MARXISM AND DARWINISM. 17 



ever supplanted older, but the causes and aims of this 

 development were unknown. 



In his theory Marx started with the information 

 at hand in his time. The great political revolution that 

 gave Europe the aspect it had, the French Revolution, 

 was known to everyone to have been a struggle for 

 supremacy, waged by the bourgeois against nobility 

 and royalty. After this struggle new class struggles 

 originated. The struggle carried on in England by 

 the manufacturing capitalists against the landowners 

 dominated politics ; at the same time the working class 

 revolted against the bourgeoisie. What were all these 

 classes? Wherein did they differ from each other? 

 Marx proved that these class distinctions were owing 

 to the various functions each one played in the pro- 

 ductive process. It is in the productive process that 

 classes have their origin, and it is this process which 

 determines to what class one belongs. Production is 

 nothing else than the social labor process by which 

 men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. 

 It is the production of the material necessities of life 

 that forms the main structure of society and that de- 

 termines the political relations and social struggles. 



The methods of production have continuously 

 changed with the progress of time. Whence came 

 these changes? The manner of labor and the produc- 

 tive relationship depend upon the tools with which 

 people work, upon the development of technique and 

 upon the means of production in general. Because in 

 the Middle Ages people worked with crude tools, while 

 now they work on gigantic machinery, we had at that 

 time small trade and feudalism, while now we have 

 capitalism ; it is also for this reason that at that time 

 the feudal nobility and the small bourgeoisie were the 



