CHAPTER XIV

THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY

It remains now to examine the general doctrine known as the economic interpretation of history and its bearing on social progress. We are accustomed to meeting this doctrine in its extreme form in socialist propaganda. But it is by no means confined to the socialists. A recent writer on vocational education is no less extreme: "The evolution of industry is the evolution of humanity." In the writings of Marx and Engels we find the doctrine that on the organization of the forces of production depends social organization in all its multiplicity.

"The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life, and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure: that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders, is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in man's better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.'

" 1

1 Friedrich Engels, Socialism Utopian and Scientific, chaps. ii-iii. Cf. for a statement of the same proposition in almost identical language, Engels' preface to the English translation of the Communist Manifesto, 1888.

Marx and Engels have not lacked for American disciples to popularize their doctrines. Mr. A. M. Simons, for instance, in the preface to his Social Forces in American History says:

"Changes in the industrial basis of society - inventions, new processes, and combinations and methods of producing and distributing goods-create new interests with new social classes to represent them. These improvements in the technique of production are the dynamic element that brings about what we call progress in society."1

Perhaps, after the Communist Manifesto, Mr. W. J. Ghent states as vigorously as any one the economic basis of morals and the impotence of ideals against the economic motive.

"That idealistic or spiritual forces are part of the causation in many of our acts and beliefs, that they are apparently the entire causation in other acts and beliefs, is not to be denied. Nevertheless, there are two pertinent facts not to be lost to view. First, that all of our idealistic or spiritual conceptions (apart from conceptions of the supernatural) have their origin in past or present social needs, and these in turn have their base in economic needs; and, second, that everywhere and always the economic environment limits the range and effect of the spiritual forces. . . . prevailing mode of production determines in large part what is moral and what immoral, and the ruling class are always the formulators of the code."2

Lest it appear that these quotations are the rash obiter dicta of untutored radicals it might be well to compare

Carver generalizes the ultimate basis

1 Pp. vii, 69. Cf. Ghent, Mass and Class, pp. 22-3. on this point in the following dogmatic statement: of all social conflict is found in economic scarcity of one form or another " (Essays in Social Justice, 35; this is also the substance of chap. ii).

2 Mass and Class, pp. 15, 16, 17, 18-19, 29. Cf. for other socialistic expressions of the same idea: Loria, The Economic Foundations of Society; M. H. Fitch, The Physical Basis of Mind and Morals; Kautsky, Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History; L. Boudin, Socialism and War.

them with the conclusions of men recognized as eminently safe and sober. "The morals of men are more governed by their pursuits than by their opinions," said Mr. Lecky. He cites the Romans as an example of how from their military pursuits military mores were set up long before the introduction of philosophic systems of morality. Again, he attempts to show that truthfulness is not a virtue of nature nor of education, but is industrial.1 Parenthetically one might ask Mr. Lecky to explain why it was necessary to have a special merchant's code in the earlier days of European business, or what was the significance of the principle of caveat emptor, if truthfulness was preeminently the commercial virtue. At best business veracity seems to be prompted more by fear of loss than by essential love of truth.

From no less an authority than the learned Rector of the University of Brussels comes equally radical doctrine. He has the biological bias, but with Spencer's notion of social evolution as an organic law, combines ideas that sound unmistakably like economic determinism:

"It would not be rash to affirm basing one's affirmation upon acquired inductions and experiments — that the structure and functioning of every society are determined in general by the economic structure and functioning, and primarily by the laws of their economic circulation." 2

For at least half a century an economic interpretation of the United States Constitution has been accepted by reputable American scholars. Charles Francis Adams, as early as 1856, announced that the Constitution was the work of commercial people in the seaport towns, planters of the slave-holding states, officers of the revolutionary

1 History of European Morals, i. 158, 236, 145.

2 De Greef, Les Lois Sociologiques, 147.

army, and property holders everywhere.1 Professor Beard is the most outspoken contemporary exponent of that view.

"No less an important person than Washington," he writes, "assigned the satisfaction of the claims of the public creditors as the chief reason for the adoption of the Constitution. . . . This stubbornly fought battle over the Constitution was in the main economic in character, because the scheme of government contemplated was designed to effect, along with a more adequate national defence, several commercial and financial reforms of high significance, and at the same time to afford an efficient check upon state legislatures that had shown themselves prone to assault acquired property rights, particularly of personalty, by means of paper money and other agrarian measures.

That other conditions, such as the necessity for stronger national defence, entered into the campaign is, of course admitted, but with all due allowances, it may be truly said that the Constitution was a product of a struggle between capitalistic and agrarian interests."

Professor Beard sees also in Jeffersonian Democracy merely the political expression of the agrarian discontent with a government which was building up a moneyed aristocracy. Its supporters came from the farmers, smaller tradesmen and mechanics.2 In the following chapter some critical comment will be offered upon the attempt to reduce politics to a mere phase of economic life; but for the moment let the theory stand in this unabashed form.

We only need to substitute Professor Sumner's phrase 'life conditions' for the cruder concept of 'the prevailing mode of production' to bring the dicta of Lecky into close

1 The Works of John Adams, vol. i, p. 441.

2 C. A. Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, 2-4, 466-7. Cf. his Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, 296, etc. See also Walter Lippman, New Republic, February 19, 1916, p. 64: Rabbeno, The American Commercial Policy, 292 ff.

paralellem with the Mardanists. The leating motive of Sumner's monumental exposition of the "folkways' is that the mores have followed the changes in life conditions, have reacted on the current faiths and philosophies, and produced ethical notions to justify the mores themselves. He declares fatly that we live in a war of two antagonistic ethical philosophies, "the ethical policy taught in the books and the schools, and the success policy"; and that the success polity is the determinant. In other words, mankind is incurably pragmatic in a narrow sense of the word), for whatever works is right. Here again, we have a searching criticism of ideals.

"Wilberforce," he declares, "did not overthrow slavery. Natural forces reduced to the service of man and the discovery of new land set men 'free' from great labor, and new ways suggested new sentiments of humanity and ethics. The mores changed and all the wider deductions in them were repugnant to slavery." Again: "We can find all kinds of forces in history except ethical forces. . . . The ethical forces are figments of speculation.” 1

Beyond question, self-maintenance or provision for life needs was primitive man's primary interest. But does this mean that things were not things to the savage, but only things-in-relation-to-his-stomach? Is the food-quest his first interest? Probably so, the closer he approaches to his simian ancestors. But even at these lowly stages the claims of sex, play, and vanity were scarcely less imperious. In the satisfaction of these desires, which constitute the sum of early well-being, three elements are involved: (1) conquest of nature, through (2) ap

1 Folkways, pp. 166, 33, 114, 163, 475-6. Cf. Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 386, 395, etc., for a very vigorous statement of a similar thesis, viz., that since things in this world make their own relations and moralities, the material and social conditions, are, if not the sole cause, at least the controlling factor in civilization.