Philosophers before Marx generally advocated that heroes create history, while historical materialists such as Marx thought: "People are the creators of history." However, historical figures have a great influence on history, and heroes can promote the development of history.

2. Expand:

Historical materialism: it is a philosophical theory about the universal law of human social development and a scientific historical view. Historical materialism points out that the fundamental cause of all historical events is material richness, and the development of social history has its inherent objective laws. The mode of production of material life determines the general process of social life, political life and spiritual life; Social existence determines social consciousness, and social consciousness reacts on social existence; The contradiction between productivity and production relations, the contradiction between economic base and superstructure are the basic contradictions to promote all social development. In class society, the basic social contradiction is class struggle, which is the direct driving force for the development of class society; The highest form of class struggle is to carry out social revolution and seize state power; The history of social development is the history of people's practical activities, and the people are the creators of history, but the activities and functions of the people in creating history are always restricted by the economic, political and ideological and cultural conditions in a certain historical stage.

Historical materialism was founded by German philosophers Marx and Engels. They call it "historical materialism" or "historical materialism". Russian philosopher Lenin evaluated historical materialism as "sociology of science", "the only scientific view of history" and "the only scientific method of social science is materialistic method". E Bernstein and others revised it into economic materialism.