Marxism: Chapter 3 from Historiagraphy: Secular and Religious, Part 2

Gordon H. Clark

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Editor’s note: The following article is taken from Dr. Gordon H. Clark’s Historiography: Secular and Religious, The Trinity Foundation, [1971] 1994 second edition. With the rise of Marxism of various sorts among the young, having been “preached” from the colleges, universities, and even seminaries and among the political class with candidates that openly espouse Marxism, this article is pertinent to today’s situation. This article is part 2.

 

Scientific Prediction

Going back a step to the idea that wealthy proletarians have displaced workers on the subsistence level, an inattentive student may wish to exonerate Marx and Engels for not seeing this far into their future. This exoneration is inattentive because one must deal with a theory shared by past and present Communists alike. It is the Communists’ boast that they can scientifically predict the course of social development. Marx in his Critique of Political Economy referred to “the material transformation of the economic conditions of production [which] can be determined with the precision of natural science….” In an introduction to Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Engels assures us that Marx “could never be taken unawares by events.” In the present century too, Trotsky in The Living Thoughts of Karl Marx (14) wrote, “If the theory correctly estimates the course of development and foresees the future better than other theories, it remains the most advanced theory of our time.” The Communist claim to predict history is one to be tested in several places.

Engels, in the book we have been quoting, Principles of Communism, soon provides another place of testing. Q 11. “The proletariat develops in step with the bourgeoisie…. Since proletarians can be employed only by capital, and since capital expands only through employing labor, it follows that the proletariat proceeds at precisely the same pace as the growth of capital.” But it would appear, in contradiction to Communist theory, that this is not so. Capital no doubt needs labor, but capital does not expand only through employing more labor. The expansion instead of being pari passu is more nearly one of inverse proportion. At any rate, capital has expanded enormously since Engels wrote, and yet the proletariat, as Engels defined it, has declined. Many of them have been liberated by stocks and bonds and savings funds.

The liberation Engels expected, however, is a different one. Q 16. “Revolutions are…always the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes…. The proletariat…has been violently suppressed…the opponents of Communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength.” Therefore, a violent revolution—the sudden qualitative change that breaks out upon an accumulation of small quantitative changes—is inevitable. Q 18. This revolution “will establish a democratic constitution and through this the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already the majority of the people; indirect in France and Germany.” Q 19. “The Communist revolution will not be merely a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries, that is to say, at least in England, France, and Germany.  … It will go slowest…in Germany, most rapidly…in England.”

At this point the quotation of Engels’ catechism will break off and two observations will be made, one concerning the method of the revolution predicted, and the second the prediction itself as an implication of scientific theory.

First, the idea of proletarian revolution, which bulked so large in original Communism, had to be abandoned because the “proletariat” in the early twentieth century was obviously improving its economic status, and was not paid at a bare subsistence level. Therefore, Lenin had to find a substitute. His substitute was the conspiratorial, professional revolutionaries, under strict party control, viewed as “intelligentsia” and proclaimed as the “vanguard” of the working classes.

To disguise the fact that a Communist revolution makes little or no appeal to the working classes, to disguise the fact also that the revolutionaries are criminals just as truly as, though on a far greater scale than, the pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Communists still use the word proletarian for propaganda purposes. For example, conspiratorial criminal revolutionaries and proletarians are joined together in an assertion by James Burnham on February 1, 1940: “The fundamentals of politics are constituted by the central aim…socialism. And we must agree on the most important means…for achieving that aim: the dictatorship of the proletariat, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist society, the building of the party.”[1]

So much for the means on which Engels so confidently relied to usher in the Communistic state. Now, second, let us look at the prediction itself. The point is important because the claim is made that scientific history can predict the future course of events.

Do these predictions, as Trotsky claims, correctly estimate the course of history, and can historical materialism foresee the future better than any other theory? In a letter to Dr. Kugelmann on December 8, 1857, Marx said he was afraid that the revolution would break before he could finish Das Kapital. A few months later in another letter he repeated the same thought. Engels, as just indicated, predicted the rapid success of Communism in England. In another volume he makes his prediction more detailed. “Hence also the deep wrath of the whole working-class, from Glasgow to London…a wrath which before too long a time goes by, a time almost within the power of man to predict, must break out into a Revolution in comparison with which the French Revolution and the year 1794 will have proved to have been child’s play.”[2] On a later page (296) he suggests the years 1852 to 1853 as the date of this revolution and asserts that “These are all inferences which may be drawn with the greatest certainty, …. Prophecy is nowhere so easy as in England…. The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring about a peaceful solution” (297).

But if prophecy is nowhere so easy as in England, Communistic theory is in a bad way; and after the English people refrained from chopping off Queen Victoria’s head in the Tower, Engels in a Preface written in 1892 shrugged off this failure of Communistic science as a result of “youthful ardour” (ix).

Another instance of the failure of historical materialism is found almost at the end of The Communist Manifesto where Marx and Engels predict that “Germany…is on the eve of a bourgeoisie revolution [that] will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.” Apparently, Germany was to be a Communistic nation by 1871. Marx also prophesied in Das Kapital that the United States was destined to take bloody revenge on England for its wrongs to the Irish peasantry.

And what about Russia? Could not scientific Communism predict its own greatest success? That it could not is scarcely surprising; that it still claims to, is.

A theory that has made and still makes claims to scientific prediction must be judged by the event. David Guest in a Textbook of Dialectical Materialism asseverates, “The refutation of this bourgeois view [that history is not a science] is simply the continued success of Marxism in predicting the general tendency of world events. Since the world economic crisis, with its accompaniments of the spread of fascism and the practical proof of the economic superiority of the Soviet system—events which can only be understood in terms of Marxism—many bourgeois intellectuals have come to see daylight.”

David Guest defends not only the claim that historical materialism is scientific, he also refers to the economic superiority of the Soviet system. Of course, he means that the economic system of Russia is superior to that of the United States. This would be a little hard to prove. Suppose we offer him an easier comparison, even easier than West Berlin, viz., Czarist Russia.

The Czarist government of Nicholas II was incredibly inefficient, corrupt, and stupid. All sorts of evil abounded. When an American reads a description of the economic, social, and political conditions that led to the disgraceful collapse of the Russian armies in World War I, he can hardly believe that such a system could have arisen, much less survived for several centuries. Nevertheless, among the welter of evils great and small two good things can be found. First, the Czar’s government was not nearly so brutal as Communism. Of course, the Czar’s secret police sent thousands of political prisoners to Siberia. But Communism sent tens of thousands, besides murdering a few million Ukrainians. Then, second, Czarist Russia was able to feed its own people, and export grain too. The Communists, on the other hand, though they can orbit the earth, cannot raise wheat. The importance of this lies in the fact that an industrial society is a very unpleasant one, unless its people are fed. Strange to say, at least if it were not for the fact that there is so much strange in Communist theory, socialist republics, especially those emerging from primitive conditions, are blind to the need of an agricultural base for an industrial society. They want steel, but they need food. This is one of the flaws in the present Indian socialism. Before the advent of independence and socialism, India not only fed itself, but exported food. Now wheat must be given to India because its government sacrifices food and lets its people starve in order to import heavy industry it cannot properly support. Therefore, its socialism must be fed by capitalistic food from America. And Red China is kept alive by Canada.

That Marxism has made history so scientific as to predict the future is such a distortion of the truth that one would expect Marxists, if they were normal human beings, to be embarrassed. Marx and Engels asserted that nationalism was declining. In The Communist Manifesto they wrote, “National differences, and antagonisms between peoples, are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce…. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.”

At the beginning of the twentieth century socialism popularized the view that no great war could any longer occur because the friendly ties among the workmen of the several nations were stronger than their national sentiments. Socialism proved to be woefully mistaken. Since in this case their reading of what was then the present and the near future was so wide of the mark, why should any of their contemporary analyses be credited? Why indeed should their theories be accepted at all?

 

Marxist History

If these are samples of scientific prediction of the future, the next thing is to see what scientific history can do to the past. Since the Communists use history as a main support for their policies, and since historiography is the subject of this volume, the crux of the matter should be found here.

The test case for this theory Engels believes to be the demise of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. The point at issue is not that capitalism as an economic system requires an economic explanation —that much is self-evident; but rather Engels’ aim is to show that this economic development controls all political revolutions and the entire intellectual history of the epoch. As a quotation from Marx said, “the economic structure of society [is] the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures…. The mode of production in material life determines the…spiritual processes of life.” Presumably then American devotion to baseball is the result of capitalism. If this be deemed too facetious, should one identify humanitarianism as the product of the bourgeoisie? But to take an example from Communist theory itself, Engels pointedly asserted that the Protestantism of the British nation is so explained.[3]

Briefly the account is as follows. At the end of the Middle Ages the rising middle class of the towns were the revolutionary element. This bourgeoisie was incompatible with feudalism. Since the center of feudalism was the Roman church, the church had to be destroyed first. At this very time advances were made in science, and science rebelled against the church. The struggle took on a religious disguise. The Lutheran creed replaced feudalism with absolute monarchy and the peasants were reduced to serfdom. But Calivin instituted republicanism, and his theory of predestination teaches that rewards do not depend on men’s cleverness or energy, but on factors he does not control, i.e., “unknown superior economic powers.” Therefore, there was no absolute monarchy in Holland or Scotland. In England, since the bourgeoisie could not win by themselves, the peasants furnished an army to overthrow Charles I. Bur now the aristocracy began to desire money; hence, they became bourgeoisie, turned out the farmers, and raised sheep. Thus, the new Tudor aristocracy, which replaced the old class eradicated by the Wars of the Roses, depended on industry and commerce. The manufacturer needed to keep his workers in subjection, and therefore Britain maintained Protestantism.

Coming down to the nineteenth century, Engels insists that “American Revivalism” in the persons of Moody and Sankey, and the indigenous Salvation Army, kept the manufacturers in power and suppressed the stirrings of the working class.

Since the Communists boast so loudly of their scientific methods, Engels can hardly object to an examination of some of his details. Even on points of lesser significance one does not expect a reputable scientist to be careless. And the rise of capitalism and the Protestant Reformation are not points of lesser significance. Therefore, let the scrutiny be a little strict.

First of all, one may admit that the rise of the middle class in the late medieval towns was the result of economic forces. What were these forces? A widely held explanation is that the Turkish advance against Constantinople with its cutting of the old caravan routes induced the Europeans to take to the sea, adding importance and power to the towns. Now, undoubtedly the substitution of ships for caravans is a change in the method of distribution and exchange. But Engels’ theory would also require a change in the Turkish methods of production to explain their drive toward Constantinople. Or, prior to this, what change in the methods of production and distribution produced the Arab conquest of North Africa? Could either the Arab or Turkish military action have been more religiously than economically motivated? And stull further back, was the Arab acceptance of Mohammed’s prophecies in the first place the result of some new form of agriculture? If the Protestant Reformation is to be fitted into the Marxist scheme, the rise of Islam must also be so explained. But there was no industrial revolution in those days.

Karl Kautsky, a Dutch Communist, attempts to excuse Marxism for its failure to explain such historic changes as these. He admits that in antiquity and in the Middle Ages there were “bitter class struggles, civil wars and political catastrophes,” but there was no “social revolution” i.e., an upheaval in which a different social class seized political power. This he explains on the ground of the slowness of economic development. Technical progress did not compel new forms of property; hard work was still fundamental. And he offers other reasons. But if this is so, it seems clear that these civil wars, political catastrophes, and class struggles were not the result of altered modes of production, and therefore Marxism is without resources to explain them.[4]

Now, it may be said that if Engels chose to use as his example the change from European feudalism to modern capitalism, a critic misses the point by asking for another example. But it may also be said that if the Communistic theory is to be accepted, it must be applicable to all civilizations and epochs and cannot stand on a single favorable example—if indeed the demise of feudalism is so favorable.

Another point in Engels’ account is the assertion that science was making great advances at the very time the towns were emerging from feudalism. Sci-ence then rebelled against the church and therefore the economic struggle took on a religious disguise.

Now, for one thing, Engels’ dates seem to be about a century off. If Copernicus died in 1543 and if the Galileo incident, which is about the best example of a conflict between science and the Roman church, occurred in the following century, the great advances in science cannot be made contemporaneous with the rise of the towns near the end of the feudal period. For another thing, Engels fails to support his thesis that this struggle between science and the church was basically economic and only disguised as religious. Giordano Bruno’s science and philosophy certainly provided sufficient ground for a thoroughly theological debate. There was little economics about it. It is all the less plausible to explain Lutheran and Calvinistic theology as a religious disguise for economic changes. Nor can the devotion of the Protestant converts be so explained. Manufacturers as manufacturers do not accept martyrdom. Even Galileo declined this opportunity.

But Communist theory is set. Echoing Engels, A. M. Simons[5] argues that the Crusades are not to be explained by any religious motive of “rescuing the holy sepulchre from the profane touch of the infidel,” for “it is at least suggestive that crusades were not preached until trade routes were endangered, and that they ceased when commerce underwent a transformation that rendered these particular trade routes of less importance to the ruling merchant class.”

Coming down to the Reformation, he gives the standard Communist account: “The Reformation, with its individualism in theology, was as perfect a reflex of capitalism as ‘free competition’ and laissez-faire in economics” (14).

But if the Reformation was a reflex, the capitalism of which it was a reflex must have existed as a developed movement prior to 1517. Free competition and laissez-faire must also have been standard before that date. Yet there was little free competition and no laissez-faire laissez-passer for many years thereafter. Production was rigidly controlled by the labor unions. It was in their reaction to their strangle-hold and their obstruction of progress that the cry went out: “Let it be produced, let it be transported.”[6]

The Communistic explanation of the Reformation deserves further study. Communists are required to account for theological revolutions in terms of the modes of production and exchange; but I have never seen a Communist explanation of how methods of production produced the doctrine of justification by faith. In my capitalistic ignorance and prejudice, I had always supposed that Luther found the doctrine in the New Testament. Or is it the contention that the Apostle Paul derived his ideas from some economic upheaval in the Roman Empire?

Explanations of theology may come hard for the atheistic Communists, for Engels also manages to leave Reformation politics in confusion. Perhaps Lutheranism overemphasized the duty of subjecting oneself to the state, but why should Lutheranism be identified as the cause of absolute monarchy?

Was the France of Louis XIV Lutheran? No doubt Holland and eventually England overthrew absolute monarchy; and no doubt Calvinism played a considerable part in this. But if it was the methods of production and exchange in France that taught Calvin his doctrine of predestination, before he was exiled to Switzerland, and if that theology overthrew the Stuarts in 1649 and finally in 1688, all of which made Britain Protestant in order to hold the factory workers in submission, how is it that France, whose conditions produced Calvin, did not overthrow the Bourbons until 1789, and never became Protestant? Was it because their factories did not have the same methods of production? Or was it because Catherine de Medici massacred 70,000 Protestants and Louis XIV exiled the remainder?

Then, finally, assuming that the Salvation Army and American revivalism prevented the working man from breaking the manufacturers’ chains, one wonders what American method of production produced Moddy and Sankey? What was wrong with British production that it failed to produce indigenous revivalism and had to import it from America? And now in the latter half of the twentieth century shall we say that Billy Graham’s revivals are to be explained by frozen foods and the welfare state?

These criticisms have been of diverse details; but they concentrate on a single point. Communism claims that not only politics, but also religion, art, and all intellectual history are determined by the methods of production and exchange. Therefore, this principle must be successfully applied to a large number of historical sequences before it appears plausible.

The number must be very large before Communism can justify its claim to have developed scientific history. Can it explain the Old Testament? The religion of the ancient Hebrews differed greatly from that of the surrounding Canaanites. Now perhaps in 1300 bc the Hebrews were a little more nomadic and a little less agricultural than the Canaanites; but it is unlikely that the slight economic differences can account for the extremely great religious difference.

Similarly, production in Czarist Russia by serfs and production by slaves in Georgia and Mississippi, if they differed a little, did not differ sufficiently to explain why Russia was an absolute monarchy while the southerners were Jeffersonian Democrats.

Indeed, during the four thousand years prior to ad 1500, the methods of production and exchange were largely the same all over the world; but the religious, intellectual, and social conditions varied enormously even within relatively short periods of time and close proximity in space.

Instead of interpreting all intellectual activity as economically determined, and especially instead of construing Protestantism as a disguise in the support of capitalism, it would be equally correct, and even more plausible, to maintain that Protestants are capitalistic in order to ensure the freedom of religion, whereas Communism and the Warren-Fortas Supreme Court use an economic disguise for the purpose of advancing atheism.

Engels himself, in a negative sort of way, invites this suggestion, for he writes, “unless we believe in supernatural revelation, we must admit that no religious tenets will ever suffice to prop up a tottering society” (Socialism, 43).

Now, Protestantism, at present so degenerate that churchman proclaim the death of God, may not suffice to prop up our tottering society; perhaps Communism is the wave of the future; but it may still be true that genuine Protestants, Luther and Calvin and those who believe their doctrines, support capitalism in the interest of religion rather than religion in the interest of economics.

 

American Communism

How Marxists might reply to these criticisms is hard to say. They rather ignore embarrassing details; they prefer generalities to concreteness. But some very up-to-date and definitely American consideration of these points may proceed by an analysis of History and Reality (Cameron Associates, 1955) by Dr. Aptheker, the National Director of the American Institute for Marxist Studies.

The Marxists make it annoyingly difficult to understand their theory by reason of the irresponsibility of their method of invective, inherited from Marx and Engels. One expects that the rantings of Gus Hall will be incoherent; but from the chief theoretician of the Communist Party in the United States an undisillusioned student expects something fairly calm and intelligible. But it turns out otherwise.

For example, Dr. Aptheker asserts, “The belief that history is ‘incoherent and immoral,’ in the words of the tortured Henry Adams, permeates bourgeois historiography today…” (17). This half sentence contains three annoyances. First, is the term bourgeois. A bourgeois is a person who derives part of his income from stocks, bonds, or savings accounts. No doubt many such people believe that history is incoherent and immoral, possibly because of the spread of Communism. But others, capitalistic, bourgeois, orthodox followers of the Reformation believe that God directs history according to an eternal plan. Since different segments of the bourgeois hold different views on this point, the possession of stocks and bonds cannot be said to control one’s historiography. The same conclusion is supported from the opposite side also. Existentialists, whether or not they own bonds or work for wages, are ordinarily left-wingers. On Dr. Aptheker’s principles, therefore, they should deny that history is incoherent. Yet this is their forte. That the incoherence of history is a widespread view may be admitted; but that it is limited to capitalists may well be denied.

The bourgeoisie (the term does not fit French society, and it is totally out of place in America) are those whom Dr. Aptheker denounces as the American “ruling classes” (52). How strange this sounds! Most of my friends and I own some stocks and savings accounts, and life insurance too, but neither they nor I consider ourselves the “ruling class.” We voted for Goldwater. Therefore, when Aptheker denounces the American ruling classes, we would have no idea of whom he meant, were it not that he graciously identifies Walter Lippmann as one of its members. Lippmann’s chief disqualifica-tion for legitimate work in historiography, Aptheker makes clear, is the fact that his writing is “lucrative” (54). Communists simply cannot conceal their jealousy when someone earns a good salary.

The second annoyance in the sentence quoted is the description of Henry Adams as tortured—seeing that no explanation is given and no point is made of it. A parallel construction is the reference to America’s sour counterpart of Churchill, Herbert Hoover” (176). This really means nothing more than that these two men were not Communists.

Third, it would be hard to prove that contemporary historiography is permeated by the notion that history is immoral and incoherent. The bibliography in this present volume lists a fair number of recent and living writers who do not so believe. Nor does Dr. Aptheker properly follow up his assertion. He cites Harold Temperly, John Buchan, and Charles A. Beard. But he continues with a diatribe against Croce—who, it would seem, did not believe history to be incoherent.

Naturally, Aptheker opposes Croce’s idealism and favors “a consistent materialist view [which] is possible only from a proletarian standpoint” (21); for which reason it is necessary to decry the attempt of a “naïve” headmistress who wrote against materialism in “gleaming ink.” Then when Toynbee quotes Marx as saying, “Christianity is the opiate of the people,” Aptheker charges him with “the crassest type of misquotation,” because Marx’s words were actually “Religion…is the people’s opium” (23).

These obfuscating outbursts are a long-standing Communist tactic. From the Manifesto to Krushchev to Mao, enormities of illogical propaganda are normal procedure. Neurotic, truculent, self-alienation is its best defense.

Even when more substantial matters are discussed, the same confusion reigns that was seen in the materialist account of the Reformation. In the book mentioned above, Dr. Aptheker discusses the nature of history. He will not have history to be a matter of unique events and individual men. The usual philosophic reasons are given. If the contents of history were all unique, there would be no general laws. In particular there would be no cause-and-effect relations. And, in general, science and language cannot handle individuality.

Of course, Dr. Aptheker very much wants history and language to handle individual events. He wishes to retain single events. He says, “The hypothesis of multiple, equal, cumulative, and, in part, unknowable causes—in which…everything is cause to everything else—results…in the denial of the possibility of any effective resolution of human injustice and oppression” (29-30).

In the following chapter a general analysis of causation will be attempted; but in order to consider the possibility of any effective resolution of injustice, a certain amount of anticipatory material cannot be avoided. If some repetition occurs later, it will be paid for by a corresponding brevity in the argument.

Dr. Aptheker continues the outmoded notion of a cause as a single event, necessary and sufficient to prove its effect. But clearly two single events of the same type do not uniformly produce two similar effects. A hearty meal taken by one person may not have an effect similar to that produced by a hearty meal eaten by another person. The health of the person is also part of the cause, and states of health are sufficiently different to produce widely different effects. This is so obvious that no sensible person could disagree, not even Dr. Aptheker. But the implications extend beyond obvious superficialities. As we trace the interlocking of conditions, we must add to the health of the person other factors, such as a serios accident immediately after the meal, or news that a person’s daughter has just suffered a serious accident, or a declaration of war, or a war without a declaration. In actual situations of historical importance this list must be extended without end. The result is that instead of single events being related as cause and effect, the whole of the past is the cause of the whole of the future. This is just “the hypothesis of multiple, equal, cumulative, and in part unknowable causes” that Dr, Aptheker deplores. It prevents any effective resolution of human injustices. Yet when the Communists try to justify, rather than merely assert, that Luther is the cause of absolute monarchy or that Moody and Sankey helped to enslave the working class, they, including Marx and Engels, are reduced to describing the determinant in terms that apply to the entire social situation.

Does the rejection of the naïve and untenable theory of single causation prevent the amelioration of oppressive situations? Well, if it does, this would not make single causation any the more tenable. But there are some complications. Within the narrow limits of practical politics, it may be that the principle of multiple and in part unknown causes does not prevent some revolution of social maladjustments. One who holds to this theory of causation can also admit that certain parts of the present civil-rights legislation have to some extent improved upon earlier social inequities. And if government action often blunders, possibly American revivalism can help on a small scale. At least Dr. Billy Graham has tried.

But the theory of multiple causation tends toward a rather hit and miss approach, and Dr. Aptheker stands on solid ground when, from the principle of multiple causation as it is stated by most modern historiographers, he draws the inference that the most important problems (and not only the most important) are insoluble.

In contrast to this hit and miss approach of universal causation, the theory of single causes for single effects promises that the social scientist can hit the nail on the head. So far the promise has not been kept. In capitalistic countries historians have often noted the totally unexpected and often undesirable consequences of social legislation. In the United States the change to the direct election of Senators was to have eliminated the machinations of greedy politicians. Its most noticeable effect was the breakdown of party integrity. “Advanced” penology with its substitution of rehabilitation for punishment has resulted in an unprecedented and as yet uncontrolled increase in crime. And public education seems more efficient in the production of juvenile delinquents than in the salvation of democracy.

Or consider civil rights again. In order to ameliorate the conditions relative to Negro housing, legislation has destroyed the right of homeowners to choose the purchaser of their homes. If a Negro and a white man offer to buy a home, the owner runs the risk of severe penalties if he sells to the white man. This legislation has resulted in the integration of many neighborhoods. But as the Negroes move in, the whites move out; and the integrated neighbor-hood becomes “de facto” segregated. Thus, the legislation that the Negro thought would solve his problem is so far from successful that insurrection has exploded in the large cities. And how many whites (who may have opposed it previously) want integration protected by law, but the proponents of civil rights have succeeded in declaring integrated communities unconstitutional. True, this may not be the legal wording, but it is the actual situation. The conclusion is that regardless of single or multiple causation, many legislative efforts at melioration produce the opposite result. In fact, if government action has ever improved conditions, it can hardly be due to intelligent foresight.

 

The chapter will continue in the next Trinity Review.


[1]Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, 195.

[2]The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1892, 18.

[3]Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, 24-30.

[4]Karl Kautsky, The Social Revolution, translated by A. M. Simons, Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1916, 21-27.

[5]Social Forces in American History, International Publishers, 1926, 6.

[6]Marxist historiography, besides restricting its examples to western Europe and ignoring the events of the east, is productive of wildly irresponsible assertions. No doubt Simons is correct when he says that the North’s victory in the Civil War “was won as much by the industrial workers who toiled in the shop…as by those who carried guns,” but we wonder at the parenthesis which states, “and whose death rate and percentage of injured was [sic] fully as high” (278). Did 360,000 northern factory workers die?

If American workers suffered such losses of life and limb, the socialistic cotton spinners of Lancashire “starved rather than see work come through lifting the cotton blockade. When the capitalists of England, more eager to defend their immediate profits than even the broad interests of their class, would have interfered in behalf of the Confederacy, it was these workers who stood in the way of such action, and not the least of those who were responsible for this steadfast position was the founder of modern scientific Socialism—Karl Marx” (284).