Besides, the Marxians themselves have tried to prove that capital is actively undermining its own existence, which is surely the ne plus ultra of the revolutionary temperament.
[997] “The result is that capital has managed to solve problems which the Utopians tackled in vain. It has also given rise to conditions which permit of an entrance into a new form of society. Thus socialism will not need to invent new machinery or to get people accustomed to them,” etc. (Sorel, loc. cit., p. 41.)
[998] “The economists regard the feudal institutions as artificial, the bourgeois as natural. The existing economic ties, in their opinion, are elemental laws that must always bind society.… They have had some history, that is all we can really say.” (Marx, Misère de la Philosophie, pp. 167-168.)
[999] Manifesto, § 2.
[1000] Whenever they change their method of production men also change their whole social outlook. “The hand-mill gave us the servile State; the steam-mill is the parent of the industrial, capitalist State.” (Misère de la Philosophie, 2nd ed., p. 156.) This oft-repeated phrase contains a picturesque antithesis rather than a scientific formula of historical materialism. In his preface to his Kritik der politischen Oekonomie Marx expresses himself with much more moderation. The following is the most important passage of that celebrated page (p. 5):
“In the course of their efforts at production men enter into certain definite and necessary relations which may be wholly independent of their own individual preferences—such industrial ties being, of course, correlative to the state of their productive forces. Taken together, all these links constitute the economic structure of society. In other words, it supplies a basis upon which the legal and political superstructure is raised, and corresponding to it are certain social forms which depend upon the public conscience. The method of producing commodities, speaking generally, fixes the social, political, and intellectual processus of life. A man’s conscience has less to do with determining his manner of life than has his manner of life with determining the state of his conscience.”
The word “fixes,” even when qualified by “speaking generally,” seems a little pronounced, and Marxism has substituted the term “explained,” which is somewhat nearer the mark. Labriola says that “it merely represents an attempt to explain historical facts in the light of the economic substructure.” (Conception matérialiste, p. 120.)
This materialistic conception is developed in a very paradoxical fashion in Loria’s La Constitution sociale. He shows how all history and every war, whether of Guelph or of Ghibelline, the Reformation and the French Revolution, and even the death of Christ upon Calvary, rest upon an economic basis. In Loria’s opinion, however, this basal fact is not industrialism, but the various types of land systems. See the chapter on Rent.
It would not be correct to regard Marxism as a mere expression of fatalism or out-and-out determinism. The Marxian pretends to be, and as a matter of fact he really is, a great believer in will-power. Once the workers see where their interests really lie he would have them move towards that goal with irresistible strength. It is not always even necessary to define the end quite clearly before beginning to move. “Everything that has happened in history has, of course, been the work of man, but only very rarely has it been the result of deliberate choice and well-considered planning on his part.” (Labriola, Conception matérialiste, p. 133.) Elsewhere: “The successive creation of different social environments means the development of man himself.” (Ibid., pp. 131-132.)
It would be beyond the scope of this work to enter into a metaphysical discussion of these theories, however much one would like to.