Under the slogan of “People’s Sovereignty”, populism attempts to incite the masses to oppose elites and anti-establishment in the “name of the people”, which will cause an impact on the Marxist mass conception of history. Only by clarifying the category of “the masses” in the context of Marxism and the concept of “people” in the context of populism, exploring how historical materialism interprets the role of the “mass of the people” and “outstanding individuals” in historical development, recognizing how does populism deal with the relationship between the “elite” and the “mass”, and clarifying the performance of the mass history view in the international communist movement and the practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the populist “view of the people” in the Western political civilization, can we consciously draw a clear line between Marxism and populism, and uphold and consolidate the guiding position of Marxism in the field of ideology.