material conditions of the people, they are not always so and not necessarily so. There are other causes which may affect the material conditions of the people, and there are changes in the technical part of production and distribution which do not at all affect the material conditions of the people. And the Marxists claim that it is the changes in the "material conditions" that are the prime movers of history, no matter what the causes of these changes may be. The technical development only affects the course of history indirectly and only in so far as it causes changes in the material conditions under which people live and work.
The same malady,—Confusion of Terms and Ideas,—is the cause of another great objection to the Materialistic Conception of History. This is advanced with great vehemence by most critics of an "ethical" bent of mind, among others, by the well-known English socialist, E. Belfort Bax. It is to the following effect: People do not always act out of self-interest. They are very often swayed by ideal motives and then act quite contrary to their own interests. Hence, the fatal error of the Materialistic Conception of History in making the "material interests" the prime movers of History.[1]
This objection has been partly answered already in a preceding chapter, where it was pointed out that the Materialistic Conception of History has nothing to do with the question of individual idealism. That it was not a theory explaining the motives which impel individuals to act, but a historical theory explaining the motive powers which bring about those actions of the masses, the aggregate of which make up what we call history; the powers which are the "causes of the causes" of individual action. A man may very well act against his own interest, even sacrifice his life, for the sake of an ideal, and yet his ac-
- ↑ E. Belfort Bax, Die Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, in Die Zeit (1896). Synthetische contra Neumarxistische Geschichtsauffassung.— Die Grenzen der Materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung, in Neue Zeit (1897).
