The Materialist Conception of History (1940)

Book Review from the September 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some misrepresentations of Marx turn up again

The Labour Book Service recently published “The Politics of Democratic Socialism,” by Mr. E. F. M. Durbin. It was highly praised in reviews in the Labour and Liberal Press, and Mr. Herbert Morrison and Professor Tawney were among those who congratulated Mr. Durbin on his work. There is a good deal of merit, though perhaps not much originality, in some parts of the book, but the section dealing with the Materialist Conception of History shows a reckless and profound ignorance of the subject. So far as the writer of the article is aware the reviews of the book said nothing about that section, though it is of the greatest importance.

In it Mr. Durbin discusses what he believes to be the Marxian view, and dismisses it as wholly untenable. It is, he says, impossible to accept “as a true theory of history” (page 179). Readers who are not already familiar with Marx’s views and who find Mr. Durbin’s destructive criticism convincing will be surprised to learn that in fact he does not deal with Marx’s view. Instead, he alters its name to “economic interpretation of history,” robs it of its real content and substitutes other things that would have amazed Marx and Engels, treats as qualified exponents of it such people as Laski, Strachey and Cole (the last of whom took upon himself to alter its name to “realistic interpretation of history”), and ends up with the condescending remark that “Marxists show no willingness whatever to accept the more reasonable version of their own theory” (page 175).

Before dealing with Mr. Durbin’s errors it may be remarked that he is not at all original. It has all been done before; though Mr. Durbin’s ignorance of Marx probably extends also to an ignorance of his predecessors in the art of knocking down Aunt Sallies of his own construction. He might, with profit, look up Kautsky’s “Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History” and Boudin’s “Theoretical System of Karl Marx,” where he would find that the critics who preceded him are duly answered.

As it is impossible for reasons of space to deal with all of Mr. Durbin’s errors it must suffice to show the line on which his argument is developed.

The doctrine which Mr. Durbin shows to be untenable is the doctrine “that history is determined, and the action of individuals and groups controlled, by rational acquisitive self-interest” (page 168). To clinch his argument he makes the following points (page 171): —

“We are clearly influenced continuously by the thought of our material welfare. But are we influenced by nothing else ? Do we order our whole lives and choose all our group loyalties by the thought of nothing but our real wages. … It is only if we are moved by these considerations alone that a purely economic interpretation of history can be sustained.” (His italics.)

All very true, but what on earth has this to do with Marx and the Materialist Conception of History? Mr. Durbin, to be sure, is certain that it has everything to do with it; but the reader of his book will notice that nowhere does he show where Marx or Engels ever wrote anything about history being determined “by the thoughts of nothing but our real wages.”

Instead Mr. Durbin adopts an old device of quoting not from Marx to prove his point against Marx, but of quoting from Laski, Cole and Strachey, whom he blandly describes as “the modern exponents of the doctrine” and “the newest schools of Marxist thought” (page 158).

May we protest to Mr. Durbin that it would not occur to serious students of Marx that Marxism has been understood and correctly stated, much less improved, by the speculations and interpretations of these gentlemen.

How Marx really stated the view held by him and Engels can be seen from the following passage in his preface to his “Critique of Political Economy,” 1859: —

“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations which are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”

It is not that Mr. Durbin is entirely unaware of what Marx and Engels said about the Materialist Conception of History. Indeed, he quotes on page 157 of his book the following passage from Engels’ 1888 preface to the Communist Manifesto: —

“In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes.”

But after quoting this, instead of examining it to see whether it is tenable or not, he prefers to make a slashing attack on some other and utterly absurd theory which explains historical movements as the sole result of thinking “of nothing but our real wages.” Did it not once occur to Mr. Durbin that it would be odd for a prosperous manufacturer like Engels to devote much time and money to the working-class movement and the abolition of capitalism (and prosperous manufacturers) if in fact he held the view that (in Mr. Durbin’s words) “we order our whole lives and choose all our group loyalties by the thought of nothing but our real wages”?

Did Mr. Durbin never notice that “the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it”—this being the definition used by Engels—is wider than, and very different from, the conception of mere individual or group self-interest?

Does he not appreciate that the prevailing “mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it” exercise an influence on the ideas and aims and actions of individuals and social groups far beyond the simple notion of individual wages or profits. This confusion of “material conditions” with “material interests” has misled many others besides Mr. Durbin. It was, for example, dealt with by Boudin in his ”Theoretical System for Karl Marx,” published in 1907 (Chapter III).

Did Mr. Durbin never ask himself why Marx and Engels habitually used the term materialist conception of history and not “economic” interpretation, still less “economic determination”? (the phrase used by Professor Seligman and those who have followed him).

Engels, in a letter to a student written in 1890, anticipated Mr. Durbin’s errors. He wrote: —

“According to the Materialist Conception of History, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure—the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems—all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. (Italics Engels’.)

Engels went on to explain that the overemphasis of the economic factor was in part the fault of Marx and himself—”Facing our adversaries we had to lay especial stress on the essential principle denied by them, and, besides, we had not always the time, place, or occasion to assign to the other factors . . . the part which belongs to them.”

Nevertheless, at no time did Marx or Engels put forward the view that the economic factor is the only one or that “economic factor” is so narrow a conception as mere “acquisitive self-interest.”

In Ins letter Engels elaborated the Marxian view in its correct form, a form quite unlike that of Mr. Durbin’s imagination: —

“The economic conditions, which we consider as the determinative basis in the history of society, we understand to be the manner in which men in a given society produce their means of subsistence and the ways in which they effect the exchange of products among themselves (this as long as division of labour exists). The entire technique of production and transportation is here included. According to our conception this technique determines the mode of exchange, of distribution of products, and—after the disintegration of the tribal society—the division of society into classes, the conditions of master and slave, of State, of politics, law, etc. Further, among the economic conditions under which these phenomena obtain, must be included the geographical environment, and also the actual remains of former phases of economic evolution which often persisted by force of tradition, inertia, or because of circumstances which surround that form of society.

Even if …. technique largely depends on the condition of science, yet, in a greater measure, does the latter depend on the conditions of and the need for, technique. If society is in the need of the development of a certain technique, this helps science more than ten universities.”

And again: —

“History is not as some would imagine, for the sake of their greater convenience, an automatic effect of the economic situation, but men themselves make their own history. Certain it is, however, that men act in accordance with the prevailing conditions that dominate their field of action.” (Italics Engels’.)

It will also be seen from Engels’ letter above that he did not hold the view that for Marxists “economic forces” can be narrowed down to “technical discoveries” alone. Mr. Durbin, however, is able to reach that conclusion, by quoting from Mr. Laski and Mr. Stratchey. After the quotation (pages 156 and 157) Mr. Durbin says: —

“These quotations demonstrate beyond doubt that the first of the four basic contentions of the Marxist analysis—that history is exclusively determined by “economic” forces, and even exclusively by technical discoveries—has been seriously maintained by Marxists from the dawn of Marxist thought in the forties of last century down to the most recent publications of the Left Book Club.” (Page 157.)

This conclusion may be true as regards Laski and Strachey, but Mr. Durbin cannot base it on the passages he quotes from Marx and Engels.

This fact about technical development was dealt with by Louis Boudin (“Theoretical System of Karl Marx,” page 35) in a passage which concludes with the following: —

“Be it therefore said here for the Nth time, that while changes in the technical development of the means of production usually go together with changes in the material conditions of the people, they do not necessarily so go together and are separate and distinct from each other. While the technical developments in the means of production and distribution are the chief cause of changes in the material conditions of the people, they are not always so and not necessarily so. There are other causes which may affect the material conditions of the people, and there are changes in the technical part of production and distribution which do not at all affect the material conditions of the people. And the Marxists claim that it is the changes in the “material conditions” that are the prime movers of history, no matter what the causes of these changes may be. The technical development only affects the course of history indirectly and only in so far as it causes changes in the material conditions under which people live and work.”

Another of Mr. Durbin’s errors disposed of by Engels is the belief that Marxists “are committed” to the doctrine of “the impotence of ideas” (page 175). It will be noticed that Engels mentions “political theories” as one of the factors which exercise an influence on historical struggles. Does this surprise Mr. Durbin ? Has he forgotten the lifetime devoted by Marx and Engels to studying and teaching, and to Socialist propaganda?

We could say a lot more about Mr. Durbin’s book, but perhaps it will be sufficient to add that if Mr. Durbin really wants to do a serious job of work he should start off with the assumption that Marx and Engels meant and understood what they wrote, and should take the advice Engels himself gave to a student in the letter written in 1890—“I would further ask you to study the theory from its original sources and not from second-hand works; it is really much easier.”

When Mr. Durbin says (page 179) that he and others “who cannot accept any of the existing variants of this theory, await any new forms of it with sustained and lively interest,” our advice to him is to go back and look at the theory as it really was in the original and is still, and to remember that his “variants of it” are not variants of Marx but variants on the theme Cole-Laski-Strachey. This is not the same thing.

Edgar Hardcastle