For all its concern with history, Marxist social science is concerned not only with the past, but primarily with the present and the future. It would be impossible to understand the present and foresee the future without study of the past. However the active and creative nature of Marxist theory finds its clearest expression in its central task—the study of the contemporary life of society and of tendencies in its development. The study of the present from the Marxist point of view is the task of the social sciences in their totality.