the usual sense of that word, but merely of the condition itself. Karl Kautsky in a discussion with Belfort Bax used this example: The turning away from all earthly interests, the longing for death, of early Christianity may,—he says—very well be explained by the material conditions of the Roman Empire at that time. But it would, of course, be monstrous to attribute the longing for death to some material interest.
If the learned critics would only carefully refrain from substituting other terms and ideas in place of those used and expressed by Marx and his disciples a good deal of their criticism would fall of itself, and the rest could easily be answered. So, for instance, would a careful reading of Marx and a clear comprehension of the terms used by him do away with all the objections which admit that the economic factor plays an important role in history but think that "too much" is claimed for it, and that other factors are "not taken into account."
So do most of the critics talk of Marx's failure to "take into account" such things as human nature, race, geography, etc. Those of our readers who have read carefully the preceding chapters will have seen that these things have all been "taken into account"; and that when the Marxists still insist upon the economic factor as the determining factor of historical progress it is because this factor is the only one which accounts for the movement of history, the progress of the human race from one state to another, as all the other factors are comparatively stationary, and could therefore account perhaps for a condition of the human race but not for its Progression.
That it was not any failure to "take" these things "into account" that led Marx to proclaim the economic factor as the material factor which moves history, a mere cursory reading of Marx will show. In his work on Capital, he says:
"Aside from the more or less developed condition of social production, the productivity of labor depends on natu-
