IV. The materialistic conception of history

• • Prefaces
  • I. Introduction
  • II. Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit
  • III. The "Communist manifesto" and the scientific spirit
  • IV. The materialistic conception of history
  • V. Capitalism and the law of concentration
  • VI. The class struggle theory
  • VII. Karl marx and the economics of socialism
  • VIII. Outlines of socialist economic theory
  • IX. Outlines of the socialist state
  • X. The means of realization

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I

Socialism, then, in the modern, scientific sense, is a theory of social evolution. Its hopes for the future rest, not upon the genius of some Utopia-builder, but upon the inherent forces of historical development. The Socialist state will never be realized except as the result of economic necessity, the culmination of successive epochs of industrial evolution. Thus the existing social system appears to the Socialist of to-day, not as it appeared to the Utopians and as it still must appear to mere ideologist reformers, as a triumph of ignorance or wickedness, the reign of false ideas, but as the result of an age-long evolutionary process, determined, not wholly indeed, but mainly, by certain methods of producing the necessities of life in the first place, and secondly, of effecting their exchange. Not, let it be understood, that Socialism has become a mere mechanical theory of economic fatalism. The historical development, the social evolution, upon the laws of which the theories of Socialism are based, is a human process, involving all the complex feelings, emotions, aspirations, hopes, and fears common to man. To ignore this fundamental fact, as they must who interpret the Marx-Engels theory of history as a doctrine of economic fatalism, is to miss the profoundest significance of the theory. While it is true that the scientific spirit destroys the idea of romantic, magic transformations of the social system and the belief that the world may be re-created at will, rebuilt upon the plans of some Utopian architect, it still, as we shall see, leaves room for the human factor. Otherwise, indeed, it would only be a new kind of Utopianism. They who accept the theory that the production of the material necessities of life is the main impelling force, the geist, of human evolution, may rightly protest against social injustice and wrong just as vehemently as any of the ideologists, and aspire just as fervently toward a nobler and better state. The Materialistic Conception of History does not involve the fatalist resignation summed up in the phrase, "Whatever is, is natural, and, therefore, right." It does not involve belief in man's helplessness to change conditions.

II

The idea of social evolution is admirably expressed in the fine phrase of Leibnitz, "The present is the child of the past, but it is the parent of the future." The great seventeenth-century philosopher was not the first to postulate and apply to society that doctrine of flux, of continuity and unity, which we call evolution. In all ages of which record has been preserved to us, it has been sporadically, and more or less vaguely, expressed. Even savages seem to have dimly perceived it. The saying of the Bechuana chief, recorded by the missionary, Casalis, was probably, judging by its epigrammatic character, a proverb of his people. "One event is always the son of another," he said—a saying strikingly like that of Leibnitz.

Since the work of Lyell, Darwin, Wallace, Spencer, Huxley, Youmans, and their numerous followers—a brilliant school embracing the foremost historians and sociologists of Europe and America—the idea of evolution as a universal law has made rapid and certain progress. Everything changes; nothing is immutable or eternal. Whatever is, whether in geology, astronomy, biology, or sociology, is the result of numberless, inevitable, related changes. Only the law of change is changeless. The present is a phase only of a great transition process from what was, through what is, to what will be.

The Marx-Engels theory is an exploration of the laws governing this process of evolution in the domain of human relations: an attempt to provide a key to the hitherto mysterious succession of changes in the and with each fresh discovery the Unknown is narrowed by the expansion of the Known.

The theory that ideas determine progress, that, in the words of Professor Richard T. Ely, "all that is significant in human history may be traced back to ideas," is only true in the sense that a half truth is true. It is true, nothing but the truth, but it is less than the whole truth. Truly all that is significant in human history may be traced back to ideas, but in like manner the ideas themselves can be traced back to material sources. For ideas have histories, too, and the causation of an idea must be understood before the idea itself can serve fully to explain anything. We must go back of the idea to the causes which gave it birth if we would interpret anything by it. We may trace the American Revolution, for example, back to the revolutionary ideas of the colonists, but that will not materially assist us to understand the Revolution. For that, it is necessary to trace the ideas themselves to their source, the economic discontent of an exploited people. This is the spirit which illumines the works of historians like Green, McMaster, Morse Stephens, and others of the modern school, who emphasize social forces rather than individual facts, and find the geist of history in social experiences and institutions.

What has been called the "Great Man theory," which the materialist conception of Marx and Engels has been an important creative influence, is concerned less with the chronicle of notable events and dates than with their underlying causes and the manner of life of the people. Had it no other bearing, the Marx-Engels theory, considered solely as a contribution to the science of history, would have been one of the greatest intellectual achievements of the nineteenth century. By emphasizing the importance of the economic factors in social evolution, it has done much for economics and more for history.

III

While the Materialistic Conception of History bears the names of Marx and Engels, as the theory of organic evolution bears the names of Darwin and Wallace, it is not claimed that the idea had never before been expressed. Just as thousands of years before Darwin and Wallace the theory which bears their names had been dimly perceived, so the idea that economic conditions dominate historical developments had its foreshadowings. The famous dictum of Aristotle, that only by the introduction of machines would the abolition of slavery ever be made possible, is a conspicuous example of many anticipations of the theory. It is true that "In dealing with speculations so remote, we have to guard against reading modern meanings into writings produced in ages whose limitations of knowledge were serious, whose temper and standpoint are wholly alien to our own," but the Aristotelian saying admits of no other interpretation. It is clearly a recognition of the fact that the supreme politico-social institution of the time depended upon hand labor.

In later times, the idea of a direct connection between economic conditions and legal and political institutions reappears in the works of various writers. Professor Seligman quotes from Harrington's "Oceana" the argument that the prevailing form of government depends upon the conditions of land tenure, and the extent of its monopolization. Saint-Simon, too, as already stated, taught that political institutions depend upon economic conditions. But it is to Marx and Engels that we owe the first formulation into a definite theory of what had hitherto been but a suggestion, and the beginnings of a literature, now of considerable proportions, dealing with history from its standpoint. No more need be said concerning the "originality" of the theory.

A word as to the designation of the theory. Its authors gave it the name "historical materialism," and it has been urged that the name is, for many reasons, unfortunately chosen. Two of the leading exponents of the theory, Professor Seligman and Mr. Ghent, the former an opponent, the latter an advocate of Socialism, have expressed this conviction in very definite terms. The last-named writer bases his objection to the name on the ground that it is repellent to many persons who associate the word materialism with the philosophy "that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe." That is an old objection, and undoubtedly contains much truth. It is interesting in connection therewith to read the sarcastic comment of Engels upon it in the introduction to his "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific." The objection of Professor Seligman is based upon another ground entirely. He impugns its accuracy. "The theory which ascribes all changes in society to the influence of climate, or to the character of the fauna and flora, is materialistic," he says, "and yet has little in common with the doctrine here discussed. The doctrine we have to deal with is not only materialistic, but also economic in character; and the better phrase is ... the 'economic interpretation' of history." For this reason he discards the name given to the theory by its authors and adopts the luminous phrase of Thorold Rogers, without credit to that writer.

By French and Italian writers the term "economic determinism" has long been used, and it has been adopted to some extent in this country by Socialist writers. But this term, as Professor Seligman points out, is objectionable, because it exaggerates the theory, and gives it, by implication, a fatalistic character, conveying the idea that economic influence is the sole determining factor—a view which its authors specifically repudiated. While the reasoning of Professor Seligman in the argument quoted against the name "historical materialism" is neither very profound nor conclusive, since climate and fauna and flora are included in the term "economic" as clearly as in the term "materialistic," much may be said in favor of his choice of the term he borrows from Thorold Rogers, and it is used by many Socialist writers in preference to that used by Marx and Engels.

Many persons have doubtless been deceived into believing that the theory involves the denial of all influence to idealistic or spiritual factors, and the assumption that economic forces alone determine the course of historical development. Much of the criticism of the theory, especially by the Germans, rests upon that assumption. The theory is attacked, also, as being sordid and brutal upon the same false assumption that it implies that men are governed solely by their economic interests, that individual conduct is never inspired by anything higher than the economic interest of the individual. These are misconceptions of the theory, due, no doubt, to the overemphasis placed upon it by its authors—a common experience of new doctrines—and, above all, the exaggerations of too zealous, unrestrained disciples. There is a wise saying of Schiller's which suggests the spirit in which these exaggerations of a great truth—exaggerations by which it becomes falsehood—should be regarded: "Rarely do we reach truth, except through extremes—we must have foolishness ... even to exhaustion, before we arrive at the beautiful goal of calm wisdom." When it is contended that the "Civil War was at bottom a struggle between two economic principles," we have the presentation of an important truth, the key to the proper understanding of a great historical event. But when that important fact is exaggerated and torn from its legitimate place to suit the propaganda of a theory, and we are asked to believe that Garrison, Lovejoy, and other abolitionists were inspired solely by economic motives, that the urge and passion of human freedom did not enter into their souls, we are forced to reject it. But let it be clearly understood that it forms no part of the theory, that it is even expressly denied in the very terms in which Marx and Engels formulated the theory, and that its authors repudiated such perversions of it.

In no respect has the theory been more grossly exaggerated and misrepresented than in its application to religion. True philosopher that he was, Marx realized the absurdity of attempting "to abstract religious sentiment from the course of history, to place it by itself." He recognized that all religion is, fundamentally, man's effort to put himself into harmonious relation with, and to discover an interpretation of, the forces of the universe. The more incomprehensible those forces, the greater man's need of an explanation of them. He could not fail to see that the religion of a people always bears a marked relation to their mental development and their special environment. He knew that at various stages the Yahve of the Hebrews represented very different conceptions, answering to changes in the social and political conditions of the people. To the primitive Israelitish tribes, Yahve was, as Professor Rauschenbusch remarks, a tribal god, fortunately stronger than the gods of the neighboring tribes, but not fundamentally different from them, and the way to win his favor was to sacrifice abundantly. Later, with the development of a national spirit, the religious ideal became a theocracy, and Yahve became a King and Supreme Lord. In times of oppression and war Yahve was a God of War, but under other conditions he was a God of Peace. At every step the conception of Yahve bears a very definite relation to the material life.

Marx knew that primitive religions have often a celestial pantheon fashioned after the existing social order, kings being gods, aristocrats being demigods, and common mortals occupying a celestial rank equal to their terrestrial one. The celestial hierarchy of the Chinese, for example, is an exact reproduction of the earthly hierarchy, and all the privileges of rank are observed celestially as on earth. So in India we find the religions reproducing in their concepts of heaven the degrees and divisions of the various castes, while our own American Indian conceived of a celestial hunting ground, with abundant reward of game, as his Paradise. "The religious world is but the reflex of the real world," said Marx, and the phrase has been used, both by disciples and critics, as an attack upon religion itself; as showing that the Marxian philosophy excludes the possibility of religious belief. Obviously, however, the passage will not bear such an interpretation. To say that "the religious world is but the reflex of the real world" is by no means to deny that men have been benefited by seeking an interpretation of the forces of the universe, or to assert that the quest for such an interpretation is incompatible with rational conduct. In his scorn for Bakunin's "Alliance" programme with its dogmatic atheism Marx was perfectly consistent. The passage quoted simply lays down, in bare outline, a principle which, if well founded, enables us to study comparative religion from a new viewpoint.

It is not a denial of religion, then, which the famous utterance of Marx involves, but a recognition of the fact that, even as all religions may be traced to the same fundamental instinct in mankind, so the different forms which the religious conception assumes are, or may be, reflexes of the material life of those making them. Thus man makes religion for himself under the urge of his deepest instincts. The application of the theory to religion is analogous to its application to historical events. To say that a given religion assumes the form it does as an unconscious reflex of the environment in which it is produced, is no more a denial of that religion than to say that the Reformation arose out of economic and social conditions, and not out of an idea in Luther's mind, is a denial of the fact that there was a Reformation, or that the Reformation benefited the people. The value of the theory to the study of religions and religious movements is not less than to the study of history. Does anybody pretend that we can understand Christianity without taking into account the Roman Empire; or that we can understand Catholicism without knowing something of the economic life of medieval Europe; or Methodism without knowing the social condition of England in Wesley's day?

In one of the very earliest of his writings upon the subject, some comments upon the philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach, and intended to form the basis of a separate work, we find Marx insisting that man is not a mere automaton, driven irresistibly by blind economic forces. He says: "The materialistic doctrine, that men are the products of conditions and education, different men, therefore, the products of other conditions and changed education, forgets that circumstances may be altered by men, and that the educator has himself to be educated." Thus early we see the master taking a position entirely at variance with those of his disciples who would claim that the human factor has no influence upon historical development, that man is without power over his own destiny. From that position Marx never departed. Both he and Engels recognized the human character of the problem, and the futility of attempting to reduce all the processes of history and human progress to one sole basic cause. And in no case, so far as I am aware, has either of them attempted to do this.

In another place, Marx contends that "men make their own history, but they make it not of their own accord or under self-chosen conditions, but under given and transmitted conditions. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a mountain upon the brain of the living." Here, again, the influence of the human will is not denied, though its limitations are indicated. This is the application to social man of the theory of limitations of the will commonly accepted as applying to individuals. Man is only a freewill agent within certain sharp and relatively narrow bounds. In a given contingency, I may be "free" to act in a certain manner, or to refrain from so acting. I may take my choice, in the one direction or the other, entirely free, to all appearances, from restraining or compelling influences. Thus, I have acted upon my "will." But what factors formed my will? What circumstances determined my decision? Perhaps fear, or shame, or pride; perhaps tendencies inherited from my ancestors.

Engels admits that the economic factor in evolution has sometimes been unduly emphasized. He says: "Marx and I are partly responsible for the fact that the younger men have sometimes laid more stress on the economic side than it deserves. In meeting the attacks of our opponents, it was necessary for us to emphasize the dominant principle denied by them; and we did not always have the time, place, or opportunity to let the other factors which were concerned in the mutual action and reaction get their deserts." In another letter, he says: "According to the materialistic view of history, the factor which is in last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. But when any one distorts this so as to read that the economic factor is the sole element, he converts the statement into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic condition is the basis; but the various elements of the superstructure,—the political forms of the class contests, and their results, the constitutions,—the legal forms, and also all the reflexes of these actual contests in the brains of the participants, the political, legal, philosophical theories, the religious views ... all these exert an influence on the development of the historical struggles, and, in many instances, determine their form."

It is evident, therefore, that the doctrine does not imply economic fatalism. It does not deny that ideals may influence historical developments and individual conduct. While, as we shall see in a later chapter, it is part of the doctrine that classes are formed upon a basis of unity of material interests, it does not deny that men may, and often do, act in accordance with the promptings of noble impulses and humanitarian ideals, when their material interests would lead them to do otherwise. We have a conspicuous example of this in the life of Marx himself; in his splendid devotion to the cause of the workers through years of terrible poverty and hardship when he might have chosen wealth and fame. It is known, for example, that Bismarck made the most extravagant offers to enlist the services of Marx, who declined them at the very time when he was suffering awful privations. Marx himself has noted more than one instance of individual idealism triumphing over material interests and class environment, and, by a perversity that is astonishing, and not wholly disingenuous, some of his critics, notably Ludwig Slonimski, have used these instances as arguments against his theory, claiming that they disprove it! We are to understand the materialistic theory, then, as teaching, not that history is determined by economic forces only, but that in human evolution the chief factors are social factors, and that these factors in turn are mainly molded by economic circumstances.

This, then, is the basis of the Socialist philosophy, which Engels regarded as "destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology." Marx himself made a similar comparison. Marx was, so Liebknecht tells us, one of the first to recognize the importance of Darwin's investigations to sociology. His first important treatment of the materialistic theory, in "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," appeared in 1859, the year in which "The Origin of Species" appeared. "We spoke for months of nothing else but Darwin, and the revolutionizing power of his scientific conquests," says Liebknecht. Darwin, however, had little knowledge of political economy, as he acknowledged in a letter to Marx, thanking the latter for a copy of "Das Kapital." "I heartily wish that I possessed a greater knowledge of the deep and important subject of economic questions, which would make me a more worthy recipient of your gift," he wrote.

IV

The test of such a theory must lie in its application. Let us, then, apply the materialistic principle, first to a specific event, and then to the great sweep of the historic drama. Perhaps no single event has more profoundly impressed the imaginations of men, or filled a more important place in our histories, than the discovery of America by Columbus. In the schoolbooks, this great event figures as a splendid adventure, arising out of a romantic dream. But the facts are, as we know, far otherwise. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there were numerous and well-frequented routes from Hindustan, that vast storehouse of treasure from which Europe drew its riches. Along these routes cities flourished. There were the great ports, Licia in the Levant, Trebizond on the Black Sea, and Alexandria. From these ports, Venetian and Genoese traders bore the produce over the passes of the Alps to the Upper Danube and the Rhine. Here it was a source of wealth to the cities along the waterways, from Ratisbon and Nuremburg, to Bruges and Antwerp. Even the slightest acquaintance with the history of the Middle Ages must suffice to give the student an idea of the importance of these cities.

When all these routes save the Egyptian were closed one and made the other possible. The same explanation applies to the voyage of Vasco da Gama, six years later, which resulted in finding a way to India over the southeast course by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

Kipling asks in his ballad, "The British Flag"—

"And what should they know of England, who only England know?" There is a profound truth in the defiant line, a truth which applies equally to America or any other country. The present is inseparable from the past. We cannot understand one epoch without reference to its predecessors; we cannot understand the history of the United States unless we seek the key in the history of Europe—of England and France in particular. At the very threshold, in order to understand how the heroic navigator came to discover the vast continent of which the United States is part, we must pause to study the economic conditions of Europe which impelled the adventurous voyage, and led to the discovery of a great continent stretching across the ocean path. Such a view of history does not rob it of its romance, but rather adds to it. Surely, the wonderful linking of circumstances—the demand for spices and silks to minister to the fine tastes of aristocratic Europe, the growth of the trade with the East Indies, the grasping greed of Moor and Turk—all playing a rôle in the great drama of which the discovery of America is but a scene, is infinitely more fascinating than the latter event detached from its historical setting!

It is not easy to give in the compass of a few pages an intelligent view of the main currents of history. The sketch here introduced—not without hesitation—is an endeavor to state the Socialist concept of the course of social evolution in a brief outline and to indicate the principal economic causes which have operated to determine that course.

It is now generally admitted that primitive man lived under Communism. Lewis H. Morgan has calculated that if the life of the human race be assumed to have covered one hundred thousand years, at least ninety-five thousand years were spent in a crude, tribal Communism, in which private property was practically unknown, and in which the only ethic was devotion to tribal interests, and the only crime antagonism to tribal interests. Under this social system the means of making wealth were in the hands of the tribes, or gens, and distribution was likewise socially arranged. Between the different tribes warfare was constant, but in the tribe itself there was coöperation and not struggle. This fact is of tremendous importance in view of the criticisms which have been directed against the Socialist philosophy from the so-called Darwinian point of view, according to which competition and struggle is the law of life; that what Professor Huxley calls "the Hobbesial war of each against all" is the normal state of existence.

This is described as "the so-called Darwinian" theory advisedly, for the struggle for existence as the law of evolution has been exaggerated out of all likeness to the conception of Darwin himself. In "The Descent of Man," for instance, Darwin raises the point under review, and shows how, in many animal societies, the struggle for existence is replaced by coöperation for existence, and how that substitution results in the development of faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. "Those communities," he says, "which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best and rear the greatest number of offspring." Despite these instances, and the warning of Darwin himself that the term "struggle for existence" should not be too narrowly interpreted or overrated, his followers, instead of broadening it according to the master's suggestions, narrowed it still more. Thus the theory has been exaggerated into a mere caricature of the truth. This is almost invariably the fate of theories which deal with human relations, perhaps it would be equally true to say of all theories. The exaggerations of Malthus's law of population is a case in point. The Marx-Engels theory of the materialistic conception of history is, as we have seen, another.

Kropotkin, among others, has developed the theory along the lines suggested by Darwin. He points out that "though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, mutual defense, amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle.... If we resort to an indirect test, and ask nature: 'Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in their respective classes, the highest development of intelligence and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy."

From the lowest forms of animal life up to the highest, man, this law proves to be operative. It is not denied that there is competition for food, for life, within the species, human and other. But that competition is not usual; it arises out of unusual and special conditions. There are instances of hunger-maddened mothers tearing away food from their children; men drifting at sea have fought for water and food as beasts fight, but these are not normal conditions of life. "Happily enough," says Kropotkin again, "competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods.... Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support." This is the voice of science now that we have passed through the extremes and arrived at the "beautiful goal of calm wisdom." Competition is not, in the verdict of modern science, the law of life, but of death. Strife is not nature's way of progress.

Anything more important to our present inquiry than this verdict of science it would be difficult to imagine. Men have for so long believed and declared struggle and competition to be the "law of nature," and opposed Socialism on the ground of its supposed antagonism to that law, that this new conception of nature's method comes as a vindication of the Socialist position. The naturalist testifies to the universality of the principle of coöperation throughout the animal world, and the historian and sociologist to its universality throughout the greatest part of man's history. Present economic tendencies toward combination and away from competition, in industry and commerce, appear as the fulfilling of a great universal law. And the vain efforts of men to stop that process, by legislation, boycotts, and divers other methods, appear as efforts to set aside immutable law. Like so many Canutes, they bid the tides halt, and, like Canute's, their commands are vain and mocked by the unheeding tides.

Under Communism, then, man lived for many thousands of years. As far back as we can go into the paleo-ethnology of mankind, we find evidences of this. All the great authorities, Morgan, Maine, Lubbock, Taylor, Bachofen, and many others, agree in this. And under this Communism all the great fundamental inventions were evolved, as Morgan and others have shown. The wheel, the potter's wheel, the lever, the stencil plate, the sail, the rudder, the loom, were all evolved under Communism in its various stages. So, too, the cultivation of cereals for food, the smelting of metals, the domestication of animals,—to which we owe so much, and on which we still so largely depend,—were all introduced under Communism. Even in our day there have been found many survivals of this Communism among primitive peoples. Mention need only be made here of the Bantu tribes of Africa, whose splendid organization astonished the British, and the Eskimos. It is now possible to trace with a fair amount of certainty the progress of mankind through various stages of Communism, from the unconscious Communism of the nomad to the consciously organized and directed Communism of the most highly developed tribes, right up to the threshold of civilization, when private property takes the place of common, tribal property, and economic classes appear.

V

Private property, other than that personal ownership and use of things, such as weapons and tools, which involves no class or caste domination, and is an integral feature of all forms of Communism, first appears in the ownership of man by man. Slavery, strange as it may seem, is directly traceable to tribal Communism, and first appears as a tribal institution. When one tribe made war upon another, its efforts were directed to the killing of as many of its enemies as possible. Cannibal tribes killed their foes for food, rarely or never killing their fellow-tribesmen for that purpose. Non-cannibalistic tribes killed their foes merely to get rid of them. But when the power of mankind over the forces of external nature had reached that point in its development where it became relatively easy for a man to produce more than was necessary for his own maintenance, the custom arose of making captives of enemies and setting them to work. A foe captured had thus an economic value to the tribe. Either he could be set to work directly, his surplus product enriching the tribe, or he could be used to relieve some of his captors from other necessary duties, thus enabling them to produce more than would otherwise be possible, the effect being the same in the end. The property of the tribe at first, slaves become at a later stage private property—probably through the institution of the tribal distribution of wealth. Cruel, revolting, and vile as slavery appears to our modern sense,—especially the earlier forms of slavery before the body of legislation, and, not less important, sentiment, which surrounded it later arose,—it still was a step forward, a distinct advance upon the older customs of cannibalism and wholesale slaughter.

Nor was it a progressive step only on the humanitarian side. It had other, profounder consequences from the evolutionary point of view. It made a leisure class possible, and provided the only conditions under which art, philosophy, and jurisprudence could be evolved. The secret of Aristotle's saying, that only by the invention of machines would the abolition of slavery ever be made possible, lies in his recognition of the fact that the labor of slaves alone made possible the devotion of a class of men to the pursuit of knowledge instead of to the production of the primal necessities of life. The Athens of Pericles, for example, with all its varied forms of culture, its art and its philosophy, was a semi-communism of a caste above, resting upon a basis of slave labor underneath. Similar conditions prevailed in all the so-called ancient democracies of civilization.

The private ownership of wealth producers and their products made private exchange inevitable; individual ownership of land took the place of communal ownership, and a monetary system was invented. Here, then, in the private ownership of land and laborer, private production and exchange, we have the economic factors which caused the great revolts of antiquity, and led to that concentration of wealth into few hands, with its resulting mad luxury on the one hand and widespread proletarian misery upon the other, which conspired to the overthrow of Greek and Roman civilization. The study of those relentless economic forces which led to the break-up of Roman civilization is important as showing how chattel slavery became modified and the slave to be regarded as a serf, a servant bound to the soil. The lack of adequate production, the crippling of commerce by hordes of corrupt officials, the overburdening of the agricultural estates with slaves, so that agriculture became profitless, the crushing out of free labor by slave labor, and the rise of a wretched class of freemen proletarians, these, and other kindred causes, led to the breaking up of the great estates; the dismissal of superfluous slaves, in many cases, and the partial enfranchisement of others by making them hereditary tenants, paying a fixed share of their product as rent—here we have the embryonic stage of feudalism. It was a revolution, this transformation of the social system of Rome, of infinitely greater importance than the sporadic risings of a few thousand slaves. Yet, such is the lack of perspective which the historians have shown, it is given a far less important place in the histories than the risings in question. Slavery, chattel slavery, died because it had ceased to be profitable; serf labor arose because it was more profitable. Slave labor was economically impossible, and the labor of free men was morally impossible; it had, thanks to the slave system, come to be regarded as a degradation. In the words of Engels, "This brought the Roman world into a blind alley from which it could not escape.... There was no other help but a complete revolution."

The invading barbarians made the revolution complete. By the poor freemen proletarians who had been selling their children into slavery, the barbarians were welcomed. Misery, like opulence, has no patriotism. Many of the proletarian freemen had fled to the districts of the barbarians, and feared nothing so much as a return to Roman rule. What, then, should the proletariat care for the overthrow of the Roman state by the barbarians? And how much less the slaves, whose condition, generally speaking, could not possibly change for the worse? The free proletarian and the slave could join in saying, as men have said thousands of times in circumstances of desperation:—

"Our fortunes may be better; they can be no worse."

VI

Feudalism is the essential politico-economic system of the Middle Ages. Obscure as its origin is, and indefinite as the date of its first appearances, there can be no doubt whatever that the break-up of the Roman system, and the modification of the existing form of slavery, constituted the most important of its sources. Whether, as some writers have contended, the feudal system of land tenure and serfdom is traceable to Asiatic origins, being adopted by the ruling class of Rome in the days of the economic disintegration of the empire, or whether it rose spontaneously out of the Roman conditions, matters little to us. Whatever its archæological interest, it does not affect the narrower scope of our present inquiry whether economic necessity caused the adoption of an alien system of land tenure and agricultural production, or whether economic necessity caused the creation of a new system. The central fact is the same in either case.

That period of history which we call the Middle Ages covers a span of well-nigh a thousand years. If we arbitrarily date its beginning from the successful invasion of Rome by the barbarians in the early part of the fifth century, and its ending with the final development of the craft guilds in the middle of the fourteenth century, we have a sufficiently exact measure of the time during which feudalism developed, flourished, and declined. There are few things more difficult than the bounding of epochs in social evolution by exact dates. Just as the ripening of the wheat fields comes almost imperceptibly, so that the farmer can say when the wheat is ripe, yet cannot say when the ripening occurred, so with the epochs into which social history divides itself. There is the unripe state and the ripe, but no chasm yawns between them; they are merged together. We speak of the "end" of chattel slavery, and the "rise" of feudalism, therefore, in a wide, general sense. As a matter of fact, chattel slavery survived to some extent for centuries, existing alongside of the new form of servitude; and its disappearance took place, not simultaneously throughout the civilized world, but at varying intervals. Likewise, there is a vast difference between the first, crude, ill-defined forms of feudalism and its subsequent development.

The theory of feudalism is the "divine right of kings." God is the Supreme Lord of all the earth, the kings are His vice-regents, devolving their authority in turn upon whomsoever they will. All land is held as belonging to the king, God's chosen representative. He divides the realm among his barons, to rule over and defend. For this they pay tribute to the king—military service in times of war and, at a later period, money. In turn, the barons divide the land among the lesser nobility, receiving tribute from them. By these divided among the freemen, who also pay tribute, the land is tilled by the serfs, who pay service to the freeman, the lord of the manor. The serf pays no tribute directly to the king, only to his liege lord; the liege lord pays to his superior, and so on, up to the king. This is the economic framework of feudalism; with its ecclesiastical side we are not here concerned.

At the base of the whole superstructure, then, was the serf, his relation to his lord differing only in degree, though in material degree, from that of the chattel slave. He might be, and often was, as brutally ill-treated as the slave before him had been; he might be ill-fed and ill-housed; his wife or daughters might be ravished by his master or his master's sons. Yet, withal, his condition was better than that of the slave. He could maintain his family life in an independent household; he possessed some rights, chief of which perhaps was the right to labor for himself. Having his own allotment of land, he was in a much larger sense a human being. Compelled to render so many days' service to his lord, tilling the soil, clearing the forest, quarrying stone, and doing domestic work, he was permitted to devote a certain, often an equal, number of days to work for his own benefit. Not only so, but the service the lord rendered him, in protecting him and his family from the lawless and violent robber hordes which infested the country, was considerable.

The feudal estate, or manor, was an industrial whole, self-dependent, and having few essential ties binding it to the outside world. The barons and their retainers, lords, thanes, and freemen, enjoyed a certain rude plenty, some of the richer barons enjoying a considerable amount of luxury and splendor. The villein and his sons tilled the soil, reaped the harvests, felled trees for fuel, built the houses, raised the necessary domestic animals, and killed the wild animals; his wife and daughters spun the flax, carded the wool, made the homespun clothing, brewed the mead, and gathered the grapes which they made into wine. There was little real dependence upon the outside world except for articles of luxury.

Such was the basic economic institution of feudalism. But alongside of the feudal estate with its serf labor, there were the free laborers, no longer regarding labor as shameful and degrading. These free laborers were the handicraftsmen and free peasants, the former soon organizing themselves into guilds. There was a specialization of labor, but, as yet, little division. Each man worked at a particular craft and exchanged his individual products. The free craftsman would exchange his product with the free peasant, and sometimes his trade extended to the feudal manor. The guild was at once his master and protector; rigid in its rules, strict in its surveillance of its members, it was strong and effective as a protector against the impositions and invasions of feudal barons and their retainers. Division of labor first appears in its simplest form, the association of independent individual workers for mutual advantage, sharing their products upon a basis of equality. This simple coöperation involved no fundamental, revolutionary change in society. That came later with the development of the workshop system, and the division of labor upon a definite, predetermined plan. Men specialized now in the making of parts of things; no man could say of a finished product, "This is mine, for I made it." Production had become a social function.

VII

At first, in its simple beginnings, the coöperation of many producers in one great workshop did not involve any general or far-reaching changes in the system of exchange. But as the new methods spread, and it became the custom for one or two wealthy individuals to provide the workshop and necessary tools and materials for production, the product of the combined laborers being appropriated in its entirety by the owners of the agencies of production, who paid the workers a money wage representing less than the actual value of their product, and based upon the cost of their subsistence, the whole economic system was once more revolutionized. The custom of working for wages, hitherto rare and exceptional, became general and customary; individual production for use, either directly or through the medium of personal exchange, was superseded by social production for private profit. The wholesale exchange of social products for private gain took the place of the personal exchange of commodities. The difference between the total cost of the production of commodities, including the wages of the producers, and their exchange value—determined at this stage by the cost of producing similar commodities by individual labor—constituted the share of the capitalist, his profit, and the objective of his investment.

The new system did not spring up spontaneously and full-fledged. Like feudalism, it was a growth, a development of existing forms. And just as chattel slavery lingered on after the rise of the feudal régime, so the old methods of individual production and direct exchange of commodities for personal use lingered on in places and isolated industries long after the rise of the system of wage-paid labor and production for profit. But the old methods of production and exchange gradually became rare and almost obsolete. In accordance with the stern economic law that Marx afterward developed so clearly, the man whose methods of production, including his tools, are less efficient and economical than those of his fellows, thereby making his labor more expensive, must either adapt himself to the new conditions or fall in the struggle which ensues. The triumph of the new system of capitalist production, with its far greater efficiency arising from associated production upon a plan of specialized division of labor, was, therefore, but a question of time. The class of wage-workers thus gradually increased in numbers; as men found that they were unable to compete with the new methods, they accepted the inevitable and adapted themselves to the new conditions. The industrial revolution which established capitalism was, like the great revolutions which ushered in preceding social epochs, the product of man's tools.