Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/73

Rh by Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, respectively. It is not to be confused with the intellectual battle and polemics between scientific Socialism and the Utopianism of the French and English schools. As stated before, the intellectual struggle between these two conceptions is still going on in the movement, and will continue to go on until Historical Materialism or the Materialist Conception of History becomes the predominating Conception in society—philosophically as well as socially: an intellectual revolution which we are rapidly approaching and which has its roots in the material conditions of capitalist production. The present world-war, I believe, has been a wonderful schoolmaster in this direction. Never were the interests, class aspirations and economic forces of the ruling classes and their pliable governments more openly exposed, and never have I read and perceived more articles and books, dealing with the economic and social aspects of the war, written and published by bourgeois members of society than since the outbreak of the war. Of course, in the Socialist movement the war has been also a great incentive to study and particularly to delve into the "mysteries" of the foundation of Scientific Socialism—the Materialist Conception of History.

To return to the subject. It cannot be denied, however, that the struggle between Historical Materialism and Utopian Idealism, as personified in Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, tended gradually to disrupt the already loose form of the International's organization. This falling apart, however, carried within its womb the germs of consolidation and organization along national lines. And it is peculiar how the subsequent course of events furnished additional proof of the soundness of the Marxian method of historical analysis; for is it not indeed a striking coincidence only explainable with the aid of the Marxian key, when we perceive that in all countries with a prominent capitalist physiognomy, Marxism exercised full control in the organization, and in the Latin and chiefly agrarian countries Bakunism side by side with Marxism could be observed.