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SOCIALISM: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
by
ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE
"I will make a man more precious than fine gold;
even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir."
--_Isaiah xiii, 12._
Chicago
Charles H. Kerr & Company
1907
Copyright 1907
by Charles H. Kerr & Company
[Illustration: logo]
Press of
John F. Higgins
Chicago
TO
M. E. M. AND L. H. M.
PREFACE
Of the papers in this little volume two have appeared in print before:
"Science and Socialism" in the International Socialist Review for
September, 1900, and "Marxism and Ethics" in Wilshire's Magazine for
November, 1905. My thanks are due to the publishers of those periodicals
for their kind permission to re-print those articles here. The other
papers appear here for the first time.
There is an obvious inconsistency between the treatment of Materialism
in "Science and Socialism" and its treatment in "The Nihilism of
Socialism." I would point out that seven years elapsed between the
composition of the former and that of the latter essay. Whether the
inconsistency be a sign of mental growth or deterioration my readers
must judge for themselves. I will merely say here that the man or woman,
whose views remain absolutely fixed and stereotyped for seven years, is
cheating the undertaker. What I conceive the true significance of this
particular change in opinions to be is set forth in the essay on "The
Biogenetic Law."
Some Socialists will deprecate what may seem to them the unwise
frankness of the paper on "The Nihilism of Socialism." To them I can
only say that to me Socialism has always been essentially a
revolutionary movement. Revolutionists, who attempt to maintain a
distinction between their exoteric and their esoteric teachings, only
succeed in making themselves ridiculous. But, even were the maintenance
of such a distinction practicable, it would, in my judgment, be highly
inexpedient. As a mere matter of policy, ever since I first entered the
Socialist Movement, I have been a firm believer in the tactics admirably
summed up in Danton's "_De l'audace! Puis de l'audace! Et toujours de
l'audace!_"
Should any reader find himself repelled by "The Nihilism of Socialism,"
let me beg that he will not put the book aside until he has read the
essay on "The Biogenetic Law."
I do not send forth this little book with any ambitious hope that it
will be widely read, or even that it will convert any one to Socialism.
My hope is far more modest. It is that this book may be of some real
service, as a labor-saving device, to the thinking men and women who
have felt the lure of Socialism, and are trying to discover just what is
meant by the oft-used words 'Marxian Socialism,' Should it prove of
material aid to even _one_ such man or woman, I would feel that I had
been repaid a hundred-fold for my labor in writing it.
ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE.
Feb. 7, 1907.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM 15
I. THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 25
II. THE LAW OF SURPLUS-VALUE 34
III. THE CLASS STRUGGLE 46
MARXISM AND ETHICS 57
INSTEAD OF A FOOTNOTE 75
THE NIHILISM OF SOCIALISM 81
THE BIOGENETIC LAW 131
KISMET 143
SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM[1]
(International Socialist Review, September, 1900.)
Until the middle of this (the nineteenth) century the favorite theory
with those who attempted to explain the phenomena of History was the
Great-Man-Theory. This theory was that once in a while through infinite
mercy a great man was sent to the earth who yanked humanity up a notch
or two higher, and then we went along in a humdrum way on that level, or
even sank back till another great man was vouchsafed to us. Possibly the
finest flower of this school of thought is Carlyle's Heroes and Hero
Worship. Unscientific as this theory was, it had its beneficent effects,
for those heroes or great men served as ideals, and the human mind
requires an unattainable ideal. No man can be or do the best he is
capable of unless he is ever reaching out toward an ideal that lies
beyond his grasp. Tennyson put this truth in the mouth of the ancient
sage who tells the youthful and ambitious Gareth who is eager to enter
into the service of King Arthur of the Table Round:
"-----------the King
Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep."
This function of furnishing an ideal was performed in former times by
these great men and more especially by those great men whom legend, myth
and superstition converted into gods. But with the decay of the old
faiths the only possible fruitful ideal left is the ideal upheld by
Socialism, the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth in which the
economic conditions will give birth to the highest, purest, most
altruistic ethics the world has yet seen. It is true the co-operative
commonwealth is far more than a Utopian ideal, it is a scientific
prediction, but at this point I wish to emphasize its function as an
ideal.
But it is obvious that this Great Man theory gave no scientific clue to
history. If the Great Man was a supernatural phenomenon, a gift from
Olympus, then of course History had no scientific basis, but was
dependent upon the arbitrary caprices of the Gods, and Homer's Iliad was
a specimen of accurate descriptive sociology. If on the other hand the
great man was a natural phenomenon, the theory stopped short half way
toward its goal, for it gave us no explanation of the genesis of the
Great Man nor of the reasons for the superhuman influence that it
attributed to him.
Mallock, one of the most servile literary apologists of capitalism, has
recently in a book called "Aristocracy and Evolution" attempted to
revive and revise this theory and give it a scientific form. He still
attributes all progress to Great Men, but with the brutal frankness of
modern bourgeois Capitalism, gives us a new definition of Great Men.
According to Mallock, the great man is the man who makes money. This has
long been the working theory of bourgeois society, but Mallock is the
first of them who has had the cynicism or the stupidity to confess it.
But mark you, by this confession he admits the truth of the fundamental
premise of modern scientific socialism, our Socialism, viz., that the
economic factor is the dominant or determining factor in the life of
society. Thus you see the ablest champion of bourgeois capitalism,
admits, albeit unconsciously, the truth of the Marxian materialistic
conception of history. This book, however, is chiefly remarkable for its
impudent and shameless misrepresentations of Marx and Marxism, but these
very lies show that intelligent apologists of capitalism know that their
only dangerous foe is Marxian socialism.
But just as according to the vulgar superstition the tail of a snake
that has been killed wiggles till sundown, so this book of Mallock's is
merely a false show of life made by a theory that received its deathblow
long since. It is the wiggling of the tail of the snake that Herbert
Spencer killed thirty years ago with his little book "The Study of
Sociology." The environment philosophy in one form or another has come
to occupy the entire field of human thought. We now look for the
explanation of every phenomenon in the conditions that surrounded its
birth and development. The best application of this environment
philosophy to intellectual and literary phenomena that has ever been
made is Taine's History of English Literature.
But while Spencer's Study of Sociology is the most signal and brilliant
refutation of the Great Man theory, no one man really killed that
theory. The general spread and acceptance of Darwinism has produced an
intellectual atmosphere in which such a theory can no more live than a
fish can live out of water.
By Darwinism we mean, as you know, the transmutation of species by
variation and natural selection--selection accomplished mainly, if not
solely, by the struggle for existence. Now this doctrine of organic
development and change or metamorphic evolution, which was, with its
originators, Wallace and Darwin, a purely biological doctrine, was
transported to the field of sociology by Spencer and applied with great
power to all human institutions, legal, moral, economic, religious, etc.
Spencer has taught the world that all social institutions are fluid and
not fixed. As Karl Marx said in the preface to the first edition of
Capital: "The present society is no solid crystal, but an organization
capable of change, and is constantly changing," and again in the preface
to the second edition, "Every historically developed social form is in
fluid movement." This is the theory of Evolution in its broadest sense,
and it has struck a death-blow to the conception of Permanence so dear
to the hearts of the bourgeoisie who love to sing to their Great God,
Private Property, "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen." "_Saecula saeculorum._" "For the Ages of
Ages."
Before natural science had thus revolutionized the intellectual
atmosphere, great men proclaiming the doctrines of modern socialism
might have been rained down from Heaven, but there would have been no
socialist movement. In fact many of its ideas had found utterance
centuries before, but the economic conditions, and consequently the
intellectual conditions were not ripe, and these ideas were still-born,
or died in infancy.
The general acceptance of the idea that all things change, that
property, marriage, religion, etc., are in process of evolution and are
destined to take on new forms prepared the way for Socialism. A man who
has read Wallace and Darwin is ready to read Marx and Engels.
Now the story of the birth of Darwinism is itself a proof of the fallacy
of the Great Man theory, and a signal confirmation of the view that new
ideas, theories and discoveries emanate from the material conditions.
The role of the great man is still an important one. We need the men who
are capable of abstract thought, capable of perceiving the essential
relations and significance of the facts, and of drawing correct
inductions from them. Such men are rare, but there are always enough of
them to perform these functions. And the Great Man, born out of due
time, before the material and economic conditions are ripe for him, can
effect nothing. When the conditions are ripe, the new idea always occurs
to more than one man; that is, the same conditions and facts force the
same idea upon different minds. It is true there is always some one man
who gives this idea its best expression or best marshals the evidence of
the facts in its support, and the idea usually becomes inseparably
linked with his name. In this way does our race express its gratitude to
its great men and perpetuate their memory.
Darwinism or the theory of Natural Selection was in this way
independently discovered by Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles Darwin,
and the popular judgment has not erred in giving the chief credit to
Charles Darwin.
Wallace's paper "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New
Species," written by Wallace on one of the far-away islands of the Malay
Archipelago, where he was studying the Geographical Distribution of
Species, appeared in the "Annals of Natural History" in 1855. Its
resultant conclusion was "that every species has come into existence
coincident both in space and time with a preexisting closely allied
species." Mr. Darwin tells us that Mr. Wallace wrote him that the cause
to which he attributed this coincidence was no other than "generation
with modification," or in other words that the "closely allied
ante-type" was the parent stock from which the new form had been derived
by variation.
Mr. Wallace's second paper, which in my judgment is the clearest and
best condensed statement of the Doctrine of the Struggle for Existence
and the principle of Natural Selection ever written, was written by Mr.
Wallace at Ternate in the Malay Archipelago, in February, 1858, and sent
to Mr. Darwin. It was called "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart
Indefinitely from the Original Type." Mr. Wallace requested Mr. Darwin
to show it to Sir Chas. Lyell, the father of Modern Geology, and
accordingly Dr. Hooker, the great botanist, brought it to Sir Chas.
Lyell. They were both so struck with the complete agreement of the
conclusions of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that they thought it would be
unfair to publish one without the other, so this paper and a chapter
from Darwin's unpublished manuscript of the "Origin of Species" were
read before the Linnaean Society on the same evening and published in
their Proceedings for 1858, and thus appeared in the same year, 1859, as
Marx's Critique of Political Economy. This theory of Natural Selection
is, you know, in brief, that more animals of every kind are born than
can possibly survive, than can possibly get a living. This gives rise to
a Battle for Life. In this battle those are the victors who are the best
able to secure food for themselves and their offspring and are best able
by fight or flight to protect themselves from their enemies. This is
called the Law of the Survival of the Fittest, but remember, the Fittest
are not always the best or most highly developed forms, but simply those
forms best suited to the then existing environment. These two extremely
interesting papers of Wallace are printed as the two first chapters of
his book "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature," published by
MacMillan, a book so fascinating I would beg all my hearers and readers
who have not read it to do so.
This law of double or multiple discovery holds good of all great
discoveries and inventions, and is notably true of the first of the
three great thoughts that we ordinarily associate with the name of Karl
Marx. These three are:
1. The Materialistic Conception of History.
2. The Law of Surplus Value.
3. The Class Struggle--the third being a necessary consequence of the
first two.
Now the Materialistic Conception of History was independently discovered
by Engels just as Darwinism was by Wallace, as you will see by reading
Engels' preface to the Communist Manifesto. But just as Wallace gave
Darwin all the credit, so Engels did to Marx.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This essay was originally prepared for and delivered as a Lecture
before the Young Mens' Socialist Literary Society, an organization of
Jewish Socialists on the lower East Side of New York city, in the early
part of the winter of 1899-1900.
I
THE MATERIALISTIC CONCEPTION OF HISTORY
What do we mean by the Doctrine of the Materialistic Conception of
History, or of "Economic Determinism," as Ferri calls it? We must make
sure we understand, for there is cant in Socialism, just as there is in
religion, and there is good reason to fear many of us go on using these
good mouth-filling phrases, "Materialistic Conception of History,"
"Class-Conscious Proletariat," "Class Struggle," and "Revolutionary
Socialism," with no more accurate idea of their meaning than our pious
friends have of the theological phrases they keep repeating like so many
poll-parrots.
At bottom, when we talk intelligently of the Materialistic Conception of
History, we simply mean, what every man by his daily conduct proves to
be true, that the bread and butter question is the most important
question in life. All the rest of the life of the individual is
affected, yes dominated the way he earns his bread and butter. As this
is true of individuals, so also it is true of societies, and this gives
us the only key by which we can understand the history of the past, and,
within limits, predict the course of future development.
That is all there is of it. That is easy to understand, and every man of
common sense is bound to admit that that much is true.
The word "materialistic" suggests philosophy and metaphysics and brings
to our minds the old disputes about monism and dualism, and the dispute
between religious people who believe in the existence of spirit and
scientists who adopt modern materialistic monism. But no matter what
position a man may hold on these philosophical and theological questions
he can with perfect consistency recognize the fact that the economic
factor is the dominant, determining factor in every day human life, and
the man who admits this simple truth believes in the Marxian
Materialistic Conception of History. The political, legal, ethical and
all human institutions have their roots in the economic soil, and any
reform that does not go clear to the roots and affect the economic
structure of society must necessarily be abortive. Any thing that does
go to the roots and does modify the economic structure, the bread and
butter side of life, will inevitably modify every other branch and
department of human life, political, ethical, legal, religious, etc.
This makes the social question an economic question, and all our thought
and effort should be concentrated on the economic question.[2]
I am aware of the fact that in the Preface of his "Socialism, Utopian
and Scientific," Engels apparently identifies the Materialistic
Conception of History with Materialistic Monism in Philosophy, but this
connection or identification is not a necessary logical consequence of
any statement of the Materialistic Conception of History I have been
able to find by Engels, Marx, Deville, Ferri, Loria, or any Marxian of
authority and to thus identify it, is detrimental to the cause of
Socialism, since many people who would not hesitate to admit the
predominance of the economic factor, instantly revolt at the idea of
Materialism.
Let us take Engels' statement of this doctrine in the preface to the
Manifesto. It is as follows:
"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production
and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it,
form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be
explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch."
Does not that agree exactly with the doctrine as I have stated it? Or,
take this statement of it by Comrade Vail, of Jersey City:
"The laws, customs, education, public opinion and morals are controlled
and shaped by economic conditions, or, in other words, by the dominant
ruling class which the economic system of any given period forces to
the front. The ruling ideas of each age have been the ideas of its
ruling class, whether that class was the patricians of ancient Rome, the
feudal barons of the middle ages, or the capitalists of modern times.
The economic structure of society largely controls and shapes all social
institutions, and also religious and philosophical ideas."
Or, take this, by Marx himself: "The mode of production obtaining in
material life determines, generally speaking, the social, political and
intellectual processes of life."
Does not that again agree exactly with the doctrine as I have stated it?
The doctrine is stated in nearly the same language by Loria and Ferri,
though Ferri calls it Economic Determinism, which seems to me a much
better and more exact name. Ferri points out that we must not forget the
intellectual factor and the various other factors, which though they are
themselves determined by the economic factor, in their turn become
causes acting concurrently with the economic factor. Loria deals with
this whole subject most exhaustively and interestingly in his recently
translated book "The Economic Foundations of Society." Curiously enough
in this long book he never once gives Marx the credit of having
discovered this theory, but constantly talks as though he--Loria--had
revealed it to a waiting world. The method of his book is the reverse of
scientific, as he first states his theory and conclusions and then
starts to scour the universe for facts to support them, instead of first
collecting the facts and letting them impose the theory upon his mind.
And his book is by no means free from inconsistencies and
contradictions. But while you cannot place yourselves unreservedly and
confidingly in his hands as you can in those of Karl Marx, still his
book has much value. He shows most interestingly how all the connective
institutions, as he calls religious and legal and political
institutions, have been moulded in the interest of the economically
dominant class, and how useful they have been in either persuading or
forcing the so-called "lower classes" to submit to the economic
conditions that were absolutely against their interests. But the system
of Wage Slavery is such a beautifully automatic system, itself
subjugating the workers and leaving them no choice, that I cannot see
that the capitalists have any further need of any of these connective
institutions save the State. At all events, these institutions are fast
losing their power over the minds of men. But the most valuable part of
his book is the immense mass of evidence he has collected showing how
political sovereignty follows economic sovereignty or rather, revenue,
and how all past history has been made up of a series of contests
between various kinds of revenue, particularly between rent from landed
property and profits from industrial or manufacturing capital, but as
this is nothing more than the Class Struggle between the landed
aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, a struggle sketched by master hands in
the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels, we can give Loria no credit
for originality, but merely praise his industry in collecting evidence.
Gabriel Deville, who has probably done more than any one else to
popularize the ideas of Marx in France, has pointed out a very nice
distinction here. Man, like all living beings, is the product of his
environment. But while animals are affected only by the natural
environment, man's brain, itself a product of the natural environment,
becomes a cause, a creator, and makes for man an economic environment,
so that man is acted on by two environments, the natural environment
which has made man and the economic environment which man has made. Now
in the early stages of human development, it is the natural environment,
the fertility of the soil, climatic conditions, abundance of game, fish,
etc., which is all-important, but with the progress of civilization, the
natural environment loses in relative importance, and the economic
environment (machinery, factories, improved appliances, etc.) grows in
importance until in our day the economic environment has become well
nigh all-important. Hence the inadequacy of the Henry George theory
which places all its stress on one element of the natural environment,
land, and wholly neglects the dominant economic environment.
But while this economic environment, the dominant factor in human life,
is the child of the brain of man, man in its creation has been forced to
work within strict limitations. He had to make it out of the materials
furnished him in the first place by the natural environment and later by
the natural environment and the inherited economic environment, so that
in the last analysis the material and economic factors are supreme.
We Marxians are often accused of neglecting the intellectual factor and,
as Deville says, a whole syndicate of factors; but we do not neglect
them. We recognize their existence and their importance, but we do
refuse to waste our revolutionary energy on derivative phenomena when we
are able to see and recognize the decisive, dominant factor, the
economic factor. As Deville says, we do not neglect the cart because we
insist upon putting it behind the horse instead of in front of or
alongside of him, as our critics would have us do. Now, if the economic
factor is the basic factor, it behooves us to understand the present
economic system--Marx's Law of Surplus-Value is the key to this system.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] If this be true the question naturally arises: Why do the
socialists, instead of using economic methods to solve an economic
question, organize themselves into a political party? To answer this
question, we must first see what the State is and what relation it holds
to the economic conditions. Gabriel Deville defines the State thus: "The
State is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human
societies by their division into classes, a power which, being clothed
with force, makes laws and levies taxes." As long as the economically
dominant class retain full possession of this public power of coercion
they are able to use it as a weapon to defeat every attempt to alter the
economic structure of society. Hence every attempt to destroy economic
privilege and establish Industrial Democracy inevitably takes the form
of a political class struggle between the economically privileged class
and the economically exploited class.
II
THE LAW OF SURPLUS-VALUE
The second great idea that we associate with the name of Karl Marx is
the Law of Surplus-Value. Curiously enough this one technical theory is
the only discovery that bourgeois writers and economists give Marx
credit for. If you look up Marx in any ordinary encyclopedia or
reference book you will find they make his fame depend on this theory
alone, and to make matters worse they usually misstate and misrepresent
this theory, while they invariably fail to mention his two other equally
great, if not greater discoveries, the Materialistic Conception of
History and the Class Struggle. I think the reason they give special
prominence to this law of Surplus-Value is that, as it is a purely
technical theory in economics, it is easier to obscure it with a cloud
of sophistry and persuade their willing dupes that they have refuted it.
And then they raise the cry that the foundation of Marxian Socialism
has been destroyed and that the whole structure is about to tumble down
on the heads of its crazy defenders, the Socialists. It is much to be
regretted that many so-called Socialists are found foolish enough to
play into the hands of the Capitalists by joining in the silly cry that
some pigmy in political economy has overthrown the Marxian theory of
Value. I suppose these so-called Socialists are actuated by a mad desire
to be up to date, to keep up with the intellectual band-wagon.
Revolutions in the various sciences have been going on so rapidly, they
fancy that a theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a
back-number, and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last
new cloud of sophistry, purporting to be a theory of value, that has
been evolved by the feeble minds of the anarchists of Italy or the
capitalist economists of Austria. The Fabians of London are the most
striking example of these socialists whose heads have been turned in
this way by the rapid progress of science. But the followers of
Bernstein in Europe and this country are running into the same danger
and in their eagerness to grasp the very newest and latest doctrine will
fall easy victims of the first windy and pretentious fakir who comes
along. Ask any one of these fellows who tells you that the Marxian
theory of Value has been exploded, to state the new and correct theory
of Value that has taken its place and you will find that he cannot state
a theory that you or I or any other man can understand. He will either
admit he is floored, or else he will emit a dense fog of words. I
challenge any one of them to state a theory of value that he himself can
understand, let alone make any one else understand.
Now the Marxian theory of Value can be clearly stated so that you and I
can understand it. But let us begin with surplus-value. This theory of
surplus-value is simply the scientific formulation of the fact that
workingmen had been conscious of in a vague way long before Karl Marx's
day, the fact that the workingman don't get a fair deal, that he don't
get all he earns. This fact had been formulated as long ago as 1821 by
the unknown author of a letter to Lord John Russell on "The Source and
Remedy of the National Difficulties." In this letter the very phrases
"surplus produce" and "surplus labor" are used. You will find that Marx
refers to this letter in a note on page 369 (Humboldt edition, 644 Kerr
edition) of the American edition of Capital. The Russian writer,
Slepzoff, quotes several passages from this letter in an article in the
December, 1899, number of _La Revue Socialiste_, and it is amazing to
see how near to Marx's conclusions this unknown writer had come eighty
years ago, but the conditions were not ripe and his letter would to-day
be forgotten if Marx had not embalmed it in a footnote. I confess I was
surprised to learn that this was not a purely original discovery of
Marx's, but the fact that it is not is one more signal confirmation of
the theory I have given in this lecture of the double or multiple
discovery of great ideas.
But let us resume the discussion of Surplus Value and see just what it
really is.
No matter where you, my workingman hearer or reader may work, the person
or corporation or trust for whom or which you work gets back more out of
your labor, than he or it pays you in wages. If this is not so, your
employer is either running a charitable institution or he is in business
for his health. You may have employers of that kind here on the East
Side of New York, but I have never met any of them elsewhere. It is
impossible to conceive of a man going on day after day, week after week,
year after year, paying you wages, unless he receives more for the
product of your labor than he pays you in wages. Now, this difference
between what you get and what he gets is what we call surplus-value.
This surplus-value is the key to the whole present economic organization
of society. The end and object of bourgeois society is the formation and
accumulation of surplus-value, or in other words, the systematic robbery
of the producing class. Now when we say robbery, we do not mean to
accuse employers of conscious dishonesty. They are the creatures of a
system just as the workers are, but it is a system which makes their
interests diametrically opposed to the interests of their employees. The
only way the capitalists can increase their relative share of the
product of their employees' labor is by decreasing the relative share of
the latter.
Now, if out of the total product of his labor the workingman only
receives a part, then it is true to say that he works part of the day
for himself and part of the day gratuitously for the capitalist. Let us
say, for purposes of illustration, that he works three hours for himself
and seven hours for his employer for nothing. This three hours we call
his necessary labor time, or his paid labor; and the seven hours we
call his surplus labor time or his unpaid labor. The product of his
three hours' labor is the equivalent of his wages or as we call it, the
value of his Labor-Power. The product of the other seven hours of his
labor, his surplus or unpaid labor, is surplus product or surplus-value.
Starting from the fact that every workingman knows to be true, that he
don't get all he feels he ought to get, we have thus, I think, made the
definition of surplus-value clear to every one of you, but we have been
talking of surplus-value and value of labor power and we have not yet
defined Value.
When we speak of the value of an object we mean the amount of human
labor that is embodied or accumulated in it, that has been spent in
fitting it to satisfy human needs. And we measure the amount of this
human labor by its duration, by labor-time. You, if you are a skilled,
highly-paid worker, receiving say four dollars a day, may say that it is
absurd to say that an hour of your labor produces no more value than an
hour of Tom's or Dick's or Pete's, who get only eighty cents a day
apiece. You are quite right. Your hour does produce more value. The
labor-time that determines value is the labor-time of the average,
untrained worker. Again, you may waste your time, spending half of it
looking out of the window or carrying on a flirtation. This wasted labor
does not count in measuring value. The only labor that counts is the
labor that is socially necessary under normal conditions for the
production of the given commodity. Again, labor spent to produce a
useless article does not produce value. To produce value the labor must
serve to satisfy human wants. Now, I think this is quite clear so far.
We know what surplus-value is. We know what value is and how it is
measured. Let us now see what is meant by the Value of Labor-Power.
To begin with, what is Labor-Power? When a workingman goes upon the
market to sell something for money with which to buy bread and butter
and other necessaries of life, what has he to offer for sale? He cannot
offer a finished commodity, such as a watch, a shoe, or a book, because
he owns nothing. He has neither the necessary machinery, the necessary
raw material, nor even the necessary place in which to work to make
these things. These all belong to another class who by owning them, in
fact, own him. He cannot offer labor for sale, because his labor does
not yet exist. He cannot sell a thing that has no existence. When his
labor comes into real objective existence, it is incorporated with
materials that are the property of the class that rules him, and no
longer belongs to him. He cannot sell what he don't possess. There is
only one thing he can sell, namely, his mental and physical or muscular
power to do things, to make things. He can sell this for a definite time
to an employer, just exactly as a livery stable keeper sells a horse's
power to trot to his customers for so much per hour. Now this power of
his to do things is what we call his labor-power; that is, his capacity
to perform work. Now, its value is determined precisely like the value
of every other commodity, _i. e._, by the labor-time socially necessary
for its production. Now the labor-time socially necessary for the
production of labor-power is the labor-time socially necessary to
produce the food, clothing and shelter or lodging that are necessary to
enable the laborer to come on the labor market day after day able
physically to work, and also to enable him to beget and raise children
who will take his place as wage-slaves when he shall have been buried
by the County or some Sick and Death Benefit Fund.
In the example we used above we assumed that the laborer worked three
hours a day to produce a value equal to the value of his labor-power.
The price of this value, the value produced by his paid labor, we call
"Wages." This price is often reduced by the competition of "scabs" and
other victims of capitalist exploitation, below the real value of
labor-power, but we have not time to go into that here, so we will
assume that the laborer gets in wages the full value of his labor-power.
Well, then, if he produces in three or four hours a value equal to the
value of his labor-power or wages, why doesn't he stop work then, and
take his coat and hat and go home and devote the rest of the day to
study, reading, games, recreation and amusement? He don't because he
can't. He has to agree (voluntarily, of course) to any conditions that
the class who by owning his tools own him choose to impose upon him, and
the lash of the competition of the unemployed, Capital's Reserve Army,
as Marx called it, is ever ready to fall upon his naked back.
Why is he so helpless? Because he and his class have been robbed of the
land and the tools and all the means of sustenance and production, and
have nothing left them but that empty bauble, legal liberty, liberty to
accept wages so small that they barely enable them to live like beasts,
or liberty to starve to death and be buried in unmarked graves by the
public authorities.
The wage system necessarily implies this surplus labor or unpaid labor.
So long as there are wages, workingmen, you will never get the full
product of your labor. Let no reformer beguile you into a struggle which
simply aims to secure a modification of the wage system! Nothing short
of the annihilation of the wage system will give you justice and give
you the full product of your labor.
But while wages necessarily imply surplus-labor, the reverse is not
true. You can have surplus-labor without wages. Surplus-labor is not an
invention of modern capitalists. Since Mankind emerged from the state of
Primitive Communism typified by the Garden of Eden in the Hebraic myth,
there have been three great systems of economic organization: 1.
Slavery; 2. Serfdom; 3. The Wage System. It is interesting to note the
varying appearances of surplus or unpaid labor under these three
systems.
Under the first, Slavery, all labor appears as unpaid labor. This is
only a false appearance, however. During a part of the day the slave
only reproduces the value of his maintenance or "keep." During that part
of the day he works for himself just as truly as the modern wage slave
works for himself during a part of his day. But the property relation
conceals the paid labor.
Under the second system, Serfdom, or the Feudal System,--the paid labor
and the unpaid labor are absolutely separate and distinct, so that not
even the most gifted orthodox political economist can confuse them.
Under the third system, Wage Slavery, the unpaid labor apparently falls
to Zero. There is none. You voluntarily enter into a bargain, agreeing
that your day's work is worth so much, and you receive the full price
agreed upon. But again this is only a false appearance. As we saw by our
analysis, a part of the wage-slave's day is devoted to paid labor and a
part to unpaid. Here wages or the money relation conceals the unpaid
labor and disguises under the mask of a voluntary bargain the struggle
of the working class to diminish or abolish unpaid labor, and the
class-conscious, pitiless struggle of the capitalist class to increase
the unpaid labor and reduce the paid labor to the minimum, _i. e._, to
or below the level of bare subsistence. In other words the Wage System
conceals the Class Struggle.
III
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
The third of the great ideas that will always be associated with the
name of Karl Marx is that of the Class Struggle. The Class Struggle is
logically such a necessary consequence of both the Materialistic
Conception of History and the Law of Surplus-Value, that as we have
discussed them at some length, but little need be said of the Class
Struggle itself. In discussing the Materialistic Conception of History
we showed with sufficient fullness and clearness that, in the language
of the Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of Class Struggles." Hence it is clear the
doctrine of class struggles is a key to past history. But it is more
than this. It is a compass by which to steer in the present struggle for
the emancipation of the proletariat, who cannot, fortunately, emancipate
themselves without emancipating and ennobling all mankind.
The Law of Surplus-Value has shown us that there is a deep-seated,
ineradicable conflict between the direct class interest of the
proletariat which coincides with the true interests of the human race,
and the direct, conscious guiding interest of the class who own the
means of production and distribution. There is here a direct clash
between two hostile interests. This fact has been skilfully hidden from
the eyes of the workers in the past, but the modern socialist movement,
aided by the growing brutality of the capitalist class, is making it
impossible to fool them in this way much longer. In other words, the
workingmen are becoming Class-Conscious, _i. e._, conscious of the fact
that they, as a class, have interests which are in direct conflict with
the selfish interests of the capitalist class. With the growth of this
class-consciousness this conflict of interests must inevitably become a
political class struggle. The capitalists, the economically privileged
class, struggle to retain possession of the State that they may continue
to use it as a weapon to keep the working class subjugated, servile and
dependent. The proletariat, the working-class, struggle to obtain
possession of the State, that they may use it to destroy every vestige
of economic privilege, to abolish private property in the means of
production and distribution, and thus put an end to the division of
society into classes, and usher in the society of the future, the
Co-operative Commonwealth. As the State is in its very nature a class
instrument, as its existence is dependent upon the existence of distinct
classes, the State in the hands of the victorious proletariat will
commit suicide, by tearing down its own foundation.
Until a man perceives and is keenly conscious of this class conflict, a
conflict which admits of no truce or compromise, and ranges himself on
the side of the workers to remain there until the battle is fought and
the victory won, until the proletariat shall have conquered the public
powers, taken possession of that class instrument, the State (for so
long as the State exists it will be a class instrument) and made it in
the hands of the working class a tool to abolish private ownership in
the tools and the land, in the means of production and distribution, and
to abolish all classes by absorbing them all in the Brotherhood of Man;
until a man has thus shown himself clearly conscious of the Class
Struggle, with its necessary implications, his heart may be in the right
place, but laboring men can not trust him as a leader. The fact that
the hearts of many popular reformers, political candidates and so-called
"friends of labor," who ignore the class struggle, are on the right
side, but gives them added power to mislead and betray workingmen.
Workingmen, I beg you to follow no leader who has not a clear enough
head to see that there is a class struggle, and a large enough heart to
place himself on your side of that struggle. But remember that you are
not fighting the battle of a class alone. You are fighting for the
future welfare of the whole human race. But while this is true, it is
also true that your class must bear the brunt of this battle, for yours
is the only class that, in the language of the Manifesto, "has nothing
but its chains to lose, and a World to gain!" The rich have much to
lose, and this very real and tangible risk of loss not unnaturally
blinds the eyes of most of them to the more remote, though infinitely
greater compensations that Socialism has to offer them. The Middle
Class, even down to those who are just a round above the proletarians on
the social ladder, love to ape the very rich and the capitalist
magnates. It tickles their silly vanity to fancy that their interests
are capitalistic interests, and their mental horizon is too hopelessly
limited for them to perceive that the proletariat whom it pleases them
to despise as the great army of the "unwashed" are in truth fighting
their battles for them, and receiving instead of gratitude, contempt,
gibes and sneers. Socialism does occasionally receive a recruit from the
very highest stratum of society, but I tell you it is easier for a camel
to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a member of the
Middle Class to become a scientific socialist.
I have said the Class Struggle is a compass to steer by in the present
struggle for the emancipation of the working class. If we steer by this
compass, we will resolutely reject all overtures from political parties
representing the interests of other classes, even when such parties in
their platform endorse some of the immediate demands of the socialists;
we will "fear the Greeks bringing gifts;" we will not be seduced for a
moment by the idea of fusion with any so-called Socialist party which is
not avowedly based on the Class Struggle; especially as individuals will
we avoid giving our votes or our support to any Middle Class party which
we may at times fancy to be "moving in the right direction." The history
of the class conflicts of the past shows that whenever the proletarians
have joined forces with the Middle Class or any section of it, the
proletarians have had to bear the heat and burden of the day and when
the victory has been won their allies have robbed them of its fruits.
You, yourselves, then, Workingmen, must fight this battle! To win, it is
true, you will need the help of members of the other classes. But this
help the economic evolution is constantly bringing you. It is a law of
the economic evolution that with the progress of industrialism the ratio
of the returns of capital to the capital invested constantly diminishes,
(though the aggregate volume of those returns increases). You see this
in the constant lowering of the rate of interest. Now, as their incomes
decrease, the small capitalists and the middle class, who form the vast
majority of the possessing class, become unable to continue to support
the members of the liberal professions, the priests, preachers, lawyers,
editors, lecturers, etc., whose chief function heretofore has been to
fool the working class into supporting or at least submitting to the
present system. Now, when the income of these unproductive laborers, an
income drawn from the class hostile to the proletariat, shall sensibly
decrease or, worse still, cease, these educated members of the liberal
professions will desert the army of Capital and bring a much-needed
reinforcement to the Army of Labor.
Some of the more far-seeing upholders of the present system are keenly
conscious of this danger. And this danger (even though most of the
expansionists may not realize it), is one of the most potent causes of
the Imperialism, Militarism, and Jingoism which are at present
disgracing the civilized world. England in Africa, and America in the
Philippines are pursuing their present criminal policies, not solely to
open new markets for English and American goods, but also to secure new
fields for the investment of English and American capital, and thus to
stop the continuous dropping of the rate of interest and profits, for if
this cannot be stopped, the intellectual proletariat will join the
sweating proletariat, and the Co-operative Commonwealth will be
established and then the poor capitalists will have to work for their
livings like other people.
This was clearly pointed out by a capitalist writer in an essay in a
recent number of the Atlantic Monthly, who warned the capitalist
opponents of McKinley, Destiny & Co.'s policy of expansion that they
were attempting to close the only safety-valve which under present
conditions could, not avert, but postpone the Social Revolution.[3]
But, friends, nothing can postpone it long, for the industrial crises
and financial panics are recurring at shorter and shorter intervals, and
the process of recovery from them is slower and slower, and every panic
and crisis forces thousands of educated, intelligent members of the
middle class off their narrow and precarious foothold down into the
ranks of the proletariat, where the hard logic of the facts will convert
them to class-conscious Socialism.
Workingmen, I congratulate you upon the approaching victory of the
workers and the advent of the Co-operative Commonwealth, for I tell you,
in the language of an English comrade:
"Failure on failure may seem to defeat us; ultimate failure is
impossible.
Seeing what is to be done then, seeing what the reward is,
Seeing what the terms are,--are you willing to join us? Will you
lend us the aid of your voice, your money, your sympathy?
May we take you by the hand and call you 'Comrade'?"
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The expansion policy also acts as a safety-valve by promoting the
emigration of the discontented and by providing employment abroad for
the educated proletarians who would, no doubt, become "dangerous and
incendiary Socialist agitators" in their native lands.
MARXISM AND ETHICS
(Wilshire's Magazine, November, 1905).