he position assumed
by him in the last part of the work under consideration.

They form part of a series of articles written for the "Sozialistische
Akademiker" in 1890, and are as follows:

"Marx and I are partly responsible for the fact that the younger men
have sometimes laid more stress on the economic side than it deserves.
In meeting the attacks of our opponents it was necessary for us to
emphasize the dominant principle denied by them, and we did not always
have the time, place, or opportunity to let the other factors which were
concerned in the mutual action and reaction get their deserts."

And in another letter to the same magazine he says: "According to the
materialistic view of history, the factor which is, in last instance,
decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life.
More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. But when anyone
distorts this so as to read that the economic factor is the sole element
he converts the statement into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase.
The economic condition is the basis, but the various elements of the
superstructure--the political forms of the class-contests, and their
results, the constitutions--the legal forms and also all the reflexes of
these actual contests in the brains of the participants, the political,
legal, philosophical theories, the religions views--all these exert an
influence on the development of the historical struggles, and in many
instances determine their form."

Here we may leave this much disputed matter for the present, as any
involved discussion of controversial questions would be out of place
here. The question in its ultimate form is merely scholastic, for not
even the most extreme determinist would hold that only the economic
argument must be relied upon by the orators and the press of the
proletarian movement. Any one, however, who wishes to pursue the subject
farther can find abundant material in the already great and growing
amount of literature in connection with it.

There is no doubt that the ideas of Marx respecting the basis of
historical progress have already revolutionized the teaching of history
in the universities, although but few professors have been honest enough
to give him credit for it. The economic factor continually acquires
greater importance in the eyes of the student of history, but the
practical discoverer of this factor is still slighted and the results of
his labors are assimilate