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Croce
Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx
by Benedetto Croce
translated by C.M. Meredith
and with an introduction by A.D. Lindsay
1914
INTRODUCTION
The Essays in this volume, as will be apparent, have all of them had an
occasional origin. They bear evident traces of particular controversy and
contain much criticism of authors who are hardly, if at all, known in this
country. Their author thought it worth while to collect them in one volume
and it has been, I am sure, worth while to have them translated into English,
because though written on different occasions and in different controversies
they have all the same purpose. They are an attempt to make clear by philosophical
criticism the real purpose and value of Marx's work.
It is often said that it is the business of philosophy to examine and
criticise the assumptions of the sciences and philosophy claims that in this
work it is not an unnecessary meddler stepping in where it is not wanted.
For time and again for want of philosophical criticism the sciences have
overstepped their bounds and produced confusion and contradiction. The distinction
between the proper spheres of science and history and moral judgment is not
the work of either science or history or moral judgment but can only be accomplished
by philosophical reflection, and the philosopher will justify his work, if
he can show the various contending parties that his distinctions will disentangle
the puzzles into which they have fallen and help them to understand one another.
The present state of the controversy about the value of the writings of
Karl Marx obviously calls for some such work of disentangling. No honest
student can deny that his work has been of great historic importance and
it is hard to believe that a book like Das Kapital which has been the inspiration
of a great movement can be nothing but a tissue of false reasoning as some
of its critics have affirmed. The doctrine of the economic interpretation
of history has revivified and influenced almost all modern historical research.
In a great part of his analysis of the nature and natural development of
a capitalist society Marx has shown himself a prophet of extraordinary insight.
The more debatable doctrine of the class war has at least shown the sterility
of the earlier political theory which thought only in terms of the individual
and his state. The wonderful vitality of the Marxian theory of labour value
in spite of all the apparent refutations it has suffered at the hands of
orthodox political economists is an insoluble puzzle if it had no more in
it than the obvious fallacy which these refutations expose. Only a great
book could become ' the Bible of the working classes.'
But the process of becoming a Bible is a fatal process. No one can read
much current Marxian literature or discuss politics or economics with those
who style themselves orthodox Marxians without coming to the conclusion that
the spirit of ecclesiastical dogmatism daily growing weaker in its own home
has been transplanted into the religion of revolutionary socialism. Many
of those whose eyes have been opened to the truth as expounded by Marx seem
to have been thereby granted that faith which is the faculty of believing
what we should otherwise know to be untrue, and with them the economic interpretation
of history is transformed into a metaphysical dogma of deterministic materialism.
The philosopher naturally finds a stumbling-block in a doctrine which is
proclaimed but not argued. The historian however grateful he may be for the
light which economic interpretation has given him, is up in arms against
a theory which denies the individuality and uniqueness of history and reduces
it to an automatic repetition of abstract formulae. The politician when he
is told of the universal nature of the class war points triumphantly to the
fact that it is a war which those who should be the chief combatants are
slow to recognise or we should not find the working classes more ready to
vote for a Liberal or a Conservative than for a Socialist. The Socialist
must on consideration become impatient with a doctrine that by its fatalistic
determinism makes all effort unnecessary. If Socialism must come inevitably
by the automatic working out of economic law, why all this striving to bring
it about ? The answer that political efforts can make no difference, but
may bring about the revolution sooner, is too transparently inadequate a
solution of the difficulty to deceive anyone for long. Lastly the economist
can hardly tolerate a theory of value that seems to ignore entirely the law
of supply and demand, and concludes with some justice that either the theory
of labour value is nonsense or that Marx was talking about something quite
apart in its nature from the value which economics discusses. All these objections
are continually being made to Marxianism, and are met by no adequate answer.
And just as the sceptical lecturer of the street corner argues that a religion
which can make men believe in the story of Balaam's ass must be as nonsensical
as that story, so with as little justice the academic critic or the anti-socialist
politician concludes that Socialism or at least Marxianism is a tissue of
nonsensical statements if these ridiculous dogmas are its fruit.
A disentangles of true and false in so-called Marxianism is obviously
needed, and Senatore Croce is eminently fitted for the work. Much of the
difficulty of Marx comes from his relation to Hegel. He was greatly influenced
by and yet had reacted from Hegel's philosophy without making clear to others
or possibly to himself what his final position in regard to Hegel really
was. Senatore Croce is a Hegelian, but a critical one. His chief criticism
of Hegel is that his philosophy tends to obscure the individuality and uniqueness
of history, and Croce seeks to avoid that obscurity by distinguishing clearly
the methods of history, of science and of philosophy. He holds that all science
deals with abstractions, with what he has elsewhere called pseudo-concepts.
These abstractions have no real existence, and it is fatal to confuse the
system of abstraction which science builds up with the concrete living reality.
'All scientific laws are abstract laws,' as he says in one of these essays,
(III p. 57), 'and there is no bridge over which to pass from the concrete
to the abstract; just because the abstract is not a reality but a form of
thought, one of our, so to speak, abbreviated ways of thinking. And although
a knowledge of the laws may light up our perception of reality, it cannot
become that perception itself.'
The application to the doctrine of historic materialism is obvious. It
calls attention to one of the factors of the historical process, the economic.
This factor it quite rightly treats in abstraction and isolation. A knowledge
of the laws of economic forces so obtained may 'light up our perception '
of the real historical process, but only darkness and confusion can result
from mistaking the abstraction for reality and from the production of those
a priori histories of the stages of civilisation or the development of the
family which have discredited Marxianism in the eyes of historians. In the
first essay and the third part of the third Croce explains this distinction
between economic science and history and their proper relation to one another.
The second essay reinforces the distinction by criticism of another attempt
to construct a science which shall take the place of history. A science in
the strict sense history is not and never can be.
Once this is clearly understood it is possible to appreciate the services
rendered to history by Marx. For Croce holds that economics is a real science.
The economic factors in history can be isolated and treated by themselves.
Without such isolated treatment they cannot be understood, and if they are
not understood, our view of history is bound to be unnecessarily narrow and
one-sided. On the relative importance of the economic and the political and
the religious factors in history he has nothing to say. There is no a priori
answer to the question whether any school of writers has unduly diminished
or exaggerated the importance of any one of these factors. Their importance
has varied at different times, and can at any time only be estimated empirically.
It remains a service of great value to have distinguished a factor of such
importance which had been previously neglected.
If then the economic factor in history should be isolated and treated
separately, how is it to be distinguished? For it is essential to Croce's
view of science that each science has its own concepts it.' which can be
distinguished clearly from those of other sciences. This question is discussed
in Essay III Q. 5 and more specifically in Essay VI. Croce is specially anxious
to distinguish between the spheres of economics and ethics. Much confusion
has been caused in political economy in the past by the assumption that economics
takes for granted that men behave egoistically, i.e. in an immoral way. As
a result of this assumption men have had to choose between the condemnation
of economics or of mankind. The believer in humanity has been full of denunciation
of that monstrosity the economic man, while the thorough-going believer in
economics has assumed that the success of the economic interpretation of
history proves that men are always selfish. The only alternative view seemed
to be the rather cynical compromise that though men were sometimes unselfish,
their actions were so prevailingly selfish that for political purposes the
unselfish actions might be ignored. Croce insists, and surely with justice,
that economic actions are not moral or immoral, but in so far as they are
economic, non-moral. The moral worth of actions cannot be determined by their
success or failure in giving men satisfaction. For there are some things
in which men find satisfaction which they yet judge to be bad. We must distinguish
therefore the moral question whether such and such an action is good or bad
from the economic whether it is or is not useful, whether it is a way by
which men get what they, rightly or wrongly want.In economics then we are
merely discussing the efficiency or utility of actions. We can ask of any
action whether it ought or ought not to be done at all. That is a moral question.
We may also ask whether it is done competently or efficiently: that is an
economic question. It might be contended that it is immoral to keep a public
house, but it would also have to be allowed that the discussion of the most
efficient way by keeping a public house was outside the scope of the moral
enquiry. Mrs Weir of Hermiston was confusing economics with ethics when she
answered Lord Braxfield's complaints of his ill-cooked dinner by saying that
the cook was a very pious woman. Economic action according to Croce is the
condition of moral action. If action has no economic value, it is merely
aimless, but it may have economic value without being moral, and the consideration
of economic value must therefore be independent of ethics.
Marx, Croce holds was an economist and not a moralist, and the moral judgments
of socialists are not and cannot be derived from any scientific examination
of economic processes.
So much for criticisms of Marx or rather of exaggerated developments of
Marxianism, which though just and important, are comparatively obvious. The
most interesting part of Signor Croce's criticism is his interpretation of
the shibboleth of orthodox Marxians and the stumbling block of economists,
the Marxian theory of labour-value with its corollary of surplus value. Marx's
exposition of the doctrine in Das Kapital is the extreme of abstract reasoning.
Yet it is found in a book full of concrete descriptions of the evils of the
factory system and of moral denunciation and satire. If Marx's theory be
taken as an account of what determines the actual value of concrete things
it is obviously untrue. The very use of the term surplus value is sufficient
to show that it might be and sometimes is taken to be the value which commodities
ought to have, but none can read Marx's arguments and think that he was concerned
with a value which should but did not exist. He is clearly engaged on a scientific
not a Utopian question.
Croce attempts to find a solution by pointing out that the society which
Marx is describing is not this or that actual society, but an ideal, in the
sense of a hypothetical society, capitalist society as such. Marx has much
to say of the development of capitalism in England, but he is not primarily
concerned to give an industrial history of England or of any other existing
society. He is a scientist and deals with abstractions or types and considers
England only in so far as in it the characteristics of the abstract capitalist
society are manifested. The capitalism which he is analysing does not exist
because no society is completely capitalist. Further it is to be noticed
that in his analysis of value Marx is dealing with objects only in so far
as they are commodities produced by labour. This is evident enough in his
argument. The basis of his contention that all value is 'congealed labour
time' is that all things which have economic value have in common only the
fact that labour has been expended on them, and yet afterwards he admits
that there are things in which no labour has been expended which yet have
economic value. He seems to regard this as an incidental unimportant fact.
Yet obviously it is a contradiction which vitiates his whole argument. If
all things which have economic value have not had labour expended on them,
we must look elsewhere for their common characteristic. We should probably
say that they all have in common the fact that they are desired and that
there is not an unlimited supply of them. The pure economist finds the key
to this analysis of value in the consideration of the laws of supply and
demand, which alone affect all things that have economic value, and finds
little difficulty in refuting Marx's theory, on the basis which his investigation
assumes.
A consideration of Marx's own argument forces us therefore to the conclusion
that either Marx was an incapable bungler or that he thought the fact that
some things have economic value and are yet not the product of labour irrelevant
to his argument because he was talking of economic value in two senses, firstly
in the sense of price, and secondly in a peculiar sense of his own. This
indeed is borne out by his distinction of value and price. Croce developing
this hint, suggests that the importance of Marx's theory lies in a comparison
between a capitalist society and another abstract economic society in which
there are no commodities on which labour is not expended, and no monopoly.
We thus have two abstract societies, the capitalist society which though
abstract is very largely actualised in modern civilisation, and another quite
imaginary economic society of unfettered competition, which is continually
assumed by the classical economist, but which, as Marx said, could only exist
where there was no private property in capital, i.e. in the collectivist
state.
Now in a society of that kind in which there was no monopoly and capital
was at everyone's disposal equally, the value of commodities would represent
the value of the labour put into them, and that value might be represented
in Wits of socially necessary labour time. It would still have to be admitted
that an hour of one man's labour might be of much greater value to the community
than two hours of another man, but that Marx has already allowed for. The
unit of socially necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the hour of
one man might contain two or any number of such abstract units of labour
time. What Marx has done is to take the individualist economist at his word:
he has accepted the notion of an economic society as a number of competing
individuals. Only he has insisted that they shall start fair and therefore
that they shall have nothing to buy or sell but their labour. The discrepancy
between the values which would exist in such a society and actual prices
represent the disturbance created by the fact that actual society is not
a society of equal competitors, but one in which certain competitors start
with some kind of advantage or monopoly.
If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it bears a close relation
to a simpler and more familiar contention, that in a society where free economic
competition holds sway, each man gets what he deserves, for his income represents
the sum that society is prepared to pay for his services, the social value
of his work. In this form the hours worked are supposed to be uniform, and
the differences in value are taken to represent different amounts of social
service. In Marx's argument the social necessity is taken as uniform, and
the difference in value taken to represent differences in hours of work.
While the main abstract contention remains the same, most of those who argue
that in a system of unfettered economic competition most men get what they
deserve, rather readily ignore the existence of monopoly, and assume that
this argument justifies the existing distribution of wealth. The chief purpose
of Marx's argument is to emphasise the difference between such an economic
system and a capitalist society. He is here, as so often, turning the logic
of the classical economists against themselves, and arguing that the conditions
under which a purely economic distribution of wealth could take place, could
only exist in a community where monopoly had been completely abolished and
all capital collectivised.
Croce maintains that Marx's theory of value is economic and not moral.
Yet it is hard to read Marx and certainly Marxians without finding in them
the implication that the values produced in such an economic society would
be just. If that implication be examined, we come on an important difficulty
still remaining in this theory. The contention that in a system of unfettered
economic competition, men get the reward they deserve, assumes that it is
just that if one man has a greater power of serving society than another
he should be more highly rewarded for his work. This the individualist argument
with which we compared Marx's assumes without question. But the Marxian theory
of value is frequently interpreted to imply that amount of work is the only
claim to reward. For differences in value it is held are created by differences
in the amount of labour. But the word amount may here be used in two senses.
When men say that the amount of work a man does should determine a man's
reward; they commonly mean that if one man works two hours and another one,
the first ought to get twice the reward of the second. 'Amount ' here means
the actual time spent in labour. But in Marx's theory of value amount means
something quite different, for an hour of one man's work may, he admits,
be equal to two of another man's. He means by amount a sum of abstract labour
time units. Marx's scientific theory of value is quite consistent with different
abilities getting different rewards, the moral contention that men should
get more reward if they work more and for no other reason is not. The equation
of work done by men of different abilities by expressing them in abstract
labour time units is essential to Marx's theory but fatal to the moral claim
sometimes founded upon it.
Further the great difficulty in allowing that it is just that men of different
abilities should have different rewards, comes from the fact that differences
of ability are of the nature of monopolies. In a pure economic society high
rewards would be given to rare ability and although it is possible to equate
work of rare ability with work of ordinary ability by expressing both as
amounts of abstract labour time units, it surely remains true that the value
is determined not by the amount of abstract labour time congealed in it but
by the law of supply and demand. Where there are differences of ability there
is some kind of monopoly, and where there is monopoly, you cannot eliminate
the influence of the relation of supply and demand in the determination of
value. What you imagine you have eliminated by the elimination of capital,
which you can collectivise, remains obstinately in individual differences
of ability which cannot be collectivised.
But here I have entered beyond the limits of Croce's argument. His critical
appraisement of Marx's work must be left to others to judge who have more
knowledge of Marx and of economics than I can lay claim to. I am confident
only that all students of Marx whether they be disciples or critics, will
find in these essays illumination in a field where much bitter controversy
has resulted in little but confusion and obscurity.
A. D. LINDSAY.
CHAPTER 1. CONCERNING THE SCIENTIFIC FORM OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
Historical materialism is what is called a fashionable subject. The theory
came into being fifty years ago, and for a time remained obscure and limited;
but during the last six or seven years it has rapidly attained great fame
and an extensive literature, which is daily increasing, has grown up around
it. It is not my intention to write once again the account, already given
many times, of the origin of this doctrine; nor to restate and criticise
the now well-known passages in which Marx and Engels asserted the theory,
nor the different views of its opponents, its supporters, its exponents,
and its correctors and corruptors. My object is merely to submit to my colleagues
some few remarks concerning the doctrine, taking it in the form in which
it appears in a recent book by Professor Antonio Labriola, of the University
of Rome.(1*)
For many reasons, it does not come within my province to praise Labriola's
book. But I cannot help saying as a needful explanation, that it appears
to me to be the fullest and most adequate treatment of the question. The
book is free from pedantry and learned tattle, whilst it shows in every line
signs of the author's complete knowledge of all that has been written on
the subject: a book, in short, which saves the annoyance of controversy with
erroneous and exaggerated opinions, which in it appear as superseded. It
has a grand opportunity in Italy, where the materialistic theory of history
is known almost solely in the spurious form bestowed on it by an ingenious
professor of economics, who even pretends to be its inventor.(2*)
I
Any reader of Labriola's book who tries to obtain from it a precise concept
of the new theory of history, will reach in the first instance a conclusion
which must appear to him evident and incontestable, and which I sum up in
the following statement: 'historical materialism, so-called, is not a philosophy
of history.' Labriola does not state this denial explicitly; it may even
be granted that, in words, he sometimes says exactly the opposite.(3*) But,
if I am not mistaken, the denial is contained implicitly in the restrictions
which he places on the meaning of the theory.
The philosophical reaction of realism overthrew the systems built up by
teleology and metaphysical dogmatism, which had limited the field of the
historian. The old philosophy of history was destroyed. And, as if in contempt
and depreciation, the phrase, 'to construct a philosophy of history,' came
to be used with the meaning: 'to construct a fanciful and artificial and
perhaps prejudiced history.'
It is true that of late books have begun to reappear actually having as
their title the 'philosophy of history.' This might seem to be a revival,
but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different one. These recent
productions do not aim at supplying a new philosophy of history, they simply
offer some philosophising about history. The distinction deserves to be explained.
The possibility of a philosophy of history presupposes the possibility
of reducing the sequence of history to general concepts. Now, whilst it is
possible to reduce to general concepts the particular factors of reality
which appear in history and hence to construct a philosophy of morality or
of law, of science or of art, and a general philosophy, it is not possible
to work up into general concepts the single complex whole formed by these
factors, i.e. the concrete fact, in which the historical sequence consists.
To divide it into its factors is to destroy it, to annihilate it. In its
complex totality, historical change is incapable of reduction except to one
concept, that of development: a concept empty of everything that forms the
peculiar content of history. The old philosophy of history regarded a conceptual
working out of history as possible; either because by introducing the idea
of God or of Providence, it read into the facts the aims of a divine intelligence;
or because it treated the formal concept of development as including within
itself, logically, the contingent determinations. The case of positivism
is strange in that, being neither so boldly imaginative as to yield to the
conceptions of teleology and rational philosophy, nor so strictly realistic
and intellectually disciplined as to attack the error at its roots, it has
halted half way, i.e. at the actual concept of development and of evolution,
and has announced the philosophy of evolution as the true philosophy of history:
development itself -- as the law which explains development! Were this tautology
only in question little harm would result; but the misfortune is that, by
a too easy confusion, the concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands
of the positivists, from the formal emptiness which belongs to it in truth,
and acquires a meaning or rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings
of teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious unction and reverence
with which one hears the sacred mystery of evolution spoken of gives sufficient
proof of this.
From such realistic standpoints, now as always, any and every philosophy
of history has been criticised. But the very reservations and criticisms
of the old mistaken constructions demand a discussion of concepts, that is
a process of philosophising: although it may be a philosophising which leads
properly to the denial of a philosophy of history. Disputes about method,
arising out of the needs of the historian, are added. The works published
in recent years embody different investigations of this kind, and in a plainly
realistic sense, under the title of philosophy of history. Amongst these
I will mention as an example a German pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst ourselves
a compendious introduction by Labriola himself. There are, undoubtedly, still
philosophies of history which continue to be produced in the old way: voices
clamantium in deserto, to whom may be granted the consolation of believing
themselves the only apostles of an unrecognised truth.
Now the materialistic theory of history, in the form in which Labriola
states it, involves an entire abandonment of all attempt to establish a law
of history, to discover a general concept under which all the complex facts
of history can be included.
I say 'in the form in which he states it,' because Labriola is aware that
several sections of the materialistic school of history tend to approximate
to these obsolete ideas.
One of these sections, which might be called that of the monists, or abstract
materialists, is characterised by the introduction of metaphysical materialism
into the conception of history.
As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing the relation between his opinions
and Hegelianism employed a pointed phrase which has been taken too often
beside the point. He said that with Hegel history was standing on its head
and that it must be turned right side up again in order to replace it on
its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world, whereas for him (Marx) 'the
ideal is nothing else than the material world' reflected and translated by
the human mind. Hence the statement so often repeated, that the materialistic
view of history is the negation or antithesis of the idealistic view. It
would perhaps be convenient to study once again, accurately and critically,
these asserted relations between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To
state the opinion which I have formed on the matter; the link between the
two views seems to me to be, in the main, simply psychological. Hegelianism
was the early inspiration of the youthful Marx, and it is natural that everyone
should link up the new ideas with the old as a development, an amendment,
an antithesis. In fact, Hegel's Ideas and Marx knew this perfectly well --
are not human ideas, and to turn the Hegelian philosophy of history upside
down cannot give us the statement that ideas arise as reflections of material
conditions. The inverted form would logically be this: history is not a process
of the Idea, i.e. of a rational reality, but a system of forces: to the rational
view is opposed the dynamic view. As to the Hegelian dialectic of concepts
it seems to me to bear a purely external and approximate resemblance to the
historical notion of economic eras and of the antithetical conditions of
society. Whatever may be the value of this suggestion, which I express with
hesitation, recognising the difficulty of the problems connected with the
interpretation and origin of history; -- this much is evident, that metaphysical
materialism, at which Marx and Engels, starting from the extreme Hegelian
left, easily arrived, supplied the name and some of the components of their
view of history. But both the name and these components are really extraneous
to the true character of their conception. This can be neither materialistic
nor spiritualistic, nor dualistic nor monadistic: within its limited field
the elements of things are not presented in such a way as to admit of a philosophical
discussion whether they are reducible one to another, and are united in one
ultimate source. What we have before us are concrete objects, the earth,
natural production, animals; we have before us man, in whom the so-called
psychical processes appear as differentiated from the so-called physiological
processes. To talk in this case of monism and materialism is to talk nonsense.
Some socialist writers have expressed surprise because Lange, in his classic
History of Materialism, does not discuss historical materialism. It is needless
to remark that Lange was familiar with Marxian socialism. He was, how ever,
too cautious to confuse the metaphysical materialism with which he was concerned,
with historical materialism which has no essential connection with it, and
is merely a way of speaking.
But the metaphysical materialism of the authors of the new historical
doctrine, and the name given to the latter, have been not a little misleading.
I will refer as an example to a recent and bad little book, which seems to
me symptomatic, by a sufficiently accredited socialist writer, Plechanow.(4*)
The author, designing to study historical materialism, thinks it needful
to go back to Holbach and Helvetius. And he waxes indignant at metaphysical
dualism and pluralism, declaring that 'the most important philosophical systems
were always monistic, that is they interpreted matter and spirit as merely
two classes of phenomena having a single and indivisible cause.' And in reference
to those who maintain the distinction between the factors in history, he
exclaims: 'We see here the old story, always recurring, of the struggle between
eclecticism and monism, the story of the dividing walls; here nature, there
spirit, etc.' Many will be amazed at this unexpected leap from the materialistic
study of history into the arms of monism, in which they were unaware that
they ought to have such confidence.
Labriola is most careful to avoid this confusion: 'Society is a datum,'
he says, 'history is nothing more than the history of society.' And he controverts
with equal energy and success the naturalists, who wish to reduce the history
of man to the history of nature, and the verbalists, who claim to deduce
from the name materialism the real nature of the new view of history. But
it must appear, even to him, that the name might have been more happily chosen,
and that the confusion lies, so to speak, inherent in it. It is true that
old words can be bent to new meanings, but within limits and after due consideration.
In regard to the tendency to reconstruct a materialistic philosophy of
history, substituting an omnipresent Matter for an omnipresent idea, it suffices
to re-assert the impossibility of any such construction, which must become
merely superfluous and tautologous unless it abandoned itself to dogmatism.
But there is another error, which is remarked among the followers of the
materialistic school of history, and which is connected with the former,
viz., to anticipate harm not only in the interpretation of history but also
in the guidance of practical activities. I refer to the teleological tendencies
(abstract teleology), which also Labriola opposes with a cutting attack.
The very idea of progress, which has seemed to many the only law of history
worth saving out of the many devised by philosophical and non-philosophical
thinkers, is by him deprived of the dignity of a law, and reduced to a sufficiently
narrow significance. The idea of it, says Labriola, is 'not only empirical,
but always incidental and hence limited': progress 'does not influence the
sequence of human affairs like destiny or fate, nor like the command of a
law.' History teaches us that man is capable of progress; and we can look
at all the different series of events from this point of view: that is all.
No less incidental and empirical is the idea of historical necessity, which
must be freed from all remnants of rationalism and of transcendentalism,
so that we see in it the mere recognition of the very small share left in
the sequence of events, to individuals and personal free will.
It must be admitted that a little of the blame for the teleological and
fatalistic misunderstandings fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he once had to
explain, liked to 'coquette' with the Hegelian terminology: a dangerous weapon,
with which it would have been better not to trifle. Hence it is now thought
necessary to give to several of his statements a somewhat broad interpretation
in agreement with the general trend of his theories.(5*) Another excuse lies
in the impetuous confidence which, as in the case of any practical work,
accompanies the practical activities of socialism, and engenders beliefs
and expectations which do not always agree with prudent critical and scientific
thought. It is strange to see how the positivists, newly converted to socialism,
exceed all the others (see the effect of a good school!) in their teleological
beliefs, and their facile predeterminations. They swallow again what is worst
in Hegelianism, which they once so violently opposed without recognising
it. Labriola has finely said that the very forecasts of socialism are merely
morphological in nature; and, in fact, neither Marx nor Engels would ever
have asserted in the abstract that communism must come about by an unavoidable
necessity, in the manner in which they foresaw it. If history is always accidental,
why in this western Europe of ours, might not a new barbarism arise owing
to the effect of incalculable circumstances? Why should not the coming of
communism be either rendered superfluous or hastened by some of those technical
discoveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have hitherto produced the
greatest revolutions in the course of history?
I think then that better homage would be rendered to the materialistic
view of history, not by calling it the final and definite philosophy of history
but rather by declaring that properly speaking it is not a philosophy of
history. This intrinsic nature which is evident to those who understand it
properly, explains the difficulty which exists in finding for it a satisfactory
theoretical statement; and why to Labriola it appears to be only in its beginnings
and yet to need much development. It explains too why Engels said (and Labriola
accepts the remark), that it is nothing more than a new method; which means
a denial that it is a new theory. But is it indeed a new method? I must acknowledge
that this name method does not seem to me altogether accurate. When the philosophical
idealists tried to arrive at the facts of history by inference, this was
truly a new method; and there may still exist some fossil of those blessed
times, who makes such attempts at history. But the historians of the materialistic
school employ the same intellectual weapons and follow the same paths as,
let us say, the philological historians. They only introduce into their work
some new data, some new experiences. The content is different, not the nature
of the method.
II
I have now reached the point which for me is fundamental. Historical materialism
is not and cannot be a new philosophy of history or a new method; but it
is properly this; a mass of new data, of new experiences, of which the historian
becomes conscious.
It is hardly necessary to mention the overthrow a short time ago of the
naive opinion of the ordinary man regarding the objectivity of history; almost
as though events spoke, and the historian was there to hear and to record
their statements. Anyone who sets out to write history has before him documents
and narratives, i.e. small fragments and traces of what has actually happened.
In order to attempt to reconstruct the complete process, he must fall back
on a series of assumptions, which are in fact the ideas and information which
he possesses concerning the affairs of nature, of man, of society. The pieces
needed to complete the whole, of which he has only the fragments before him,
he must find within himself. His worth and skill as a historian is shown
by the accuracy of his adaptation. Whence it clearly follows that the enrichment
of these views and experiences is essential to progress in historical narration.
What are these points of view and experiences which are offered by the
materialistic theory of history?
That section of Labriola's book which discusses this appears to me excellent
and sufficient. Labriola points out how historical narration in the course
of its development, might have arrived at the theory of historical-factors;
i.e., the notion that the sequence of history is the result of a number of
forces, known as physical conditions, social organizations, political institutions,
personal influences. Historical materialism goes beyond, to investigate the
interaction of these factors; or rather it studies them all together as parts
of a single process. According to this theory -- as is now well known, and
as Marx expressed it in a classical passage -- the foundations of history
are the methods of production, i.e. the economic conditions which give rise
to class distinctions, to the constitution of rank and of law, and to those
beliefs which make up social and moral customs and sentiments, the reflection
whereof is found in art, science and religion.
To understand this point of view accurately is not easy, and it is misunderstood
by all those who, rather than take it in the concrete, state it absolutely
after the manner of an absolute philosophical truth. The theory cannot be
maintained in the abstract without destroying it, i.e. without turning it
into the theory of the factors, which is according to my view, the final
word in abstract analysis.(6*) Some have supposed that historical materialism
asserts that history is nothing more than economic history, and all the rest
is simply a mask, an appearance without reality. And then they labour to
discover the true god of history, whether it be the productive tool or the
earth, using arguments which call to mind the proverbial discussion about
the egg and the hen. Friedrich Engels was attacked by someone who applied
to him to ask how the influence of such and such other historical factors
ought to be understood in reference to the economic factor. In the numerous
letters which he wrote in reply, and which now, since his death, are coming
out in the reviews, he let it be understood that, when together with Marx,
upon the prompting of the facts, he conceived this new view of history, he
had not meant to state an exact theory. In one of these letters he apologists
for whatever exaggeration he and Marx may have put into the controversial
statements of their ideas, and begs that attention may be paid to the practical
applications made of them rather than to the theoretical expressions employed.
It would be a fine thing, he exclaims, if a formula could be given for the
interpretation of all the facts of history! By applying this formula, it
would be as easy to understand any period of history as to solve a simple
equation.(7*)
Labriola grants that the supposed reduction of history to the economic
factor is a ridiculous notion, which may have occurred to one of the too
hasty defenders of the theory, or to one of its no less hasty opponents.(8*)
He acknowledges the complexity of history, how the products of the first
degree first establish themselves, and then isolate themselves and become
independent; the ideals which harden into traditions, the persistent survivals,
the elasticity of the psychical mechanism which makes the individual irreducible
to a type of his class or social position, the unconsciousness and ignorance
of their own situations often observed in men, the stupidity and unintelligibility
of the beliefs and superstitions arising out of unusual accidents and complexities.
And since man lives a natural as well as a social existence, he admits the
influence of race, of temperament and of the promptings of nature. And, finally,
he does not overlook the influence of the individual, i.e. of the work of
those who are called great men, who if they are not the creators, are certainly
collaborators of history.
With all these concessions he realises, if I am not mistaken, that it
is useless to look for a theory, in any strict sense of the word, in historical
materialism; and even that it is not what can properly be called a theory
at all. He confirms us in this view by his fine account of its origin, under
the stimulus of the French Revolution, that great school of sociology --
as he calls it. The materialistic view of history arose out of the need to
account for a definite social phenomenon, not from an abstract inquiry into
the factors of historical life. It was created in the minds of politicians
and revolutionists, not of cold and calculating savants of the library.
At this stage someone will say: -- But if the theory, in the strict sense,
is not true, wherein then lies the discovery? In what does the novelty consist?
To speak in this way is to betray a belief that intellectual progress consists
solely in the perfecting of the forms and abstract categories of thought.
Have approximate observations no value in addition to theories? The knowledge
of what has usually happened, everything in short that is called experience
of life, and which can be expressed in general but not in strictly accurate
terms? Granting this limitation and understanding always an almost and an
about, there are discoveries to be made which are fruitful in the interpretation
of life and of history. Such are the assertions of the dependence of all
parts of life upon each other, and of their origin in the economic subsoil,
so that it can be said that there is but one single history; the discovery
of the true nature of the State (as it appears in the empirical world), regarded
as an institution for the defence of the ruling class; the proved dependence
of ideals upon class interests; the coincidence of the great epochs of history
with the great economic eras; and the many other observations by which the
school of historical materialism is enriched. Always with the aforesaid limitations,
it may be said with Engels: 'that men make their history themselves, but
within a given limited range, on a basis of conditions actually pre-existent,
amongst which the economic conditions, although they may be influenced by
the others, the political and ideal, are yet, in the final analysis, decisive,
and form the red thread which runs through the whole of history and guides
us to an understanding thereof.
From this point of view too, I entirely agree with Labriola in regarding
as somewhat strange the inquiries made concerning the supposed forerunners
and remote authors of historical materialism, and as quite mistaken the inferences
that these inquiries will detract from the importance and originality of
the theory. The Italian professor of economics to whom I referred at the
beginning, when convicted of a plagiarism, thought to defend himself by saying
that, at bottom, Marx's idea was not peculiar to Marx; hence, at worst, he
had robbed a thief. He gave a list of forerunners, reaching back as far as
Aristotle. Just lately, another Italian professor reproved a colleague with
much less justice for having forgotten that the economic interpretation had
been explained by Lorenzo Stein before Marx. I could multiply such examples.
All this reminds me of one of Jean Paul Richter's sayings: that we hoard
our thoughts as a miser does his money; and only slowly do we exchange the
money for possessions, and thoughts for experiences and feelings. Mental
observations attain real importance through the realisation in thought and
an insight into the fulness of their possibilities. This realisation and
insight have been granted to the modern socialist movement and to its intellectual
leaders Marx and Engels. We may read even in Thomas More that the State is
a conspiracy of the rich who make plots for their own convenience: gunedam
conspiratio divitum, de suds commodis reipublicae nomine tituloque tractantium,
and call their intrigues laws: machinamenta jam leges fiunt.(9*) And, leaving
Sir Thomas More -- who, after all, it will be said, was a communist -- who
does not know by heart Marzoni's lines: Un' odiosa Forza il mondo possiede
e fa nomarsi Dritto....(10*) But the materialist and socialist interpretation
of the State is not therefore any the less new. The common proverb, indeed,
tells us that interest is the most powerful motive for human actions and
conceals itself under the most varied forms; but it is none the less true
that the student of history who has previously examined the teachings of
socialist criticism, is like a short-sighted man who has provided himself
with a good pair of spectacles: he sees quite differently and many mysterious
shadows reveal their exact shape.
In regard to historical narrative then, the materialistic view of history
resolves itself into a warning to keep its observations in mind as a new
aid to the understanding of history. Few problems are harder than that which
the historian has to solve. In one particular it resembles the problem of
the statesman, and consists in understanding the conditions of a given nation
at a given time in respect to their causes and functioning; but with this
difference: the historian confines himself to exposition, the statesman proceeds
further to modification; the former pays no penalty for misunderstanding,
whereas the latter is subjected to the severe correction of facts. Confronted
by such a problem, the majority of historians -- I refer in particular to
the conditions of the study in Italy -- proceed at a disadvantage, almost
like the savants of the old school who constructed philology and researched
into etymology. Aids to a closer and deeper understanding, have come at length
from different sides, and frequently. But the one which is now offered by
the materialistic view of history is great, and suited to the importance
of the modern socialist movement. It is true that the historian must render
exact and definite in each particular instance, that co-ordination and subordination
of factors which is indicated by historical materialism, in general, for
the greater number of cases, and approximately; herein lies his task and
his difficulties, which may sometimes be insurmountable. But now the road
has been pointed out, along which the solution must be sought, of some of
the greatest problems of history apart from those which have been already
elucidated.
I will say nothing of the recent attempts at an historical application
of the materialistic conception, because it is not a subject to hurry over
in passing, and I intend to deal with it on another occasion. I will content
myself with echoing Labriola, who gives a warning against a mistake, common
to many of these attempts. This consists in retranslating, as he says, into
economic phraseology, the old historical perspective which of late has so
often been translated into Darwinian phraseology. Certainly it would not
be worth while to create a new movement in historical studies in order to
attain such a result.
III
Two things seem to me to deserve some further explanation. What is the
relation between historical materialism and socialism? Labriola, if I am
not mistaken, is inclined to connect closely and almost to identify the two
things. The whole of socialism lies in the materialistic interpretation of
history, which is the truth itself of socialism; to accept one and reject
the other is to understand neither. I consider this statement to be somewhat
exaggerated, or, at least, to need explanation. If historical materialism
is stripped of every survival of finality and of the benignities of providence,
it can afford no apology for either socialism or any other practical guidance
for life. On the other hand, in its special historical application, in the
assertion which can be made by its means, its real and close connection with
socialism is to be found. This assertion is as follows: -- Society is now
so constituted that socialism is the only possible solution which it contains
within itself. An assertion and forecast of this kind moreover will need
to be filled out before it can be a basis for practical action. It must be
completed by motives of interest, or by ethical and sentimental motives,
moral judgments and the enthusiasms of faith. The assertion in itself is
cold and powerless. It will be insufficient to move the cynic, the sceptic,
the pessimist. But it will suffice to put on their guard all those classes
of society who see their ruin in the sequence of history and to pledge them
to a long struggle, although the final outcome may be useless. Amongst these
classes is the proletariat, which indeed aims at the extinction of its class.
Moral conviction and the force of sentiment must be added to give positive
guidance and to supply an imperative ideal for those who neither feel the
blind impulse of class interest, nor allow themselves to be swept along by
the whirling current of the times.
The final point which I think demands explanation, although in this case
also the difference between myself and Labriola does not appear to be serious,
is this: to what conclusions does historical materialism lead in regard to
the ideal values of man, in regard that is to intellectual truth and to what
is called moral truth?
The history of the origin of intellectual truth is undoubtedly made clearer
by historical materialism, which aims at showing the influence of actual
material conditions upon the opening out, and the very development of the
human intellect. Thus the history of opinions, like that of science, needs
to be for the most part re-written from this point of view. But those who,
on account of such considerations concerning historical origins, return in
triumph to the old relativity and scepticism, are confusing two quite distinct
classes of problem. Geometry owes its origin no doubt to given conditions
which are worth determining; but it does not follow that geometrical truth
is something merely historical and relative. The warning seems superfluous,
but even here misunderstandings are frequent and remarkable. Have I not read
in some socialist author that Marx's discoveries themselves are of merely
historical importance and must necessarily be disowned. I do not know what
meaning this can have unless it has the very trivial one of a recognition
of the limitation of all human work, or unless it resolves itself into the
no less idle remark that Marx's thought is the offspring of his age. This
one-sided history is still more dangerous in reference to moral truth. The
science of morality is evidently now In a transformation stage. The ethical
imperative, whose classics are Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, and Herbart's
Allgemeine praktische Philosophie, appears no longer adequate. In addition
to it an historical and a formal science of morality are making their appearance,
which regard morality as a fact, and study its universal nature apart from
all preoccupations as to creeds and rules. This tendency shows itself not
only in socialistic circles, but also elsewhere, and it will be sufficient
for me to refer to Simmel's clever writings. Labriola is thus justified in
his defence of new methods of regarding morality. 'Ethics, he says, for us
resolves itself into an historical study of the subjective and objective
conditions according to which morality develops or finds hindrances to its
development.' But he adds cautiously, 'in this way alone, i.e., within these
limits, is there value in the statement that morality corresponds to the
social situation, i.e., in the Anal analysis to the economic conditions.'
The question of the intrinsic and absolute worth of the moral ideal, of its
reducibility or irreducibility to intellectual truth, remains untouched.
It would perhaps have been well if Labriola had dwelt a little more on
this point. A strong tendency is found in socialistic literature towards
a moral relativity, not indeed historical, but substantial, which regards
morality as a vain imagination. This tendency is chiefly due to the necessity
in which Marx and Engels found themselves, in face of the various types of
Utopians, of asserting that the so-called social question is not a moral
question,i.e. as this must be interpreted, it cannot be solved by sermons
and so-called moral methods and to their bitter criticism of class ideals
and hypocrisies.(11*) This result was helped on, as it seems to me, by the
Hegelian source of the views of Marx and Engels; it being obvious that in
the Hegelian philosophy ethics loses the rigidity given to it by Kant and
preserved by Herbart. And lastly the name materialism is perhaps not without
influence here, since it brings to mind at once well-understood interests
and the calculating comparison of pleasures. It is, however, evident that
idealism or absolute morality is a necessary postulate of socialism. Is not
the interest which prompts the formation of a concept of surplus-value a
moral interest, or social if it is preferred? Can surplus value be spoken
of in pure economics? Does not the labourer sell his labour-power for exactly
what it is worth, given his position in existing society? And, without the
moral postulate, how could we ever explain Marx's political activity, and
that note of violent indignation and bitter satire which is felt in every
page of Das Kapital? But enough of this, for I find myself making quite elementary
statements such as can only be overlooked owing to ambiguous or exaggerated
phraseology.
And in conclusion, I repeat my regret, already expressed, concerning this
name materialism, which is not justified in this case, gives rise to numerous
misunderstandings, and is a cause of derision to opponents. So far as history
is concerned, I would gladly keep to the name realistic view of history,
which denotes the opposition to all teleology and metaphysics within the
sphere of history, and combines both the contribution made by socialism to
historical knowledge and those contributions which may subsequently be brought
from elsewhere. Hence my friend Labriola ought not to attach too much importance,
in his serious thoughts, to the adjectives final and definite, which have
slipped from his pen. Did he not once tell me himself that Engels still hoped
for other discoveries which might help us to understand that mystery, made
by ourselves, and which is History?
May, 1896.
NOTES:
1. Del materialismo storico, dilacidazione prefiminare, Rome, E. Loescher,
1896. See the earlier work by the same author: In memoria del 'Manifesto
dei communisti,' and ed. Rome, E. Loescher, 1895.
2. I refer to the works of Professor Achille Loria.
3. He calls it on one occasion: 'the final and definite philosophy of
history.'
4. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus, Stuttgart, 1896.
5. See, for example, the comments upon some of Marx's statements, in the
article Progrés et dévelopment in the Devenir Social for March,
1896.
6. For this reason I do not, like Labriola, call the theory of the factors
a half-theory; nor do I like the comparison with the ancient doctrine, now
abandoned in physics, physiology and psychology, of physical forces, vital
forces and mental faculties.
7. See a letter dated 21st September 1890, published in the Berlin review,
Der Socialistische Akademiker, No 19, 1st October 1895. Another, dated 25th
January 1894, is printed in No 20, 16th October, of the same review.
8. He even distinguishes between the economic interpretation and the materialistic
view of history. By the first term he means 'those attempts at analysis,
which taking separately on the one hand the economic forms and categories,
and on the other for example, law, legislation, politics, custom, proceed
to study the mutual influences of the different sides of life, thus abstractly
and subjectively distinguished.' By the second, on the contrary, 'the organic
view of history' of the 'totality and unity of social life,' where economics
itself 'is melted into the tide of a process to appear afterwards in so many
morphological stages, in each of which it forms the basis relatively to the
rest which corresponds to and agrees with it.'
9. Utopia, L. II (THOMAE MORI angli Opera, Louvain 1566, 18.)
10. 'Hateful Force rules the world and calls itself Justice.'
11. From this point of view it is worth while to note the antipathy which
leaks out in socialist writings towards Schiller, the poet of the Kantian
morality aesthetically modified, who has become the favourite poet of the
German middle classes.
CHAPTER II. CONCERNING HISTORICAL MATERIALISM VIEWED AS A SCIENCE OF SOCIAL
ECONOMICS
The attentive reader of Professor Stammler's book,(1*) realises at the
outset that it treats of the materialistic theory of history not as a fruitful
guide to the interpretation of historical fact, but as a science or philosophy
of society.
A number of attempts have been made, based in the first instance on Marx's
statements, to build up on these statements a general theory of history or
of society. It is on these attempts then, and not on the least bold amongst
them, that Stammler bases his work, making them the starting point of his
criticism and reconstruction. It may be precisely on this account that he
chooses to discuss historical materialism in the form given to it by Engels,
-- which he calls the most complete, the authentic(!) statement of the principles
of social materialism. He prefers this form to that of Marx, which he thinks
too disconnected; and which is, indeed, less easily reduced to abstract generalities;
whereas Engels was one of the first to give to historical materialism a meaning
more important than its original one. To Engels, also, as is well known,
is due the very name materialism as applied to this view of history.
We cannot, indeed, deny that the materialistic view of history has in
fact developed in two directions, distinct in kind if not in practice, viz.:
(1) a movement relating to the writing of history, and (2) a science and
philosophy of society. Hence there is no ground for objecting to Stammler's
procedure, when he confines himself to this second problem, and takes it
up at the point to which he thinks that the followers of historical materialism
have brought it. But it should be clearly pointed out that he does not concern
himself at all with the problems of historical method. He leaves out of account
that is, what, for some people -- and for me amongst them -- is the side
of this movement of thought which is of living and scientific interest.
Professor Stammler remarks how in the propositions employed by the believers
in historical materialism: 'the economic factor dominates the other factors
of social life,' 'the economic factor is fundamental and the others are dependent,'
and the like, the concept economic has never been defined. He is justified
in making this remark, and in attaching the greatest importance to it, if
he regards and interprets those propositions as assertions of laws, as strict
propositions of social science. To use as essential in statements of this
kind, a concept which could neither be defined nor explained, and which therefore
remained a mere word, would indeed be somewhat odd. But his remark is entirely
irrelevant when these propositions are understood as: 'summaries of empirical
observations, by the help of which concrete social facts may be explained.'
I do not think that any sensible person has ever expected to find in those
expressions an accurate and philosophical definition of concepts; yet all
sensible people readily understand to what class of facts they refer. The
word economic here, as in ordinary language, corresponds, not to a concept,
but to a group of rather diverse representations, some of which are not even
qualitative in content, but quantitative. When it is asserted, that in interpreting
history we must look chiefly at the economic factors, we think at once of
technical conditions, of the distribution of wealth, of classes and sub-classes
bound together by definite common interests, and so on. It is true these
different representations cannot be reduced to a single concept, but no matter,
there is no question of that: here we are in an entirely different sphere
from that in which abstract questions are discussed.
This point is not without interest and may be explained more in detail.
If economic be understood in its strict sense, for example, in the sense
in which it is employed in pure economics, i.e., if by it be meant the axiom
according to which all men seek the greatest satisfaction with the least
possible effort, it is plain that to say that this factor plays a part (essential,
dominant, or equal to that of the others) in social life, would tell us nothing
concrete. The economic axiom is a very general and purely a formal principle
of conduct. It is inconceivable that anyone should act without applying,
well or ill, the very principle of every action, i.e., the economic principle.
Worse still if economic be taken in the sense which, as we shall see, Professor
Stammler gives to it. He understands by this word: 'all concrete social facts';
in which sense it would at once become absurd to assert that the economic
factor, i.e., all social-facts in the concrete dominated, a part of these
facts! Thus in order to give a meaning to the word economic in this proposition,
it is necessary to leave the abstract and formal; to assign definite ends
to human action; to have in mind an 'historical man,' or rather the average
man of history, or of a longer or shorter period of history; to think, for
example, of the need for bread, for clothes, for sexual relations, for the
so-called moral satisfactions, esteem, vanity, power and so on. The phrase
economic factor now refers to groups of concrete facts, which are built up
in common speech, and which have been better defined from the actual application
made of the above-mentioned propositions in historical narrative and in the
practical programmes of Marx and his followers.
In the main, this is recognised by Professor Stammler himself when he
gives an admirable explanation of the current meaning of the expressions:
economic facts and political facts, revolutions more political than economic
and vice versa. Such distinctions, he says, can only be understood in the
concrete, in reference to the aims pursued by the different sections of society,
and to the special problems of social life. According to him, however, Marx's
work does not deal with such trifling matters: as, for instance, that so-called
economic life influences ideas, science, art and so on: old lumber of little
consequence. Just as philosophical materialism does not consist in the assertion
that bodily facts have an influence over spiritual, but rather in the making
of these latter a mere appearance, without reality, of the former: so historical
materialism must consist in asserting that economics is the true reality
and that law is a fallacious appearance.
But, with all deference to Professor Stammler, we believe that these trifling
matters, to which he contemptuously refers, are precisely what are dealt
with in Marx's propositions; and, moreover, we think them neither so trifling
nor of such little consequence. Hence Professor Stammler's book does not
appear to us a criticism of the most vital part of historical materialism,
viz., of a movement or school of historians. The criticism of history is
made by history; and historical materialism is history made or in the making.
Nor does it provide the starting point for a criticism of socialism, as
the programme of a definite social movement. Stammler deceives himself when
he thinks that socialism is based on the materialistic philosophy of history
as he expounds it: on which philosophy are based, on the contrary, the illusions
and caprices of some or of many socialists. Socialism cannot depend on an
abstract sociological theory, since the basis would be inadequate precisely
because it was abstract; nor can it depend on a philosophy of history as
rhythmical or of little stability, because the basis would be transitory.
On the contrary, it is a complex fact and results from different elements;
and, so tar as concerns history, socialism does not presuppose a philosophy
of history, but an historical conception determined by the existing conditions
of society and the manner in which this has come about. If we put on one
side the doctrines superimposed subsequently, and read again Marx s pages
without prejudice, we shall then see that he had, at bottom, no other meaning
when he referred to history as one of the factors justifying socialism.
'The necessity for the socialization of the means of production is not
proved scientifically.' Stammler means that the concept of necessity as employed
by many Marxians, is erroneous; that the denial of teleology is absurd, and
that hence the assertion of the socialization of the means of production
as the social programme is not logically accounted for. This does not hinder
this assertion from being possibly quite true. Either because, in addition
to logical demonstrations there are fortunate intuitions, or because a conclusion
can be true although derived from a false premise: it suffices, obviously,
that there should be two errors which cancel one another. And this would
be so in our case. The denial of teleology; the tacit acceptance of this
same teleology: here is a method scientifically in. correct with a conclusion
that may be valid. It remains to examine the whole tissue of experiences,
deductions, aspirations and forecasts in which socialism really consists;
and over which Stammler passes indifferently, content to have brought to
light an error in the philosophical statement of a remote postulate, an error
which some, or it may be many, of the supporters and politicians of socialism
commit.
All these reservations are needed in order to fix the scope of Stammler's
investigation; but it would be a mistake to infer from them that we reject
the starting point of the inquiry itself. Historical materialism says Professor
Stammler has proved unable to give us a valid science of society: we, however,
believe that this was not its main or original object. The two statements
come practically to the same thing: the science of society is not contained
in the literature of the materialistic theory. Professor Stammler adds that
although historical materialism does not offer an acceptable social theory,
it nevertheless gives a stimulus of the utmost intensity towards the formation
of such a theory. This seems to us a matter of merely individual psychology:
suggestions and stimuli, as everyone knows, differ according to the mind
that receives them. The literature of historical materialism has always aroused
in us a desire to study history in the concrete, i.e., to reconstruct the
actual historical process. In Professor Stammler, on the contrary, it arouses
a desire to throw aside this meagre empirical history, and to work with abstractions
in order to establish concepts and general points of view. The problems which
he sets before himself, might be arrived at psychologically by many other
paths.
There is a tendency, at present, to enlarge unduly the boundaries of social
studies. But Stammler rightly claims a definite and special subject for what
ought to be called social science; that is definite social data. Social science
must include nothing which has not sociability as its determining cause.
How can ethics ever be social science, since it is based on cases of conscience
which evade all social rules? Custom is the social fact, not morality'. How
can pure economics or technology ever be social science, since those concepts
are equally applicable to the isolated individual and to societies? Thus
in studying social data we shall see that, considered in general, they give
rise to two distinct theories. The first theory regards the concept society
from the causal standpoint; the second regards it from the teleological standpoint.
Causality and teleology cannot be substituted the one for the other; but
one forms the complement of the other.
If, then, we pass from the general and abstract to the concrete, we have
society as existing in history. The study of the facts which develop in concrete
society Stammler consigns to a science which he calls social (or political,
or national) economics. From such facts may still be abstracted the mere
form, i.e., the collection of rules supplied by history by which they are
governed; and this may be studied independently of the matter. Thus we get
jurisprudence, or the technical science of law; which is always bound up
inseparably with a given actual historical material, which it works up by
scientific method, endeavouring to give it unity and coherence. Finally,
amongst social studies are also included those investigations which aim at
judging and determining whether a given social order is as it ought to be;
and whether attempts to preserve or change it are objectively justified.
This section may be called that of practical social problems. By such definitions
and divisions Professor Stammler exhausts every possible form of social study.
Thus we should have the following scheme:
SOCIAL SCIENCE.
1. General Study of Society.
a. Causal.
b. Teleological.
2. Study of Concrete Society.
a. of the form (technical science of law).
b. of the matter (social economics).
c. of the possible (practical problems).
We believe that this table correctly represents his views, although given
in our own way, and in words somewhat different from those used by him. A
new treatment of the social sciences, the work of serious and keen ability,
such as Stammler seems to possess, cannot fail to receive the earnest attention
of all students of a subject which is still so vague and controversial. Let
us examine it then section by section.
The first investigation relating to society, that concerned with causality,
would be directed to solving the problem of the nature of society. Many definitions
have been given of this up to the present: and none of them can be said to
be generally accepted, or even to claim wide support. Stammler indeed, rejects,
after criticism, the definitions of Spencer or Rümelin, which appear
to him to be the most important and to be representative of all the others.
Society is not an organism (Spencer), nor is it merely something opposed
to legalised society (Rümelin): Society, says Stammler, is 'life lived
by men in common, subject to rules which are externally binding.' These rules
must be understood in a very wide sense, as all those which bind men living
together to something which is satisfied by outward performance. They are
divided, however, into two large classes: rules properly speaking legal,
and rules of convention. The second class includes the precepts of propriety
and of custom, the code of knightly honour, and so on. The distinctive test
lies in the fact that the latter class are merely hypothetical, while the
former are imposed without being desired by those subjected to them. The
whole assemblage of rules, legal and conventional, Stammler calls social
form. Under these rules, obeying them, limiting them and even breaking them
men act in order to satisfy their desires; in this, and in this alone, human
life consists. The assemblage of concrete facts which men produce when working
together in society, i.e., under the assumption of social rules, Stammler
calls social matter, or social economics. Rules, and actions under rules;
these are the two elements of which every social datum consists. If the rules
were lacking, we should be outside society; we should be animals or gods,
as says the old proverb: if the actions were lacking there would remain only
an empty form, built up hypothetically by thought, and no portion of which
was actually real. Thus social life appears as a single fact: to separate
its two constituent factors means either to destroy it, or to reduce it to
empty form. The law governing changes within society cannot be found in something
which is extra social; not in technique and discovery, nor in the workings
of supposed natural laws, nor in the influence of great men, of mysterious
racial and national spirit; but it must be sought in the very centre of the
social fact itself. Hence it is wrong to speak of a causal bond between law
and economics or vice versa: the relation between law and economics is that
between the rule and the things ruled, not one of cause and effect. The determining
cause of social movements and changes is then ultimately to be found in the
actual working out of social rules, which precede such changes. This concrete
working out, these actions accomplished wider rules, may produce (1) social
mutations which are entirely quantitative (in the number of social facts
of one or another kind); (2) mutations which are also qualitative, consisting
that is in changes in the rules themselves. Hence the circle of social life:
rules, social facts arising under them; ideas, opinions, desires, efforts
resulting from the facts; changes in the rules. When and how this circle
originated, that is to say when and how social life arose on the earth, is
a question for history, which does not concern the theorist. Between social
life and non-social life there are no gradations, theoretically there is
a gulf. But as long as social life exists, there is no escape from the circle
described above.
The form and matter of social life thus come into conflict, and from this
conflict arises change. By what test can the issue of the conflict be decided?
To appeal to facts, to invent a causal necessity which may agree with some
ideal necessity is absurd. In addition to the law of social causality, which
has been expounded, there must be a law of ends and ideals, i.e., a social
teleologic. According to Stammler, historical materialism identifies, nor
would it be the only theory to attempt such an identification, causality
and teleology; but it, too, cannot escape from the logical contradictions
which such assertions contain. Much praise has been given to that section
of Professor Stammler's book in which he shows how teleological assumptions
are constantly implied by historical materialism in all its assertions of
a practical nature. But we confess that the discovery seems to us exceedingly
easy, not to be compared to that of Columbus about the egg. Here again we
must point out that the pivot of the Marxian doctrine lies in the practical
problem and not in the abstract theory. The denial of finality is, at bottom,
the denial of a merely subjective and peculiar finality. And here, too, although
the criticism as applied to historical materialism seems to us hardly accurate,
we agree with Stammler's conclusion, i.e., that it is necessary to construct,
or better to reconstruct, with fresh material, a theory of social teleology.
Let us omit, for the present, an examination of Stammler's construction
of teleology, which includes some very fine passages (e.g. the criticism
of the anarchist doctrine) and ask instead: What is this social science of
Stammler, of which we have stated the striking and characteristic features?
The reader will have little difficulty in discovering that the second investigation,
that concerning social teleology, is nothing but a modernised philosophy
of law. And the first? Is it that long desired and hitherto vainly sought
general sociology? Does it give us a new and acceptable concept of society?
To us it appears evident that the first investigation is nothing but a formal
science of law. In it Professor Stammler studies law as a fact, and hence
he cannot find it except in societal subjected to rules imposed from without.
In the second, he studies law as an ideal and constructs the philosophy (imperative)
of law. We are not here questioning the value of the investigation, but its
nature. The present writer is convinced that social data leave no place for
en abstract independent science. Society is a living together; the kind of
phenomena which appear in this life together is the concern of descriptive
history. But it is perfectly possible to study this life together from a
given point of view, e.g., from the legal point of view, or, in general,
from that of the legal and nonlegal rules to which it can be subjected; and
this Stammler has done. And, in so doing, he has examined the nature of law,
separating the concrete individual laws and the ideal type of law; which
he has then studied apart. This is the reason why Stammler's investigation
seems to us a truly scientific investigation and very well carried out, but
not an abstract end general science of society. Such a science is for us
inconceivable, just as a formal science of law is, on the contrary, perfectly
conceivable.
As to the second investigation, that concerning teleology, there would
be some difficulty in including it in the number of sciences if it be admitted
that ideals are not subjects for science. But here Professor Stammler himself
comes to our assistance by assigning the foundation of social teleology to
philosophy, which he defines as the science of the True and of the Good,
the science of the Absolute, and understands in a non-formal sense.
Professor Stammler speaks readily of a monism of the social life, and
accepts as suitable and accurate the name materialism as applied to Marx's
conception of history, and connects this materialism with metaphysical materialism,
applying to it also Lange's statement, viz., that 'materialism may be the
first and lowest step of philosophy, but it is also the most substantial
and solid.' For him historical materialism offers truth, but not the whole
truth, since it regards as real the matter only and not the form of social
life; hence the necessity of completing it by restoring the form to its place,
and fixing the relation between form and matter, combining the two in the
unity of social life. We doubt whether Engels and his followers ever understood
the phrase social materialism in the sense which Stammler assigns to it.
The parallel drawn between it and metaphysical materialism seems to us somewhat
arbitrary.
We come to the group of concrete sciences, i.e., those which have for
their subject society as given in history. No one who has had occasion to
consider the problem of the classification of the sciences, will be inclined
to give the character of independent and autonomous sciences to studies of
the practical problems of this or that society, and to jurisprudence, and
the technical study of law. This latter is only an interpretation or explanation
of a given existing legal system, made either for practical reasons, or as
simple historical knowledge. But what we think merits attention more than
these questions of terminology and classification, is the conception of social
economics, advanced by Stammler; of the second, that is, of the concrete
social sciences, enumerated above. The difficulties arising out of this conception
are more serious, and centre on the following points; whether it is a new
and valid conception, or whether it should be reduced to something already
known; or finally whether it is not actually erroneous.
Stammler holds forth at length against economics regarded as a science
in itself, which has its own laws and which has its source in an original
and irreducible economic principle. It is a mistake, he says, to put forward
an abstract economic science and subdivide it into economic science relating
to the individual and social economic science. There is no ground of union
between these two sciences, because the economics of the isolated individual
offers us only concepts which are dealt with by the natural sciences and
by technology, and is nothing but an assemblage of simple natural observations,
explained by means of physiology and individual psychology. Social economics,
on the other hand, offers the peculiar and characteristic conditions of the
externally binding rules, wider which activities develop. And what can an
economic principle be if not a hypothetical maxim: the man who wishes to
secure this or that object of subjective satisfaction must employ these or
those means, 'a maxim which is more or less generally obeyed, and sometimes
violated'? The dilemma lies then between the natural and technological consideration
and the social one: there is no third thing. 'Ein Drittes ist nicht da!'
This Stammler frequently reiterates, and always in the same words. But the
dilemma (whose unfortunate inspiration he owes to Kant) does not hold, it
is a case of a trilemma. Besides the concrete social facts, and besides the
technological and natural knowledge, there is a third thing, viz., the economic
principle, or hedonistic postulate, as it is preferred to call it. Stammler
asserts that this third thing is not equal in value to the two first ones,
that it comes as a secondary consideration, and we confess that we do not
clearly understand what this means. What he ought to prove is that this principle
can be reduced to the two former ones, viz., to the technical or to the social
conditions. This he has not done, and indeed we do not know how it could
be done. That economics, thus understood, is not social science, we are so
much the more inclined to agree since he himself says as much in calling
it pure economics, i.e., something built up by abstraction from particular
facts and hence also from the social fact. But this does not mean that it
is not applicable to society, and cannot give rise to inferences in social
economics. The social factor is then assumed as a medium through which the
economic principle displays its influence and produces definite results.
Granted the economic principle, and granted, for example, the legal regulation
of private property in land, and the existence of land differing in quality,
and granted other conditions, then the fact of rent of land arises of necessity.
In this and other like examples, which could easily be brought forward, we
have laws of social and political economics, i.e., deductions from the economic
principle acting under given legal conditions. It is true that, under other
legal conditions, the effects would be different; but none of the effects
would occur were it not for the economic nature of man, which is a necessary
postulate, and not to be identified with the postulate of technical knowledge,
or with any other of the social rules. To know is not to will; and to will
in accordance with objective rules is not to will in accordance with ideals
which are merely subjective and individual (economic).
Stammler might say that if the science of economics thus interpreted is
not properly a social science, he leaves it on one side, because his object
is to construct a science which may be fully entitled to the name of social
economics. But -- let us, too, construct a dilemma! -- this social economics,
to which he aspires, will either be just economic science applied to definite
social conditions, in the sense now indicated, or it will be a form of historical
knowledge. No third thing exists. Ein Drittes ist nicht da!
And indeed, for Stammler an economic phenomenon is not any single social
fact whatever, but a group of homogeneous facts, which offer the marks of
necessity. The number of economic facts required to form the group and give
rise to an economic phenomenon cannot be determined in general; but can be
seen in each case. By the formation of these groups, he says, social economics
does not degenerate into a register of data concerning fact, nor does it
become purely mechanical statistics of material already given which it has
merely to enumerate. Social economics should not merely examine into the
change in the actual working out of one and the same social order, but remains,
now as formerly, the seat of all knowledge of actual social life. It must
start from the knowledge of a given social existence, both in regard to its
form and in regard to its content; and enlarge and deepen it up to the most
minute peculiarity of its actual working out, with the accuracy of a technical
science, the conditions and concrete objects of which are clearly indicated;
and thus free the reality of social life from every obscurity. Hence it must
make for itself a series of concepts, which will serve the purpose of such
an explanation.
Now this account of the concept of social economics is capable of two
interpretations. The first is that it is intended to describe a science,
which has indeed for its object (as is proper for sciences) necessary connections,
in the strict sense of the word. But how establish this necessity? How make
the concepts suitable to social economics? Evidently by allowing ourselves
to be guided by a principle, by abstracting a single side from concrete reality;
and if it is to be for economics this principle can be none other than the
economic principle, and social economics will consider only the economic
side of a given social life. Profits, rent, interest, labour value, usury,
wages, crises, will then appear as economic phenomena necessary under given
conditions of the social order, through which the economic principle exerts
its influence.
The other interpretation is that Stammler's social economics does not
indeed accomplish the dissolving work of analysis but considers this or that
social life in the concrete. In this case it could do nothing but describe
a given society. To describe does not mean to describe in externals and superficially;
but, more accurately, to free that group of facts from every obscurity, showing
what it actually is, and describing it, as far as possible in its naked reality.
But this is, in fact, historical knowledge, which may assume varied forms,
or rather may define in various ways its own subject. It may study a society
in all its aspects during a given period of fume, or at a given moment of
its existence, or it may even take up one or more aspects of social life
and study them as they present themselves in different societies and at different
times, and so on. It is history always, even when it avails itself of comparison
as an instrument of research. And such a study will not have to make concepts,
but will take them as it needs them from those sciences, which do, in fact,
elaborate concepts.
Thus it would have been of great interest to see the working out of this
new social economics of Stammler a little more clearly, so that we might
determine exactly in which of the aforesaid two classes it ought to be placed.
Whether it is merely political economy in the ordinary sense, or whether
it is the concrete study of single societies and of groups of them. In the
latter case Stammler has added another name or rather two names; science
of the matter of social life and social economics, to the many phrases by
which of late the old History has been disguised (social history, history
of civilization, concrete sociology, comparative sociology, psychology of
the populace and of the classes, etc.). And the gain, if we may be allowed
to say so, will not be great.
September 1898.
NOTES:
1. Wirthschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung,
eine socialphilosophische Untersuchung, DR RUDOLPH STAMMLER, Professor at
the University of Halle, A.S., Leipzig, Veit U.C., 1896, pp. viii-668.
CHAPTER III. CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM OF SOME CONCEPTS
OF MARXISM
I. OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM IN MARX'S DAS KAPITAL
Notwithstanding the many expositions, criticisms, summaries and even abbreviated
extracts in little works of popular propaganda, which have been made of Karl
Marx s work, it is far from easy, and demands no small effort of philosophical
and abstract thought, to understand the exact nature of the investigation
which Marx carried out. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject,
it does not appear that the author himself always realised fully the peculiar
character of his investigation, that is to say its theoretical distinctness
from all other investigations which may be made with his economic material;
and, throughout, he despised and neglected all such preliminary and exact
explanations as might have made his task plain. Then, moreover, account must
be taken of the strange composition of the book, a mixture of general theory,
of bitter controversy and satire, and of historical illustrations or digressions,
and so arranged that only Loria, (fortunate man!), can declare Das Kapital
to be the finest and most symmetrical of existing books; it being, in reality,
unsymmetrical, badly arranged and out of proportion, sinning against all
the laws of good taste; resembling in some particulars Vico's Scienza nueva.
Then too there is the Hegelian phraseology beloved by Marx, of which the
tradition is now lost, and which, even within that tradition he adapted with
a freedom that at times seems not to lack an element of mockery. Hence it
is not surprising that Das Kapital has been regarded, at one time or another,
as an economic treatise, as a philosophy of history, as a collection of sociological
laws, so-called, as a moral and political book of reference, and even, by
some, as a bit of narrative history.
Nevertheless the inquirer who asks himself what is the method and what
the scope of Marx's investigation, and puts on one side, of course, all the
historical, controversial and descriptive portions (which certainly form
an organic part of the book but not of the fundamental investigation), can
at once reject most of the above-mentioned definitions, and decide clearly
these two points:
(1) As regards method, Das Kapital is without doubt an abstract investigation;
the capitalist society studied by Marx, is not this or that society, historically
existing, in France or in England, nor the modern society of the most civilised
nations, that of Western Europe and America. It is an ideal and formal society,
deduced from certain hypotheses, which could indeed never have occurred as
actual facts in the course of history. It is true that these hypotheses correspond
to a great extent to the historical conditions of the modern civilised world;
but this, although it may establish the importance and interest of Marx's
investigation because the latter helps us to an understanding of the workings
of the social organisms which closely concern us, does not alter its nature.
Nowhere in the world will Marx's categories be met with as living and real
existences, simply because they are abstract categories, which, in order
to live must lose some of their qualities and acquire others.
(a) As regards scope, Marx's investigation does not cover the whole field
of economic fact, nor even that one ultimate and dominant portion, whence
all economic facts have their source, like rivers flowing from a mountain.
It limits itself, on the contrary, to one special economic system, that which
occurs in a society with private property in capital, or, as Marx says, in
the phrase peculiar to him, capitalist. There remained untouched, not only
the other systems which have existed in history and are possible in theory,
such as monopolist society, or society with collective capital, but also
the series of economic phenomena common to the different societies and to
individual economics. To sum up, as regards method, Das Kapital is not an
historical description, and as regards scope, it is not an economic treatise,
much less an encyclopedia.
But, even when these two points are settled, the real essence of Marx's
investigation is not yet explained. Were Das Kapital nothing but what we
have so far defined, it would be merely an economic monograph on the laws
of capitalist society.(1*) Such a monograph Marx could only have made in
one way: by deciding on these laws, and explaining them by general laws,
or by the fundamental concepts of economics; by reducing, in short, the complex
to the simple, or passing, by deductive reasoning, and with the addition
of fresh hypotheses, from the simple to the complex. He would thus have shown,
by precise exposition, how the apparently most diverse facts of the economic
world are ultimately governed by one and the same law; or, what is the same
thing, how this law is differently refracted as it takes effect through different
organizations, without changing itself, since otherwise the means and indeed
the test of the explanation would be lacking. Work of this nature had been
already carried out, to a great extent, in Marx's time, and since then it
has been developed yet further by economists, and has attained a high degree
of perfection, as may be seen, for instance, in the economic treatises of
our Italian writers, Pantaleoni and Pareto. But I much doubt whether Marx
would have become an economist in order to devote himself to a species of
research of almost solely theoretical, or even scholastic, interest. His
whole personality as a practical man and a revolutionist, impatient of abstract
investigation which had no close connection with the interests of actual
life, would have recoiled from such a course. If Das Kapital was to have
been merely an economic monograph, it would be safe to wager that it would
never have come into existence.
What then did Marx accomplish, and to what treatment did he subject the
phenomena of capitalist society, if not to that of pure economic theory?
Marx assumed, outside the field of pure economic theory, a proposition; the
famous equivalence between value and labour; i.e. the proposition that the
value of the commodities produced by labour is equal to the quantity of labour
socially necessary to produce them. It is only with this assumption that
his special investigation begins.
But what connection has this proposition with the laws of capitalist society?
or what part does it play in the investigation? This Marx never explicitly
states; and it is on this point that the greatest confusions have arisen,
and that the interpreters and critics have been most at a loss.
Some of them have explained the law of labour-value as an historical law,
peculiar to capitalist society, all of whose manifestions it determines;(2*)
others rightly seeing that the manifestations of capitalist society are by
no means determined by such a law, but comply with the general economic motives
characteristic of the economic nature of man, have rejected the law as an
absurdity at which Marx arrived by pressing to its extreme consequences an
unfortunate concept of Ricardo.
Criticism was thus bewildered between entire acceptance, combined with
a clearly erroneous interpretation, and entire and summary rejection of Marx's
treatment; until, in recent years, and especially after the appearance of
the third and posthumous volume of Das Kapital, it began to seek out and
follow a better path. In truth, despite its eager defenders, the Marxian
doctrine has always remained obscure; and, despite contemptuous and summary
condemnation, it has always displayed also an obstinate vitality not usually
possessed by nonsense and sophistry. For this reason it is to the credit
of Professor Werner Sombart, of Breslau University, that he has declared,
in one of his lucid writings, that Marx's practical conclusions may be refuted
from a political standpoint, but that, scientifically, it is above all important
to understand his ideas.(3*)
Sombart, then, breaking openly with the interpretation of Marx's law of
value as a real law of economic phenomena, and giving a fuller, and I may
say, a bolder expression to the timid opinions already stated by another
(C. Schmidt), says, that Marx's law of value is not an empirical but a conceptual
fact (Keine empirische, sondern eine gedankliche Thatsache); that Marx's
value is a logical fact (eine logische Thatsache), which aids our thought
in understanding the actual realities of economic life.(4*)
This interpretation, in its general sense, was accepted by Engels, in
an article written some months before his death and published posthumously.
To Engels it appeared that 'it could not be condemned as inaccurate, but
that, nevertheless, it was too vague and might be expressed with greater
precision."(5*)
The acute and courteous remarks on the theory of value, published lately
in an article in the Journal des Economistes by an able French Marxian, Sorel,
indicate a movement in the same direction. In these remarks he acknowledges
that there is no way of passing from Marx's theory to actual phenomena of
economic life, and that, although it may offer elucidation, in a somewhat
limited sense, it does not appear further that it could ever explain, in
the scientific meaning of the word.(6*)
And now too Professor Labriola, in a hasty glance at the same subject,
referring clearly to Sombart, and partly agreeing and partly criticising,
writes: 'the theory of value does not denote an empirical factum nor does
it express a merely logical proposition, as some have imagined; but it is
the typical premise without which all the rest would be unthinkable.'(7*)
Labriola's phrase appears to me, in fact, somewhat more accurate than
Sombart's; who, moreover, shows himself dissatisfied with his own term, like
someone who has not yet a quite definite concept in view, and hence cannot
find a satisfactory phrase.
'Conceptual fact,' 'logical fact' expresses much too little since it is
evident that all sciences are interwoven from logical facts, that is from
concepts. Marx's labour-value is not only a logical generalisation, it is
also a fact conceived and postulated as typical, i.e. something more than
a mere logical concept. Indeed it has not the inertia of the abstract but
the force of a concrete fact,(8*) which has in regard to capitalist society,
in Marx's investigation, the function of a term of comparison, of a standard,
of a type.(9*)
This standard or type being postulated, the investigation, for Marx, takes
the following form. Granted that value is equal to the labour socially necessary,
it is required to show with what divergencies from this standard the prices
of commodities are fixed in capitalist society, and how labour-power itself
acquires a price and becomes a commodity. To speak plainly, Marx stated the
problem in unappropriate language; he represented this typical value itself,
postulated by him as a standard, as being the law governing the economic
phenomena of capitalist society. And it is the law, if he likes, but in the
sphere of his conceptions, not in economic reality. We may conceive the divergencies
from a standard as the revolt of reality when confronted by this standard
which we have endowed with the dignity of law.
From a formal point of view there is nothing absurd about the investigation
undertaken by Marx. It is a usual method of scientific analysis to regard
a phenomenon not only as it exists, but also as it would be if one of its
factors were altered, and, in comparing the hypothetical with the real phenomenon,
to conceive the first as diverging from the second, which is postulated as
fundamental, or the second as diverging from the first, which is postulated
in the same manner. If I build up by deductive reasoning the moral rules
which develop in two social groups which are at war one against another,
and if I show how they differ from the moral rules which develop in a state
of peace, I should be making something analogous to the comparison worked
out by Marx. Nor would there be great harm (although the expression would
be neither fortunate nor accurate) in saying, in a figurative sense, that
the law of the moral rules in time of war is the same as that of the rules
in time of peace, modified to the new conditions, and altered in a way which
seems, ultimately, inconsistent with itself. As long as he confines himself
to the limits of his hypothesis Marx proceeds quite correctly. Error could
come in only when he or others confuse the hypothetical with the real, and
the manner of conceiving and of judging with that of existing. As long as
this mistake is avoided, the method is unassailable.
But the formal justification is insufficient: we need another. With a
formally correct method results may be obtained which are meaningless and
unimportant, or mere mental tricks may be performed. To set up an arbitrary
standard of comparison, to compare, and deduce, and to end by establishing
a series of divergencies from this standard; to what will this lead? It is
then, the standard itself which needs justification: i.e. we need to decide
what meaning and importance it may have for us.
This question too, although not stated exactly in this way, has occurred
to Marx's critics; and an answer to it has been already given some time ago
and by many, by saying that the equivalence of value and labour is an ideal
of social ethics, a moral ideal. But nothing could be imagined more mistaken
in itself and farther from Marx's thought than this interpretation. What
moral inference can ever be drawn from the premise that value is equal to
the labour socially necessary? If we reflect a little, absolutely none. The
establishment of this fact tells us nothing about the needs of the society,
which needs will make necessary one or another ethical-legal system of property
and of methods of distribution. Value may certainly equal labour, nevertheless
special historical conditions will make necessary society organised in castes
or in classes, divided into governing and governed, rulers and ruled; with
a resulting unequal distribution of the products of labour. Value may certainly
equal labour; but even supposing that fresh historical conditions ever make
possible the disappearance of society organised in classes and the advent
of a communistic society, and even supposing that in this society distribution
could take place according to the quantity of labour contributed by each
person, this distribution would still not be a deduction from the established
equivalence between value and labour, but a standard adopted for special
reasons of social convenience.(10*) Nor can it be said that such an equivalence
supplies in itself an idea of perfect justice (even though unrealizable),
since the criterion of justice has no relation to the difference often due
to purely natural causes, in the ability to do more or less social labour
and to produce a greater or smaller value. Thus neither a rule of abstract
justice nor one of convenience and social utility can be derived from the
equivalence between value and labour. Rules of either kind can only be based
on consideration of a quite different grade from that of a simple economic
equation.
Sombart, avoiding this vulgar confusion, has been better advised in looking
for the meaning of the standard set up by Marx in the nature of society itself,
and apart from our moral judgments. Thus he says that labour is the economic
fact of greater objective importance, and that value, in Marx's view, is
nothing 'if not the economic expression of the fact of the socially productive
power of labour, as the basis of economic existence.'
But this investigation appears to me to be merely begun and not yet worked
out to a conclusion; and if I might suggest wherein it needs completion,
I should remark that it is necessary to attempt to give clearness and precision
to this word objective, which is either ambiguous or metaphorical. What is
meant by an economically objective fact? Do not these words suggest rather
a mere presentiment of a concept instead of the distinct vision of this concept
itself?
I will add, merely tentatively, that the word objective (whose correlative
term is subjective) does not seem to be in place here. Let us, instead, take
account, in a society, only of what is properly economic life, i.e. out of
the whole society, only of economic society. Let us abstract from this latter
all goods which cannot be increased by labour. Let us abstract further all
class distinctions, which may be regarded as accidental in reference to the
general concept of economic society. Let us leave out of account all modes
of distributing the wealth produced, which, as we have said, can only be
determined on grounds of convenience or perhaps of justice, but in any case
upon considerations belonging to society as a whole, and never from considerations
belonging exclusively to economic society. What is left after these successive
abstractions have been made? Nothing but economic society in so far as it
is a working society.(11*) And in this society without class distinctions,
i.e. in an economic society as such and whose only commodities are the products
of labour, what can value be? Obviously the sun, of the efforts, i.e. the
quantity of labour, which the production of the various kinds of commodities
demands. And, since we are here speaking of the economic social organism,
and not of the individual persons living in it, it follows that this labour
cannot be reckoned except by averages, and hence as labour socially (it is
with society, I repeat, that we are here dealing) necessary.
Thus labour-value would appear as that determination of value peculiar
to economic society as such, when regarded only in so far as it produces
commodities capable of being increased by labour.
From this definition the following corollary may be drawn: the determination
of labour value will have a positive conformity with facts as long as a society
exists, which produces goods by means of labour. It is evident that in the
imaginary county of Cocaigne this determination would have no conformity
with facts, since all goods would exist in quantities exceeding the demand;
similarly it is also evident that the same determination could not take effect
in a society in which goods were inadequate to the demand, but could not
be increased by labour.
But hitherto history has shown us only societies which, in addition to
the enjoyment of goods not increasable by labour, have satisfied their needs
by labour. Hence this equivalence between value and labour has hitherto had
and will continue for an indefinite time to have, a conformity with facts;
but, of what kind is this conformity? Having ruled out (1) that it is a question
of a moral ideal, and (2) that it is a question of scientific law; and having
nevertheless concluded that this equivalence is a fact (which Marx uses as
a type), we are obliged to say, as the only alternative, that it is a fact,
lout a fact which exists in the midst of other facts; i.e. a fact that appears
to us empirically as opposed, limited, distorted loy other facts, almost
like a force amongst other forces, which produces a resultant different from
what it would produce if the other forces ceased to act. It is not a completely
dominant fact but neither is it non-existent and merely imaginary.(12*)
It is still necessary to remark that in the course of history this fact
has undergone various alterations, i.e., has been more or less obscured;
and here it is proper to do justice to Engels' remark in reference to Sombart;
that as regards the way in which the latter defines the law of value 'he
does not bring out the full importance which this law possesses during the
stages of economic development in which it is supreme.' Engels makes a digression
into the field of economic history to show that Marx's law of value, i.e.
the equivalence between value and the labour socially necessary, has been
supreme for several thousand years.(13*) Supreme is too strong a term; but
it is true that the opposed influences of other facts to this law have been
fewer in number and less intense under primitive communism and under medieval
and domestic economic conditions, whilst they have reached a maximum in the
society based on privately owned capital and more or less free universal
competition, i.e. in the society which produces almost exclusively commodities.(14*)
Marx, then, in postulating as typical the equivalence between value and
labour and in applying it to capitalist society, was, as it were, making
a comparison between capitalist society and a part of itself, isolated and
raised up to an independent existence: i.e. a comparison between capitalist
society and economic society as such (but only in so far as at is a working
society). In other words, he was studying the social problem of labour and
was showing by the test implicitly established by him, the special way in
which this problem is solved in capitalist society. This is the justification,
no longer formal but real, of his method.
It was in virtue of this method, and by the light thrown by the type which
he postulated, that Marx was able to discover and define the social origin
of profit, i.e. of surplus value. Surplus value in pure economics is a meaningless
word, as is evident from the term itself; since a surplus value is an extra
value, and thus falls outside the sphere of pure economics. But it rightly
has meaning and is no absurdity, as a concept of difference, in comparing
one economic society with another, one fact with another, or two hypotheses
with one another.
It is also in virtue of the same premise that he was able to arrive at
the proposition: that the products of labour in a capitalist society do not
sell, unless by exception, for their value, but usually for more or less,
and sometimes with great deviations from their value; which is to say, to
put it shortly, value does not coincide with price. Suppose, by hypothesis
the organisation of production were suddenly changed from a capitalist to
a communistic system, we should see at once, not only that alteration in
the fortunes of men which appeals so much to popular imagination, but also
a more remarkable change: a change in the fortunes of things. A scale of
valuation of goods would then fashion itself, very different for the most
part, from that which now exists. The way in which Marx proves this proposition,
by an analysis of the different components of the capital employed in different
industries, i.e. of the proportion of fixed capital (machines, etc.) and
of floating capital (wages), need not be explained here in detail.
And, in the same way, i.e. by proving that fixed capital increases continually
in comparison with floating capital, Marx tries to establish another law
of capitalist society, the law of the tendency of the rate of profits to
fall. Technical improvement, which in an abstract economic society would
show itself in the decreased labour required to produce the same wealth,
shows itself in capitalist society in a gradual decline in the rate of profits.(15*)
But this section of Volume III of Das Kapital is one of the least developed
in this little worked-out posthumous book; and it seems to me to be worth
a special critical essay, which I hope to write at another time, not wishing
to treat the subject here incidentally.(16*)
II
MARX'S PROBLEM AND PURE ECONOMICS (GENERAL ECONOMIC SCIENCE)
Marxian economics is thus a study of abstract working society showing
the variations which this undergoes in the different social economic organisations.
This investigation Marx carried out only in reference to one of these organizations,
i.e. the capitalist; contenting himself with mere hints in regard to the
slave and serf organizations, primitive communism, the domestic system and
to savage conditions.(17*)
In this sense he and Engels declared that economics (the economics studied
by them), was an historical science.(18*) But here, too, their definition
has been less happy than the investigation itself; we know that Marx's researches
are not historical, but hypothetical and abstract, i.e. theoretical.(19*)
They might better be called researches into sociological economics, if the
word sociological were not one which is employed most variously and arbitrarily.
If Marx's investigation is thus limited, if the law of value postulated
by him is the special law of an abstract working society, which only partially
takes effect in economic society as given in history, and in other hypothetical
or possible economic societies, the following results seem to follow evidently
and readily: (1) That Marxian economics is not general economic science;
(2) that labour-value is not a general concept of value. Alongside, then,
of the Marxian investigation, there can, or rather must, exist and flourish
a general economic science, which may determine a concept of value, deducing
it from quite different and more comprehensive principles than the special
ones of Marx. And, if the pure economists, confined to their own special
province, have been wrong to show an ungenerous intellectual dislike for
Marx's investigations, his followers, in their turn, have been wrong to regard
ungratefully a branch of research which was alien to them, calling it now
useless, and now frankly absurd.
Such is, in effect, my opinion, and I freely acknowledge that I have never
been able to discover other antithesis or enmity between these two branches
of research except the purely accidental one of the mutual antipathy to and
mental ignorance of each other, of two groups of students. Some have resorted
to a political explanation; but, with no wish to deny that political prepossessions
are often the causes of theoretical errors, I do not consider an explanation
as adequate and appropriate, which resolves itself into accusing a large
number of students of allowing themselves blindly and foolishly to be overcome
by passions alien to science; or, what is worse, of knowingly falsifying
their thought and constructing a whole economic system from motives of practical
opportunism.
Indeed Marx himself had not the time or means to adopt an attitude, so
to speak, towards the purists, or the hedonists, or the utilitarians, or
the deductive or Austrian school, or whatever else they may call themselves.
But he had the greatest contempt for the oeconomia vulgaris, under which
term he was wont to include also the researches of general economics, which
explain what needs no explanation and is intuitively evident, and leave unexplained
what is more difficult and of genuine interest. Nor has Engels discussed
the subject; but an indication of his opinion may be found in his attack
on Dühring. Dühring was struggling to find a general law of value,
which should govern all possible types of economic organisation; and Engels
refuted him: 'Anyone who wishes to bring under the same law the political
economy of Terra del Fuoco and that of modern England, can produce nothing'
but the vulgarest commonplaces.' He scorns the truth of ultimate instance,
the eternal laws of value, the tautologous and empty axioms which Herr Dühring
would have produced by his method.(20*) Fixed and eternal laws are non-existent:
there is then no possibility of constructing a general science of economics,
valid for all times and in all places. If Engels had meant to refer to those
who affirm the eternity and inevitability of the laws characteristic of capitalist
society, he would have been justified; and would have been aiming his blows
at a prejudice which history alone suffices to refute, by showing as it does,
how capitalism has appeared at | |
