Basic theories and core contents of the scientific system of Marxism; the concentrated generalization and theoretical formulation of the basic standpoint, viewpoint and method of Marxism; the soul and quintessence of Marxism.
The fundamental principles of Marxism are an organic and unified whole. When Marx and Engels founded the materialist conception of history and revealed the essence of human society and its laws of development, they grasped human society as an organically unified system and opposed observing, understanding and interpreting individual social phenomena divorced and isolated from the society as a whole. In his 1847 book The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx criticized Proudhon’s idealist conception of history and his metaphysical method of inquiry, emphasizing that the society “is a structure, in which all relations coexist simultaneously and support one another”. In his 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx expressed the fundamental principles of historical materialism in classical terms, in particular the theory of the structure of society as a whole and the thought of the social organism. On the one hand, Lenin divided Marxism into three major component parts: Marxist philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism, and wrote famous works such as The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism, but, at the same time, Lenin placed great emphasis on the fact that Marxism is a rigorous scientific system “cast from a single piece of steel”, “Marxism is the system of Marx’s views and teaching, which have a remarkable consistency and integrity”, “it is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defense of bourgeois oppression.” “The whole spirit of Marxism, its whole system, demands that each proposition should be considered (α) only historically, (β) only in connection with others, (γ) only in connection with the concrete experience of history”. . .
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