Marx did not claim that individuals were always actuated by economic
interest; he was far from imagining that material considerations led to
Abélard’s romance [Abélard, Pierre (1079-1142)], or the gospel of Buddha,
or the poems of Keats [Keats, John (1795-1821)]. But perhaps he
underestimated the role played by noneconomic incentives in the behavior
of masses: by religious fervor, as in Moslem or Spanish armies; by
nationalistic ardor, as in Hitler’s troops or Japan’s kamikazes; by the self-
fertilizing fury of mobs, as in the Gordon riots of June 2-8, 1780, in
London, or the massacres of September 2-7, 1792, in Paris. In such cases
the motives of the (usually hidden) leaders may be economic, but the result
is largely determined by the passions of the mass. In many instances
political or military power was apparently the cause rather than the result of
economic operations, as in the seizure of Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917,
or in the army coups that punctuate South American history. Who would
claim that the Moorish conquest of Spain, or the Mongol conquest of
Western Asia, or the Mogul conquest of India, was the product of economic
power? In these cases the poor proved stronger than the rich; military
victory gave political ascendancy, which brought economic control. The
generals could write a military interpretation of history.
Allowing for these cautions, we may derive endless instruction from the
economic analysis of the past. We observe that the invading barbarians
found Rome weak because the agricultural population which had formerly
supplied the legions with hardy and patriotic warriors fighting for land had
been replaced by slaves laboring listlessly on vast farms owned by one man
or a few. Today the inability of small farms to use the best machinery
profitably is again forcing agriculture into large-scale production under
capitalistic or communistic ownership. It was once said that “civilization is
a parasite on the man with the hoe,”
but the man with the hoe no longer
exists; he is now a “hand” at the wheel of a tractor or a combine.
Agriculture becomes an industry, and soon the farmer must choose between
being the employee of a capitalist and being the employee of a state.
