Lecture XX

The three principles are minutely worked out, but they do not fit in with social conditions in Germany. However, they correspond exactly to social conditions in England. That, after all, is where they were worked out. That is where Marx worked on them first of all, and then also Engels, and Bernstein. This is their source. Here they fit in because—to take the third principle—they are founded on the class war. And this class war is waged, basically, in the British soul. Think of Cromwell. If you study all the impulses that have reigned in the British soul since Cromwell, you will wind up with material for the third principle, the principle of class war. Furthermore, since the invention of the spinning-jenny and the commencement of the social life which came into being as a result, everything that has flowed into the theory of added value has been uppermost in the British Empire. And the materialistic view of history is, when you look at it, nothing but Buckle's view of history translated into a pedantic German way of thinking. Look at Buckle's History of Civilisation. It is written in accordance with the way such things are written within the framework of British culture: namely, according to the principle of never entering into consequences. Darwin, too, did not enter into the consequences. He limited himself in a certain way. But in Karl Marx's materialistic view of history the matter is transformed with severity—regardless of consequences—in, if you like, a pedantic, German way.