Marxism deals with history concretely, not in the abstract. Historical
materialism carefully deals with the different historical stages through which
humankind has developed and explains the particular laws that govern different
socio-economic formations.
Historical materialism sets out from the premise that the mainspring of historical development is, in the last analysis, the development of the productive forces - that is, humankind's power over nature.
The
crisis of the capitalist system is reflected in a crisis of bourgeois
values, morality, religion, politics and philosophy. The mood of
pessimism that afflicts the bourgeoisie and its ideologues in this
period is manifested in the poverty of its thought, the triviality of
its art and the emptiness of its spiritual values. It is expressed in
the wretched philosophy of post-modernism, which imagines itself to
be superior to all previous philosophy, when in reality it is vastly
inferior.