The specialization of the hand – which may mean the tool, implies specifically human activity, the transforming reaction of man on nature, on production. Man alone has succeeded in impressing his stamp on nature and altering the aspect and climate of his dwelling place. And he has accomplished this primarily and essentially by means of the hand. It is a step by step process with the development of the hand of the brain; there came consciousness first of the conditions for producing separate results useful in practice and later, among the more favoured peoples and arising from the former, of insight into the natural laws governing them. And with the rapidly growing knowledge of the laws of nature with that, the means for reacting on nature also grew; the hand alone would never have achieved the steam engine if man's brain had not developed correlatively and side by side with it, and partly owing to it.
With man we enter history. This history is made for man, and in so far as they themselves take part in it, this occurs without their knowledge or desire. On the other hand, the more human beings become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their history themselves, consciously, the less becomes the influence of unforeseen effects and uncontrolled forces on this history, and the more accurately does the historical result correspond to the aim laid down in advance. If, however, we apply this measure to human history, to that of even the most developed peoples of the present day, we find that there still exists a colossal discrepancy between the proposed aims and the results arrived at, that unforeseen effects predominate, and that uncontrolled forces are far more powerful than those set in motion according to plan. And this cannot be otherwise as long as the most essential historical activity of men is particularly subject to the interplay of the unintended effects of uncontrolled forces and achieves its desired end only by way of exception and, much more frequently, the exact opposite. In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously. And what is the consequence? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses, and every ten years a great crash. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only the conscious organization of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can elevate mankind above the rest of the animal world socially in the same way that production in general has done this for men specifically. Historical development makes such an organization daily more indispensable, but also more possible every day. From it there will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, especially the natural sciences, too, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it into insignificance.
With man we enter history. This history is made for man, and in so far as they themselves take part in it, this occurs without their knowledge or desire. On the other hand, the more human beings become removed from animals in the narrower sense of the word, the more they make their history themselves, consciously, the less becomes the influence of unforeseen effects and uncontrolled forces on this history, and the more accurately does the historical result correspond to the aim laid down in advance. If, however, we apply this measure to human history, to that of even the most developed peoples of the present day, we find that there still exists a colossal discrepancy between the proposed aims and the results arrived at, that unforeseen effects predominate, and that uncontrolled forces are far more powerful than those set in motion according to plan. And this cannot be otherwise as long as the most essential historical activity of men is particularly subject to the interplay of the unintended effects of uncontrolled forces and achieves its desired end only by way of exception and, much more frequently, the exact opposite. In the most advanced industrial countries we have subdued the forces of nature and pressed them into the service of mankind; we have thereby infinitely multiplied production, so that a child now produces more than a hundred adults previously. And what is the consequence? Increasing overwork and increasing misery of the masses, and every ten years a great crash. Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind, and especially on his countrymen, when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal state of the animal kingdom. Only the conscious organization of social production, in which production and distribution are carried on in a planned way, can elevate mankind above the rest of the animal world socially in the same way that production in general has done this for men specifically. Historical development makes such an organization daily more indispensable, but also more possible every day. From it there will date a new epoch of history, in which mankind itself, and with mankind all branches of its activity, especially the natural sciences, too, will experience an advance that will put everything preceding it into insignificance.