Quiz: Letters on Historical Materialism

All 33 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. How, according to Engels, do the masses learn?

   Only through the consequences of their own mistakes By reading Capital From the lectures and pamphlets of party intellectuals From the bourgeois press
2. 2. Which work of Marx does Engels single out as an excellent application of the theory?

   The Poverty of Philosophy Wage Labour and Capital The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte The Holy Family
3. 3. What does Engels say about the relation of science and technique?

   Technique depends entirely on pure science Science depends far more on the needs of technique than the reverse Science and technique are unrelated Universities are the main source of all technical progress
4. 4. What, according to Engels, do Barth and similar critics lack?

   Statistics Dialectics Knowledge of Greek Political courage
5. 5. Which ironic example does Engels give of treating economic doctrines as eternal truths?

   Charlemagne founding a central bank to finance his campaigns against the Saxons Luther nailing a treatise on the theory of rent to the church door at Wittenberg Caesar abolishing the Roman corn duties in the name of Manchester principles Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Philip Augustus bringing in free trade, not crusades
6. 6. What happens as a field of study moves further from economics towards pure ideology?

   It ceases to change It runs exactly parallel to economic development It becomes more strictly determined Its development shows more accidents and zigzags
7. 7. Why can economically backward countries lead in philosophy?

   Philosophy has no connection with economics Backward countries leave the educated more leisure for thought Their rulers patronise philosophers Philosophy builds on thought material handed down by predecessors
8. 8. What image does Engels use for how individual wills produce a historical result?

   A river flowing to the sea through many channels An infinite series of parallelograms of forces A pyramid of social classes A clockwork mechanism
9. 9. Why does Engels say he and Marx are partly to blame for overemphasis on economics?

   They had to stress the main principle against those who denied it They wrote only for economists They never wrote about politics They believed economics was the only determining factor in history
10. 10. What does Engels include in the “economic relations” that form the basis of history?

    Only the ownership of land and the forms of property in it, apart from technique The technique of production and transport, geography, earlier survivals Only wages and profits, since the struggle over them decides all other relations Only the movement of money and prices, which governs every other social relation
11. 11. What do superstructural elements often determine, according to the Bloch letter?

    The economic basis itself Only the outcome of wars The form of historical struggles Nothing at all
12. 12. Where had Schmidt’s letter travelled before Engels answered it?

    In his pocket to the North Cape and the Norwegian fjords To America with Aveling Through the hands of the Prussian frontier police To Zurich and back
13. 13. What does Engels say Barth has failed to see?

    That the economic factor can be read off directly from philosophy, religion and law That Marx regarded ideas as the sole driving force of history, and economics as secondary That material conditions are primary, yet ideas exert a secondary reaction on them That the material conditions of life change only when men first change their ideas
14. 14. Why does law in a modern state reflect economic conditions inexactly?

    Lawyers are ignorant of economics It must also be internally consistent Judges are bribed It is copied from Roman law
15. 15. What are the three ways the state can react on economic development?

    Tax production, borrow against it, or print paper money to pay for its own needs Conquer new markets, found colonies abroad, or open the country to free trade Reform itself gradually, provoke a revolt against it, or abdicate to a new class Go the same way, go against it, or cut off some directions and prescribe others
16. 16. To what does Engels compare economic, political and other reflexes?

    Images in the eye, which appear upside down Shadows cast on the wall of Plato’s cave by the fire Echoes in a mountain valley, which come back weakened Reflections of the hills in a still mountain lake
17. 17. What happens when trade becomes independent of production?

    It follows its own laws and reacts on production It disappears It becomes identical with production It ceases to depend on production in any way at all
18. 18. What would be true if economics were the only determining factor?

    History would be wholly unknowable, since no one could foresee an economic change Applying the theory to any period would be easier than solving a simple equation There would be no class struggle, since every class would follow its interest blindly The state would never have arisen, since economics needs no political power to rule
19. 19. What did Marx say of the French “Marxists” of the late 1870s?

    “They should read Hegel before they read me” “They understand Capital better than I do” “All I know is that I am not a Marxist” “They are the true heirs of my doctrine”
20. 20. Where, according to Engels, did brother–sister marriage still occur in the nineteenth century?

    In Crete Among the Ptolemies of Egypt In Hawaii’s royal family In the Prussian nobility
21. 21. What does Engels conclude about individual wills that fail to achieve their aims?

    They determine history alone They count for nothing They cancel each other out and leave no trace Each contributes to the resultant and is included in it
22. 22. What does Engels admit he and Marx neglected?

    The economic content of political and legal ideas The role of the peasantry in the revolutions The history of Prussia How ideological notions arise, their form
23. 23. What did the Volks-Tribüne debate on future distribution overlook, according to Engels?

    That money will be abolished That distribution depends on how much there is to distribute That distribution must follow the quantity of labour for all time That workers prefer equal shares
24. 24. What was the object of the European conquest of India, according to Engels?

    Settling European farmers Converting India to Christianity Imports from India Exports to India
25. 25. How does the state arise in Engels’s account to Schmidt?

    From people given common functions who become independent From a social contract freely made among equal individuals From divine right, conferred on the first kings by the priests From the conquest of one tribe by another, and from nothing else
26. 26. How do the inheritance laws of England and France react on the economy?

    By setting the rate of interest on mortgages By affecting the distribution of property They have no economic effect By fixing wages
27. 27. Which examples does Engels give of things it would be ridiculous to explain purely economically?

    The French Revolution and the drafting of the Code Napoléon The steam engine and the railway Every small German state and the High German consonant shift The Reformation and the Peasant War
28. 28. What, according to Engels, is the “ultimately determining factor” in history?

    The production and reproduction of real life Geography and climate The ideas of great men The form of the state
29. 29. How does Engels define ideology in the letter to Mehring?

    A deliberate lie, knowingly told by the ruling class to deceive the masses A process of thought done consciously, but with a false consciousness The science of the origin of ideas in sensation, as the French defined it Any system of ideas whatever, true or false, held by a social class
30. 30. What does Engels ask to show that political power matters economically?

    Why fight for proletarian dictatorship if state power is economically impotent? Why do capitalists trouble to vote, if the economy decides everything for them? Why did Bismarck need the Anti-Socialist Law if the workers’ party had no power? Why do governments fight wars at all, if conquest can never change economic life?
31. 31. In societies without a collective plan, what governs history according to the letter to Borgius?

    Necessity, whose complement and form of appearance is accident Providence, working its purpose out through blind human action The will of great men, who shape events by their decisions Pure chance, which no science can reduce to any law
32. 32. What does Engels say about Napoleon?

    That without him there would have been no revolution That he was a mere puppet of the Paris bankers and the army contractors That this Corsican was chance; another would have filled the place That his rise was economically determined in every detail of his career
33. 33. How does Engels describe the materialist conception of history?

    As a finished system that already answers every historical question As a political programme to guide the party’s day-to-day agitation As above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction As a branch of Hegel’s logic applied to the facts of economic life