Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/23

 to opinions on either side, can look round today at the social sciences generally and not have to admit that they are all in much the same state as history. It would be difficult to imagine any more remarkable situation than that presented in our day by the science of economics. We have had within the last thirty years a theory of social development founded on an economic conception put forward by a worker quite outside the ranks of the official exponents of this science. I refer to Marx’s view of modern society, and the theory of surplus value on which it is based. It is a view so utterly out of proportion, so evidently only partially true, and so clearly demonstrative at every point of the author’s ignorance of the method of action in human society, of existing evolutionary forces larger than any he has taken account of, that it can hardly have any prominent place reserved to it in a future science of society; yet, strange as it may appear, there is at the present time scarcely a professor of economics in any university within the limits of our western civilization who has not felt the effects, direct or indirect, upon his work, of Marx’s generalization. It grows in influence, despite the refutations it is continually receiving from the economists. Nay more, I am much inclined to think that a recent socialist writer (Dr. Edward Aveling, The Student's Marx) has not greatly overrated Marx’s true position in placing him alone along-side of Darwin in influencing the thought of the nineteenth century. And in what consists the secret influence of Marx’s generalization, masterly despite its errors? Simply, it seems to me, in this: that he has succeeded in basing his theory of society on a clear and largely true statement of the historical and human form of a relationship which has projected itself throughout the history of life. His work has taken no account of the factors, special to human society, which control and regulate this relationship. Yet the effect of the imperfect view which Marx has obtained, of a natural law operating in human society in a larger sense than the economists have been trained to understand, has so far raised him above his critics that his theory remains, as a political and social force, almost unaffected by the criticism of those who endeavor to deal with it from within the narrow circle of the merely economic position. And it has been, perforce, to the economist alone that society has had to turn for instruction. In the present state of knowledge there has been absolutely no science of society in any larger sense than his, to which the world could look for help and guidance in the problems with which it is