"History and the Marxian Method was the outcome of an unconscious compact which Butterfield had made with those of his pupils who were Marxists—a diplomatic attempt to keep them on the rails of orthodox historical study by widening the range of "bourgeois history". It accepted as the "clue" to a great deal of bourgeois thinking the assumption that "in the last analysis ideas...determine the course of history", and it accepted the Marxist allegation that this sort of analysis lay "in the centre of our bourgeois system". It presented Marxism as a valuable ally in the fight against Whiggery and Liberalism."