I saw a review of Paul Barth’s book [Die Geschichtsphilosophie Hegels und der Hegelianer bis auf Marx und Hartmann] by that bird of ill omen, Moritz Wirth, in the Vienna Deutsche Worte, and this book itself, as well. I will have a look at it, but I must say that if “little Moritz” is right when he quotes Barth as stating that the sole example of the dependence of philosophy, etc., on the material conditions of existence which he can find in all Marx’s works is that Descartes declares animals to the machines, then I am sorry for the man who can write such a thing. And if this man has not yet discovered that while the material mode of existence is the primum agens [primary agent, prime cause] this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with a secondary effect, he cannot possibly have understood the subject he is writing about. However, as I said, all this is secondhand and little Moritz is a dangerous friend. The materialist conception of history has a lot of them nowadays, to whom it serves as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx used to say, commenting on the French “Marxists” of the late [18]70s: “All I know is that I am not a Marxist.”

The Base, ie the Mode of Production, is the primary mover. Capitalism is the creator of Liberalism, not the other way around. However, upon acknowledging this, some people fail to “close the loop,” seeing the Superstructure, ie culture, merely as a “projection” from the Base, a constant emittance, rather than 2 components that develop each other dialectically, in spirals.