but these are purely individual oppositions. In like manner there are logical, conceptual contrasts of different degrees and kinds. But it is necessary to determine precisely how far and in what sense it is permissible to speak of oppositions in social life and in history; we must not uncritically introduce psychological and logical contrasts into the sphere of sociology. Still less is it legitimate, in anthropomorphic fashion, to introduce psychological and logical oppositions into nature and the universe.
Marx makes an improper use of logical and psychological analogy when he bases his catastrophic theory upon the reputed opposition between two classes. Marx himself occasionally advocated a sounder view.[1]
As time passed, the views of Marx and Engels upon revolution underwent modification, for they came to conceive the social struggle in the spirit of the modern doctrine of evolution. They no longer represented this struggle solely in political and strategical terms as a violent physical struggle, for they looked upon it also as a bloodless economic struggle, thinking here of strikes and above all of the general strike—the struggle in this form being likewise conceived as revolutionary. To put the matter in general terms, they now conceived revolution rather as the gradual evolution of the definitive social state. In this double sense Engels frequently spoke of his party as "the most revolutionary party known to history"; in this sense it was asserted that capitalism was "revolutionising society"; and so on.
Eventually Marx and Engels accepted Darwinism, and were thereby led to modify their Hegelianism and their use of the Hegelian dialectic, although they failed to take clear note of their change of outlook. The modern cosmologist no longer regards the developmental process as revolutionary or catastrophic, but looks upon it as an evolution effected by infinitesimal and innumerable quantitative and qualitative modifications. Geological and cosmical catastrophe is looked upon as the terminal outcome of numerous gradational changes.
- ↑ For example, in the criticism of the Gotha program the bourgeoisie is not described as a unified class, nor was the existence of such a unification suggested even in the Communist Manifesto, Kautsky, too, in his writing published in 1889, the Class Oppositions of 1789, attacked the views of those who hold that in accordance with the theory of historical evolution by class struggles there can be no more than two camps within society.
