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."[79] In another letter,[80] 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,[81] 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.[82]
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.[83] 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,"[84] 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.[85]
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.[86] 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 by the hordes of savages which infested Central Asia, it became an easy matter for the Moors in Africa and the Turks in Europe to exact immense revenues from the Eastern trade, solely through their monopoly of the route of transit. Thus there developed an economic parasitism which crippled the trade with the East. The Turks were securely seated at Constantinople, threatening to advance into the heart of Europe, and building up an immense military system out of the taxes imposed upon the trade of Europe with the East—a military power, which, in less than a quarter of a century, enabled Selim I to conquer Mesopotamia and the holy towns of Arabia, and to annex Egypt.[87] It became necessary, then, to find a new route to India; and it was this great economic necessity which set Columbus thinking of a pathway to India over the Western Sea. It was this same great problem which engaged the attention of all the navigators of the time; it was this economic necessity which induced Ferdinand and Isabella to support the adventurous plan of Columbus. In a word, without detracting in any manner from the splendid genius of Columbus, or from the romance of his great voyage of discovery, we see that, fundamentally, it was the economic interest of Europe which gave birth to the 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?"