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p The possibility, discovered by the founders of Marxism, of scientifically forecasting social development is of inestimable importance for the revolutionary activity of the working class, which has a vested interest in understanding the laws of the movement and development of society for the purpose of changing it. And it is by no means accidental that the opponents of Marxism have for a long time concentrated their efforts on “refuting” the thesis about the possibility of a scientific cognition of the laws of social development and consequently of forecasting future social development. In so doing they change from time to time the devices with which they attempt to refute the Marxist theory on the possibility of social forecasting.

p In assessing the problem of historical forecasting, the neo-Kantians, for example, proceed from the general proposition that the general, the logical, i.e., the specific subject of science, is something subjective; in this way they reject the inner connection and possibility of cognising social phenomena, first and foremost, the laws of historical development.

p Bourgeois historiography has been strongly influenced by the neo-Kantians W. Windelband and H. Rickert. Their works have been accepted by historians as the philosophical foundation of historiographical practice.

p On the question of scientific forecasting, the neo-Kantians adopted a very definite position. They regarded the impossibility of such forecasting as an axiom. Rickert, for 76 exampie, used this “axiom” as an argument intended to prove his statement that the laws of the development of society simply do not exist. “...If laws of history existed,” he wrote, “history would be able not only to explain the past, but also to forecast the future."  [76•1 

p In principle the followers of Windelband and Rickert still make use of this sophism today. Thus, for example, Popper, Acton and others, basing their argument on the complexity of the historical process, deduce the methodological impossibility of scientific forecasting, and then proceeding from this impossibility conclude that the idea of determinism is “unfounded”.

p It is well known that Rickert, in contrasting nature with society, rejected any progressive development in nature and recognised in it only eternal repetition. In his view, development in history means only “the formation of the individual event".  [76•2 

p Marxists have expressed their opinions in detail on this question, and we shall confine ourselves here to remarking that this conception, which has long since been refuted by the achievements of the natural and social sciences, finds some advocates to this very day.  [76•3  The apogee of neoKantian philosophic enquiry was ultimately to “prove” that historiography which confines itself to describing events and rejects the existence of laws can also be called a science, and moreover, that it alone, as “the science of the individual event”, is a true science, whereas generalising science departs from reality. The logic of this reasoning, directed against Marxism, may be reduced to the following: if history is an irrational process, devoid of all logic, and the decisive role in its development is played by the will of isolated individuals or chance, then the scientific forecasting of Marxists about the inevitable, natural victory of socialism is nothing but a fiction, a speculative doctrine of salvage, a prophecy, etc.

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p Therefore, when a “respectful attitude towards the uncognisability of the aim"  [77•1  is advanced by Western historians as a compulsory element of historical thought, this can mean one thing only: the rejection of the possibility of forecasting, and consequently of the conscious transformation of the present 

p The general crisis of capitalism has led some bourgeois ideologists to attempt to break out of the framework of the agnosticism and methodology of neo-Kantianism and create a world outlook (generalising in its content), which could serve as a “justification” for imperialism, for its existence in the face of its approaching collapse, and create the illusion of an historical perspective. As Anderle says, “at the present time voices are being heard with increasing persistence from all sides demanding the creation of large historical canvases reflecting whole epochs and periods ... and deep down our age, racked with crises and apocalyptic fears, is in constant view. An answer must be found to the questions which our age poses...."  [77•2  However, the philosophy of history must not only give a recipe on how to overcome these fears of the collapse of the capitalist system, but at the same time accept the ideological challenge put to it by historical materialism and scientific communism. It is this which served “the awakening of the philosophy of history".  [77•3  Various philosophers of the present and recent past engaged in the study of history have tried, alongside theological and other speculative interpretations of history, to reach a rational understanding of the historical process, to create theoretical systems and use the latter as a basis for forecasting the historical processes of the future. We have in mind, first and foremost, the systems of Spengler and Toynbee, systems which, although they abound in speculative constructions, have as their aim the forecasting of the future. This book, writes Spengler in his work The Decline of the West, has made for the first time “the venture of predetermining history, 78 of following still untraveiled stages in the destiny of a Culture, and speciiically of the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfilment—the West-European-American ".   [78•1 

p Basically what we are dealing with here are attempts to set up a personal approach to the problem of forecasting against Marxism. Unlike the neo-Kantians, the philosophers in question do not dispute the existence of the laws of the historical process and the possibility of predicting future social development on their basis. The neo-Karitian interpretation of history, although it envisages the possibility of the irrational “cognition of the meaning of history" and, moreover, prepares the ground for justifying such “ cognition" by the irrationalisation of the historical process, does not recognise either purely speculative or historico– philosophical systems which claim to be scientific as having the right to prove the propositions which they advance with the help of historical facts. In other words, it disputes the possibility “of scientifically solving the question of being and its meaning".  [78•2  Toynbee, however, openly advocated the use of rational methods, particularly the comparative method, in historical science, and, therefore, renounced the neo-Kantian axiom of the individual event,  [78•3  which was incompatible with these methods. Spengler advocated “ contemplation" and verbally rejected rational methods. As evidence of the speculative nature of Spengler’s ideas about the decline of Western Europe, his own statements are quoted, such as, for example: “...the phenomenon of the Great Cultures ... (must be) seen and felt and worked out...."  [78•4  However the birth of the organism is seen only by he who is able to lift the world cover of causality without giving thought to it.  [78•5  “Goethe ... hated Mathematics—Sympathy, observation, comparison, immediate and inward certainty, intellectual flair—these were the means whereby he was 79 enabled to approach the secrets of the phenomenal world in motion. Now these are the means of historical research— precisely these and no other."  [79•1  These statements are most characteristic and should be borne in mind in assessing Spengler’s ideas. At the same time, however, one must remember that Spengler, like Toynbee after him, regarded his cultural cycles as isomorphic systems. Using the comparative method, Spengler ultimately reduces all cultural cycles to a single model and formulates laws of growth equally valid for all cultural cycles.

p Spengler’s basic error was not that he used this method, but that he applied it to phenomena which do not have the same structure. This, in turn, means that he proceeded from an incorrect central concept, namely, the cultural cycle. This error, incidentally, was repeated later by Toynbee. In the first place, one cannot explain the development of the cultural cycle by the existence of the “soul” of culture and outline the boundaries of the cycle by this “soul” (in the case of Toynbee, the soul is replaced by religion, style in art, a great discovery, etc.). In the second place, by rejecting continuous development one reduces development to an equivalent in form alternation of events, which, it is held, repeat themselves constantly in cultural cycles that replace one another or co-exist. The very idea of the cultural cycle was indisputably arbitrary, but the method used to study this construction was a rational one. That the idea of the cultural cycle is an arbitrary one is confirmed by the fact that Toynbee, as one of his West German critics has pointed out, gives the concept of “culture” a different meaning each time, which is basically inadmissible when using the general concept of “culture”.  [79•2  His definition of culture as “a single meaningful whole”,  [79•3  as a construction limited in time and space, which must be studied to explain the history of a certain number of nations, peoples, etc., this definition, like Ranke’s definition of the state, which he sees as something totally individual and representing, in his view, “a Divine design”, is an abortive attempt. Toynbee’s idea of the “meaning " of history as an attempt 80 “to ascend from the level of a primitive humanity to the height of some superhuman kind of living”,  [80•1  (“Society of saints”), is also arbitrary and not confirmed by the facts.

p In spite of the attempts to use rational methods, in spite of the search for definite “laws”, these systems are indubitably dogmatic, for their creators, as mentioned above, on the one hand, set up an initial system a priori, first and foremost, the so-called cultural cycles, and on the other hand, ignored facts which cannot be explained within the framework of their systems. And there were a fair number of such facts. Thus, for example, Spengler’s system does not explain why Japan in the second half of the 19th century was able in forty years to reach the “Faustian cultural cycle" (for Spengler this cycle is equivalent to capitalist Western Europe). Nor did this theory justify itself in the case of such a phenomenon as the Soviet Union, which has no uniform physical conditions or a single race, the basic components of Spengler’s “soul of culture”, and which, nevertheless, was transformed over a short period into a united great power with a very distinctive culture. These and many other facts show that in treating the concept of culture Spengler was basing himself on arbitrary statements.

p Toynbee’s theory, in its turn, does not explain all the facts which bear witness to the unity of mankind’s spiritual culture, and this is because he rejects the concept of a common material culture. This common material culture is seen, for example, in the unity of hieroglyphic writing of peoples at the early stages of civilisation. According to Toynbee, this is a paradoxical, inexplicable phenomenon, but from the point of view of the materialist interpretation of history it is completely logical. The creation of theoretical, albeit dogmatic systems took place, however, in the first instance not in order to explain historical facts, but to predetermine the future, as Spengler emphasises. And since all prediction in any science, from the point of view of logic, is always the deduction of facts on the basis of general laws, it is impossible to reject the creation of systems if one wishes to predict. There exists, however, an inseparable link between explaining and predicting, for theories which do not give a scientific explanation of events that have already taken place are of no use in predicting future 81 events. This connection emerged in the above-mentioned systems.

p Thus, Spengler, and later Toynbee, were not able to create a correct system capable of explaining historical facts and, consequently, were unable to predict the future on the basis of their systems. This is seen most clearly in Spengler’s gloomy predictions about Russia’s industrial development. Thus, he stated, for example: “So also the Russian looks with fear and hatred at this tyranny of wheels, cables, and rails.... There will come a time when he will blot out the whole thing from his memory and his environment, and create about himself a wholly new world, in which nothing of this Devil’s technique is left."   [81•1  This prediction shows that Spengler totally misunderstood the essence of the historical process and its motive forces, and was, therefore, bound to make totally incorrect deductions.

p This is also true of his predictions about the imminent “decline of the West”. Here, it is true, the “decline”, which was prophesied on the basis of the obvious external symptoms of the crisis of the capitalist system, was predicted correctly in a certain sense, for imperialism is indeed the highest and final stage, the stage of the collapse of capitalist society. However, the fall of capitalist society certainly does not mean the end of civilisation, the end of the progressive development of mankind, as Spengler and Toynbee believe. Consequently, this forecast is untenable in terms of historical prediction.

p Basically the conclusion about the inevitable “decline of the West" is an analogy in which, proceeding from the formal resemblance of general sociological tendencies inherent in any antagonistic social formation at the final stage of its development, the period of its disintegration, the common fate of comparable social formations is inferred, namely, their decline. Inferences of this kind in respect of the objective, but at the same time formal repetition of certain symptoms are quite insufficient to explain the content of processes, that is, to explain their characteristic causes and the differences between them.  [81•2 

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p In this case Spengler differs from Toynbee in that he is consistent and follows the determinist principle to the end, whereas Toynbee refrains from predicting the fate of the West. “Our post mortem examination of dead civilisations does not enable us to cast the horoscope of our own civilisation or of any other that is still alive,"  [82•1  he writes. He refuses for perfectly understandable reasons to draw any final conclusions about the decline of culture on the basis of his theory, accuses Spengler of “dogmatic determinism" and in contradiction with the whole of his system wants to give the West the chance of eternal existence.

p It was, of course, impossible to conceal this contradiction from such bourgeois critics as F. Hampl, for example, the neo-Kantian historian. He writes: “After this you wait for Toynbee, like Spengler ... to recognise the existence of a strict logic in history and to recognise also that each culture is doomed by the highest law to perish at some time or other in a definite way. How else could one understand the uniformity of the process of decline of all cultures which have perished before us? Toynbee, however, ... far from drawing consistent conclusions from his theory of the decline of cultures, like Spengler, offers our West European culture which, in his opinion, is the only flourishing culture at the present time, considerable chances of so-called eternal existence. All other cultures, in his opinion, declined only through the fault of people, consequently, West European culture will continue to exist if we are sensible and fulfil the various demands advanced by Toynbee... ."  [82•2 

p Since for reasons of a class nature bourgeois ideologists refuse to make a concrete analysis of the social processes they examine, their views on the possibility of overcoming this “crisis of existence" are bound inevitably to be Utopian, fantastic and unreal. To create the “world state”, about which Toynbee dreams, national states will not subject themselves voluntarily to the dictate of American monopolies and allow the latter to enslave them; nor can the class struggle in the world be destroyed with the help of any manipulations, such as changes in the conditions of distribution, or the “turning” of the “majority”, i.e., the working people, to a definite faith, etc. Personal loyalty to bourgeois society 83 does not allow him to recognise the irreconcilability of the above-mentioned convictions. As a result, he makes the fate of Western Europe depend on the grace of God: “The divine spark of creative power is still alive in us, and, if we have the grace to kindle it into flame, then the stars in their courses cannot defeat our efforts to attain the goal of human endeavour".  [83•1 

p Here “prediction” turns into open prophecy. Fritz Wagner, a West German critic of neo-Kantian contemplation, hits the nail on the head when he detects in Toynbee’s works “vacillation between a positivist position and prophetic hope".  [83•2  In spite of the fact that Toynbee constantly insists that he is far from any “dogmatic determinism" and prefers voluntarism to determinism in his conclusions, many bourgeois historians, as we have seen in the cases of Hampl and Wagner, have not allowed themselves to be deceived and have recognised the true nature of his system.

p It is interesting, however, that the main criticism levelled at Toynbee, and also at other historians of the same trend, is not that he makes excessive concessions to the principle of determinism, concessions which are not compatible with neo-Kantian views, but that he interprets the fate of Western Europe pessimistically and by his “fantastic false doctrines undermines the foundations and threatens the future of West European culture".  [83•3 

p Exactly the same criticism was made of Spengler and Toynbee by Karl Popper, the well-known opponent of scientific historical prediction, and it is characteristic that he criticised them not only for trying to predict history, but first and foremost for the pessimistic nature of their prediction. “If enough people believe in the decline of the West,” he writes, “the West will certainly decline, even if it would have continued its ascent without this propaganda."  [83•4 

p It is quite clear that pragmatic views rejected most decisively as contradicting “objectivity” by the supporters 84 of the neo-Kantian interpretation of history in discussions on philosophico-rnethodological problems, play a certain role at least in the given case where the possibility or impossibility of scientific prediction is involved.

p Popper’s criticism does contain a rational kernel, it is true, for between scientific prediction and that which is predicted there is a feedback namely, that people can regulate their actions one way or the other on the basis of prediction. Even under state-monopoly capitalism it is quite possible, by taking into account scientific forecasts of economic development, to try to avert to some extent a certain imbalance in the economy or, on the basis of statistical calculations, to avoid a predicted over-production of certain goods. However, on no account must one make this possibility absolute and go on to eliminate the laws of historical development, as Popper does.

p We do not dispute the fact that predicting the future “decline of the West" may have a demoralising effect on its defenders and accelerate this decline. But just as the speculative prediction of a state of society in the future cannot of itself produce this state if the conditions for it have not yet matured (suffice it to mention, for example, Kant’s views on the eternal world or the ideal organisation of society), so predicting a decline cannot of itself bring about this decline if the social formation in question is in the stage of ascent. The imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, as we know, was constantly being predicted by its enemies, but this forecast could not prevent the Soviet Union’s rapid development.

p As far as the aim of forecasts made by such philosophers as Spengler and Toynbee is concerned, it is the exact opposite of what Popper regards as the effect of this forecast.

p To return to the analysis of Toynbee’s theory, one must point out its purely speculative religious idea about the Divine requirement for the embodiment of the meaning of history with the help of the people’s concrete actions. In discussing this theory, critics have expressed certain doubts as to the mass effect of a purely religious doctrine. “To trace that which providence has prepared for us,...” writes W. den Boer, “is an absurd thing for both believers and unbelievers, for the latter because they do not believe in providence, and for the former because they regard the final decision as to 85 ascent or decline, crime and punishment, cause and effect, as being outside historical knowledge and await this decision, having totally submitted to it in advance."  [85•1 

p The emphasis on non-religious theories of the industrial society promoted this awareness of deficiency mentioned by W. den Boer. How low bourgeois ideologists rate the chances of elevating any doctrine based on religion to the rank of a single ideology for the West may be seen from the following statement by the Dutch historian P. Geyl. “As for me, I think that the prospects of a universal turning to some faith or other, on which Toynbee is relying, are so slight that if we were to advance such a doctrine it would be the death sentence for the future of our culture."  [85•2 

Realising the untenability of the views on the future advanced by Spengler and Toynbee, bourgeois philosophers and sociologists have sought for a positive solution to the problem. They advance all manner of solutions—from outright recognition of the impossibility of delving into the future to attempts to solve the question from the viewpoint of abstract anthropology (this is characteristic mainly of philosophical trends). Others, primarily bourgeois sociologists, incline to develop a “truly scientific" outlook of social development, usually seeing “technological determinism" and various versions of the ideology of industrialism as the sheet anchor. Let us now consider the most well-known philosophical and sociological theories about the future in the capitalist countries of the West.