Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx Part 7

What Marx wished to do, or mistakenly thought himself to be doing is, I think, of interest to criticism up to a certain point; although the history of science shows that thinkers have not always had the clearest and plainest knowledge of the whole of their thought; and that it is one thing to discover a truth, and another to define and cla.s.sify the discovery when made. It may be allowed that he who confuses ideological with historical research thus best reproduces Marx's _spirit_; but in this case the work will be an artistic recasting or a psychological reproduction, not a criticism; and will gather up with the sound also the unsound portion of Marx's thought.

To go into details. Labriola tries to prove the emptiness or vagueness of some of my definitions and the falsity of some of my reasoning. I having a.s.serted that capitalist economics is a special case of general economics, Labriola remarks, '_en pa.s.sant_,' that it is nevertheless the only case which has given rise to a theory and to divisions of schools; and I acknowledge that I do not understand the point of this remark, although it is said to be made '_en pa.s.sant_.' Both Marx and Engels lamented that the ancient and medieval economic systems had not been studied in the same way as the modern. Thus there are conceivable at least three economic theories, ancient, medieval and modern, and is it not lawful to construct a general economics; _i.e._ to study in isolation that common _element_ which causes these three groups of facts to be all three denoted by a common name? Labriola then asks what this general and extra-historical economics can consist of, and whether it can never be of service to the conjectural psychology of primitive man: he jests after the manner of Engels, who in truth has sometimes joked too much during a discussion on serious matters. Is it incredible that I too should jest? But I do not think there is occasion to do so! He wonders at my _insatiability_, because having accepted the hedonistic theories, I wish to accept Marx's theories too: as though my entire proof was not intended to make it plain that the ant.i.thesis between these theories exists only in imagination; and that Marx's theory is not an economic system entirely opposed to other systems ('_quelque chose de tout-a-fait oppose_' are Labriola's own words), but a special and partial inquiry; and as though by hedonism I meant all the personal convictions, philosophical, historical and political, of those who follow, or say that they follow, its guidance, and not indeed _only what follows legitimately from its axiom_. When I call the explanation of the nature of profits, offered by the hedonistic school, an _economic explanation_, he inquires sarcastically: 'Could it possibly be _non-economic_?' But my statement contains no pleonasm: the adjective _economic_ is added to mark off the hedonistic explanation from that of Marx, which, to my thinking, is not purely economic, but historical and comparative, or sociological, if it is preferred. He wonders that I speak of a _working society_, and asks: 'As opposed to what?' 'Perhaps to the saints in paradise?' But I have pointed out the opposition between a hypothetical _working society_,--_i.e._ such that all its goods are produced by labour,--and a society, economic certainly, but not exclusively working, because it enjoys goods given by nature, as well as the products of labour. The saints in paradise form another irrelevant jest.

I called Marx's concept of _surplus-value a concept of difference_; and Labriola reproaches me for not being able 'to say exactly what I understand by these words.' And yet I am not in the habit of speaking or writing when I do not exactly know what I want to say; and here I believe that I have clearly expressed a thought which I had exceedingly clearly in my mind. Let us take two types of society: type A consisting of 100 persons, who, with capital held in common and equal labour, produce goods which are divided in equal proportions; type B consisting of 100 persons, 50 of whom own the land and the means of production, _i.e._ are capitalists, and 50 are shut out from this ownership, _i.e._ are proletarians and workmen; in the distribution, the former receive, in proportion to the capital which they employ, a share in the products of the labour of the latter. It is evident that in type A there is no place for _surplus value_. But neither in type B are you justified in giving the name _surplus-value_ to that portion of the products which is swallowed up by the capitalists, except when _you are comparing_ type B with type A, and _are considering the former as a contrast to the latter_. If type B is considered by itself, which is precisely what the pure economists do and ought to do, the product which the 50 capitalists appropriate, _i.e._ their profits, is a result of mutual agreement, arising out of different comparative degrees of utility. Turn in every direction and in pure economics you will find nothing more. The expropriatory character of profit can be a.s.serted only when to the second society, we apply, almost like a chemical reagent, the standard, which, on the other hand, is characteristic of a type of society founded on human equality, a type 'which has attained the solidity of a popular conviction' (Marx). Profit 'is surplus-labour _not paid for_', says Marx, and it may be so; but _not paid for_ in reference to what? In existing society it is certainly paid for, by the price which it actually secures. It is a question then, of determining in what society _it would have that price_ which in existing society _is denied it_. And then, indeed, it is a question of _comparison_.

The following of Labriola's a.s.sertions is not original, but is nevertheless quite gratuitous: 'Pure economics is so little extra-historical, that it has borrowed the data from real history, of which it makes two absolute postulates: the freedom of labour and the freedom of compet.i.tion, pushed to their extreme by hypothesis.' If I open Pantaleoni's well-known treatise, I read in the very first paragraph of the _Teoria del valore_, Ferrara's fundamental theory that: 'value is above all a phenomenon of the _economics of the individual or isolated person_.' So little do the legal conditions of society enter into the necessary postulates of pure economics.

After which, Labriola ought not to be horrified if I have written: 'that Marx has taken his celebrated equivalence[77] "between value and labour from outside the field of pure economics." He will ask me: from whence then has he taken it? And I reply: _from a special and definite type of society_, in which the legal organisation and the pre-supposed conditions of fact make value correspond to the quant.i.ty of labour.

Labriola does not consider justified the comparison which I have drawn, (metaphor for metaphor), between the commodities which in Marxian economics are presented as the _crystallisations of labour_ and the goods which in pure economics might well be called _quant.i.ties of possible satisfactions for crystallised wants_. 'Hitherto--he exclaims--only sorcerers have been able to believe, or to cause it to be believed, that by desires alone a part of ourselves might be glutinised into any goods whatsoever.' But what does _glutinise_ mean?

To obtain the commodity _a_ costs us _x_ labour of a given kind, this is Marx's _congealed labour_. Pure economics, using a more general formula, states that it costs us that body of wants which we must leave unsatisfied: this is the form of _congealment_ which pure economics might supply. There is no question, in the one case, of an objective reality, as Labriola seems to think, or in the other of an imagined sorcery; but in both cases it is a matter of the literary use of imaginative expressions to denote mental att.i.tudes and elaborations. In this connection Labriola, as if to limit their range, says that Marx, as an author, belonged to the seventeenth century. May I be allowed, as a humble student of literature, and the author of several investigations into the character and origin of seventeenth century style,[78] to protest. Seventeenth century style consists in ingenuity, _i.e._ in putting cold intellectuality into an aesthetic form; hence the forced comparison, the lengthy metaphor, the play on words and the equivocations. But Marx, on the contrary, misuses poetic expressions, which give the content of his thought with unrestrained vigour. We find in him just the opposite of seventeenth century style: not a lack of connection between the form and the thought, but such a violent embrace of the former by the latter that the unlucky form sometimes runs the risk of being left suffocated.[79]

The reader will be tired of these replies to a negative criticism; but negative criticism is nevertheless all that Labriola offers us. What is his interpretation of Marx's thought? Or which does he accept, out of those offered? Here Labriola is silent. It is true that on another occasion I believed that I discerned in his statement that 'labour-value is the _typical premiss_ in Marx, without which all the rest would be unthinkable,' an agreement with my thesis. But I see now that I must have been deceived, and that the words must have another meaning; which, however, warned by the unlucky attempt already made, I shall not attempt further to specify. In the meantime Sombart has _built castles in the air_; Sorel has made _hasty_ or _premature elaborations_; the present writer _has not understood_ (see p. 224).

Are we then faced by a mystery? Our friend, Labriola, relates (p. 50) a story of Hegel who is said to have declared that _one only of his pupils had understood him_. (The anecdote, I may add, is recounted by Heinrich Heine in a much wittier manner).[80] Is the same thing to be repeated with regard to Marx's theory of value?

In truth, though without wishing to deny the difficulty of Marx's thought and of the form in which he expresses it, I think that the mystery may be at length cleared up. And I say this, not only on account of my inward conviction of the truth of my own interpretation, but also on account of the agreement in which I find myself with several critics, who, almost at the same moment, and by independent methods, have arrived at results nearly similar to my own.

'Or, se im mostra la mia carta il vero, Non e lontano a discoprirsi il porto....'[81]

A similar tendency shows itself in what has been written on the subject by Sombart, in 1894, by Engels in 1895, by myself in 1896, by Sorel in 1897, by myself more at length in 1897, and again by Sorel in June of last year (1898).[82] Certainly truth and falsehood cannot be decided by external signs, the intellect being the only judge of them, and a judge who allows scope for infinite appeals. But nevertheless it is natural that under the circ.u.mstances pointed out above, a feeling of hope and confidence must arise that the discussion is about to be closed, that the problem is at length _ripe for solution_.

II

_Meaning of phrase crisis In Marxianism: Sorel's view of equivalence of value and labour mostly in agreement with view put forward above: An attempt to examine profits independently of theory of value: Is not possible: Surplus product same as surplus value._

I think it opportune, however, to return to those _elaborations_ of Sorel, which Labriola summarily judges with such severity, in order to make some remarks about them, not in refutation but in support, and to explain a certain point where there may seem to be disagreement between us, which perhaps has no reason to exist.

But here I may be allowed to make a remark. Labriola is also waging war with Sorel: his book _Discorrendo_, etc., arising out of a series of friendly letters to Sorel, which I undertook to edit in Italy, is published in French with an appendix directed against me, and a preface directed against Sorel. The ground of the quarrel is especially in connection with the so-called _crisis in Marxism_.

Now if the _crisis in Marxism_ be understood as the a.s.sertion of the need for a revision and correction of the scientific ideas, of the historical beliefs, of the material of observed facts, which are current in Marxian literature, well and good: in such a crisis I too believe. If it means also a change in the programmes and practical methods, I neither agree nor disagree, having never concerned myself with the subject in dispute. If the danger is really existent the apprehension of which seems to obsess and disturb Labriola, that a crisis in Marxism of whatever kind, or the commencement of it, may be neutralised by those to whose interest it is to lead astray and scatter the labour movement, then _provideant consules_. But whether there be crisis or no crisis, whether purely scientific or also practical, whether apprehensions are well-founded or imagined and exaggerated, all these things have no connection with the questions raised by me, which relate to the erroneousness of this or that theoretical or historical statement of Marxism, and the way in which this or that must be understood in order to be regarded as true. This is my standpoint and on this ground alone I admit discussion. I may be mistaken, but this must be proved to me. But if, on the contrary, the only answer vouchsafed to me is that the crisis in Marxism results from the international reaction, of which ingenious critics are taking advantage, I shall be left it is true, somewhat bewildered; but I shall not on this account be convinced that the theory of value is true, in the burlesque sense, for example, in which it is expounded by Stern in his well-known propagandist booklet.

Sorel at first supposes,[83] wittily enough, that Marx had built up different economic spheres, the first of which (that of labour-value) is the simplest; the second, including the phenomenon of an average rate of profit, and the creation of cost of production, is more complex, and the third, in which is observed the effect of rent of land, is still more complex. In pa.s.sing from the simple to the more complex sphere, we should find again the laws of the preceding one, modified by the new data introduced, which would have given rise to new phenomena.

In his second article he abandons this interpretation, being convinced that Marx's ideal construction does not aim at supplying a complete explanation of the phenomena of economics by means of the increasing complexity of his combinations. And, in my opinion, he did well to abandon it; not only for the excellent reason stated by him, that Marx's inquiry does not include an entire system of economics, but also because the process suggested by him does not explain why Marx, in a.n.a.lysing the economic phenomena of the second or third sphere, ever _used concepts whose place was only in the first one_. It does not explain what I have called the _eliptical comparison_, and herein lies the difficulty of Marx's work, or rather of the literary statement of his thought. If the correspondence between labour and value is only realized in the simplified society of the first sphere, why insist on translating the phenomena of the second _into terms of the first_? Why give the name transformation of surplus value to what makes its appearance as the natural economic result of capital which must have (from its very nature as capital) a profit? Does Marx offer an explanation connecting ground and consequence, or does he not rather draw a _parallel between two different phenomena_, by which the diversities illuminating the origins of society are set in relief?

But Sorel now advances to precisely this conclusion, borrowing a happy phrase from his first article: that Marx's work is not intended to explain by means of laws a.n.a.logous to physical laws, but only to throw partial and indirect light on economic reality.

The method which Marx employs in his inquiry, says Sorel, is a _metaphysical instrument_; he makes a _metaphysics of economics_. This expression may be satisfactory or not, according to the different meanings given to the word _metaphysics_; but the idea is accurate and true. Marx builds an ideal construction which helps him to explain the conditions of labour in capitalist society.

What are the limits of Marx's ideal construction, and in what do his hypotheses consist? I have said that the concept of labour-value is true for an ideal society, whose only goods consist in the products of labour, and in which there are no cla.s.s distinctions. Sorel does not think it necessary to eliminate as I have done, the divisions of cla.s.ses. But, since he writes: 'Marx, like Ricardo, conceived a mechanical society, perfectly automatic, in which compet.i.tion is always at its maximum efficiency, and exchanges are effected by means of universal information; and he supposed that the various sociological conditions are measurable in intensity, and that the numbers resulting can be connected by mathematical formulae; hence in such a society, utility, demand, and commerce in commodities _are results of the divisions of cla.s.ses_; _value will not in consequence be a function of this condition_, although it is truly a function of the conditions of production; utility, demand, can only appear in the forms of the function, _in the parameters referring to the social divisions_.' Since he, I repeat, does not in his hypothesis, make labour-value dependent on the division of cla.s.ses, it seems to me that this is practically to _leave out_ the fact of the division. And it is perhaps clearer to omit it explicitly.

We should have then: (1) a working economic society without differences of cla.s.ses, law of labour-value; (2) Social divisions of cla.s.ses, origin of profit, which, _but only in comparison with the preceding type and in so far as the concepts of the former are carried over into the latter_, may be defined as surplus-value; (3) Technical distinction between the different industries requiring different combinations of capital (different proportions of fixed and floating capital). Origin of the average rate of profits, which in relation to the preceding type, may be regarded as a change in, and equalisation of, surplus-values; (4) Appropriation of the land by part of a social cla.s.s. Pure rent; (5) Qualitative differences in land. Differential rent. Which rents, pure and differential, present themselves, but only in comparison with the preceding types, as cut off from the amounts of surplus-value and of profits. Sorel agrees with me that the concept of labour-value, obtained in the manner described, is not only not a law in the same sense as a physical law, but is also not a law in the ethical sense, _i.e._ one that could be understood as a rule of what ought to exist. It is a law, he says, _in an entirely Marxian sense_.

This I too tried to express when I wrote in my essay: 'It is a _law_ in Marx's _conception_, but not _in economic reality_. It is clear that we may conceive the divergencies in relation to a standard as the rebellion of reality in opposition to that standard, to which we have given the dignity of law.'

It seems to me that the jurist Professor Stammler in his book _Wirthschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffa.s.sung_,[84] has also made the mistake of interpreting Marx's concept as an _ideal_ law. He is absolutely correct when, in rejecting Kautsky's comparison between the concept of labour-value and the law of gravity--which takes effect fully on a vacuum--whilst the resistance made by air leads to special results, he maintains that this has nothing a.n.a.logous to a physical law. For him, on the other hand, Marx's law is justified (at least formally) as an attempt at investigation into what in the judgment of economists, granted the capitalist organisation of society, may be _objectively accurate_.

Subjective judgments may differ, but that does not affect what ought to be an objective criterion, to divide the true from the false. But can an _objective criterion_ ever be found within the sphere of economics? Anyone who has rightly understood the principle of hedonistic economics must answer no. And if Stammler brings forward such an idea, it is because in his work he expressly intends to deny the originality of economic material and the independence of economics as a science.[85]

Sorel believes that Marx's method has rendered all the a.s.sistance of which it is capable, and cannot aid the study, which it is needful to make, of modern economic conditions. If I am not mistaken he means that the hopes of the Marxians in regard to the fruitfulness of Marx's method are futile, and that the pages which he has written in the history of economics are practically all that can be produced by it. A good part of the third volume, in which Marx shows himself a simple cla.s.sical economist, and the miserable and scanty output of Marxian economic writings subsequent to Marx, would suggest that Stammler's opinion is justified by the facts.

But, whilst Sorel's book seems to me welcome in the endeavour to understand and define the score of Marx's economic inquiries, I cannot form the same judgment of another attempt made to reform the basis of Marx's system by rejecting his method, and a part of his results. I refer to a recent book by Dr Antonio Graziadei,[86] which has been much discussed during these last months. Graziadei's object is to examine profits independently of the theory of value: a course already indicated by Professor Loria, and the fallacy of which ought to be clearly evident at a glance, without its being necessary to wait for proof from the results of the attempt. A system of economics from which _value_ is omitted, is like logic without the _concept_, ethics without _duty_, aesthetics without _expression_. It is economics ...

cut off from its proper sphere. But let us see for a moment how Graziadei manages the working out of his idea.

In the first place he tries to prove that in Marx's own work the theory of profits is in itself independent of that of value. Profits he says, consist in surplus-value, _i.e._ in the difference between total labour and necessary labour. Hence it can be made to originate in surplus-value without starting from the form value itself. But he himself destroys the argument when further on (p. 10) he objects that if labour is not productive labour it does not give rise to profits.

Precisely for that reason--we answer--in order to be in a position to speak of labour which is productive, Marx must start from value, and precisely for that reason, in Marx's thought, the theory of profits and the theory of value are inseparably connected.

As to the construction, on his own account, of a theory of profits which is independent of that of value, Graziadei accomplishes this in a very curious way: viz. by carefully avoiding the words _value_ and _labour_, and by speaking instead only of _product_. Profits, according to him, do not arise out of surplus-labour or surplus-value, but out of surplus-product; hence we can, and ought, in theory, to start from the concept of product and not concern ourselves with value, which is a superficial growth of the final stage of the market.

Surplus product! But surplus-product, in so far as it is an _economic_ surplus-product, is _value_. Certainly, the capitalist who pays wages in kind, and in getting back again the goods advanced by him, also appropriates the other part of the product (surplus-product), can, instead of taking this to market, consume it himself directly (as in Graziadei's hypothesis). But this does not alter the matter at all, because the fact that the product is not taken to market does not mean that it has no value in exchange: since it is true that the capitalist has obtained it by means of an exchange between himself and the labourer; which means that he has always a.s.sessed its value in some manner.

And here we are again at the theory of value, from which we have vainly attempted to escape. Moreover, since Graziadei is essentially concerned with the economics of labour, here we are again at Marx's exact concept of labour value. _Tamen usque recurrit!_[87]

Graziadei's book includes also some _corrections_ of Marx's special theories on profits and wages. But I may be allowed to remark that the corrections to be called such ought to refer to the governing principles. New facts do not weaken a theory firmly established on fundamentals; and it is natural that, with a change in the actual conditions, a new casuistry will arise which Marx could not discuss.

Whatever forecasts he may have made in his long career as author and politician, which the event has proved fallacious--I do not believe he ever pretended:

'Sguaiato Giosue ...

Fermare il sole.'[88]

_April, 1899._

FOOTNOTES:

[74] _Socialisme et philosophie_ by ANTONIO LABRIOLA. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1899, see pp. 207-224. Postscript to the French edition.

[75] See chap. III.

[76] Like an impenitent sinner I shall come back to this distinction, which is essential for the solid foundation of the principles of economics, and the evil effects of whose neglect are apparent in the discourses of economists.

[77] I write _equivalence_ because Marx writes thus, and because for the present question this other is quite irrelevant: viz. whether the relation of value can be expressed in the mathematical form of a relation of equivalence. But, for my part, and I follow the hedonists in this; I deny entirely that the relation of value is a relation of equivalence. The proof of this has already been supplied by others, and there is no occasion to repeat it.

[78] See CROCE _Giambattista Basile e il 'c.u.n.to de li c.u.n.ti_,' Naples, 1891; _Ricerche ispano-italiane_, series I, last paragraph, (_Atti dell' Acc. Pontan_; vol. xxviii, 1898); _I predicatori italiani del seicento e il gusto spagnuolo_, Naples, Pierro, 1899; _I trattatisti italiani del 'concettismo' e Baltasar Gracian_ (_Atti dell' Acc.

Pontan_; vol. xxix, 1899).

[79] LABRIOLA--who reproduces Marx's style very well here and there in his own--writes in his essay on '_Das Kommunistische Manifest_,' 2nd Ed., p. 79. 'The _Manifesto_ ... does not shed tears over nothing. The tears of things have already risen on their feet of themselves, like a spontaneously vengeful force.' The _tears_ which rise _on their feet_ may make the hair rise _on the head_ of a man of moderate taste; but the expression, although violently imaginative, is not in seventeenth century style.

[80] Als Hegel auf dem Todbette lag, sagte er:--Nur einer hat mich verstanden! Aber gleich darauf fugte er verdriesslich hinzu. Und der hat mich auch nicht verstanden!' (_Heine. Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland._ Bk. III).

[81] 'Now, if my map shows me true, we are not far from the sight of our haven....' (Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_.)

[82] SOMBART, in the _Archiv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik_, vol. vii., 1894, pp. 555-594; ENGELS in _Neue Zeit_ xiv., vol. i., 4-11, 37-44; CROCE, _Le teorie storiche del prof. Loria_; SOREL in the _Journal des economistes_, no. for May 15th, 1897; CROCE, _Per la interpretazione e la critica di alcuni concetti del marxism_, see in this volume chap. III.; SOREL, _Nuovi contributi alla teoria marxistica del valore_, in the _Giornale degli economisti_, June 1898.

[83] In the article referred to, in the _Journal des Economistes_.

[84] See pp. 266-8, 658-9.

[85] See chap. II.