female chastity, and women usually accepted their teaching; both
really believed the doctrine, but its persistence was only possible
through the economic power of men. This led erring women to punishment
here on earth, which made further punishment hereafter seem probable.
When the economic penalty ceased, the conviction of sinfulness
gradually decayed. In such changes we see the collapse of "bourgeois
ideology."

But in spite of the fundamental importance of economic facts in
determining the politics and beliefs of an age or nation, I do not
think that non-economic factors can be neglected without risks of
errors which may be fatal in practice.

The most obvious non-economic factor, and the one the neglect of which
has led Socialists most astray, is nationalism. Of course a nation,
once formed, has economic interests which largely determine its
politics; but it is not, as a rule, economic motives that decide what
group of human beings shall form a nation. Trieste, before the war,
considered itself Italian, although its whole prosperity as a port
depended upon its belonging to Austria. No economic motive can account
for the opposition between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. In Eastern
Europe, the Balkanization produced by self-determination has been
obviously disastrous from an economic point of view, and was demanded
for reasons which were in essence sentimental. Throughout the war
wage-earners, with only a few exceptions, allowed themselves to be
governed by nationalist feeling, and ignored the traditional Communist
exhortation: "Workers of the world, unite." According to Marxian
orthodoxy, they were misled by cunning capitalists, who made their
profit out of the slaughter. But to any one capable of observing
psychological facts, it is obvious that this is largely a myth.