PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

Thus it may be true enough, as James Madison wrote in the tenth paper
of the Federalist, that "a landed interest, a manufacturing interest,
a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests,
grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into
different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views." But if
you examine the context of Madison's paper, you discover something
which I think throws light upon that view of instinctive fatalism,
called sometimes the economic interpretation of history. Madison was
arguing for the federal constitution, and "among the numerous
advantages of the union" he set forth "its tendency to break and
control the violence of faction." Faction was what worried Madison.
And the causes of faction he traced to "the nature of man," where
latent dispositions are "brought into different degrees of activity,
according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for
different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many
other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to
different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power, or
to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting
to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties,
inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more
disposed to vex and oppress each other, than to cooperate for their
common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into
mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents
itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been
sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most
violent conflicts. But the _most common_ and _durable_ source
of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property."
Madison's theory, therefore, is that the propensity to faction may be
kindled by religious or political opinions, by leaders, but most
commonly by the distribution of property. Yet note that Madison claims
only that men are divided by their relation to property. He does not
say that their property and their opinions are cause and effect, but
that differences of property are the causes of differences of opinion.
The pivotal word in Madison's argument is "different." From the
existence of differing economic situations you can tentatively infer a
probable difference of opinions, but you cannot infer what those
opinions will necessarily be.
This reservation cuts radically into the claims of the theory as that
theory is usually held. That the reservation is necessary, the
enormous contradiction between dogma and practice among orthodox
socialists bears witness. They argue that the next stage in social
evolution is the inevitable result of the present stage. But in order
to produce that inevitable next stage they organize and agitate to
produce "class consciousness." Why, one asks, does not the economic
situation produce consciousness of class in everybody? It just
doesn't, that is all. And therefore the proud claim will not stand