"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in oneword, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?"What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence."When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge."
"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in oneword, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
"What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
"When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.
"When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge."
Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social divisions into classes, and the laws of property become fetters to the productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves into class struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.
"With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be madebetween the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, æsthetic, or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the conditions of production."—(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
"With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be madebetween the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, æsthetic, or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the conditions of production."—(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks into oblivion. The men who assist the progress of the new society accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development. Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.
Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and perfection of the productive forces.
"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production, as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society."
Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.
The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in the positions of classes and the struggles which followed hard on the English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.
One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding of historical processes is his conception of social classes and of class struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and politicians who pointed out the part played by social classes in politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought. He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following terms:
"The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undevelopedperiod of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement."
"The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undevelopedperiod of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement."
The classification of the various groups of society, or the division of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions. It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain scientifically established features which determine the social classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material) form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operativesociety, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking, or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other class owns the means of production.
Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated, unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve, if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist imposes.Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can oppress the owner of labour-power.
This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state, but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and strives to change the basis of society from private property to common property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts. The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the beginnings of the Socialist movement, when theworkers saw in Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian, when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the further development of industry, the progress of machine technique, the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength, organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.
At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in harmony with the course of social development.
In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class, of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle withthe capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of social revolution.
The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and economic system—one of which classes fights for the existing order of private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system. Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles. The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now, political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations. These new political and historical orientations are largely the result of Marx's life-work.
Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle constitutes the lever of social revolution and theimpulse of the dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible, or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy. This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted task, as its foundation—the Trade Union movement—becomes established and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most effective lever forthe achievement of this object is the conquest of political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary Dictatorship of the Proletariat.—(Marx, Letter to the German Social Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852, to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the existence of classes in modern society or their strife against one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the evolution of the class struggles, and political economists showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the creation of a society of free and equal."—("Neue Zeit," Vol. XXV., second part, p. 164.)
"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the existence of classes in modern society or their strife against one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the evolution of the class struggles, and political economists showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the creation of a society of free and equal."—("Neue Zeit," Vol. XXV., second part, p. 164.)
With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in 1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship in the Communist Manifesto:
"The first step in the revolution by the working class is toraise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy."The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible."Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
"The first step in the revolution by the working class is toraise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.
"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production."
But suppose that it is not the revolutionary working class which first attains to power in the revolution, but the democracy of the lower middle class and the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to the League of Communists in 1850 he said:
"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage, resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remainquiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from doing this, but it is within their power to render their success over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably facilitated."The workers must, during the conflict and immediately afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as long as possible."Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to present their own demands side by side with those of the middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a cool and dispassionate fashion,and manifest open distrust of the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows every successful street fight. Against the new official Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers' government, either in the form of local committees, communal councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses its support amongst the working classes, but from the commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers must no longer level their distrust against the defeated reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies, who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends. The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers. But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up their arms and equipment, and any attempt atdisarmament must be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1) compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as possible of the productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the workers must press them to the point of turning such measures into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and factories the workers must demand that such railways and factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the workersmust demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes, self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the revolution in permanence.'"
"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage, resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remainquiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from doing this, but it is within their power to render their success over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably facilitated.
"The workers must, during the conflict and immediately afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as long as possible.
"Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to present their own demands side by side with those of the middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a cool and dispassionate fashion,and manifest open distrust of the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows every successful street fight. Against the new official Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers' government, either in the form of local committees, communal councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses its support amongst the working classes, but from the commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers must no longer level their distrust against the defeated reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies, who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends. The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers. But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up their arms and equipment, and any attempt atdisarmament must be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1) compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as possible of the productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the workers must press them to the point of turning such measures into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and factories the workers must demand that such railways and factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the workersmust demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes, self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the revolution in permanence.'"
This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the Bolsheviks and Spartacists.
The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate emancipation from their political victory.
"In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that higher form of life which present-day society inevitably opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole series of historical processes, in the course of which men and circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new society, which have already developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society."—(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
"In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that higher form of life which present-day society inevitably opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole series of historical processes, in the course of which men and circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new society, which have already developed in the womb of the collapsing bourgeois society."—(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with productive work, in order to transform the members of society into producers. So long as the transition period lasts theCommunist maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every respect—economic, social, and intellectual—still tainted with the marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic structure of society, and the cultural development which it determines."—(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given according to his deeds.
"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives to society, after deductions for government, education, and other social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour. For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes; his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will consist in the application of the same measure: labour."
Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first need of life, when theall-round development of the individual and the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist principle of equality be put into operation.
Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not mistake the economic, political, and historical rôle of the nation: this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples, whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the bourgeoisie.
1.Capital.
As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society. Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists, especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society. Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by Engels after Marx's death.
The first volume deals with the origin and tendencies of large industrial capital, with the immediate and simple process of commodity production, so far as it concerns the relations between employer and worker, the exploitation of the proletariat, wages and labour time, and the influence of modern technique on the condition of the worker. We see in the first volume the effect of the factory system in creating capital. Its chief figure is the producing, suffering, rebelliousworking class. In the second volume, the employer appears on the market, sells his commodities, and sets the wheels of production again in motion, so that commodities will continue to be produced. In the third volume, the realisation process of the undertakings of the capitalist class, or the movement of capital as a whole is exhibited: cost of production, cost price, total gains and their division into profit, interest and ground rent. The first volume presents the greatest difficulties. The tremendous efforts of the author to produce a masterpiece unnecessarily refined and sublimated and overloaded with learning the doctrines of value and surplus value until they attained the level of a philosophy, an example of Hegelian logic. He played with his subject like an intellectual athlete. That Marx could handle complicated economic questions in a clear, vigorous manner is shown by the third volume, which is written just as it came out of the author's head, and without the apparatus of learning subsequently erected, without the crutches of notes and polemico-philosophical excursions.
To understand "Capital" it is necessary to bear in mind that (1) Marx regarded the scientifically discovered principles as the real inner being of things, practice he regarded as the superficial appearance of things, capable of being apprehended empirically; for example, Value is the theoretical expression, Price the empirical; Surplus Value is the theoretical, and Profit the empirical expression; the appearances apprehended by experience (Price and Profit) deviate indeed from theory, but without the theory they cannot be understood; (2) he looked at the capitalist economic system as being essentially free fromexternal hindrances and disturbances, free from invasions both by the State and the proletariat: the Labour struggles of factory protection laws of which Marx speaks in "Capital" serve rather to perfect the productive forces than to restrict the exploiting proclivities of sovereign capital.
2.Value.
The life and motion of capitalistic society appears as an infinite net of exchange operations, formed out of numerous entwined meshes.
Through the medium of money, men continually exchange the most varied commodities and services. A ceaseless buying and selling, an uninterrupted series of exchanges of things, and labour power—this constitutes the essential part of human relations in capitalistic society. An economic map of these relations, graphically displayed, would not be less confusing than an astronomical map which exhibited the manifold and intersected orbits of the heavenly bodies. And yet there must be some rule or law which operates in this seeming medley of movements; for men do not work or exchange their goods by hazard, like savages who give their entire lumps of gold or rough diamonds for a necklace of glass pearls. The English and French economists in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, amongst whom Petty (1623-87), Quesnay (1694-1759), Adam Smith (1723-96), and Ricardo (1772-1823) were the most original, sought for the laws which regulated exchange operations, and their theories were designated by Marx as classical bourgeois economy. Following up their investigations, Marx declared: Every commodity, that is, every thing or good produced underCapitalism and brought to the market possesses a use value and an exchange value.
The use value is the utility of the commodity to satisfy a physical or mental need of its user: a commodity without use value is not exchangeable or saleable. As use values, commodities are materially different from each other; nobody will exchange a ton of wheat for a ton of wheat of the same kind, but he will for clothes.
In what measure will commodities exchange with one another? The measure is the exchange value, and this consists in the trouble and quantity of labour which the production of a commodity costs. Equal quantities of labour are exchanged with each other on the market. As exchange values, as the embodiment of human labour, commodities are essentially equal to each other, only quantitatively are they different, as different categories of commodities embody different quantities of labour. It is obvious that the quantities of labour will not be calculated according to the working methods of the individual producers, but according to the prevailing social working methods.
If, for example, hand-weaver A requires twenty hours for the production of a piece of cloth, which in a modern factory will be produced in five hours, the cloth of the hand-weaver does not therefore possess four-fold exchange value. If hand-weaver A demands of consumer B an equivalent of twenty working hours, B answers that a similar piece of cloth can be produced in five hours, and therefore it only represents an exchange value of five working hours. Thus, according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity consists in the quantity of socially necessary labour power which its reproduction would require.
This quantity of labour is no constant factor. New inventions, improvements in labour processes, increase in the productivity of labour, etc., cause a diminution in the quantity of labour necessary for the reproduction of a commodity; its exchange value, or expressed in terms of money, its price, will therefore sink, provided that other things (demand, medium of exchange) remain equal.
Consequently, labour is the source of exchange value, and the latter is the principle which regulates exchange operations. Exchange value even measures the extent of the commodity wealth of society. Wealth may increase in volume, but decrease in value, in so far as a less quantity of socially necessary labour becomes necessary for its reproduction.
The more progressive a country is industrially and the higher the level of its civilisation, the greater is its wealth, and the smaller is the quantity of labour which must be expended on the creation of wealth. In the practical Labour politics of our times, this is expressed in higher wages and shorter working hours.
It was said above that use value is a basic condition for the exchange of the individual commodity. This does not exhaust the rôle of use value. The quantity of use value of which society has need determines the quantity of the exchange values to be created. If more commodities are required than society requires, the superfluous commodities have no exchange value, in spite of the labour that is expended on them.—("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 1, pp. 175-176.)
The complete realisation of exchange values or the social labour that is performed depends, as is seen, on the adaptation of supply to demand, and is a matter of organisation, of social direction.
We have noticed that the Marxian theory of value is related to that of the classical economists, but they are by no means the same thing. Apart from some improvements and definitions which Marx made, they are distinguished by the following conceptions: In the classical theory of value, the capitalist who directs production and provides with his capital the tools and raw materials of labour, markets the finished commodity, and keeps going the processes of reproduction, appears as the only creator of value: the wage worker is only one of his means of production. In the Marxian theory of value, on the other hand, the wage worker who transforms the raw materials into commodities, or removes the raw materials to the place of production, appears as the sole creator of value. Value is only created by the worker in production, and in distribution connected therewith.
3.Wages and Labour.
The worker appears to receive wages for his work. In reality he receives wages as the equivalent for the labour power expended by him, quite in accordance with the law of value, inasmuch as he receives by way of exchange as much means of sustenance as is usual and customary to replace the labour power he has expended, just as the working horse receives as much oats and hay as are necessary to maintain it capable of work.
The capitalist and the worker exchange certain quantities of commodities in proportions determined by economic laws (means of subsistence against a quantity of the commodity, labour power, of equal value, commodity for commodity, exchange value for exchange value).
As, therefore, the wages of labour signify a certain quantity of the means of subsistence, so they increase even if their money form remains unaltered with a fall in the price of the means of life, for the worker is then in the position, with his unaltered wage, to buy a greater quantity of the means of life. In the reverse case, if the prices of the means of life rise, the wages of labour fall, even if their money form remains the same as previously. This law of wages, formulated by Ricardo, was accepted by Marx, but he did not content himself with this acceptance. Ricardo regarded the capitalist world as the only possible and reasonable one, at least at the time when he wrote his "Principles," while Marx from the year 1843 adopted a critical attitude towards it, and sought to negate it. Consequently, he investigated further, and expressed himself somewhat as follows:
The capitalist theoricians believed that the wages question was disposed of when it was settled by the law of value. We know, however, that every commodity possesses not only an exchange value, but also a use value, and is bought for the sake of the latter. The use value of the commodity labour power is distinguished in a very remarkable way from the use value of all other commodities.
The use or the employment of labour power creates exchange value, and can create much more exchange value than itself possesses.
The employer can make use of labour power so long that it not only creates its own exchange value (the value of the means of subsistence), but double this. To create the value of wages, the worker needs five or six hours daily, but he is obliged to produce for the capitalist during ten or twelve hours. If the workerwere independent he would only produce during one half of the working day in order to receive his means of subsistence. This period of producing Marx called "necessary labour." As he is dependent on the capitalist, the worker must not only perform "necessary labour" but also surplus labour: the worker can generally only find employment under the conditions that, besides the time needed for himself, he also works a definite number of hours for the capitalist without payment. Or, as Marx says: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during the 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and the value which labour creates in the labour process are two entirely different magnitudes. And this difference in the two values was what the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power. The circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same labour power can work during a whole day; that consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."
"No injury to the seller," which is quite correct from the standpoint of Ricardo, but not from that of Marx. He often calls surplus value "unpaid labour," and says, for example, "the capitalist appropriates one half of every day's labour without payment." In other words, he takes away something without return. This is a very distinct ethical judgment.
On the other hand, it is very important that in our consideration of the wages question we have come upagainst the Marxian doctrine of surplus value. For this doctrine is the cornerstone of the whole economic system of Marx.
4.Surplus Value.
We have already noted that Marx followed the classical economics in his treatment of the theory of value, but improved the definition of it, and brought it to bear on wages. In doing this he laid stress on the conflict between Capital and Labour.
The beginning of this dialectical process, so far as England was concerned, was the work of the anti-capitalistic critics, who uttered their protest about 1820, or three years after the appearance of Ricardo's work. They declared, according to Ricardo, labour is the source and the measure of value. And yet according to his opinion labour is nothing and capital everything.
This should be reversed: labour must be all, and capital nothing. This literature was contemporaneous with the emergence of the English revolutionary Labour movement, from which Chartism arose at a later date. Piercy Ravenstone (1821) called capital a metaphysical (airy, impalpable) entity. Hodgskin (1827) called it a fetish, whereas they described labour as the economic reality. The expressions surplus-product and surplus-value were already known to this anti-capitalist school, with which Marx also connected himself when he set to work to elaborate his criticism of political economy.[7]But this literature supplied him with much less material for the construction of the theory of surplus value than the formulation of the theory of value of the classical economy. Besides,while the English anti-capitalist critics, like Ravenstone, Gray, Hodgskin, and J.F. Bray merely condemned surplus value as immoral and as the source of all social wrongs, Marx used the theory of surplus value as the key to unlock the mechanism of the capitalist system and to reveal its workings, its tendencies, and its final destiny. This appears to be the real difference between the English anti-capitalist critics and Marx. In this matter he was obliged to perform most of the work himself. The question he put was no longer "What is the substance of wealth and how is it measured?" but "How is its growth and continual accretions to be explained?" Capital is that portion of wealth which is employed for the purpose of gain, of increase. Whence comes this gain, this increase? The answer is as follows:
All capital that is embarked on a productive undertaking consists of two parts: one part is expended on the technical means of production—on buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials, the other on wages. The first part Marx calls Constant Capital (c), the other part Variable Capital (v). The first is called constant, because it only adds to the commodities just as much value as it loses in the course of the productive process; it creates no fresh value: Marx also calls it the passive portion. The outlay on wages is called variable capital because it undergoes an alteration in the process of production: it creates new additional value: Marx also called variable capital the active portion, for it creates surplus value (s).
This composition of capital of constant and variable parts Marx calls its organic composition. He calls it average or normal composition when the capital of a business is 80 per cent. constant and 20 per cent.variable. If the constant part is higher, and the variable part lower, he calls it capital of a high composition.
Capital of under 80 per cent. constant portion and over 20 per cent. variable portion he calls capital of a lower composition. And rightly, because the higher the ladder of capitalist production is, the more costly and extensive are the machinery and factory buildings and the greater is the outlay on raw materials, whereas primitive businesses employ less machinery, cheaper workshops, but a relatively greater number of workers. The relation between (c) and (v) reveals at the same time the stage to which production has developed.
Thus, according to Marx, it is solely the variable capital which creates surplus value, or, as it is commonly expressed, profit. We have seen above, in the explanation of the nature of wages, why variable capital creates more value than it is paid for by the capitalist; the worker does indeed receive the exchange value of his labour power, but the use value of the labour power functions, we have assumed, twice as many hours as are necessary for its reproduction. This surplus labour is embodied in surplus value. While the worker receives, let us say, a daily wage of three shillings, for the reproduction of which five hours of work suffice, his labour power will be used for ten hours. These five hours of surplus labour appear in the exchange value of the commodity, so that the value of the commodity is composed of the transferred portion of the constant capital, the outlay on wages, and the added surplus value. Immediately before the production process only constant and variable capital existed, or, in brief (c) and (v); after the completionof the production process, the commodity embodies constant and variable capital and also surplus value, or (c) and (v) and (s). This is the actual value of the commodity, (c) or, shortly expressed, c + v + s.
The relation between wages and surplus value, or between paid and unpaid labour, or, shortly, s/v, Marx calls the rate of surplus value: it expresses the degree of the exploitation of labour.
If wages amount to three shillings, which can be produced in five working hours, and if the worker works in the factory ten hours for these wages, so that he creates exchange value to the amount of six shillings, then the rate of surplus value is 100 per cent. The whole of the surplus value which arises in this manner in the process of production is called the mass of the surplus value, or shortly, m.s., that is to say, the individual rate of surplus value multiplied by the total number of workers engaged in an undertaking, or the total amount of wages.