tory in war does not always go to the side with the greatest economic resources.
Marx fitted his philosophy of history into a mould suggested by Hegelian dialectic, but in fact
there was only one triad that concerned him: feudalism, represented by the landowner; capitalism,
represented by the industrial employer; and Socialism, represented by the wageearner. Hegel
thought of nations as the vehicles of dialectic movement; Marx substituted classes. He disclaimed
always all ethical or humanitarian reasons for preferring Socialism or taking the side of the wage-
earner; he maintained, not that this side was ethically better, but that it was the side taken by the
dialectic in its wholly determnistic movement. He might have said that he did not advocate
Socialism, but only prophesied it. This, however, would not have been wholly true. He
undoubtedly believed every dialectical movement to be, in some impersonal sense, a progress, and
he certainly held that Socialism, once established, would minister to human happiness more than
either feudalism or capitalism have done. These beliefs, though they must have controlled his life,
remained largely in the background so far as his writings are concerned. Occasionally, however,
he abandons calm prophecy for vigorous exhortation to rebellion, and the emotional basis of his
ostensibly scientific prognostications is implicit in all he wrote.
Considered purely as a philosopher, Marx has grave shortcomings. He is too practical, too much
wrapped up in the problems of his time. His purview is confined to this planet, and, within this
planet, to Man. Since Copernicus, it has been evident that Man has not the cosmic importance
which he formerly arrogated to himself. No man who has failed to assimilate this fact has a right
to call his philosophy scientific.
There goes with this limitation to terrestrial affairs a readiness to believe in progress as a universal
law. This readiness characterized the nineteenth century, and existed in Marx as much as in his
contemporaries. It is only because of the belief in the inevitability of progress that Marx thought it
possible to dispense with ethical considerations. If Socialism was coming, it must be an
improvement. He would have readily admitted that it would not seem to be an improvement to
landowners or capitalists, but that only showed that they were out of harmony with the dialectic
movement of the time. Marx