economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious
dramatization of human society into the "class conflict." Nothing was
overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this "conflict." Marx
depicted a great melodramatic conflict, in which all the virtues were
embodied in the proletariat and all the villainies in the capitalist.
In the end, as always in such dramas, virtue was to be rewarded and
villainy punished. The working class was the temporary victim of a
subtle but thorough conspiracy of tyranny and repression. Capitalists,
intellectuals and the BOURGEOISIE were all "in on" this diabolic
conspiracy, all thoroughly familiar with the plot, which Marx was so
sure he had uncovered. In the last act was to occur that catastrophic
revolution, with the final transformation scene of the Socialist
millenium. Presented in "scientific" phraseology, with all the authority
of economic terms, "Capital" appeared at the psychological moment.
The heaven of the traditional theology had been shattered by Darwinian
science, and here, dressed up in all the authority of the new science,
appeared a new theology, the promise of a new heaven, an earthly
paradise, with an impressive scale of rewards for the faithful and
ignominious punishments for the capitalists.

Critics have often been puzzled by the tremendous vitality of this work.
Its predictions have never, despite the claims of the faithful, been
fulfilled. Instead of diminishing, the spirit of nationalism has
been intensified tenfold. In nearly every respect Marx's predictions
concerning the evolution of historical and economic forces have been
contradicted by events, culminating in the great war. Most of his
followers, the "revolutionary" Socialists, were swept into the whirlpool
of nationalistic militarism. Nevertheless, this "Bible of the working
classes" still enjoys a tremendous authority as a scientific work. By
some it is regarded as an economic treatise; by others as a philosophy