e and
conscience of all classes, instead of to the interests of a special
class, they could probably double their numerical strength at once. To
many, therefore, it seems a fatuous and quixotic policy to preach such a
doctrine, and it is very often charitably ascribed to the peculiar
intellectual and moral myopia of fanaticism.

Before accepting this conclusion, and before indorsing the Rooseveltian
verdict, the reader is bound as a matter of common fairness, and of
intellectual integrity, to consider the Socialist side of the argument.
There is no greater fanaticism than that which condemns what it does not
take the trouble to understand. The Socialists claim that the doctrine
is misrepresented; that it does not produce class hatred; and that it is
a vital and pivotal point of Socialist philosophy. The class struggle,
says the Socialist, is a law of social development. We only recognize
the law, and are no more responsible for its existence than for the law
of gravitation. The name of Marx is associated with the law in just the
same manner as the name of Newton is associated with the law of
gravitation, but Marx is no more responsible for the social law he
discovered than was Newton for the physical law he discovered. There
were class struggles thousands of years before there was a Socialist
movement, thousands of years before Marx was born, and it is therefore
absurd to charge us with the creation of the class struggle, or class
hatred. We realize perfectly well that if we ignored this law in our
propaganda, making our appeal to a universal sense of abstract justice
and truth, many who now hold aloof from us would join our movement. But
we should not gain strength as a result of their accession to our ranks.
We should be obliged to emasculate Socialism, to dilute it, in order to
win a support of questionable value. History teems with examples of the
disaster which inevitably attends such a course. We should be quixotic
and fatuous indeed if we attempted anything of the kind. Such, briefly
stated, are the main outlines of the reply which the average Socialist
gives to the criticism of the class struggle doctrine described.

The class struggle theory is part of the economic interpretation of
history. Since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, the modes of
economic production and exchange have inevitably grouped men into
economic classes. The theory is thus admirably stated by Engels in the
Introduction to the _