whole in terms of material particles called atoms, or otherwise. This concept of materialism is to be valuated very positively because it was the first step into a methodological science of nature, and, as you know, the fundamentals of this first step, the concept of atom, is still a valid concept in spite of all changes of its qualification in modern sciences.

The second meaning of materialism^l is a moral attitude of desire for goods which satisfy the drives of libido and of power, and especially of libido (power, more as a means to satisfy the libido drives). If this meaning is used, then it is ALWAYS used, by everybody, in a devaluating sense,

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*Cf. the review by the noted American historian, Charles A. Beard^m, of PTⁿ's The Interpretation of History (1936), which appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, XLIII (Jan. 1938), 666. Beard expresses his surprise that here, for once, is a theologian who has read his Marx^o! – Ed.