Page "Historical materialism" Paragraph 40

"(...) If Russia is tending to become a capitalist nation after the example of the Western European countries, and during the last years she has been taking a lot of trouble in this direction-she will not succeed without having first transformed a good part of her peasants into proletarians ; and after that, once taken to the bosom of the capitalist regime, she will experience its pitiless laws like other profane peoples.

That is all.

But that is not enough for my critic.

He feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of