Socialism: A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles Part 11

[125] _Ma.s.s and Cla.s.s_, page 101.

[126] _Message to Congress_, January, 1906.

[127] _Ma.s.s and Cla.s.s_, page 53.

[128] Vide _War of the Cla.s.ses_, by Jack London, page 17.

[129] _Organized Labor_, by John Mitch.e.l.l, page ix.

[130] The remainder of this chapter is largely reproduced from my little pamphlet, _Shall the Unions go into Politics?_

[131] This aspect of the exploitation of the laborers has been brought to the front very dramatically by the many recent "strikes" against high rents and high prices for meat and other commodities. Rent strikes and riots against high prices have become common events in our large cities.

[132] _Organized Labor_, by John Mitch.e.l.l, page 324.

[133] See _Report of Commission of Investigation_, Senate Ex. Doc. No.

7, Fifty-third Congress, third session.

[134] Particulars are taken from a pamphlet by five members of the New York Bar and issued by the Social Reform Club, New York, in 1900.

[135] See the article by Judge Seabury, _The Abuses of Injunctions, in The Arena_, June, 1903.

[136] See the New York daily papers, January 31, 1906.

CHAPTER VII

KARL MARX AND THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM

I

The first approach to a comprehensive treatment by Marx of the materialistic conception of history appeared in 1847, several months before the publication of the _Communist Manifesto_, in "La Misere de la Philosophie,"[137] the famous polemic with which Marx a.s.sailed J. P.

Proudhon's _La Philosophie de la Misere_. Marx had worked out his theory at least two years before, so Engels tells us, and in his writings of that period there are several evidences of the fact. In "La Misere de la Philosophie," the theory is fundamental to the work, and not merely the subject of incidental allusion. This little book, all too little known in England and America, is therefore important from this historical point of view. In it, Marx for the first time shows his complete confidence in the theory. It needed confidence little short of sublime to challenge Proudhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful satire, and fierce invective of the attack, have rather tended to obscure for readers of a later generation the real merit of the book, the importance of the fundamental idea that history must be interpreted in the light of economic development, that economic evolution determines social life.

The book is important for two other reasons. First, it was the author's first serious essay in economic science--in the preface he boldly and frankly calls himself an economist--and, second, in it appears a full and generous recognition of that brilliant coterie of English Socialist writers of the Ricardian school from whom Marx has been unjustly, and almost spitefully, charged with "pillaging" his princ.i.p.al ideas.

What led Marx to launch out upon the troubled sea of economic science, when all his predilections were for the study of pure philosophy, was the fact that his philosophical studies had led him to a point whence further progress seemed impossible, except by way of economics. The Introduction to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"

makes this perfectly clear. Having decided that "the method of production in material existence conditions social, political, and mental evolution in general," a study of economics, and especially an a.n.a.lysis of modern industrial society, became inevitable. During the year 1845, when the theory of the economic interpretation of history was absorbing his attention, Marx spent six weeks in England with his friend Engels, and became acquainted with the work of the Ricardian Socialists already referred to.[138] Engels had been living in England about three years at this time, and had made an exhaustive investigation of industrial conditions there, and become intimately acquainted with the leaders of the Chartist movement. His fine library contained most of the works of contemporary writers, and it was thus that Marx came to know them.

Foremost of this school of Socialists which had arisen, quite naturally, in the land where capitalism flourished at its best, were William G.o.dwin, Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and John Francis Bray. With the exception of Hall, of whose privately printed book, "The Effects of Civilisation on the People of the European States," 1805, he seems not to have known, Marx was familiar with the writings of all the foregoing, and his obligations to some of them, especially Thompson, Hodgskin, and Bray, were not slight. While the charge, made by Dr. Anton Menger,[139] among others, that Marx took his surplus value theory from Thompson is quite absurd, and rests, as Bernstein has pointed out, upon nothing but the fact that Thompson used the words "surplus value" frequently, but not at all in the same sense as that in which Marx uses them,[140] we need not attempt to dispute the fact that Marx gleaned much of value from Thompson and the two other writers. While criticising them, and pointing out their shortcomings, Marx himself frequently pays tributes of respect to each of them. His indebtedness to any of them, or to all of them, consists simply in the fact that he recognized the germinal truths in their writings, and saw far beyond what they saw.

G.o.dwin's most important work, "An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice,"

appeared in 1793, and contains the germ of much that is called Marxian Socialism. In it may be found the broad lines of the thought which marks much of our present-day Socialist teaching, especially the criticism of capitalist society. Marx, however, does not appear to have been directly influenced by it to any extent. That he was influenced by it indirectly, through William Thompson, G.o.dwin's most ill.u.s.trious disciple, is, however, quite certain. Thompson wrote several works of a Socialist character, of which "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most Conducive to Human Happiness, Applied to the newly proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth," 1824, and "Labour Rewarded. The Claims of Labour and Capital Conciliated, or How to Secure to Labour the Whole Products of its Exertions," 1827, are the most important and best known. Thompson must be regarded as one of the greatest precursors of Marx in the development of modern Socialist theory. A Ricardian of the Ricardians, he states the law of wages in language that is almost as emphatic as La.s.salle's famous _Ehernes Lohngesetz_, which Marx made the b.u.t.t of his satire.[141] Accepting the view of Ricardo,--and indeed, of Adam Smith and other earlier English economists, including Petty,--that labor is the sole source of exchange value,[142] he shows by cogent argument the exploitation of the laborer, and uses the term "surplus value" to designate the difference between the cost of maintaining the laborer and the value of his labor product, a.s.sisted, of course, by machinery and other capital, which goes to the capitalist. By a most labored argument, Professor Anton Menger has attempted to create the impression that Marx took, without acknowledgment, his _theory of the manner in which surplus value is produced_ from Thompson, simply because Thompson frequently used the _term itself_.[143] Marx never claimed to have originated the term. It is to be found in the writings of earlier economists than Thompson even, and Marx quotes an anonymous pamphlet ent.i.tled _The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties_. _A Letter to Lord John Russell_, published in London in 1821, in which the phrase "the quant.i.ty of the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist" appears.[144] Nor did Marx claim to be the first to distinguish surplus value. That had been done very clearly by many others, including Adam Smith.[145] What is original in Marx is the explanation of the manner in which surplus value is produced.

John Gray's "A Lecture on Human Happiness," published in 1825, has been described by Professor Foxwell as being "certainly one of the most remarkable of Socialist writings,"[146] and the summary of the rare little work which he gives amply justifies the description. Gray published other works of note, two of which, "The Social System, a Treatise on the Principle of Exchange," 1831, and "Lectures on the Nature and Use of Money," 1848, Marx subjects to a rigorous criticism in "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Thomas Hodgskin's best-known works are "Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital,"

1825, and "The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted,"

1832. The former, which Marx calls "an admirable work," is only a small tract of thirty-four pages, but its influence in England and America was very great. Hodgskin was a man of great culture and erudition, with a genius for popular writing upon difficult topics. It is interesting to know that in a letter to his friend, Francis Place, he sketched a book which he proposed writing, "curiously like Marx's 'Capital,'" according to Place's biographer, Mr. Wallas,[147] and from which the conservative old reformer dissuaded him. John Francis Bray was a journeyman printer about whom very little is known. His "Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy," published in Leeds in 1839, Marx calls "a remarkable work," and in his attack upon Proudhon he quotes from it extensively to show that Bray had antic.i.p.ated the French writer's theories.[148]

The justification for this lengthy digression from the main theme of the present chapter lies in the fact that so many critics have sought to fasten the charge of dishonesty upon Marx, and claimed that the ideas with which his name is a.s.sociated were taken by him, without acknowledgment, from these English Ricardians. As a matter of fact, no economist of note ever quoted his authorities, or acknowledged his indebtedness to others, more generously than did Marx, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether even the names of the precursors whose ideas he is accused of stealing would be known to his critics but for his frank recognition of them. No candid reader of Marx can fail to notice that he is most careful to show how nearly these writers approached the truth as he conceived it.

II

When the February revolution of 1848 broke out, Marx was in Brussels.

The authorities there compelling him to leave Belgian soil, at the request of the Prussian government, he returned to Paris, but not for a long stay. The revolutionary struggle in Germany stirred his blood, and with Engels, Wilhelm Wolf, the intimate friend to whom he later dedicated the first volume of "Capital," and Ferdinand Freiligrath, the fiery poet of the movement, Marx started the _New Rhenish Gazette_.

Unlike the first _Rhenish Gazette_, the new journal was absolutely free from control by business policy. Twice Marx was summoned to appear at the Cologne a.s.sizes, upon charges of inciting the people to rebellion, and each time he defended himself with superb audacity and skill, and was acquitted. But in June, 1849, the authorities suppressed the paper, because of the support it gave to the risings in Dresden and the Rhine Province. Marx was expelled from Prussia and once more sought a refuge in Paris, which he was allowed to enjoy only for a very brief time.

Forbidden by the French government to stay in Paris, or any other part of France except Brittany, which, says Liebknecht, was considered "fireproof," Marx turned to London, the mecca of all political exiles, arriving there toward the end of June, 1849.

His removal to London was one of the crucial events in the life of Marx.

It became possible for him, in the cla.s.sic land of capitalism, to pursue his economic studies in a way that was not possible anywhere else in the world. As Liebknecht says: "Here in London, the metropolis (mother city) and the center of the world, and of the world of trade--the watch tower of the world whence the trade of the world and the political and economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in any other part of the globe--here Marx found what he sought and needed, the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be created in London only."[149]

Already much more familiar with English political economy than most English writers of his time, and with the fine library of the British Museum at his command, Marx felt that the time had at last arrived when he could devote himself to his long-cherished plan of writing a great treatise upon political economy as a secure basis for the theoretical structure of Socialism. With this object in view, he resumed his economic studies in 1850, soon after his arrival in London. The work proceeded slowly, however, princ.i.p.ally owing to the long and bitter struggle with poverty which encompa.s.sed Marx and his gentle wife. For years they suffered all the miseries of acute poverty, and even afterward, when the worst was past, the princ.i.p.al source of income, at times almost the only source in fact, was the five dollars a week received from the _New York Tribune_, for which Marx acted as special correspondent, and to which he contributed some of his finest work.[150]

There are few pictures more pathetic, albeit also heroic, than that which we have of the great thinker and his devoted wife struggling against poverty during the first few years of their stay in London.

Often the little family suffered the pangs of hunger, and Marx and a group of fellow-exiles used to resort to the reading room of the British Museum, weak from lack of food very often, but grateful for the warmth and shelter of that hospitable spot. The family lived some time in two small rooms in a cheap lodging house on Dean Street, the front room serving as reception room and study, and the back room serving for everything else. In a diary note, Mrs. Marx has herself left us an impressive picture of the suffering of those early years in London.

Early in 1852, death entered the home for the first time, taking away a little daughter. Only a few weeks later another little daughter died, and Mrs. Marx wrote concerning this event:--

"On Easter of the same year--1852--our poor little Francisca died of severe bronchitis. Three days the poor child was struggling with death.

It suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in the small back room; we all moved together into the front room, and when night approached, we made our beds on the floor. There the three living children were lying at our side, and we cried about the little angel, who rested cold and lifeless near us. The death of the dear child fell into the time of the most bitter poverty ... (the money for the burial of the child was missing). In the anguish of my heart I went to a French refugee who lived near, and who had sometimes visited us. I told him our sore need. At once with the friendliest kindness he gave me two pounds.

With that we paid for the little coffin in which the poor child now sleeps peacefully. I had no cradle for her when she was born, and even the last small resting place was long denied her. What did we suffer when it was carried away to its last place of rest!"[151]

The poverty, of which we have here such a graphic view, lasted for several years beyond the publication of the "Critique," on to the appearance of the first volume of "Capital." When this struggle is remembered and understood, it becomes easier to appreciate the life work of the great Socialist thinker. "It was a terrible time, but it was grand nevertheless," wrote Liebknecht years afterward to Eleanor Marx.

As this is the last place in which the personality of Marx, or his personal affairs, will be discussed in this volume, and in view of constant misrepresentations on the part of unscrupulous opponents of Socialism, a further word concerning his family life may not be out of place. Those persons who regard Socialism as being antagonistic to the family relation, and fear it in consequence, will find no suggestion of support for that view in either the life of Marx or his teaching. The love of Marx and his wife for each other was beautiful and idyllic. A true account of their love and devotion would rank with the most beautiful love stories in literature. Their friends understood that, too, and there is a world of significance in the one brief sentence spoken by Engels, when told of the death of his friend's beautiful wife, who was likewise his own dear friend: "Mohr [Negro, a nickname given to Marx by his friends when young, on account of his ma.s.s of black hair and whiskers] is dead too," he said simply. He knew that from this blow Marx could not recover. It was indeed true. Though he lingered on for about three months after her death, the life of Marx really ended when the playmate of his boyhood, and the lover and companion of all the years of struggle, died with the name of her dear "Karl" upon her lips.

Marx was an ideal father as well as an ideal husband. Always pa.s.sionately fond of children, he could not resist the temptation to join the games of children upon the streets, and in the neighborhoods where he lived the children soon learned to regard him as their friend.

To his own children he was a real companion, always ready to amuse and to be amused by them.

III

The studious years spent in the reading room of the British Museum complete the anglicization of Marx. "Capital" is essentially an English work, the fact of its having been written in German, by a German writer, being merely incidental. No more distinctively English treatise on political economy was ever written, not even "The Wealth of Nations."

Even the method and style of the book are, contrary to general opinion, much more distinctly English than German. I do not forget his Hegelian dialectic with its un-English subtleties, but against that must be placed the directness, vigor, and pointedness of style, and the cogent reasoning, with its wealth of concrete ill.u.s.trations, which are as characteristically English. Marx belongs to the school of Petty, Smith, and Ricardo, and their work is the background of his. "Capital" was the child of English industrial conditions and English thought, born by chance upon German soil.

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, English economic thought was entirely dominated by the ideas and methods of Ricardo, who has been described by Senior, not without justice, as "the most incorrect writer who ever attained philosophical eminence."[152] So far as such a sweeping criticism can be justified by looseness in the use of terms, it is justified by Ricardo's failing in this respect. That he should have attained the eminence he did, dominating English economic thought for so many years, in spite of the confusion which his loose and uncertain use of words occasioned, is not less a tribute to Ricardo's genius than evidence of the poverty of political economy in England at that time. In view of the constant and tiresome reiteration of the charge that Marx pillaged his labor-value theory from Thompson, Hodgskin, Bray, or some other more or less obscure writer of the Ricardian school, it is well to remember that there is nothing in the works of any of these writers connected with the theory of value which is not to be found in the earlier work of Ricardo himself. In like manner, the theory can be traced back from Ricardo to the master he honored, Adam Smith.

Furthermore, almost a century before the appearance of "The Wealth of Nations," Sir William Petty had antic.i.p.ated the so-called Ricardian labor-value theory of Smith and his followers.

Petty, rather than Smith, is ent.i.tled to be regarded as the founder of the cla.s.sical school of political economy, and Cossa justly calls him "one of the most ill.u.s.trious forerunners of the science of statistical research."[153] He may indeed fairly be said to have been the father of statistical science, and was the first to apply statistics, or "political arithmetick," as he called it, to the elucidation of economic theory. He boasts that "instead of using only comparative and superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments," his method is to speak "in Terms of Number, Weight, or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense; and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature; leaving those that depend upon the mutable Minds, Opinions, Appet.i.tes, and Pa.s.sions of particular Men, to the Consideration of others."[154]

The celebrated saying of this sagacious thinker that "labor is the father and active principle of wealth; lands are the mother," is more Marxian than Ricardian. Petty divided the population into two cla.s.ses, the productive and non-productive, and insisted that the value of all things depends upon the labor it costs to produce them. This is, as we shall see, entirely Ricardian, but not Marxian. But these are the ideas Marx is supposed to have borrowed, without acknowledgment, from comparatively obscure followers of Ricardo, in spite of the fact that he gives abundant credit to the earlier writer. It has been asked with ample justification whether these critics of Marx have read either the works of Marx or his predecessors.

Adam Smith, who accepted the foregoing principles laid down by Petty, followed his example of basing his conclusions largely upon observed facts instead of abstractions. It is not the least of Smith's merits that, despite his many digressions, looseness of phraseology, and other admitted defects, his love for the concrete kept his feet upon the solid ground of fact. With his successors, notably Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, it was far otherwise. They made political economy an isolated study of abstract doctrines. Instead of a study of the meaning and relation of facts, it became a cult of abstractions, and the aim of its teachers seemed to be to render the science as little scientific, and as dull, as possible. They set up an abstraction, an "economic man," and created for it a world of economic abstractions. It is impossible to read either Ricardo or John Stuart Mill, but especially the latter, without feeling the artificiality of the superstructures they created, and the justice of Carlyle's description of such political economy as the "dismal science." With a realism greater even than Adam Smith's, and a more logical method than Ricardo or John Stuart Mill, Marx restored the science of political economy to its old fact foundations.

IV

The superior insight of Marx is shown in the very first sentence of his great work. The careful reader at once perceives that the first paragraph of the book strikes a keynote which distinguishes it from all other economic works comparable to it in importance. Marx was a great master of the art of luminous and exact definition, and nowhere is this more strikingly shown than in this opening sentence of "Capital": "The wealth of those societies _in which the capitalist mode of production prevails_ presents itself as an immense acc.u.mulation of commodities, its unit being a single commodity."[155] In this simple, lucid sentence the theory of social evolution is clearly implied. The author repudiates, by implication, the idea that it is possible to lay down universal or eternal laws, and limits himself to the exploration of the phenomena appearing in a certain stage of historical development. We are not to have another abstract economic man with a world of abstractions all his own; lone, s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners upon barren islands, imaginary communities nicely adapted for demonstration purposes in college cla.s.s rooms, and all the other stage properties of the political economists, are to be entirely discarded. Our author does not propose to give us a set of principles by which we shall be able to understand and explain the phenomena of human society at all times and in all places--the Israel of the Mosaic Age, the nomadic life of Arab tribes, Europe in the Middle Ages, and England in the nineteenth century.

In effect, the pa.s.sage under consideration says: "Political economy is the study of the principles and laws governing the production and distribution of wealth. Because of the fact that in the progress of society different systems of wealth production and exchange, and different concepts of wealth, prevail at different times, and at various places at the same time, we cannot formulate any laws which will apply to all times and all places. We must choose for examination and study a certain form of production, representing a particular stage of historical development, and be careful not to attempt to apply any of its laws to other forms of production, representing other stages of development. We might have chosen to investigate the laws which governed the production of wealth in the ancient Babylonian Empire, or in Mediaeval Europe, had we so desired, but we have chosen instead the period in which we live."