4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST philosophical idealist in history (Hegel), Lenin highly valued the contributions made to human knowledge by idealism. Developing in mutual conflict for several centuries, idealism and materialism successively negated each other as they assumed newer and newer forms, culminating in the emergence of Dialectical Materialism in the nineteenth century. Marx and Engels, known earlier as talented Young Hegelians, developed and enriched Hegelian dialectics while assimilating all that is best in the then existing materialism. Dialectical Materialism was therefore a negation of both existing (Hegelian) Idealism and existing (Feurbachian) Materialism. It goes to the credit of Lenin that he further developed and enriched the Marx-Engels philosophy. PHILOSOPHY OF PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION Dialectical (and Historical) Materialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin is the philosophy of revolutionary action. 'Philosophers*, said Marx, 'have in various ways interpreted the world; the point is to change it.' Theirs however, is not the philosophy of any revolution but of proletarian revolution. To quote from Marx's Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 'As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy.' Marxism-Leninism being dialectical materialism, it is of course opposed to the philosophy of Shankara which is the acme of India's idealist philosophy. No Marxist, however, can help seeing that the evolution of that philosophy was an important stage in the development of Indian thought which, in its turn, is integrally connected with the development of Indian society. For, as Marx and Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto, 'Intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling classes.' To make a critique of Adi Shankara's philosophy therefore, we should make a survey of Indian society and thought. For, Shankara like any other Indian philosopher was a product of Indian society; his thought was the further development of Indian thought down to his time. Though born in Kerala (the village Kaladi in what is today Ernakulam district in that state), he acquired name and fame as an Indian scholar of a high order who carried forward the best in Indian idealist philosophy.' His life and thoughts were moulded by India as a whole not Kerala alone. CLASS STRUGGLE What then is Indian society? How did society and thought develop here? 'The written history of all hitherto existing society' is according to Marx and Engels, 'the history of class struggle' (Communist Manifesto)