admits that great men make their bows only infrequently on the stage of history.
For Engels social need is not only a necessary condition for the appearance of a great man but also sufficient. But how does he know that, even when a great and urgent social need is present, a great man must arise to cope with it? Who or what guarantees this blessed event? Not the Providence of Augustine and Bossuet, not the Cunning of Reason of Hegel, not the Unknowable of Spencer, but “the dialectical contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production.”
This dynamic force works in a truly remarkable fashion. But one wonders by what specific chain of causation it guides the union of sperm and egg out of which is generated the individual whose qualities enable him in season to achieve greatness. And how does the dialectical mode of economic production go about finding a substitute for the great man it produces but fails to keep alive? How long must the run be before the substitute is found? What happens to the urgent social need or historical crisis in the meantime? Does it obligingly wait until he turns up? The resolution of economic contradictions is historically necessary, says Engels. The union of sperm and egg is historically accidental, he adds. How then does historical necessity get itself translated into the realm of biology? One is tempted to paraphrase Hamlet’s exclamation to his father’s ghost: “Well done, old metaphysical mole! Canst work i’ the earth so fast? A worthy pioneer!” Or does Engels believe that just anybody can substitute for Cæsar, Augustus, and Cromwell?
Test Engels’ position by selecting any historical period and answering these questions in concrete terms. Suppose we ask why a great man failed to appear to answer the crying need for the unity of all the anti-Fascist forces in Germany—a unity which probably would have prevented Hitler from taking power save after a violent and prolonged civil war and which, under certain circumstances, might have resolved the economic distress that gave Hitler his audience and following? Who will deny the need? Who will deny the failure to meet it? Even by way of a substitute! Does the failure of a great man to appear at this time indicate that he was unnecessary or that the victory of Fascism was “inevitable”? If the first, why defeat; if the second, why the opposition to the inevitable? Even those who
