Natural Factors in Economic History by K. A. Wittfogel

An excerpt translation of K. A. Wittfogel's 1932 text "Natural Factors in Economic History"

Dear readers,

This blog post presents two complementary works by J.E. Morain from the Spring 2025 Reading Group. You’ll find both a transcript of an oral presentation and an original translation of K.A. Wittfogel’s “Natural Factors in Economic History” article transposed to the blog format. A few important notes: per the reading announcement, the below presentation builds from Wittfogel’s broader work on “Geographical Materialism,” and not the “Natural Factors” work alone. Moreover, this blog post is structured with the oral presentation first, followed by the translated excerpt. For the translation, please be advised that the footnotes were left untranslated as is. We hope these materials serve as an early eco-Marxist model for engaging with contemporary discussions on the value of nature, the dual character of labor-power as both “social” process and “natural” process, and the dynamic relationship between laborers and their geographical environment.

Best,

The CTWG Editorial Team

Karl August Wittfogel’s System of Historical Materialism (presentation)

Today we are going to discuss excerpts from two essays by Karl August Wittfogel. But, before we get into Wittfogel’s theories, I want to provide a quick biographical overview.
Wittfogel was born in 1896 to a protestant family in Germany. He studied the humanities at university before being drafted into the German army in 1917. He then became a Marxist in the aftermath of the war, briefly joining Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats before moving to the newly formed Communist Party in 1920. In 1921 he began pursuing what would become his main academic interest, the study of China within the social sciences. His first works are mainly historical, although he dabbled in philosophy of science/knowledge and wrote several stage plays. From the very start, his approach to social sciences was integrative and comparative. Thus, among his early historical writings are two comparative histories and a series of works on China which gradually focused more and more on the distinct particularities of Chinese society. Beyond his immediate interest in concrete socio-historical research, Wittfogel wanted to establish historical materialism as the science of history and supplant the works of theoretically “bourgeois” and politically right-wing German social scientists like Max Weber (a liberal) and Werner Sombart (a Nazi).

It is interesting to note that in Wittfogel’s works from the 1920s, some of his theoretical formulations approach those of the great Russian Marxist theorist Isaak Illich Rubin or the German “New Reading of Marx” developed in the 1960s and 70s. For example, in his book Die Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, which, as the title suggests, is a history of (early) capitalism, he explains that his method for the book is to combine an explanation the “systematic-logical” economic categories of capitalism (as described by Marx) with a “class-history” of capitalism. He describes value as a “social relation” that coordinates the social production of separated and competing individual producers, praises Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness as one of the best recent works of Marxist theory, etc. The focus on class struggle and social relations contrasts very strongly with his later work. I bring this all up just so you understand that when Wittfogel dismisses Lukács as idealist, for example, he does not do this out of simple ignorance. We can still detect some traces of this period of “proletarian science” in Wittfogel’s critiques of geopolitical theory and bourgeois geographical materialism—he says bourgeois geographical materialism was flawed because the social position of the bourgeoisie led them to epistemic and scientific quagmires, whereas the standpoint of the proletariat allows a correct epistemic starting point for true materialism.

Wittfogel’s outlook on historical materialism fundamentally changed after he read the works of the famous Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov. Plekhanov had emphasized natural and (especially) geographical factors to an unprecedented extent in his writings. This approach strongly resonated with Wittfogel, perhaps because it allowed him to use geographical factors to explain the different developmental trajectories that emerged in world history.

Wittfogel’s new, Plekhanov-influenced version of historical materialism was first introduced in the first reading for today, the essay “Geopolitics, Geographical Materialism, and Marxism” from 1929. This essay was occasioned, as the title suggests, by the recent upsurge in geographical and “geopolitical” writing among both revisionist socialists (Horrabin, Graf) and far-right reactionaries (Haushofer, who was massively influential on the Nazis). According to Wittfogel, all “geopoliticians” new and old are characterized by “the combination of an ineffectual geographical materialism with a completely unfounded eclecticism.” They all combine idealist speculation on things like national spirit and The State with a stupid geographical materialism that can only analyze things based on their immediate appearance. The “geopoliticians” universally ignore the economy, the process of production, and the labor process—i.e., the real media by which nature exerts its influence on society.

Eventually Wittfogel begins outlining his own theory. At this point I am going to turn to reconstructively summarizing his theory as given in the two readings. Because these writings are rather obscure, and one is being translated for the first time, I am focusing on summarizing and explaining, not evaluation. We’re going to start with his account of the labor process and then go into his theory of nature.

Wittfogel sometimes calls the social labor process the “fundamental relation” [grundlegende Verhaltnis] (GGMM 41 et passim). The labor process is “fundamental” in the sense that it is the metabolic relation between humanity and non-human nature. As far as I know, Wittfogel was one of very few people who picked up on Marx’s concept of “metabolism” (Stoffwechsel) at this time; he also took up Marx’s interest in soil. Anyway, there are three components to the labor process: labor power, objects of labor, and means of labor—these are also the three main productive forces in society. I will treat them in the order just given.

Labor power, like the other two components, has a social side and a natural side. The social side is the organization and qualification of labor power, i.e. the technique of individual work and the technical division of labor. In general, this is the application of knowledge or science. The natural side consists in “physiological characteristics, race, [and] national character.” The first is simple enough: the strength and endurance of the workers, but the latter two require a brief digression.
Wittfogel, like Marx and Engels, was a believer in racial science. Indeed, his 800 page monograph on the economy and society of China begins with an investigation into the racial characteristics of the Chinese. It must be understood that his conception of racial science was rather unique. He was—like Trofim Lysenko—a Lamarckian, meaning he rejected Darwin’s theories and believed that acquired characteristics could be inherited. This in turn meant that racial differences could and would eventually be negated by the egalitarianism of socialist society. Despite his defense of race science, he still insisted that race was ultimately not that important and can pretty much be disregarded in historical analysis.

So much for labor power. The objects of labor are very simple. Either they are natural materials or natural objects of labor (wild animals and plants, minerals, etc.) or they are “raw materials,” i.e. objects that have already been transformed by labor (domesticated organisms, pig iron, cloth, fibers, etc.) (GGMM 43). Wittfogel has an interesting argument that extractively sourced natural materials play a very important role in early hunter-gatherer society and industrial capitalism, but are relatively less important in agrarian forms of society (feudalism, “asiatic society,”) (GGMM, 46). The argument has significant plausibility when one considers how much labor in medieval times was based around lumber from cultivated and managed forests, domesticated animals and plants, products sourced from those animals and plants, and so on. Ultimately I am not knowledgeable enough to evaluate it, however.

Now I turn to the means of labor. It is in relation to this topic that some of Wittfogel’s characteristic novel ideas emerge. Wittfogel’s opponents (in this case, Gorter and Cunow) reduce the means of labor to mere technology (maybe having an allowance for draft animals), and thus ignore the importance of natural means of labor. Soil is a natural means of labor in agriculture; it is the medium by which seeds become plants. Water is a natural means of labor in fishing, aquaculture, agriculture, and the use of mills and turbines. Wittfogel notes, however, that the use of these means of labor often requires tools—hoes, spears, nets, shovels, etc. Moreover, they are modified by human labor (soil depletion, salinization, overfishing, etc.) Thus the natural means of labor, although they are decisively not a product of humanity, nonetheless have a distinctively historical character, as do all naturally conditioned productive forces.

Wittfogel introduced two concepts to elucidate the historical character of naturally conditioned productive forces, i.e. nature insofar as it is socio-economically relevant. He claims that QUOTE, “Industry and the state of society “produce” the natural environment in a twofold manner, firstly through transformation, secondly through the actualization of essential aspects of nature.” Transformation is “the immediate result of labor-activity;” it is the physical change in nature as a result of human action. Actualization (or de-actualization) is the process by which parts of nature QUOTE “take on relevance to man as a result of a change of standpoint occurring in the labor process.” For Wittfogel, transformation takes absolute priority; actualization requires transformation but not vice versa. Great revolutions in the mode of production—the invention of agriculture, stockpiling, whatever—begin a process of maturation in the new mode of production. This process of maturation leads—a bit too naturally in my opinion—to the actualization of new parts of nature via the novel transformations of nature that it calls forth. Within this historical pattern and within the labor process, nature is “passive” and humanity is “active.” Nature sets conditions, establishes laws, provides a “larder” of materials, and so on, while humanity transforms these materials within the bounds of the conditions and laws established by nature. In the final analysis, we must always remember that everything comes from nature and is ultimately “natural” — although, as I will discuss later, I sometimes find that Wittfogel does forget this fundamental fact.

Turning back to history, stagnation in development presents some problems. For Wittfogel, stagnation means a problem with the productive forces, and hence with nature in the last instance. Either there are simply no new natural productive forces to exploit (what about trade?) or the new productive forces are in conflict with the existing mode of production (this sounds like a social problem to me!). As you can probably tell, I am pretty skeptical of Wittfogel’s position here. At his most extreme, Wittfogel uses this principle to deduce the entire historical trajectory of Asia from some elementary facts about the soil and climate of China: the climate lead to irrigation agriculture, which produced an irrigation bureaucracy, and this bureaucracy violently prevented the development of the “germ cells” of capitalism, of bourgeois class power, because they threatened the “central nervous system” of the irrigation economy. (NUWg 607-8).

This is the famous (or infamous) geographical aspect of Wittfogel’s historical materialism. If you consult a text written a few years after our readings called “Theorie der orientalischen Gesellschaft” (The Theory of Oriental Society—it’s from 1938) you will find comparative tables that predict what kind of mode of production (nomadism, irrigation agriculture, rainfall agriculture) will develop based entirely on what sorts of water are available (rain, rivers, etc.). While each of these modes of production implies a distinctive class structure, their historical trajectory has no immediately apparent relation to class struggle. (The charts from that text contrast very strongly with similar comparative history charts from 1924’s Geschichte der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft; the latter are focused strongly on the outcome of class struggles and the relations of production more generally.) Ultimately, however, Wittfogel must appeal to class struggle and relations of production to explain why, for example, China and Japan (I would also add Korea) developed very differently from one another (see GGMM pp. 56-7).

One may object that the development of technology abolishes dependence on nature in all forms. Wittfogel strongly disagrees, saying that “The significance of the natural factors grows together with the social conditions (force) of the process of production” (GGMM 47). “The dependence on natural conditions” does “[assume] an increasingly mediated character,” (GGMM 47), but the dependence remains, especially when it comes to raw materials. I do not object to that point, but the difference between “dependence on nature” or “conditioning by nature” and “determination by geography” becomes very apparent when we consider the possibilities created by technology. I think these are two fundamentally different forms of ‘determination’ (or whatever you want to call it) that relate to different periods, i.e. different modes of production. Referencing Plekhanov, he claims it would be “a blatant error to mistake the change of form for a cessation of the effects of the natural factor,” but he does not theorize these forms.

Wittfogel squirmed away from this difference by appealing to the monopolization of raw materials that results from imperialist conquest—now he could still readily identify nation-states with certain raw materials and geographical resources. But consider a modern country like South Korea, which has a large manufacturing sector, produces essentially none of its own raw materials (it is the 3rd largest importer of metals in the world), and has no imperialist holdings. Clearly the extent of geographical determination has lessened considerably due to advancements in transport, technology, and global trade relations. Korea even uses irrigation agriculture! Clearly Wittfogel’s theory has some glaring problems vis-a-vis geography.

The ‘other’ side of his account of nature also has some problems. For one, there is a distinct lack of reflexivity—where does this view of ‘passive’ nature come from? For whatever reason, Wittfogel did not feel compelled to justify this dualist, vaguely Aristotelian approach. The schematic division between natural and social components in the Geographical materialism paper is somewhat confounding. Only the rawest aspects of nature are “natural;” if I understand him correctly, domesticated organisms are a social element, not a natural one (or at least they are more social than natural). His treatment of so-called ‘human nature,’ or the ‘biological’ aspect of human existence is also lacking. There is no mention of evolution, probably because Wittfogel did not even believe in Darwinian evolution. This results in blindspots regarding the origins of tool use, the earliest kinds of technology, and the emergence of homo sapiens as a singular species on Earth more generally. Engels was already ahead of Wittfogel with his fragment on the role of tools in human evolution.

I find further problems in Wittfogel’s definition of a mode of production. According to him, it is “the unity of material and personal productive forces in the entire concrete process of production [Gesamtproduktionsprozess] of a determinate epoche of society.” First of all, the definition is circular because elsewhere he defines epochs of society as historical modes of production. Where does this excess ‘epochal differentiation’ come from? The obvious answer is, of course, the relations of production and the superstructure. The process of production always entails the relations of production. What the Althusserians called the technical relations of production is called the organization of labor-power by Wittfogel, obscuring its social aspect. The way in which Wittfogel divides up the mode of production from the relations of production seems to me artificial and invalid. Recall the previously mentioned argument about the irrigation bureaucracy in China—that whole situation is a showcase of the social relations of production and the effects of the superstructure (the State) on the economic base via class struggle!

“The structure of the contemporaneously active productive forces as a whole,” Wittfogel writes, “determines the economic structure of a historical epoch.” He adds that “This structure, however, is unified [faßt sich … zusammen] in the mode of production.” Due to the lack of any explanation, this ‘unification’ appears in his theory as something both totally automatic and totally simple. It is unclear why there is any unity at all, especially given the circularity of the definition. How is it unified in historical time? If it is a unity, then what does it mean for there to be a conflict between emergent and dominant modes of production? Wittfogel offers us no answers to these questions.

Allow me to digress for a moment. It must be understood that Wittfogel’s view that mode of production more or less equals forces of production was not exactly orthodox, even for the time. We all know that Marx’s use of the term was inconsistent to say the least, so it was up to later Marxists to fix a definition. Bukharin, in stark contrast to Wittfogel, defined the mode of production as “the totality of the production relations;” it was only “determined by the development of the productive forces;” it did not consist of these forces. Kautsky, on the other hand, had a more expansive definition; he defined the mode of production with reference to the totality of socially connected labor processes, as the nature of the overall process of production including both its social and technical sides. Other authors (Lukács, Rubin, etc.) did not provide a formal definition for the concept of the mode of production, but tended to focus heavily on the ‘social side’ of things. Cunow commented that many considered the term synonymous with a technical description of the labor process. Ultimately, the definition found in Stalin’s 1938 pamphlet Dialectical and Historical Materialism (unity of forces and relations of production) became by far the most influential. (Honestly, Stalin’s definition is not bad as a starting point.) One of the greatest contemporary Marxist theoreticians, Jairus Banaji, has drawn attention to the concept of “laws of motion” in relation to the delineation of modes of production; I think this concept has great potential to connect with Wittfogel’s ideas of actualization and different views of nature. Etienne Balibar’s essay “The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism” in Reading Capital also provides an interesting contrast, and perhaps correction, to Wittfogel’s theory.

I’m not going to conclude with a summary of Wittfogel’s views, instead I’m going to say one good thing about Wittfogel’s theory and then a criticism of it.

On one hand, Wittfogel rightly gave nature a place in his theoretical constructions and invented new and compelling concepts to understand humanity’s changing relationship with nature.
On the other hand, he made nature into the master of history and neglected social relations.
On one hand, Wittfogel drew up a systematic presentation of the process of production and correctly recognized that nature was used as a ‘tool’ just like man-made technology.
On the other hand, his analysis basically stopped at the process of production.
I could go on like this for a while, but I hope you get the point.

Translation

[Karl Wittfogel, “Die natürlichen Ursachen der Wirtschaftsgeschichte,” in: Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 67 (1932), 466–492; 597-609; 711-731.]

2. Nature and Society in the Marxian System

{1} Marx’s analysis of history does not, as Sombart2 recently charged, begin with the assumption of free will. Free will is a theological postulate. A scientific conception of the social world is not possible with such presuppositions.3 Willful intentionality [Willensrichtung] and activity of socially productive man [Menschen] is determined, except in the most general way, by the physical constitution of the human being—this is in distinction to other animals4—and, indeed, in a way which is modified at every moment by the stage of development that has been reached, by the objective substrate of this activity. Though within the labor process man may place a potentially gigantic apparatus of means of labor between himself and the object of his labor, the object of labor always remains nature itself. “Man and his labor on one side, nature and its materials on the other;” that is the most universal fundamental relation [Grundbeziehung] in the process of social labor, like this itself “an eternal natural condition of human life independent of every form of this life, but rather common to all social forms.”5 However, this means, just as Hegel already declared, that man, despite all the “power” over external nature that tools lend him, is “subjugated” by nature in the determination of his aims.6 Lenin expressed this in his materialist commentary on Hegel’s Logic thusly: “The laws of the external world, of nature, which are divided into mechanical and chemical (this is very important) are the bases of man’s purposive activity. In his practical activity, man is confronted with the objective world, is dependent on it, and determines his activity by it.”7

a. Natural and Social Productive Forces

The development of the social labor process, as the foundation of total social development, is the development of the productive forces that determine the character and efficacy of the labor process. Although [they are] historically conditioned as a collective, the productive forces do not all carry a social character in a strict sense. Two groups of productives forces function together in the labor process: produced and not produced, socially conditioned and naturally conditioned.8 All naturally conditioned (natural) productive forces have a historical character [Beschaffenheit]; only under certain historical circumstances do they become active [wirksam]. All social productive forces are, for their part, determined by the character of the corresponding active naturally conditioned productive forces.

Now the subjective-personal element (labor qualification and organization) develops within the totality of social productive forces always in connection with and dependency upon the material [sachlichen] conditions of production.9 The material [sachliche] conditions of production—so-called technology—are, however, determined “by external conditions (the laws of nature).” Thusly did Lenin recently render again and with greater precision the corresponding thoughts of Hegel, Marx, and Engels. In the configuration of the “leading” means of his labor as well as in the realized social labor-activity that accompanies it, man depends on the “external world, nature” and “lets his activity be determined by it.” The laws of this external, natural world form “the foundation of purposive human activity.”10 Marxistically [speaking], such a determinacy [Bestimmtheit] can only mean the determinacy of the path of development [Entwicklungsganges]. The course [Werden] of the social productive forces, centrally that of its material core, i.e. technology, is determined by the structure of the present moment in nature.

In this sense Plekhanov explains—although admittedly with less precision than Marx and Lenin, since he, like most Marxists, did not adopt the concept of natural productives forces from Marx—that “the development of the productive forces, which in the last instance determine the development of all social relations, are themselves determined by the character of the geographical natural conditions.”11

We follow Marx’s distinction, which among Marxists Lenin was almost alone in accepting.12 By differentiating the thought put forward by Plekhanov, by tracing this thought back to Marx’s own conception, we can say that nature and society, the natural and social productive forces, “execute fundamentally different functions. Man and his social labor-activity represent the principle of unrest, of movement; nature (original or modified), the objective substratum which directs (or fails to direct) this activity in a definite direction through its material structure. Although man has an active relation to nature through the social labor process, at any given stage of the social forces of production he can only organize his activity in accordance with the natural means of labor and natural objects of labor he has plucked from the earth. Which naturally conditioned elements are “tapped” by socially-laboring man is above all determined by the totality of the socially developed forces of production (labor skills, science and its technological applicability, the organization of labor, the volume and efficacy of produced means of production). But the direction of the change in the social form of the process of labor (and whether there is a change at all) is not dependent on the arbitrary will of productive man but on the type, wealth and combination of the naturally conditioned forces of production socially “available” at any given time.”13

“Motive [bewegend] activity and passive determination of direction;”14 these are the two essentially different functions that are performed by the two fundamental elements of the social labor process within every social formation. It follows that every analysis of economic development which exclusively concerns itself with the social side [of things] is incomplete, mutilated, and false. According to Marx and Engels, [one must] begin with “the real process of production,”15 with metabolism [Stoffwechsel] of socially laboring man with nature. “In the whole conception of history up to the present this real basis of history has either been totally disregarded or else considered as a minor matter […] With this the relation of man to nature is excluded from history and hence the antithesis of nature and history is created.”16

We will furnish evidence that not only the majority of essentially non-Marxist economic histories, but also nearly all adherents of Marxism-derived economic- and social-historical works, have not satisfied the requirements put forward by Marx.

b. The Meaning of the Concept of the Mode of Production

It [is a matter of concern for us], that the role and meaning of that which Marx called the “mode of production,” “material mode of production,” or “mode of production of material life”17 has almost never been received in the sense intended by Marx. Either Marx’s core thought disappears in analysis of the concept centered around determining what is covered by it, and in polemics against a legitimately incorrect technicist view—with corresponding neglect of the concept in concrete social investigation (Cunow)18; or the concept, within which they declare the social side to be the “dominant” one, is put in a subordinate place in the overall system of presentation, such that its connection with the concept of productive forces and the connection with [the concept of] the relations of production is not clearly registered (Kautsky).19 Or the concept of the mode of production is simply lumped together with that of the relations of production (recently: Thalheimer and Mannheim).20 Against this it is indicated that mode of production and relations of production are unconditionally two separate categories in Marx (which does not eliminate their intimate dialectical connection [Zusammengehörigkeit]) and that according to the materialist conception of history, the mode of production is the determinant moment, from which the character [Art] and changes in the relations of production are derived [ableitet].21

The mode of production is the unity of material [sachlich] and personal [persönlich] productive forces in the whole concrete process of production of a determinate epoche of society. The mode of production is the method by which socially laboring man obtains his livelihood.22 Naturally they can only obtain their livelihood by social labor. Organization and qualification of human labor power solely depend on the “objective organs” of labor—to give up this idea is to give up Marx’s materialism on a decisive point.23

The “theory of the determination of labor-organization by the means of production”24 was upheld with the same insistence [Entschiedenheit] by both the “young” Marx and the Marx of Theories of Surplus Value and Capital.25 Wanting to ignore the repercussions [Rückwirking] that transfer from the personal side to the objective side would certainly be undialectical, but it would distort the basic materialist relation if one were to—in (justified) defense against the technicist viewpoint—explain, simply and without emphasizing the primary causal connection between the different elements of production (technical and otherwise)26, that “they mutually condition and influence one another.”27 The mode of production is “the real process of production,”28 i.e. the totality of the essential elements of the respective “metabolism” of man and nature, emphasizing the material side of the process, which, according to Hegel, Marx, and Lenin, is totally conditioned by external conditions, by the mechanical-chemical laws of nature.

In the concept of the mode of production—however necessary the inclusion of the social moment might be—the relation of socially laboring man to nature stands in the foreground. In the concept of the relations of production—however strongly the technical, nature-bound side must be followed—the social side of the matter stands in the foreground. The former is the determinant, the latter is the determined.

The concept of the material mode of production in the system of Marxian historical analysis occupies such a central position for this reason. In Marx’s decisive formulations, the relation of socially laboring man to nature always comes first, followed by that of men to one another. The mode of production is fixed first. The respective determinate relations of production “correspond” to it. In The German Ideology, “one aspect of human activity, the reshaping of nature by men,” is handled first. “The other aspect, the reshaping of men by men,” follows thereafter.29 Within “the real process of production,” there is “a historically created relation to nature and of individuals to one another.”30 In Capital, this means that: “…the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure”31

Regarding the connection of the mode of production to the relations of production (in which it is to be noted that the latter can be taken in a narrower or broader sense): “…in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations.”32 (Relations of production in the broader sense.) “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of […] social life”33 (Ditto). “In the paper industry generally, we may advantageously study in detail not only the distinctions between modes of production based on different means of production, but also the connection between the social relations of production and those modes of production.”34 “By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it [the bourgeoisie -K. A. W.] is continually transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process.”35 “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.”36 (Here: relations of production in the narrower and broader sense.) “…The conditions of production of his labour, i.e. his mode of production, and the labour process itself (!), must be revolutionized.”37 “…The production of relative surplus-value completely revolutionizes the technical processes of labour and the groupings into which society is divided.”38 “…A difference between two social modes of production and the social arrangements corresponding to them is involved…”39 “The bourgeois mode of production and the relations of production that correspond to it…”40 “With the constant upheavals in the mode of production, hence (!) in the relations of production, relations of exchange, and mode of living…”41

We could continue repeating similar formulations—the first volume of Capital offers a cornucopia—for longer still. But the principle, as well as the philological side of the question, should be clear. Marx, the dialectical materialist, saw the social labor process as proceeding in dependence upon its ultimate substrate, i.e. nature. This is where it is decided whether and in what direction changes in the labor process come about. Hence, the significance [definition?] of naturally conditioned productive forces. Hence the significance of the mode of production as the unity of all the productive forces, both the active, social side and the passive, direction-giving, natural side. No free will. No arbitrary choice [Willkür] in the development of material production. It is this, his materialist intransigence, that prompted Marx to designate the great epochs of production as the great historical modes of production (and not relations of production).

The labor-technical structure [Gliederung] of an epoch, that is its material foundation. It is out of this [foundation] that the basic structure of society grows. The famous formula found in The Poverty of Philosophy (“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist”42) may emphasize the individual means of production too strongly; the Marx of Capital, using a different starting point, may argue that it is the multiplicity of material conditions of production that is decisive, not an individual moment;43 but this does not mean that one moment cannot play a particularly important role. The core materialist thought is not destroyed through these and similar, later remarks, rather only refined and made firm.

“It is not what is made but how, and by what instruments of labour, that distinguishes different economic epochs.”44 This thesis stands in the center of Marx’s magnum opus, the first volume of Capital. Since Marx included natural means of labor in [the category of] unproductive means of labor, he could assert his thesis without any “clarifying” additions of the kind that Kautsky believed he had to add to the apology for his poorly understood [version of] Marx.45 In this context [Zusammenhang], we once again recall [vergegenwärtige] Marx’s observations about the “difference between different modes of production based on different means of production” with the significant addition: “the connection between the social relations of production and those modes of production” (I, S. 345). The structure of the contemporaneously [jeweils] active productive forces as a whole determines the economic structure of a historical epoch. This structure, however, is unified [faßt sich … zusammen] in the mode of production.

An economic-historical analysis that does not undermine the power—which is always emphasized even by non-Marxists—of Marx’s scientific tools,46 but rather makes full use of them, cannot be satisfied with the approach [centered around the] relations of production. The mode of production must first be laid bare. So long as this path is not taken, we lack a true Marxist procedure, and instead only have an approximation at best.

First of all, the mode of production! Within it, however, the naturally conditioned element of the productive forces must be fully illuminated. “All historical writing must set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.”47 Will shall see what this means for the concrete construction of an economic-social history of man.

3. Stagnation and Development in Humanity’s Material Production

{48} The present state of the study of races [Rassenforschung] requires us to desist from any analysis of the economic effects of that which Marx dubbed subjective natural determinacy49 [subjektive Naturbestimmtheit]. Concrete economic-historical investigation shows that the significance of this moment—which is in no way fixed and unmodifiable—is thoroughly undercut by the effects of objective natural conditions, so an approach that (by necessity) has to disregard the former moment can proceed without leaving open major sources of error.50

So much more pressing is the question concerning the ‘whether’ and ‘why’ of the changes in objective nature during the course of history. Kautsky claims in his late work that “the meaning of technology and economy for the historical process is more decisive than that of nature.” Those moments would therefore be “more important for humanity … than these [i.e. nature],” because “those that form the variable element in the human environment, whereas nature, in contrast to human society, represented a relatively constant, unalterable element.”51 It is this fixed conception of the relation between man and nature that either leads to a mechanical naturalism52 or, in a false reaction to a false presupposition, to a backslide into an idealistic postulation of free will.53 The dialectical emphasis on the activity of laboring man as well as the reference to the repercussions [Rückwirkung] of this activity on the natural substrate eliminate the apparent weakness. The historically relevant nature in question, which scarcely changes in the course of human history without human intervention, nevertheless does not simply become, as Kautsky says, ever more manipulable by more developed technology.54 [Rather,] nature itself changes in the process of [its] interplay with socially laboring man. And so Feuerbach, according to Marx and Engels’ polemic that just as easily could have been directed at Kautsky, “[did] not see that the sensuous world around him is not a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but the product of industry and of the state of society.”55

Industry and the state of society “produce” the natural environment in a twofold manner, firstly through transformation, secondly through the actualization [Aktualisierung] of essential aspects of nature.56 There is a distinction between the two forms of change, a distinction that does not eliminate the frequent (but not necessary) connection between them. Transformation of nature is the immediate result of the labor-activity of productive man: creation of an artificial steppe, artificial swamps (irrigation), cultivation of specific types of animals and plants (and the extermination of others), creation of new waterways, depletion of farmland or natural resources, fabrication of an artificial climate, etc., etc. Actualization (or de-actualization) of specific parts or properties of nature includes moments that take on relevance to man as a result of a change of standpoint [Standpunkänderung] occurring in the labor process, or which cease to be important for the process of production on these grounds. Accordingly, there can be no talk of those moments in nature that are essential for the human labor process remaining ever the same. In [certain] periods of history, nature (the cosmos) may undergo relatively little change in its total structure. In relation to socially laboring man, [nature] changes in a radical way [only] insofar as development occurs.

Insofar as development occurs. Indeed, there is no actualization of new naturally conditioned productive forces without a preceding transformation of elements of nature. The reverse does not hold true. Not every transformation leads to actualization of new moments of nature. The great problem of stationary economic orders emerges here. Australia, Africa, the East Indies, the great oriental cultural zone—all these historical complexes show us organisms of production, which, after a [period] of more or less prosperous development and with certain exceptions got into a position in which they still transformed [nature], but actualized no or almost no essentially new elements of nature. A universal economic history of humanity will have to assert that the greater part of the earth’s population belongs to a stationary sphere of life [Lebenskreis] (or belonged to one, in any case). These stagnating organisms of production were first propelled into new development by the only place where a breakthrough into industrial capitalism took place, Europe. Thus, it falls to economic history to explain not merely the development of different economic complexes, but also the incidents of halted development, of stagnation, which are no less important for the full historical picture.

Not every transformation of natural matter into human use-value leads to the exploitation of new natural forces or makes new aspects of nature relevant [aktuell] for the labor process. Without the social process of production, whatever stage it may achieve, there is no actualization. Labor alone, however, is not sufficient. Labor must contain the possibility of a corresponding novel kind of activity [Betätigung]. Where this does not obtain, the process of production remains in the same spot. [In this case, then,] there is no development, merely repetition. Historically seen, there is stagnation.

A unit of social life [gesellschaftliche Lebenseinheit] reaches a determinate stage of production: that of hunting and gathering, animal husbandry, agriculture. The beginning of activity in a new mode of production obviously cannot be one of complete utilization; a period of maturation follows. Either this maturation is realized in such a way that it merely advances to the exploitation of qualitatively similar elements and thus the quantitative advance does not reach the threshold of a novel quale [Quale]. This is the process that Müller-Lyer has given the name “lateral development.”57 Or, the [process of] maturation makes the transition to essentially new elements possible. We could call this “vertical development,” a [kind of] development in the strict and genuine sense. In the second case, it succeeds in putting new natural forces in the service of production, be it the ability to produce animals and plants or mechanical or chemical properties of industrially useful materials. But, when is this not possible?

I. The process of maturation stays stuck—and this goes for any stage [of development]—in lateral development because new naturally conditioned productive forces, on the basis of which the social productive forces could develop, are not available.

II. Alternatively, new natural forces are available, but they were ‘tapped’ [erschlossen] under different circumstances [and under] another mode of production. [This] shows that they [the natural forces] cannot be actualized due to [the] totally determined structure of the productive forces of the achieved mode of production. This may (A) be grounded in the structure of the heretofore dominant kind of production [Produktionsart] itself (e.g. in the particularities of the slave-driven agricultural economy of late antiquity) or it may (B) have its cause in the specific antagonistic relations between the heretofore dominant and emerging spheres of production (a problem in the development of industrial capitalism in the womb of the great agrarian societies of Asia). Concrete historical research will have to determine which of these cases (I or II; A or B) it is dealing with.

The metabolic process of historically determined social labor leads, in its transformation of nature, to the exploitation of new sides (properties) of nature, and if the qualitatively novel [element] is, firstly, essential for the modification of the labor process, and if it is, secondly, available not only haphazardly, but rather in general extent, then a new view of nature results for man, who is stimulated to new needs and sees new possibilities for production and consumption. Nature shows itself to man “from a new side.” After primitive groups took hold of fire, whether this was the result of a lightning strike, flowing lava, or, less possibly, an unforeseen side effect of drilling activity58 [e.g. with a bow drill -J.E.M.], wholly new aspects of nature—wood as fuel, certain constellations of terrain protecting fires—became relevant [aktuell].

After certain activities of a maturing hunter-gatherer economy [Sammelwirtschaft]—stockpiling, for example—led to understanding the possibility of conscious reproduction of useful plants, moments which were heretofore more or less irrelevant to man [working in the] new style of production (soil quality, the cultivability of certain plants) came to the foreground of his interests, his transformative social labor. The same procedure is repeated in the transition to animal husbandry, to artificial irrigation. Primitive tillage grows into use of the water supply. Success stabilizes need. From this point in time onwards, the structure of nature is revolutionized (not “in itself,” but for the [purposes] of laboring man at this stage). Rain, waterways, wind systems, and groundwater now take on a startlingly new utility for the sphere of life [Lebenskreis] of agricultural producers. A stream, which was previously taken as something neutral if not hostile, is now sought after, carefully observed, and taken into service. The actualization of rivers and seas for water transportation is one of the few significant examples in economic and cultural geography to emerge from the “sphere of commerce.” The maturation of textile work up to the point of wool spinning and weaving did not only depend on certain species of animals, but also on the land appropriate for their reproduction. The history of England and Spain shows what this actualization of arable land as sheep-runs could mean economically. The industrial history of the last century is the history of the general actualization of coal and a partial de- and re-actualization of iron (England) in connection with the decline of wood smelting and transition to coal-based ironworking. The maturation of mechanical-electrical energy production has made moving water relevant (watermills), irrelevant (steam engines), and relevant once again ([hydroelectric] turbines). Thus nothing is more false than the claim that nature stays ever the same, a constant factor, in the course of economic history. It changes, at least in simple ways, and even in multifaceted ways as development occurs. The fundamental relation is newly shaped by these changes stemming from the activity of laboring man, but is never abolished. No free will, not even for technically, productively active man. He may transform the landscape on his journey through the mountains. He may confront new tasks and prospects with every step of the path blasted into the cliffs. [But,] his path must adapt to the “passive” structure of the mountain. And he takes flight not from [the power of] his free will, but in compliance with new, deeper, and more complicated structural laws of nature. That is the dialectical, materialist theory of the Marxian conception of history.59

  1. S. 472-481. ↩

  2. W. Sombart, Die drei Nationalökonomien. München-Leipzig 1930, S. 224. ↩

  3. Auch Sombart kann nicht umhin, dies zu sehen. Er führt daher später selbst als eine Gleichförmigkeit der Willensbildung bewirkende Motivationsgrundlage an: »Charakter«, »Geist und Blut«, sowie »endlich« auch »äußere Umstände«, unter denen »ferner« auch (!) die »natürlichen Verhältnisse des Bodens und des Klimas« genannt werden (a. a. O. S. 265, 268, 270). Sombarts Zurückgreifen auf einen barbarischen geographischen Materialismus wollen wir, ohne das Prinzip hier zu diskutieren, nur kenntlich machen. Es ist ganz offenbar ein Produkt der Geringschätzung, die Sombart diesem Problemkreis entgegenbringt. Bezeichnend ist an Sombarts Verhalten immerhin dies, daß auch er dort, wo er sich der konkreten wissenschaftlichen Analyse nähert, sein theologisches Postulat faktisch fallen lassen muß. ↩

  4. Marx und Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie. Bruchstück, unter dem Titel »Marx und Engels über Feuerbach« veröffentlicht im Marx-Engels-Archiv I, Frankfurt a. M., v. J. (1926), S. 237. ↩

  5. Marx, Das Kapital, 8. Aufl., Hamburg 1919, S. 146. ↩

  6. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Ausg. Lasson, Leipzig 1923, II, S. 398. ↩

  7. W. Adoratski, Lenin über die Hegelsche Logik und Dialektik. Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, Jahrg. III, Nr. 5, S. 656. Hervorhebung von uns. ↩

  8. Zum weiterhin folgenden vgl.: Wittfogel, Geopolitik, geographischer Materialismus und Marxismus. Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, deutsche Ausgabe, Jahrg. III, Heft 1 (S. 17—51), Heft 4 (S. 485—522), Heft 5 (S. 698—735); russische Ausgabe, Jahrg. 1929, Heft 2/3, 6, 7/8. ↩

  9. Vgl. hierzu den nächstfolgenden Abschnitt. ↩

  10. Adoratski, Lenin über die Hegelsche Logik, S. 656. ↩

  11. G. Plechanow, Die Grundprobleme des Marxismus, deutsch, Ausgabe Rjazanov, Wien-Berlin 1929, S. 46. ↩

  12. Gratisnaturproduktivkräfte der Arbeit existieren sowohl in der Landwirtschaft wie in der Industrie. (W. I. Lenin, Die Agrarfrage und die »Marx-Kritiker«, Werke, deutsch, IV, I, Wien-Berlin 1928, S. 229 ff.) ↩

  13. Wittfogel, Geopolitik, geographischer Materialismus und Marxismus, a. a. O. S. 723. ↩

  14. Ebendort S. 724. ↩

  15. Marx und Engels über Feuerbach, a. a. O. S. 259. ↩

  16. Ebendort S. 260. Hervorhebungen von us. ↩

  17. Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, deutsch, 7. Aufl., Stuttgart 1919, S. 91. Das Kapital, 8. Aufl., Hamburg 1919, I, S. 449 Anm. Vorwort zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, 8. Aufl., Stuttgart 1921, S. LV. ↩

  18. H. Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts- und Staatstheorie, Berlin 1921. Vor allem II, S. 148 ff. In seinen ethnologischen Schriften arbeitet Cunow nicht mit dem Begriff der Produktionsweise. Vgl. etwa: Die Verwandtschaftsorganisation der Australneger, Stuttgart 1894. Die soziale Verfassung des Inkareichs. Stuttgart 1896. (Hier wird zwar die agrikole Produktionsweise der Inkagesellschaft beschrieben, aber erst im 5. Kapitel, S. 72 ff. und ohne den Versuch einer Ableitung der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse aus der Produktionsweise.) Ähnlich auch: Ursprung der Religion und des Gottesglaubens, Berlin 1913. Von der Produktionsweise der Gruppen und Stämme, die Cunow auf ihre religiösen Vorstellungen hin untersucht, ist stets nur nebenbei, wenn überhaupt die Rede. Sehr viel stärker hebt Cunow die Naturbeziehungen als Grundlage wirtschaftlicher Entwicklung hervor in seiner Allgemeinen Wirtschaftsgeschichte. I—III, Berlin 1926 ff.; freilich nur für das Wirtschaftsleben der Primitiven. Auch hier folgt er jedoch nicht den Marxschen Kategorien, was zur Folge hat, daß selbst da, wo der das Naturmoment berücksichtigt, dies in einer chaotischen Weise geschieht, nicht viel anders, als die alten geographischen Materialisten es, soweit sie das Wirtschaftliche heranzogen, auch getan haben. So stellt Cunow die Frage nach dem Warum der Stagnation der Australneger überhaupt nicht (I, S. 77 ff.). Bei Behandlung der Jägervölker Nordamerikas sieht er nur ihren Reichtum an L e b e n s mitteln (I, S. 169 ff. und 227 ff.). Die von Marx sofort mitgestellte Frage nach den natürlichen Grundlagen der A r b e i t s mittel — hier: Steine, im Gegensatz zu Südamerika — gliedert er seiner Fragestellung nicht ein. Ganz im Sinne der alten geographischen Materialisten tritt bei Cunow bei der Untersuchung höherer Gesellschaftsformen das Problem der Naturgrundlage ihrer Entwicklung mehr und mehr zurück. Bei der Perukultur wird die Erwähnung der Naturgrundlagen der Bewässerungswirtschaft und die Schilderung dieser Wirtschaft selbst der Darstellung der sozialen Ordnung — der Mark — angehängt (I, S. 293 ff.). Bei Analyse der römischen Agrarentwicklung, einschließlich der Sklavenlandwirtschaft, bei Untersuchung der altindischen Agrarverhältnisse oder bei Beschreibung der industriellen Entwicklung Englands ist von den Naturgrundlagen so gut wie gar nicht mehr die Rede (II, S. 56, 27 ff., 32; III, S. 449, 472, 479). Im Falle England führt dieses sein Verfahren Cunow zu handgreiflichen Ungenauigkeiten, im Falle Indien zu einer völligen Fehlanalyse. ↩

  19. K. Kautsky, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, Berlin 1927, I, S. 737 ff. Nachdem Kautsky über »Die Anpassung an die Natur« gesprochen, nachdem er einen ganzen Abschnitt von 16 Kapiteln der Technik gewidmet hat, beschäftigt er sich im Abschnitt »Die Ökonomie« in einem vier Seiten langen Kapitel mit der Frage der Produktionsweise. ↩

  20. A. Thalheimer, Einführung in den dialektischen Materialismus, Wien-Berlin 1928, S. 134. K. Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, Bonn 1929, S. 92 ff. ↩

  21. Die Stellung Bucharins unterscheidet sich von derjenigen der Vorgenannten in einer Reihe von Punkten. (Siehe Wittfogel, Geopolitik usw., S. 733 Ann.) Doch hat gerade auch er über seiner Untersuchung der einzelnen Elemente des Produktionsprozesses die Präzisierung des Begriffes der Produktionsweise vernachlässigt (Theorie des historischen Materialismus, deutsch, Hahnburg 1921, vor allem S. 121 ff.). ↩

  22. Marx, Elend der Philosophie, S. 91, Kapital. I, S. 48 Ann. ↩

  23. Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert. 4. Aufl. Stuttgart 1921, S. 353. ↩

  24. Brief Marxens an Engels vom 7. Juli 1866. Briefwechsel, Ausg. Rjazanov. Gesamtausgabe, III. Abtlg., Bd. III. Berlin 1930, S. 345. Hervorhebung im Original. ↩

  25. Elend der Philosophie, S. 91, 97 und 117. Für den »späten« Marx vgl. Wittfogel, Geopolitik, a. a. O. S. 121 Anm. ↩

  26. Die »drei konstitutiven Elemente des Arbeitsprozesses« sind nach Cunow: Arbeitskraft, Natur und Technik. (Die Marxsche Geschichts-… theorie, II, S. 163.) Daß sich diese Formel nicht mit derjenigen Marxens über die einfachen Elemente des Arbeitsprozesses deckt und daß sie zugleich sachlich unrichtig ist, haben wir in unserem mehrfach erwähnten Aufsatz nachgewiesen. (Geopolitik usw. S. 507 ff.) ↩

  27. Cunow a. a. O. II, S. 165. ↩

  28. Marx und Engels über Feuerbach, S. 259. ↩

  29. Ebendort S. 254. ↩

  30. Ebendort S. 259. ↩

  31. Kapital III, 2, S. 353. ↩

  32. Elend der Philosophie, S. 91. ↩

  33. Vorwort zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, LV. ↩

  34. Kapital, I, S. 345. ↩

  35. Ebendort S. 452. ↩

  36. Ebendort S. 452. Zitiert aus dem »Kommunistischen Manifest«. (Vgl. dieses, Ausgabe Duncker, Berlin 1923, S. 24.) ↩

  37. Kapital, I, S. 278. ↩

  38. Ebendort S. 474. ↩

  39. Kapital, III, 2, S. 134. ↩

  40. Theorien über den Mehrwert, III, S. 492. ↩

  41. Ebendort S. 513. ↩

  42. Elend der Philosophie, S. 91. ↩

  43. Kapital, I, S. 478. ↩

  44. Ebendort S. 142. ↩

  45. Kautsky, Ethik und materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, 6. und 7. Tausend, Stuttgart 1910, S. 113—117. Vgl. auch die Abschwächungen, die Kautsky in seinem Alterswerk über den historischen Materialismus macht (a. a. O. I, S. 741). Einer klaren Stellungnahme zu den entscheidenden Thesen Marxens wird in beiden Fällen aus dem Wege gegangen. Daß Kautsky im Grunde der Meinung war, Marxens Auffassung sei eine technizistische, läßt sich aus dem Umstände schließen, daß er in seinem Vorwort zu Gorters Schrift über den historischen Materialismus (deutsch, Stuttgart 1919) mit keinem Worte gegen Gorters technizistische Darstellung des historischen Materialismus Verwahrung einlegt. Gegen die Gleichsetzung von Produktionsweise und Technik, wie sie sich bei Gorter findet, hat Cunow mit Recht Einspruch erhoben (a. a. O. II, S. 224). ↩

  46. Wir erinnern an Max Webers Hinweis auf »die eminente, ja einzigartige heuristische Bedeutung« aller »spezifisch-marxistischen Gesetze« und Entwicklungskonstruktionen, deren idealtypische Auslegung durch M. Weber hier nicht diskutiert werden soll (M. Weber, Die »Objektivität« sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen 1922, S. 205). Wir erinnern an Troeltschs Annäherung an die Grundformel des historischen Materialismus (Der Historismus und seine Probleme, Tübingen 1922, etwa S. 344 ff. und 756). Wir erinnern schließlich an Sombarts Vorwort zum III. Bande seines »Modernen Kapitalismus« (München-Leipzig 1928), wo Sombart erklärt: »Mit seiner genialen Fragestellung hat er (Marx) der ökonomischen Wissenschaft für ein Jahrhundert die Wege fruchtbarer Forschung gewiesen. Alle Sozialökonomen, die sich diese Fragestellung nicht zu eigen zu machen wußten, waren zur Unfruchtbarkeit verdammt, wie wir heute schon mit Sicherheit feststellen können« (III, I, S. XIX). ↩

  47. Marx und Engels über Feuerbach, S. 237 ff. ↩

  48. S. 481-486. ↩

  49. Einleitung zu einer Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. (Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, S. XLVII.) Für weitere Äußerungen von Marx und Engels über die Frage siehe: Wittfogel, Geopolitik usw., S. 509 ff. ↩

  50. Vgl. Wittfogel, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chinas., Bd. I., Leipzig 1931. »Die anthropologischen Grundlagen«, S. 8—21; ferner: »Die Qualifikation der chinesischen Arbeitskraft«, S. 132—152. ↩

  51. Kautsky, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung, I, S. 866 ff. Ähnlich argumentiert auch Bucharin, wenn er erklärt: »Jene Elemente, die an sich in der Natur vorkommen, sind hier mehr oder weniger beständig da. Sie können daher die Veränderungen nicht erklären« (Theorie des historischen Materialismus, S. 133). ↩

  52. »Die naturalistische Auffassung der Geschichte, wie z. B. mehr oder weniger bei Draper und anderen Naturforschern, als ob die Natur ausschließlich auf den Menschen wirke, die Naturbedingungen überall seine geschichtliche Entwicklung ausschließlich bedingten, ist daher einseitig und vergißt, daß der Mensch auch auf die Natur zurückwirkt, sie verändert, sich neue Existenzbedingungen schafft« (F. Engels, Dialektik und Natur, Marx-Engels-Archiv, II, Frankfurt 1927, S. 165). ↩

  53. Der Technizismus führt, falls nicht die Naturseite im Sinne der oben wiedergegebenen Gedanken Hegels und Lenins doch als das letztlich Bestimmende erkannt wird, seine Anhänger in eine Position, deren notwendige Konsequenz die Annahme der Willensfreiheit ist. Bucharin fühlt das sehr wohl. Nachdem er gesagt hat: »Verändert wird die gesellschaftliche Technik«, fügt er im Nebensatz an: »die sich natürlich an das anpaßt, was in der Natur vorhanden ist« (a. a. O. S. 133). Nebensätze solcher Art sind nun gewiß sehr bezeichnend dafür, daß ein Theoretiker die Unrichtigkeit seiner Position fühlt, doch genügen sie natürlich nicht, die in den Hauptsätzen aufgestellte, den ganzen Gedankengang tragende falsche technizistische These aufzuheben. ↩

  54. Kautsky a. a. O. S. 869. ↩

  55. Marx und Engels über Feuerbach, Marx-Engels-Archiv, I, S. 242. ↩

  56. Über die Stellung von Marx und Engels zu diesem Problem werden wir an anderer Stelle eingehender sprechen. Man vergleiche zunächst außer den in den vorhergehenden Anmerkungen namhaft gemachten Ausspruchen die wichtigen prinzipiellen Äußerungen Markens in seinem Brief an Engels vom 3. Oktober 1866 (Briefwechsel, Ausgabe Rjazanov, III, S. 361). Hier wird speziell auch das Moment der Aktualisierung hervorgehoben. Die Termini »Transformierung« und »Aktualisierung« zur Kennzeichnung der beiden wesentlichen Formen der Änderung der Natur im Geschichtsverlauf stammen von uns. ↩

  57. F. Müller-Lyer, Die Zähmung der Normen, I, München 1918, S. 224 ff. Das Problem des Zusammenhanges — oder eines eventuellen Nichtzusammenhangs — zwischen Transformierung und Aktualisierung in dem von uns behandelten Sinne hat Müller-Lyer jedoch nicht gesehen, jedenfalls nicht in begrifflich klarer und seine Analyse leitender Weise ↩

  58. K. Weule, Die Kultur der Kulturlosen, 15. Aufl., Stuttgart 1921, S. 56 ff. H. Klaatsch, Der Werdegang der Menschheit und die Entstehung der Kultur, 2. Aufl., Berlin usw. 1922, S. 96 ff. K. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentralbrasiliens, 2. Aufl., Berlin 1897, S. 212 ff. Auch wenn die Zähnung des Feuers nicht unmittelbar aus dem Produktionsprozeß hervorgewachsen sein sollte, wie das die Kuhnsche Theorie annahm, bleibt die Tatsache bestehen, daß das Feuer erst auf einer ganz bestimmten Stufe der gesellschaftlichen Produktion für den Menschen aktuell geworden ist. Die Einbeziehung des Feuers ist unbedingt als Akt der Ausreifung der vorher erreichten Produktionsweise anzusehen. ↩

  59. Der Kulturgeograph muß, wo er konkret denkt, dieser Konzeption sich anschließen. So betont Ratzel mit allem Recht, “daß der Unterschied zwischen Natur- und Kulturvolk nicht in dem Grade, sondern in der Art dieses Zusammenhangs mit der Natur zu suchen ist. Die Kultur ist Naturfreiheit nicht im Sinne der völligen Loslösung, sondern in dem der vielfältigen weiteren und breiteren Verbindung . . . Wir werden nicht von der Natur im ganzen freier, indem wir sie eingehender ausbeuten ud studieren, wir machen uns nur von einzelnen Zufällen vervielfältigen” (Anthropogeographie, 4. Aufl. Stuttgart 1921, I, S. 41). Unsere hier bekundete Übereinstemmuing mit einem Gedanken Ratzels schließt eine kirtische Stellungnahme zu seinem geschichtsphilosphischen Gesamtsystem nicht aus (Vgl. Wittfogel, Geopolitik usw. S. 26 ff.). ↩