This mixture damages both philosophy and politics, and
is therefore important to avoid.
For another reason, also, the attempt to base a political theory upon
a philosophical doctrine is undesirable. The philosophical doctrine of
materialism, if true at all, is true everywhere and always; we cannot
expect exceptions to it, say, in Buddhism or in the Hussite movement.
And so it comes about that people whose politics are supposed to be a
consequence of their metaphysics grow absolute and sweeping, unable to
admit that a general theory of history is likely, at best, to be only
true on the whole and in the main. The dogmatic character of Marxian
Communism finds support in the supposed philosophic basis of the
doctrine; it has the fixed certainty of Catholic theology, not the
changing fluidity and sceptical practicality of modern science.
Treated as a practical approximation, not as an exact metaphysical
law, the materialistic conception of history has a very large measure
of truth. Take, as an instance of its truth, the influence of
industrialism upon ideas. It is industrialism, rather than the
arguments of Darwinians and Biblical critics, that has led to the
decay of religious belief in the urban working class. At the same
time, industrialism has revived religious belief among the rich. In
the eighteenth century French aristocrats mostly became free-thinkers;
now their descendants are mostly Catholics, because it has become
necessary for all the forces of reaction to unite against the
revolutionary proletariat.
Pages:
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108