[1]Bastiat-Schulze, p. iii., Berlin 1878.
[1]
Bastiat-Schulze, p. iii., Berlin 1878.
[2]SeeWorking Men’s Programme.
[2]
SeeWorking Men’s Programme.
[3]SeeOpen Letter.
[3]
SeeOpen Letter.
[4]SeeOpen Letter, passim.
[4]
SeeOpen Letter, passim.
[5]SeeBastiat-Schulze, p. 189.
[5]
SeeBastiat-Schulze, p. 189.
[6]Bastiat-Schulze, p. 188.
[6]
Bastiat-Schulze, p. 188.
[7]Bastiat-Schulze, p. 18.
[7]
Bastiat-Schulze, p. 18.
[8]Bastiat-Schulze, p. 186.
[8]
Bastiat-Schulze, p. 186.
[9]Ibid., p. 181.
[9]
Ibid., p. 181.
To those who identify socialism with the extreme revolutionary spirit, Rodbertus is naturally an enigma. Everything characteristic of Rodbertus is an express contradiction of their notion of a socialist. He was a Prussian lawyer and landowner, a quiet and cultured student, who disliked revolution and even agitation. It was a marked feature of his teaching also, that he meant the socialist development to proceed on national lines and under national control. Yet it is impossible to give any reasonable account of socialism that will exclude Rodbertus. Clearly the only right way out of the dilemma for those who are caught in it is to widen their conception of the subject; and Rodbertus will become perfectly clear and intelligible.
Karl Johann Rodbertus, by some considered to be the founder of scientific socialism, was born at Greifswald on 12th August 1805, his father being a professor at the university there. He studied law at Göttingen and Berlin, thereafter engaging in various legal occupations; and, after travelling for some time, he bought the estate of Jagetzow, in Pomerania, whence his nameof Rodbertus-Jagetzow. In 1836 he settled on this estate, and henceforward devoted his life chiefly to economic and other learned studies, taking also some interest in local and provincial affairs.
After the revolution of March 1848 Rodbertus was elected member of the Prussian National Assembly, in which body he belonged to the Left Centre; and for fourteen days he filled the post of Minister of Public Worship and Education. He sat for Berlin in the Second Chamber of 1849, and moved the adoption of the Frankfort imperial constitution, which was carried. Then came the failure of the revolutionary movement in Prussia, as elsewhere in Europe, and Rodbertus retired into private life. When the system of dividing the Prussian electorate into three classes was adopted, Rodbertus recommended abstention from voting. His only subsequent appearance in public life was his candidature for the first North German Diet, in which he was defeated.
His correspondence with Lassalle was an interesting feature of his life. At one time Rodbertus had some intention of forming a social party with the help of the conservative socialist Rudolf Meyer and of Hasenclever, a prominent follower of Lassalle; but no progress was made in this. Rodbertus was neither disposed nor qualified to be an agitator, being a man of a calm and critical temperament, who believed that society could not be improved by violent changes, but by a long and gradual course of development. He warned the working men of Germany against connectingthemselves with any political party, enjoining them to be a social party pure and simple. He died on 8th December 1875.
The general position of Rodbertus was ‘social, monarchical, and national.’ With his entire soul he held the purely economic part of the creed of the German Social Democratic party, yet he did not agree with their methods, and had no liking for the productive associations with State help of Lassalle. He regarded a socialistic republic as a possible thing, but he cordially accepted the monarchic institution in his own country, and hoped that a German emperor might undertake therôleof a social emperor. He was also a true patriot, and was proud and hopeful of the career that lay before the regenerated empire of Germany.
The basis of the economic teaching of Rodbertus is the principle laid down by Adam Smith and Ricardo, and insisted on by all the later socialists, that labour is the source and measure of value. In connection with this he developed the position that rent, profit, and wages are all parts of a national income produced by the united organic labour of the workers of the community. Consequently there can be no talk of the wages of labour being paid out of capital; wages is only that part of the national income which is received by the workmen, of a national income which they have themselves entirely produced. The wages fund theory is thus summarily disposed of.
But the most important result of the theory is his position that the possession of land and capital enablesthe landholders and capitalists to compel the workmen to divide the product of their labour with those non-working classes, and in such a proportion that the workers only obtain as much as can support them in life. Thus the Iron Law of Wages is established. Hence also Rodbertus deduces his theory of commercial crises and of pauperism, and in the following way: In spite of the increasing productivity of labour, the workers obtain in general only sufficient to support their class, and therefore a smaller relative share of the national income. But the producers form also the large mass of consumers, and, with the decline of their relative share in the national income, must decline the relative purchasing power of this large class of the people. The growing production is not met by a correspondingly growing consumption; expansion is succeeded by contraction of production, by a scarcity of employment, and a further decline in purchasing power on the part of the workers. Thus we have a commercial crisis bringing with it pauperism as a necessary result. In the meantime the purchasing power of the non-producing capitalists and landholders continues relatively to increase; but, as they have already had enough to buy all the comforts of life, they spend the more in the purchase of luxuries, the production of which increases.
A fundamental part of the teaching of Rodbertus is his theory of social development. He recognised three stages in the economic progress of mankind: (1) the ancient heathen period in which property in humanbeings was the rule; (2) the period of private property in land and capital; (3) the period, still remote, of property as dependent on service or desert. The goal of the human race is to be one society organised on a communistic basis; only in that way can the principle that every man be rewarded according to his work be realised. In this communistic or socialistic State of the future, land and capital will be national property, and the entire national production will be under national control; and means will be taken so to estimate the labour of each citizen that he shall be rewarded according to its precise amount. An immense staff of State officials will be required for this function. As we have already said, Rodbertus believed that this stage of social development is yet far distant; he thought that five centuries will need to pass away before the ethical force of the people can be equal to it.
From what we have already said, it will be understood that by his temperament, culture, and social position Rodbertus was entirely averse to agitation as a means of hastening the new era; and in the measures which he recommends for making the transition towards it he showed a scrupulous regard for the existing interests of the capitalists and landholders. He proposed that those two classes should be left in full possession of their present share of the national income, but that the workers should reap the benefit of the increasing production. To secure them this increment of production he proposed that the State should fix a normal working day for the various trades, a normal day’s work, and alegal wage, the amount of which should be revised periodically, and raised according to the increase of production, the better workman receiving a better wage. By measures such as these, carried out by the State in order to correct the evils of competition, would Rodbertus seek to make the transition into the socialistic era.
The economic work of Rodbertus is therefore an attempt made in a temperate and scientific spirit to elucidate the evil tendencies inherent in the competitive system, especially as exemplified in the operation of the Iron Law of Wages. The remedy he proposes is a State management of production and distribution, which shall extend more and more, till we arrive at a complete and universal socialism—and all based on the principle that, as labour is the source of value, so to the labourer should all wealth belong.
It is hardly necessary further to dwell on the theories of Rodbertus. The general outlines of his teaching are clear enough, and the details could be properly treated only in a work specially devoted to him. In some leading features his economic position is the same as that of Marx and Lassalle. The chief difference lies in the application of their principles. We have seen that he expects the Prussian or German State to adopt his theories, but the interest we can have in the very remote realisation of them in this way naturally cannot be very great. It was unreasonable to believe that the people of Germany would make no use of their newly acquired political rights to promote their social claims;and it is needless to say that a socialistic evolution slowly carried out under an army of officials is not a very inviting prospect.
On the recent political economy of Germany, especially as represented by Adolf Wagner, Rodbertus has exercised a great influence. For many he is the founder of a truly scientific socialism. His criticism of the leading principles of economics has led them to make important changes in the statement and treatment of their science.[1]
[1]The following are the most important works of Rodbertus:Zur Erkenntniss unserer staatswirthschaftlichen Zustände(1842);Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann(1850);Creditnoth des Grundbesitzes(2nd ed., 1876); ‘Der Normal-arbeitstag,’ inTüb. Zeitschrift(1878); Letters to A. Wagner, etc.,Tüb. Zeitschrift(1878-79); Letters to Rudolf Meyer (1882). See also Adolf Wagner (Tüb. Zeitschrift) (1878); Kozak’s work on Rodbertus (1882); an excellent monograph by G. Adler (Leipsic, 1884); and Prof. Gonner’sSocial Philosophy of Rodbertus(London, 1899).
[1]
The following are the most important works of Rodbertus:Zur Erkenntniss unserer staatswirthschaftlichen Zustände(1842);Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann(1850);Creditnoth des Grundbesitzes(2nd ed., 1876); ‘Der Normal-arbeitstag,’ inTüb. Zeitschrift(1878); Letters to A. Wagner, etc.,Tüb. Zeitschrift(1878-79); Letters to Rudolf Meyer (1882). See also Adolf Wagner (Tüb. Zeitschrift) (1878); Kozak’s work on Rodbertus (1882); an excellent monograph by G. Adler (Leipsic, 1884); and Prof. Gonner’sSocial Philosophy of Rodbertus(London, 1899).
The greatest and most influential name in the history of socialism is unquestionably Karl Marx. He and his like-minded companion Engels are the acknowledged heads of the ‘scientific and revolutionary’ school of socialism, which has its representatives in almost every country of the civilised world, and is generally recognised as the most serious and formidable form of the new teaching.
Like Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx was of Jewish extraction. It is said that from the time of his father, back to the sixteenth century, his ancestors had been rabbis.[1]Marx was born at Treves in 1818, where his father belonged to the legal profession. Both parents were highly cultured and raised above the traditions and prejudices of their race. In 1824, when Marx was six years of age, the family passed over from Judaism to the profession of the Christian faith.
Brought up under very favourable circumstances, ardent and energetic, and endowed with the highestnatural gifts, the young Marx speedily assimilated the best learning that. Germany could then provide. At the universities of Bonn and Berlin he studied law to please his father, but following his own bent he gave his time much more to history and philosophy. Hegel was still about the zenith of his influence, and Marx was a zealous student, and for some time an adherent of the reigning school. In 1841 Marx finished his studies and gained the degree of doctor with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus. This was destined to close his connection with the German universities. He had intended to settle at Bonn as teacher of philosophy, but the treatment which his friend Bruno Bauer as teacher of theology in the same university experienced at the hands of the Prussian minister Eichhorn, deterred him from following out his purpose.
In truth, Marx’s revolutionary temperament was little suited to the routine of the German man of learning, and the political conditions of Prussia gave no scope for free activity in any department of its national life. Marx therefore could only enter the ranks of the opposition, and early in 1842 he joined the staff of theRhenish Gazette, published at Cologne as an organ of the extreme democracy. He was for a short time editor of the paper. During his connection with it he carried on an unsparing warfare against the Prussian reaction, and left it before its suppression by the Prussian Government, when it sought by compromise to avoid that fate.
In the same year, 1843, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, who belonged to a family of good positionin the official circles of the Rhine country. Her brother was subsequently Prussian minister. It was a most happy marriage. Through all the trials and privations of a revolutionary career Marx found in his wife a brave, steadfast, and sympathetic companion.
Soon after his marriage Marx removed to Paris, where he applied himself to the study of the questions to which his life and activity were henceforward to be entirely devoted. All his life he appears to have worked with extraordinary intensity. At Paris he lived in close intercourse with the leading French socialists; with Proudhon he often spent whole nights in the discussion of economic problems. His most intimate associates, however, were the German exiles. Arnold Ruge and he edited theDeutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. He met also the greatest of the German exiles, Heine, and is said to have had a share in suggesting to the poet the writing of the celebratedWintermärchen.
Most important of all those meetings in Paris, however, was that with Friedrich Engels. Friedrich Engels was the son of a manufacturer at Barmen, where he was born in 1820. Brought up to his father’s business, Engels had resided for some time in Manchester. When he met Marx at Paris in 1844 the two men had already arrived at a complete community of views, and for nearly forty years continued to be loyal friends and comrades-in-arms.
Early in 1845, Marx, at the instance of Prussia, was expelled from Paris by the Guizot Ministry. Marxsettled in Brussels, where he resided three years. He gave up his Prussian citizenship without again becoming naturalised in any country. It was in 1845 that Engels published his important work,The Condition of the Working Class in England. In Brussels, in 1847, Marx published his controversial work on Proudhon’sPhilosophie de la Misère, entitledMisère de la Philosophie. Proudhon, it must be remembered, was at that time the leading name in European socialism, and Marx had been on very intimate terms with him. Marx’s criticism of his friend is nevertheless most merciless. In defense of the German we can but say that such scathing methods were not unusual at that time, and that where the cause of truth and of the proletariat as he understood it was concerned, he scorned all manner of compromise and consideration for personal feelings. His book on Proudhon, in spite of its controversial form, is interesting as the first general statement of his views.
This book on Proudhon scarcely attracted any attention whatever. In the same year, 1847, he and his friend Engels had a notable opportunity for an expression of their common opinions which excited wide attention, and which has had a great and still growing influence in the cause of the working man.
A society of socialists, a kind of forerunner of the International, had established itself in London, and had been attracted by the new theories of Marx and the spirit of strong and uncompromising conviction with which he advocated them. They entered into relation with Marx and Engels; the society was reorganisedunder the name of the Communist League; and a congress was held, which resulted, in 1847, in the framing of theManifesto of the Communist Party, which was published in most of the languages of Western Europe, and is the first proclamation of that revolutionary socialism armed with all the learning of the nineteenth century, but expressed with the fire and energy of the agitator, which in the International and other movements has so startled the world.
During the revolutionary troubles in 1848 Marx returned to Germany, and along with his comrades, Engels, Wolff, etc., he supported the most advanced democracy in theNew Rhenish Gazette. In 1849 he settled in London, where he spent his after-life in the elaboration of his economic views and in the realisation of his revolutionary programme. In 1859 he publishedZur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. This book was for the most part incorporated in the first volume of his great work on capital,Das Kapital, which appeared in 1867.[2]Much of his later life was spent in ill health, due to the excessive work by which he undermined a constitution that had originally been exceptionally healthy and vigorous. He died in London, March 14, 1883. It was a time of the year which had been marked by the outbreak of the Commune at Paris, and is therefore for a twofold reason a notable period in the history of the proletariat.
Since the death of Marx his great work,Das Kapital,has been completed by the publication of the second and third volumes, which have been edited by Engels from manuscripts left by his friend. But neither of these two volumes has the historical interest which may fairly be claimed for the first. In 1877 Engels published on his own account a work calledHerrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,[3]a controversial treatise against Dühring (a teacher of philosophy in the university of Berlin) which has had considerable influence on the development of the German Social Democracy. Engels died in 1895, after loyal and consistent service in the cause of the proletariat, which extended over more than fifty years.
The causes which have variously contributed to the rise of German socialism are sufficiently clear. With the accession of the romanticist Frederick William IV. to the throne of Prussia in 1840 German liberalism received a fresh expansion. At the same time the Hegelian school began to break up, and the interest in pure philosophy began to wane. It was a time of disillusionment, of dissatisfaction with idealism, of transition to realistic and even to materialistic ways of thinking. This found strongest expression in the Hegelian left, to which, after the ideals of the old religions and philosophies had proved unsubstantial, there remained as solid residuum the real fact of man with his positive interests in this life. The devotionand enthusiasm which had previously been fixed on ideal and spiritual conceptions were concentrated on humanity. To adherents of the Hegelian left, who had been delivered from intellectual routine by the most intrepid spirit of criticism, and who therefore had little respect for the conventionalisms of a feudal society, it naturally appeared that the interests of humanity had been cruelly sacrificed in favour of class privilege and prejudice.
The greatest thinkers of Germany had recognised the noble elements in the French Revolution. To recognise also the noble and promising features of French socialism was a natural thing, especially for Germans who had been in Paris, the great hearth of the new ideas. Here they found themselves definitely and consciously in presence of the last and greatest interest of humanity, the suffering and struggling proletariat of Western Europe, which had so recently made its definite entry in the history of the world. Thus socialism became a social, political, and economic creed to Karl Marx and his associates. But they felt that the theories which preceded them were wanting in scientific basis; and it was henceforward the twofold aim of the school to give scientific form to socialism, and to propagate it in Europe by the best and most effective revolutionary methods.
The fundamental principle of the Marx school and of the whole cognate socialism is the theory of ‘surplus value’—the doctrine, namely, that, after the labourer has been paid the wage necessary for the subsistenceof himself and family, the surplus produce of his labour is appropriated by the capitalist who exploits it. This theory is an application of the principle that labour is the source of value, which was enunciated by many of the old writers on economics, such as Locke and Petty, which was set forth with some vagueness and inconsistency by Adam Smith, and was more systematically expounded by Ricardo. The socialistic application of the principle in the doctrine of surplus value had been made both by Owenites and Chartists. It was to prevent this appropriation of surplus value by capitalists and middlemen that the Owen school tried the system of exchange by labour notes in 1832, the value of goods being estimated in labour time, represented by labour notes.
The principle that labour is the source of value has been accepted in all its logical consequences by Marx, and by him elaborated with extraordinary dialectical skill and historical learning into the most complete presentation of socialism that has ever been offered to the world. A like application of the principle, but in a less comprehensive fashion, has been made by Rodbertus; and it is the same theory that underlies the extravagances and paradoxes of Proudhon. The question whether the priority in the scientific development of the principle is due to Marx or Rodbertus cannot be discussed here. But it may be said that, the theory had been set forth by Rodbertus in his first work in 1842, that the importance of the principle was understood by the Marx school as early as 1845, andthat in a broad and general way it had indeed become the common property of socialists. The historical importance and scientific worth of the writings of Rodbertus should not be overlooked; nor are they likely to be when so much attention has been given to him by A. Wagner and other distinguished German economists.
But in the great work of Marx the socialist theory is elaborated with a fulness of learning and a logical power to which Rodbertus has no claim. With Marx the doctrine of surplus value receives its widest application and development: it supplies the key to his explanation of the history and influence of capital, and consequently of the present economic era, which is dominated by it. It is the basis, in fact, of a vast and elaborate system of social philosophy. In any case it is an absurdity as well as an historical error to speak of Marx as having borrowed from Rodbertus. Marx was an independent thinker of great originality and force of character, who had made the economic development of modern Europe the study of a laborious lifetime, and who was in the habit, not of borrowing, but of strongly asserting the results of his own research and of impressing them upon other men.
The great work of Marx may be described as an exposition and criticism of capital. But it is also indirectly an exposition of socialism, inasmuch as the historical evolution of capital is governed by natural laws, the inevitable tendency of which is towards socialism. It is the great aim of Marx to reveal the law of the economic movement of modern times. Now,the economic movement of modern times is dominated by capital. Explain, therefore, the natural history of capital, the rise, consolidation, and decline of its supremacy as an evolutionary process, and you forecast the nature of that into which it is being transformed—socialism. Hence the great task of the Marx school is not to preach a new economic and social gospel, not to provide ready-made schemes of social regeneration after the fashion of the early socialists, nor to counteract by alleviating measures the wretchedness of our present system, but to explain and promote the inevitable process of social evolution, so that the domination of capital may run its course and give place to the higher system that is to come.
The characteristic feature of therégimeof capital, or, as Marx usually calls it, the capitalistic method of production, is, that industrial operations are carried on by individual capitalists employing free labourers, whose sole dependence is the wage they receive. Those free labourers perform the function fulfilled in other states of society by the slave and the serf. In the development of the capitalistic system is involved the growth of the two classes,—the capitalist class, enriching itself on the profits of industry, which they control in their own interest, and the class of workers, nominally free, but without land or capital, divorced, therefore, from the means of production, and dependent on their wages—the modern proletariat. The great aim of the capitalist is the increase of wealth through the accumulation of his profits. This accumulation is secured by theappropriation of what the socialists call surplus value. The history of the capitalistic method of production is the history of the appropriation and accumulation of surplus value. To understand the capitalistic system is to understand surplus value. With the analysis of value, therefore, the great work of Marx begins.
The wealth of the societies in which the capitalistic method of production prevails appears as an enormous collection of commodities. A commodity is in the first place an external object adapted to satisfy human wants; and this usefulness gives it value in use, makes it a use value. These use values form the material of wealth, whatever its social form may be. In modern societies, where the business of production is carried on to meet the demands of the market, for exchange, these use values appear as exchange values. Exchange value is the proportion in which use values of different kinds exchange for each other. But the enormous mass of things that circulate in the world market exchange for each other in the most different proportion. They must, however, have a common quality, or they could not be compared. This common quality cannot be any of the natural properties of the commodities. In the business of exchange one thing is as good as another, provided you have it in sufficient quantity.
Leaving out of consideration, therefore, the physical qualities that give commodities use value, we find in them but one common characteristic—that they are all products of human labour. They are all crystallised forms of human labour. It is labour applied to naturalobjects that gives them value. What constitutes value is the human labour embodied in commodities. And the relation of exchange is only a phase of this value, which is therefore to be considered independently of it. Further, the labour time spent in producing value is the measure of value, not this or that individual labour, in which case a lazy or unskilled man would produce as great a quantity of value as the most skilful and energetic. We must take as our standard the average labour force of the community. The labour time which we take as the measure of value is the time required to produce a commodity under the normal social conditions of production with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour. Thus labour is both the source and the measure of value.
The conditions necessary to the existence and growth of capitalism, therefore, are as follows:—A class, who have a virtual monopoly of the means of production; another class of labourers, who are free, but destitute of the means of production; and a system of production for exchange in a world market. But it may be asked how these historical conditions were established? How did the capitalist class originate, and how were the workers divorced from the instruments of labour, and how was the world market opened up?
Such a state of things was established only after a long and gradual process of change, which Marx copiously illustrates from the history of England, as the classic land of the fully developed capitalism. In the Middle Ages the craftsman and peasant were the ownersof the small means of production then extant, and they produced for their own needs and for their feudal superior; only the superfluity went into the general market. Such production was necessarily small, limited, and technically imperfect. Towards the close of the Middle Ages a great change set in, caused by a remarkable combination of circumstances—the downfall of the feudal system and of the Catholic Church, the discovery of America and of the sea route to India. Through the breaking-up of the feudal houses with their numerous retainers, through the transformation of the old peasant-holdings into extensive sheep-runs, and generally through the prevalent application of the commercial system to the management of land, instead of the Catholic and feudal spirit, the peasantry were driven off the land; a multitude of people totally destitute of property were thrown loose from their old means of livelihood, and were reduced to vagabondage or forced into the towns. It was in this way that the modern proletarians made their tragic entry in history.
On the other hand, there was a parallel development of the capitalist class, brought about by the slave-trade, by the exploitation of the American colonies and of both the Indies, and by the robbery, violence, and corruption which attended the transference of the land from the Catholic and feudal to the modernrégime. The opening and extension of the vast world market, moreover, gave a great stimulus to industry at home. The old guilds having already been expropriated and dissolved, the early organisation of industry under the control ofan infant capitalism passed through its first painful and laborious stages, till, with the great mechanical inventions, with the application of steam as the motive-power, and the rise of the factory system towards the close of the eighteenth century, the great industrial revolution was accomplished, and the capitalistic method of production attained to its colossal manhood.
Thus the capitalistic system was established. And we must remember that in all its forms and through all the stages of its history the great aim of the capitalist is to increase and consolidate his gains through the appropriation of surplus value. We have now to inquire how this surplus value is obtained?
The starting-point of the capitalistic system is the circulation of wares. As we have seen, the capitalistic method of production is dominated by exchange. If exchange, however, consisted merely in the giving and receiving of equivalents, there could be no acquisition of surplus value. In the process of exchange there must appear something the utilisation of which by the buyer yields a greater value than the price he pays for it.
The thing desired is found in the labour force of the workman, who, being destitute of the means of production, must have recourse to the owner of these, the capitalist. In other words, the workman appears on the market with the sole commodity of which he has to dispose, and sells it for a specified time at the price it can bring, which we call his wage, and which is equivalent to the average means of subsistence required tosupport himself and to provide for the future supply of labour (in his family). But the labour force of the workman, as utilised by the capitalist in the factory or the mine, produces a net value in excess of his wage; that is, over and above his entire outlay, including the wage paid to his workmen, the capitalist finds himself in possession of a surplus, which can only represent the unpaid labour of his workmen. This surplus is the surplus value of Karl Marx, the product of unpaid labour.
This appropriation of surplus labour is a very old phenomenon in human society. In all the forms of society which depended on slave-labour, and under the feudalrégime, the appropriation of the results of other men’s labour was open, undisguised, and compulsory. Under the capitalistic system it is disguised under the form of free contract. The effect is the same. For the workman who is unprovided with the instruments of labour, whose working power is useless without them, this compulsion is not less real because it is concealed under the forms of freedom. He must agree to this free contract or starve.
It is the surplus value thus obtained which the capitalist seeks to accumulate by all the methods available. These methods are described by Marx with great detail and elaboration through several hundred pages of his first volume. His account, supported at every step by long and copious citations from the best historical authorities and from the blue-books of the various parliamentary commissions, is a lurid and ghastlypicture of the many abuses of English industrialism. It is the dark and gloomy reverse of the industrial glories of England. The fearful prolongation of the hours of labour, the merciless exploitation of women and of children from the age of infancy, the utter neglect of sanitary conditions—whatever could lessen the costs of production and swell the profits of the capitalist, though every law of man and nature were violated in the process; such are the historical facts which Marx emphasises and illustrates with an overwhelming force of evidence. They receive ample confirmation in the history of the English Factory Acts, imposed on greedy and unscrupulous capitalists after a severe struggle prolonged for half a century, and required to prevent the moral and physical ruin of the industrial population.
We must now consider the process of the development of capitalism rather more closely.[4]Under the old system industry was carried on by the individual. There could be no doubt as to the ownership of the product, as he produced it by his own labour, with materials and tools that belonged to himself. Such was the normal method of production in those days.
It is very different in the existing system. The most conspicuous result of the capitalistic system is, that production is a social operation carried on by men organised and associated in factories; but the product is appropriated by individual capitalists: it is social production and capitalistic appropriation. Whereas the property of the preceding era rested on the individual’sown labour, property under the capitalistic system is the product of other men’s labour. This is the contradiction which runs through the entire history of capitalism. Here we have in germ all the antagonism and confusion of the present time. The incompatibility of social production and capitalistic appropriation must more and more declare itself as the supremacy of the system extends over the world.
The contradiction between social production and capitalistic appropriation naturally appears in the contrast between the human beings concerned in it. For the appropriators form thebourgeoisie, and the social workers constitute the proletariat, the two historic classes of the new era. Another conspicuous and important result is that, while we have this organisation in the factory, we have outside of it all the anarchy of competition. We have the capitalistic appropriators of the product of labour contending for the possession of the market, without systematic regard to the supply required by that market—each one filling the market only as dictated by his own interest, and trying to outdo his rivals by all the methods of adulteration, bribery, and intrigue; an economic war hurtful to the best interests of society. With the development of the capitalistic system machinery is more and more perfected, for to neglect improvement is to succumb in the struggle; the improved machinery renders labour superfluous, which is accordingly thrown idle and exposed to starvation; and this is entirely satisfactory to the capitalist class, whose interest it is to have a reservearmy of labourers disposable for the times when industry is specially active, but cast out on the streets through the crash that must necessarily follow.
But as the technique improves the productive power of industry increases, and continually tends more and more to surpass the available needs of the market, wide as it is. This is all the more inevitable, because the consumption of the masses of the population is reduced to the minimum requisite merely to maintain them in life. It is another contradiction of the capitalistic system that on the one hand its inherent laws tend to restrict the market which on the other hand it is ready by all means fair and foul to extend. The consequence is, that the market tends to be overstocked even to absolute repletion; goods will not sell, and a commercial crisis is established, in which we have the remarkable phenomenon of widespread panic, misery, and starvation resulting from a superabundance of wealth—a “crise pléthorique,” as Fourier called it, a crisis due to a plethora of wealth.
These crises occur at periodic intervals, each one severer and more widespread than the preceding, until they now tend to become chronic and permanent, and the whole capitalistic world staggers under an atlantean weight of ill-distributed wealth. Thus the process goes on in obedience to its own inherent laws. Production is more and more concentrated in the hands of mammoth capitalists and colossal joint-stock companies, under which the proletariat are organised and drilled into vast industrial armies. But as crisis succeeds crisis,until panic, stagnation, and disorder are universal, it becomes clear that thebourgeoisieare no longer capable of controlling the industrial world. In fact, the productive forces rise in chronic rebellion against the forms imposed on them by capitalism.
The incompatibility between social production and anarchic distribution decidedly declares itself. A long course of hard experience has trained the modern democracy in the insight necessary for the appreciation of the conditions of its own existence. The social character of production is explicitly recognised. The proletariat seizes the political power, and through it at last takes complete control over the economic functions of society. It expropriates the private capitalist, and, appropriating the means of production, manages them in its own interest, which is the interest of society as a whole; society passes into the socialistic stage through a revolution determined by the natural laws of social evolution, and not by a merely arbitrary exercise of power. It is a result determined by the inherent laws of social evolution, independent of the will and purpose of individual men. All that the most powerful and clear-sighted intellect can do is to learn to divine the laws of the great movement of society, and to shorten and alleviate the birth-pangs of the new era. The efforts of reactionaries of every class to turn the wheel of history backwards are in vain. But an intelligent appreciation of its tendencies, and a willing co-operation with them, will make progress easier, smoother, and more rapid.
We need hardly return to therôlewhich is played by surplus value in this vast historical process. The capitalist appropriates the product of labour because it contains surplus value. It is the part of the product that embodies surplus value and represents a clear gain which attracts him. Surplus value is the beginning, middle, and end of capitalism. It moves it alike in its origin and progress, decline and fall. It is the keynote of a great process of historic evolution continued for centuries; the secret of a vast development, which becomes more and more open as time goes on. And capitalism grows sick of the sustenance which formerly nourished it. It dies of over-repletion, of habitual excess in surplus value.
Let us now inquire how far the Marx school have thrown any light on the forms likely to be assumed by the new society after the downfall of capitalism. In his mature works as far as published Marx himself has said little to guide us. The clearest indication of his views is contained in the following passage:—‘Let us assume an association of free men, who work with common means of production and consciously put forth their many individual labour powers as a social labour power. The total product of the association is a social product. A part of this product serves again as means of production. It remains social property. But another part is as means of living consumed by the members of the association. It must therefore be distributed among them. The nature of this distribution will change according to the special nature of the organisation ofproduction and the corresponding grade of historical development of the producers.’ And then he goes on to assume that the share of each producer in the means of living may be determined by his labour time. Labour time will at once serve as measure of the share of each producer in the common labour, and therefore also of his share in the portion of the common product which is devoted to consumption.[5]
Another important indication by one who has full right to speak for Marx is contained in Fr. Engels’ views regarding the State. After the proletariat have seized political power and transformed the means of production into State property, the State will cease to exist. In the old societies the State was an organisation of the exploiting class for the maintenance of the conditions of exploitation that suited it. Officially the representatives of the whole society, the exploiting class only represented itself. But when the State at last becomes the real representative of the whole society it renders itself superfluous. In a society which contains no subject class, from which class rule and the anarchy of production and the collisions and excesses of the struggle for individual existence have been removed, there is nothing to repress, and no need for a repressing force like the State. The first act wherein the State really appears as representative of the entire society—the appropriation of the means of production in the name of society—is also its last independent act as State. In place of the government over persons, therewill be an administration of things and the control of productive processes. The State is not abolished; it dies away.[6]
In effect, these two indications of opinion point to a condition of society which is not fundamentally different from that contemplated by the anarchist school. Both look forward to a period when men will live in free associations, and when the administration of social affairs will be conducted without the exercise of compulsion.
It will have been seen that what Marx and his school contemplate is an economic revolution brought about in accordance with the natural laws of historic evolution. But in order to understand the full import of this revolution in the mind of Marx, we must remember that he regards the economic order of society as the groundwork of the same, determining all the other forms of social order. The entire legal and political structure, as well as philosophy and religion, are constituted and controlled in accordance with the economic basis. This is in harmony with his method and his conception of the world, which is the Hegelian reversed: ‘For Hegel the thought process, which he transforms into an independent subject under the name idea, is the creator of the real, which forms only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material transformed and translated in the human brain.’ His conception of the world is a frank and avowed materialism.
And to a world thus understood he applies the dialectic method of investigation. Dialectic is a word current in the Hegelian and other philosophies. It sounds rather out of place in a materialistic view of the world. In the system of Marx it means that the business of inquiry is to trace the connection and concatenation in the links that make up the process of historic evolution, to investigate how one stage succeeds another in the development of society, the facts and forms of human life and history not being stable and stereotyped things, but the ever-changing manifestations of the fluent and unresting real, the course of which it is the duty of science to reveal. Both Marx and Fr. Engels, moreover, are fond of expressing the development of capitalism in the language of the well-known Hegelian threefold process—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Private property resting on a man’s own labour of the former times is the thesis. The property resting on other men’s labour of the capitalistic era is the negation of this individual property. The expropriation of the capitalists by the proletariat is the negation of the negation, or synthesis. But how far this use of the Hegelian terms is merely a form of literary expression, or how far it is a survival in Marx of a real belief in Hegelianism, it is not easy to determine.[7]
The whole position of the Marx school may be characterised as evolutionary and revolutionary socialism, based on a materialistic conception of the world and of human history. Socialism is a social revolution determinedby the laws of historic evolution—a revolution which, changing the economic groundwork of society, will change the whole structure.
It may now be convenient to sum up the socialism of the Marx school under the following heads:—