PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

described in economic materialism which enables anyone to prophesy
whether the owner will take a long view or a short one, a competitive
or a cooperative.
Did the theory have the validity which is so often claimed for it, it
would enable us to prophesy. We could analyze the economic interests
of a people, and deduce what the people was bound to do. Marx tried
that, and after a good guess about the trusts, went wholly wrong. The
first socialist experiment came, not as he predicted, out of the
culmination of capitalist development in the West, but out of the
collapse of a pre-capitalist system in the East. Why did he go wrong?
Why did his greatest disciple, Lenin, go wrong? Because the Marxians
thought that men's economic position would irresistibly produce a
clear conception of their economic interests. They thought they
themselves possessed that clear conception, and that what they knew
the rest of mankind would learn. The event has shown, not only that a
clear conception of interest does not arise automatically in everyone,
but that it did not arise even in Marx and Lenin themselves. After all
that Marx and Lenin have written, the social behavior of mankind is
still obscure. It ought not to be, if economic position alone
determined public opinion. Position ought, if their theory were
correct, not only to divide mankind into classes, but to supply each
class with a view of its interest and a coherent policy for obtaining
it. Yet nothing is more certain than that all classes of men are in
constant perplexity as to what their interests are. [Footnote: As a
matter of fact, when it came to the test, Lenin completely abandoned
the materialistic interpretation of politics. Had he held sincerely to
the Marxian formula when he seized power in 1917, he would have said
to himself: according to the teachings of Marx, socialism will develop
out of a mature capitalism... here am I, in control of a nation that
is only entering upon a capitalist development... it is true that I am
a socialist, but I am a scientific socialist... it follows that for
the present all idea of a socialist republic is out of the question...
we must advance capitalism in order that the evolution which Marx
predicted may take place. But Lenin did nothing of the sort. Instead
of waiting for evolution to evolve, he tried by will, force, and
education, to defy the historical process which his philosophy
assumed.
Since this was written Lenin has abandoned communism on the ground
that Russia does not possess the necessary basis in a mature
capitalism. He now says that Russia must create capitalism, which will
create a proletariat, which will some day create communism. This is at
least consistent with Marxist dogma. But it shows how little
determinism there is in the opinions of a determinist.]
This dissolves the impact of economic determinism. For if our economic
interests are made up of our variable concepts of those interests,