s by his
_economic determinism_.

The economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_
energies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are the
determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal
manifestations of human life, both individual and social.

This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian
theory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best
established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.

It is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociology
are able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_
which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politically
organized," is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of
the economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical and
administrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and to
postpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.

The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated
the clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of
socialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political
compass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete
confidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is the
great historical law of _class struggles_.[81] ("The history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Communist
Manifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)

If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like
those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of
all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that
every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance
with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical
basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In
the political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,
to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,
directly or indirectly subserve its interests.

These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by
inheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic
origin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend
them as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,
without seeing their real source, but the latter--the