p The bankruptcy of the idealist point of view in explaining the phenomena of nature and of social development was bound to force, and really did force, thinking people (i.e., not eclectics, not dualists) to return to the materialist view of the world. But the new materialism could no longer be a simple repetition of the teachings of the French materialists of the end of the eighteenth century. Materialism rose again enriched by all the acquisitions of idealism. The most important of these acquisitions was the dialectical method , the examination of phenomena in their development, in their origin and destruction. The genius who represented this new direction of thought was Karl Marx.
p Marx was not the first to revolt against idealism. The banner of revolt was raised by Ludwig Feuerbach. Then, a little later than Feuerbach, the Bauer brothers appeared on the literary scene: their views merit particular attention on the part of the presentday Russian reader.
p The views of the Bauers were a reaction against Hegel’s idealism. Nevertheless, they themselves were saturated through and through with a very superficial, one-sided and eclectic idealism.
p We have seen that the great German idealists did not succeed in understanding the real nature or discovering the real basis of social relations. They saw in social development a necessary process, conforming to law, and in this respect they were quite right. But when it was a question of the prime mover of historical development, they turned to the Absolute Idea, the qualities of which were to give the ultimate and most profound explanation of that process. This constituted the weak side of idealism, against which accordingly a philosophical revolution first broke out. The extreme Left wing of the Hegelian school revolted with determination against the "Absolute Idea".
p The Absolute Idea exists (if it exists at all) outside time and space and, in any case, outside the head of each individual man. Reproducing in its historical development the course of the logical development of the Absolute Idea, mankind obeys a force alien to 581 itself, standing outside itself. In revolting against the Absolute Idea, the young Hegelians revolted first of all in the name of the independent activity of man, in the name of ultimate human reason.
p “Speculative philosophy,” wrote Edgar Bauer, "is very mistaken when it speaks of reason as some abstract, absolute force.... Reason is not an objective abstract force, in relation to which man represents only something subjective, accidental, passing; no, the dominating force is man himself, his consciousness of self, and reason is only the strength of that consciousness. Consequently there is no Absolute Reason, but there is only reason which changes eternally with the development of consciousness of self: it does not exist at all in its final form, it is eternally changing." [581•*
p And so there is no Absolute Idea, there is no abstract Reason, but there is only man’s consciousness, the ultimate and eternally changing human reason. This is quite true; against this even Mr. Mikhailovsky would not argue, although as we already know he can find anything “debatable” ... with more or less doubtful success. But, strangely enough, the more we underline this correct thought, the more difficult becomes our position. The old German idealists adapted the conformity to law of every process in nature and in history to the Absolute Idea. The question arises, to what will we adapt this conformity to law when we have destroyed its carrier, the Absolute Idea? Let us suppose that in relation to nature a satisfactory reply can be given in a few words: we adapt it to the qualities of matter. But in relation to history things are far from being as simple: the dominating force in history turns out to be man’s consciousness of self, eternally changing, ultimate human reason. Is there any conformity to law in the development of this reason? Edgar Bauer would naturally have replied in the affirmative, because for him man, and consequently his reason, were not at all something accidental, as we have seen. But if you had asked the same Bauer to explain to you his conception of conformity to law in the development of human reason; if you had asked him, for example, why in a particular historical epoch reason developed in this way, and in another epoch in that way, practically speaking you would have received no reply from him. He would have told you that "eternally developing human reason creates social forms”, that "historical reason is the motive force of world history" and that consequently every particular social order proves to be obsolete as soon as reason makes a new step in its development. [581•** But all these and similar assurances would not be 582 a reply to the question, but rather a wandering around the question of why human reason takes new steps in its development, and why it takes them in this direction and not in that. Obliged by you to deal precisely with this question, E. Bauer would have hastily put it aside with some meaningless reference to the qualities of the ultimate, eternally changing human reason, just as the old idealists confined themselves to a reference to the qualities of the Absolute Idea.
p To treat reason as the motive force of world history, and to explain its development by some kind of special, immanent, internal qualities meant to transform it into something unconditional—or, in other words, to resurrect in a new form that same Absolute Idea which they had just proclaimed to be buried for ever. The most important defect of this resurrected Absolute Idea was the circumstance that it peacefully coexisted with the most absolute dualism or, to be more precise, even unquestionably presupposed it. As the processes of nature were not conditioned by ultimate, eternally changing human reason, two forces turned out to be in existence: in nature—matter, in history—human reason. And there was no bridge connecting the motion of matter with the development of reason, the realm of necessity with the realm of freedom. That was why we said that the views of Bauer were saturated through and through with a very superficial, onesided and eclectical idealism.
p “Opinion governs the world"—thus declared the writers of the French Enlightenment. Thus also spoke, as we see, the Bauer brothers when they revolted against Hegelian idealism. But if opinion governs the world, then the prime movers of history arc those men whose thought criticises the old and creates the new opinions. The Bauer brothers did in fact think so. The essence of the historical process was reduced, in their view, to the refashioning by the "critical spirit" of the existing store of opinions, and of the forms of life in society conditioned by that store. These views of the Bauers were imported in their entirety into Russian literature by the author of the Historical Letters^^404^^ —who, by the way, spoke not of the critical “spirit” but of critical “thought”, because to speak of the spirit was prohibited by Sovremennik.
p Once having imagined himself to be the main architect, the demiurge of history, the "critically thinking" man thereby separates off himself and those like him into a special, higher variety of the human race. This higher variety is contrasted to the mass, foreign to critical thought, and capable only of playing the part of clay in the creative hands of "critically thinking" personalities. “Heroes” are contrasted to the “crowd”. However much the hero loves the crowd, however filled he may be with sympathy for its age-long needs and its continuous sufferings, he cannot but look 583 down on it from above, he cannot but realise that everything depends upon him, the hero, while the crowd is a mass alien to every creative element, something in the nature of a vast quantity of ciphers, which acquire some positive significance only in the event of a kind, "critically thinking" entity condescendingly taking its place at their head. The eclectic idealism of the Bauer brothers was the basis of the terrible, and one may say repulsive, self-conceit of the "critically thinking" German “intellectuals” of the 1840s; today, through its Russian supporters, it is breeding the same defect in the intelligentsia of Russia. The merciless enemy and accuser of this self-conceit was Marx, to whom we shall now proceed.
p Marx said that the contrasting of "critically thinking" personalities with the “mass” was nothing more than a caricature of the Hegelian view of history: a view which in its turn was only the speculative consequence of the old doctrine of the oppositeness of Spirit and Matter. "In Hegel the Absolute Spirit of history [583•* already treats the mass as material and finds its true expression only in philosophy. But with Hegel the philosopher is only the organ through which the creator of history, the Absolute Spirit, arrives at self-consciousness by retrospection after the movement has ended. The participation of the philosopher in history is reduced to this retrospective consciousness, for real movement is accomplished by the Absolute Spirit unconsciously, [583•** so that the philosopher appears post festum. Hegel is doubly inconsistent: first because, while declaring that philosophy constitutes the Absolute Spirit’s existence, he refuses to recognise the real philosophical individual as the Absolute Spirit; secondly because according to him the Absolute Spirit makes history only in appearance. For as the Absolute Spirit becomes conscious of itself as the creative World Spirit only in the philosopher and post festum, its making of history exists only in the consciousness, in the opinion of the philosopher, i.e., only in the speculative imagination. Herr Bruno Bauer [583•*** eliminates Hegel’s inconsistency.
p “First, he proclaims Criticism to be the Absolute Spirit and himself to be Criticism. Just as the element of Criticism is banished from the mass, so the element of mass is banished from Criticism. Therefore Criticism sees itself incarnate not in a mass, 584 but in a small handful of chosen men, exclusively in Herr Bauer and his followers.
p “Herr Bauer further does away with Hegel’s other inconsistency. No longer, like the Hegelian spirit, does he make history post festum and in imagination. He consciously plays the part of the World Spirit in opposition to the mass of the rest of mankind; he enters in the present into a dramatic relation with that mass; he invents and carries out history with a purpose and after mature meditation.
p “On the one side stands the Mass, that material, passive, dull and unhistorical element of history. On the other side stand the Spirit, Criticism, Herr Bruno and Co. as the active element from which arises all historical action. The act of social transformation is reduced to the brain work of Critical Criticism." [584•*
p These lines produce a strange illusion: it seems as though they were written, not fifty years ago, but some month or so ago, and are directed, not against the German Left Hegelians, but against the Russian “subjective” sociologists. The illusion becomes still stronger when we read the following extract from an article of Engels:
p “Self-sufficient Criticism, complete and perfect in itself, naturally must not recognise history as it really took place, for that would mean recognising the base mass in all its massy massiness, whereas the problem is to redeem the mass from massiness. History is therefore freed from its massiness, and Criticism, which has a free attitude to its object, calls to history, saying: ’You ought to have happened in such and such a way!’ All the laws of Criticism have retroactive force: history behaved quite differently before the decrees of Criticism than it did after them. Hence massy history, the so-called real history, deviates considerably from critical history...." [584•**
p Who is referred to in this passage? Is it the German writers of the 40s, or some of our contemporary “sociologists”, who gravely discourse on the theme that the Catholic sees the course of historical events in one way, the Protestant in another, the monarchist in a third, the republican in a fourth: and that therefore a good subjective person not only can, but must, invent for himself, for 585 his own spiritual use, such a history as would fully correspond to the best of ideals? Did Engels really foresee our Russian stupidities? Not at all! Naturally, he did not even dream of them, and if his irony, half a century later, fits our subjective thinkers like a glove, this is to be explained by the simple fact that our subjective nonsense has absolutely nothing original in it: it represents nothing more than a cheap Suzdal^^407^^ print from a caricature of the same “Hegelianism” against which it wars so unsuccessfully....
p From the point of view of "Critical Criticism”, all great historical conflicts amounted to the conflict of ideas. Marx observes that ideas "were worsted" every time they did not coincide with the real economic interests of that social stratum which at the particular time was the bearer of historical progress. It is only the understanding of those interests that can give the key to understanding the true course of historical development.
p We already know that the French writers of the Enlightenment themselves did not close their eyes to interests, and that they too were not averse to turning to them for an explanation of the given condition of a given society. But their view of the decisive importance of interests was merely a variation of the “formula” that opinions govern the world: according to them, the interests themselves depend on men’s opinions, and change with changes in the latter. Such an interpretation of the significance of interests represents the triumph of idealism in its application to history. It leaves far behind even German dialectical idealism, according to the sense of which men discover new material interests every time the Absolute Idea finds it necessary to take a new step in its logical development. Marx understands the significance of material interests quite otherwise.
p To the ordinary Russian reader the historical theory of Marx seems some kind of disgraceful libel on the human race. G. I. Uspensky, if we are not mistaken, in his Ruin, has an old woman, the wife of some official who even in her deathbed delirium obstinately goes on repeating the shameful rule by which she was guided all her life: "Aim at the pocket, the pocket! " The Russian intelligentsia naively imagines that Marx attributes this base rule to all mankind: that he asserts that, whatever the sons of man have busied themselves with, they have always, exclusively and consciously, "aimed at the pocket". The selfless Russian “intellectual” naturally finds such a view just as “disagreeable” as the theory of Darwin is “disagreeable” for some official dame who imagines that the whole sense of this theory amounts to the outrageous proposition that she, forsooth, a most respectable official’s lady, is nothing more than a monkey dressed up in a bonnet. In reality Marx slanders the “intellectuals” just as little as Darwin does official dames.
586p In order to understand the historical views of Marx, we must recall the conclusions at which philosophy and social and historical science had arrived in the period immediately preceding his appearance. The French historians of the Restoration came as we know to the conclusion that "civil conditions”, "property relations”, constitute the basic foundation of the entire social order. We know also that the same conclusion was reached, in the person of Hegel, by idealist German philosophy—against its will, against its spirit, simply on account of the inadequacy and bankruptcy of the idealist explanation of history. Marx, who took over all the results of the scientific knowledge and philosophic thought of his age, completely agrees with the French historians and Hegel about the conclusion just mentioned. I became convinced, he said, that "legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum-total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of ’civil society’, that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy".^^408^^
p But on what does the economy of the given society depend? Neither the French historians, nor the Utopian Socialists, nor Hegel have been able to reply to this at all satisfactorily. All of them, directly or indirectly, referred to human nature. The great scientific service rendered by Marx lies in this, that he approached the question from the diametrically opposite side, and that he regarded man’s nature itself as the eternally changing result of historical progress, the cause of which lies outside man. In order to exist, man must support his organism, borrowing the substances he requires from the external nature surrounding him. This borrowing presupposes a certain action of man on that external nature. But, "acting on the external world, he changes his own nature”. In these few words is contained the essence of the whole historical theory of Marx, although naturally, taken by themselves, they do not provide an adequate understanding of it, and require explanations.
p Franklin called man "a tool-making animal”. The use and production of tools in fact does constitute the distinguishing feature of man. Darwin contests the opinion that only man is capable of the use of tools, and gives many examples which show that in an embryonic form their use is characteristic for many mammals. And he naturally is quite right from his point of view, i.e., in the sense that in that notorious "human nature" there is not a single feature which is not to be found in some other variety of animal, and that therefore there is absolutely no foundation for considering man to be some special being and separating him 587 off into a special “kingdom”. But it must not be forgotten that quantitative differences pass into qualitative. What exists as an embryo in one species of animal can become the distinguishing feature of another species of animal. This particularly applies to the use of tools. An elephant breaks off branches and uses them to brush away flies. This is interesting and instructive. But in the history of the evolution of the species “elephant” the use of branches in the fight against flies probably played no essential part; elephants did not become elephants because their more or less elephant-like ancestors brushed off flies with branches. It is quite otherwise with man. [587•*
p The whole existence of the Australian savage depends on his boomerang, just as the whole existence of modern Britain depends on her machines. Take away from the Australian his boomerang, make him a tiller of the soil, and he of necessity will change all his mode of life, all his habits, all his manner of thinking, all his “nature”.
p We have said: make him a tiller of the soil. From the example of agriculture it can clearly be seen that the process of the productive action of man on nature presupposes not only the implements of labour. The implements of labour constitute only part of the means necessary for production. Therefore it will be more exact to speak, not of the development of the implements of labour , but more generally of the development of the means of production , the productive forces— although it is quite certain that the most important part in this development belongs or at least belonged up to the present day (until important chemical industries appeared) precisely to the implements of labour.
p In the implements of labour man acquires new organs, as it were, which change his anatomical structure. From the time that he rose to the level of using them, he has given quite a new aspect to the history of his development. Previously, as with all the other animals, it amounted to changes in his natural organs. Since that time it has become first of all the history of the perfecting of his artificial organs, the growth of his productive forces.
p Man—the tool-making animal—is at the same time a social animal , originating in ancestors who for many generations lived in more or less large herds. For us it is not important at this point why our ancestors began to live in herds—the zoologists have to ascertain, and are ascertaining, this—but from the point of view of the philosophy of history it is extremely important to note that 588 from the time the artificial organs of man began to play a decisive part in his existence, his social life itself began to change, in accordance with the course of development of his productive forces.
p “In production, men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature, does production, take place." [588•*
p The artificial organs, the implements of labour, thus turn out to be organs not so much of individual as of social man. That is why every essential change in them brings about changes in the social structure.
p “These social relations into which the producers enter with one another, the conditions under which they exchange their activities and participate in the whole act of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production. With the invention of a new instrument of warfare, fire-arms, the whole internal organisation of the army necessarily changed; the relationships within which individuals can constitute an army and act as an army were transformed and the relations of different armies to one another also changed. Thus the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, change, are transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, the productive forces. The relations of production in their totality constitute what are called the social relations, society, and, specifically, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois society are such totalities of production relations, each of which at the same time denotes a special stage of development in the history of mankind." [588•**
p It is hardly necessary to add that the earlier stages of human development represent also no less distinct totalities of production relations. It is equally unnecessary to repeat that, at these earlier stages too, the state of the productive forces had a decisive influence on the social relations of men.
p At this point we must pause in order to examine some, at first sight fairly convincing, objections.
p The first is as follows.
p No one contests the great importance of the implements of labour, the vast role of the forces of production in the historical 589 progress of mankind—the Marxists are often told—but it was man who invented the implements of labour and made use of them in his work. You yourselves recognise that their use presupposes a comparatively very high degree of intellectual development. Every new step forward in the perfecting of the implements of labour requires new efforts of the human intellect. Efforts of the intellect are the cause, and the development of the productive forces the consequence. Therefore the intellect is the prime mover of historical progress, which means that those men were right who asserted that opinions govern the world, i.e., that human reason is the governing element.
p Nothing is more natural than such an observation, but this does not prevent it from being groundless.
p Undoubtedly the use of the implements of labour presupposes high development of the intellect in the animal man. But see the reasons which modern natural science gives as an explanation for this development.
p “Man could not have attained his present dominant position in the world without the use of his hands, which are so admirably adapted to act in obedience to his will,” says Darwin. [589•* This is not a new idea: it was previously expressed by Helvetius. But Helvetius, who was never able to take his stand firmly on the view-point of evolution, was not able to clothe his own thought in a more or less convincing form. Darwin put forward in its defence an entire arsenal of arguments, and although they all naturally have a purely hypothetical character, still in their sum-total they are sufficiently convincing. What does Darwin say, then? Whence did quasi-man get his present, quite human hands, which have exercised such a remarkable influence in promoting the successes of his " intellect"? Probably they were formed in virtue of certain peculiarities of the geographical environment which made useful a physiological division of labour between the front and rear limbs. The successes of “intellect” appeared as the remote consequence of this division and—again in favourable external circumstances—became in their turn the immediate reason for the appearance of man’s artificial organs, the use of tools. These new artificial organs rendered new services to his intellectual development, and the successes of the “intellect” again reflected themselves upon the organs. We have before us a long process in which cause and consequence are constantly alternating. But it would be a mistake to examine this process from the standpoint of simple interaction. In order that man should take advantage of the successes already achieved by his “intellect” to perfect his artificial implements, i.e., to increase his power over 590 nature, he had to be in a certain geographical environment, capable of providing him with (1) materials necessary for that perfecting, (2) the object the working up of which would presuppose perfected implements. Where there were no metals, the intellect of social man alone could not in any circumstances lead him beyond the boundaries of the "polished stone period”; and in just the same way in order to pass on to the pastoral and agricultural life he required certain fauna and flora, without which "intellect would have remained motionless”. But even this is not all. The intellectual development of primitive societies was bound to proceed the more quickly, the greater were the mutual connections between them, and these connections were, of course, the more frequent, the more varied were the geographical conditions of the localities which they inhabited, i.e., the less similar, consequently, were the products of one locality and those of another. [590•* Lastly, all know how important in this respect are the natural means of communication. It was already Hegel who said that mountains divide men, while seas and rivers bring them together. [590•**
p Geographical environment exercises no less decisive an influence on the fate also of large societies, the fate of states arising on the ruins of the primitive clan organisations. "It is not the mere fertility of the soil, but the differentiation of the soil, the variety of its natural products, the changes of the seasons, which form the physical basis for the social division of labour, and which, by changes in the natural surroundings, spur man on to the 591 multiplication of his wants, his capabilities, his means and modes of labour. It is the necessity of bringing a natural force under the control of society, of economising, of appropriating or subduing it on a large scale by the work of man’s hand, that first plays the decisive part in the history of industry. Examples are, the irrigation works in Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, or in India and Persia where irrigation, by means of artificial canals, not only supplies the soil with the water indispensable to it, but also carries down to it, in the shape of sediment from the hills, mineral fertilisers. The secret of the flourishing state of industry in Spain and Sicily under the dominion of the Arabs lay in their irrigation works." [591•*
p Thus only thanks to certain particular qualities of the geographical environment could our anthropomorphic ancestors rise to that height of intellectual development which was necessary to transform them into tool-making animals. And in just the same way only certain peculiarities of the same environment could provide the scope for using in practice and constantly perfecting this new capacity of “tool-making”. [591•** In the historical process of the 592 development of productive forces, the capacity of man for "tool- making" must be regarded first of all as a constant magnitude , while the surrounding external conditions for the use of this capacity in practice have to be regarded as a constantly varying magnitude. [592•*
p The difference in results (the stages of cultural development ) achieved by various human societies is explained precisely by the fact that environment did not permit the various human tribes to make practical use to an equal extent of their capacity to " invent”. There is a school of anthropologists who trace the origin of the difference in results mentioned in the different qualities of the races of man. But the view of this school does not hold water: it is merely a new variation of the old method of explaining historical phenomena by references to "human nature" (or here, references to racial nature ), and in its scientific profundity it has not gone very much farther than the views of Moliere’s doctor, who sagely proclaimed that opium sends one to sleep because it has the 593 quality of sending to sleep (a race is backward because it has the quality of backwardness).
p Acting on external nature, man changes his own nature. He develops all his capacities, among them also the capacity of “tool-making”. But at any given time the measure of that capacity is determined by the measure of the development of productive forces already achieved.
p Once an implement of labour has become an object of production, the very possibility—as well as the greater or lesser degree—of perfecting its manufacture entirely depends on the implements of labour with the help of which it is manufactured. This is comprehensible to anyone even without explanation. But this is what, for example, may seem quite incomprehensible at first glance. Plutarch, when mentioning the inventions made by Archimedes during the siege of Syracuse by the Romans, finds it necessary to apologise for the inventor. It is, of course, indecent for a philosopher to occupy himself with things of this kind, he reflects, but Archimedes was justified by the extremity in which his country found itself. We ask, who would now think of seeking for circumstances which extenuate the guilt of Edison? We nowadays do not consider shameful—quite the opposite—the use by man in practice of his capacity for mechanical inventions, while the Greeks (or if you prefer the Romans), as you see, took quite a different view of this. Hence the course of mechanical discovery and invention among them was bound to proceed—and actually did proceed—incomparably more slowly than amongst ourselves. Here once again it might seem that opinions govern the world. But whence did the Greeks derive such a strange, “opinion”? Its origin cannot be explained by the qualities of the human “intellect”. It remains only to recall their social relations. The societies of Greece and Rome were, as we know, societies of slave-owners. In such societies all physical labour, all the work of production, fell to the lot of the slaves. The free man was ashamed of such labour, and therefore naturally there was established a contemptuous attitude even to the most important inventions which bore on the processes of production—and among them to the mechanical inventions. That is why Plutarch looked on Archimedes in a very different way from that in which we now regard Edison. [593•* 594 But why was slavery established in Greece? Was it not because the Greeks, on account of some errors of their “intellect”, considered the slaveowning order to be the best? No, it was not because of that. There was a time when the Greeks also had no slavery, and at that time they did not at all consider the slaveowning social order to be natural and inevitable. Later on, slavery arose among the Greeks, and gradually began to play a more and more important part in their life. Then the view of the citizens of Greece also changed: they began to defend slavery as a quite natural and unquestionably essential institution. But why, then, did slavery arise and develop among the Greeks? Evidently, for the same reason that it arose and developed in other countries as well, at a certain stage of their social development. And this reason is well known: it consists in the state of the productive forces. For, in fact, in order that it should be more profitable for me to make my conquered enemy into a slave, rather than into roast meat, it is necessary that the product of his unfree labour should be able to maintain not only his own existence biit, at least in part, mine too: in other words, a certain stage of development of the productive forces at my disposal is essential. And it is precisely through this door that slavery enters history. Slave labour is not very favourable to the development of the productive forces; in conditions of slavery it advances extremely slowly, but still it does advance. Finally there arrives a moment at which the exploitation of slave labour proves to be less advantageous than the exploitation of free labour. Then slavery is abolished, or gradually dies out. It is shown to the door by that same development of the productive forces which introduced it into history. [594•* Thus we, returning to Plutarch, see that his view of Archimedes’ inventions was conditioned by the state of the productive forces of his age. And as views of this kind undoubtedly have a 595 vast influence on the further course of discovery and invention, we can say all the more that for every given people, at every given period of its history, the further development of its productive forces is determined by their condition in the period under examination.^^414^^
p Naturally, wherever we have to deal with inventions and discoveries, we deal also with “reason”. Without reason discoveries and inventions would have been just as impossible as they were before man appeared on the earth. The teaching we are setting forth does not at all leave out of account the role of reason; it only tries to explain why reason at every given time acted in this way, and not otherwise; it does not despise the successes of reason, but only seeks to find a sufficient cause for them.
p Lately another objection has been raised to the same teaching, and we shall leave Mr. Kareyev to set it forth:
p “In course of time,” says this writer, having more or less successfully expounded the historical philosophy of Engels, "Engels supplemented his view by new considerations which introduced an essential alteration. If previously he had recognised as the foundation of the material conception of history only the investigation of the economic structure of society, later on he recognised as equally important the study of family structure. This took place under the influence of new conceptions of the primitive forms of marriage and family relations, which forced him to take into account not only the process of the production of products but also the process of the reproduction of human generations. In this respect the influence came in part form Morgan’s Ancient Society,” etc. [595•* ~^^415^^
p And so, if earlier Engels "recognised as the foundation of the material" (? ) "conception of history the investigation of the economic structure of society”, later on, "having recognised as equally important”, etc., he, practically speaking, ceased to be an “economic” materialist. Mr. Kareyev sets forth this event in the tone of a dispassionate historian, while Mr. Mikhailovsky "skips and jumps" on the same subject; but both of them say essentially one and the same thing, and both repeat what before them was said by the extremely superficial German writer Weisengriin in his book, Entwickelungsgesetze der Menschheit.^^416^^
p It is quite natural that such a remarkable man as Engels, who during whole decades followed attentively the advance of science of his time, should very substantially “supplement” his basic view of the history of humanity. But there are supplements and supplements, as there are "fago.t et fagot”. In this case the whole question is, did Engels change his views as a result of the “ 596 supplements" which were introduced in them? Was he really obliged to recognise, side by side with the development of “production”, the action of another factor, allegedly "equally important" with the first? It is easy for anyone to reply to this question who has even the least willingness to make an attentive and serious approach to it.
p Elephants sometimes beat off flies with branches, says Darwin. We have remarked in this connection that nevertheless these branches play no essential part in the life of elephants, and that the elephant did not become an elephant because he used branches. But the elephant multiplies. The male elephant has a certain relationship with the female. The male and the female have a certain relationship with their young. It is clear that these relations have not been created by “branches”: they have been created by the general conditions of life of this species, conditions in which the role of a “branch” is so infinitely small that it can without error be equated to zero. But imagine that in the life of the elephant the branch begins to play a more and more important part, in the sense that it begins more and more to influence the structure of those general conditions on which depend all the habits of elephants, and in the long run their very existence. Imagine that the branch has acquired at length a decisive influence in creating these conditions. Then we shall have to recognise that it determines in the long run also the relations of the male elephant with the female and with his young. Then we shall have to recognise that there was a time when the “family” relations of elephants developed independently (in the sense of their relation with the branch), but that later on there came a time when those relations began to be determined by the “branch”. Will there be anything strange in such an admission? Absolutely nothing, except the strangeness of the very hypothesis that a branch might suddenly acquire a decisive importance in the life of the elephant. And we know ourselves that in relation to the elephant this hypothesis cannot but seem strange; but in application to the history of man things are different.
p Man only gradually separated off from the animal world. There was a time when in the life of our anthropoid ancestors tools played just as insignificant a part as branches play in the life of the elephant. During this very long period, the relations between the anthropoid males and the anthropoid females, just as the relations between each and their anthropoid young, were determined by the general conditions of life of this species, which bore no relation whatsoever to the implements of labour. On what did then depend the “family” relations of our ancestors? It is the naturalists who must explain this: the historian has as yet nothing to do in this sphere. But now the implements of labour begin to play a 597 more and more important part in the life of man, the productive forces develop more and more, and there comes at length a moment when they acquire a decisive influence on the whole structure of social, and among them of family, relations. It is at this point that the work of the historian begins: he has to show how and why the family relations of our ancestors changed in connection with the development of their productive forces, how the family developed in accordance with economic relations. But obviously, once he sets about such an explanation, he has in studying the primitive family to reckon not only with economics: for people multiplied even before the implements of labour acquired their decisive significance in human life: even before this time there existed some kind of family relations which were determined by the general conditions of existence of the species homo sapiens. What then has the historian to do here? He will have, first of all, to ask for a service record of this species from the naturalist, who is passing over to him the further study of the development of man; and he will have secondly to supplement this record "out of his own resources”. In other words he will have to take the “family”, as it came into existence, shall we say, in the zoological period of the development of humanity, and then show what changes were introduced into it during the historical period, under the influence of the development of the productive forces, in consequence of changes in economic relations. That is all Engels says. And we ask: when he says this, is he in the least changing his “original” view of the significance of the productive forces in the history of humanity? Is he accepting, side by side with the working of this factor, the working of some other, "of equal importance"? It would seem that he is changing nothing, it would seem that he is accepting no such factor. Well, but if he is not, then why do Messrs. Weisengrun and Kareyev talk about a change in his views, why does Mr. Mikhailovsky skip and jump? Most probably because of their own thoughtlessness.
p “But after all, it is really strange to reduce the history of the family to the history of economic relations, even during what you call the historical period,” shout our opponents in chorus. It may be strange, and maybe it is not strange: this is debatable, we shall say in the words of Mr. Mikhailovsky. And we don’t mind debating it with you, gentlemen, but only on one condition: during the debate behave seriously, study attentively the meaning of our words, don’t attribute to us your own inventions, and don’t hasten to discover in us contradictions which neither we nor our teachers have, or ever had. Are you agreed? Very well, let’s debate.
p One cannot explain the history of the family by the history of economic relations, you say: it is narrow, one-sided, 598 unscientific. We assert the contrary, and turn to the mediation of specialist investigators.
p Of course you know the book of Giraud-Teulon: Les origines de la famille’? We open this book which you know, and we find in it for example the following passage:
p “The reasons which brought about the formation within the primitive tribe" (Giraud-Teulon says, in point of fact, "within the horde"—de la horde) "of separate family groups are evidently connected with the growth in wealth of this tribe. The introduction into use, or the discovery, of some grain, the domestication of new species of animals, could be a sufficient reason for radical transformations in savage society: all great successes of civilisation always coincided with profound changes in the economic life of the population" (p. 138). [598•*
p A few pages further on we read:
p “Apparently the transition from the system of female kinship to the system of male kinship was particularly heralded by conflicts of a juridical character on the basis of property right" (p. 141). And further on: "The organisation of the family in which male right predominates was everywhere aroused, it seems to me, by the action of a force as simple as elemental: the right of property " (p. 146).
p You know, of course, what significance in the history of the primitive family McLennan attributes to the killing of children of the female sex? Engels, as we know, has a very negative attitude to McLennan’s researches; but all the more interesting is it for us in the present case to learn the views of McLennan on the reason which gave rise to the appearance of infanticide, which allegedly exercised such a decisive influence on the history of the family.
p “To tribes surrounded by enemies, and, unaided by art, contending with the difficulties of subsistence, sons were a source of strength, both for defence and in the quest for food, daughters a source of weakness." [598•**
p What was it, then, that brought about, in McLennan’s opinion, the killing of children of the female sex by the primitive tribes? The insufficiency of the means of existence, the weakness of the productive forces: if these tribes had enough food, probably they would not have killed their little girls merely out of fear that one day an enemy might come and possibly kill them, or take them away into captivity.
p We repeat that Engels does not share McLennan’s view of the history of the family, and we too find it very unsatisfying; but 599 what is important at this stage is that McLennan, too, shares in the sin with which Engels is reproached. He, too, seeks in the state of the productive forces the answer to the riddle of the history of family relations.
p Need we continue our extracts, and quote from Lippert or Morgan? We see no need of this, for whoever has read them knows that in this respect they are just as great sinners as McLennan and Engels. Not without sin on this occasion, as is well known, is Herbert Spencer himself, although his sociological views have absolutely nothing in common with "economic materialism".
p Of course it is possible to take advantage of this last circumstance for polemical purposes, and to say: there you are! So one can agree with Marx and Engels on this or that individual question, and not share their general historical theory! Of course one can. The only question is, on whose side will logic be.
p Let us go further.
p The development of the family is determined by the development of property right, says Giraud-Teulon, adding that all successes of civilisation in general coincide with changes in the economic life of humanity. The reader probably has noticed himself that Giraud-Teulon is not quite precise in his terminology: his conception of "property right" is covered, as it were, by the conception of "economic life”. But after all, right is right, and economy is economy, and the two conceptions should not be mixed up. Where has this property right come from? Perhaps it arose under the influence of the economy of the given society (civil law always serves merely as the expression of economic relations, says Lassalle), or perhaps it owes its origin to some quite different reason. Here we must continue the analysis, and not interrupt it precisely at the moment when it is becoming of particularly profound and most vital interest.
p We have seen already that the French historians of the Restoration did not find a satisfactory reply to the question of the origin of property right. Mr. Kareyev, in his article "Economic Materialism in History”, deals with the German historical school of law. It will not be a bad thing for us also to recall the views of this school.
p Here is what our professor says about it. "When at the beginning of the present century there arose in Germany the so-called ’historical school of law’,^^417^^ which began to examine law not as a motionless system of juridical norms, as it was conceived of by previous jurists, but as something moving, changing, developing, there appeared in this ’school a strong tendency to contrast the historical view of law, as the sole and exclusively correct view, with all other possible views in this sphere. The historical view never tolerated the existence of scientific truths applicable to all 600 ages, i.e., what in the language of modern science are called general laws, and even directly denied these laws, and together with them any general theory of law, in favour of the idea that law depends on local conditions—a dependence which has always and everywhere existed, but does not exclude principles which are common to all nations." [600•*
p In these few lines there are very many ... how shall we put it?... shall we say, inexactitudes, against which the representatives and supporters of the historical school of law would have raised a protest. Thus, for example, they would have said that, when Mr. Kareyev ascribes to them the denial of "what in the language of science are called general laws”, he either deliberately distorts their view, or else is confusing conceptions in a way most unbefitting a “historiosophist”, mixing up those “laws” which fall within the scope of the history of law, and those which determine the historical development of nations. The historical school of law never dreamed of denying the existence of the second kind of law, and always tried to discover them although its efforts were not crowned with success. But the very cause of its failure is extremely instructive, and if Mr. Kareyev were to give himself the trouble of thinking about it, perhaps—who knows—he too would make clear for himself, at last, the "substance of the historical process".
p In the eighteenth century people were inclined to explain the history of law by the action of the “legislator”. The historical school strongly revolted against this inclination. As early as 1814, Savigny formulated the new view in this way: "The sum-total of this view consists of the following: every law arises from what in common usage, but not quite exactly, is called customary law, i.e., it is brought into being first of all by the custom and faith of the people, and only afterwards by jurisprudence. Thus it is everywhere created by internal forces, which act unnoticed, and not by the personal will of the legislator." [600•**
p This view was later developed by Savigny in his famous work System des heutigen romischen Rechts. "Positive law,” he says in this work, "lives in the general consciousness of a people, and therefore we have to call it popular law.... But this must not in any event be understood as meaning that law has been created by individual members of the people arbitrarily.... Positive law is created by the spirit of a people, living and acting in its individual members, and therefore positive law, not by accident but of 601 necessity, is one and the same law in the consciousness of individual persons." [601•*
p Savigny continues: "If we consider the question of the origin of the State, we shall have in the same way to locate it in supreme necessity, in the action of a force building outward from within, as was shown earlier in the case of law in general; and this applies not only to the existence of the State in general, but also to that particular form which the State assumes in every individual nation." [601•**
p Law arises in exactly the same "invisible way" as language, and it lives in the general consciousness of a people, not in the shape "of abstract rules, but in the shape of a living conception of institutions of law and in their organic connection, so that, when necessity arises, the abstract rule has to be formed in its logical shape from this general conception, by means of a certain artificial process (durch einen kiinstlichen Prozess)". [601•***
p We are not interested here in the practical aspirations of the historical school of law; but as far as its theory is concerned, we can already say, on the basis of the words of Savigny here quoted, that it represents:
p 1. A reaction against the view held widely in the eighteenth century that law is created by the arbitrary will of individual persons (“legislators”); and an attempt to furnish a scientific explanation of the history of law, to understand that history as a process which is necessary, and which, therefore, conforms to law.
p 2. An attempt to explain that process, starting from a completely idealist point of view: "the spirit of a people”, the "consciousness of a people”, is the final authority to which the historical school of law appealed.
p Puchta expressed the idealist character of the views of this school even more sharply.
p Primitive law, with Puchta, just as with Savigny, is customary law. But how does customary law arise? The opinion is often expressed that this law is created by everyday practice (Uebung), but this is only a particular case of the materialist view of the origin of popular conceptions. "Exactly the opposite view is the right one: everyday practice is only the last moment, it only expresses and embodies the law which has arisen, and which lives in the conviction of the individuals belonging to the particular people. Custom influences conviction only in the sense 602 that the latter, thanks to custom, becomes more conscious and more stable." [602•*
p And so the conviction of a people concerning this or that legal institution arises independently of everyday practice, and earlier than “custom”. Whence does this conviction come from, then? It arises from the depth of the spirit of the people. The particular form this conviction takes with a particular people is to be explained by the particular features of the spirit of the people concerned. This is very obscure—so obscure that it does not contain any symptom of a scientific explanation. Puchta himself feels that things here are not quite satisfactory, and tries to put them right with an observation of this kind: "Law arises by an imperceptible path. Who could take upon himself to trace those paths which lead to the origin of the given conviction, to its conception, its growth, its flourishing, its manifestation? Those who tried to do so, for the most part started from mistaken ideas." [602•**
p “For the most part....” That means that there also existed investigators whose initial ideas were correct. To what conclusions, then, about the genesis of popular views on law did these persons arrive? We must suppose that this remained a secret for Puchta, because he does not go one step further than meaningless references to the qualities of the spirit of the people.
p Nor is any explanation provided by the above-quoted remark of Savigny that law lives in the general consciousness of a people, not in the shape of abstract rules, but "in the shape of a living conception of legal institutions in their organic connection”. And it is not difficult to understand what it was that impelled Savigny to give us this somewhat muddled information. If we had presumed that law exists in the consciousness of a people "in the shape of abstract rules”, we should thereby in the first place have come up against the "general consciousness" of the jurists, who know very well with what difficulty a people grasps these abstract rules, and secondly, our theory of the origin of law would have assumed a too incredible form. It would have appeared that before entering into any practical relations one with another, before acquiring any practical experience whatsoever, the men constituting the given people work out definite legal conceptions for themselves, and having laid in a store of these, as a tramp does of crusts, they set 603 forth into the sphere of everyday practice, enter upon their historical path. Nobody, of course, would believe this, and so Savigny eliminates the "abstract rules": law exists in the consciousness of the people not in the shape of definite conceptions, it represents, not a collection of already fully shaped crystals, but a more or less saturated solution out of which, "when necessity for this arises”, i.e., when coming up against everyday practice, the required juridical crystals are precipitated. Such an approach is not without its ingenuity, but naturally it does not in the least bring us nearer to a scientific understanding of phenomena.
p Let us take an example:
p The Eskimos, Rink tells us, scarcely have any regular property; but in so far as it can be spoken of, he enumerates three forms which it takes:
p “1. Property owned by an association of generally more than one family—e.g., the winter-house....
p “2. Property, the common possession of one, or at most of three families of kindred—viz., a tent and everything belonging to the household, such as lamps, tubs, dishes of wood, soapstone pots; a boat, or umiak, which can carry all these articles along with the tent; one or two sledges with the dogs attached to them;!., the stock of winter provisions....
p “3. As regards personal property—i.e., owned by every individual ... his clothes ... weapons, and tools or whatever was specially used by himself. These things were even regarded as having a kind of supernatural relation to the owner, reminding us of that between the body and the soul. Lending them to others was not customary." [603•*
p Let us try and conceive of the origin of these three kinds of property from the standpoint of the old historical school of law.
p As, in the words of Puchta, convictions precede everyday practice, and do not arise on the basis of custom, one must suppose that matters proceeded in the following way. Before living in winter-houses, even before they began to build them, the Eskimos came to the conviction that once winter-houses appeared among them, they must belong to a union of several families. In the same way, our savages came to the conviction that, once there appeared among them summer tents, barrels, wooden plates, boats, pots, sledges and dogs, all these would have to be the property of a single family or, at most, of three kindred families. Finally, they formed no less firm a conviction that clothes, arms and tools must constitute personal property, and that it would be wrong even to lend these articles. Let us 604 add to this that probably all these “convictions” existed, not in the shape of abstract rules, but "in the shape of a living conception of legal institutions in their organic connection”, and that out of this solution of legal conceptions there were precipitated— "when necessity for this arose”, i.e., as they encountered winter dwellings, summer tents, barrels, stone pots, wooden plates, boats, sledges and dogs—the norms of customary Eskimo law in their more or less "logical form”. And the qualities of the above- mentioned legal solution were determined by the mysterious qualities of the Eskimo spirit.
p This is not a scientific explanation at all, but a mere "way of talking"—Redensarten, as the Germans say.
p That variety of idealism which was maintained by the supporters of the historical school of law proved in its explanation of social phenomena to be even more fallacious than the much more profound idealism of Schelling and Hegel.
p How did science emerge from that blind alley in which idealism found itself? Let us hear what Mr. M. Kovalevsky, one of the most distinguished representatives of modern comparative law, has to say.
p Pointing out that the social life of primitive tribes bears on itself the stamp of communism, Mr. Kovalevsky (listen, Mr. V. V.: he also is a “professor”) says:
p “If we enquire as to the real foundations for such an order of things, if we try and discover the reasons which forced our primitive forefathers, and still oblige modern savages, to maintain a more or less sharply expressed communism, we shall have in particular to learn the primitive modes of production. For the distribution and consumption of wealth must be determined by the methods of its creation. And as to this, ethnography states the following: hunting and fishing peoples secure their food as a rule in hordes.... In Australia the kangaroo is hunted by armed detachments of several tens, and even hundreds, of natives. The same takes place in northern countries when hunting the reindeer.... It is beyond doubt that man is incapable of maintaining his existence alone; he needs help and support, and his forces are multiplied tenfold by association.... Thus we see social production at the beginning of social development and, as the necessary natural consequence of this, social consumption. Ethnography abounds in facts which prove this." [604•*
605p Having quoted the idealist theory of Lerminier,^^418^^ according to which private property arises from the self-consciousness of the individual, Mr. Kovalevsky continues:
p “No, this is not so. It is not for this reason that primitive man arrives at the idea of the personal appropriation of the chipped stone which serves him as a weapon, or of the skin which covers his body. He arrives at this idea in consequence of the application of his individual forces to the production of the object concerned. The flint which serves him as an axe has been chipped by his own hands. At the hunt in which he engaged together with many comrades, he struck the final blow at the animal, and therefore the skin of that animal becomes his personal property. The customary law of savages is distinguished by great exactness on this question. It carefully provides beforehand, for example, for the case in which the hunted animal fell under the joint blows of two hunters: in that event the animal’s skin becomes the property of the hunter whose arrow penetrated nearest to the heart. It also provides for the case in which an already wounded animal was given the finishing blow by a hunter who turned up accidentally. The application of individual labour logically gives rise, consequently, to individual appropriation. We can trace this phenomenon through all history. He who planted a fruit tree becomes its owner.... Later a warrior who won a certain booty becomes its exclusive owner, so that his family no longer has any right to it. In just the same way a priest’s family has no right to the sacrifices which are made by the faithful, and which become his personal property. All this is equally well confirmed by the Indian laws and by the customary law of the South Slavs, Don Cossacks or ancient Irish. And it is important not to make any mistake as to the true principle of such appropriation, which is the result of the application of personal effort to the procuring of a definite object. For when the personal efforts of a man are supplemented by the help of his kin ... the objects secured no longer become private property." [605•*
p After all that has been said, it will be comprehensible why it is arms, clothes, food, adornments, etc., that first become objects of personal appropriation. "Already from the first steps taken, the domestication of animals—dogs, horses, cats, working cattle—constitutes the most important fund of personal and family appropriation...." [605•** But to what extent the organisation of production continues to influence the modes of appropriation is shown, for example, by such a fact: among the Eskimos the hunting of whales takes place in big boats and big detachments, and the boats which serve for this prupose 606 represent social property. But the little boats which serve for transporting the objects of family property themselves belong to separate families, or "at most to three kindred families".
p With the appearance of agriculture, the land also becomes an object of appropriation. The subjects of property in land become more or less large unions of kindred. This, naturally, is one of the forms of social appropriation. How is its origin to be explained? "It seems to us,” says Mr. Kovalevsky, "that its reasons lie in that same social production which once upon a time involved the appropriation of the greater part of movable objects." [606•*
p Naturally, once it has arisen, private property enters into contradiction to the more ancient mode of social appropriation. Wherever the rapid development of productive forces opens a wider and wider field for "individual efforts”, social production fairly rapidly disappears, or continues to exist in the shape, so to speak, of a rudimentary institution. We shall see later on that this process of the disintegration of primitive social property at various times and in various places through the most natural, material necessity, was bound to be marked by great variety. At present we will only stress the general conclusion of the modern science of law that legal conceptions—or convictions, as Puchta would have said—are everywhere determined by the modes of production.
p Schelling said on one occasion that the phenomenon of magnetism must be understood as the embedding of the “subjective” in the “objective”. All attempts to discover an idealist explanation for the history of law represent no more than a supplement, a “Seitenstiick”, to idealist natural philosophy. It amounts always to the same, sometimes brilliant and ingenious, but always arbitrary and always groundless meditations, on the theme of the self-sufficing, self-developing spirit.
p Legal conviction could not precede everyday practice for this one reason alone that, if it had not grown out of that practice, it would have no reason for existence whatsoever. The Eskimo stands for the personal appropriation of clothes, arms and implements of labour for the simple reason that such appropriation is much more convenient, and is suggested by the very qualities of the things involved. In order to learn the proper use of his weapon, his bow or his boomerang, the primitive hunter must adapt himself to it, study all its individual peculiarities, and if possible adapt it to his own individual peculiarities. [606•** Private 607 property here is in the nature of things much more than any other form of appropriation, and therefore the savage is " convinced" of its advantages: as we know, he even attributes’ to the implements of individual labour and to arms some kind of mysterious connection with their owner. But his conviction grew up on the basis of everyday practice, and did not precede it: and it owes its origin, not to the qualities of his “spirit”, but to the qualities of the articles which he is using, and to the character of those modes of production which are inevitable for him in the existing state of his productive forces.
p To what extent everyday practice precedes legal “conviction” is shown by the numerous symbolic acts existing in primitive law. The modes of production have changed, with them have likewise changed the mutual relations of men in the process of production, everyday practice has changed, yet “conviction” has retained its old shape. It contradicts the new practice, and so fictions appear, symbolic signs and actions, the sole purpose of which is formally to eliminate this contradiction. In the course of time the contradiction is at last eliminated in an essential way: on the basis of the new economic practice a new legal conviction takes shape.
p It is not sufficient to register the appearance, in a given society, of private property in this or that object, to be able thereby to determine the character of that institution. Private property always has limits which depend entirely on the economy of society. "In the savage state man appropriates only the things which are directly useful to him. The surplus, even though it is acquired by the labour of his hands, he usually gives up gratuitously to others: to members of his family, or of his clan, or of his tribe,” says Mr. Kovalevsky. Rink says exactly the same about the Eskimos.^^419^^ But whence did such ways arise among the savage peoples? In the words of Mr. Kovalevsky, they owe their origin to the fact that savages are not acquainted with saving. [607•* This is not a very clear expression, and is particularly 608 unsatisfactory because it was very much abused by the vulgar economists. Nevertheless, it can be understood in what sense our author uses the expression. “Saving” is really unknown to primitive peoples, for the simple reason that it is inconvenient and, one may say, impossible for them to practise it. The flesh of an animal that has been killed can be “saved” only to an inconsiderable extent: it goes bad, and then becomes quite unsuitable for use. Of course, if it could be sold, it would be very easy to “save” the money got for it. But money does not yet exist at this stage of economic development. Consequently, the economy of primitive society itself fixes narrow limits within which the spirit of “thrift” can develop. Moreover, today I was lucky enough to kill a big animal, and I shared its meat with others, but tomorrow (hunting is an uncertain business) I will return with empty hands, and others of my kin will share their booty with me. The custom of sharing thus appears as something in the nature of mutual insurance, without which the existence of hunting tribes would be quite impossible.
p Finally, one must not forget that private property among such tribes exists only in an embryo form, while the prevailing property is social. The habits and customs which have grown up on this basis, in their turn, set limits to the arbitrary will of the owner of private property. Conviction, here too, follows economy.
p The connection of the legal conceptions of men with their economic life is well illustrated by the example which Rodbertus readily and frequently used in his works. It is well known that the ancient Roman writers energetically protested against usury. Cato the Censor considered that a usurer was twice as bad as a thief (that was just what the old man said: exactly twice). In this respect the Fathers of the Christian Church were completely at one with the heathen writers. But—a remarkable fact—both revolted only against interest produced by money capital. But to loans in kind, and to the surplus which they brought, there was an incomparably milder attitude. Why this difference? Because it was precisely money or usurers’ capital that was effecting terrible devastations in society at that time: because it was precisely this that was "ruining Italy". Legal “conviction”, here too, went hand-in-hand with economy.
p “Law is the pure product of necessity or, more exactly, of need,” says Post. "In vain should we seek in it any ideal basis whatsoever." [608•* We should say that this was quite in the spirit of the most modern science of law, if our scholar did not display a fairly considerable confusion of conceptions, very harmful in its consequences.
609p Speaking generally, every social union strives to work out such a system of law as would best satisfy its needs and would be most useful for it at the given time. The circumstance that the particular sum-total of legal institutions is useful or harmful for society cannot in any way depend on the qualities of any “idea” whatsoever, from whomsoever the idea might come; it depends, as we have seen, on the modes of production and on those mutual relations between people which are created by those modes. In this sense law has not and cannot have any ideal foundations, as its foundations are always real. But the real foundations of every given system of law do not exclude an ideal attitude towards that system on the part of the members of the given society. Taken as a whole, society only gains from such an attitude of its members towards that system. On the contrary, in its transitional epochs, when the system of law existing in society no longer satisfies its needs, which have grown in consequence of the further development of productive forces, the advanced part of the population can and must idealise a new system of institutions, more in keeping with the "spirit of the time”. French literature is full of examples of such an idealisation of the new advancing order of things.
p The origin of law in “need” excludes an “ideal” basis of law only in the conception of those people who are accustomed to relegate need to the sphere of crude matter, and to contrast this sphere to the "pure spirit”, foreign to need of every kind. In reality, only that is “ideal” which is useful to men, and every society in working out its ideals is guided only by its needs. The seeming exceptions from this incontestably general rule are explained by the fact that, in consequence of the development of society, its ideals frequently lag behind its new needs. [609•*
p The realisation of the dependence of social relations on the state of productive forces is penetrating more and more into modern social science, in spite of the inevitable eclecticism of many scientists and in spite of their idealist prejudices. "Just as comparative anatomy has raised to the level of a scientific truth the Latin proverb that ’from the claws I recognise the lion’, so the 610 study of peoples can from the armament of a particular people form an exact conclusion as to the degree of its civilisation,” says Oscar Peschel, whom we have already quoted. [610•* ... "With the mode of procuring food is bound up most intimately the dissection of society. Wherever man joins with man a certain authority appears. Weakest of all are the social ties among the wandering hunter hordes of Brazil. But they have to defend their areas and need at least a military chief.... The pastoral tribes are for the most part under the authority of patriarchal sovereigns, as the herds belong as a rule to a single master, who is served by his fellow-tribesmen or by previously independent but later impoverished possessors of herds. The pastoral form of life is mostly, though not exclusively, characterised by great migrations of peoples, both in the north of the Old World and in South Africa; on the other hand, the history of America knows only of individual attacks by wild hunter tribes on the fields of civilised peoples which attract them. Entire peoples which leave their previous places of habitation could make great and prolonged journeys only when accompanied by their herds, which provided them with the necessary food on their way. Furthermore, prairie cattle-breeding itself impels a change of pastures. But with the settled mode of life and agriculture there appears the striving to make use of the labour of slaves.... Slavery leads sooner or later to tyranny, since he who has the largest number of slaves can with their help subject the weakest to his will.... The division into free men and slaves is the beginning of the division of society into estates." [610•**
p Peschel has many considerations of this kind. Some of them are quite just and very instructive; others are “debatable” for more than Mr. Mikhailovsky. But what we are concerned with here are not particular details but the general direction of Peschel’s thought. And that general direction completely coincides with what we have already seen in the work of Mr. Kovalevsky: it is in the modes of production, in the state of the productive forces, that he seeks the explanation of the history of law and even of the whole organisation of society.
p And this is precisely what Marx long ago and insistently advised writers on social science to ’do. And in this lies to a considerable extent, though not completely (the reader will see later why we say: not completely), the sense of that remarkable 611 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy which had such bad luck here in Russia, which was so terribly and so strangely misunderstood by the majority of Russian writers who read it in the original or in extracts.
p “In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum-total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure...." ^^42^^°
p Hegel says of Schelling that the fundamental principles of the system of that philosopher remain undeveloped, and his absolute spirit appears unexpectedly, like a pistol-shot (wie aus der Pistole geschossen). When the average Russian intellectual hears that in Marx "everything is reduced to the economic foundation" (others say simply: "to the economic”), he loses his head, as though someone had suddenly fired a pistol by his ear. "But why to the economic?" he asks dejectedly and uncomprehendingly. "Of course the economic is also important (especially for the poor peasants and workmen). But after all, no less important is the intellectual (particularly for us intellectuals).” What has just been set forth has, we hope, shown the reader that the perplexity of the average Russian intellectual occurs in this case only because he, that intellectual, was always a little careless about what was "particularly important intellectually" for himself. When Marx said that "the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy”, he did not at all intend to upset the world of learning by sudden pistol-shots: he was only giving a direct and exact reply to the "damned questions" which had tormented thinking heads for a whole century.
p The French materialists, consistently developing their sensationalist views, came to the conclusion that man, with all his thoughts, feelings and aspirations, is the product of his social environment. In order to go further in applying the materialist view to the study of man, it was necessary to solve the problem of what conditions the structure of the social environment, and what are the laws of its development. The French materialists were unable to reply to this question, and thereby were forced to be false to themselves and return to the old idealist point of view which they had so strongly condemned: they said that environment is created by the “opinion” of men. Dissatisfied with this superficial reply, the French historians of the Restoration set themselves the task of analysing social environment. The result of their analysis was the conclusion, extremely important for science, that political constitutions are rooted in social relations, while 612 social relations are determined by the state of property. With this conclusion there arose before science a new problem, without solving which it could not proceed: what then determines the state of property? The solution of this problem proved to be beyond the powers of the French historians of the Restoration, and they were obliged to dismiss it with remarks on the qualities of human nature which explained absolutely nothing at all. The great idealists of Germany—Schelling and Hegel—who were their contemporaries in life and work, already well understood how unsatisfactory was the point of view of human nature: Hegel made caustic fun of it. They understood that the key to the explanation of the historical advance of humanity must be sought outside human nature. This was a great service which they rendered: but in order that that service should prove completely fruitful for science, it was necessary to show where precisely that key should be sought. They looked for it in the qualities of the spirit, in the logical laws of development of the absolute idea. This was a radical error of the great idealists, which returned them by roundabout ways to the point of view of human nature, since the absolute idea, as we have already seen, is nothing else than the personification of our logical process of thought. The discovery of the genius of Marx corrects this radical error of idealism, thereby inflicting on it a deadly blow: the state of property, and with it all the qualities of the social environment (we saw in the chapter on idealist philosophy that Hegel, too, was forced to recognise the decisive importance of the "state of property”) are determined, not by the qualities of the absolute spirit and not by the character of human nature, but by those mutual relations into which men of necessity enter one with another "in the social production of their life”, i.e., in their struggle for existence. Marx has often been compared with Darwin—a comparison which arouses Messrs. Mikhailovsky, Kareyev and their fraternity to laughter. Later we shall say in what sense that comparison should be understood, although probably many readers already see it without our help. Here we shall permit ourselves, with all due respect to our subjective thinkers, another comparison.
p Before Copernicus, astronomy taught that the earth is a motionless centre, around which revolve the sun and the other celestial bodies. This view made it impossible to explain very many phenomena of celestial mechanics. The Polish genius approached their explanation from quite the opposite point of view: he presupposed that it was not the sun that revolves around the earth, but on the contrary the earth around the sun. The correct view had been discovered, and much became clear that had been unclear before Copernicus.
613p Before Marx, writers on social science had taken human nature as their point of departure, and thanks to this, the most important questions of human development had remained unanswered. Marx’s teaching gave affairs quite a different turn: while man, to maintain his existence, acts on the external world, he changes his own nature,^^421^^ said Marx. Consequently the scientific explanation of historical development should be begun at the opposite end: it is necessary to ascertain in what way does this process of the productive action of man on external nature take place. In its great importance for science, this discovery can be boldly placed on a par with that of Copernicus, and on a par with the greatest and most fruitful discoveries of science in general.
p Strictly speaking, previous to Marx social science had much less in the way of a firm foundation than astronomy before Copernicus. The French used to call, and still call, all the sciences bearing on human society, "sciences morales et politiques" as distinct from “sciences” in the strict sense of the word, under which name were understood, and are still understood, only the exact sciences. And it must be admitted that, before Marx, social science was not and could not be exact. So long as learned men appealed to human nature as to the highest authority, of necessity they had to explain the social relations of men by their views, their conscious activity; but the conscious activity of man necessarily has to present itself to him as free activity. But free activity excludes the conception of necessity, i.e., of conformity to law; and conformity to law is the necessary foundation of any scientific explanation of phenomena. The idea of freedom obscured the conception of necessity, and thereby hindered the development of science. This aberration can up to the present day be observed with amazing clarity in the “sociological” works of “subjective” Russian writers.
p But we already know that freedom must be necessary. By obscuring the conception of necessity, the idea of freedom itself became extremely dim and a very poor comfort. Driven out at the door, necessity flew in at the window; starting from their idea of freedom, investigators every moment came up against necessity, and in the long run arrived at the melancholy recognition of its fatal, irresistible and utterly invincible action. To their horror, freedom proved to be an eternally helpless and hopeless tributary, an impotent plaything in the hands of blind necessity. And truly pathetic was the despair which at times seized upon the clearest and most generous idealistic minds. "For several days now I have been taking up my pen every minute,” says Georg Buchner, "but cannot write a word. I have been studying the history of the revolution. I have felt myself crushed, as it were, by the frightful fatalism of history. I see in human nature the most repulsive 614 dullness, but in human relations an invincible force, which belongs to all in general and to no one in particular. The individual personality is only foam on the crest of the wave, greatness is only an accident, the power of genius is only a puppet-show, a ridiculous attempt to fight against iron law, which at best can only be discovered, but which it is impossible to subject to one’s will." [614•* It may be said that, to avoid such bursts of what naturally was quite legitimate despair, it was worth while even for a time abandoning one’s old point of view, and attempting to liberate freedom, by appealing to that same necessity which made a mock of her. It was necessary once again to review the question which had already been put by the dialectical idealists, as to whether freedom does not follow from necessity, and whether the latter does not constitute the only firm foundation, the only stable guarantee and inevitable condition of human freedom.
p We shall see to what such an attempt led Marx. But as a preliminary let us try and clear up for ourselves his historical views, so that no misunderstandings should remain in our minds on that subject.
p On the basis of a particular state of the productive forces there come into existence certain relations of production, which receive their ideal expression in the legal notions of men and in more or less "abstract rules”, in unwritten customs and written laws. We no longer require to demonstrate this: as we have seen, the present-day science of law demonstrates it for us (let the reader remember what Mr. Kovalevsky says on this subject). But it will do no harm if we examine the question from the following different point of view. Once we have ascertained in what way the legal notions of men are created by their relations in production, we shall not be surprised by the following words of Marx: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being" (i.e., the form of their social existence), "but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."^^422^^ Now we know already that at least in relation to one sphere of consciousness this is really so, and why it is so. We have only to decide whether it is always so, and, if the answer is in the affirmative, why it is always so? Let us keep for the time being to the same legal notions.
p “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive 615 forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution."^^423^^
p Social ownership of movable and immovable property arises because it is convenient and moreover necessary for the process of primitive production. It maintains the existence of primitive society, it facilitates the further development of its productive forces, and men cling to it, they consider it natural and necessary. But now, thanks to those property relations and within them, the productive forces have developed to such an extent that a wider field has opened for the application of individual efforts. Now social property becomes in some cases harmful for society, it impedes the further development of its productive forces, and therefore it yields place to personal appropriation: a more or less rapid revolution takes place in the legal institutions of society. This revolution necessarily is accompanied by a revolution in the legal conceptions of men: people who thought previously that only social property was good, now began to think that in some cases individual appropriation was better. But no, we are expressing it inaccurately, we are representing as two separate processes what is completely inseparable, what represents only two sides of one and the same process: in consequence of the development of the productive forces, the actual relations of men in the process of production were bound to change, and these new de facto relations expressed themselves in new legal notions.
p Mr. Kareyev assures us that materialism is just as one-sided in its application to history as idealism. Each represents, in his opinion, only a “moment” in the development of complete scientific truth. "After the first and second moments must come a third moment: the one-sidedness of the thesis and that of the antithesis will find their application in the synthesis, as the expression of the complete truth." [615•* It will be a most interesting synthesis. "In what that synthesis will consist, I shall not for the time being say,” the professor adds. A pity! Fortunately, our “historiosophist” does not very strictly observe this vow of silence which he has imposed upon himself. He immediately gives us to understand in what will consist and whence will arise that complete scientific truth which will, in time, be understood by all enlightened humanity, but for the time being is known only to Mr. Kareyev. It will grow out of the following considerations: "Every human personality, consisting of body and soul, leads a twofold life—physical and psychical—appearing before us neither exclusively as flesh with its material requirements, nor exclusively as spirit with its intellectual and moral requirements. Both the body and the soul of man have their requirements, which seek satisfaction and which place the 616 individual personality in different relationships to the external world, i.e., to nature and to other men, i.e., to society, and these relationships are of a twofold character." [616•*
p That man consists of soul and body is a just “synthesis”, though hardly what one would call a very new discovery. If Mr. Professor is acquainted with the history of modern philosophy, he must know that it has been breaking its teeth on this same synthesis for whole centuries, and has not been able to cope with it properly. And if he imagines that this “synthesis” will reveal to him "the essence of the historical process”, Mr. V. V. will have to agree that something is going wrong with his “professor”, and that it is not Mr. Kareyev who is destined to become the Spinoza of " historiosophy".
p With the development of the productive forces, which lead to changes in the mutual relationships of men in the social process of production, there change all property relations. But it was already Guizot who told us that political constitutions are rooted in property relations. This is fully confirmed by modern knowledge. The union of kindred yields place to the territorial union precisely on account of the changes which arise in property relations. More or less important territorial unions amalgamate in organisms called states, again in consequence of changes which have taken place in property relations, or in consequence of new requirements of the social process of production. This has been excellently demonstrated, for example, in relation to the large states of the East. [616•** Equally well this has been explained in relation to the states of the ancient world. [616•*** And, speaking generally, it is not difficult to demonstrate the truth of this for any particular state on whose origin we have sufficient information. In doing so we only need not to narrow, consciously or unconsciously, Marx’s view. What we mean is this.
p The particular state of productive forces conditions the internal relations of the given society. But the same state of the productive forces also conditions its external relations with other societies. On the basis of these external relations, society forms new requirements, to satisfy which new organs arise. At a superficial glance, the mutual relations of individual societies present themselves as a 617 series of “political” acts, having no direct bearing on economics. In reality, what underlies relations between societies is precisely economics, which determines both the real (not only external) causes of inter-tribal and international relations, and their results. To each stage in the development of the productive forces corresponds its own particular system of armament, its military tactics, its diplomacy, its international law. Of course many cases may be pointed out in which international conflicts have no direct relationship with economics. And none of the followers of Marx will dream of disputing the existence of such cases. All they say is: don’t stop at the surface of phenomena, go down deeper, ask yourself on what basis did this international law grow up? What created the possibility of international conflicts of this kind? And what you will arrive at in the long run is economics. True, the examination of individual cases is made more difficult by the fact that not infrequently the conflicting societies are going through dissimilar phases of economic development.
p But at this point we are interrupted by a chorus of shrewd opponents. "Very well,” they cry. "Let us admit that political relations are rooted in economic relations. But once political relations have been given, then, wherever they came from, they, in turn, influence economics. Consequently, there is interaction here, and nothing but interaction."
p This objection has not been invented by us. The high value placed upon it by opponents of "economic materialism" is shown by the following fact.
p Marx in his Capital cites facts which show that the English aristocracy used the political power to achieve its own ends in the sphere of landownership. Dr. Paul Earth, who wrote a critical essay entitled Die Geschichtsphilosophie Hegel’s und der Hegelianer, has seized on this to reproach Marx with contradicting himself^^425^^ : you yourself, he says, admit that there is interaction here: and to prove that interaction really exists, our doctor refers to the book of Sternegg, a writer who has done much for the study of the economic history of Germany. Mr. Kareyev thinks that "’the pages devoted in Earth’s book to the criticism of economic materialism may be recommended as a model of how the problem of the role of the economic factor in history should be solved”. Naturally, he has not failed to point out to his readers the objections raised by Earth and the authoritative statement of Inama-Sternegg, "who even formulates the general proposition that interaction between politics and economy is the fundamental characteristic of the development of all states and peoples”. We must bring at least a little light into this muddle.
p First of all, what, does Inama-Sternegg actually say? On the subject of the Carolingian period in the economic history of 618 Germany he makes the following remark: "The interaction between politics and economics which constitutes the main feature of development of all states and all peoples can be traced here in the most exact fashion. As always the political role which falls to the lot of a given people exercises a decisive influence on the further development of its forces, on the structure and elaboration of its social institutions; on the other hand, the internal strength innate in a people and the natural laws of its development determine the measure and the nature of its political activity. In precisely this way the political system of the Carolings no less influenced the changing of the social order and the development of the economic relations in which the people lived at that time than the elemental forces of the people—its economic life—influenced the direction of that political system, leaving on the latter its own peculiar imprint." [618•* And that’s all. It’s not very much; but this is thought sufficient to refute Marx.
p Now let us recall, in the second place, what Marx says about the relations between economics on the one hand, and law and politics on the other.
p “Legal and political institutions are formed on the basis of the actual relations of men in the social process of production. For a time these institutions facilitate the further development of the productive forces of a people, the prosperity of its economic life.” These are the exact words of Marx; and we ask the first conscientious man we meet, do these words contain any denial of the importance of political relations in economic development, and is Marx refuted by those who remind him of that importance? Is it not true that there is not a trace of any such denial in Marx, and the people just mentioned are refuting nothing at all? To such an extent is it true that one has to consider the question, not of whether Marx has been refuted, but of why he was so badly understood? And to this question we can reply only with the French proverb: la plus belle fille du monde ne peut donrier que ce qu’elle a (the most beautiful girl in the world can only give what she has got.—Ed.). The critics of Marx cannot surpass the measure of understanding with which a bountiful Nature has endowed them. [618•**
619p Interaction between politics and economics exists: that is just as unquestionable as the fact that Mr. Kareyev does not understand Marx. But does the existence of interaction prohibit us from going further in our analysis of the life of society? No, to think that would mean almost the same as to imagine that the lack of understanding displayed by Mr. Kareyev can prevent us from attaining correct “historiosophical” conceptions.
p Political institutions influence economic life. They either facilitate its development or impede it. The first case is in no way surprising from the point of view of Marx, because the given political system has been created for the very purpose of promoting the further development of the productive forces (whether it is consciously or unconsciously created is in this case all one to us). The second case does not in any way contradict Marx’s point of view, because historical experience shows that once a given political system ceases to correspond to the state of the productive forces, once it is transformed into an obstacle to their further development, it begins to decline and finally is eliminated. Far from contradicting the teachings of Marx, this case confirms them in the best possible way, because it is this case that shows in what sense economics dominates politics, in what way the development of productive forces outdistances the political development of a people.
p Economic evolution brings in its wake legal revolutions. It is not easy for a metaphysician to understand this because, although he does shout about interaction, he is accustomed to examine" phenomena one after another, and one independently of another. But it will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking. He knows that quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness.
p At this point our opponents can stand it no longer, and pronounce their "word and deed"^^426^^ : why, that’s how Hegel used to talk, they shout. That’s how all Nature acts, we reply.
620p A tale is soon told, but work goes more slowly. In its application to history, this proverb may be altered in this way: a tale is told very simply, but work is complex in the extreme. Yes, it’s easy to say that the development of productive forces brings in its train revolutions in legal institutions. These revolutions represent complex processes, in the course of which the interests of individual members of society group themselves in the most whimsical fashion. For some it is profitable to support the old order, and they defend it with every resource at their command. For others the old order has become already harmful and hateful, and they attack it with all the strength at their disposal. And this is not all. The interests of the innovators are also far from similar in all cases: for some one set of reforms is more important, for others another set. Disputes arise in the camp of the reformers itself, and the struggle becomes more complicated. And although, as Mr. Kareyev so justly remarks, man consists of soul and body, the struggle for the most indisputably material interests necessarily raises before the disputing sides the most undoubtedly spiritual problem of justice. To what extent does old order contradict justice? To what extent are the new demands in keeping with justice? These questions inevitably arise in the minds of those who are contesting, although they will not always call it simply justice, but may personify it in the shape of some goddess in human, or even in animal shape. Thus, notwithstanding the injunction pronounced by Mr. Kareyev, the “body” gives birth to the “soul”: the economic struggle arouses moral questions—and the “soul” at closer examination proves to be the “body”. The “justice” of the old believers not infrequently turns out to be the interests of the exploiters.
p Those very same people who, with such astounding inventiveness, attribute to Marx the denial of the significance of politics assert that he attached no significance whatsoever to the moral, philosophical, religious or aesthetic conceptions of men, everywhere and anywhere seeing only "the economic”. This once again is unnatural chatter, as Shchedrin put it. Marx did not deny the “significance” of all these conceptions, but only ascertained whence they came.
p “What is electricity? A particular form of motion. What is heat? A particular form of motion. What is light? A particular form of motion. Oh, so that’s it. So you don’t attach any meaning either to light, or to heat, or to electricity. It’s all one motion for you; what one-sidedness, what narrowness of conception.” Just so, gentlemen, narrowness is the word. You have understood perfectly the meaning of the doctrine of the transformation of energy.
p Every given stage of development of the productive forces 621 necessarily involves definite grouping of men in the social process of production, i.e., definite relations of production, i.e., a definite structure of the whole of society. But once the structure of society has been given, it is not difficult to understand that the character of that structure will be reflected generally in the entire psychology of men, in all their habits, manners, feelings, views, aspirations and ideals. Habits, manners, views, aspirations and ideals will necessarily have to adapt themselves to men’s way of life, to their mode of procuring their subsistence (to use Peschel’s expression). The psychology of society is always expedient in relation to its economy, always corresponds to it, is always determined by it. The same phenomenon is repeated here which the Greek philosophers themselves noticed in nature: expediency triumphs, for the reason that that which is inexpedient is by its very character doomed to perish. Is it advantageous for society, in its struggle for existence, that there should be this adaptation of its psychology to its economy, to the conditions of life? Very advantageous, because habits and views which did not correspond to its economy and which contradicted the conditions of existence would interfere with the maintenance of that existence. An expedient psychology is just as useful for society as organs which are well fitted for their task are useful for the organism. But to say that the organs of animals must be appropriate to the conditions of their existence—does that mean the same as saying that the organs have no significance for the animal? Quite the contrary. It means recognising their colossal and essential significance. Only very weak heads could understand matters otherwise. Now the same, the very same, gentlemen, is the case with psychology. Recognising that it adapts itself to the economy of society, Marx thereby was recognising its vast and irreplaceable significance.
p The difference between Marx and, for example, Mr. Kareyev reduces itself in this case to the fact that the latter, in spite of his inclination to “synthesis”, remains a dualist of the purest water. In his view, economics is here and psychology is there: the soul is in one pocket and the body in another. Between these two substances there is interaction, but each of them maintains its independent existence, the origin of which is wrapped in the darkest mystery. [621•* The point of view of Marx eliminates this dualism. With him the economy of society and its psychology represent two sides of one and the same phenomenon of the 622 “production of life" of men, their struggle for existence, in which they are grouped in a particular way thanks to the particular state of the productive forces. The struggle for existence creates their economy, and on the same basis arises their psychology as well. Economy itself is something derivative, just like psychology. And that is the very reason why the economy of every progressing society changes: the new state of productive forces brings with it a new economic structure just as it does a new psychology, a new "spirit of the age”. From this it can be seen that only in a popular speech could one talk about economy as the prime cause of all social phenomena. Far from being a prime cause, it is itself a consequence, a “function” of the productive forces.
p And now follow the points promised in the footnote. "Both the body and the soul of man have their requirements, which seek satisfaction and which place the individual personality in different relationships to the external world, i.e., to nature and to other men.... The relation of man to nature, according to the physical and spiritual needs of the personality, therefore creates, on the one hand, various kinds of arts aiming at ensuring the material existence of the personality and, on the other hand, all intellectual and moral culture...."427 The materialist attitude of man to nature rests upon the requirements of the body, the qualities of matter. It is in the requirements of the body that one must discover "the causes of hunting, cattle-breeding, agriculture, manufacturing industry, trade and monetary operations".
p From a common sense point of view this is so, of course: for if we have no body, why should we need cattle and beasts, land and machines, trade and gold? But on the other hand, we must also say: what is body without soul? No more than matter, and matter after all is dead. Matter of itself can create nothing if in its turn it does not consist of soul and body. Consequently matter traps wild beasts, domesticates cattle, works the land, trades and presides over the banks not of its own intelligence, but by direction of the soul. Consequently it is in the soul that one must seek the ultimate cause for the origin of the materialist attitude of man to nature. Consequently the soul also has dual requirements; consequently it also consists of soul and body—and that somehow sounds not quite right. Nor is that all. Willy-nilly “doubt” arises about the following subject as well. According to Mr. Kareyev it appears that the materialist relation of man to nature arises on the basis of his bodily requirements. But is that exact? Is it only to nature that such relations arise? Mr. Kareyev, perhaps, remembers how the abbe Guibert condemned the municipal communes who were striving for their liberation from the feudal yoke as “base” institutions, the sole purpose of existence of which was, he said, to avoid the proper fulfilment of feudal obligations. What was then speaking in 623 the abbé Guibert—“body" or “soul”? If it was the “body” then, we say again, that body also consisted of “body” and “soul”; and if it was the “soul” then it consisted of “soul” and “body”, for it displayed in this case under examination very little of that unselfish attitude to phenomena which, in the words of Mr. Kareyev, represents the distinctive feature of the “soul”. Try and make head or tail of that. Mr. Kareyev will say, perhaps, that in the abbe Guibert it was the soul that was speaking, to be exact, but that it was speaking under dictation from the body, and that the same takes place when man is occupied with hunting, with banks, etc. But first of all, in order to dictate, the body again must consist both of body and of soul. And secondly, a vulgar materialist may remark: well, there’s the soul talking under the dictation of the body, consequently the fact that man consists of soul and body does not in itself mean anything at all. Perhaps throughout history all the soul has been doing is to talk under dictation from the body? Mr. Kareyev, of course, will be indignant at such a supposition, and will begin refuting the "vulgar materialist”. We are firmly convinced that victory will remain on the side of the worthy professor; but will he be greatly helped in the fray by that unquestionable circumstance that man consists of soul and body?
p And even this is not all. We have read in Mr. Kareyev’s writings that on the basis of the spiritual requirements of personality there grow up "mythology and religion ... literature and arts" and in general "the theoretical attitude to the external world" (and to oneself also), "to questions of being and cognition”, and likewise "the unselfish creative reproduction of external phenomena" (and of one’s own intentions). We believed Mr. Kareyev. But ... we have an acquaintance, a technological student, who is passionately devoted to the study of the technique of manufacturing industry, but has displayed no “theoretical” attitude to all that has been listed by the professor. And so we find ourselves asking, can our friend be composed only of a body? We beg Mr. Kareyev to resolve as quickly as he can this doubt, so tormenting for ourselves and so humiliating for a young, extremely gifted technologist, who maybe is even a genius.
p If Mr. Kareyev’s argument has any sense, it is only the following: man has requirements of a higher and lower order, he has egotistical strivings and altruistic feelings. This is the most incontestable truth, but quite incapable of becoming the foundation of “historiosophy”. You will never get any further with it than hollow and long-since hackneyed reflections on the theme of human nature: it is no more than such a reflection itself.
624p While we have been chatting with Mr. Kareyev, our perspicacious critics have had time to catch us contradicting ourselves, and above all Marx. We have said that economy is not the prime cause of all social phenomena, yet at the same time we assert that the psychology of society adapts itself to its economy: the first contradiction. We say that the economy and the psychology of society represent two sides of one and the same phenomenon, whereas Marx himself says that economy is the real foundation on which arise the ideological superstructures: a second contradiction, all the more lamentable for us because in it we are diverging from the views of the man whom we undertook to expound. Let us explain.
p That the principal cause of the social historical process is the development of the productive forces, we say word for word with Marx: so that here there is no contradiction. Consequently, if it does exist anywhere, it can only be in the question of the relationship between the economy of society and its psychology. Let us see whether it exists.
p The reader will be good enough to remember how private property arises. The development of the productive forces places men in such relations of production that the personal appropriation of certain objects proves to be more convenient for the process of production. In keeping with this the legal conceptions of primitive man change. The psychology of society adapts itself to its economy. On the given economic foundation there rises up fatally the ideological superstructure appropriate to it. But on the other hand each new step in the development of the productive forces places men, in their daily life, in new mutual relations which do not correspond to the relations of production now becoming outdated. These new and unprecedented situations reflect themselves in the psychology of men, and very strongly change it. In what direction? Some members of society defend the old order: these are the people of stagnation. Others—to whom the old order is not advantageous—stand for progress; their psychology changes in the direction of those relations of production which in time will replace the old economic relations, now becoming outdated. The adaptation of psychology to economy, as you see, continues, but slow psychological evolution precedes economic revolution. [624•*
p Once this revolution has taken place, a complete harmony is established between the psychology of society and its economy. Then on the basis of the new economy there takes place the full flowering of the new psychology. For a certain time this harmony remains unbroken, and even becomes stronger and stronger. 625 But little by little the first shoots of a new discord make their appearance; the psychology of the foremost class, for the reason mentioned above, again outlives old relations of production: without for a moment ceasing to adapt itself to economy, it again adapts itself to the new relations of production, constituting the germ of the future economy. Well, are not these two sides of one and the same process?
p Up to now we have been illustrating the idea of Marx mainly by examples from the sphere of the law of property. This law is undoubtedly the same ideology we have been concerned with, but ideology of the first or, so to speak, lower sort. How are we to understand the view of Marx regarding ideology of the higher sort—science, philosophy, the arts, etc.?
p In the development of these ideologies, economy is the foundation in this sense, that society must achieve a certain degree of prosperity in order to produce out of itself a certain stratum of people who could devote their energies exclusively to scientific and other similar occupations. Furthermore, the views of Plato and Plutarch [625•* which we quoted earlier show that the very direction of intellectual work in society is determined by the production relations of the latter. It was already Vico who said of the sciences that they grow out of social needs. In respect of such a science as political economy, this is clear for everyone who has the least knowledge of its history. Count Pecchio justly remarked that political economy particularly confirms the rule that practice always and everywhere precedes science. [625•** Of course, this too can be interpreted in a very abstract sense; one may say: "Well, naturally science needs experience, and the more the experience the fuller the science.” But this is not the point here. Compare the economic views of Aristotle or Xenophon with the views of Adam Smith or Ricardo, and you will see that between the economic science of ancient Greece, on the one hand, and the economic science of bourgeois society, on the other, there exists not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference—the point of view is 626 quite different, the attitude to the subject is quite different. How is this difference to be explained? Simply by the fact that the very phenomena have changed: relations of production in bourgeois society don’t resemble production relations in ancient society. Different relations in production create different views in science. Furthermore, compare the views of Ricardo with the views of some Bastiat, and you will see that these men have different views of production relations which were the same in their general character, being bourgeois production relations. Why is this? Because at the time of Ricardo these relations were still only flowering and becoming stronger, while in the time of Bastiat they had already begun to decline. Different conditions of the same production relations necessarily had to reflect themselves in the views of the persons who were defending them.
p Or let us take the science of public law. How and why did its theory develop? "The scientific elaboration of public law,” says Professor Gumplowicz, "begins only where the dominating classes come into conflict among themselves regarding the sphere of authority belonging to each of them. Thus, the first big political struggle which we encounter in the second half of the European Middle Ages, the struggle between the secular and the ecclesiastic authority, the struggle between the Emperor and the Pope, gives the first impetus to the development of the German science of public law. The second disputed political question which brought division into the midst of the dominating classes, and gave an impulse to the elaboration by publicists of the appropriate part of public law, was the question of the election of the Emperor”, [626•* and so on.
p What are the mutual relations of classes? They are, in the first place, just those relations which people adopt to one another in the social process of production—production relations. These relations find their expression in the political organisation of society and in the political struggle of various classes, and that struggle serves as an impetus for the appearance and development of various political theories: on the economic foundation there necessarily arises its appropriate ideological superstructure.
p Still, all these ideologies, too, may be of the first quality, but are certainly not of the highest order. How do matters stand, for example, with philosophy or art? Before replying to this question we must make a certain digression.
p Helvetius started from the principle that l’homme n’est que sensibilite. From this point of view it is obvious that man will avoid unpleasant sensations and will strive to acquire only those which are pleasant. This is the inevitable, natural egotism of 627 sentient matter. But if this is so, in what way do there arise in man quite unselfish strivings, like love of truth or heroism? Such was the problem which Helvetius had to solve. He did not prove capable of solving it, and in order to get out of his difficulty he simply crossed out that same X, that same unknown quantity, which he had undertaken to define. He began to say that there is not a single learned man who loves truth unselfishly, that every man sees in it only the path to glory, and in glory the path to money, and in money the means of procuring for himself pleasant physical sensations, as for example, by purchasing savoury food or beautiful slave girls. One need hardly say how futile are such explanations. They only demonstrated what we noted earlier—the incapacity of French metaphysical materialism to grapple with questions of development.
p The father of modern dialectical materialism is made responsible for a view of the history of human thought which would be nothing else than a repetition of the metaphysical reflections of Helvetius. Marx’s view of the history of, say, philosophy is often understood approximately as follows: if Kant occupied himself with questions of transcendental aesthetics, if he talked of the categories of mind or of the antinomies of reason, these were only empty phrases. In reality he wasn’t at all interested in either aesthetics, or antinomies, or categories. All he wanted was one thing: to provide the class to which he belonged, i.e., the German petty bourgeoisie, with as many savoury dishes and "beautiful slave girls" as possible. Categories and antinomies seemed to him an excellent means of securing this, and so he began to “breed” them.
p Need I assure the reader that such an impression is absolute nonsense? When Marx says that a given theory corresponds to such and such a period of the economic development of society, he does not in the least intend to say thereby that the thinking representatives of the class which ruled during this period deliberately adapted their views to the interests of their more or less wealthy, more or less generous benefactors.
p There have always and everywhere been sycophants, of course, but it is not they who have advanced the human intellect. And those who really moved it forward were concerned for truth, and not for the interests of the great ones in this world. [627•*
p “Upon the different forms of property,” says Marx, "upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them 628 out of its material foundations and out of the corresponding social relations."^^428^^ The process by which the ideological superstructure arises takes place unnoticed by men. They regard that superstructure, not as the temporary product of temporary relations, but as something natural and essentially obligatory. Individuals whose views and feelings have been formed under the influence of education and environment may be filled with the most sincere, most devoted attitude to the views and forms of social existence which arose historically on the basis of more or less narrow class interests. The same applies to whole parties. The French democrats of 1848 expressed the aspirations of the petty bourgeoisie. The petty bourgeoisie naturally strove to defend its class interests. But "one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interests. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent". [628•*
629p Marx says this in his book on the coup d’etat of Napoleon III.^^430^^ In another of his works he perhaps still better elucidates for us the psychological dialectics of classes. He is speaking of the emancipatory role which sometimes individual classes have to play.
p “No class in civil society can play this part unless it calls forth a phase of enthusiasm in its own ranks and those of the masses: a phase when it fraternises and intermingles with society in general, is identified with society, is felt and recognised to be the universal representative of society, and when its own demands and rights are really the demands and rights of society itself, and it is in truth the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of society and its rights in general can a particular class vindicate its general domination. The position of liberator cannot be taken by storm, simply through revolutionary energy and intellectual self-confidence. If the emancipation of a particular class is to be identified with the revolution of a people, if one social class is to be treated as the whole social order, then, on the other hand, all the deficiencies of society must be concentrated in another class; a definite class must be the universal stumbling-block, the embodiment of universal fetters.... If one class is to be the liberating class par excellence, then another class must contrariwise be the obvious subjugator. The general negative significance of the French aristocracy and clergy determined the general positive significance of the bourgeoisie, the class immediately confronting and opposing them." [629•*
p After this preliminary explanation, it will no longer be difficult to clear up for oneself Marx’s view on ideology of the highest order, as for example philosophy and art. But to make it still clearer, we shall compare it with the view of H. Taine:
p “In order to understand a work of art, an artist, a group of artists,” says this writer, "one must picture to oneself exactly the general condition of minds and manners of their age. There lies the ultimate explanation, there is to be found the first cause which determines all the rest. This truth is confirmed by experience. In fact, if we trace the main epochs of the history of art, we shall find that the arts appear and disappear together with certain conditions of minds and manners with which they are connected. Thus Greek tragedy—the tragedy of Aeschylus, Sophocles and 630 Euripides—appears together with the victory of the Greeks over the Persians, in the heroic epoch of the little city republics, at the moment of that great effort thanks to which they won their independence and established their hegemony in the civilised world. That tragedy disappears, together with that independence and that energy, when the degeneration of characters and the Macedonian conquest hand over Greece to the power of foreigners.
p “In exactly the same way Gothic architecture develops together with the final establishment of the feudal order, in the semi- renaissance of the eleventh century, at a time when society, freed from Northmen and robbers, begins to settle down. It disappears at the time when this military regime of small independent barons is disintegrating, towards the end of the fifteenth century, together with all the manners which followed from it, in consequence of the coming into existence of the new monarchies.
p “Similarly Dutch art flourishes at that glorious moment when, thanks to its stubbornness and its valour, Holland finally throws off the Spanish yoke, fights successfully against England, and becomes the wealthiest, freest, most industrious, most prosperous state in Europe. It declines at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Holland falls to a secondary role, yielding the first to England, and becomes simply a bank, a commercial house, maintained in the greatest order, peaceful and well-kept, in which man may live at his ease like a sagacious bourgeois, with no great ambitions or great emotions. Finally, just in the same way does French tragedy appear at the time when, under Louis XIV, the firmly established monarchy brings with it the rule of decorum, court life, the brilliance and elegance of the domestic aristocracy; and disappears when noble society and court manners are abolished by the Revolution.... Just as naturalists study the physical temperature in order to understand the appearance of this or that plant, maize or oats, aloes or pine, in exactly the same way must one study the moral temperature in order to explain the appearance of this or that form of art: pagan sculpture or realistic painting, mystic architecture or classical literature, voluptuous music or idealistic poetry. The works of the human spirit, like the works of living Nature, are explained only by their environment." [630•*
p Any follower of Marx will unquestionably agree with all this: yes, any work of art, like any philosophical system, can be explained by the state of minds and manners of the particular age. But what explains this general state of minds and manners? The followers of Marx think that it is explained by the social order, the qualities of the social environment. "When a great change takes place in the condition of humanity, it brings by degrees a 631 corresponding change in human conceptions,” says the same Taine. [631•* That, too, is correct. The only question is, what is it that causes changes in the position of social man, i.e., in the social order? It is only on this question that "economic materialists" differ from Taine.
p For Taine the task of history, as of science, is in the last resort a "psychological task". According to him, the general state of minds and manners creates not only the different forms of art, literature and philosophy but also the industry of the given people and all its social institutions. And this means that social environment has its ultimate cause in "the state of minds and manners".
p Thus it turns out that the psychology of social man is determined by his position, and his position by his psychology. This is once again the antinomy we know so well, with which the writers of the Enlightenment of trie eighteenth century failed to grapple..Taine did not resolve this antinomy. He only gave, in a number of remarkable works, numerous brilliant illustrations of its first proposition—the thesis that the state of minds and manners is determined by the social environment.
p Taine’s contemporaries in France, who contested his aesthetic theory, put forward the antithesis that the qualities of the social environment are determined by the state of minds and manners. [631•** This kind of discussion could be carried on until the second advent, not only without resolving the fateful antinomy, but even without noticing its existence.
p It is only the historical theory of Marx that resolves the antinomy and thereby brings the argument to a satisfactory conclusion or, at any rate, provides the possibility of concluding it satisfactorily, if people have ears to hear and a brain wherewith to think.
p The qualities of the social environment are determined by the state of the productive forces in every given age. Once the state of 632 the productive forces is determined, the qualities of the social environment are also determined, and so is the psychology corresponding to it, and the interaction between the environment on the one side and minds and manners on the other. Brunetiere is quite right when he says that we not only adapt ourselves to our environment, but also adapt it to our needs. You will ask, but whence come the needs which do not correspond with the qualities of the environment around us? They arise in us—and, in saying this, we have in view not only the material but also all the so-called spiritual needs of men—thanks to that same historical movement, that same development of the productive forces, owing to which every particular social order sooner or later proves to be unsatisfactory, out of date, requiring radical reconstruction, and maybe fit only for the scrapheap. We have already pointed earlier to the example of legal institutions to show how the psychology of men may outdistance the particular forms of their social life.
p We are sure that, on reading these lines, many readers—even those favourably inclined towards us—have remembered a mass of examples and of historical phenomena which apparently cannot in any way be explained from our point of view. And the readers are already prepared to tell us: "You are right, but not entirely; equally right, but also not entirely, are the people who hold views opposite to yours; both you and they see only half the truth.” But wait, reader, don’t seek salvation in eclecticism without grasping all that the modern monist, i.e., materialist, view of history can give you.
p Up to this point our propositions, of necessity, were very abstract. But we already know that there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete. We must give our propositions a more concrete shape.
p As almost every society is subjected to the influence of its neighbours, it may be said that for every society there exists, in its turn, a certain social, historical environment which influences its development. The sum of influences experienced by every given society at the hands of its neighbours can never be equal to the sum of the influences experienced at the same time by another society. Therefore every society lives in its own particular historical environment, which may be, and very often is, in reality very similar to the historical environment surrounding other nations and peoples, but can never be, and never is, identical with it. This introduces an extremely powerful element of diversity into that process of social development which, from our previous abstract point of view, seemed most schematic.
p For example, the clan is a form of community characteristic of all human societies at a particular stage of their development. But the influence of the historical environment greatly varies the 633 destinies of the clan in different tribes. It attaches to the clan itself a particular, so to speak individual, character, it retards or accelerates its disintegration, and in particular it diversifies the process of that disintegration. But diversity in the process of the disintegration of the clan determines the diversity of those forms of community which succeed clan life. Up to now we have been saying that the development of the productive forces leads to the appearance of private property and to the disappearance of primitive communism. Now we must say that the character of the private property which arises on the ruins of primitive communism is diversified by the influence of the historical environment which surrounds each particular society. "The careful study of the Asiatic, particularly Indian, forms of communal property would show how from different forms of primitive communal property there follow different forms of its disintegration. Thus, for example, different original types of Roman and German private property could be traced back to different forms of the Indian communal property." [633•*
p The influence of the historical environment of a given society tells, of course, on the development of its ideologies as well. Do foreign influences weaken, and if so to what extent do they weaken, the dependence of this development on the economic structure of society?
p Compare the Aeneid with the Odyssey, or the French classical tragedy with the classical tragedy of the Greeks. Compare the Russian tragedy of the eighteenth century with classical French tragedy. What will you see? The Aeneid is only an imitation of the Odyssey, the classical tragedy of the French is only an imitation of Greek tragedy; the Russian tragedy of the eighteenth century has been composed, although by unskilful hands, after the image and likeness of the French. Everywhere there has been imitation; but the imitator is separated from his model by all that distance which exists between the society which gave him, the imitator, birth and the society in which the model lived. And note that we are speaking not of the greater or lesser perfection of finish, but of what constitutes the soul of the work of art in question. Whom does the Achilles of Racine resemble—a Greek who has just emerged from a state of barbarism, or a marquis—talon rouge—of the seventeenth century? The personages of the Aeneid, it has been observed, were Romans of the time of Augustus. True, the characters of the Russian so-called tragedies of the eighteenth century can hardly be described as giving us a picture of the Russian people of the time, but their very worthlessness bears witness to the state of Russian society: they bring out before us its immaturity. = ^^431^^
634p Another example. Locke undoubtedly was the teacher of the vast majority of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century (Helvetius called him the greatest metaphysician of all ages and peoples). Yet, between Locke and his French pupils there is precisely that same distance which separated English society at the time of the "Glorious Revolution" from French society as it was several decades before the "Great Rebellion" of the French people.^^432^^
p A third example. The "true Socialists" of Germany in the 40s imported their ideas direct from France. Yet nevertheless these ideas, one may say, had already at the frontier stamped on them the mark of the society in which they were destined to spread.
p Thus the influence of the literature of one country on the literature of another is directly proportional to the similarity of the social relations of these countries. It does not exist at all when that similarity is equal to zero. As an example, the African Negroes up to the present time have not experienced the least influence of the European literatures. This influence is one-sided when one people through its backwardness can give nothing to another, either in the sense of form or in the sense of content. As an example, the French literature of last century, influencing Russian literature, did not itself experience the least Russian influence. Finally, this influence is reciprocal when, in consequence of the similarity of social life, and consequently of cultural development, each of the two peoples making the exchange can borrow something from the other. As an example, French literature, influencing English, experienced the influence of the latter in its turn.
p The pseudo-classical French literature^^433^^ was very much to the liking, at one time, of the English aristocracy. But the English imitators could never equal their French models. This was because all the efforts of the English aristocrats could not transport into England those relations of society in which the French pseudoclassical literature flourished.
p The French philosophers were filled with admiration for the philosophy of Locke; but they went much further than their teacher. This was because the class which they represented had gone in France, fighting against the old regime, much further than the class of English society whose aspirations were expressed in the philosophical works of Locke.
p When, as in modern Europe, we have an entire system of societies, which influence one another extremely powerfully, the development of ideology in each of these societies becomes just as increasingly complex as its economic development becomes more and more complex, under the influence of constant trade with other countries.
p We have in these conditions one literature, as it were, common to all civilised mankind. But just as a zoological genus is 635 subdivided into species, so this world literature is subdivided into the literatures of the individual nations. Every literary movement, every philosophical idea assumes its own distinctive features, sometimes quite a new significance, with every particular civilised nation. [635•* When Hume visited France, the French “philosophers” greeted him as their fellow-thinker. But on one occasion, when dining with Holbach, this undoubted fellow-thinker of the French philosophers began talking about "natural religion”. "As regards atheists,” he said, "I do not admit their existence: I have never met a single one.” "You have not had much luck up to now,” retorted the author of the System of Nature. "Here, for a start, you can see seventeen atheists seated at table.” The same Hume ha$ a decisive influence on Kant, whom he, as the latter himself admitted, awakened from his dogmatic drowsiness. But the philosophy of Kant differs considerably from the philosophy of Hume. The very same fund of ideas led to the militant atheism of the French materialists, to the religious indifferentism of Hume and to the “practical” religion of Kant. The reason was that the religious question in England at that time did not play the same part as it was playing in France, and in France not the same as in Germany. And this difference in the significance of the religious question was caused by the fact that in each of these three countries the social forces were not in the same mutual relationship as in each of the others. Similar in their nature, but dissimilar in their degree of development, the elements of society combined differently in the different European countries, with the result that in each of them there was a very particular "state of minds and manners”, which expressed itself in the national literature, philosophy, art, etc. In consequence of this, one and the same question might excite Frenchmen to passion and leave the English cold; one and the same argument might be treated by a progressive German with respect, while a progressive Frenchman would regard it with bitter hatred. To what did German philosophy owe its colossal successes? To German realities, answers Hegel: the French have no time to occupy themselves with philosophy, life pushes them into the practical sphere (zum Praktischen), while German realities are more reasonable, and the Germans may perfect theory in peace and quiet (beim Theoretischen stehen bleiben). As a matter of fact, this imaginary reasonableness of German realities reduced itself to the poverty of German social and political life, which left educated Germans at that time no other choice than to serve as officials of unattractive “realities” (to adapt themselves to the " Practical”) or to seek consolation in theory, and to concentrate in this sphere all the strength of their passion, all the energy of their 636 thought. But if the more advanced countries, going away into the “Practical”, had not pushed forward the theoretical reasoning of the Germans, if they had not awakened the latter from their " dogmatic drowsiness”, never would that negative quality—the poverty of social and political life—have given birth to such a colossal positive result as the brilliant flowering of German philosophy.
Goethe makes Mephistopheles say: "Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat—Plage.” “(Reason has become unreason and right wrong."—Ed.) In its application to the history of German philosophy, one may almost venture such a paradox: nonsense gave birth to reason, poverty proved a benefaction.
Notes
[581•*] Edgar Bauer, Der Streit der Kritik mil Kirche und Staat , Berne, 1844, S. 184.
[581•**] Loc. cit. , p. 185.
[583•*] The same as the Absolute Idea.
[583•**] The reader will not have forgotten the expression of Hegel quoted earlier: the owl of Minerva begins to fly only in the evening.
[583•***] Bruno Bauer was the elder brother of Edgar, mentioned earlier, and the author of a book famous in its day, Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker.
[584•*] F. Engels und K. Marx, Die heilige Familie, oder-Kritih der hritischen Kritik. Gegen Bruno Bauer und Consorten , Frankfurt am Main, 1845, pp. 126-28. This book is a collection of articles by Engels and Marx directed against various opinions expressed in the "Critical Criticism”. The passage quoted is taken from an article by Marx^^405^^ against an article by Bruno Bauer. It was also from Marx that the passage quoted in the preceding chapter was taken.
[The passage is in chapter 6-by Marx-of The Holy Family ( Gesamtausgabe , Abt. I, Bd. 3, S. 257-58).]
[584•**] Ibid., S. 6.406
[587•*] “So thoroughly is the use of tools the exclusive attribute of man that the discovery of a single artificially shaped flint in the drift or cave-breccia is deemed proof enough that man has been there.” Daniel Wilson, Prehistoric Man , Vol. I, pp. 151-52, London, 1876.
[588•*] K. Marx, Lohnarbeit und Kapital. = ^^409^^
[588•**] Ibid.^^410^^
[589•*] La descendance de I’homme, etc. , Paris, 1881, p. 51.^^411^^
[590•*] In the well-known book of von Martius, on the primitive inhabitants of Brazil,^^412^^ several interesting examples can be found which show how important are what seem to be the most insignificant peculiarities of various localities, in developing mutual relations between their inhabitants.
[590•**] However, it must be observed about the sea that it does not always bring men together. Ratzel (Anthropo-Geographie, Stuttgart, 1882, p. 92) justly remarks that at a certain low stage of development the sea is an absolute frontier, i.e., it renders impossible any relations whatsoever between the peoples it divides. For their part, relations which are made possible originally only by the characteristics of geographical environment leave their impression on the physiognomy of primitive tribes. Islanders are markedly distinguished from those dwelling on continents.
“Die Bevolkerungen der Inseln sind in einigen Fallen vollig andere als die des nachstgelegenen Festlandes oder der nachsten grosseren Insel; aber auch wo sie urspriinglich derselben Rasse oder Volkergruppe angehoren, sind sie immer weit von derselben verschieden; und zwar, kann man hinzusetzen, in der Regel weiter als die entsprechenden festlandischen Abzweigungen dieser Rasse oder Gruppe untereinander" (Ratzel, loc. cit. , S. 96). L"The inhabitants of islands are in some cases totally different from those of the nearest mainland or the nearest large island; but even where they originally belonged to the same race or group of peoples, they are always widely different from the latter; and indeed one can add, as a rule, that they differ more widely than do the corresponding branches of this race or group on the mainland among themselves."] Here is repeated the same law as in the formation of the species and varieties of animals.
[591•*] Marx, Das Kapital , 3. Aufl., S. 524-26. ^^413^^ In a footnote Marx adds: "One of the material bases of the power of the State over the small disconnected producing organisms in India, was the regulation of the water supply. The Mohammedan rulers of India understood this better than their English successors”. We may compare with the opinion of Marx, quoted above, the opinion of a most recent investigator: "Unter dem, was die lebende Natur dem Menschen an Gaben bietet, ist nicht der Reichtum an Stoffen, sondern der an Kraften oder, besser gesagt, Krafteanregungen am hochsten zu schatzen" (Ratzel, loc. cit. , S. 343).["Among the gifts which living Nature offers to men, that to be prized most highly is not material wealth, but energy, or rather the means of producing energy."}
[591•**] Editor’s Note : Plekhanov’s arguments about the significance of the geographical environment in social progress (see pp. 591-92 and 663-66 of this edition) cannot be regarded as absolutely correct. In his later works Plekhanov even speaks of the determining influence of the geographical environment on the entire course of social progress.
While pointing out quite rightly that the geographical environment influences man through social relations, that the latter, once they have arisen, develop in conformity with their inner laws, Plekhanov is mistaken when he says that social structure "is determined in the long run by the characteristics of the geographical environment" (p. 664) and that "the capacity of man for ’tool-making’ must be regarded first of all as a constant magnitude , while the surrounding external conditions for the use of this capacity in practice have to be regarded as a constantly varying magnitude " (p. 592).
Geographical environment is unquestionably one of the constant and indispensable conditions of development of society and, of course, influences the development of society, accelerates or retards its development. But its influence is not the determining influence, inasmuch as the changes and development of society proceed at an incomparably faster rate than the change’s and development of geographical environment. In the space of three thousand years three different social systems have been successively superseded in Europe: the primitive communal system, the slave system and the feudal system. In the eastern part of Europe, in the U.S.S.R., even four social systems have been superseded. Yet during this period geographical conditions in Europe have either not changed at all, or have changed so slightly that geography takes no note of them. And that is quite natural. Changes in geographical environment of any importance require millions of years, whereas a few hundred or a couple of thousand years are enough for even very important changes in the system of human society.
It follows from this that geographical environment cannot be the chief cause, the determining cause of social development, for that which remains almost unchanged in the course of tens of thousands of years cannot be the chief cause of development of that which undergoes fundamental changes in the course of a few hundred years.
[592•*] "We must beware,” says L. Geiger, "of ascribing to premeditation too great a part in the origin of implements. The discovery of the first implements of the highest importance took place, of course, by accident, like many great discoveries of modern times. They were of course rather discovered than invented. I arrived at this view in particular on account of the circumstance that the names of implements never arise from their manufacture, that those names never have a genetic character, but arise from the use which is made of the implement. Thus, in the German language Schere (scissors), Sage (saw), Hacke (pick-axe) are objects which shear (scheren), saw (sagen), hack (hacken). This law of language must all the more attract our attention because the names of devices which do not represent tools are formed by a genetic or passive method, from the material or from the work of which or thanks to which they arise. Thus, a skin as a receptacle for wine in many languages originally means the skin torn off an animal: to the German Schlauch corresponds the English slough (snakeskin): the Greek ascos is simultaneously a skin in the sense of receptacle, and the skin of a beast. Here, consequently, language shows us quite evidently how and out of what was manufactured the device called a skin. It is otherwise in relation to implements; and they at first—if we base ourselves on language—were not manufactured at all. Thus the first knife could be found by accident, and I would say made use of in play, in the shape of a sharpened stone.” L. Geiger, Die Urgeschichte der Menschheit im Lichte der Sprache. Mit besonderer Beziehung auf die Entstehung des Werkzeugs , pp. 36-37 (in the collection Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte der Menschheit , Stuttgart, 1878).
[593•*] “For the art of mechanics ... was first originated by Eudoxus and Archytas, who embellished geometry with its subtleties, and gave to problems incapable of proof by word and diagram a support derived from mechanical illustrations that were patent to the senses.... But Plato was incensed at this, and inveighed against them as corrupters and destroyers of the pure excellence of geometry, which thus turned her back upon the incorporeal things of abstract thought and descended to the things of sense, making use, moreover, of objects which required much mean and manual labour. For this reason mechanics was made entirely distinct from geometry, and being for a long time ignored by philosophers came to be regarded as one of the military arts" (Plutarchi, Vita Marcelli , edit. Teubneriana, C. Sintenis, Lipsiae, 1883, Ch. XIV, pp. 135-36). As the reader will see, Plutarch’s view was far from new at that time.
[594•*] It is known that for a long time the Russian peasants themselves could have, and not infrequently did have, their own serfs. The condition of a serf could not be attractive to a peasant. But in the then state of the productive forces of Russia not a single peasant could find that condition abnormal. A “muzhik” who had made some money just as naturally began to think about buying serfs as a Roman freeman strove to acquire slaves. The slaves who revolted under the leadership of Spartacus waged war with their lords, but not with slavery; if they had succeeded in winning their freedom, they would themselves, in favourable circumstances, and with the most tranquil conscience, have become slave-owners. Willy-nilly one recalls at this point the words of Schelling, which acquire a new meaning, that freedom must be necessary. History shows that any of the forms of freedom makes its appearance only where it becomes an economic necessity.
[595•*] See "Economic Materialism in History”, in Vestnik Yevropy , August 1894, p. 601.
[598•*] We quote from the French edition of 1874.
[598•**] J. F. McLennan, Studies in Ancient History: Primitive Marriage , 1876, p. 111.
[600•*] Vestnik Yevropy, July 1894, p. 12.
[600•**] Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Vom Beruf unserer Zeitfiir Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft, 3rd ed., Heidelberg, 1840, p. 14. The first edition appeared in 1814.
[601•*] Berlin edition, 1840, Vol. I, p. 14.
[601•**] Ibid., p. 22.
[601•***] Ibid., p. 16.
[602•*] Cursus der Institutionen, Leipzig, 1841, Vol. I, p. 31. In a footnote Puchta speaks sharply of the eclectics who strive to reconcile contradictory views of the origin of law, and uses such expressions that willy-nilly the question arises: can he possibly have anticipated the appearance of Mr. Kareyev? But on the other hand it must be said that in Germany at the time of Puchta they had quite enough eclectics of their own. Whatever else there may be a shortage of, there are always and everywhere inexhaustible reserves of that type of mind.
[602•**] Ibid., p. 28.
[603•*] H. J. Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, 1875, pp. 9-10, 30.
[604•*] M. Kovalevsky, Tableau des origines et de revolution de lafamille et de la propriete, Stockholm, 1890, pp. 52-53. The late N. Sieber’s Outlines of Primitive Economic Culture contains numerous facts demonstrating with the utmost clarity that modes of appropriation are determined by modes of production.
[605•*] Ibid., p. 95.
[605•**] Ibid., p. 57.
[606•*] Ibid., p. 93.
[606•**] It is known that the intimate connection between the hunter and his weapon exists in all primitive tribes. “Der Jager darf sich keiner fremden Waffen bedienen" [“The hunter must not make use of a stranger’s weapons."], says Martius of the primitive inhabitants of Brazil, explaining at the same time whence these savages derived such a “conviction”: "Besonders behaupten diejenigen Wilden, die mit dem Blasrohr schiessen, dass dieses Geschoss durch den Gebrauch eines Kremden verdorben werde, und geben es nicht aus ihren Handen.” (Von dem Rechtszustande unter den Ureimvohnern Brasiliens, Miinchen, 1832, S. 50.) “(In particular these savages who shoot with a blowpipe, insist that this weapon is spoiled when used by a stranger, and don’t allow it out of their hands."—Ed.) "Die Fiihrung dieser Waffen (bows and arrows) erfordert eine grosse Geschicklichkeit und bestandige Uebung. Wo sie bei wilden Volkern im Gebrauche sind, berichten uns die Reisenden, dass schon die Knaben sich mit Kindergeraten im Schiessen iiben.” (Oscar Peschel, Vblkerkunde, Leipzig, 1875, S. 190) ["The use of these weapons (bows and arrows) requires great skill and constant practice. Where they are in use ajnong savage peoples, we are told by travellers, the boys already practise shooting with toy weapons."]
[607•*] Loc. cit., p. 56.
[608•*] Dr. Albert Hermann Post, Dcr Ursprung des Rechts. Prolegomena zu einer allgemeinen vergleichenden Rechtswissenschaft, Oldenburg, 1876, S. 25.
[609•*] Post belongs to the category of these people who have far from parted with idealism yet. Thus, for example, he shows that the union of kindred corresponds to hunting and nomad society, and that with the appearance of agriculture and the stable settlement bound up with it, the union of kindred yields place to “Gaugenossenschaft” (we should call it the neighbourcommunity). It would seem clear that the man is seeking the key to the explanation of the history of social relations in nothing else than the development of productive forces. In individual cases Post is almost always true to such a principle. But this does not prevent him regarding "im Menschen schaffend ewigen Geist" (-"the Eternal Spirit creating in Man".-£d.) as the fundamental cause of the history of law. This man has been, as it were, specially created in order to delight Mr. Kareyev.
[610•*] Loc. cit., p. 139. When we were making this extract, we imagined Mr. Mikhailovsky quickly rising in his seat, crying: "I find this debatable: the Chinese may be armed with English rifles. Can one on the basis of these rifles judge of the degree of their civilisation? " Very well asked, Mr. Mikhailovsky: from English rifles it is not logical to draw conclusions about Chinese civilisation. It is of English civilisation that one must judge from them.
[610•**] Loc. cit., pp. 252-53.
[614•*] In a letter to his betrothed, written in 1833. Footnote for Mr. Mikhatlovsky: This is not the Biichner who preached materialism in the general philosophical sense”; it is his brother, who died young, the author of a famous tragedy, The Death of Danton.
[615•*] Vestnik Yevropy, July 1894, p. 6.
[616•*] Ibid., p. 7.
[616•**] See the book of the late L. Mechnikov on the great historical risers.^^424^^ In this book the author in essence only summarised the conclusions arrived at by the most authoritative specialist historians, such as Lenormant. Elisee Reclus says in his introduction to the book that Mechnikov’s view will mark an epoch in the history of science. This is untrue, in the sense that the view is not a new one: Hegel expressed it in the most definite way. But undoubtedly science will gain a great deal if it consistently adheres to that view.
[616•***] See Morgan’s Ancient Society and Engels’ book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.
[618•*] Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte bis zum Schluss der Karolingenperiode, Leipzig, 1889, Band I, S. 233-34.
[618•**] Marx says that "every class struggle is a political struggle”. Consequently, concludes Barth, politics in your opinion does not influence economics at all, yet you yourself quote facts proving... etc. Bravo, exclaims Mr. Kareyev, that’s what I call a model of how one ought to argue with Marx! The “model” of Mr. Kareyev displays a remarkable power of thought altogether. "Rousseau,” says the model, "lived in a society where class distinctions and privileges were carried to the extreme, where all were subjected to an all-powerful despotism; and yet the method of the rational structure of the state borrowed from antiquity—the method which was also used by Hobbes and Locke—led Rousseau to create an ideal of society based on universal equality and popular self-government. This ideal completely contradicted the order existing in France. Rousseau’s theory was carried out in practice by the Convention; consequently, philosophy influenced politics, and through it economics" (loc. cit., p. 58). How do you like this brilliant argument, to serve which Rousseau, the son of a poor Genevese Republican, turns out to be the product of aristocratical society? To refute Mr. Barth means to repeat oneself. But what are we to say of Mr. Kareyev, who applauds Barth? Ah, Mr. V. V., your "professor of history" is poor stuff, really he is. We advise you quite disinterestedly: find yourself a new " professor".
[621•*] Don’t imagine that we are slandering the worthy professor. He quotes with great praise the opinion of Earth, according to which "law carries on a separate, though not independent existence”. Now, it’s just this " separateness, though not independence" that prevents Mr. Kareyev from mastering "the essence of the historical process”. How precisely it prevents him will be immediately shown by points in the text.
[624•*] In essence this is the very psychological process which the proletariat of Europe is now going through: its psychology is already adapting itself to the new, future relations of production.
[625•*] [See pages 618-21 of this edition.]
[625•**] "Quand’essa cominciava appena a nascere nel diciasettesimo secolo, alcune nazioni avevano gia da piu secoli fiorito colla loro sola esperienza, da cui poscia la scienza ricavo i suoi dettami.” (Storia della Econimia publica in Italia, etc., Lugano, 1829, p. 11.) ["Even before it (political economy) began to take shape in the seventeenth century, some nations had been flourishing for several centuries relying solely on their practical experience. That experience was later used by this science for its propositions."]
John Stuart Mill repeats: "In every department of^human affairs, Practice long precedes Science.... The conception, accordingly, of Political Economy as a branch of Science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.” Principles of Political Economy, London, 1843, Vol. I, p. 1.
[626•*] Rechtsstaat und Sozialismus, Innsbruck, 1881, S. 124-25.
[627•*] This did not prevent them from sometimes fearing the strong. Thus, for example, Kant said of himself: "No one will force me to say that which is against my beliefs; but I will not venture to say all I believe."
[628•*] Proving that the conditions of life (les circonstances) influence the organisation of animals, Lamarck makes an observation which it will be useful to recall here in order to avoid misunderstandings. "It is true, if this statement were to be taken literally, I should be convicted of an error; for whatever the environment may do, it does not work any direct modification whatever in the shape and organisation of animals.” Thanks to considerable changes in that environment, however, new requirements, different from those previously existing, make their appearance. If these new requirements last a long time, they lead to the appearance of new habits. "Now, if a new environment ... induces new habits in these animals, that is to say, leads them to new activities which have become habitual, the result will be the use of some one part in preference to some other part, and in some cases the total disuse of some part no longer necessary.” The increasing of use or its absence will not remain without influence on the structure of organs, and consequently of the whole organism. (Lamarque, Philosophic zoologique etc., nouvelle edition par Charles Martin, 1873, t. I, pp. 223-24.)^^429^^
In the same way must also be understood the influence of economic requirements, and of others following from them, on the psychology of a people. Here there takes place a slow process of adaptation by exercise or non-exercise; while our opponents of “economic” materialism imagine that, in Marx’s opinion, people when they experience new requirements immediately and deliberately change their views. Naturally this seems to them a piece of stupidity. But it is they themselves who invented this stupidity: Marx says nothing of the kind. Generally speaking, the objections of these thinkers remind us of the following triumphant refutation of Darwin by a certain clergyman: "Darwin says, throw a hen into the water and she will grow webbed feet. I assert that the hen will simply drown."
[629•*] Contribution to the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law. Introduction (Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher, 1844).
[630•*] Philosophic de l’art (deuxieme édition), Paris, 1872, pp. 13-17.
[631•*] Philosophic de I’art dans les Pays-Bas, Paris, 1869, p. 96.
[631•**] "Nous subissons 1’influence du milieu politique ou historique, nous subissons 1’influence du milieu social, nous subissons aussi 1’influence du milieu physique. Mais il ne faut pas oublier que si nous la subissons, nous pouvons pourtant aussi lui resister et vous savez sans doute qu’il y en a de memorables exemples.... Si nous subissons 1’influence du milieu, un pouvoir que nous avons aussi, c’est de ne pas nous laisser faire, ou pour dire encore quelque chose de plus, c’est de conformer, c’est d’adapter le milieu lui-meme, a nos propres convenances.” (F. Brunetiere, L’evolution de la critique depuis la renaissance jusqu’a nos jours, Paris, 1890, pp. 260-61.) t"We experience the influence of the political or historical environment, we experience the influence of the social environment, we also experience the influence of the physical environment. But it must not be forgotten that, if we experience it, we can however also resist it, and you know doubtless that there are memorable examples of this.... If we experience the influence of environment, a power which we also have is not to let ourselves be swayed, or to say more, it is the power of making the environment conform, of adapting it to our own convenience."]
[633•*] Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, Anmerkung, S. 10.
[635•*] [This sentence is to be found only in the first Russian edition.]
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