26
PARTISAN REVIEW
ideal. Now, it seems to me that to phrase matters
this
way is to beg
many questions not merely about Marx's meaning but about the nature
of the social process. Nothing in a history which is made by men is
"bound" to happen; and even nonhistorical events are evitable, for
their occurrence is dependent upon other events concerning which we
cannot correctly say that they must happen. The absurdity of all these
presuppositions about
"inevitabilities'~
and "determining" social laws
from which we can spell out the shape of the future is graphically
underscored by the potentialities of the atomic bomb. It is the height
of intellectual parochialism to imagine that the liberation of nuclear
energy opens up a new era of life or disaster in social and political
experience but leaves untouched the perspectives and relevance of
socialist thought. The fact that atomic war may break out within the
next few years and that such a war may destroy civilization, as we
know it, with all its prospects of socialism, should naturally make a
difference to intelligent thinking on the future of socialism.
The harnessing of nuclear energy makes immensely more feasible
the solution of the problems of production on a world scale. At the
same time, a handful of technical and military personnel, in an un–
democratic society, could easily prevent any attempt to change the
political or social character of the economy. Hence these are questions
that are prior to, and more immediately pressing than, all others. Marx
was one of the first to allow for the influence of science and scientific
technology upon society. But he didn't allow enough for it-and for
its relative autonomy. And there is no reason to believe that had he
lived, the man who could not sleep for thinking about the effects of
a new steam locomotive exhibited in the 1850's would have lacked
the wit and imagination to see that he would have had to recast many
·conclusions and theories, particularly about the methods of achieving
socialism, that had seemed valid at an earlier time.
Taking an historical view, the situation, as I see it, is briefly
this.
The whole burden of Marx's analysis, and particularly his recommen–
dations for
action
based on it, made sense only on the assumption
that the working class and its allies would accept responsibility for the
role which their feelings and the situation in which they had been
cast, suggested to them; and further that at the opportune moments
of crisis in the development of capitalism, they would move with intel–
ligence and courage to bring the political and cultural relations of
society into line with the potentialities of its productive forces. This,
for a number of reasons we shall not inquire into, the working class
failed to do. Its most momentous failures were in 1914, and in 1919,
