ENGELS TO W. BORGIUS*” 

London, 25 January 1894 

Dear Sir, 

Herewith the answers to your questions. 

1. By economic relations, considered by us to be the determinant upon 
which the history of society is based, we understand the manner in which 
men of a certain society produce the necessities of life, and exchange 

“Now Wroclaw 

those products among themselves (in so far as division of labour exists). Thus 
they comprise the entire technology of production and transport. As we see it, 
that technology also determines the manner of exchange, likewise the 
distribution of products and hence, following the dissolution of gentile 
society, also the division into classes, hence the relations of rulers and 
subjects, and hence the state, politics, the law, etc. Economic relations further 
comprise the geographical basis on which these are enacted, and, indeed, the 
inherited remnants of earlier stages of economic development, remnants 
which often owe their survival only to tradition or vis inertiae“ they also, of 
course, comprise the external environment by which this form of society is 
encompassed. 

If, as you say, technology is indeed largely dependent on the state of sci- 
ence, then how much more is not the latter dependent on the state and the 
requirements of technology? If society has a technological requirement, the 
latter will do more to promote science than ten universities. Hydrostatics 
(Torricelli, etc.) owes its existence solely to the need to regulate mountain 
streams in Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Only since the 
discovery of its technological uses have we known anything rational about 
electricity. Unfortunately historiographers in Germany have got into the 
habit of writing about the sciences as though they had appeared out of the 
blue. 

2. We see economic conditions as that which, in the final analysis, 
determines historical development. But the human race is itself an economic 
factor. Here, however, there are two points which should not be overlooked: 

a) Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc., 
development is based on economic development. But each of these also 
reacts upon the others and upon the economic basis. This is not to say that 
the economic situation is the cause and that it alone is active while 
everything else is mere passive effect, but rather that there is reciprocal 
action based, in the final analysis, on economic necessity which invariably 
prevails. The state, for instance, exerts its influence through protective tariffs, 
free trade, good or bad fiscal systems, and even your German philistine’s 
mortal weariness and impotence, consequent upon Germany’s impoverished 
economic condition between 1648 and 1830, and expressing itself first in 
Pietism and then in sentimentality and cringing servility 

* the force of inertia 

to princes and nobles, even this was not without economic effect. It was one 
of the greatest obstacles to recovery and was not removed until chronic 
poverty became acute as a result of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. 
Thus the effect of the economic situation is not, as is sometimes 
conveniently supposed, automatic; rather, men make their own history, but in 
a given environment by which they are conditioned, and on the basis of 
extant and actual relations of which economic relations, no matter how much 
they may be influenced by others of a political and ideological nature, are 
ultimately the determining factor and represent the unbroken clue which 
alone can lead to comprehension. 

b) While men may make their own history, they have not hitherto done so 
with a concerted will in accordance with a concerted plan, not even in a given 
and clearly delimited society. Their aspirations are at variance, which is why 
all such societies are governed by necessity of which the counterpart and 
manifestation is chance. The necessity which here invariably prevails over 
chance is again ultimately economic. This brings us to the question of what 
are known as great men. The fact that such and such a man, and he alone, 
should arise at a particular time in any given country, is, of course, purely 
fortuitous. But if we eliminate him, a replacement will be called for and such 
a replacement will be found—tant bien que mal,“ but found he will ultimately 
be. That Napoleon, this particular Corsican, was the military dictator 
rendered necessary by a French Republic bled white by her own wars, was 
fortuitous; but that, in the absence of a Napoleon, someone else would have 
taken his place is proved by the fact that the moment someone becomes 
necessary—Caesar, Augustus, Cromwell, etc.—he invariably turns up. If it 
was Marx who discovered the materialist view of history, the work of 
Thierry, Mignett Guizot and every English historiographer prior to 1850 goes 
to show that efforts were being made in that direction, while the discovery of 
the same view by Morgan shows that the time was ripe for it and that it was 
bound to be discovered. 

The same thing applies to all fortuitous and seemingly fortuitous events in 
history. The further removed is the sphere we happen to be investigating 
from the economic sphere and the closer to the purely abstract, ideological 
sphere, the more likely shall we be to find evidence of the fortuitous in its 
development, and the more irregular will be the curve 

* for better or for worse 

it describes. But if you draw the mean axis of the curve, you will find that the 
longer the period under consideration and the larger the area thus surveyed, 
the more approximately parallel will this axis be to the axis of economic 
development. 

In Germany the greatest obstacle to accurate interpretation is the ir- 
responsible neglect of economic history in literature. It is so difficult, not 
only to rid oneself of the historical ideas drummed into one at school, but 
actually to get together the material necessary for the purpose. Who, for 
instance, has so much as read old G. von Giilich whose dry catalogue of 
material nevertheless contains so much that throws light on innumerable 
political facts! 

Come to that, I believe that the fine example provided by Marx in the /8. 
Brumaire’ should, precisely because it is a practical example, go a long way 
towards answering your questions. I also think that I touched on most of 
these points in the Anti-Dihring Chapters 9-11 and II , 2-4, also ITI, and in 
the introduction, and again in the final section of the Feuerbach.‘ 

Please do not take every word I have said above for gospel, but rather 
consider them in their general context; I am sorry not to have had the time to 
write to you in such careful detail as I should have had to do for publication. 

Would you kindly convey my compliments to Mr ...° and thank him for 
sending me the ...© which greatly amused me. 

Yours very sincerely, 

F. Engels