 the development of the Stone Age many thousands of years ago. This primitive period reached its peak in the Aztec, Mayan and Incan cultures, and came to a close with the invasion of the white man at the end of the fifteenth century.
The second great epoch begins with the bringing of civilization by the Europeans. It proceeds through the various phases in the formation and transformation of bourgeois society which have culminated in the national and world supremacy of the American monopolists. The third stage, arising out of the second, had its inception with the birth of large-scale industry and the wage-working class.
What are the relations between these three overlapping epochs which mark off decisive steps in the advancement of American society? It is characteristic of the low theoretical level of .bourgeois historians that they do not even broach this question, although it is fundamental in American history. They view capitalism as the sole system of society with solid substance and enduring structure; all others are passing phantoms. Indian tribalism, as we have noted, is to them a forgotten relic; socialism a horrible specter or an impossible fantasy – while civil society in its capitalist forms remains an eternal necessity. Consequently they cannot see or admit that there are distinct stages of American history; that these distinct epochs are interlinked in a necessary chain of connection; or that any significant sequence of development can be discerned in the complex social process.
Nevertheless, behind the sequence of social forms which bridged the transition from savagery to civilization on this continent, there is a lawfulness. Although it had endured for thousands of years, the communal organization of the Indian tribes had to give way before the superior forces of private property. When the feudalists tied up with English rule and later the slaveholders blocked the further development of the productive forces, they, too, were extinguished by the creators of capitalist power.
The bourgeois thinkers concentrate attention upon that side of American historical development whereby precapitalist methods of production and forms of property were displaced by ascending bourgeois relations. They largely ignore other aspects of the same process. It is true that the regimes following Indian tribalism multiplied the powers of production through the practices and passions of private ownership and “free enterprise,” improved techniques, widened culture and opened new vistas to mankind. But these acquisitions had to be paid for by increased inequality and the intensified oppression of the rulers over the ruled. Precious qualities of freedom and fraternity were lost in the shift from primitive collectivism to modern capitalism. As a result of the prevailing class division of society, humanity has remained stunted and defective.
Yet bourgeois thinkers assume that the triumph of capitalism coincides with the highest attainable summit of human existence. History is to be halted while the American people perpetually salute their capitalist commanders in the reviewing stand. How does such an outlook essentially differ from that of the slaveholders who could not adjust themselves to the advent of higher social forms?
In reality, the steps leading to the consolidation of capitalism were only a prelude to the building of a truly civilized life for the American people, and not at all the crowning acts of American civilization. These remain to be taken as the next great stage of our evolution matures and as we move toward socialism.
In the anti-Marxist polemics of spokesmen for capitalism, there is a fatal inconsistency. On one hand, they point to the unlimited potentialities of abundance in -the manufacture of motor cars, atom bombs, supersonic planes, and other things – in a phrase, to the dynamic nature of our productive forces. On the other hand, they demand that these productive forces remain forever encased in capitalist ownership. While everything else is subject to improvement, capitalist control of the productive facilities 