but always incidental and hence limited': progress 'does not influence
the sequence of human affairs like destiny or fate, nor like the
command of a law.' History teaches us that man is capable of progress;
and we can look at all the different series of events from this point of
view: that is all. No less incidental and empirical is the idea of
historical necessity, which must be freed from all remnants of
rationalism and of transcendentalism, so that we see in it the mere
recognition of the very small share left in the sequence of events, to
individuals and personal free will.
It must be admitted that a little of the blame for the teleological and
fatalistic misunderstandings fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he once had
to explain, liked to 'coquette' with the Hegelian terminology: a
dangerous weapon, with which it would have been better not to trifle.
Hence it is now thought necessary to give to several of his statements a
somewhat broad interpretation in agreement with the general trend of
his theories.(5*) Another excuse lies in the impetuous confidence
which, as in the case of any practical work, accompanies the practical
activities of socialism, and engenders beliefs and expectations which do
not always agree with prudent critical and scientific thought. It is
strange to see how the positivists, newly converted to socialism, exceed
all the others (see the effect of a good school!) in their teleological
beliefs, and their facile predeterminations. They swallow again what is
worst in Hegelianism, which they once so violently opposed without
recognising it. Labriola has finely said that the very forecasts of
socialism are merely morphological in nature; and, in fact, neither
Marx nor Engels would ever have asserted in the abstract that
communism must come about by an unavoidable necessity, in the
manner in which they foresaw it. If history is always accidental, why in
this western Europe of ours, might not a new barbarism arise owing to
the effect of incalculable circumstances? Why should not the coming of
communism be either rendered superfluous or hastened by some of
those technical discoveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have
hitherto produced the greatest revolutions in the course of history?
I think then that better homage would be rendered to the materialistic
view of history, not by calling it the final and definite philosophy of
history but rather by declaring that properly speaking it is not a
philosophy of history. This intrinsic nature which is evident to those
who understand it properly, explains the difficulty which exists in
finding for it a satisfactory theoretical statement; and why to Labriola it
appears to be only in its beginnings and yet to need much development.
It explains too why Engels said (and Labriola accepts the remark), that
it is nothing more than a new method; which means a denial that it is a
new theory. But is it indeed a new method? I must acknowledge that
this name method does not seem to me altogether accurate. When the
philosophical idealists tried to arrive at the facts of history by inference,
this was truly a new method; and there may still exist some fossil of
those blessed times, who makes such attempts at history. But the
historians of the materialistic school employ the same intellectual
weapons and follow the same paths as, let us say, the philological
historians. They only introduce into their work some new data, some
new experiences. The content is different, not the nature of the method.
II
I have now reached the point which for me is fundamental. Historical
materialism is not and cannot be a new philosophy of history or a new
method; but it is properly this; a mass of new data, of new experiences,
of which the historian becomes conscious.
It is hardly necessary to mention the overthrow a short time ago of the
naive opinion of the ordinary man regarding the objectivity of history;
almost as though events spoke, and the historian was there to hear and
to record their statements. Anyone who sets out to write history has
before him documents and narratives, i.e. small fragments and traces of
what has actually happened. In order to attempt to reconstruct the
complete process, he must fall back on a series of assumptions, which
are in fact the ideas and information which he possesses concerning the
affairs of nature, of man, of society. The pieces needed to complete the
whole, of which he has only the fragments before him, he must find
within himself. His worth and skill as a historian is shown by the
accuracy of his adaptation. Whence it clearly follows that the
enrichment of these views and experiences is essential to progress in
historical narration.
What are these points of view and experiences which are offered
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