not to be employed in the language of statistics except for the purpose of denoting an absolute and a relative decrease in the number of agricultural, industrial, commercial, financial establishments, correlative with an increase in the total activity of the category into which they fall. This suggestion was referred to the Committee which was appointed at this Congress for the purpose of dealing with statistical terminology.

BOOK VI

THE INCONSISTENCIES

SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

OF

Р

CHAPTER I

"SCIENTIFIC" PROPHECIES

"Natural necessity" acording to Marx and EngelsNatural necessity belied by facts-Fatalist theories. -Werner Sombart: his doubts-Marxist interference with "natural necessity"-Social legislation tends to retard it.

MARX and Engels set themselves up as scientific prophets. Beyond Ricardo's à priori formula, they felt the most profound distrust of the natural laws of exchange as put forward by economists. But they affirmed the existence of "natural necessity," by introducing the notion of which to socialistic thought they claimed to have effected a great revolution. They claimed to have traced, in the "Communist Manifesto," the process which was fated to end in communism.

Economic development realises itself in a particular manner and it is precisely because it does so that all the items with which the programme is concerned attain their fulfilment. Accordingly there is no escape for you members of the middle classes and capitalists, and for you workmen and wage-earners; your triumph is assured, for everything will come to pass just as we have foretold. Karl Marx is God, and Engels is his prophet!

Three and twenty centuries have elapsed since Thucydides defined the function of history as being to ascertain the truth as regards the past in order to foresee the future. But to ascertain the truth is essential, and he who fails to do so and invents facts instead of observing them misleads himself in his forecasts as well as others. In "Das Kapital" Karl Marx says: "Reflection on the forms of social life and consequently the scientific analysis of them, follows a course which is completely opposed to their true movement," or, in other words, the present explains the past, but does not explain the