Nevertheless, the organisation of the proletariat, and his journalistic
labours, however intense and however weighty, did not represent in the
life of Marx anything more than a vexatious parenthesis or a regrettable
delay in the fulfilment of the supreme task he had set before himself
from the very outset of his life in Britain. Hardly, in fact, had Marx
settled down in the wonderful town of London, to the economist so
inexhaustible a field for study and experience, than he proposed to
rebuild from the foundations the entire edifice of his economic and
statistical knowledge, which was at that time comparatively small when
contrasted with the vast extent of his preliminary readings in
philosophy. In the British Museum library, therefore, he plunged into
the study of the classical economists of the island realm, showing
inexhaustible patience in tracing the earliest and most trifling
ramifications of economic science.
Beginning with the study of the theory of rent, he went on to the study
of money, of the relationship between the quantity of metal in
circulation and the rate of exchange, of the influence of bank reserves
upon prices, and so forth. He then devoted himself to the theories of
value, profit, interest, and population. Simultaneously he studied
without remission statistics, blue books, ministerial and parliamentary
concerns.
From all this gigantic toil he derived the materials for the writing of
the work which was henceforward to be at once the sorrow and the joy of
his life. His first intention was to limit himself to a critical history
of political economy, or a detailed analysis of the theories which he
had so often enunciated, as well as of the lacunae which had become
apparent in them. But an unexpected result issued from the mental
contact with this huge mass of science and analysis, for he believed
that he had made a splendid and startling discovery whereby the sacred
theory of profit could be utterly exploded.
Now, therefore, he outlined the design of his great work, which was to
consist of two parts; a first, historico-critical, intended to elucidate
the different forms of the theory of profit as expounded by the various
British economists; and a second, theoretical and constructive, which
was to announce to the world the author's own doctrine. This method of
exposition is substantially identical with that followed by Böhm-Bawerk
in his _Capital and Interest_, and it corresponds moreover to the
immediate requirements of the investigation, which ought to begin with
the study of prevailing opinions and doctrines, and then only proceed to
innovation. But a more attentive examination of the question soon
convinced Marx that this would not be the most efficacious method of
furnishing a theoretical reproduction of actualities, since, to this
end, we must let the phenomena tell their own tale before we proceed to
call to account those who have already analysed them, and before we draw
attention to the ways in which their conception of the facts diverges
from that which reality, when directly questioned, reveals. The method
has ever been preferred by the most gifted theorists, and has been
applied by Bergson with admirable dexterity in his _Creative Evolution_.
Marx, therefore, never weary of destroying and refashioning, inverted
his original design, and promptly began the study and analysis of
concrete phenomena, to proceed then only to a criticism of the theories
of his precursors. It was in accordance with such criteria that he wrote
his _Criticism of Political Economy_, of which the first instalment was
published at Berlin in 1859.
The most notable portion of this work is the preface, which contains
the first statement of the theory of historical materialism. The
relationships of men in social life, says Marx, are determined by the
conditions of production, are necessary relationships independent of the
individual will; these determined relationships constitute the real
foundation upon which is erected the legislative, political, moral, and
religious superstructure of every age. The relationships of production,
or the economic relationships prevailing at a given period, are a
natural and necessary outcome of the method of production, or rather of
the historic phase of the instrument of production. But sooner or later
the further development of the productive forces generates a new
configuration in technical method, a configuration incompatible with the
prevailing relationships of production, those correlative to the
productive order hitherto dominant. There then occurs an explosion, a
social revolution, which disintegrates economic relationships, and, by
ricochet, disintegrates existing social relationships, replacing them by
better economic relationships, adequate to the new and more highly
evolved phase of the productive instrument.
In broad outline it may be said that economic evolution has exhibited
four progressive phases; the Asiatic economy, the classical economy, the
feudalist economy, and the modern bourgeois or capitalist economy. The
evolution of the productive instrument, never arrested in its secular
march, will in due course renew the eternally recurrent opposition
between the method of production and the relationships of production,
rendering these incompatible. Once more will come an explosion, the last
of the great social convulsions, whereby the bourgeois economic order
will be overthrown and will be replaced by the co-operative
commonwealth. This new development will close the primary epoch of the
history of human society.
But the work we are discussing is further noteworthy inasmuch as it
reflects a special phase of our author's thought, a thought which never
ceased to exhibit a struggle between opposing trends and was ever
oppressed by their contrast. The book, in fact, shows Marx continually
involved in antiquated Hegelian machinery, or proceeding through a chain
of categories evolving one from another--capital, landed property, the
wage system, the state, foreign commerce, the world market. From each of
these categories we may infer how the process of their successive
development is accomplished. We are led to infer that the wage system is
the outcome of landed proprietorship, for the expropriation of the
peasant proprietors produces the proletarianised masses offering labour
power for sale; and we are led to infer that the constitution of the
world market is the crown and the epilogue of modern capitalist economy.
In fact, according to Marx, the historic mission of capitalism based
upon wage labour, whose origins go back to the sixteenth century, is the
creation of the world market. The world market is now devoted to the
colonisation of California and Australia and to the opening of trading
ports in China and Japan; its creation marks the climax of capitalism's
historic mission, and indicates the approaching end of the economic form
which was destined to fulfill it.
Now these ideas, in themselves arbitrary and fantastic, show how Marx's
thought at that epoch was still in an undecided or amphibious phase, in
which the torrid sun of British economic science had not as yet
succeeded in totally dispelling the fogs of German philosophy. But
another incompatibility lessens the value of the book or diminishes its
doctrinal efficacy; for Marx, at this stage of his studies, invariably
gave to the history of doctrine too preponderant a place, introducing it
insistently into the course of his own exposition, which was thus
deprived of continuity and weakened in force.
Further, the book we are considering did not directly bear upon any of
the social questions which strongly arouse public interest, but was
restricted to the study of two theories whose importance at first sight
seems purely academic, the theory of value and the theory of money.
Marx contended that the value of commodities is exclusively determined
by the quantity of labour incorporated into them; he traced the
affiliations of this thesis with the work of its first enunciators in
Italy and in England; but he did not offer any reasoned demonstration of
its truth. On the contrary, he frankly recognised that this contention
is full of contradictions alike theoretical and practical,
contradictions that appear insoluble; but he promised to vanquish them
in the subsequent course of his exposition.
Far more noteworthy is the chapter on money, for it contains a masterly
criticism of the quantitative theory of Ricardo, and an effective
refutation of the "labour notes" idea of Bray, Gray, Proudhon, and
others. According to this plan, every producer performing a certain
quantum of labour would receive from the state a voucher entitling him
to obtain from other producers the result of an equal quantum of labour;
but the suggestion implies complete ignorance of the intrinsic
conditions of the individualistic economy, wherein each producer creates
an object without any certainty that there will be a market for it, or
that it represents a real utility and will fetch a definite price. It
obviously follows that the producer cannot be sure that he will be able
to sell the article which he has produced, or that he will be able to
transform it into anything with universal purchasing power; the product
has to be baptised or sanctioned by the market, which alone has power to
stamp it as useful by purchasing it.
Now the "labour note" system claims that it can forcibly dispense with
the market by supplying to the producer of an article whose utility and
saleable value has not been recognised by the market, a universally
available purchasing power. The practical outcome of this forcible
method is that the producer of a useless article can by means of his
"labour note" secure for himself a useful article, whereas the producer
of this latter will not in turn be able to exchange his own "labour
note" for any object possessing utility; that is to say, the article
made by the first producer will find no purchaser, and the "labour note"
of the second producer will effect no purchase. This is inevitable, for
the proposed reform is inconsistent, eclectic, and incomplete, since it
pretends to socialise exchange while maintaining production and
distribution upon their old individualistic basis, and overlooks the
incongruity of any such supposition.
The "labour note" system cannot rationally be instituted until
production has been socialised, or until the state shall impose upon
each individual the production of a specified quantity and quality of
commodities, correlatively imposing upon the consumer the obligation to
acquire these. In such conditions, however, we could no longer speak of
commodities or of exchange, for these phenomena belong exclusively to an
individualistic economy and would have no place in a socialised economy.
This means that the reform of exchange by the suppression of profit can
only be effected by the suppression of exchange itself, by the
institution of the co-operative commonwealth. Indeed, Robert Owen, who
proposed the "labour note" system in 1832, and was the most brilliant of
its advocates, clearly recognised this difficulty, and understood that
the socialisation of production would be an indispensable preliminary to
the adoption of the plan. It was the impatience of his disciples which
forced him to inaugurate the system within the framework of the
capitalist economy by founding the National Equitable Labour Exchange.
The logic of facts gave a patent demonstration of the irrationality of
the attempt; and Owen, saddened and humiliated, was compelled to witness
the failure of the new institution.
It will readily be understood that these abstruse and abstract
investigations, devoid as they are of any tangible connection with the
burning problems of property, were not likely to arouse interest among
the members of the party. Nothing could be more natural than the tone of
hopeless discouragement with which the volume was greeted even by the
author's most devoted friends. Liebknecht, for example, declared that he
had never before experienced so great a disappointment. Biskamp enquired
what on earth it was all about; Burgers deplored that Marx should have
published a work so dull and fragmentary. It is true that the book had a
moderate sale; Rau quoted it in his treatise; certain Russian and
American economists made it the subject of profound studies.
Nevertheless, the publisher refused to proceed with the issue.
Hardly had this literary bickering come to an end when Marx became
involved in a violent quarrel with the distinguished naturalist Karl
Vogt, who publicly charged him with setting snares for the German exiles
and with having sordid relationships with the police. Marx replied with
a savage booklet entitled _Herr Vogt_ (London, 1860). The style of this
polemic writing is intolerably vulgar; but in other respects the book is
noteworthy, for it contains interesting revelations anent the Italian
campaign and the relationships between Turin and the Tuileries. We must
remember, moreover, that the accusation here launched against Vogt, that
he was in the pay of the Second Empire, was subsequently confirmed
beyond dispute, for in 1871 among the ruins of the Tuileries there was
found a receipt for frs. 40,000 which had been paid over to Vogt.
But scientific failures, personal contests, persistent and distressing
domestic discomforts, seemed to inspire our athlete with renewed
strength for the continuance of the work he had begun. Nevertheless,
profiting by experience, he decided upon a yet further modification in
the plan of his book, resolving to defer to its final section all
historico-critical disquisitions, and to concentrate his energies upon
the positive analysis of concrete reality. Further, being prevented by
frequent illness from tackling the more difficult themes of pure
economics, he devoted these long intervals of comparative leisure to
statistical investigations and to the perusal of factory inspectors'
reports, of white books and of blue books, and he plunged into the study
of the economic history of Great Britain, so that it became possible for
him to interleave the pages of abstract theory, necessarily difficult
to understand, with pages that are really living, pages that vibrate
with the reflex of reality. At length, abandoning the method he had
previously followed of publishing fragmentary essays, he decided to
rewrite the work throughout before sending it to press.
After several years of incredible labour, the days being devoted to
reading in the British Museum library, and the nights (for he often went
on writing until four in the morning) to literary composition; falling
again and again beneath the burden of his cross, but ever rising to his
feet once more, thanks to the demon within urging him on and thanks also
to the sustaining hand of his incomparable friend; he at length
completed his task, and in the spring of 1867 sailed for Hamburg with
the manuscript of the first volume of _Capital_, which he entrusted to
Meissner for publication. In Hamburg he passed pleasant days with Dr.
Kugelmann, a friend and fervent admirer, and with various officials,
generals, and bankers; he was visited by a lawyer named Warnebold, an
emissary from Bismarck, who, acting on the minister's instructions,
exhorted him "to employ his brilliant talents for the advantage of the
German people." Before long, however, he returned to London, where he
earnestly devoted himself to giving the last touches to his book, which
was finally issued from the press in the autumn of the same year.
Thus was at length given to the world the monumental work destined to
revolutionise sociological thought, and to give a new and higher trend,
not to socialism alone, but to political economy itself. To sum up its
drift very briefly, we may say that the argument follows three chief
lines, value, machinery, and primitive accumulation. He set out from the
fundamental principle (a principle which the philosopher Krause had
declared to be as important to political economy as the fall of heavy
bodies is important to physics) that the value of products is measured
by the mass of labour incorporated into them, and drew the conclusion
that the profit of capital is nothing other than the materialisation of
a quantity of labour expended by the worker, and is in other words
unpaid labour, stolen and usurped income. The worker, that is to say,
transmits into the product a value equal to the quantity of labour
incorporated therein, but receives from the capitalist a value less than
this, a value equal to the quantity of labour embodied in the
commodities necessary to reproduce the energy expended by the worker.
Now the difference between the value of the product (that is to say the
quantity of labour transmitted by the worker into the product) and the
value of the labour power (that is to say the quantity of labour
employed in producing the commodities consumed by the worker) constitute
the surplus value which is gratuitously pocketed by the owner of the
means of production in virtue of the fact that he is owner. In this way
Marx attains to the qualitative notion of the income of capital, or
explains whereof that income effectively consists. It remains to
determine the quantity of income, which cannot be specified unless there
have previously been precisely determined the measure and the figure of
wages.
Now though it be true that the growth of accumulation virtually tends to
bring about an increase in the amount paid in wages, it is nevertheless
within the power of the capitalist to obviate this undesirable event by
investing the growing accumulation in the form of technical capital,
which by its very nature is without influence upon wages. But the
capitalist can do more than this. He can transform into technical
capital a part of the capital which has hitherto been utilised in paying
wages, thus throwing some of the workers out of employment, or creating
an industrial reserve army. This reserve army, on the one hand stifles
all resistance on the part of the workers in active employment, keeping
their wages at a level which will purchase the barest necessaries, and
on the other hand permits to capitalist industry the sudden expansions
in times of prosperity which to the capitalist are so desirable and so
profitable.
Thus Marx's qualitative investigation is succeeded by a quantitative
investigation, so that we learn, not only what surplus value is, but
that it is equal to all the excess over and above the more or less
limited subsistence of the worker, and that the worker is not merely
defrauded of part of the value resulting from his labour, but is reduced
to a wretched pittance, happy if he can secure this, and if he be not
condemned by the hopeless entanglements of capitalist relationships to
submergence in the backwater of the most terrible poverty. The result is
that to the favoured recipients of surplus value there is subject a
brutalised crowd reduced to a narrow wage, while at a yet lower level
there struggles in the morass the amorphous mass of those who are
condemned to labour without end.
We thus realise, adds Marx, how profit is born of capital and is in its
turn transformed into capital. But none of the considerations hitherto
adduced suffice to make it clear what was the origin of primitive
capital, that which first of all gave birth to profit, and consequently
cannot be the product of profit. The celebrated section on the secret of
primitive accumulation was intended to solve this problem. Classical
political economy, said Marx, regarded the formation of primitive
capital as an episode which occurred during the first days of creation.
In times long gone by, there were two sorts of people; one, the
diligent, intelligent, and above all frugal élite; the other, lazy
rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. Thus it
came to pass before long that the former became impoverished whilst the
latter grew wealthy, and the wealthy earned the gratitude of the poor
by hiring these to work for them in return for a paltry wage. The
theological legend of original sin tells us how man came to be condemned
to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the economic history of
original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no
means essential. We learn that one section of humanity has succeeded in
eluding the divine judgment and in procuring for itself bread and cakes
by the sweat of others.
Unfortunately, continues Marx, a conscientious questioning of history
discloses that primitive capital originated in very various ways, of a
character anything but idyllic. Until the close of the fifteenth century
there existed in England a race of peasant proprietors, nominally
subject to the jurisdiction of the great lords of the soil. But the
increasing demand for wool which resulted from the expansion of the
Flemish wool industry, and the increasing demand for flesh meat
consequent upon the growth of population, induced the great landowners
to destroy an agrarian system by which their returns from rent were
rendered practically nil. The free cultivators were brutally evicted
from the fields which their ancestors had arduously tilled for centuries
past, to be replaced by shepherds and flocks, the crowds of the
expropriated hastening to the towns to offer the strength of their arms
for hire.
Here they happened upon a rout of usurers, traders, house-owners,
enriched craftsmen, and lucky speculators; and here too were those who
had expropriated them, the landowners who had heaped up savings by fair
means or foul, but had hitherto been unable to turn their savings to
account owing to the restrictions imposed by the corporative economy
(guild system). These accepted as a gift from heaven the influx of the
proletarian multitude, and were not slow in setting the newcomers to
work on behalf of the growing manufactures. Modern capitalist industry
thus originated in a terrible expropriation of the working population
which transformed the independent peasants into an impoverished and
hunger-stricken mob. But historic nemesis awaits this society conceived
in theft, and Marx predicts its disastrous end in the ominous words:
"The knell of capitalist property will sound; the expropriators will be
expropriated."
The fulfilment of the process will be effected by the forces inherent in
the mechanism of the capitalist economy. The more extensive the
development of that economy, the fiercer becomes the internecine
struggle between the individual aggregations of capital, the more
extensive become the accumulations of wealth in the hands of capitalists
of the upper stratum, and the smaller becomes the number of these;
correlatively there takes place an increase in the size of the working
and poverty-stricken crowd, the more hopeless and more pitiful becomes
its degradation, whilst simultaneously its cohesion grows more compact,
for the workers are disciplined and organised by the very process which
associates labour in the factory and upon the land. At a given moment,
when the number of mammoth capitalists has conspicuously diminished, and
when the pullulating mass of proletarians has increased to an
immeasurable degree and has been forced down into the most abject
poverty, it will at length be easy to the dispossessed to expropriate
the small group of usurpers.
Thus the expropriation of the masses by the few, which greeted the dawn
of the contemporary economic order, will be counterposed by the
expropriation of the restricted number of masters at the hands of the
proletarian masses, and this will triumphantly herald a calmer and more
resplendent sunrise.