k of the Marxian
philosophy as a political force. It is juster to speak of the Marxian
tradition.

So when I write of Marx's influence I have in mind what men and women in
socialist meetings, in daily life here in America, hold as a faith and
attribute to Marx. There is no pretension whatever to any critical study
of "Das Kapital" itself. I am thinking rather of stuffy halls in which an
earnest voice is expounding "the evolution of capitalism," of little
groups, curious and bewildered, listening in the streets of New York to
the story of the battle between the "master class" and the "working
class," of little red pamphlets, of newspapers, and cartoons--awkward,
badly printed and not very genial, a great stream of spellbinding and
controversy through which the aspirations of millions are becoming
articulate:

The tradition is saying that "the system" and not the individual is at
fault. It describes that system as one in which a small class owns the
means of production and holds the rest of mankind in bondage. Arts,
religions, laws, as well as vice and crime and degradation, have their
source in this central economic condition. If you want to understand our
life you must see that it is determined by the massing of capital in the
hands of a few. All epochs are determined by economic arrangements. But a
system of property always contains within itself "the seeds of its own
destruction." Mechanical inventions suggest a change: a dispossessed
class compels it. So mankind has progressed through savagery, chattel
slavery, serfdom, to "wage slavery" or the capitalism of to-day. This age
is pregnant with the socialism of to-morrow.

So roughly the tradition is handed on. Two sets of idea seem to dominate
it: we are creatures of economic conditions; a war of classes is being
fought everywhere in which the proletariat will ultimately capture the
industrial machinery and produce a sound economic life as the basis of
peace and happiness for all. The emphasis on environment is insistent.
Facts are marshaled, the news of the day is interpreted to show that men
are determined by economic conditions. This fixation has brought down
upon the socialists a torrent of abuse in which "atheism" and
"materialism" are prevailing epithets. But the propaganda continues and
the philosophy spreads, penetrating reform groups, social workers,
historians, and sociologists.

It has served the socialist purpose well. To the workingmen it has
brought