stones, owe their effects on the human organism to given physiological conditions. True, for not everything can influence the body. But among the things that can, some may nourish it and others may kill it. Similarly, not all types of individuals can influence given social conditions, and whoever does so, must meet these conditions. But once we admit that individuals can influence historical developments, then it is not precluded that at certain periods different individuals, through their activities and ideas, may give rise to different developments. A modern Ajax would occupy a booth in a side show of a circus; a Joan of Arc, in a scientifically enlightened age, wandering into General Headquarters with a tale about “hearing voices,” would be sent to a psychopathological ward for observation. They would not influence events. But, to use Plechanov’s own illustrations and admissions, a Suvorov in place of a Buturlin, a Louis XVIII. instead of a Louis XV., a concubine more intelligent and less fearful than Madame de Pompadour in respect to foreign policy, might have affected the course of empire.[1]
2. What Plechanov has done is to substitute at this point, before his final relapse into orthodoxy, a quite different theory of history from that held by Engels and other orthodox Marxists. He is not affirming that heroes are made by their times. He is not predicting that a social need for a great man will produce him. He is not denying that great, or even weak, individuals can redetermine the course of history. He is maintaining that the time, place, and extent of the changes wrought by these individuals depend upon the economic conditions of their day, and the interplay of class interests which grow out of these conditions. To this no one but a mystical extremist like Carlyle would object, but many historians would add supplementary sets of limiting conditions to the freedom of the great man. This independence of thought on Plechanov’s part would be admirable were he aware of it and were he not trying to prove that it was perfectly compatible with doctrinaire economic determinism which denied that there are any genuine alternatives in phases of social development and that, a fortiori, individuals
- ↑ It should be remembered that we are not discussing the historic truth of Plechanov’s illustrations but only his method. Madame de Pompadour had perhaps less influence on French history than Plechanov believes. At this phase of his thought, he must believe that she was, so to speak, a heroine in reverse, instead of just another beautiful, brainy, and ambitious woman.
