What did Marx and Engels discover during their study of history? First of all they decided that self-preservation is the supreme instinct in man and therefore his whole pattern of human conduct must have been governed by an attempt to wrest the necessities of life from nature. It is a dialectical process—man against nature. This led them to a monumental conclusion: all historical developments are the result of “Economic Determinism”—man’s effort to survive. They said that everything men do—whether it is organizing a government, establishing laws, supporting a particular moral code or practicing religion—is merely the result of his desire to protect whatever mode of production he is currently using to secure the necessities of life. Furthermore, they believed that if some revolutionary force changes the mode of production, the dominant class will immediately set about to create a different type of society designed to protect the new economic order.
“Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of material existence…. What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed?”{23}
To appreciate their point of view, it is necessary to understand Marx and Engels’ mechanistic conception of the way the human mind works. They said that after the brain receives impressions from the outside world, it automatically moves the individual to take action (this is their Activist Theory). They did not believe knowledge could be acquired without motivating the owner to do something about it. For example, when men became aware that slavery was a satisfactory way to produce crops, construct buildings and enjoy various kinds of services, this knowledge moved the dominant class to create a society which protected the interest of the slave owners. And in modern times Marx and Engels believed that the bourgeois or property class have done the same thing by instinctively creating a society to protect their capitalistic interests. As they said to the bourgeois in the Communist Manifesto:
“Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence (system of law) is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class.”{24}
From this it will be seen that Marx and Engels did not believe that men could arbitrarily choose any one of several forms of society but only that one which promotes the prevailing mode of production. The very nature of man’s materialistic make-up requires him to do this. “Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means.”{25} According to Marx the thing which we call “free will” is nothing more nor less than an awareness of the impelling forces which move an individual to action; in taking action he is not free to change the course his very nature dictates.
“Communism has no idea of freedom as the possibility of choice, of turning to right or left, but only as the possibility of giving full play to one’s energy when one has chosen which way to turn.”{26}
In other words, human minds receive knowledge of existing economic circumstances and “choose” to turn in the direction which is necessary to preserve the current mode of production. They are then free only in the sense that they are moved to decide that they will expend vast quantities of energy in building a superstructure of government, morals, laws and religion which will perpetuate these basic economic circumstances. At the foundation of all activities of society lies “Economic Determinism.” “The mode of production in material life determined the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life.”{27}
Marx and Engels now felt they had discovered something much more vital to human welfare than simply a philosophical explanation of history. In fact, they believed they had identified Economic Determinism as the basic creative force in human progress. Having made this important discovery they felt that if they could somehow force upon mankind the influence of a highly perfected system of economic production it would automatically produce a highly perfected society which, in turn, would automatically produce a higher type of human being. In other words, they would reverse the Judaic-Christian approach which endeavors to improve humanity in order to improve society. Here again they were reaffirming their conviction that human beings are not the creators of society but its products: “The final causes of all social changes and political revolution are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s insight into eternal truth and justice… but in the economics of each particular epoch.”{28}
Therefore, Marx and Engels advocated a change in economic structure as the only valid way of improving society and refining the intellectual make-up of humanity. But how can a new, improved system of production and distribution be introduced among men? What historical procedure has Economic Determinism unconsciously followed to bring mankind to its present state of advancement?
Human Progress Explained in Terms of Class Struggle
Marx and Engels answered their own question by deciding that from earliest times the mode of production and the means of distribution have always produced two basic classes of people: those who owned the means of production and thereby became exploiters, and those who owned nothing and therefore had to sell or trade their physical labor to survive. The element of conflict between these two groups was identified by Marx and Engels as the basic force in history which has prompted the evolution of society toward ever-ascending levels of achievement.
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted… fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”{29}
Here again Marx and Engels were applying the principles of Dialectics. All past societies have been a combination of opposite force or classes—the exploiters and the exploited. The clash between them has always generated the dynamic force which has propelled society into some new development. The transition, they noted, was often accompanied by revolution and violence.
But must the course of human events always follow this never-ending cycle of clashes between the two opposing classes of society? Must there always be revolution to produce new orders which in turn are destroyed by revolution to produce others? Marx and Engels visualized a day when there would be unity among men instead of opposition, peace instead of war. Such a hope, of course, violated their own theory of dialectics which says nothing in nature can be at rest—everything is a unity of opposing forces. Nevertheless, Marx and Engels reasoned that since they had discovered the inexorable law of history with its self-improving device of class struggle, they would use one final, terrible class struggle for the purpose of permanently eliminating the thing which had caused all past conflicts in society. What is this one terrible feature of all past societies which has caused selfishness, jealousy, class struggle and war? Marx and Engels thought all of these things could be traced to one root—private property. If they used a final revolutionary class uprising to overthrow private property, it would mean that class struggle would become unnecessary because there would be nothing to fight over!