life. Some of them,
doubtless, realizing that the Materialist Conception of History involves
the Nihilism of Socialism, and thus calls on them to abandon their
religious, metaphysical, and dualistic habits of thought, to cast aside
their conventional class morality, to cease vaporing about that
impossible monstrosity, "the Socialist State," attempt to cut the
Gordian knot by denying the Materialist Conception of History, while
clinging to their socialist ideal. They thus repeat in inverted form the
curious feat in intellectual acrobatics performed by Professor Seligman,
who believes in historical materialism, but rejects Socialism. "There
is nothing in common," he asserts, "between the economic interpretation
of history and the doctrine of socialism, except the accidental fact
that the originator of both theories happened to be the same man." And a
few pages further on he reiterates: "Socialism and 'historical
materialism' are entirely independent-conceptions."[32]

To the educated socialists, who deny or mutilate the doctrine of
historical materialism, the materialist socialist might well reply by
asserting that these educated socialists are socialists only because of
the artistic, intellectual, ethical, and spiritual changes they expect
the economic revolution of socialism to produce. The fact that they,
lovers of "the things of the spirit," are socialists proves that they
believe, albeit unconsciously, in economic determinism.

But, although this personal argument might Well be deemed sufficient, it
can readily be proven affirmatively that the whole theory of Modern
Socialism rests upon the foundation of historical materialism. This
clearly appears in the' admirable summary of the teachings of Marx that
Gabriel Deville gives in the Preface to his epitome of Marx's "Capital."

"History, Marx has shown, is nothing but the history of class
conflicts. The division of society into classes, which made its
appearance with the social life of man, rests on economic
relations--maintained by force--which enable some to succeed in
shifting on to the shoulders of others the natural necessity of
labor.

"Material interests have always been the inciting motives of the
incessant struggles of the privileged classes, either with, each
other, or against the inferior classes at whose expense they live.
Man is dominated by the material conditions of life, and these
conditions,