Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx Part 1

Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx.

by Benedetto Croce.

INTRODUCTION

The Essays in this volume, as will be apparent, have all of them had an occasional origin. They bear evident traces of particular controversy and contain much criticism of authors who are hardly, if at all, known in this country. Their author thought it worth while to collect them in one volume and it has been, I am sure, worth while to have them translated into English, because though written on different occasions and in different controversies they have all the same purpose. They are an attempt to make clear by philosophical criticism the real purpose and value of Marx's work.

It is often said that it is the business of philosophy to examine and criticise the a.s.sumptions of the sciences and philosophy claims that in this work it is not an unnecessary meddler stepping in where it is not wanted. For time and again for want of philosophical criticism the sciences have overstepped their bounds and produced confusion and contradiction. The distinction between the proper spheres of science and history and moral judgment is not the work of either science or history or moral judgment but can only be accomplished by philosophical reflection, and the philosopher will justify his work, if he can show the various contending parties that his distinctions will disentangle the puzzles into which they have fallen and help them to understand one another.

The present state of the controversy about the value of the writings of Karl Marx obviously calls for some such work of disentangling. No honest student can deny that his work has been of great historic importance and it is hard to believe that a book like _Das Kapital_ which has been the inspiration of a great movement can be nothing but a tissue of false reasoning as some of its critics have affirmed. The doctrine of the economic interpretation of history has revivified and influenced almost all modern historical research. In a great part of his a.n.a.lysis of the nature and natural development of a capitalist society Marx has shown himself a prophet of extraordinary insight. The more debatable doctrine of the cla.s.s war has at least shown the sterility of the earlier political theory which thought only in terms of the individual and his state. The wonderful vitality of the Marxian theory of labour value in spite of all the apparent refutations it has suffered at the hands of orthodox political economists is an insoluble puzzle if it had no more in it than the obvious fallacy which these refutations expose. Only a great book could become 'the Bible of the working cla.s.ses.'

But the process of becoming a Bible is a fatal process. No one can read much current Marxian literature or discuss politics or economics with those who style themselves orthodox Marxians without coming to the conclusion that the spirit of ecclesiastical dogmatism daily growing weaker in its own home has been transplanted into the religion of revolutionary socialism. Many of those whose eyes have been opened to the truth as expounded by Marx seem to have been thereby granted that faith which is the faculty of believing what we should otherwise know to be untrue, and with them the economic interpretation of history is transformed into a metaphysical dogma of deterministic materialism. The philosopher naturally finds a stumbling-block in a doctrine which is proclaimed but not argued. The historian however grateful he may be for the light which economic interpretation has given him, is up in arms against a theory which denies the individuality and uniqueness of history and reduces it to an automatic repet.i.tion of abstract formulae. The politician when he is told of the universal nature of the cla.s.s war points triumphantly to the fact that it is a war which those who should be the chief combatants are slow to recognise or we should not find the working cla.s.ses more ready to vote for a Liberal or a Conservative than for a Socialist. The Socialist must on consideration become impatient with a doctrine that by its fatalistic determinism makes all effort unnecessary. If Socialism must come inevitably by the automatic working out of economic law, why all this striving to bring it about? The answer that political efforts can make no difference, but may bring about the revolution sooner, is too transparently inadequate a solution of the difficulty to deceive anyone for long. Lastly the economist can hardly tolerate a theory of value that seems to ignore entirely the law of supply and demand, and concludes with some justice that either the theory of labour value is nonsense or that Marx was talking about something quite apart in its nature from the value which economics discusses. All these objections are continually being made to Marxianism, and are met by no adequate answer. And just as the sceptical lecturer of the street corner argues that a religion which can make men believe in the story of Balaam's a.s.s must be as nonsensical as that story, so with as little justice the academic critic or the anti-socialist politician concludes that Socialism or at least Marxianism is a tissue of nonsensical statements if these ridiculous dogmas are its fruit.

A disentangler of true and false in so-called Marxianism is obviously needed, and Senatore Croce is eminently fitted for the work. Much of the difficulty of Marx comes from his relation to Hegel. He was greatly influenced by and yet had reacted from Hegel's philosophy without making clear to others or possibly to himself what his final position in regard to Hegel really was. Senatore Croce is a Hegelian, but a critical one. His chief criticism of Hegel is that his philosophy tends to obscure the individuality and uniqueness of history, and Croce seeks to avoid that obscurity by distinguis.h.i.+ng clearly the methods of history, of science and of philosophy. He holds that all science deals with abstractions, with what he has elsewhere called pseudo-concepts. These abstractions have no real existence, and it is fatal to confuse the system of abstraction which science builds up with the concrete living reality. 'All scientific laws are abstract laws,' as he says in one of these essays, (III p. 57), 'and there is no bridge over which to pa.s.s from the concrete to the abstract; just because the abstract is not a reality but a form of thought, one of our, so to speak, abbreviated ways of thinking. And although a knowledge of the laws may _light up_ our perception of reality, it cannot become that perception itself.'

The application to the doctrine of historic materialism is obvious. It calls attention to one of the factors of the historical process, the economic. This factor it quite rightly treats in abstraction and isolation. A knowledge of the laws of economic forces so obtained may 'light up our perception' of the real historical process, but only darkness and confusion can result from mistaking the abstraction for reality and from the production of those _a priori_ histories of the stages of civilisation or the development of the family which have discredited Marxianism in the eyes of historians. In the first essay and the third part of the third Croce explains this distinction between economic science and history and their proper relation to one another. The second essay reinforces the distinction by criticism of another attempt to construct a science which shall take the place of history. A science in the strict sense history is not and never can be.

Once this is clearly understood it is possible to appreciate the services rendered to history by Marx. For Croce holds that economics is a real science. The economic factors in history can be isolated and treated by themselves. Without such isolated treatment they cannot be understood, and if they are not understood, our view of history is bound to be unnecessarily narrow and onesided. _On the relative importance_ of the economic and the political and the religious factors in history he has nothing to say. There is no _a priori_ answer to the question whether any school of writers has unduly diminished or exaggerated the importance of any one of these factors.

Their importance has varied at different times, and can at any time only be estimated empirically. It remains a service of great value to have distinguished a factor of such importance which had been previously neglected.

If then the economic factor in history should be isolated and treated separately, how is it to be distinguished? For it is essential to Croce's view of science that each science has its own concepts which can be distinguished clearly from those of other sciences. This question is discussed in Essay III Q. 5 and more specifically in Essay VI. Croce is specially anxious to distinguish between the spheres of economics and ethics. Much confusion has been caused in political economy in the past by the a.s.sumption that economics takes for granted that men behave egoistically, _i.e._ in an immoral way. As a result of this a.s.sumption men have had to choose between the condemnation of economics or of mankind. The believer in humanity has been full of denunciation of that monstrosity the economic man, while the thorough-going believer in economics has a.s.sumed that the success of the economic interpretation of history proves that men are always selfish. The only alternative view seemed to be the rather cynical compromise that though men were sometimes unselfish, their actions were so prevailingly selfish that for political purposes the unselfish actions might be ignored. Croce insists, and surely with justice, that economic actions are not moral or immoral, but in so far as they are economic, nonmoral. The moral worth of actions cannot be determined by their success or failure in giving men satisfaction. For there are some things in which men find satisfaction which they yet judge to be bad. We must distinguish therefore the moral question whether such and such an action is good or bad from the economic whether it is or is not useful, whether it is a way by which men get what they, rightly or wrongly want. In economics then we are merely discussing the efficiency or utility of actions. We can ask of any action whether it ought or ought not to be done at all. That is a moral question. We may also ask whether it is done competently or efficiently: that is an economic question. It might be contended that it is immoral to keep a public house, but it would also have to be allowed that the discussion of the most efficient way by keeping a public house was outside the scope of the moral enquiry. Mrs Weir of Hermiston was confusing economics with ethics when she answered Lord Braxfield's complaints of his ill-cooked dinner by saying that the cook was a very pious woman.

Economic action according to Croce is the condition of moral action.

If action has no economic value, it is merely aimless, but it may have economic value without being moral, and the consideration of economic value must therefore be independent of ethics.

Marx, Croce holds was an economist and not a moralist, and the moral judgments of socialists are not and cannot be derived from any scientific examination of economic processes.

So much for criticisms of Marx or rather of exaggerated developments of Marxianism, which though just and important, are comparatively obvious. The most interesting part of Signor Croce's criticism is his interpretation of the s.h.i.+bboleth of orthodox Marxians and the stumbling-block of economists, the Marxian theory of labour value with its corollary of surplus value. Marx's exposition of the doctrine in _Das Kapital_ is the extreme of abstract reasoning. Yet it is found in a book full of concrete descriptions of the evils of the factory system and of moral denunciation and satire. If Marx's theory be taken as an account of what determines the actual value of concrete things it is obviously untrue. The very use of the term surplus value is sufficient to show that it might be and sometimes is taken to be the value which commodities ought to have, but none can read Marx's arguments and think that he was concerned with a value which should but did not exist. He is clearly engaged on a scientific not a Utopian question.

Croce attempts to find a solution by pointing out that the society which Marx is describing is not this or that actual society, but an ideal, in the sense of a hypothetical society, capitalist society as such. Marx has much to say of the development of capitalism in England, but he is not primarily concerned to give an industrial history of England or of any other existing society. He is a scientist and deals with abstractions or types and considers England only in so far as in it the characteristics of the abstract capitalist society are manifested. The capitalism which he is a.n.a.lysing does not exist because no society is completely capitalist. Further it is to be noticed that in his a.n.a.lysis of value Marx is dealing with objects only in so far as they are commodities produced by labour. This is evident enough in his argument. The basis of his contention that all value is 'congealed labour time' is that all things which have economic value have in common only the fact that labour has been expended on them, and yet afterwards he admits that there are things in which no labour has been expended which yet have economic value. He seems to regard this as an incidental unimportant fact. Yet obviously it is a contradiction which vitiates his whole argument. If all things which have economic value have not had labour expended on them, we must look elsewhere for their common characteristic. We should probably say that they all have in common the fact that they are desired and that there is not an unlimited supply of them. The pure economist finds the key to this a.n.a.lysis of value in the consideration of the laws of supply and demand, which alone affect all things that have economic value, and finds little difficulty in refuting Marx's theory, on the basis which his investigation a.s.sumes.

A consideration of Marx's own argument forces us therefore to the conclusion that either Marx was an incapable bungler or that he thought the fact that some things have economic value and are yet not the product of labour irrelevant to his argument because he was talking of economic value in two senses, firstly in the sense of price, and secondly in a peculiar sense of his own. This indeed is borne out by his distinction of value and price. Croce developing this hint, suggests that the importance of Marx's theory lies in a comparison between a capitalist society and another abstract economic society in which there are no commodities on which labour is not expended, and no monopoly. We thus have two abstract societies, the capitalist society which though abstract is very largely actualised in modern civilisation, and another quite imaginary economic society of unfettered compet.i.tion, which is continually a.s.sumed by the cla.s.sical economist, but which, as Marx said, could only exist where there was no private property in capital, _i.e._ in the collectivist state.

Now in a society of that kind in which there was no monopoly and capital was at everyone's disposal equally, the value of commodities would represent the value of the labour put into them, and that value might be represented in units of socially necessary labour time. It would still have to be admitted that an hour of one man's labour might be of much greater value to the community than two hours of another man, but that Marx has already allowed for. The unit of socially necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the hour of one man might contain two or any number of such abstract units of labour time. What Marx has done is to take the individualist economist at his word: he has accepted the notion of an economic society as a number of competing individuals. Only he has insisted that they shall start fair and therefore that they shall have nothing to buy or sell but their labour. The discrepancy between the values which would exist in such a society and actual prices represent the disturbance created by the fact that actual society is not a society of equal compet.i.tors, but one in which certain compet.i.tors start with some kind of advantage or monopoly.

If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it bears a close relation to a simpler and more familiar contention, that in a society where free economic compet.i.tion holds sway, each man gets what he deserves, for his income represents the sum that society is prepared to pay for his services, the social value of his work. In this form the hours worked are supposed to be uniform, and the differences in value are taken to represent different amounts of social service. In Marx's argument the social necessity is taken as uniform, and the difference in value taken to represent differences in hours of work.

While the main abstract contention remains the same, most of those who argue that in a system of unfettered economic compet.i.tion most men get what they deserve, rather readily ignore the existence of monopoly, and a.s.sume that this argument justifies the existing distribution of wealth. The chief purpose of Marx's argument is to emphasise the difference between such an economic system and a capitalist society.

He is here, as so often, turning the logic of the cla.s.sical economists against themselves, and arguing that the conditions under which a purely economic distribution of wealth could take place, could only exist in a community where monopoly had been completely abolished and all capital collectivised.

Croce maintains that Marx's theory of value is economic and not moral.

Yet it is hard to read Marx and certainly Marxians without finding in them the implication that the values produced in such an economic society would be just. If that implication be examined, we come on an important difficulty still remaining in this theory. The contention that in a system of unfettered economic compet.i.tion, men get the reward they deserve, a.s.sumes that it is just that if one man has a greater power of serving society than another he should be more highly rewarded for his work. This the individualist argument with which we compared Marx's a.s.sumes without question. But the Marxian theory of value is frequently interpreted to imply that amount of work is the only claim to reward. For differences in value it is held are created by differences in the amount of labour. But the word amount may here be used in two senses. When men say that the amount of work a man does _should_ determine a man's reward; they commonly mean that if one man works two hours and another one, the first ought to get twice the reward of the second. 'Amount' here means the actual time spent in labour. But in Marx's theory of value amount means something quite different, for an hour of one man's work may, he admits, be equal to two of another man's. He means by amount a sum of abstract labour time units. Marx's scientific theory of value is quite consistent with different abilities getting different rewards, the moral contention that men should get more reward if they work more and for no other reason is not. The equation of work done by men of different abilities by expressing them in abstract labour time units is essential to Marx's theory but fatal to the moral claim sometimes founded upon it.

Further the great difficulty in allowing that it is just that men of different abilities should have different rewards, comes from the fact that differences of ability are of the nature of monopolies. In a pure economic society high rewards would be given to rare ability and although it is possible to equate work of rare ability with work of ordinary ability by expressing both as amounts of abstract labour time units, it surely remains true that the value is determined not by the amount of abstract labour time congealed in it but by the law of supply and demand. Where there are differences of ability there is some kind of monopoly, and where there is monopoly, you cannot eliminate the influence of the relation of supply and demand in the determination of value. What you imagine you have eliminated by the elimination of capital, which you can collectivise, remains obstinately in individual differences of ability which cannot be collectivised.

But here I have entered beyond the limits of Croce's argument. His critical apprais.e.m.e.nt of Marx's work must be left to others to judge who have more knowledge of Marx and of economics than I can lay claim to. I am confident only that all students of Marx whether they be disciples or critics, will find in these essays illumination in a field where much bitter controversy has resulted in little but confusion and obscurity.

A.D. LINDSAY.

_CHAPTER I._ CONCERNING THE SCIENTIFIC FORM OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Historical materialism is what is called a fas.h.i.+onable subject. The theory came into being fifty years ago, and for a time remained obscure and limited; but during the last six or seven years it has rapidly attained great fame and an extensive literature, which is daily increasing, has grown up around it. It is not my intention to write once again the account, already given many times, of the origin of this doctrine; nor to restate and criticise the now well-known pa.s.sages in which Marx and Engels a.s.serted the theory, nor the different views of its opponents, its supporters, its exponents, and its correctors and corruptors. My object is merely to submit to my colleagues some few remarks concerning the doctrine, taking it in the form in which it appears in a recent book by Professor Antonio Labriola, of the University of Rome[1].

For many reasons, it does not come within my province to praise Labriola's book. But I cannot help saying as a needful explanation, that it appears to me to be the fullest and most adequate treatment of the question. The book is free from pedantry and learned tattle, whilst it shows in every line signs of the author's complete knowledge of all that has been written on the subject: a book, in short, which saves the annoyance of controversy with erroneous and exaggerated opinions, which in it appear as superseded. It has a grand opportunity in Italy, where the materialistic theory of history is known almost solely in the spurious form bestowed on it by an ingenious professor of economics, who even pretends to be its inventor[2].

I

_1. Scope of essay: Labriola's book implies that historical materialism is not a philosophy of history: Distinction between a philosophy of history and philosophising about history: Reason why two have been confused: Materialistic theory of history as stated by Labriola not an attempt to establish a law of history: This contrasted with theories of monists, and teleologists: Engels' statement that it is a new method erroneous: New content not new method._

Any reader of Labriola's book who tries to obtain from it a precise concept of the new theory of history, will reach in the first instance a conclusion which must appear to him evident and incontestable, and which I sum up in the following statement: 'historical materialism, so-called, _is not a philosophy of history_.' Labriola does not state this denial explicitly; it may even be granted that, in words, he sometimes says exactly the opposite.[3] But, if I am not mistaken, the denial is contained implicitly in the restrictions which he places on the meaning of the theory.

The philosophical reaction of realism overthrew the systems built up by teleology and metaphysical dogmatism, which had limited the field of the historian. The old philosophy of history was destroyed. And, as if in contempt and depreciation, the phrase, 'to construct a philosophy of history,' came to be used with the meaning: 'to construct a fanciful and artificial and perhaps prejudiced history.'

It is true that of late books have begun to re-appear actually having as their t.i.tle the 'philosophy of history.' This might seem to be a revival, but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different one.

These recent productions do not aim at supplying a _new philosophy of history_, they simply offer _some philosophising about history_. The distinction deserves to be explained.

The possibility of a philosophy of history presupposes the possibility of reducing the sequence of history to general concepts. Now, whilst it is possible to reduce to general concepts the particular factors of reality which appear in history and hence to construct a philosophy of morality or of law, of science or of art, and a general philosophy, it is not possible to work up into general concepts the single complex whole formed by these factors, _i.e._ the _concrete fact_, in which the historical sequence consists. To divide it into its factors is to destroy it, to annihilate it. In its complex totality, historical change is incapable of reduction except to one concept, that of _development_: a concept empty of everything that forms the peculiar content of history. The old philosophy of history regarded a conceptual working out of history as possible; either because by introducing the idea of G.o.d or of Providence, it read into the facts the aims of a divine intelligence; or because it treated the formal concept of development as including within itself, logically, the contingent determinations. The case of positivism is strange in that, being neither so boldly imaginative as to yield to the conceptions of teleology and rational philosophy, nor so strictly realistic and intellectually disciplined as to attack the error at its roots, it has halted halfway, _i.e._ at the actual concept of development and of evolution, and has announced the philosophy of evolution as the true philosophy of history: development itself--as the law which explains development! Were this tautology only in question little harm would result; but the misfortune is that, by a too easy confusion, the concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands of the positivists, from the formal emptiness which belongs to it in truth, and acquires a meaning or rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings of teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious unction and reverence with which one hears the sacred mystery of _evolution_ spoken of gives sufficient proof of this.

From such realistic standpoints, now as always, any and every philosophy of history has been criticised. But the very reservations and criticisms of the old mistaken constructions demand a discussion of concepts, that is a process of philosophising: although it may be a philosophising which leads properly to the denial of a philosophy of history. Disputes about method, arising out of the needs of the historian, are added. The works published in recent years embody different investigations of this kind, and in a plainly realistic sense, under the t.i.tle of _philosophy of history_. Amongst these I will mention as an example a German pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst ourselves a compendious introduction by Labriola himself. There are, undoubtedly, still philosophies of history which continue to be produced in the old way: voices _clamantium in deserto_, to whom may be granted the consolation of believing themselves the only apostles of an unrecognised truth.

Now the materialistic theory of history, in the form in which Labriola states it, involves an entire abandonment of all attempt to establish a law of history, to discover a general concept under which all the complex facts of history can be included.

I say 'in the form in which he states it,' because Labriola is aware that several sections of the materialistic school of history tend to approximate to these obsolete ideas.

One of these sections, which might be called that of the _monists_, or _abstract materialists_, is characterised by the introduction of metaphysical materialism into the conception of history.

As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing the relation between his opinions and Hegelianism employed a pointed phrase which has been taken too often beside the point. He said that with Hegel history was standing on its head and that it must be turned right side up again in order to replace it on its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world, whereas for him (Marx) 'the ideal is nothing else than the material world' reflected and translated by the human mind. Hence the statement so often repeated, that the materialistic view of history is the negation or ant.i.thesis of the idealistic view. It would perhaps be convenient to study once again, accurately and critically, these a.s.serted relations between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To state the opinion which I have formed on the matter; the link between the two views seems to me to be, in the main, simply _psychological_.

Hegelianism was the _early inspiration_ of the youthful Marx, and it is natural that everyone should link up the new ideas with the old as a development, an amendment, an ant.i.thesis. In fact, Hegel's _Ideas_--and Marx knew this perfectly well--are not human _ideas_, and to turn the Hegelian philosophy of history upside down cannot give us the statement that ideas arise as reflections of material conditions. The inverted form would logically be this: history is not a process of the _Idea_, _i.e._ of a rational reality, but a system of forces: to the rational view is opposed the dynamic view. As to the Hegelian dialectic of concepts it seems to me to bear a purely external and approximate resemblance to the historical notion of economic eras and of the ant.i.thetical conditions of society. Whatever may be the value of this suggestion, which I express with hesitation, recognising the difficulty of the problems connected with the interpretation and origin of history;--this much is evident, that metaphysical materialism, at which Marx and Engels, starting from the extreme Hegelian left, easily arrived, supplied the name and some of the components of their view of history. But both the name and these components are really extraneous to the true character of their conception. This can be neither materialistic nor spiritualistic, nor dualistic nor monadistic: within its limited field the elements of things are not presented in such a way as to admit of a philosophical discussion whether they are reducible one to another, and are united in one ultimate source. What we have before us are concrete objects, the earth, natural production, animals; we have before us man, in whom the so-called psychical processes appear as differentiated from the so-called physiological processes. To talk in this case of monism and materialism is to talk nonsense. Some socialist writers have expressed surprise because Lange, in his cla.s.sic _History of Materialism_, does not discuss historical materialism. It is needless to remark that Lange was familiar with Marxian socialism. He was, however, too cautious to confuse the metaphysical materialism with which he was concerned, with historical materialism which has no essential connection with it, and is merely a _way of speaking_.

But the metaphysical materialism of the authors of the new historical doctrine, and the name given to the latter, have been not a little misleading. I will refer as an example to a recent and bad little book, which seems to me symptomatic, by a sufficiently accredited socialist writer, Plechanow.[4] The author, designing to study historical materialism, thinks it needful to go back to Holbach and Helvetius. And he waxes indignant at metaphysical dualism and pluralism, declaring that 'the most important philosophical systems were always _monistic_, that is they interpreted matter and spirit as merely two cla.s.ses of phenomena having a single and indivisible cause.' And in reference to those who maintain the distinction between the factors in history, he exclaims: 'We see here the old story, always recurring, of the struggle between eclecticism and monism, the story of the dividing walls; here nature, there spirit, etc.' Many will be amazed at this unexpected leap from the materialistic study of history into the arms of monism, in which they were unaware that they ought to have such confidence.

Labriola is most careful to avoid this confusion: 'Society is a datum,' he says, 'history is nothing more than the history of society.' And he controverts with equal energy and success the _naturalists_, who wish to reduce the history of man to the history of nature, and the _verbalists_, who claim to deduce from the name materialism the real nature of the new view of history. But it must appear, even to him, that the name might have been more happily chosen, and that the confusion lies, so to speak, inherent in it. It is true that old words can be bent to new meanings, but within limits and after due consideration.

In regard to the tendency to reconstruct a materialistic philosophy of history, subst.i.tuting an omnipresent Matter for an omnipresent Idea, it suffices to re-a.s.sert the impossibility of any such construction, which must become merely superfluous and tautologous unless it abandoned itself to dogmatism. But there is another error, which is remarked among the followers of the materialistic school of history, and which is connected with the former, viz., to antic.i.p.ate harm not only in the interpretation of history but also in the guidance of practical activities. I refer to the teleological tendencies (abstract teleology), which also Labriola opposes with a cutting attack. The very idea of _progress_, which has seemed to many the only law of history worth saving out of the many devised by philosophical and non-philosophical thinkers, is by him deprived of the dignity of a law, and reduced to a sufficiently narrow significance. The idea of it, says Labriola, is 'not only empirical, but always incidental and hence limited': progress 'does not influence the sequence of human affairs like destiny or fate, nor like the command of a law.' History teaches us that man is capable of progress; and we can look at all the different series of events from this point of view: that is all. No less incidental and empirical is the idea of _historical necessity_, which must be freed from all remnants of rationalism and of transcendentalism, so that we see in it the mere recognition of the very small share left in the sequence of events, to individuals and personal free will.

It must be admitted that a little of the blame for the teleological and fatalistic misunderstandings fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he once had to explain, liked to 'coquette' with the Hegelian terminology: a dangerous weapon, with which it would have been better not to trifle. Hence it is now thought necessary to give to several of his statements a somewhat broad interpretation in agreement with the general trend of his theories.[5] Another excuse lies in the impetuous confidence which, as in the case of any practical work, accompanies the practical activities of socialism, and engenders beliefs and expectations which do not always agree with prudent critical and scientific thought. It is strange to see how the positivists, newly converted to socialism, exceed all the others (see the effect of a good school!) in their teleological beliefs, and their facile predeterminations. They swallow again what is worst in Hegelianism, which they once so violently opposed without recognising it. Labriola has finely said that the very forecasts of socialism are merely _morphological_ in nature; and, in fact, neither Marx nor Engels would ever have a.s.serted in the abstract that communism must come about by an unavoidable necessity, in the manner in which they foresaw it. If history is always accidental, why in this western Europe of ours, might not a new barbarism arise owing to the effect of incalculable circ.u.mstances? Why should not the coming of communism be either rendered superfluous or hastened by some of those technical discoveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have hitherto produced the greatest revolutions in the course of history?

I think then that better homage would be rendered to the materialistic view of history, not by calling it the _final and definite philosophy of history_ but rather by declaring that properly speaking _it is not a philosophy of history_. This intrinsic nature which is evident to those who understand it properly, explains the difficulty which exists in finding for it a satisfactory theoretical statement; and why to Labriola it appears to be only in its beginnings and yet to need much development. It explains too why Engels said (and Labriola accepts the remark), that it is nothing more than a new _method_; which means a denial that it is a new _theory_. But is it indeed a new method? I must acknowledge that this name _method_ does not seem to me altogether accurate. When the philosophical idealists tried to arrive at the facts of history by inference, this was truly a new method; and there may still exist some fossil of those blessed times, who makes such attempts at history. But the historians of the materialistic school employ the same intellectual weapons and follow the same paths as, let us say, the philological historians. They only introduce into their work some new _data_, some new _experiences_. The content is different, not the nature of the method.

II

_2. Historical materialism a ma.s.s of new data of which historian becomes conscious: Does not state that history is nothing more than economic history, nor does it provide a theory of history: Is simply investigation of influence economic needs have exercised in history: This view does not detract from its importance._