Socialist Tradition

CHAPTER XII

SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

(a) MARX AND ENGELS

DURING the last generation Marx has occasioned such a devastating torrent of exposition, criticism, deification and denigration, that here, if anywhere, one might be justified in waving the still curious reader to the ample and accessible literature, pressed down and running over, which may so easily be found elsewhere on the subject. Yet though this inordinate flood of books, and of books upon books, might well afford any prudent man complete justification for refusing to write one further book on Marx, it can hardly be invoked as an adequate plea for silence where, as here, we are concerned with successive phases of socialist thought and with their mutual inter-reactions. Accordingly, much as a sensitive typewriter may rebel against being called upon to perform so hackneyed a task, it is necessary that we should seek to reproduce sufficient of the essential core of Marx to understand his place in the succession. Unfortunately, on any line of approach, it is a rather large and intractable core, with numerous facets.

We are not here concerned with Marx’s biography, except in so far as it is related to, or helps to explain, his doctrine. He was born in 1818 in Trier, and like most of the theorists of socialism he belonged to what he himself would have called the Bourgeoisie. He was of Jewish descent, but his family had undergone a recent conversion to Christianity. It has been ingeniously suggested that, in an anti-semitic environment, the converted Jew suffers doubly. He is treated as a Jew, without having the moral support and consolation of knowing that he is one of God’s chosen people. Marx married, as the Victorians would have said, ‘above him.’ His wife, Jenny von Westphalen, was of a family with distinctly superior connections, a fact of which rather oddly (or perhaps not so oddly) Marx seems to have been rather proud. From his entrance upon the world until 1848 he lived the life of a professional revolutionary, with no rest for the sole of his foot. From 1848 until 1883 he was a political exile, living, but for minor interludes, in London. The year 1848 represents a landmark in Marx’s life: he remained curiously a man of 1848. The conditions under which he did his work in London, above all in the earlier years, make it something of a miracle that he ever did any work at all. The real hero, or martyr, of the Marx household was his wife: but it is unwise of a revolutionary to marry a Jenny von Westphalen and take her to Dean Street. She seems to have been something of a saint; but even a saint may be pardoned for becoming neurotic if she happens to be married to a Karl Marx. No one so qualified as she to claim for herself the familiar hymn: ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.’ In a world full of the glorification of Marx, somewhat scant justice has been done to his suffering wife.

Further, Marx was throughout his London life increasingly dependent in a sense and to an extent which would have been entirely repugnant to any ordinary man, and which in his innermost soul must have been repugnant even to him, successful as he may have been in concealing it. It was Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) who kept the Marx household going, and without his unstinted and inexhaustible generosity it would probably have foundered quite early in the days of London exile. All these circumstances in his life naturally tended to undermine Marx’s self-respect and confidence, and to produce in him an almost complete example of the manifestations of the Inferiority Complex. He was suspicious of everyone; he quarrelled sooner or later with everyone—Engels alone excepted; he was arrogant and self-assertive; for all who did not acknowledge his superiority, he had the supremest contempt. In his heart there was envy and bitterness and hatred; for the world at large he had neither tolerance nor love.

Engels, who has been mentioned as the material saviour of the Marx household, was, however, much more than that. The collaboration of Marx and Engels is surely something that is unique in literary history. Many of the most significant Marxian productions—including The Communist Manifesto, ‘the best thing Marx ever wrote’—were in fact written jointly. It was Engels who edited (and some would suggest that he rather more than edited) the second and third volumes of Capital after Marx’s death. For almost forty years there was scarcely a thought of Marx which was not also a thought of Engels. He was the one friend whose friendship for Marx endured, though indeed it was sorely tried on one occasion. That it did endure was due solely to Engels’ extraordinary willingness to play second fiddle and to subordinate himself in all things. He tied himself to an uncongenial occupation (which, strictly speaking, it ought to have been against their joint-conscience for him to accept) entirely in order to gain the means which enabled Marx to frequent the British Museum as a full-timer. There have been many instances in history where a man has sacrificed everything for a woman, and doubtless just as many where a woman has sacrificed everything for a man. It is not easy to find a parallel to the case of Engels who, for the sake of a common cause, gave his whole life in order that another, with no claims of blood or relationship upon him, should be exempted from the necessity of earning his own livelihood. Despite his own very considerable independent work, Engels has until recently stood somewhat overmuch in the shadow of Marx. The ‘Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute’ in Moscow has, by its title, at last done tardy justice to Engels’ place in the scheme of things.

Marx was the founder of ‘Scientific Socialism,’ as opposed to ‘Utopian Socialism.’ The distinction, of which Marx and Engels were very conscious, may call for a preliminary word of explanation. The ‘Utopians’ were pre-eminently Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen. In The Communist Manifesto, the reproach directed against them is that they had no knowledge of the Proletariat as such; they made their appeal to the whole of society, by preference to the ruling classes; they dreamed fantastic pictures of a new society, and even sought to create ‘duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem.’ To the Utopians, socialism was the expression of absolute truth.1 They appealed to morality; whereas, ‘from a scientific standpoint, this appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch further.’2 The Utopians constructed the outlines of a new society out of their own heads,3 and looked round, like Fourier, for a capitalist to ‘launch’ it. In other words, they did not have a philosophy of history. The function of scientific socialism was to reveal socialism as ‘a necessary product of historical development.’ Given a knowledge of the laws according to which human history unrolls itself, the scientific socialist could show, with a wealth of obstetrical metaphor for which they manifested a marked partiality (invoking wombs, midwives and umbilical cords),4 that the existing capitalistic society could not fail to give birth to a socialist order. The appeal to morality and justice, the vision and the dream, were replaced by an understanding and acceptance of historical development.

Many commentators have stressed the view that Marx can in no respect lay claim to ‘originality.’ It may be true; it is certainly immaterial. It may not be so in the world of science and scientific discovery; but in the realm of thought, there are few ideas which, with a little ingenuity, cannot be shown to have had a long ante-natal history, or perhaps to be but the restatement of something suggested out of due season to an earlier generation. In the words of a musical critic, dealing with the somewhat analogous question of musical plagiarism, ‘it is not the tune that matters, but what you do with the tune.’5 In the same way, it is doubtless true that the component parts of Marxian thought can be traced to a multitude of sources. He collected his bricks from many masons’ yards; but he used them to construct a building which was very much according to his own design.

The sources of Marx may be glanced at, even if in the space available here the glance may be little more than an enumeration. Firstly, there was Hegel, who dominated his earlier years; for Marx belonged to a generation when Hegelianism was as fashionable as Fabianism in the late ‘nineties. From Hegel he learned the principle of development by contrast and by conflict. Every state, condition or proposition calls forth its negation, which in turn provokes the negation of the negation, which contains in itself the original positive and the subsequent negation. Every thesis reacts to its anti-thesis, which leads to the synthesis, combining both thesis and anti-thesis. Hegel had yoked his apparatus to the car of idealism. It was Feuerbach who made Marx a ‘materialist,’ but though Marx abandoned Hegel’s idealism, he continued throughout life to think in terms of the Hegelian dialectic, and to find particular pleasure in anything that might seem to exemplify the negation of the negation. Hegelianism is the kind of thing that ought to be left to Hegelians who presumably know the secret of Hegel. In less expert hands, as in those of Proudhon, it seems to the illiterate and ignorant outsider to become a mere toy which enables every swing of every pendulum to be regarded as the embodiment of a great philosophical principle.1 Enough here to note that it was from Hegel that Marx learned that development, the unfolding of events, results from the conflicts of opposites, leading to a synthesis on a new plane.2

From the earlier French socialists, with whom he had contacts during the period of his residence in Paris, it is probable that Marx derived the phrase, if not precisely his conception, of the ‘class war.’ For indeed, the idea of the class war, if one so chooses, goes back to a famous phrase in Plato’s Republic; but before Marx, the ‘class war’ (expressed or implied) had been conceived rather in terms of the conflict of interests between rich and poor. Neither Marx nor Engels was interested in the poor as such; like a good deal of modern social legislation, they tended to restrict their interest to ‘employed persons’; and the class war, from being the conflict between rich and poor, became the war between employer and employed—which is not by any means necessarily the same war. On the economic side, the affiliation and sources of Marx are clear beyond all shadow of dubiety. He is merely the continuator of classical English Political Economy. To the outward eye of the unsophisticated man, the Marxian theory of value is no more than Ricardo transcribed, doubtless supported by a proof which Ricardo surely would have disdained. It is necessary to state this identity with extreme circumspection, for in truth (as we shall see presently) no one quite knows what Marx meant by value, and consequently no one can say with assurance what the Marxian theory of value involves. But as a first approximation, and keeping in mind the possibility that Marx may have meant something quite different from what he appeared to say, it remains true that on all this question of value, Marx is substantially Ricardo. Lastly, the conception of surplus value, as has been seen in the foregoing chapter, was familiar to Gray, Hodgskin and the other members of the rediscovered group of early English socialists, and was expressed by them with the utmost precision, though again doubtless without the Marxian trimmings.

Such a survey of the Marxian system as the scope of this chapter allows may conveniently be brought under four headings, though it is of the essence of Marx’s genius that the various parts of the completed structure are most intricately and ingeniously interwoven. There is, firstly, a background, a view of history—a ‘philosophy of history,’ in the ordinary phrase—which is embodied in what has acquired the rather misleading title of the ‘Materialist Conception of History.’ This again is manifested in a perpetually recurring and never-ending class struggle in which the negation of the negation leads to ever new negations. Secondly, there is the economic analysis, which represents the central core in the system so far as Marx endeavours to be rein wissenschaftlich. This is concerned with the exposition of a theory of value, and is applied to lay bare the secrets and the procedure of capitalist exploitation. There is, thirdly, a body of prophecy, designed to show the future development of the capitalistic system and its ultimate destination. Lastly, there is a view of the State, with some shadowed hints as to the technique of revolution and the far-off haven when we shall have outgrown the need of the machinery of the State. Each of these aspects of Marxism may be briefly surveyed.

The Materialist Conception of History is not too happy in its baptismal name: Mr. Cole has suggested as an improvement the ‘Realist Conception of History,’ but, having noted its inadequacy, it may be convenient to adhere to the familiar phrase. Adam Smith says somewhere that’ the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments.’1 In their context, these words may not have a pronounced Marxian flavour; but when unscrupulously detached, they represent a fair first approximation to the Materialist Conception of History. In their enunciation of this view of the unrolling of events, Marx and Engels were concerned to repudiate the ‘idealist’ view of history, that men are what they are by virtue of ideal influences, that they are fashioned by their religion, their laws, their literature and their art. The relationship, they would hold, is the other way round. In what was supposed to be an epigrammatic summary of the theory, ‘it is not religion that makes men, but men who make their religion.’ In an innocuous and generalised summary given by Engels, the essence of the theory is ‘to trace political events back to the effects of what are, in the last resort, economic causes.’1 The economic factor, above all the manner in which men earn their daily bread, provides the dynamic factor in history, in the light of which everything else—the structure of society, religion, law and art—must find their explanation.

Rather oddly, in the matter of what some have regarded as the most characteristic and original feature of the Marxian system, there is nowhere, either in Marx or Engels, an adequate or systematic account of the Materialist Conception of History, and of its implications. It is scattered about in odd pages and paragraphs, and probably the clearest expressions are to be found in Engels rather than in Marx. What has come to be regarded as the most significant and completest statement is contained in the Preface to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. There is a frequently quoted passage in one of Engels’ later introductions to The Communist Manifesto. Strange as it may appear, one of the best known ‘sources’ for the Marxian theory is in a speech delivered by Engels at the graveside of Marx. There is at least one significant passage in The Eighteenth Brumaire; the theory is scattered pretty liberally up and down German Ideology; the anthologist of the Materialist Conception will find some quite useful quotations in Anti-Dühring; and lastly (or lastly to be noted here), it is a frequent and recurrent theme in the correspondence of Marx and Engels.

In view of the considerable controversy which the Materialist Conception of History has occasioned, and of the sparseness and diffusion of the authoritative sources, there may be advantage in assembling a few of the more significant sentences in which Marx and Engels themselves declared their faith. Take, first of all, a short extract from the clearest of Marx’s statements:

In the social production of their means of existence men enter into definite necessary relations which are independent of their will, productive relationships which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The aggregate of these productive relationships constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a juridical and political superstructure arises, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of the material means of existence conditions the whole process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, it is their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Preface to Critique of Political Economy).

From The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:

Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, as foundation, there is built a superstructure of diversified and characteristic sentiments, illusions, habits of thought, and outlooks on life in general. The class as a whole creates and shapes them out of its material foundation, and out of the corresponding social relationships.1

From The German Ideology, out of a considerable number of possible quotations, a few sentences may be selected:

By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.... What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.2

We do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process.... Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.3

From the same work a mangled sentence may be taken explaining that their view of history was to start out from the simple material production of life:

and so, from this starting point, to explain the whole mass of different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., etc., and trace their origins and growths.4

A statement of some interest derives from The Poverty of Philosophy:

Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces, men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.5

Two snippets may be given from Engels, speaking alone, in order that he may make his special contribution to this anthology. The first is from Anti-Dühring:

The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production, and with production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social order; that in every society which has appeared in history the distribution of the products, and with it the division of society into classes or estates, is determined by what is produced and how it is produced, and how the product is exchanged. According to this conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of men, in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be sought not in the philosophy but in the economics of the period concerned.1

The second is from the speech at the graveside of Marx. Engels then said that Marx had

discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art, etc.; and that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which these things must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa as had hitherto been the case.2

Lastly, though it is strictly outside the scope of this chapter, yet nevertheless is interesting as illustrative of a tradition, two sentences from Lenin may be given:

People always were and always will be the stupid victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.3

By disclosing that all ideas and all the various tendencies, without exception, have their roots in the condition of the material forces of production, Marxism pointed the way to an all-embracing and comprehensive study of the process of rise, development, and decline of social-economic formations.4

Intentionally and of design, we have courted the danger of wearying the reader with this short selection of somewhat ponderous pro-nouncements. The Materialist Conception of History tends to be discussed somewhat in the air. It is not always made clear just how far the theory was carried by Marx and Engels, who frequently dealt with the question in an obiter dictum, or in an incidental aside. Accordingly it seemed expedient to reproduce textually a few of the more precise statements of the principle, so that it might be presented in the authentic voice of the authors, rather than in a summary or commentary which might be suspected of distortion. The general contention, as laid down in the earlier statements, is, however, clear. It is the economic factor—so it is argued—above all, as that is embodied in the conditions of production, that ultimately determines all things. It governs the structure of the society in which men live. It fashions their religion; it determines their laws; it shapes their literature and their art. The spiritual is determined by the material; things are in the saddle and ride mankind. It is a view which, despite disclaimers, tends to a doctrine of fatalism.1

Inextricably bound up with the Materialist Conception of History, at least in its Marxian presentation, is the theory of the Class Struggle. The Materialist Conception of History, indeed, expresses itself in and through an everlasting struggle between classes. The Communist Manifesto puts this in the forefront: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ The Manifesto proceeds to record the opposition of freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, baron and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, leaping somewhat too lightly through the centuries. There is no history, apart from the record of class struggles; and presumably what is left of history when the class struggle is decanted is but the record of insignificant trivialities. The phase of the class struggle (reached in 1848) was revealed in the opposition of interests between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie. The theory of the class struggle, as found in Marx, is, of course, merely a somewhat mechanical application of the Hegelian formula. Hegelianism requires that the negation, having asserted itself, should proceed to struggle with its opposite and rise to a higher synthesis, the negation of the negation; and accordingly, classes must toe the line and behave accordingly, whether they like it or not. It is, however, by no means obvious—as is implicit in Marxism—why the struggle pending in 1848 between Capitalism and the Proletariat should conduct us to the final synthesis and the disappearance of all classes, leading, as Mr. Bertrand Russell notes with horror, to a state of Byzantine immobility.

One aspect of this continuous class struggle, though perhaps it has not received much notice from the commentators, is nevertheless curious and significant. The later editions of The Communist Manifesto have a correcting footnote to the famous opening sentence, pointing out that, to be exact, the proposition that all history is the history of class struggles should be restricted to ‘recorded history.’ For Engels, as he grew older, fell under the influence of theories explaining the origin of society; and he became satisfied that there had been an early golden age, when there was neither property nor a State. The Origin of the Family, in large stretches, is a glorification of this lost paradise, in contrast with later unhappier times. These questions had better be left to the expert, in whose number it may be doubted whether Engels had claims to be included. It is, however, always of interest to note where, in the view of our authorities, the human race took the wrong turning. In this case, the evil thing was the introduction of division of labour, so near and so dear to the heart of Adam Smith. Division of labour and private property are, we are told, identical expressions. Division of labour implies unequal distribution both of labour and of its products.1 A more emphatic indication of the far-off source of the class war in division of labour may be found in this passage:

The division of labour implies from the outset the division of the conditions of labour, of tools and materials, and thus the splitting up of accumulated capital among different owners, and thus, also, the division between capital and labour, and the different forms of property itself.2

Primitive society (the so-called ‘gentile constitution,’ in Engels’ phraseology) was shattered by division of labour and the consequent cleavage of society into classes.3 That the principle of division of labour lies at the root of all class struggles also provides the theme for the concluding section of Anti-Dühring, where, as we shall see later, Engels (with Marx’s approval) draws, quite logically, a pretty picture of a Utopia where division of labour, like some other things, will have withered away.4 In attempting an assessment of the social philosophy of Marx and Engels, it is perhaps necessary to distinguish between the earlier and more rigid statements of the Materialist Conception of History, and what it tended to become later under criticism. For beyond a doubt it was watered down with the years. In one of his later letters addressed to J. Bloch (September 21, 1890), Engels goes far towards emptying the doctrine of its characteristic content, and acknowledges that Marx and he were partly to blame if the younger generation (or some of them) had laid more stress on the economic side than was due.

If, however, we take the Materialist Conception of History, in its earlier forms, stimulating as it may be in providing a canon of interpretation, it is obvious that it falls short at many points. History cannot be explained solely in terms of the economic factor, because the other factors, however they may have originated, do in fact attain to an independent existence. Religion and patriotism, a country’s laws and traditions, certainly develop into primary forces, imperiously dictating in defiance of economic considerations.

The most obvious difficulty of the Materialist Conception of History, at least in its less guarded statements, is seen in its helplessness when confronted with the problem of mind, and of the influence of mind on mind. Doubtless great men are conditioned by their environment, but they are certainly not produced by their environment; we all reflect our times. It is easy enough to persuade ourselves that any of the leaders of humanity could have appeared only when he did appear. It is absurd to assume that any great man was bound to appear at the appropriate juncture. When he was old enough to know better, Engels, in a letter of January 25, 1894, more or less champions this extraordinary view. That Napoleon, ‘just that particular Corsican,’ appeared and did what he did, was an accident, but if just that particular Corsican had failed to turn up, ‘another would have filled the place’—apparently with equal efficiency. ‘The man has always been found as soon as he became necessary.’ Presumably the man is also found as soon as he is unnecessary, of whom there are many at large in the world in these latter days. Engels can hardly have thought of the curious theological implications of the view that we all have somewhere our deputy ready to do our work when we are put out of action. It is indeed by no means overwhelmingly obvious that if Hegel and Marx had died in their infancy, the Hegelian philosophy would have been produced by someone called Schmidt to give a flavour to the three volumes of Capital, written by some one called Meyer: on the whole, the chances are against it.

Indeed, it may be doubted whether one can eliminate from history the possibility of mighty repercussions, springing from trivial and non-economic causes. There have been some who have suspended the world’s destiny from the classical shapeliness of Cleopatra’s nose. If Shakespeare is right, she was probably not the woman to allow a mere broken nose, had such befallen her, to stand between her and the fulfilment of her destiny. Without, however, invoking such a far-fetched and hackneyed example, it might be interesting to speculate on the consequences to this country of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth. Had she married and had issue, there would clearly have been no union of the Crowns in 1603; and, the opportunity missed, who knows when it might have recurred? Perhaps ‘ultimately’ it might have been all the same; but for some centuries many things in these islands might have been entirely different.

In the Marxian statement, the class struggle is so intimately a part of the Materialist Conception of History, that anything tending to undermine faith in the general doctrine must also weaken the plausibility of the view that the eternal ineluctable class struggle provides the whole content of history. The class war, however, is so much the entire substance of syndicalism later, that it may be wise to listen to the syndicalists before coming to a conclusion in the matter.1 Two things only need be said here. The first is that, quite obviously, it is absurd to seek to show that there must be an economic occasion to every conflict in history. Perhaps ultimately the moral factor is a more potent divider of men than is the economic; men consciously engage in conflict, in defiance of the dictates of their economic interests. Mr. Penty, to whom the Guild Socialist movement owed so much in its early development, expressed the point unambiguously: ‘it is the moral issue,’ he observed, ‘that finally divides men.’2 Wars based on religion or national feeling play a considerable part in the unrolling of events. Religion and patriotism, as has been seen, are real forces, much as Marx and Engels may deplore them as superfluous luxuries, in process of atrophy. It is significant of their short-sightedness in certain respects that they could, as far back as The German Ideology, declare that big industry in all countries had created a class ‘with which nationality is already dead.’3

The other preliminary point to be noted at this stage is that where the sentiment of the class war does exist to-day, it is very largely attributable to the teaching of Marx himself. The contrast between rich and poor goes back to Plato and the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and doubtless beyond. Marx’s peculiar contribution was to discover that in the relationship of employer and employed, there were such seeds of antagonism that the whole of society, so long as there were employers and employed, could be nothing but a perpetual warfare between these two classes. Mr. Bertrand Russell’s conclusion was that Marx by his teaching created the class war which he had prophesied4; and M. Gonnard, somewhat too ingeniously, finds in this a demonstration of the falsity of the central Marxian thesis, since the class struggle is thus due to an ideological cause, namely, ‘l’idée de la lutte de classes: De sorte que là où Marx semble avoir raison—il a tort.’5 This, if not exactly convincing, is at least subtle.

The Materialist Conception of History has thus, in the general Marxian presentation, provided us with the key to the understanding of the world’s history: the doctrine of the class war shows us the mechanics of the theory. In the everlasting unfolding of the class war, in which the under-dog becomes the top-dog, only to beget a new under-dog, called for short the negation of the negation, we have reached (1848) the stage where the position of the Bourgeoisie, of the Capitalist, is challenged by the rising Proletariat. It becomes necessary, therefore, to consider the hidden springs of this antagonism, and to reveal how the worker is inevitably exploited by his employer. This leads to the Marxian theory of value, with its corollary or adjunct, the doctrine of surplus value, which most Marxians regard as more important than its parent doctrine.

Here we reach the core of Marx, and here Marx becomes rein wissenschaftlich. Also, because he becomes rein wissenschaftlich, he places his demonstration of the theory of value in the opening sections of the first volume of Capital: ‘die schwerst verständliche nicht nur, sondern auch die schwächste,’ not only the most difficult to understand, but also the weakest, as a sympathetic critic has very justly observed.1 The discussion of the Marxian theory of value offers such a well-trampled field, and the perusal of Marx in his more characteristically Marxian moments is so emphatically as the climbing up a sandy way to the feet of the aged, that few readers will look for, and none will find here, a systematic survey of the salient features of Volume I of Capital, with digressive glances at later volumes. It should be sufficient to say just enough to recall what everyone is supposed to know, and to provide a basis for the few comments which it may be necessary to make here. Unfortunately, while there is little doubt as to what Marx said—for the printed word is there to testify—there seems to be increasing doubt among his intelligent followers as to whether Marx quite succeeded in saying what he meant, since it seems fairly obvious that he cannot have meant what he said. The present generation has profited from one excellent volume bearing the title What, Marx Really Meant, but there is still room for another on What Marx Really Meant, Actually. For the present, in summarising, we shall proceed on the assumption that in general Marx meant what he said; or, in other words, we shall meanwhile stifle those doubts as to the meaning of Volume I of Capital which naturally became vocal a generation later with the publication of Volume III.

With (it is hoped) no greater inaccuracy than is perhaps inevitable in a condensed summary for revision purposes, it may be said that in its broad shape the Marxian theory of value is merely the Ricardian theory, transplanted and in some ways made more rigid. The opening pages, with a courage that Ricardo lacked, attempted a rigorous proof, ultimately resting on the contention (or assumption) that ‘commodities’ are exclusively the products of labour, and that labour is (after the exclusion of other possibilities) the only element common to two commodities whose exchange is in question. Accordingly, the equation, expressing the ratio of exchange, tells us that labour, the common element, is present in equal quantities in the commodities exchanged. The proof, as such, is a mere burlesque, and involves such crude disregard for the ordinary laws of reasoning that, if indeed it were seriously intended, it affords striking evidence of that complete absence of self-criticism which in some ways distinguished Marx. ‘Sie sieht aus wie ein Beweis—ist aber keiner,’ says Wilbrandt with much restraint: ‘It looks like a proof, but in fact is none.’1 In pursuance of this train of reasoning, we must, however, cease to think of labour as being the labour of a joiner or a mason; we must train ourselves to think in terms of that elusive abstraction, the element in labour which is common to all labour, or ‘human labour in the abstract’ whatever that may be. One further reservation is necessary at this stage: labour may be inefficient or unskilful, and a bungling worker, by expending more of his bungling labour or by working with, primitive tools, clearly does not thereby increase the value of his product. The labour that determines value is therefore the labour that is socially necessary in the conditions of production of the time.

But, apart from the question of normal efficiency, it may further be said that all labour is not effective. It is possible to labour and produce nothing that anybody wants. In such a case, the labour does not count as labour, whatever else it may count as. So, also, more labour than is socially necessary may be devoted to the production of a commodity, so that a glut arises. In that case, the labour is not to be counted as labour to the full extent. In short, though of course Marx does not so express it, labour is to be graded up or down until the right answer is obtained. Another example of manipulation occurs in the problem of how to deal with skilled labour; for skilled labour, in the Marxian world, is merely simple labour intensified or multiplied. The reduction of one to the other is made by a process which goes on behind the backs of the workers; but again the solution is quite clearly a glaring example of reasoning in a circle. If you want to find the appropriate multiplier which will put the work of a skilled engineer and a charwoman on an equality, you can only consult the market and find out what happens there. In order (apparently) to explain the situation in the market, you get from the market the multiplier which, when appropriately used, will give a satisfactory explanation of the behaviour of the market. Subject to these rather far-reaching embroideries, the value of a commodity is nothing more than the labour embodied in it.

But this Labour Theory of Value is for Marx but a stepping-stone towards unveiling the secret of capitalistic accumulation, of the exploitation to which the worker is subjected. This is made clear in the doctrine of surplus value, which is by way of being a pendent to the theory of value. Accumulation and exploitation are possible because there happens to be on the market for sale a commodity possessing quite peculiar properties. This is ‘labour-power,’ which on the Marxian view is quite distinct from labour. Labour-power, not labour, is the commodity which the capitalist purchases. Now labour-power also has its value. Ricardo has taught us, as he has taught Marx, what that is. The natural price to pay for labour is that which enables the worker to subsist and continue his race; in fact, it is the cost of production of labour. This is the value quite properly paid for labour-power; but when labour-power is used, it gives off more value than it cost. The worker may make enough for his maintenance (his necessary wage) in six hours; but he has sold himself with his labour-power, and he may be made to work ten or twelve hours each day. The difference (in this case, the work of four or six hours) represents the exploitation of the worker; it is unpaid labour appropriated by the capitalist.

It will be observed that the whole of the surplus value is derived from labour. Indeed, on the theory, as initially stated, it would appear to be derived from the individual worker; each individual worker would appear to be robbed by his own particular employer. This view is, however, modified by later elaborations of the analysis. That the surplus value comes from labour, and from labour alone, is reinforced by a distinction which is fundamental to the Marxian analysis. Capital is differentiated by Marx into constant and variable capital, corresponding broadly to the distinction between machinery and wages. But machinery yields no surplus value. It is of the essence of a machine that, in being used up, it transfers its value, neither more nor less, to the product. Whatever be thought of the validity of the argument, it has at least the advantage that it thrusts on labour the whole burden of providing surplus value. It should be noted for its significance later that industries will vary from each other according to their organic composition’; the ratio of constant to variable capital, low in some industries, will be high elsewhere.

Capital exists in order that surplus value may be created, and that it may be created more abundantly. There are two obvious ways of achieving this end. There is the possibility of prolonging the workingday (supplemented by reduction of meal-hours); there is equally the possibility of reducing the number of hours during which the worker must necessarily labour in order to secure his own maintenance. If, by further introduction of machinery or by improved technical processes, it is made possible for the worker to earn his subsistence in four hours instead of six, two additional hours will have been made available for the production of surplus value. Surplus value may further be increased by roping in the wives and the children; for the theory of the so-called Iron Law of Wages (whether as in Ricardo or in Lassalle) postulates that the family wage should be no more than sufficient for the maintenance of the family. Theoretically, therefore, the long-run result of employing the wives and the children is that their services are got for nothing, to the greater increase of surplus value.

Along these lines, then, capital seeks to satisfy its insatiable lust for increased surplus value. But here we encounter the first of the two snares which, quite apart from many other besetting difficulties, in the end brought the Marxian system, on this side at least, to irremediable confusion. The capitalist, thirsting for surplus value, introduces more and more machinery, in order thereby to cut down the time required for the worker’s maintenance and so increase the number of hours available for the production of surplus value. But, as we have seen, constant capital yields no surplus value, which can be derived only from variable capital. There is something whimsical in the suggestion that, in order to increase surplus value, the capitalist 4hus cuts down that part of capital which yields surplus value, replacing it by that part of capital which can yield none. The contradiction is glaring, and Marx’s explanation will resolve it only for those who can humbly say: Credo quia impossibile. Marx, according to Engels, was well versed in mathematics, though he never got the length of understanding the meaning and the limitations of an average. Nevertheless, he found an average a very present help in time of trouble.1 It is unnecessary here to go into detail in the matter of the explanation offered. Briefly, it would seem to be that the surplus value is averaged out and distributed among the employers; and though doubtless the introduction of machinery reduces the amount of surplus value, nevertheless the employer who takes this course secures for himself a bigger whack of what is going.

The other ‘inherent contradiction’ has proved even more fatal to the solidity of the Marxian structure, and has proved the fruitful mother of a whole literature devoted to the alleged inconsistency between the first and the third Volumes of Capital. The difficulty here arises from Marx’s assertion, imposed upon him by his propagandist tendencies, that all surplus value springs from labour alone, combined with the other fact stressed by him that the ‘organic composition’ (the ratio of constant to variable capital) varies enormously from one industry to another. From these two propositions, it should follow that an industry with a high percentage of variable capital should enjoy a higher rate of profit than one in which labour occupies a less important place. It obviously is not so. The capitalist looks for a more or less uniform rate of profit in all enterprises; he does not expect, and he certainly does not get, an abnormally high rate of profit in industries where there is much labour to be exploited, nor an abnormally low rate where machinery has stepped in to do the bulk of the work. The difficulty is frankly faced in Volume I of Capital; but the solution (though it appears in the Marx-Engels correspondence) was not given to the public until the appearance of the third volume, twenty-seven years later. The text of the explanation will be found by the enquiring reader in the ninth chapter of that volume; but for a comprehension of what is contained in this statement, he must rely on an inner illumination. Mr. Postgate’s statement on the subject is admirable: surplus value, he says, ‘is shared out over the whole capitalist class, by a very complicated and esoteric process, which cannot be explained here’1—nor anywhere else, he might almost have added, had he wished to make his delphic utterance somewhat less delphic. It would be well if Mr. Postgate’s reticent example were followed by all subsequent Marxian commentators, as it shall certainly be followed here.

The one fact that does emerge from Marx’s tangled attempt to reconcile the uniform rate of profit with his original labour theory of value is that commodities are now said to exchange at their ‘prices of production,’ which is equivalent to their cost-price plus the average profit—not at their ‘value.’ Indeed, it is only by the merest accident that commodities will exchange at their value; apart from a contingency which is so remote as to be negligible, commodities will exchange above or below their ‘values,’ the extent to which some sell above their ‘values’ being balanced by the corresponding extent to which others sell below their ‘values.’ And here, if the reader has not already done so, he may well pull himself together and ask what indeed is this thing that Marx calls value. For it would not occur to one reader in a thousand, coming to Capital with a virgin mind and a candid spirit, that in the first volume Marx was doing anything other than searching for an explanation of value which would tell us in what ratio commodities would exchange against each other, and that the Law of Value which he reached was in fact meant to explain prices. In the third volume we have clearly stated a distinction between prices and value, and we are told that commodities never (or so nearly never as to make no difference) exchange at their value, but at a price which is above or below their value. No wonder that the publication of the third volume called for a process of mental readjustment.

The mess in fact cannot be tidied up; nor is it worth while composing an Apology for Chaos. The labour theory of value is, however, so much the core of Marxism, viewed as a system with claims to be rein wissenschaftlich that a few general observations may perhaps be tolerated. In the first place, it is universally acknowledged that Marx’s Theory of Value is that part of the system which has frayed most, and most irretrievably, with the passage of time. Having discussed the problem of value for well over two thousand years, it is probable that the human race will continue the discussion, so long as they retain the power of reason and of speech; and also (despite J. S. Mill) it is extremely improbable that they will ever be able to say that this ghost is effectively laid. But at least it can be said with some assurance that the type of theory which Marx took over from Ricardo is for ever dead beyond hope of resurrection. We have learned from the Austrians that value cannot be explained as a summation of past costs; value looks to the future and to use in the future. No doubt the Austrian way of thinking is also beginning to show threadbare patches; and the indications are that the next generation will manipulate ‘scales of preference,’ and slide along ‘curves of indifference.’ But nothing can ever bring back the way of thinking in which the Marxian theory of value is rooted; it was indeed part of Marx’s misfortune that he should adopt for his purpose a theory already moribund.

A second consideration that cannot fail to bring an increasing sense of discomfort to a balanced reader of Marx and of orthodox Marxian literature alike is that so frequently words in ordinary use are employed with a special connotation, the reader generally being left to sense the difference. For Marx, the individual worker and the individual employer have no real existence except in so far as they represent the class to which they belong. He argues in terms of an abstract worker and an abstract employer, each of them as anæmic as that other Victorian ghost, the economic man. Nowhere is there any suggestion that work and management are alike human functions, that business may be a ticklish affair, in which money may be lost as well as made. In Marx’s world, at least in the earlier phases of the exposition, an employer just cannot help making money: all he has to do is to employ workers, and if he doubles the number of his workers, he will double the flow of surplus value. And in the same way all workers are alike and interchangeable. Sometimes the essential ideas of a school are most clearly seen in the exposition of orthodox and uninspired disciples, if only because they are less intelligent and more unguarded. Kautsky somewhere accepts the view that any five adult farm labourers will do as much as any other five.1 The argument, of course, holds not merely of farm labourers. Just as the employers automatically decant surplus value in proportion to the number of workers employed, so workers also, as indistinguishable as a flock of sheep, automatically give off surplus value. There is no skill, no management, no competence anywhere.

The most glaring and pervasive distortion of an everyday term is of course with regard to ‘Capital’ itself, the most crucial word in the whole discussion. In Marx, as indeed throughout Marxian literature, capital has a meaning to which the whole world, outside Marxian colleges, is a complete stranger. For Marx, it is not every one who owns wealth who is a capitalist; nor is he necessarily a capitalist who, possessing the means of production, uses these to accumulate gain. A capitalist is one who, being himself idle, lives entirely on surplus value extracted from workers in his employment. If, by one of the devices familiar in the pages of Hans Andersen and Grimm, an industrious apprentice could invent a machine capable of doing all the work of Lancashire, then if only he could work it himself, he might corner the cotton of the world and hold humanity to ransom, but he would apparently leave the Marxian court with clean hands, so far as surplus value is concerned. The beginning of evil is in a contract of employment. The point could be illustrated from Marx himself, but again it may be more instructive to see it in the broad stream of the Marxian tradition. Thus the faithful Kautsky, before he became Kautsky the Renegade, defines capital as ‘value that breeds surplusvalue.’1 Even more illuminating is Kautsky in a later passage drawn from the same source:

The employer of wage workers only becomes a capitalist when the mass of surplus-value created by them is large enough to assure him a comfortable income and to increase his wealth, without his being obliged to put his own shoulder to the wheel.2

Mr. Emile Burns expresses the same view when he remarks that

Property (whatever the physical form) only becomes capital in the economic sense when it is used to produce surplus value; that is, when it is used to employ workers, who in the course of producing things also produce surplus value.3

So also with regard to smaller people, who are to be allowed to escape the damnation of being capitalists:

It does not make any difference whether in fact he employs one or two men; the point is that he works, and must work, because he cannot live on the labour of the few men he is able to employ.4

The implications here are curious: if surplus value is a species of theft, apparently it becomes reprehensible only if enough is taken to put the robber at his ease; if he is obliged to eke out his plunder by doing some work of his own, he escapes condemnation, apparently under the happy dispensation of de minimis. For the present, however, we are concerned with the fact that in the Marxian tradition, capital is not capital unless it enables the owner to live entirely on surplus value, and unless in fact he does live in idleness on his surplus value.5

One last point is of interest in visualising the Marxian world which is governed by the Marxian Law of Value. It is a world in which all workers are engaged in the manufacture of ‘commodities’—‘vendible commodities/ to use the offending phrase in which Adam Smith sought the test of ‘productive labour.’ Now it is a long time since all labour was embodied in ‘vendible commodities,’ and for good or evil we are moving to a position in which ‘services’ bulk more and more largely in what labour does. It is indeed a mark of advancing society. Mr. Colin Clark has familiarised us with the increasing importance of tertiary, as against primary and secondary industry. Heaven forbid that anyone to-day should entangle himself in the old quagmire which concerns itself with the distinction between productive and unproductive labour; but obviously the armies of administration (of all kinds), of transport, of entertainment—to go no further—do not fit in with a Marxian world where the production of commodities with a view to sale exhausts the whole content of economic life. It would be difficult, for instance, for the Musicians’ Union to express their grievances and claims within the framework of Marxian ideology.

The Marxian world, in short, is a wholly abstract, artificial and unreal construction, entirely distinct from that in which any of us have pursued our economic activities. Doubtless, in all sciences, it is a common procedure to make simplifying assumptions, and from the original hypothesis to make a gradual approach to reality—even if some of us may refuse to contemplate a world where ‘the only consumable good is a single species of economic cake.’ The Marxian world is just as unreal as this example drawn from unimpeachable economic orthodoxy. The objection to the Marxian assumptions is not that they are assumptions, not that they represent a departure from reality; but that their author never makes it clear that they are abstractions. Marx writes throughout as if he were concerned with reality: he never warns his readers that, as a first step and in order to simplify his reasoning, he is meanwhile arguing on certain not wholly real assumptions and hypotheses. The reader never knows at any moment whether he is concerned with abstraction or reality; and it is fairly clear that Marx himself neither knew nor cared. Indeed it took the world at large almost two generations to realise that just here perhaps lies the greatest obstacle to a comprehension of Marx.

For indeed it becomes ever increasingly clear that the real issue on this, the central element of Marxian doctrine, is not whether he succeeded in ‘establishing his case,’ but rather, what was the case he was trying to establish. The unanswerable, if not very satisfactory, reply to such criticisms of Marx as are contained, for instance, in the classical exposition of Böhm-Bawerk, or more recently in that by Mr. H. W. B. Joseph, is that while the critic may be very successfully directing his artillery against something that Marx (quite obviously) said, in fact (whether he said it or not) Marx meant something entirely different. This retort is indeed almost a matter of course from the Marxian side. Thus Dr. Lindsay—and in this respect he is not unique—admits that ‘no one can read and master these refutations without agreeing that they are unanswerable on the assumption that they describe correctly the question that Marx was trying to answer and Marx’s answer to it.’1 Instead of repeating these misdirected criticisms, it may be more instructive to interrogate a few of the more intelligent admirers of Marx, and ascertain, if possible, what they make of it all; in particular, arising out of the ‘apparent discrepancy’ between the first and third Volume (to use the discreet phraseology of Whitehall), what they think Marx meant by the labour theory of value; and, to particularise still further, what they think he meant by ‘value.’ In view of the space already squandered on Marx, only a few witnesses may be cited.

Because he is rather in line with the argument developed in the preceding paragraphs, Croce may be taken first. He points out that it is far from easy to understand the exact nature of the investigation which Marx carried out. And he adds (which is not wholly surprising) that ‘it does not appear that the author himself always realised fully the peculiar character of his investigation.’2 Capital, we are told, is an abstract investigation, concerned with ‘an ideal and formal society, deduced from certain hypotheses, which could indeed never have occurred as actual facts in the course of history.’3 It would be difficult to express more emphatically the view that Capital has as much relation to actuality as would be possessed by a discussion of the application of the Pareto line to the Kingdom of Heaven. Lastly, not to linger too long with Croce, it may be instructive to note the test he applied in assessing the Marxian theory of value. He asked himself, he says: ‘Under what conditions and assumptions is Marx’s theory thinkable?’ It is Croce who italicises the last word.

Loria is perhaps scarcely a serious critic; yet, as the writer who has excelled all others in the extravagance of his eulogies of Capital, he ought to be heard. For him Capital ‘is a masterpiece wherein all is great, all alike incomparable and wonderful’—and much more. Yet to Loria the third Volume of Capital was a death-blow to the system, and the consciousness that it would prove to be so explains Marx’s failure to complete Capital in his lifetime: ‘Need we wonder that his hand trembled, that his spirit quailed, before the inexorable act of destruction?’4 This is somewhat too melodramatic; Marx’s failure to complete Capital is indeed something of a problem, but it is more likely that the explanation was rooted in his liver. For the present purpose, however, we are concerned to note that the third volume forces Loria to the view that Marx’s ‘fundamental economic theory is essentially vitiated and sophisticated, and that he is himself responsible for reducing it to hopeless absurdity.’5

Let us cast the net somewhat wider. Professor Wilbrandt, in his very sensitive appreciation of Karl Marx, offers us two points which are of some interest towards an appreciation of what Marx’s admirers think that Marx really meant. The first is a rather naive admission that the first Volume (1867) was bound to be misunderstood, until such time as the third appeared.1 In the course of these twenty-seven years Marx himself died, and as there are some who would place on Engels a not inconsiderable share of the responsibility for the third Volume, it might be a matter for consideration whether Marx himself ever had an opportunity of understanding Volume I—which, of course, is more or less what Croce says. In fact, however, it was not the publication of the third Volume which made possible a comprehension of the first: it would be truer to say that the publication of the third Volume imposed, post-haste, a revision of the orthodox interpretation of the first Volume, if a show of consistency was to be maintained.

The other significant contribution made by Wilbrandt towards a comprehension of Marx is, at the first blush, rather surprising. In opposition to the view that Capital represents an analysis of the workings of an abstract capitalism, not of any particular capitalistic State, but of a State which corresponds to the concept of pure capitalism as ideally conceived, Wilbrandt would have us believe that Marx, in writing the first volume, had in mind pre-capitalistic mediaeval conditions; and in this consideration alone do we find justification for Marx.2 It is not the usual view; but it has at least this in common with the totally opposed conception, that it makes it clear that whatever Marx may have been talking about, it was certainly not this world that we know here and now.

We are not without guides in our own country. On the whole, probably Dr. Lindsay sheds as much darkness as light on the questions he illumines. He has learned from Croce that the capitalism which Marx is analysing does not exist, since no society is completely capitalistic. He outlines a possible view, and adds: ‘If this is really the kernel of Marx’s doctrine...,’ but somehow there is no assurance in his voice that it is.3 He realises that if Marx is to escape the charge of being an incapable bungler, it must be allowed that he is talking of economic value in two senses,’ firstly, in the sense of price, and secondly in a peculiar sense of his own.’4 But we are still left very much in the dark as to the nature of that peculiarly Marxian value, which flits back from the third Volume to illumine the dark places in the first Volume of Capital—that value described by Loria as a ‘fantastical or transcendental value’ which neither possessed nor could possess any relationship to facts.1 Dr. Lindsay at least realises that some definition of the elusive ‘value’ is required, and he suggests that ‘intrinsic exchange value is for Marx the value which a commodity would have in a properly organised society where labour was performing its proper function.’2 Apart from legitimate doubts as to where such a view could be founded in Marx, it will be observed that we are very properly left to guess for ourselves what is a properly organised society, and when labour is performing its proper function—two very sizable hares to start in one sentence.

It is to Mr. Cole that we owe the alluring and confident title: What Marx Really Meant. On the immediate question, he argues—and rightly, if regard is to be had to the third Volume—that the Marxian theory of value is somewhat unique in not being a theory of prices; indeed, as he adds, it is doubtful whether in the end it has any point of contact at all with prices.3 As to the elusive Marxian ‘value,’ we are told that in Marx’s writings, ‘value’ came to mean what commodities were really worth in consequence of the amounts of labour incorporated in them, as something quite distinct from the prices which they actually fetched, or tended to fetch, in the market.’4 But the identity of value and embodied labour was surely something that Marx thought he had proved (and which therefore required proof) in the opening pages of Capital. It is true that Croce also says that Marx assumed the equivalence of value and labour. If the identity of value and labour is a matter of definition and assumption, then at least we know the meaning Marx attaches to ‘value’; but in that case the pretended proof in the opening chapter is mere eye-wash; since one states, but does not prove, definitions. Also in that case it is to be feared that the whole of Capital, resting on an arbitrary definition which implies the conclusion to be reached, is an example of wandering vainly in a circle, even more glaring than the most critical critics had thought possible. If, on the other hand, the identity of value and labour is a matter of proof and not of definition, we are still left to grope for the meaning Marx attaches to ‘value.’

The theory to which Mr. Cole guides us is that ‘the Marxian theory of value is a theory, not of prices, but of the social distribution of the resources of production.’5 If we must read into Marx something that is not very obviously there, if (as with Croce) our approach is to be determined by asking under what conditions and assumptions Marx’s theory is ‘thinkable,’ then this is as good a theory as any other: in fact it is better than most. The difficulty which Mr. Cole quite obviously and naturally feels is that in the course of all these thousands of pages, Marx himself said so little in support of what Marx really meant. ‘Why,’ Mr. Cole asks, ‘why does Marx, in the first Volume of Das Kapital, so often speak as if commodities did tend to sell at their values, whereas such a view is plainly inconsistent with his case, and he makes it abundantly clear later on in his book that they do not?’1 It is to be hoped that there is a better answer than Mr. Cole suggests. If throughout Volume I Marx speaks quite generally as if commodities tended to sell at their values, the plain man would suggest that it was probably because this idea was most frequently in Marx’s mind. Marx was almost criminally careless in neglecting to define his terms, and the natural result of such carelessness is that words jostle about in the mind, each trailing half a dozen potential meanings, with consequent confusion of thought. With just a touch of scorn, Croce speaks of Marx as having ‘despised and neglected all such preliminary and exact explanations as might have made his task plain.’2 It is significant, in connection with Mr. Cole’s question, that Engels, playing the part of official interpreter, also speaks as if the opening chapters of Capital provided a guide to the price-tickets in Bond Street. Anti-Dühring is for the most part a most dreadful book—fit only to be one of six books given to Hitler on a desert island—yet it has its uses as an official summary of Marxism as then understood. It is instructive to ponder what Engels implies when he speaks of ‘the law of value of modern bourgeois economics, according to which the value of a commodity is measured by the socially necessary labour embodied in it.’3

We shall presently, in a subsequent chapter, hear Sorel at some length on Marx and the essence of Marx; but perhaps he may be allowed a somewhat premature appearance on the issue now before us. Sorel is quite obviously flummoxed by the difficulty which must confront all intelligent Marxians: seeing that Marx so clearly cannot have meant what he said, why on earth did he so signally fail to say what he meant? Having reduced the most of Marx to ‘mythical images’ in the Sorelian sense, the objection that apparently Marx did not himself realise that he was a purveyor of myths is met in a rather beautiful and ingenuous phrase: ‘C’est qu’il était fort passionné et que, maintes fois, la passion l’a empêché de reconnaïtre des réalités tres claires.’4

Other witnesses must be allowed an even shorter time in which to testify. There is Mr. Beer, who in all this part of Marx finds political and social slogans rather than economic truths.1 The question of what Marx really meant is here disposed of somewhat too unblushingly. Marx, it is suggested, gives us slogans; he gives us Sorelian myths; and when you come to slogans and myths, the question of meaning, the question of truth fades into the background. It does not greatly matter what Marx meant, or indeed whether he meant anything: he produced half a dozen excellent battle cries. With more ‘spirituality,’ but substantially on the same lines, Mrs. Joan Robinson recalls an observation of Voltaire to the effect that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft, provided they are simultaneously given a sufficiency of arsenic. The sheep, it is suggested, are the complacent apologists of capitalism: for the rest ‘Marx’s penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.’2

This anthology, drawn from the friends and admirers of Marx, becomes tedious; but the cloud of witnesses may yield a profitable lesson, not so easily to be learned otherwise. To witness Böhm-Bawerk or Mr. Joseph carving up Marx is but a pedestrian pleasure; for these are but pedestrian writers, who are so pedestrian as to clutch at the plain meaning of words, not realising that what Marx really meant has no necessary connection with what Marx undeniably said. To witness Marx surrounded by his friends is, however, a joy of an entirely different order. For it is fairly clear that none of them really knows what Marx really meant; they are even in considerable doubt as to what he was talking about; there are hints that Marx himself did not know what he was doing. In particular, there is no one to tell us what Marx thought he meant by ‘value.’ And indeed, what all these conjectures reveal is somewhat astounding, and, one would like to think, unique. Capital is, in one sense, a three-volume treatise, expounding a theory of value and its manifold applications. Yet Marx never condescends to say what he means by ‘value,’ which accordingly is what anyone cares to make it as he follows the unfolding scroll from 1867 to 1894. Nor does anyone know to what world all this applies. Is it to the world in which Marx wrote? Or to an abstract, ‘pure,’ capitalist world existing ideally in the imagination, and nowhere else? Or (odd as the suggestion may appear) was Marx (probably unconsciously) thinking in terms of mediaeval conditions? No one knows. Are we concerned with Wissenschaft, slogans, myths, or incantations? Marx, it has been said, was a prophet—albeit a prophet whose ambitions lay in another direction—and perhaps this suggestion provides the best approach. One does not apply to Jeremiah and Ezekiel the tests to which less inspired men are subjected. Perhaps the mistake the world and most of the critics have made is just that they have not sufficiently regarded Marx as a prophet—a man above logic, uttering cryptic and incomprehensible words, which every man may interpret as he chooses.’1

No apology need be made for attaching the foregoing somewhat general discussion to the consideration of the Marxian Theory of Value and of surplus value. For these, thin as they may have worn, are the core of Marxism as a ‘system.’ Engels indeed finds in the Materialist Conception of History and in the doctrine of surplus value the whole of Marx and the whole of socialism. The remaining parts of Marx must be dealt with much more summarily. Firstly, there are the various ‘prophecies,’ the indications of the path capitalism would follow until the birth of the new order. We left the capitalist grasping in every direction for increased surplus value—rather short-sightedly introducing machinery with this end in view. Various results follow. There is thus created the Industrial Reserve Army, a force maintained to do the bidding of capitalism when occasion arises. With this there is necessarily the disappearance of all the middle classes, thrust down into the proletariat, sunk in ever-increasing misery and degradation. There is the Law—or Principle, or Prophecy or whatever it may be called—of the Concentration of Capital: ever fewer and bigger capitalists at one end with an increasing mass of misery at the other, until finally the expropriators are expropriated, and a new order begins. That the spoilers will one day be despoiled is, of course, in a sense, the common substance of all prophecy: in the words of an earlier Hebrew seer, the far-off day is one in which it can be said that ‘the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of the land.’

It was the dilatoriness of the world in fulfilling the Marxian prophecies that later led to ‘Revisionism.’ Probably Marx is on strongest grounds as a specific prophet in regard to the Industrial Reserve Army. No doubt the modern problem of mass unemployment does not quite fit into the Marxian framework of prophecy: like a thorough-going pessimist, Marx looked forward to an uninterrupted process of continual pejoration. Yet, without doubt, unemployment, by whatever name it is called, is the greatest sore in our present social structure, and it is at our peril that we fail to find a remedy. In the matter of the concentration of capital, a half-hearted claim may be advanced on behalf of Marx. Concentration there clearly has been; but it has been primarily concentration of management. It is doubtful whether there has been any significant concentration of possession; and in any case, there has been simultaneously considerable diffusion of wealth. The small owner, cherishing a tendency to a ‘bourgeois’ frame of mind, abounds. On the disappearance of the middle classes, the prophecies of Marx have been entirely wide of the mark. Society has, with admirable stubbornness, refused to segregate itself into two extreme camps.

The doctrine of the increasing degradation and misery of the working classes is of some interest in Marxian exegesis, because apparently it is susceptible of four, if not five, different interpretations. Not every dogma is so considerate of tender consciences. As enunciated in The Communist Manifesto—whatever arguments may subsequently have been advanced to the contrary—it is clear that we are concerned with literal and absolutely increasing misery:

The modern worker, on the contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks ever deeper beneath the social conditions of his own class. The labourer becomes the pauper, and pauperism increases even more rapidly than population and wealth.1

Looking round, after consulting our grandparents, it is quite obvious that the poor have not become poorer since 1848; there has not been ‘increasing misery.’ With one way of dodging the whole question, we are already familiar. ‘When Marx talked of increasing misery,’ we are told by one authority, ‘he was talking of what would be the outcome of unmodified capitalism.’ Now capitalism, it is argued, has never existed by itself, and accordingly the historical facts can neither confirm nor refute the accuracy of Marx’s diagnosis. He was merely concerned with the ‘logical effect of a hypothetical capitalism on wages.’ This, of course, is merely to transfer Marx to the fairyland of hypothetical capitalism in which no one else is specially interested.2 But, apart from the literal interpretation, which alone fits The Communist Manifesto (and Engels), and Dr. Lindsay’s escape to unreality, there remains a choice of three other possible interpretations. Firstly, the increasing misery may be ‘relative’ and not absolute. The working classes may possibly have improved their position, but not in proportion to the increased wealth of the community as a whole. This doctrine has kinship with Rodbertus’s ‘Diminishing Wage Share.’ If the rate of progress made by the working classes is less favourable than that made by their more fortunate betters, then relatively (so it might be argued) their position may be said to be one of increasing misery. It is doubtful whether even this case can be established, especially in the light of the level of taxation we now enjoy. Secondly, there is the psychological explanation of ‘misery,’ which Muckle, for instance, considers the only defensible interpretation.1 On this view, quite irrespective of wages, and whether they be high or low, capitalism imposes degradation, springing from dependence and subjection. In the Gotha programme, the psychological theory alone appears:

In present-day society, the instruments of labour are the monopoly of the capitalist class; the resulting dependence of the working class is the cause of misery and servitude in all its forms.2

Later, in Guild Socialism, this appears as the ‘beastliness’ of the wage system and of wage-slavery; the mere fact of receiving wages makes men increasingly and acutely unhappy.

But there is still a further interpretation of the doctrine of ‘increasing misery,’ which may perhaps be described as the theory of ‘delayed action.’ This theory to a certain extent holds out a hand towards Lenin. It will be found expounded in the pages of Mr. Cole. Marx, he holds, foresaw the advent of the age of economic imperialism.3 It is only as the era of wars of colonial conquest and of imperial rivalries is reached, that the capitalist system turns

by an inherent tendency which it cannot escape, into a fetter upon the effective use of the available resources. At this stage, but not until this stage has been reached, Marx holds that the capitalist system involves, by virtue of its essential nature, a fall in the working-class standard of life.4

Putting it otherwise, so long as capitalism continued to be a developing system, a rise in working-class standards would be possible; but with capitalism in difficulties, the situation would be otherwise, and workingclass standards would be forced down. ‘This interpretation alone,’ says Mr. Cole, ‘is consistent both with what Marx said and with the subsequent evolution of capitalism.’5 It is not every prophet whose prophecies are so indulgently reinterpreted in the light of subsequent evolution. According to Mr. Cole, the change-over took place in this country in the first decade of the twentieth century; in actual fact, it is fairly clear that Marx, writing in 1848 (however he may have modified his views later), was satisfied that capitalism was already in extreme difficulties, and that the axe had been laid to the root of the tree. The doctrine of increasing misery (of immiserization, to use Professor Schumpeter’s convenient but barbarous translation) has doubtless played a larger part in continental controversy than with us; it is, however, of some interest here as illustrating the latitude of interpretation consistent with orthodoxy. You may side-track the whole doctrine to an abstract capitalism that never was on land or sea; or you may declare yourself an adherent of the literal, the relative, the psychological, or the ‘delayed-action’ school of thought.

In the foregoing pages, little has been said, except by way of implication, regarding the Marxian view of the State, the nature of the coming revolution, or of what may be thereafter. On the nature of the State, there are innumerable passages in Marx and Engels alike, enabling the position to be stated with precision and clarity. On the other hand, on the inevitable revolution, still more on the structure of society and the working of the machine thereafter, Marx is extremely reticent; and reliance must therefore be placed on gleanings from relatively few passages which have in consequence received an eminence which in themselves they hardly merit.

The Marxian view of the State, as it now exists, is, in a sense, a corollary of the Materialist Conception of History. The State is ‘nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.’1 The words may vary, but the idea remains constant: the State is a class organisation, representing the interests and reflecting the ideas of the dominant class. Marx’s description of the July Monarchy in France may have specific reference to one State, but the general conception is common to all: it was ‘nothing other than a joint stock company for the exploitation of French national wealth, the dividends of which were divided among ministers, Chambers, 140,000 voters and their adherents.’2 Moreover, being the expression of the dominance of a class, and therefore part of the machinery of the class struggle, the essence of State power lies in its ‘purely repressive character.’ More tersely, if we may invite Engels to his customary role of singing in unison: ‘The State is nothing more than a machine for the oppression of one class by another.’3 With the reiterated assertion that the State is a class organisation, it is scarcely too much to say that the political philosophy of Marx begins and ends.

In turning to the future, Marx was designedly vague. The expropriators are in due course to be expropriated; but by what process this will be accomplished, just precisely what will be the situation on the morrow of the revolution, are questions to which Marx gives no limpid answers; nor does he regard it as his function to give detailed prescriptions in such matters. Yet on one point he is clear. When the expropriators are expropriated, there will still for a time be need of a State, even if not of the old State machine which is contaminated in too many respects by virtue of its old associations. The French Commune served Marx and Engels alike as an interesting object-lesson in the technique of revolution, and it is interesting to note Engels’ words (written in 1891): ‘The Commune was compelled to recognise from the outset that the working class, once come to power, could not carry on business with the old State machine.’1 Doubtless the ultimate purpose of the revolution will be the abolition of all classes, but this end will not be attained forthwith. The new organisation—State, call it what you will—will still be a class organisation, but now the dominant class whose interests it will represent will be the proletariat. The locus classicus for this is contained in the Critique of the Gotha Programme:

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.2

This is the somewhat too famous and too frequently misunderstood ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ The present State with all its class machinery will be replaced by a State which will be no less a class organisation, making no claims to comprehensiveness or to impartiality. The difference between the present bourgeois State and the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ is that the State we know aims at the maintenance of class distinctions and its own permanence, resting on these distinctions; whereas the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat,’ by aiming at the abolition of all classes, prepares the way for its own extinction.

For in this matter the Engels-Marx theory is beautifully logical, as a theory, however badly it may fit the facts of future revolutions. For if the State, by its very essence, is the expression of the interests of a class, it follows that with the total, final and irrevocable abolition of classes, the State must also disappear. The abolition of classes implies the abolition of the State; and in a society where there are no classes, there can be no State. Unfortunately, the passages in which this view is most clearly expressed derive from Engels rather than from Marx—not that it matters in the case of these twin souls. The most familiar is a passage from Anti-Dühring, from which a few sentences must almost inevitably be quoted, if only because of the celebrity of the culminating phrase.

When ultimately it (the State) becomes really representative of society as a whole, it makes itself superfluous. As soon as there is no longer any class of society to be held in subjection... there is nothing more to be repressed which would make a special repressive force, a State, necessary, The first act in which the State really comes forward as the representative of society as a whole... is at the same time its last independent act as a State. The interference of the State power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The State is not’ abolished,’ it withers away.1

No less emphatic, but perhaps even more contemptuous, is a somewhat less well-known passage from The Origin of the Family:

We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The State inevitably falls with them. The society which organises production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole State machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.2

Such is the ‘withering away of the State,’ the culminating far-distant point to which Marxian politics tends.3 Saint-Simon also, it will be recalled, played with this same idea of replacing government by administration; yet it is the merest will-o’-the-wisp. It is not so easy to ‘take things out of politics.’ Even when matters have been reduced to a state of ‘Byzantine immobility,’ it is possible for men to wrangle over ‘administration’—indeed it is impossible that they should not do so. Easy enough to say that we shall take the Unemployment Assistance Board out of politics and run it as a business show without a Minister to speak of; but that does not prevent the most violent storms from raging in Parliament and in the country, as soon as the unfortunate Board formulates its first Means Test. But the interesting—indeed the rather fascinating—point is that we are here back in a state of Godwinian anarchy, with ‘free associations of producers’ jostling each other in the void.

One glimpse of the future, indeed, takes us straight into a Fourieresque Utopia. It will be recalled that the remote beginnings of separation into classes are attributed in Marxian theory to division of labour. The Marxians, in their curious way, are nothing if not logical, according to their lights. Just as the State, on the Marxian definition, must ‘wither away’ when classes are no more; so also, if division of labour is the ultimate cause of the existence of classes, it too must be for ever scotched to prevent the re-emergence of classes. In a communist world, everyone must do everything. This antipathy to division of labour appears in Capital; more specifically, and at greater length, it gives a rosy glow to the concluding pages of Anti-Dühring. The former division of labour, it is said, must disappear. Productive labour in the new golden age will become a means to the emancipation of men

by giving each individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions; in which, therefore, productive labour will become a pleasure instead of a burden.1

That each individual should have the opportunity of developing all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions, is a dream which will cheer the vision only of the simple-minded, oblivious of the restrictions imposed by the narrow limits of human life. For life is a series of acts of choice, and each choice is at the same time a renunciation and an act of abdication.

Something unborn within me dies
     With each new day;
And every night before me lies
     A straiter way.

Even the inhabitant of Engels’ future fairyland will have to decide sooner or later whether he wishes to be Archbishop of Canterbury or First Sea Lord, whether he should seek to excel as a violinist or as a pugilist, whether he should elect to know all about Chinese literature or about the hidden pages in the life of the mackerel. The passage in The German Ideology is even more diverting in revealing the ultimate confusion which would prevail in a world which sets out to realise the ideals of Marxian confusion:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing to-day and another to-morrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.2

A short week-end on a farm might have convinced Marx that the cattle themselves might have some objection to being reared in this casual manner, in the evening. On the more general issue it is odd that what is usually regarded as the most authoritarian school of socialism should thus culminate in anarchy; that the writers who were most openly contemptuous of Utopias should lead us to a Utopia to which even Fourier could scarcely add any finishing touches.

That this chapter has assumed more ample dimensions than was designed may perhaps be excused on the ground of the central position which Marx occupies in determining the later development of socialism, and the quite unique influence which he has exercised on thought and on the march of events. Yet Marx remains an abiding and inscrutable riddle. His system has worn thin to the point of being threadbare; his most devoted followers show little compunction in throwing most of him overboard, provided they can make a pretence of hanging on to something of the Marxian legacy. Probably the most significant and enduring portion of Marx is contained in the Materialist Conception of History; for here there is something which (especially if restated sensibly as by Mr. Cole) does at least provide an interesting technique in historical interpretation. It is unfortunate that with it he linked up the doctrine of the class struggle, which has had a narrowing and sterilising effect on the subsequent development of socialism. Next to this, the most significant portion of Marx to-day is probably to be found in that aspect which links up with Lenin, as in the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and the technique of revolution. This is not a question of Wissenschaft; but at least we here see Marx as a power and an influence. On the other hand, the whole theory of value (so far as comprehensible) is dead beyond the power of recovery, and none so poor as do it reverence; and with it, the doctrine of surplus-value must also go, for it is in essence an inference from the theory of value. There is nothing so silly as the fairly common affectation that, though the theory of value may be sacrificed as bad economics and as unessential, the doctrine of surplus-value nevertheless may be left intact. It did not require a Karl Marx to come from Trier to the British Museum to prove to us that the poor have, more often than not, had a rough deal in history. If this is what is meant by retaining the doctrine of surplus-value, it clearly does not require ‘scientific’ proof; moreover this is not what the doctrine of surplus-value teaches us. Its essence lies in the contention that whenever one person is employed and paid wages by another, he is necessarily defrauded—a proposition not so easily swallowed. So likewise, the ‘specific’ prophecies for the most part have refused to be fulfilled, as indeed is sufficiently evidenced by the development of Revisionism which was provoked into existence by the failure of the world to follow the lines forecast in Marxian prophecy. On the whole, then, little of Marx is left; and what does endure is not strictly of the essence of the Marxian system.

One other point is of some interest. It has been seen that the best authorities seem to be agreed that Marx was concerned with the study of an abstract world, which never has existed or could exist, of a hypothetical capitalism,’ in Dr. Lindsay’s phrase. Now if this is so, the success of Marx rests on his having been completely misunderstood. We have seen Professor Wilbrandt underline the same point from a different angle. There was, in his view, no possibility of understanding the first Volume of Capital (1867) until the appearance of the third in 1894. Yet in these years the bases of Marx’s influence were laid. It is difficult to recall any other similar case where a book has been influential largely because it has been misunderstood.

Nor can it reasonably be said that Marx’s influence rests on his captivating style. Parts of Volume I of Capital have a certain quality of fire; but in the main he is a villainous writer, and he is no better in German than in English. Anyone who doubts may try his teeth in the first fifteen pages of Capital. Or take such a sentence as this; ‘The relation of the productive forces to the form of intercourse is the relation of the form of intercourse to the occupation or activity of the individuals.’ This is not a specially bad sentence; indeed there are far worse sentences in the page that precedes and that which follows; but, being longer, they are not so apt for quotation. But can anyone say that a dog’s breakfast of sentences like that quoted is the stuff to fire the proletariat to action?

Nor was Marx, on the record of his life, the kind of man who would be expected to make an appeal to the workers of the world. It may be doubted whether he met or knew any honest-to-God British or German workers, or would have known how to deal with them, or speak to them, if he had. His natural associates were intellectual revolutionary exiles and international intriguers—a very different type of person from the worker to whom he thought he was appealing. Nor indeed can it be said that Marx had any real knowledge of the world he was so active in analysing. He did not, with a curious eye and a question on his lips, haunt places where men work. Doubtless he knew a vast deal, but it was derived from blue-books, already fading history when he read them. Wilbrandt has an unintentionally illuminating phrase on this matter. Speaking of the relationship of Marx and Engels, he says: Engels ist sein Auge für die Wirklichkeit—it was Engels who was his ‘eye for reality.’1 It is said in high commendation of Engels: in fact it reveals the nakedness of Marx. For Reality is precisely the thing that none of us can see through the eyes of another. Marx spent much of his life chewing his intellectual cud, with his back firmly planted towards the window.

Yet despite his prosy and interminable dullness, despite the confusions and inherent contradictions of his theories, despite his manifold defects in temperament and disposition, rendering him the least fitted of men to be a hero of the people, the indubitable fact remains that Marx has proved the most influential figure of the nineteenth century. Perhaps some approach to an explanation of this mystery may be found in the fact that the Marxian tradition and influence has developed along two very different lines. In this country at least, Marx has tended to become in the main the cult of a somewhat anæmic intelligentsia who, like Marx himself, prefer to see reality through the eyes of another. In this rarefied atmosphere, it is possible to discuss which of five possible interpretations should be placed on the doctrine of ‘increasing misery’; or just how a theory devised for a hypothetical capitalism may be applied to a capitalism which is not so hypothetical. But beyond this, there are those who believe in Marx without having read him—perhaps who believe in Marx just because they have not read him. It is probably a safe surmise that to-day the third Volume of Capital is even less read than that single chapter which has conferred immortality on the prophet Obadiah, and when read, is read with as little comprehension. Just as, according to some and to judge from their practice, a good Christian need not read his Bible, so a good Marxian does not need to read his Marx: he knows it is there. Thus, for the great body of the faithful, Marx has become the inspired author of a body of Sorelian myths, which sum up, and fit in with, their general view of life, which clarify and illumine their daily strivings, which rationalise and crystallise their instincts. And these people, quite rightly, are not concerned with the metaphysical refinements of a theory of value. They accept the fact of ‘exploitation’ which has been proved by Marx, whom the doubter can read if he can and if he so chooses—by Marx who had read so many books that the list of his references runs to pages and pages of close type. Moreover ‘increasing misery’ means ‘increasing misery,’ neither more nor less; and in a world where we all feel so much less fortunate than we think we ought to be, it is comforting to be told that we are right, and to know who is responsible for our unhappiness. This is what Marx did, and here lies the secret of his influence. To consider whether Marx was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; to dredge Volumes I and III of Capital for inconsistencies or logical flaws, to ‘refute’ the Marxian system is, in the last resort, sheer waste of time; for when we consort with Marx we are no longer in the world of reason or logic. He saw visions—clear visions of the passing of all things, much more nebulous visions of how all things may be made new. And his visions, or some of them, awoke a responsive chord in the hearts of many men. Perhaps the last word may be allowed to Professor Wilbrandt: ‘Das ganze System ist Darstellung, nicht Beweis.’1 The Marxian system, if we may translate not over accurately, is pictorial representation, not proof. He gives us a vision; and visions soar above logic.

NOTE ON VALUE.

Without allowing one’s self to be beguiled into the awful morass of the Theory of Value, this at least may be said in partial illumination of Marx’s later desire to differentiate between Value and Price. No one who has ever seen behind the scenes of a Price Regulation Committee will ever again lecture with a light heart on the Marshallian, or any other theory of Value. Prices to-day are to a large extent fixed somewhat arbitrarily within a moderately wide range. The theoretical reason for this is that most commodities are virtually joint products, inasmuch as no industrial unit produces one article only, or one line only of a given article. This means that ‘cost of production’ tends to be indeterminate. There are always common costs, ‘overheads,’ the distribution of which is largely a matter of policy. If a firm wishes to push a line, it will relieve it of most of its share of overhead costs; if elsewhere the ‘traffic’ will bear more, it will be called upon to bear more than its share. In addition, the retail end may add on a flat rate of 33.33 per cent, or 50 per cent., irrespective of the specific cost of marketing the commodity in question, thereafter smoothing out the answer to the nearest convenient round figure, which may be 2s. 11¾d. With this, there is the whole problem of price-differences, determined in part by tradition, and in part by what the public wants and expects. In selling a cheap, a medium and a superior line of any commodity, the spacing is more or less rigidly determined in advance; and the public 1s. 11d. may be suspicious if the next price is less than 3s. 11/2d., or whatever it may be. Also there are certain prices on which there rests a kind of taboo. It would be interesting to speculate on the economic implications of the cryptic aphorism that ‘11s. 11d. isn’t a price.’ If 11s. 11d. isn’t a price, what on earth is it? Does it fail to qualify as a price, because 11s. 11d. looks silly on a price ticket, especially if the symbol for a shilling is inclined at the same angle as the various ‘1’s’? Or is it because ‘Eleven, eleven’ may be confusing to the ear as doubtless ‘Seven, double seven, double seven’ may be to a telephonist? On the other hand, 9s. 9d. seems to be a price. The realisation that prices contain an arbitrary element may well provoke the curious enquirer into groping for a ‘Value’ which is not thus subject to caprice. But at least terms should be defined; and in seeking for truth one should not wander in a circle.

(b) LASSALLE

Marx has become, for later generations, so exclusively and sufficiently the exponent of scientific socialism—especially if ‘Marx’ be taken as a convenient abbreviation for the Marx-Engels partnership—that any embroidery in the way of pendents might almost be regarded as unnecessary. Yet there are two other names which may not in justice be passed over altogether in silence, even if, in the field of theory and thought, they add but little that is specifically their own to the Marxian edifice. There is, in the first place, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), somewhat younger than Marx, a man who perhaps figures more prominently in the history of the socialist movement than in the history of socialist theory; and there is, secondly, Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875), Marx’s senior, pre-eminently a Fabian thinker who, shunning the busy hum of men, philosophised in retirement, and who, as some would have it at one time, was one of the writers whose ideas Marx appropriated.

Ignoring strict chronology, Lassalle may be glanced at first, in deference to his greater place in history.1 Many of the writers caught in the net of this volume are somewhat enigmatic figures; none, at least in some respects, is more enigmatic than Lassalle—whether he be a fascinating enigma, as George Meredith apparently found him,2 or a somewhat repulsive and repugnant enigma, depends to a large extent on the biographer whose guidance is, for the time being, accepted. George Brandes, writing sympathetically, finds in him a caged eagle, a tragedy of greatness, marred by ‘an impure deposit of pride and haughtiness.’3 On the other hand, anyone reading the extraordinary biography by Mr. Arno Schirokauer is left, despite its apparent panegyric intentions, with the impression that in Lassalle we have surely plumbed the deepest depths of human offensiveness. It is fairly clear that everything that Lassalle did or wrote dripped with vanity and conceit. He was a showman, a fop and a dandy; at times legitimate doubts arise as to his sincerity; his private letters are frequently nauseating. On the other hand, the meretricious tinsel which somehow adheres to Lassalle throughout Schirokauer’s biography just fails to fit in with the obvious learning, scholarship and industry manifested in the authorship of Das System der Erworbenen Rechte, which, with its 900 pages of meat, is the kind of professorial work which is not lightly displaced from its appointed station on the shelves of the Law Library. Nor does the final tragedy of his death in a more than usually foolish and unnecessary duel, with all the attendant circumstances, fit in with the part he essayed to play as a Tribune of the People, or for that matter with the authorship of the Acquired Rights. And this the German workers felt quite distinctly, even if dumbly, after his death. Labour leaders do not get killed in silly duels—least of all where the occasion of the duel is a daughter of the Philistines. The fundamental doubt remains whether Lassalle throughout may not have been merely a skilful actor in the melodrama of life.

Nevertheless, though there may be doubts as to what Lassalle in his innermost core really was, there can be no dubiety as to what he did. He carried the gospel of Marx (and of others) to those for whom it was designed. He made socialism a political movement; to him was due the creation of the General Union of German Workers (the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein). No honest workman in his senses will ever profess to enjoy the Marxian subtleties and subterfuges of the opening chapters of Capital; Marxism in itself is an indigestible by-product of a sedentary life spent in the British Museum. Lassalle was the missionary, the interpreter, the populariser, endowed with the gift of tongues and inflammatory rhetoric, an admirable Aaron to Marx’s Moses. Large tracts of Marx are calculated to extinguish any fire: Lassalle was nothing but fire, and in the last two years of his life he was a whirlwind, an ascending tornado, leading up to the final climax or anti-climax. And at least he had his reward. He may now have tended to fade into the background with the passage of years, when to all but a few the shortcomings of the ‘Fortschrittspartei’ are no longer of vital interest; for it is the fate of the politician to sink into insignificance when his peculiar problems are forgotten. But at the time of his death he was a giant and a flaming symbol, compared to Marx. He became a legend, the theme of folk-song, one of the great dead who would come again to deliver his people.1

We are here concerned, at the most, with the briefest possible statement of Lassalle’s position, indicating, so far as may be, the points on which his contribution diverges from that of Marx. Summarised in a sentence, with the injustice which such an extreme summary always entails, Lassalle’s position may be said to be based theoretically on a straightforward Marxian foundation; but he differs from Marx with regard to the programme of action for the immediate future. Here, despite his denials, he draws his inspiration from Louis Blanc, and as a necessary consequence he further differs fundamentally from Marx in his conception of what the State is, and of what can be done by and through the State.

Of the very considerable spate of publications that distinguished the concluding stormy years of Lassalle’s agitation—there were twenty in twenty-seven months!—probably the three most significant will yield sufficient for our purpose. There is, firstly, the Arbeiter-Programm, a speech delivered on April 12, 1862, outlining a general philosophy and a general programme for the Workers’ Movement. There is, secondly, the Offenes Antwortschreiben, a statement of Lassalle’s views, written on request, clarifying the relationship of the Workers’ Party to other parties (above all, to the Fortschrittspartei) in the political configuration of the time. There is, thirdly, the socalled Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, which, according to Bernstein, is Lassalle’s chief work in the social-economic field. Schulze-Delitzsch was at the time an eminent member of the Liberal Party, posing as something of an economist and a philanthropist, given to the gospel of Self-Help and Savings Banks. His views largely reflected the orthodox middle-class complacency of Bastiat. Lassalle took it upon himself to deflate Schulze-Delitzsch; but the moderately extensive pamphlet in which he does so can hardly be said to be pleasant reading. He quotes, almost in extenso, a recent publication by Schulze, and for 250 pages he pours upon his antagonist a flood of vituperative contempt, treating him as the world’s greatest nit-wit, and, if one may borrow a picturesque, if perhaps unjustifiable, phrase from Sir Thomas Urquhart, railing at him like a tripe-seller’s wife.

We are here concerned with those aspects of Lassalle which do not fall neatly inside the Marxian hold-all, and to a certain extent with those elements of Marxism to which Lassalle gave a special emphasis, implanting them in the popular mind by popularising a phrase which has endured. It is of the essence of ‘Scientific Socialism,’ which seeks to prove that the coming of socialism is part of the ineluctable march of events, that it must be based on a philosophy of history. Lassalle’s ‘philosophy of history,’ if the dignified phrase be permissible, is simple and pervasive. He views all history as divided into three periods by the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. In a sweeping generalisation, he holds that revolutions can never be made; all that can be done is to give legal recognition and effect to a revolution that has already taken place in the actual relationships existing in a society. In short, a revolution is an acknowledgement and endorsement of what has already taken place.1

On this view, the French Revolution of 1789 chronicled the fact that the nobility, whose power rested on the possession of land, had been reduced to a position of complete insignificance, and had become dependent on the Bourgeoisie.2 It gave the tiers état in law the position it had already acquired in fact.3 But this third estate did not really represent the cause of the whole of humanitjy.4 What emerged was a Bourgeoisie, with a claim to privilege resting on property qualification. Kapitalbesitz had now become the determinant of political power, in place of land.5 The French Revolution had doubtless declared Labour to be free, but it had endowed the worker with no Kapital He was rechtlich frei und faktisch mittellos—free in the eyes of the law, but in fact without means, compelled to sell life itself for the means of life.6 The year 1789 had displaced the Nobility, resting on land, in favour of the Bourgeoisie, resting on ‘capital-possession’; the year 1848, displacing the Bourgeoisie, was destined to usher in the era of humanity, securely planted on universal suffrage—of all which, more hereafter. Thus does Lassalle divide the history of humanity into two eternities, separated by a brief interval of fifty-nine years.

Though Lassalle was writing and speaking in 1862–63—well after the revolution of 1848—his analysis would indicate that the new era had not so far enjoyed a very effective dawn. In the main, though perhaps more picturesquely and with greater propaganda skill, the core of his proof of exploitation coincides with that given by Marx. The worker always pays; he is always the loser. First of all, there bulks largely in Lassalle’s mind a point which had not then attracted the attention it was to receive later: the relative merits and consequences of direct and indirect taxation. In the nature of things, indirect taxation rests preponderatingly on the poorer classes; in more modern language, it is regressive. But, in the world known to Lassalle, the bulk of the State’s income was derived from indirect taxation, mostly paid by the poor; political power, on the other hand, under the property qualification, was based on direct taxation, which contributed little. This elaborate system of indirect taxation was the device—Lassalle called it the ‘institution’—whereby the Bourgeoisie contrived that large capital should continue to enjoy immunity from the burden of taxation.1

The central proof of exploitation is pure Marx, without the Marxian complications and involutions, and therefore more comprehensible and more convincing: in short, it is more in line with the early English anticipators of Marxism. The worker receives bare subsistence (Lebensnotdurft); the entrepreneur takes the rest.2 But if it would involve vain repetition to state the substance of Lassalle’s views at greater length, three incidental points arising out of the manner of his statement should be noted. In the first place, Lassalle invented, or at least he gets the credit of having invented, the phrase which describes the alleged tendency of wages to subsistence-level as the ‘Iron Law of Wages.’ It is an old doctrine, to be found in the pages of Turgot in a more classic and precise form than that which Ricardo gave to it. Strictly speaking, Lassalle called it ‘das eherne Gesetz,’ which is a ‘brazen law,’ rather than an iron law: in any case, being metallic, it does not greatly matter. A maniac for accuracy might indeed point out that what he most frequently called it was ‘das eherne und grausame Gesetz,’ which somehow sounds even more horrible. In a way, this baptismal effort was, in the field of letters, Lassalle’s crowning achievement. The Iron (or the Brazen) Law of Wages was an idea with immense propaganda possibilities which Lassalle exploited to the uttermost. The paternity of the phrase, indeed, has a fair chance of being, in the long run, Lassalle’s most abiding title to fame.

The second point to note is that Lassalle’s statement of the ‘Iron Law’ has its roots intertwined with a primitive and crude Malthusianism. Indeed, the Iron Law of Wages, to be made plausible, demands that any temporary aberration of the wage-level above the subsistence line will be at once neutralised by a devastating torrent of children. This in fact is Lassalle’s position: if the worker receives enough for his subsistence, he will automatically produce the next generation for the employer’s behoof.1

The third point arising from Lassalle’s use of the Iron Law has reference to his relationship to Ricardo. It had been rather an affectation of the scientific socialists and their early English predecessors to claim that they were attacking the orthodox economists with their own weapons: and it has long been a commonplace (perhaps originally intended as a paradox) to look upon Marx and his fellows as the last of the classical school. Lassalle himself states the position with admirable clarity. Ricardo, he says, had carried ‘bürgerliche Oekonomie’ (may we say the classical school?) to its highest point, where the only possible further development was to transform it into ‘Sozial-Oekonomie’: ‘Socialism’ (if one may thus freely translate Sozial-Oekonomie) is nothing other than a fight against Ricardo, but it is at the same time a fight which is just as much an immanent continuation of his doctrine. The point is well and justly made.2

A somewhat different (perhaps even inconsistent) source of exploitation brings Lassalle more closely into touch with Proudhon. He attaches a quite extraordinary importance to the principle of division of labour, and draws from it conclusions which reach far in various directions. It is, among other things, one of the impulses to exploitation. He argues, dubiously, that it is only under division of labour that labour can produce any surplus above subsistence level.3 It doubtless depends on what is meant by ‘division of labour,’ which admittedly is patient of many interpretations. He argues further, and much more indefensibly, that division of labour is the source of all wealth—‘die Theiling der Arbeit ist die Quelle aller Reichthümer.’ What the capitalist does is to appropriate the advantages of division of labour and the ever-increasing productivity that springs from it.4

The principle of division of labour is further used by Lassalle to develop an idea very dear to his heart; order, he held, prevailed in production, whereas in distribution we are confronted with chaos. It is of the essence of division of labour (it is indeed a text-book commonplace) that it means a more complicated pattern; it means an extended chain between the producer and the consumer. There may have been a time when men; in Marxian language, produced ‘use-values’—living on the work of their own hands. Now no one produces anything that is even sellable, or on which he can live.1 And it is indeed true that the wretch who makes the eighteenth part of a pin, can neither sell the eighteenth part of a pin, nor feed it to his wife. With the lengthening chain to the consumer at the world’s end, we are all liable to be upset by what happens anywhere. Consequently, in opposition to liberal complacency regarding man’s ‘responsibility’ for his actions, Lassalle replies in a phrase which pleased him, that in the economic sphere to-day each man is made responsible precisely for what he has not done.2 In all this, we are subject to chance, and where chance prevails the freedom of the individual no longer exists.3 There is also a further contrast which also leads to an epigram: as against the traditional theory (as in Locke) which speaks of the ‘labour basis’ of private property, and founds property in the right of the labourer to what he has himself produced, we are living in an age in which everyone aids in the production of ‘exchange-values’ designed to pass into circulation, and in which therefore everyone can call that ‘his’ which in fact he has not produced. In a rather famous and untranslatable phrase: ‘Das Eigenthum ist Fremdthum geworden’4; which, though, it has sometimes been thought to be a free appropriation from Proudhon, in fact represents a different line of approach.

Combining these various lines of thought, it is possible to descry dimly on what grounds Lassalle, with something of the guile of the later Fabians, was able to suggest that we were already, even if unconsciously, living in a semi-socialised world. For the mere existence of division of labour binds us together; it implies work carried on in union; it is a bond linking society together with a view to production.5 In production there is therefore order, the order of the workshop, the order that springs from union for a common end. But not so with distribution. The deep inner contradiction in our organisation is that we have Gemeinsamkeit in production, and Individualismus in distribution.6 We are accordingly living in a state of ‘anarchic socialism.’7 Something of the order, of the Gemeinsamkeit, that prevails in production must be introduced elsewhere, so that our socialism may cease to be one-sided. Lassalle, it must be admitted, is here less plausible than the Fabians.

It is when Lassalle turns to the question of immediate remedies that he diverges sharply from Marx and Rodbertus. We have already seen that the French Revolution, while giving the worker an empty freedom, nevertheless refrained from giving him any capital; and he therefore remained helpless, forced to sell himself, when face to face with the entrepreneur. What must be done is to convert, or degrade capital into what it should be, to wit, a lifeless instrument in the service of labour.1 A large part of the Offenes Antwortschreiben is devoted to revealing the inadequacy of the Schulzian proposals, which appealed to the principles of responsibility, of self-help and other kindred virtues. But Lassalle, heavily armed with the Iron Law of Wages—das eherne und grausame Gesetz—knows the answer which effectively crushes all these rose-tinted proposals for reform. Nothing is done to raise the general level. Savings Banks, for example, may help a few, and even these not effectively: the final result is merely to prolong the death-struggle. Consumers’ Co-operative Societies are in the same case. For in the background there is always the eherne und grausame Gesetz, so that if, exceptionally and against all probability, it were possible to raise the general condition of the workers under the banner of Self-help, immediately and automatically the ‘Iron Law’ would depress their wages by precisely the amount by which their position had speciously been bettered.2 Along these lines, the Iron Law, as visualised and applied by Lassalle, is seen to be an insurmountable barrier blocking all aspirations towards benevolent amelioration.

Yet, if the worker is to be saved, the Iron Law must be circumvented. The solution in its phraseology is somewhat suggestive of Fourier; in its substance, it is, as near as may be, straightforward Louis Blanc. The workers—or rather the Arbeiterstand, the workers as a class—must become their own ‘undertakers.’ The principle of association doubtless does provide the path to salvation, but it must find its application and extension in the field of production, in fabrikmässige Grossproduktion. Industry is therefore to be transformed by the creation of productive associations—guilds, ateliers, or whatever they may have been called at different eras—with ownership and control vesting in the workers. In this way, and the phrase sets many chords vibrating, the distinction between wages and profits (between Arbeitslohn and Unternehmergewinn) disappears, as indeed does the conception of wages itself. Labour will receive as its reward the produce of labour, the Arbeitsertrag3

The final solution, as has been indicated, so closely resembles that proposed by Louis Blanc that, in the pleasing German phrase, it would scarcely be ‘rewarding’ to pursue it in further detail. Lassalle protested vigorously against being identified with the ‘ateliers nationaux’ of unhappy memory. Perhaps rightly: for it is at least an open question how far Louis Blanc was himself identified with, or responsible for, the ‘ateliers nationaux,’ or how far they reflected his ideas. Yet no one who reads Louis Blanc and Lassalle together can have any doubt that their proposals, as embodied in the printed word, are substantially identical: if there are minor differences, they are of an order of magnitude which at this distance of time makes the issue one of purely antiquarian and specialist interest.

Of greater importance than the ultimate view of a world of co-operative workshops is the question relating to the manner of their establishment. For here Lassalle, in discussing ways and means, adds as a kind of pendent his theory of the State. It is perhaps the most significant feature in Lassalle, as it is the least Marxian. Obviously the workers cannot, of themselves, effect the transition; for this, they must look to the State, whose business and task it is to further the great cause of free association among the workers, and whose ‘most sacred duty’ it is to provide the necessary means.1 This is indeed a very different State from that which flits furtively in the background of Marx and Engels, and which ultimately colours the stream leading to syndicalism, where the State is regarded as of necessity a tyrannous class organisation, of which the best that can be hoped is that some day it will be smashed and that later, when there are no more classes, its successor will itself wither away. What then is the State in Lassalle’s eyes? Addressing the German workers, he tells them that the State belongs to them and to the needy classes, and that they and their association are the State. The State is ‘die grosse Organisation, die grosse Assoziation der arbeitenden Klassen.’2

Here is a very positive and active State, bubbling over with benevolent subsidies; and Lassalle consciously contrasts it, in a passage which is almost classic, with the contrary ‘bourgeois’ view of the State, which is that the purpose of the State consists, solely and exclusively, in the protection of the personal freedom of the individual, and of his property. This is indeed the laissez faire idea of the State which tended (as in von Humboldt) to limit the State’s functions to protection in the narrowest sense. In a phrase which has endured, Lassalle characterised this conception as a Nachtwächteridee, viewing the State as a night-watchman, solely concerned in preventing the ft and burglary; and he adds significantly that, in this liberal view, if there were no longer any thieves or robbers, then the State would become a superfluity.1 Thus, the far-off consummation devoutly desired by the anarchist, the syndicalist, and the later communist is spoken of by Lassalle in the confident tone of one who produces an unanswerable reductio ad absurdum.

So far from wishing to reduce the State’s function to a minimum, or looking forward with equanimity to the process of its withering away, Lassalle sees in it, now and hereafter, an abiding engine for the moral uplift and regeneration of mankind. He becomes almost lyrical in his praises of the State. In the Arbeiter-Programm, the State exists to develop the freedom of mankind; it is the union of individuals into a spiritual whole; its purpose is to enable the individual to attain heights which he could never have reached by his own unaided efforts.2 In the Offenes Antwortschreiben he is, if possible, even more emphatic. There he argues that it is the task and the purpose of the State to facilitate and bring about the cultural progress of mankind; and he adds in words of almost excessive emphasis: ‘Dies ist sein Beruf. Dazu existiert er; hat immer dazu gedient und dienen müssen.’3 This is more in line with that worship of the State as something divine which, Marx and his school apart, runs through so much of German thought.

All very well for Lassalle to assure his hearers that they are the State; but are they? Has he not himself described them as the ‘disinherited’? All very well to say that it is the State’s most sacred duty to launch a thousand ships in the form of productive associations; but was the Prussian State of 1862 likely to rise to its most sacred duty? This brings us to a last point which indeed is the first plank in Lassalle’s immediate political programme. The State will only rise to the height of its duty when it represents the whole of the people; and therefore the immediate objective must be the attainment of universal suffrage.4 When the workers have obtained this, all other things will be added unto them. But this is the first essential condition, and this explains the foundations of Lassalle’s policy, which was that the workers should form a political party, distinct from and apart from all others, and that this party should concentrate on the attainment of the suffrage as the first step to the enjoyment of the ‘helping hand’ of the State. In the light of subsequent disillusionments and later criticisms, it is rather pathetic to note the touching faith which Lassalle displayed in the efficacy of the ballot-box. It is rather assumed that the attainment of universal suffrage and the official opening of the New Jerusalem will more or less synchronise, with the least imaginable time-lag.

Such is Lassalle: so far as theory is concerned, largely a purveyor and populariser of Marxian doctrine, though it should be remembered that, in the nature of things, he was denied the opportunity of reading Capital, and therefore had to draw his sustenance from the earlier writings of Marx. Above all he concentrated on ‘exploitation,’ in so far as that has its roots in the ‘Iron Law’—a phrase to which, with great propagandist skill, he gave enduring currency.1 But he was latterly a politician even more than a theorist of socialism; and as such he deviates from orthodox Marxism in his faith in the State, in his view of the uses to which the State can be put, and of the help which the State can afford—once the elected body, by a system of universal suffrage, has been made a true reflection of the people at large. If he is not, as he has sometimes been called, the first State Socialist—that title should rather go to Louis Blanc—he is probably the first who was prepared to be a Labour Prime Minister; nor would he have disdained an Earldom on his retirement.

In the foregoing brief summary of Lassalle’s views, it has been assumed that he meant what he said. Perhaps it is immaterial whether he did or did not. Yet, to revert to a point touched upon at the outset, in reading Lassalle and of Lassalle, one is haunted by the gnawing doubt whether he was in fact moved by any consideration other than a passion for the limelight and the furtherance of his own glittering career. There are traditional (and doubtless apocryphal) tales of bright young things with their eyes on Parliament, realising that they might get in each other’s way in the race for the Premiership if they adhered to the same Party, and accordingly resolving the difficulty by leaving it to the toss of a coin to determine which should go Liberal and which Conservative. It would take too long, and in any case would be outside the scope of this discussion to consider just precisely what incidents and phrases, perhaps of no great importance in themselves, give rise to the suspicion that Lassalle in the same way might very well have argued with equal dexterity and declaimed with equal eloquence in any other cause, if glory and applause had beckoned elsewhere. Nor need we in this matter be unduly affected by the obiter dicta of Marx, generously scattered throughout his correspondence, on the subject of Lassalle’s shortcomings. Lassalle had been both generous and helpful to Marx; he was a very dangerous potential rival—both excellent reasons for Marx’s increasing contempt and hatred. Lassalle’s luxurious, sybaritic and apolaustic private life; the fantastic publicity of the Countess Hatzfeld affair; the noise and the fury of political agitation; the opening moves in the political chess-game with Bismarck; the final folly of his death in a duel—all this is much more the raw material of a spectacular 120-minute film than a page from real life; and from a film hero one does not necessarily ask for translucent sincerity. The indubitable historical fact is that it was Lassalle, whatever his qualities and vanities, who created the German Workers’ Movement as a political force.

(c) RODBERTUS

Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875), who here appears third among the exponents of scientific socialism, might claim, if only on chronological grounds, the right to the highest seat. At one time, indeed, his delirious followers claimed for him a place in the German firmament comparable to that ordinarily assigned to Goethe, and feuds as to the extent to which Marx plagiarised Rodbertus periodically illumine an otherwise dull page. It may be an unworthy suspicion, but it is difficult, two (or three) generations after the event, to resist the impression that the quite obviously unjustifiable adulation of Rodbertus has its hidden springs in a desire to play down Marx by those to whom Marx was antipathetic. While this may have been a highly natural impulse, the results are not always happy. When one overhears the worshippers of Rodbertus speaking of Unser Denker, almost is one persuaded to be a Marxian.

But if in Germany Rodbertus was for a time a philosopher almost grotesquely overrated (by some), he has exercised no influence and has never excited more than the most tepid interest in this country. Even the gallant, if somewhat uninspired, attempt of the late Sir Edward Gonner to present The Social Philosophy of Rodbertus to the English-speaking world made little impression on the general indifference. Rodbertus has remained little more than a name which the navigator of the Marxian wastes periodically encounters on the fringes of his explorations.

While therefore he may not be ignored, nevertheless in this country and for this generation, he receives adequate attention if, despite his priority in time, he is treated somewhat summarily as a supplementary note to Marx. The man himself, in his aloofness from the battle, in his leisured air of well-being, provides an interesting contrast to Marx and Lassalle alike. He was a lawyer, practising—but not for too long—in the State service. While still young, he bought the estate of Jagetzow in Pomerania, and was consequently known as Rodbertus-Jagetzow. He played some part in local politics, and indeed was for a few weeks, in 1848, Minister of Education. Thereafter he was the cultured country squire, dividing his time between the management of his estate and speculations on what was wrong with the world, and how, given a few centuries, it could be put right. In the peace of his Rittergut, he was able to view things from afar.

Rodbertus, in his general theoretical position, is not far removed from Marx; though indeed the same is true of the early English pre-Marxian socialists. In other words, he is largely engaged in pushing Ricardian conclusions a stage further to serve ends of which Ricardo never dreamed. There is a good deal of justification for calling him the ‘Ricardo of Economic Socialism’—a phrase coined by Wagner.1 But though Rodbertus and Marx are not far apart in the main as theoretical analysts of the world and of ‘Capital,’ there is nevertheless a considerable difference in the atmosphere. Rodbertus is interested in the ‘Social Problem’ and its solution. He would have said that his life was devoted Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage—to quote the title of his most significant book—to the illumination of the social problem. And if anyone asks what he understood by the ‘social problem,’ the answer here is singularly precise, and perhaps somewhat limited. Expressly in his own words, the social problem consists, and consists exclusively, in Pauperismus and Handelskrisen—in the prevalent increasing poverty and in commercial crises.2 Rodbertus throughout is concerned, directly or indirectly, with these two questions and with these two questions alone. It is indeed his unquestioned merit that no one previously had placed what we should now call the Trade Cycle so completely and so emphatically in the centre of things, as in large measure the source of the world’s maladies.

The dominant factor in Rodbertus’ economic theorising is to be found in his unquestioning acceptance of the Ricardian Law of Wages, in the sense in which it was also understood by Lassalle. Whether or not this was a faithful interpretation is immaterial. Wages, he asserts, have never, or for any length of time, been above the necessary subsistence level.3 He uses the same adjective as does Lassalle: it is the grausame Gesetz, whereby wages gravitate to the level of bare necessities.4 To arrive, almost prematurely, at the central and most characteristic idea in Rodbertus’ presentation, we must combine this statement of the Iron Law of Wages in its most brazen form with the undoubted fact that wealth is increasing, that we are living in an age of ever-increasing abundance. If wages are depressed to subsistence level (with, if possible, a tendency downwards), while the sum total of wealth is simultaneously increasing, it follows naturally and ineluctably that that part of the national dividend that is devoted to wages must represent a diminishing share of the nation’s income. Thus we arrive at the Law of the Diminishing Wage Share. The amount of wages need not decline absolutely; with an increase in the number of workers, the total wage-bill would presumably rise. But the proportion which it bears to the total will, as things are, go on falling. Wages, the reward of the ‘labouring classes,’ will be a perpetually shrinking share of the nation’s wealth.1

It is this Law of the Diminishing Wage-Share which, for Rodbertus, sheds a light on most dark places. It is the operation of this law which must be abrogated, if the world is to be healed. Though slightly off our main path, it may be noted that it furnishes, to Rodbertus’ satisfaction, an explanation of commercial crises. The trade cycle (to use later terminology) rests on the fact that purchasing power and productivity do not keep in step. Rather is it true that the purchasing power of the largest part of society diminishes in proportion to increased productivity. Consequently, society finds itself producing use-values which are no longer market-values, although need, so far as concerns most of the population, is still unsatisfied.2 Waiving the phraseology of Rodbertus, which has here a somewhat Marxian aroma, the explanation of the trade cycle here offered is that periodically maladjustments arise, because of a comparative failure of purchasing power on the part of a large part of the population. It is extremely doubtful whether the ‘diminishing wage-share’ can logically be called upon to bear the burden thus placed upon it; but the theory has obvious kinship with various later lines of thought.

But though the ‘Commercial Crisis’ is almost half the picture in Rodbertus’ presentation, its significance lies chiefly in the fact that it periodically accentuates the poverty and the misery already prevalent. Let us look somewhat more closely at these ‘labouring classes,’ and see their position in the scheme of things. First of all—a general consideration—all commodities are, for Rodbertus, the product of labour and of labour only: putting it otherwise, all wealth is the creation of labour. Yet the labourers do not receive what they produce, nor on the basis of what they produce. Nor let anyone say that they are paid ‘out of capital,’ as the later Wages Fund Theory would have us believe. They are paid out of what they produce. Capital is merely ‘vorgethane Arbeit’—labour previously accomplished, requiring present labour to make it effective. There are only two kinds of income. There is, firstly, rent, which Rodbertus uses comprehensively to cover the revenue derived from the ownership of land and of capital alike. It is, in either case, an income derived by virtue of possession and without labour; and rent can arise only when society has advanced so far that labour produces more than it requires, and when there are arrangements and institutions which deprive the labourer of his surplus and enable it to be transferred to others. Apart from rent (comprehensively used to cover all unearned incomes) there are wages, which in effect are what is left over after all deductions have been made.1

We have witnessed the operation of the Iron Law (though the copyright in the phrase belongs to Lassalle). If we grope for the ‘sanctions’ behind the Iron Law, we find that ultimately it derives its force from the fact that land and capital have become vested in individuals as their private possessions. The owners, confronting workers with empty hands, are thus enabled to allow them to work only on conditions; and the conditions imposed (if things are left to themselves) are naturally that the worker, in return for permission to live, shall surrender a portion, and ultimately the whole, of his surplus produce.2 The ultimate cause of poverty and instability, working back through the diminishing wage-share and the Iron Law of Wages, is thus found in the private ownership of land and the means of production. Here is the seat of the world’s malady.

But indeed the position of the working classes is even worse than this analysis discloses. Not only does the ‘natural’ wage exclude the worker from any share in his own mounting productivity, but simultaneously the burden of taxation imposed on him tends to increase until proportionately he has become the most heavily taxed of all, while at the same time he shares least in the benefits of State expenditure.3 These are indeed, in Rodbertus’ own words, Berge von Unrecht—mountains of injustice. He might have quoted his favourite Shakespeare. What are the working classes but camels, who have their provand only for bearing burdens?

All this is the result of leaving things to ‘natural’ laws, and, assuming that the analysis is correct, Rodbertus is abundantly right in suggesting that these ‘natural’ laws should be replaced by ‘rational’ laws; in place of what is natürlich, we ought to establish what is vernünftig. It is an emphatic voice of protest against laissez faire and all its ways. On the side of social philosophy, as distinct from economic analysis, it is the most distinctive and abiding note in Rodbertus. The dominance of the private owner subjects the world to caprice, whereas we should be guided by reason and foresight. It is to the State that we must look for unbiased judgment and for decisions in the common interest of all: it is to the State that we must look in future for the conduct of enterprise. The worship of the State (using the words in no metaphorical sense) is a well-defined tradition in German thought, and to Rodbertus the State is divine. States pursue nur göttliche Ziele. Politics is the höchste und königlichste Kunst; and States themselves are die edelste Bildungen die es auf der Erde giebt,1 These phrases are best left in the original; they are so alien to our way of thinking that any attempted translation might convey a suggestion of burlesque, or even of mockery, not present in Rodbertus’ words. He belonged to the generation of Germans who quoted Shakespeare, seeking by preference their inspiration in less familiar passages; it is not without significance that he places in the forefront the words of Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida:

There is a mystery—with whom relation
Durst never meddle—in the soul of state;
Which hath an operation more divine
Than breath or pen can give expressure to.

In one passage of fundamental importance, Rodbertus outlines his views of the nature of the State and of its responsibilities for its own development. States, he says, are organisms, living organisms, and therefore subject to perpetual development. Moreover, they lead a selbstschöpferisches Leben; they are self-creative, and it is their task to prescribe the line of their own development, and to devise such organs as may be necessary for the fulfilment of their own destiny.2 The passage, which has a certain eloquence has also a certain nebulousness; but it is clear that, in Rodbertus’ view, States prescribe their own path down the course of history, that it is their task and their chief labour to devise laws and measures which will keep them in the right way, as equally to avoid laws and measures which will lead them astray. Here at least is a vision of purpose, of design, of continuity. With the aid of such a State, consciously pursuing an end determined by itself, we may hope to bring things more into conformity with reason, or at least—for Rodbertus is no optimist—we may prevent things from getting worse. But, on the threshold, it is as well to clear away certain possible deluding suggestions. We have seen that the root-trouble lies in the present ownership of land and capital, which has as a consequence that the workers with weak bargaining power—if indeed they have any at all—are compelled to sell their labour at bare subsistence rates. It is, however, no solution to suggest that land or capital, or indeed the product of labour itself, should belong to the worker. As in Lassalle, the principle of division of labour plays a quite large part in the theorisings of Rodbertus. It is division of labour that gives unity to society; but also it is division of labour that makes private property possible and renders exploitation inevitable. With the utmost emphasis, accordingly, Rodbertus declares (somewhat flamboyantly) that so long as division of labour pours out over society the cornucopia of its inestimable treasures, neither land, nor labour, nor the product of labour may be allowed to belong to the worker.1 In short, under division of labour it is impossible to say what anyone produces: production is a social process.

Further, the ‘right to the whole produce of labour’ is a delusion because of deductions which must be made. All commodities are, as has been seen, the products of labour, and only labour entering directly into production has to be taken into account. In his first main statements, Rodbertus rather tends to side-track all work other than manual work. This does not, however, mean that there are not other activities, essential to the continuance of the Commonwealth, which need to be maintained. There is the doctor; there is the judge; there are the instruments of administration. Before the workers’ share is determined, there must be an appropriate deduction to meet these essential claims. Subject to these reservations, rewards should be based on work done; just as, in a rational society, value, if not determined by labour, would at least be based on labour, so that in exchange equivalent sacrifices on the two sides would be involved.

Rodbertus has a tolerably precise view of the future—the very remote future—to which we are tending. It will be the complete example of State Socialism, where the State is divine, and where, at least by inference, the State authorities are perfectly wise and the rest of the population perfectly docile, so that they are under no temptation to question the State’s perfect wisdom. The Leitung, the administration, of all things would be in the hands of the State, and all income would rest on work done and services rendered. With regard to the more immediate future, Rodbertus’ vision is more clouded. Let us not delude ourselves. The world is not yet ready for socialism—will not be ready for socialism for another five hundred years. It is not for our time. The free will of society is not yet strong enough to do without the compulsion to work; there are hints that we still need the Geissel der Noth, the scourge of need, to impel us onwards. In short our moral strength is not yet great enough; we have not yet ended our journey in the wilderness. Moreover, the owners of capital and land—but perhaps especially the owners of land, since Rodbertus was a landowner—discharge certain functions which the State is not yet ready to take over. Consequently, possession must not for the present be disturbed. Present conditions may represent ‘mountains of injustice’; but as we are insufficiently developed morally, we must just lump it for a few centuries longer.1 The inevitability of Mr. Sidney Webb’s gradualness was as nothing compared to the gradualness of Rodbertus’ inevitability.

Meanwhile measures should be taken to prevent a further deterioration, or perhaps even to effect an improvement. It is significant for Rodbertus’ outlook that he turns to the throne for effective leadership. A socialist monarchy, or a monarchy preparing the path to socialism is his ideal.2 Except on one point, his ameliorative measures are statements of ends, rather than of means to ends. Rent (in his sense) should be restricted; the Law of the Diminishing Wage-share must be counteracted—indeed, wages must rise. The workers’ demand for mehr Besitz, a, larger share of what is going, must be satisfied3; and with the increased productivity which will spring from better organisation, it will be possible to meet this claim without in any way curtailing (meantime) what others receive. The workers must be protected against the uncertainties of the trade cycle; and taxation, now pressing on the worker with unjustifiable weight, must be reformed.

The one point on which (perhaps unfortunately) Rodbertus aimed at a more specific remedy was his suggestion for the prescription of a normal working day. This, with the Law of the Diminishing Wageshare, is what has remained most closely associated with the name of Rodbertus. Perhaps at the first blush the phrase is slightly misleading. Rodbertus was not concerned with anything so commonplace as a mere restriction of hours. Rather he aimed at the definition (inevitably to be done by tbe State) of a unit of work constituting for each occupation the normal working day. There should be a definite performance in normal time. This would open the way to equitable exchanges; it would assure the worker a share in increased productivity; and it would also make it possible to dispense with money. The State would in effect define for all industries what should be regarded as equivalent amounts of output, and workers would be paid accordingly with certificates testifying the amount of normal days’ work accomplished. These would then be exchangeable for other commodities representing the same amount of normal working days. The central authority would doubtless have to be incessantly engaged in redefining the unit of work: they would also have to assume responsibility for the issue of the necessary paper money, and they would have to devise a Magazinirungsystem,—surely an unnecessarily barbarous word—a system of depots where goods could be deposited for exchange.1 One seems to feel the near presence of Robert Owen. Apart from the incessant necessary task of tinkering with the appropriate units, the proposal gapes with difficulties. Among other things it is based on the fallacious Marxian assumption that all labour results in commodities. Where there is no measurable product, the task of defining the unit for the day’s work is insoluble. Well might Adler say that Rodbertus’ theory of labour-money conceals in itself a veritable nest of errors—ein wahres Nest von Irrtümern.2 He picks out ten ‘grave defects’; but this by no means leaves the nest empty.

Such, much too briefly, is unser Denker—an interesting figure who, if he was at one time unduly exalted, is perhaps now in danger of being unduly neglected. Without doubt, for what it is worth, he had a certain priority over Marx: he had certainly considerable influence on Lassalle and on the more academic socialists of Germany. In so far as concerns the substance of his teaching, it is obvious that a world intent on explaining away Marx, can scarcely be expected to be kinder to Rodbertus. In some respects, indeed, there is a certain similarity in the attitude adopted by their admirers. Adolf Wagner may be regarded as having been the High Priest of the cult of Rodbertus. Writing as far back as 1885, he defined his attitude to his master. The majority of Rodbertus’ theoretical doctrines, he says somewhat bluntly, are false: in particular—and he proceeds to enumerate—his theory of value, his theory of rent and capital-formation, of population, of crises, his monetary and banking theories, und anderes mehr. It is a curious position. Apparently, according to his chief admirer, little that Rodbertus said is defensible or tenable, yet he remains a bahnbrechende Denker and an abiding inspiration. As we have seen, it is not so different in the case of Marx, where the efforts of his disciples have been increasingly devoted to showing that though each individual Marxian theory may have to be tossed to the critical wolves, yet the structure as a whole and the Marxian spirit remain above criticism. Otherwise Rodbertus is perhaps a somewhat ineffective philosopher. Never was there so complete a Fabian; never was there a socialist so conservative in his fundamental instincts. Somewhat ostentatiously, he shunned the dust and the heat and the turmoil.3 Partly he was a pessimist; partly he was timorous. What could be more pessimistic than his firm conviction that the school can avail nothing against the grime and the need of the homes from which the children come?1 What could be more pessimistic than his belief that we are morally still some centuries behind the standard which socialism demands? And fear too was in his heart. In the peace of his Rittergut, he was haunted by the thought that society might be producing a race of barbarians in soul and in spirit; that there might yet be new waves of barbarian invasions, coming from within society itself—rude men who preferred to lay waste the seats of civilisation rather than endure its miseries longer.2 One thinks of Mably who also wrung his hands; one thinks of von Thünen who also, in his country retreat, brooded over the miseries of his less fortunate fellows. Rodbertus was pre-eminently a man of culture—probably of too much culture. His writings reveal a sensitiveness and a sympathy which are entirely lacking in’ the more metallic purple patches of Marx and Lassalle. In the end it is difficult not to feel kindly towards him—an earnest, sincere and just man, slightly fearful, made vaguely uncomfortable by the roughness of men who were nevertheless his fellows, and trying to forgive in advance those hordes of wronged barbarians who, in their frustration, might one day invade Jagetzow and trample his Shakespeare under foot.