ments have shown that they were based on insufficient data, and that our present knowledge requires the revision of some of his tenets or the supplementing of them by some qualifying truths, according to some, or that the whole system be thrown overboard, it having been built on false foundations, according to others. Most of the critics, however, stop at revision. Hence, the name Revisionists, under which Revisionism applied to their writings and teachings.
The most important feature, however, of modern anti-Marx literature and that which in our opinion conclusively establishes not only the pre-eminent position occupied to-day by Marxism as the recognized and established sociological doctrine, but also the fact that there is no doctrine capable of competing with it for establishment or even of dividing honors with it, are the writings of those of the critics of Marxism who claim that the whole system must be thrown overboard as unscientific. These writings are the most edifying sort of reading for a Marxist. I shall have occasion, later on, to examine this literature more particularly. Here I wish to say only this: These latter-day critics of Marx do not dare accept in its entirety any other system which has been advocated before their advent; and they do not, with some exceptions which are quite negligible, (of which I shall, however, and nevertheless, treat later on), advance any system, wholly or partly original with its authors, which would be capable of taking the place of Marxism as an explanation of social phenomena. They almost all, therefore, fall into what may well be termed Nihilism, that is to say, they are led to deny the existence, nay, even the possibility, of any social science. In other words: Marxism is so much the scientific doctrine in its sphere (which covers all the life of humanity in organized society, including all its social and intellectual manifestations) that you cannot destroy it without at the same time destroying all scientific knowledge of the subject.
It must be said, however, in justice to these writers, that
