Page:Karl Kautsky - Ethics and The Materialist Conception of History - tr. J. B. Askew (1906).pdf/122

 whence comes this monopoly of force? How does it come that one section of the people conquers with it and the other not, and that the force produces this and not other results? To all these question the force theory has no answer to give. And equally by the theory of ideas does it remain a mystery where the ideas come from which lead to freedom in the mountain country, to priest rule in the river valley land, to money and slave economy on the shores of the sea, and in hilly undulating countries to feudal serfdom.

We have seen that these differences in the development of the same peasant system rest on differences in the natural and social surroundings in which this system is placed. According to the nature of the land, according to the description of its neighbours will the peasant system of economy be the foundation of very different social forms. These special social forms become, then side by side with the natural factors, further foundations, which give a peculiar form to the development based on them. Thus the Germans found when they burst in on the Roman Empire during the migration of the peoples, the Imperial Government with its bureaucracy, the municipal system, the Christian Church, as social conditions, and these, as well as they could, they incorporated into their system.

All these geographical and historical conditions have to be studied if the particular method of production in a land at a particular time is to be understood. The knowledge of its technical conditions alone does not suffice.

It will be seen that the materialist conception of history is not such a simple formula as its critics usually conceive it to be. The examples here given show us, however, also, how class differences and class antagonisms are produced by the economic development.

Differences not simply between individuals, but also between individual groups within the society, existed already in the animal world, as we have remarked already distinctions in the strength, the reputation, perhaps even of the material position of individuals and groups. Such distinctions are natural, and will be