Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx Part 5

These statements concerning ethics and socialist pedagogy having been explained, someone might yet ask:--But what was the philosophical opinion of Marx and Engels in regard to morality? Were they relativists, utilitarians, hedonists, or idealists, absolutists, or what else?

I may be allowed to point out that this question is of no great importance, and is even somewhat inopportune, since neither Marx nor Engels were philosophers of ethics, nor bestowed much of their vigorous ability on such questions. It is indeed of consequence to determine that their conclusions in regard to the function of morality in social movements and to the method for the education of the proletariat, contain no contradiction of general ethical principles, even if here and there they clash with the prejudices of current pseudo-morality. Their personal opinions upon the principles of ethics did not take an elaborate scientific form in their books; and some wit and some sarcasm are not adequate grounds upon which to base a discussion of the subject.

And I will say yet more; in ethical matters, I have not yet succeeded in freeing myself from the prison of the Kantian Critique, and do not yet see the position taken up by Kant surpa.s.sed; on the contrary, I see it strengthened by some of the most modern tendencies, and to me the way in which Engels attacks Duhring with regard to the principles of morality in his well-known book, does not in truth appear very exhaustive.[70] Here again the procedure is repeated which we have already criticised in connection with the discussions upon the general concept of value. Where Duhring, owing to the exigencies of scientific abstraction, takes for consideration the isolated individual and explicitly states that he is dealing with an abstract ill.u.s.tration (_Denkschema_), Engels remarks, wittily but erroneously--that the isolated man is nothing but a new edition of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. It is true that in that criticism are contained many well-directed blows; and it might even be called just, if it refers only to ethical conceptions in the sense of a.s.semblages of special rules and moral judgments, relative to definite social situations, which a.s.semblages and constructions cannot claim absolute truth for all times, and all places, precisely because they are always made for particular times and particular places. But apart from these special constructions, a.n.a.lysis offers us the essential and ruling principles of morality, which give opportunity for questions which may, truly, be differently answered, but which most certainly are not taken into account by Marx and Engels. And, in truth, even if some may be able to write on the _theory of knowledge according to_ _Marx_,[71] to write on the principles of ethics according to Marx seems to me a somewhat hopeless undertaking.

VI

CONCLUSION

_Recapitulation: 1. Justification of Marxian economics as comparative sociological economics: 2. Historical materialism simply a canon of historical interpretation: 3. Marxian social programme not a pure science: 4.

Marxism neither intrinsically moral nor antimoral._

The preceding remarks are partly attempts at interpretation, and partly critical emendations of some of the concepts and opinions expressed by Marx and in the Marxian literature. But how many other points deserve to undergo revision! Beginning with that _concentration of private property in a few hands_, which threatens to become something like the discredited _iron law of wages_, and ending with that strange statement in the history of philosophy that _the labour movement is the heir of German cla.s.sical philosophy_. And attention could thus be given to another group of questions which we have not discussed (_e.g._ to the conception of future society) in regard to their detailed elucidation and their practical and historical applications.[72] If that _decomposition of Marxism_, which some have predicted,[73] meant a careful critical revision, it would indeed be welcome.

To sum up, in the meantime, the chief results which are suggested in the preceding remarks: they maintain.

1. In regard to economic science, the _justification_ of Marxian economics, understood not as general economic science, but as comparative sociological economics, which is concerned with a problem of primary interest for historical and social life.

2. In regard to the philosophy of history, the _purification_ of historical materialism from all traces of any _a priori_ standpoint (whether inherited from Hegelianism or an infection from ordinary evolutionism) and the understanding of the theory as a simple, albeit a fruitful, _canon_ of historical interpretation.

3. In regard to practical matters, the _impossibility of inferring_ the Marxian social programme (or, indeed, any other social programme) from the propositions of pure science, since the apprais.e.m.e.nt of social programmes must be a matter of empirical observations and practical convictions; in which connection the Marxian programme cannot but appear one of the n.o.blest and boldest and also one of those which obtain most support from the objective conditions of existing society.

4. In regard to ethics, the _abandonment of the legend_ of the intrinsic _immorality_ or of the intrinsic _anti-ethical_ character of Marxism.

I will add a remark on the second point. Many will think that if historical materialism is reduced to the limits within which we have confined it, it will not only no longer be a legitimate and real scientific theory (which we are indeed prepared to grant) but will actually lose all importance whatever, and against this second conclusion we once more, as we have done already on another occasion, make vigorous protest. Undoubtedly the horror expressed by some for pure science and for abstractions is inane, since these intellectual methods are indispensable for the very knowledge of concrete reality; but no less inane is the complete and exclusive worship of abstract propositions, of _definitions_, of _theorems_, of _corollaries_: almost as if these const.i.tuted a sort of aristocracy of human thought.

Well! the economic purists (not to draw examples from other fields, though numbers could be found in pure mathematics) prove to us, in fact, that the discovery of scientific theorems,--strictly, unimpeachably scientific,--is frequently neither an over-important nor over-difficult matter. To be convinced thereof we need only remark how many _eponimi_ of new theorems issue from every corner of the German or English schools. And concrete reality, _i.e._ the very world in which we live and move, and which it concerns us somewhat to know, slips out, unseizable, from the broad-meshed net of abstractions and hypotheses. Marx, as a sociologist, has in truth not given us carefully worked out definitions of _social phenomena_, such as may be found in the books of so many contemporary sociologists, of the Germans Simmel and Stammler, or of the Frenchman Durckheim; but he teaches us, although it is with statements approximate in content and paradoxical in form, to penetrate to what society is in its _actual truth_. Nay, from this point of view, I am surprised that no one has thought of calling him 'the most notable _successor_ of the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli'; a Machiavelli of the labour movement.

And I will also add a remark on the third point--if the social programme of Marxism cannot be _wholly included_ in Marxian science, or in any other science, no more can the daily practice of socialist politics be, in its turn, _wholly included_ in the general principles of the programme, which programme, if we a.n.a.lyse it, determines (1) _an ultimate end_, (the technical organisation of society); (2) _an impulse, based on history_, towards this end, found in the objective tendencies of modern society (the necessity for the abolition of capitalism and for a communistic organisation, as the one possible _form of progress_); (3) _a method_ (to accelerate the final phases of the bourgeoisie, and to educate politically the cla.s.s destined to succeed them). Marx, owing to his political insight, has for many years in a striking manner, joined with, and guided by his advice and his work, the international socialist movement; but he could not give _precepts_ and _dogmas_ for every contingency and complication that history might produce. Now _the continuation of Marx's political work is much more difficult than the continuation of his scientific work_.

And, if, in continuing the latter, the so-called Marxians have sometimes fallen into a _scientific dogmatism_ little to be admired, some recent occurrences remind us of the danger, that the continuation of the former may also degenerate into a dogmatism with the worst effects, _i.e._ a _political dogmatism_. This gives food for thought to all the more cautious Marxians, amongst whom are Kautsky and Bernstein in Germany, and Sorel in France; Labriola's new book, too, contains serious warnings on the matter.

_November, 1897._

FOOTNOTES:

[13] 'An immense monograph' (of economics understood) it is called by Professor Antonio Labriola, the most notable of the Italian Marxians, in his recent book (_Discorrendo di filosophia e socialismo_, Rome, Loescher, 1898). But in an earlier work (_In Memoria del 'Manifesto dei Comunisti'_, 2nd ed. Rome, 1895, p. 36) he defined it as '_a philosophy of history_'.

[14] I leave out those who regard the law of labour-value as the _general_ law of value. The refutation is obvious. How could it ever be 'general' when it leaves out of account a whole category of economic goods, that is the goods which cannot be increased by labour?

[15] WERNER SOMBART: _Zur Kritik des oekonomischen Systems von Karl Marx_ (in the _Archiv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik_ Vol.

VII, 1894, pp. 555-594). I have not by me the criticism (from the Hedonistic point of view) of this article by Sombart--on the third volume of _Das Kapital_--made last year by BOHM BAWERK in the _Miscellany_ in honour of Knies.

[16] _Loc. cit._, p. 571, _et seq._

[17] In the _Neue Zeit_ xiv. vol. 1, pp. 4-11, 37-44, I quote from the Italian translation: _Dal terzo volume del 'Capitale,'_ preface and notes by F. Engels, Rome 1896, p. 39.

[18] _Sur la theorie Marxiste de la valeur_ (in the _Journal des Economistes_, number for March 1897, pp. 222-31, see p. 228).

[19] _Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia_, p. 21.

[20] It must be carefully noticed that what I call a _concrete fact_ may still not be a fact which is empirically real, but a fact made by us hypothetically and _entirely imaginary_ or a fact _partially empirical_, _i.e._ existing partially in empirical reality. We shall see later on that Marx's typical premise belongs properly to this second cla.s.s.

[21] I accept the term employed by Labriola so much the more readily since it is the same as that used by me a year ago. See Essay on Loria (_Materialismio Storico_, pp. 48-50).

[22] In making an hypothesis of this nature, Marx distinguished clearly that, in such a case, 'labour-time would serve a _double_ purpose: on the one hand as standard of value, on the other as a standard of the individual share reckoned to each producer in the common labour' (_andrerseits dient die Arbeitzeit zugleich als Ma.s.s des individuellen Antheils des Producenten an der Gemeinarbeit, und daher auch an dem individuell verzehrbaren Theil des Gemein products_): See _Das Kapital_ I, p. 45.

[23] This is a different thing from the workmen or operatives in our capitalist society, who form a _cla.s.s_, _i.e._ a portion of economic society and not economic society in general and in the abstract, producing goods which can be increased by labour.

[24] It may be doubted whether this general application of labour-value to every working economic society was included in the ideas of Marx and Engels, when the numerous pa.s.sages are recalled in which one or other has declared many times that _in the future communistic society the criterion of value will disappear and production will be based on social utility, cf._ Engels as early as in the _Umrisse_ 1844, (Italian translation in _Critica sociale_ a. v.

1895) _Marx_, _Misere de la philosophie_, 2nd ed. Paris, Giard et Briere. 1896, p. 83; Engels _Antiduhring_, p. 335. But this must be understood in the sense that, not being a hypothetical communistic society based on exchange, the function of value (in exchange) would lose, according to them, its practical importance; but not in the other sense that in the opinion of the communistic society the value of goods would no longer equal the labour which they cost to society.

Because even in such a system of economic organisation, value-labour would be the economic law which entirely governed the valuation of individual commodities, produced by labour. There would be that clearness of valuation which Marx describes in his _Robinsonia, cf.

Das Kapital_, p. 43.

[25] _Dal terzo volume del 'Capitale,'_ pp. 42-55.

[26] Hence also Marx in --4 of Chap. I.: _Der Fetischcharakter der Waare und sein Geheimniss_ (I. pp. 37-50) gave a brief outline of the other economic systems of mediaeval society, and of the domestic system: 'Aller Mysticismus der Waarenwelt, all der Zauber und Spuk, welcher Arbeitsprodukte auf grundlage der Waarenproduktion umnebelt, verschwindet daher sofort, sobal wir zu anderen Producktions formen fluchten' (p. 42). The relation between value and labour appears more clearly in the less complex economic systems, because less opposed and obscured by other facts.

[27] _Das Kapital_, Book III., sec. III., Chaps. XIII., XIV., XV., _Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der Profitrate_ (vol. iii., Part I, pp. 191-249).

[28] The task of Marx's followers ought to be to free his thought from the literary form which he adopts, to study again the questions which he propounds, and to work them out with new and more accurate statements, and with fresh historical ill.u.s.trations. In this alone can scientific progress consist. The _expositions_ made hitherto of Marx's system, are merely _materials_; and some (like Aveling's) consist entirely in a series of little summaries, which follow the original chapter by chapter and prove even more obscure. For the law of the fall in the rate of profits, see below, chap. V.

[29] 'To follow out completely this criticism of bourgeois economics a knowledge of the capitalist form of production, exchange and distribution is not alone adequate. We ought similarly to study at least in their essential features and taken as terms of comparison, the other forms which have preceded it in time, or exist alongside of it in less developed countries. Such an investigation and comparison has. .h.i.therto been briefly expounded only by Marx; and we owe almost entirely to his researches what we know about pre-bourgeois theoretical economics.' (ENGELS, _Antiduhring_, p. 154). This was written by Engels twenty years ago; and since then the literature of economic history has grown remarkably, but historical research has been seldom accompanied by theoretical research.

[30] 'Political economy is essentially an historical science.'

(ENGELS, _l.c._, p. 150).

[31] What is strange is that ENGELS (in the pa.s.sage quoted in the penultimate note) says himself most truly that Marx has written _theoretical economics_, nevertheless in the sentence quoted in the last note (which appears in the same book and on the same page) he states definitely that economics in the Marxian sense is nothing but an _historical science_.

[32] _Antiduhring_, pp. 150, 155.

[33] _Das Kapital_, I, p. 67.

[34] F.A. LANGE, _Die Arbeiterfrage_, 5th ed., Winterthur, 1894, (the author's last revision was in 1874) see p. 332; _cf._ p. 248 and on p.

124, the quotation from Gossen's book, then very little known.

[35] ADOLF WAGNER, _Grundlegung der politischen oekonomie_, 3rd Ed., Leipzig, 1892, vol. I, pt. I; Bk. I, ch. i. _Die Wirthschaftliche Natur des Menschen_, pp. 70-137.

[36] I may be allowed to remark that in similar discussions, economists usually make the serious mistake _of making the concept economic coincide with the concept egoistic_. But the economic is an independent sphere of human activity, in addition to all the others, such as the spheres of ethics, aesthetics, logic, etc. The moral _goods_ and the satisfaction of the higher moral _needs_ of man, just because they are _goods_, and _needs_, are taken into account in economics, but still _only as goods and needs_, not as _moral_ or _immoral_, _egoistic_ or _altruistic_. In like manner, a _manifestation_ (by words or by any other means of expression) is taken into account in aesthetics; but only _as a manifestation _not_ as true, false, moral, immoral, useful, harmful, etc._ Economists are still impressed by the fact that Adam Smith wrote one book of theory and of ethics, and another of economic theory; which may interpret to mean that one dealt with a theory of _altruistic_ facts and the other with one of _egoistic_ facts. But if this had been so, Adam Smith would have discussed, in both of his chief works, facts of an ethical character, estimable or reprehensible; and would not have been an economist at all; a ridiculous conclusion which is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the identification of economic action with egoism.

[37] _Discorrendo di socialismo e di filesophia_, l. vi.

[38] It is strange how among the students of pure economics also this need for a different treatment makes itself felt, leading them to contradictory statements and to insuperable perplexities. PANTALEONI, _Principi di economia pura_, Florence, Barbara, 1889, p. 3, Ch. iii -- 3 (pp. 299-302), contradicts Bohm-Bawerk, inquiring whence the borrower of capital at interest is able to find the wherewithal to pay the interest. PARETO, _Introd. critica agli Estratti del Capitale del Marx_, Ital. trans. Palermo, Sandron, 1894, p. x.x.x, n.: 'The phenomena of _surplus value_ contradicts Marx's theory which determines values solely by labour. _But, on the other hand, there is an expropriation of the kind which Marx condemns._ It is not at all proved that this expropriation helps to secure the hedonistic maximum. _But it is a_ _difficult problem how to avoid this expropriation._' A learned and accurate Italian work which attempts to reconcile the opinions of the hedonistic school with those of the followers of Ricardo and Marx, is the memorandum of Prof. G. RICCA SALERMO, _La theoria del valore nella storia delle dottrine e dei fatti economici_, Rome 1894. (extr. from the _Memorie dei Lincei_, s. v. vol. I., pt. i.)

[39] See above, chap. I.

[40] The over-abused Duhring was not mistaken when he remarked that in Marx's works expressions occur frequently 'which appear to be universal without being actually so' (Allgemein aussehen ohne es zu sein). _Kritische Geschichte der Nationalokonomie und des Socialismus_, Berlin, 1871, p. 527.

[41] GENTILE, _Una critica del materialismo storico_ in the _Studi storici_ of Crivellucci, vol. VI, 1897, pp. 379-423, throws doubt on the interpretation offered by me of the opinions of Marx and Engels, and on the method of interpretation itself. I gladly acknowledge that in my two earlier essays I do not clearly point out where precisely the textual interpretation ends and the really theoretical part begins; which theoretical exposition, only by conjecture and in the manner described above, can be said to agree with the inmost thoughts of Marx and Engels. In his recent book, _La filosofia di Marx_, Pisa, Spoerri, 1899 (in which the essay referred to is reprinted), Gentile remarks (p. 104), that, although it is a very convenient practice, and in some cases legitimate and necessary 'to interpret doctrines, by calling a part of their statement worthless or accidental in form and external and weak, and a part the real substance and essential and vital, it is yet necessary to justify it in some way.' He means certainly, 'justify it as historical interpretation,' since its justification as correction of theory cannot be doubtful. It seems to me that even historically the interpretation can be justified without difficulty when it is remembered that Marx _did not insist_, (as Gentile himself says) on his metaphysical notions; and did certainly insist on his historical opinions and on the political policy which he defended. Marx's personality as a sociological observer and the teacher of a social movement, certainly outweighs Marx as a metaphysician which he was almost solely as a young man. That it is worth the trouble to study Marx from all sides is not denied, and Gentile has now admirably expounded and criticised his youthful metaphysical ideas.