Salient: An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 5, June 8th, 1949.

Karl Knew

Karl Knew

Professor Parker made this point quite forcibly. There can be a science of history, but it must be formulated by scientific method. Toynbee has Certainly not done that. He omits the really primary stuff of living altogether, and talks in abstractions. The impact of one form of society, economically superior, on another, is to Toynbee primarily a mental impact. Material things are not even important, apparently, let alone primary. Why! admitted the Professor shyly even Marx was more scientific than Toynbee! (Consternation.) Toynbee talks in metaphors. "Challenge and response" was merely an accident to human development, not the determining force, the sine qua non.

Ghandi came very near to proving that food comes first, and that therefore, in the aggregate, how society produces its needs shapes society. That is one up to Marx. Against Toynbee's pessimism. Marxism combines materialism with the observation that while each ruling class has been supplanted by another as modes of production changed, yet today there is no alternative exploiting class. The logical step forward from our type of moribund society, is to a socialism without classes. Marxism therefore looks forward with hope. Another one up to Marx.

Partisan.