ABSTRACT
The progress and outcome of the work of the more sisters in the Mendip villages demonstrate conclusively how it is impossible to make any ultimate separation between the economic basis and the ideological superstructure. Although the formal structure of his reasoning points to economic determinism as the root cause of the religious desolation of the period, Saunders qualifies the rigour of the logical argument in exactly the same way as do Marx and Engels. After appearing to assert the absolute dependence of religion on economics, he then proceeds to invert the argument. The point to be made with regard to the possible determining influence of economics is that the conditions which the Reverend Saunders is describing had existed for a very long time. The economic structure of Wales in the eighteenth century has been outlined. Unfortunately, Marxism leaves us in entire ignorance of the processes by which economic forces and movements are converted into ideology.
