The discussion up to now has largely ignored considerations of political philosophy and national differences of historical perspective, except where these were immediately relevant to some specific point of doctrine in Soviet moral philosophy. The intent has been so far as possible, to consider Soviet writings in ethical theory as contributions to an abstract philosophical inquiry transcending national political boundaries and social conditions. Such an approach must of course to some degree misrepresent a discussion in which most participants presuppose as established beyond question a Marxist sociology of knowledge, which, moreover, is frequently applied in a very sweeping way to produce "explanatory" generalizations of a very simplistic sort.