home the importance of capturing the control of industry.
Economic determinism has been an antidote to mere preaching of goodness,
to hero-worship and political quackery. Socialism to succeed had to
concentrate attention on the ownership of capital: whenever any other
interest like religion or patriotism threatened to diffuse that
attention, socialist leaders have always been ready to show that the
economic fact is more central. Dignity and prestige were supplied by
making economics the key of history; passion was chained by building
paradise upon it.

In all the political philosophies there is none so adapted to its end.
Every sanction that mankind respects has been grouped about this one
purpose--the control of capital. It is as if all history converged upon
the issue, and the workers in the cause feel that they carry within them
the destiny of the race. Start anywhere, with an orthodox socialist and
he will lead you to this supreme economic situation. Tyrannies and race
hatred, national rivalries, sex problems, the difficulties of artistic
endeavor, all failures, crimes, vices--there is not one which he will not
relate to private capitalism. Nor is there anything disingenuous about
this focusing of the attention: a real belief is there. Of course you
will find plenty of socialists who see other issues and who smile a bit
at the rigors of economic determinism. In these later days there is in
fact, a decided loosening in the creed. But it is fair to say that the
mass of socialists hold this philosophy with as much solemnity as a
reformer held his when he wrote to me that the cure for obscenity was the
taxation of land values and absolute free trade.

Singlemindedness has done good service. It has bound the world together
and has helped men to think socially. Turning their attention away from
the romanticism of history, the materialistic philosophy has helped them
to look at realities. It has engendered a fine concern about average
people, about the voiceless multitudes who have been left to pass
unnoticed. Not least among the blessings is a shattering of the
good-and-bad-man theory: the assassination of tyrants or the adoration of
saviors. A shallow and specious other-worldliness has been driven out: an
other-worldliness which is really nothing but laziness about this one.
And if from a speculative angle the Marxian tradition has shaded too
heavily the economic facts, it was at least a plausible and practical
exaggera