ways the best or most highly developed forms, but simply those
forms best suited to the then existing environment. These two extremely
interesting papers of Wallace are printed as the two first chapters of
his book "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature," published by
MacMillan, a book so fascinating I would beg all my hearers and readers
who have not read it to do so.

This law of double or multiple discovery holds good of all great
discoveries and inventions, and is notably true of the first of the
three great thoughts that we ordinarily associate with the name of Karl
Marx. These three are:

1. The Materialistic Conception of History.

2. The Law of Surplus Value.

3. The Class Struggle--the third being a necessary consequence of the
first two.

Now the Materialistic Conception of History was independently discovered
by Engels just as Darwinism was by Wallace, as you will see by reading
Engels' preface to the Communist Manifesto. But just as Wallace gave
Darwin all the credit, so Engels did to Marx.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This essay was originally prepared for and delivered as a Lecture
before the Young Mens' Socialist Literary Society, an organization of
Jewish Socialists on the lower East Side of New York city, in the early
part of the winter of 1899-1900.

I

THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

What do we mean by the Doctrine of the Materialistic Conception of
History, or of "Economic Determinism," as Ferri calls it? We must make
sure we understand, for there is cant in Socialism, just as there is in
religion, and there is good reason to fear many of us go on using these
good mouth-filling phrases, "Materialistic Conception of History,"
"Class-Conscious Proletariat," "Class Struggle," and "Revolutionary
Socialism," with no more accurate idea of their meaning than our pious
friends have of the theological phrases they keep repeating like so many
poll-parrots.

At bottom, when we talk intelligently of the Materialistic Conception of
History, we simply mean, what every man by his daily conduct proves to
be true, that the bread and butter question is the most important
question in life. All the rest of the life of the individual is
affected, yes dominated the way he earns his bread and butter. As this
is true of individuals, so also it is true of societies, and this gives
us the only key by which we can understand the history of the past, and,
within limits, predict the course of future developmen