Abstract
The question of the possibility of recurrence in history and of the validity of historical analogies is intimately associated with the entire problem of the course of the process of world history. Marxism, while recognizing the progressive and forward-moving character of social development, at the same time does not accept the conception of uninterrupted evolution ascending in a straight line. Lenin commented on the inevitable "cases of retrogression and circular movement" (1), and this in itself presumes the possibility of recurrence at different stages of historical development, and justifies attempts to discover certain historical analogies. In a number of cases, such comparisons, by revealing similarities and differences among phenomena and processes, help us to attain a deeper understanding of the regularity involved. "In order to conduct this critique of the capitalist economy comprehensively," wrote Engels, "it did not suffice to know about the capitalist form of production, exchange, and distribution. It was also necessary, at least in general outlines, to investigate and compare the forms that preceded it, or those that still existed alongside it in less developed countries." (2) Marx constantly made such comparisons and pointed to the significance of such knowledge in connection with the comparison of the process of depriving the peasantry of land and that of concentrating property in the periods when the slaveholding and the capitalist modes of production took shape: "Thus, strikingly similar events which, however, occur in different historical circumstances lead to entirely different results. By studying each of these evolutions individually and then comparing them, one easily finds the key to an understanding of this phenomenon; but one can never attain such an understanding by using any general theory of philosophy of history as a master key…, for the greatest virtue of such a theory is its incompleteness." (3)