Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/137

 130 THE POVERTY OF PilliLGsoPily

with which we are presented to-day to explain the pro- gress of history. In actual fact this word explains nothing. It is at most a declamatory form, one manner among others of paraphrasing the facts. It is a fact that the landed proprietors of Scotland obtained a new value by the development of English industry. This industry opened up new markets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale it was necessary to turn arable lands’ into pasture. To effect this transformation it was necessary to concentrate various properties. To con- centrate these properties it was necessary to abolish small holdings, drive thousands of tenants from their native land, and put in their place a few herdsmen in charge of millions of sheep. Thus by successive transformations, landlordism in Scotland has resulted in the men being driven away by sheep. Say now that the providential end of landlordism in Scotland was to cause men to be driven away by sheep, and you have constructed providential history.

Certainly, the tendency to equality appertains to our century for the men and the means of anterior centuries with wants, means of production, &c., entirely different, worked providentially for the realisation of equality, is to begin by substituting the means and the men of one century for the men and the means of anterior centuries and to misunderstand the historical movement by which successive generations transformed the results acquired from the generations which preceded them. Economists know very well that the same thing which was for one the completed work is for the other only the raw material of further production.

Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, that the social genius has produced, or rather improvised, the feudal barons, with the providential end in view of transforming the