Mere whips to scourge the backs that naked bear
The burden of the world--bent backs that dare
Not rise erect, defy the tyrant, "Should,"
And freely, boldly do the things they would.
In living's joy they rarely have a share;
They look beyond the grave, and hope that there
They'll be repaid, poor fools, for being good.
To serve thy master, that is virtue, Slave;
To do thy will, enjoy sweet life, is vice.
Poor duty-ridden serf, rebel, forget
Thy master-taught morality; be brave
Enough to make this earth a Paradise
Whereon the Sun of Joy shall never set!
Thanks to modern science--the child of the machine process--the
universality of the law of cause and effect is now assumed on all hands.
In Labriola's strong words, "Nothing happens by chance." The Marxist
believes this in all its fulness. To him systems of religion, codes of
ethics and schools of art are, in the last analysis, just as much
products of material causes as are boots or sausages. There are some
intellectual Socialists whose mode of life has shielded them from the
discipline of the Machine Process--the inexorable inculcator of
causation--who attempt to place religion and ethics and other
ideological phenomena in a separate category not to be accounted for by
the materialistic conception of history. These may turn to Marx and
weary their auditors by their iteration of "Lord! Lord!" but verily they
know not the mind of the Master.
With Marx matter always comes first, thought second. The dialectic
materialism of the Socialist is an all-inclusive philosophy, accounting
for _all_ phenomena--as fully for those called spiritual as for the most
grossly material.
The man who narrows this dialectic materialism down to economic
determinism and then defines the latter as meaning that the economic
factor has been the "dominant" factor--among many independent
factors--in producing the civilization of to-day, may be a sincere
Socialist, but he is no Marxist.
The work of the theoretical Marxist will not be done till the origin and
development of all religions, philosophies, and systems of ethics have
been explained and accounted for by reference to material and economic
causes. To understand history the primary requisite is to understand the
processes by which the material means of life have been produced and
distributed.
"The ruling ideas of every age have ever been the ideas of its ruling
class." This applies of ideas of right and wrong--of what is commonly
known as morality--as fully as to ideas of any other kind.
Conduct that has tended to perpetuate the power of the economically
dominant class--since the increase of wealth has divided society into
classes--has ever been accounted moral conduct; conduct that has tended
to weaken or subvert the power of the ruling class has always been
branded as immoral. There you have the key to all the varying codes of
ethics the world has seen. For it must never be forgotten that ideas of
right and wrong are not absolute, but relative; not fixed, but fluid,
changing with the changes in our modes of producing food, clothes and
shelter. Morality varies not only with time, but with social altitude.
What was accounted a virtue in a bold baron of the feudal days was a
crime in that same baron's serf. The pipe-line hand who regulates his
daily life by the same moral ideas which have made John D. Rockefeller a
shining example of piety will find himself behind prison bars.
Ethics simply register the decrees by which the ruling class stamps with
approval or brands with censure human conduct solely with reference to
the effect of that conduct upon the welfare of their class. This does
not mean that any ruling class has ever had the wit to devise _ab
initio_ a code of ethics perfectly adapted to further their interests.
Far from it. The process has seldom, if ever, been a conscious one. By a
process akin to natural selection in the organic world, the ruling class
learns by experience what conduct is helpful and what hurtful to it, and
blesses in the one case and damns in the other. And as the ruling class
has always controlled all the avenues by which ideas reach the so-called
lower classes, they have heretofore been able to impose upon the
subject classes just those morals which were best adapted to prolong
their subjection. Even to-day in America the majority of the working
class get their ideas--like their clothes--ready-made.
But there is an ever-growing portion of the working class whom the
ever-increasing severity of the discipline of the machine process is
teaching more and more to think solely in terms of material cause and
effect. To them, just as much as to the scholar who has learned by study
the relativity of ethics, current morality has ceased to appeal. It is
idle to talk of the will of God, or of abstract, absolute ideas of right
and wrong to the sociological scholar and the proletarian of the factory
alike.
George Bernard Shaw, in the preface to "Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant,"
says: "I have no respect for popular morality." A few weeks since, a
workingman, who had been listening to a stereotyped sentimental harangue
emitted by one of our amiable Utopian comrades, showed me the palms of
his hands, which were thickly studded with callouses, and asked me,
"What the hell has a fellow with a pair of mits like those to do with
morality? What I want is the goods." Shaw meant just what he wrote; yet
the critics will continue to treat his utterance as one of Bernard
Shaw's "delightfully witty paradoxes." My friend meant just what he
said; yet Salvation Armyists and other good Christians will continue to
preach to him and his kind a religion and a morality which have become
meaningless to them.
Organized government, with its power to make laws and levy taxes--in
other words, the State--only came into existence with the division of
society into classes. The State is, in its very essence, a class
instrument--an agency in the hands of the ruling class to keep the
masses in subjection. Hence the name, "State," cannot fitly be applied
to the social organization of a society in which there are no classes,
whether that society be the primitive communist group of savagery or the
co-operative commonwealth of the future.
The word "capital," cannot be applied to the machinery and means of
production in any and every society. They only become capital when they
are used as means to exploit (rob) a subject class of workers, and when
they shall cease to be so used they will cease to be capital. The word
"wages," necessarily implies the extraction of surplus-value (profits)
from the workers by a parasitic class; hence, that share of the social
product which the workers of the future will devote to individual
consumption cannot be correctly spoken of as "wages."
In the same way, morality is, in its very essence, a class
institution--a set of rules of conduct enforced or inculcated for the
benefit of a class. Hence, to speak of the morality of the future, when
one refers to the classless society to which Socialists look forward, is
the height or the depth of absurdity. In the free fellowship of the
future there will be no morality. This is not saying that there will be
no criteria by which conduct will be praised or deplored; it is simply
saying that with the abolition of classes, morality, like the State,
capital and wages, being a product of class-divisions, will cease to
exist.
While the revolutionary proletariat have no respect for current
morality, it is none the less true that they have in process of growth a
morality of their own--a morality that has already emerged from the
embryonic stage. The proletariat are to be the active agents in bringing
to pass the social revolution which is to put a period to Capitalism and
usher in the new order. During this transition period and until the
change is fully accomplished, they will be a distinct class with special
class interests of their own. As fast as they become class-conscious
they will recognize and praise as moral all conduct that tends to hasten
the social revolution--the triumph of their class, and they will condemn
as unhesitatingly as immoral all conduct that tends to prolong the
dominance of the capitalist class. Already we can note manifestations of
this new proletarian morality in that sense of class solidarity
exhibited by the workers in the many acts of kindness and assistance of
the employed to the unemployed, and more especially in the detestation
in which the scab is held.
The revolutionary workingman, be he avowed Socialist or not, who
repudiates the current or capitalist morality, does not abandon himself
to unbridled license, but is straightway bound by the obligations of the
adolescent proletarian morality which is enforced with ever greater
vigor by the public opinion of his class as his class grows in
class-consciousness.
Does the new morality condemn what the old branded as "crimes against
property?" It must be confessed that the revolutionary worker has
absolutely no respect for natural rights--including the right of
property--as such. Hence, as the act of an individual in appropriating
the goods of another is not likely either to help or to injure his
class, he neither approves or condemns it on moral grounds; but knowing,
as he does, that his class enemies, the capitalists, own not only "the
goods," but also the courts and the police, he condemns theft by a
workingman as suicidal folly.
The Marxist absolutely denies the freedom of the will.[4] Every human
action is inevitable. "Nothing happens by chance." Every thing is
because it cannot but be. How then can we consistently praise or blame
any conduct? If one cares to make hair-splitting distinctions, it may be
replied that we cannot, but none the less we can rejoice at some actions
and deplore others. And the love of praise, with its obverse, the fear
of blame, has ever been one of the strongest motives to human conduct.
It is not necessarily the applause of the thoughtless multitude that one
seeks; but in writing this paper, which I know will be misunderstood or
condemned by the majority of those who read it, undoubtedly one of my
motives is to win the approbation of the discerning few for whose good
opinion I deeply care.
The passengers whose train has come to a standstill on a steep up-grade
owing to the inefficiency of the engine, will not fail to greet with a
hearty cheer the approach of a more powerful locomotive. In the same
way, Socialist workingmen, though they know that no human act deserves
either praise or blame, though they know, in the words of the wise old
Frenchman, that "_comprendre tout, c'est pardonner tout_," or, better
yet, that to understand all is to understand that there is nothing to
pardon, will not be chary of their cheers to him who is able to advance
their cause, nor of their curses upon him who betrays it. And in so
doing they will not be inconsistent, but will be acting in strict
accordance with that law of cause and effect which is the very fundament
of all proletarian reasoning; for those cheers and curses will be
potent factors in causing such conduct as will speed the social
revolution.
While we have no respect for current morality, we must not fall into the
error of supposing that there are no criteria by which to judge conduct,
that there are, so to say, no valid distinctions between the acts of a
hero and those of a blackguard. By referring to the ethic inspiring the
actor we can always pronounce some conduct to be fine and other acts
base. It is this power of a fine or noble action to thrill the human
heart that makes the triumphs of dramatic art possible. The dramatists,
like Shakespeare, whose characters accept the current moral code, appeal
to a wide audience--to nearly all. But those dramatists, such as Ibsen,
Shaw, Maeterlinck, and above all, Sudermann, whose heroes and heroines
attempt to put into practice the ideals of to-morrow in the environment
of to-day, are misunderstood and disliked by the majority, and
understood and appreciated only by the few who, like themselves, have
rejected the current code and adopted the criteria of to-morrow. But
those of us who call Sudermann the first of living dramatists, do so on
account of the extreme nobility of his heroines' conduct judged by the
criteria of the future.
While there will be no morality in Socialist society; while in the
perfect solidarity of a classless society there can be no conflict of
individual with social interests; there will nevertheless be certain
actions exceptionally fitted to increase the welfare and augment the
happiness of the community, and the men and women who perform these acts
will undoubtedly be rewarded by the plaudits and the love of their
comrades. Indeed, we with our debased standards are incapable of
conceiving how dear to them this reward will be. It is because I believe
that this love of one's fellows under Socialism will be a joy far
exceeding in intensity any pleasure known to us, that I look for
dramatic art to reach under Socialism a perfection and influence to-day
inconceivable.
The most striking phenomenon in the field of ethics to-day is the rapid
growth of the new proletarian morality; and one of the principal
functions of the Socialist agitator and propagandist is to facilitate
and further this growth. He is the teacher of a new morality and, if one
accepted Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as "morality touched
with emotion," he might be called the preacher of a new religion. Let
who will call this sentimentalism, it is none the less hard fact. For,
after all, this new proletarian ethic is nothing else than
class-consciousness under a new name. And what Socialist will deny that
the chief function of the militant Socialist is to develop
class-consciousness in the workers? The one hope of the world to-day is
in the victory of the proletariat--aye, it is more than a hope, it is a
certainty; but this victory can only be won by a proletariat permeated
with the sense of solidarity; and the workingman imbued with this sense
of proletarian solidarity will be a living incarnation of the new
morality.
And what is this class-consciousness which it is our business to preach
in season and out of season? There is probably no term in the whole
technical vocabulary of Socialism which grates so unpleasantly on the
ear of the _petit bourgeois_ who "is coming our way" as this one of
"class-consciousness." To say class-consciousness is not to say class
hatred; though class-consciousness ofttimes develops into class hatred
and does not thereby become the less effective. The Socialist recognizes
in the words of Edmund Burke that "Man acts not from metaphysical
considerations, but from motives relative to his interests," and hence,
he regards it as his first duty to show his fellow-workers that their
economic interests are in direct conflict with those of the
master-class. He does not create this conflict by pointing it out; he
merely shows the working class "where they are at."
But besides pointing out this conflict of material interests, the
Socialist propagandist shows the workers that it is their high destiny
to accomplish a revolution far more glorious and pregnant with blessings
for humanity than any of those recorded in the history of the past. This
consciousness of the great part that he and his class are called to play
on the world's stage is the most uplifting and ennobling influence that
can enter the life of a workingman. There can be no doubt that the
sentiment expressed by the words, _noblesse oblige_, has had an
influence on the lives of the more worthy of the aristocrats. Similar in
its nature is the influence here under consideration, and that this
influence is not less potent is well known to every one acquainted with
the men and women who form what is known as the Socialist Movement. The
non-Socialist, who wishes to see the effect of this influence, has but
to read even in the files of the capitalist press the accounts of the
high and noble bearing of the martyrs of the Paris Commune who faced
death with calm and cheerful courage, though they were buoyed up by no
hope of a hereafter.
While we continue devoting our whole energies to arousing in our
fellow-workers a keen and clear consciousness of the hideous
class-struggle now waging in all its brutal bitterness, let us keep our
courage high and our hope bright by keeping our eyes ever fixed upon the
glorious future, upon the "wonderful days a-coming when all shall be
better than well!"
FOOTNOTE:
[4] It will be seen that the text treats the long-debated question of
the "freedom of the will" as _res adjudicata_. It may be that some
readers will want to know where to turn for fuller discussions of this
famous question. As a full bibliography of the literature on this
subject would more than fill this volume, I must content myself with
telling them that a very helpful discussion of it may be found in
Huxley's Life of Hume, and a clear and succinct statement of the
conclusions of the modern school of psychology in Ferri's "The Positive
School of Criminology." Both of these are to be had in cheap form.
INSTEAD OF A FOOTNOTE[5]
A photograph of a Fifth Avenue mansion, taken from the partition wall in
the back-yard, might be a perfectly accurate picture and yet give a very
inadequate idea of the house as a whole. This article on "Marxism and
Ethics" is, in a sense, just such a picture. In writing it, space
limitations compelled me to confine myself wholly to impressing upon the
reader the relative and transitory character of moral codes. But in the
popular concept of morality there are elements that are relatively
permanent. Darwin in his "Descent of Man" showed that the gregarious and
social traits that make associated life possible antedate, not only the
division of society into classes, but even antedate humanity itself,
since they plainly appear in the so-called lower animals.
So that my contention that morality only came into being with the
division of society into classes and will pass away when class divisions
are abolished, becomes a question of definition. If we include in our
definition of morality the almost universal and relatively permanent
gregarious traits of men and beasts, then morality has existed longer
than humanity itself, and will continue to exist under Socialism. But it
cannot be denied that moral codes were not formulated until after
class-divisions had arisen. Every moral code of which we have any
knowledge has been moulded by the cultural discipline of a society based
on class-divisions. In every one of them there is implied the relation
of status, of a superior, natural or supernatural, with the right or
power to formulate "commandments," and of an inferior class whose lot it
is to obey. We find this implication of status in even the noblest
expressions of current ethical aspirations. Wordsworth's immortal Ode to
Duty begins, "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!"
Since then morality as a word through the force of immemorial habit
unavoidably suggests to the mind the relation of status, it appears to
me that its use to describe truly social conduct in a society of equals
can lead to nothing but confusion. What we really need is the right
word to apply to the highest conduct in a classless society; and, I am
inclined to think that a generation to whom the idea of status will have
become wholly alien will find the word "social" entirely adequate for
this purpose, though I frankly confess it is not adequate for us
"In the days of the years we dwell in, that wear our lives away."
My statement that the Revolutionary worker abstains from crimes against
property from expediency rather than from principle must not be
construed into an allegation that fear of personal punishment is the
only ground for abstaining from such crimes. If it were not for the
stupidity and malice of our opponents I would feel that I was insulting
my readers by making this explanation; but for their benefit be it said
that in a society based economically upon the institution of private
property social life is impossible without respect (respect here refers
to acts, not to mental attitude) for private property. Crimes against
property are distinctly unsocial. But respect for the rights of property
is rapidly disintegrating both among trust magnates and proletarians.
The Natural Rights Philosophy[6] still has much vitality in the middle
classes, but as a broad statement it will hold good that the millionaire
or the proletarian who shows respect for private property (the private
property of others, be it understood) does so chiefly on grounds of
expediency.
The socialist materialist is well content to leave this whole question
of ethics to adjust itself, since he knows that equality of condition,
the economic basis of Socialism, will necessarily evolve a mode of
living, and standards of conduct in perfect harmony with their economic
environment.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] It may be as well to state that this was written before the writer
had read Karl Kautsky's illuminating work, "Ethics and the Materialist
Conception of History."
[6] For a fuller discussion of the relation of current conceptions of
property-rights to the Natural Rights Philosophy see Veblen's "The
Theory of Business Enterprise," Chapters II and VIII, and La Monte's
paper "Veblen, The Revolutionist," International Socialist Review, Vol.
V. pp. 726-739.
THE NIHILISM OF SOCIALISM.
"In their negative proposals the socialists and anarchists are
fairly agreed. It is in the metaphysical postulates of their
protest and in their constructive aims that they part company. Of
the two, the socialists are more widely out of touch with the
established order. They are also more hopelessly negative and
destructive in their ideals, as seen from the standpoint of the
established order." THORSTEIN VEBLEN in "The Theory of Business
Enterprise." Page 338.
To label a truth a truism is too often regarded as equivalent to placing
it in the category of the negligible. It is precisely the salient
obviousness, which makes a truth a truism, that places it in the direst
peril of oblivion in the stress of modern life. Such a truth was well
stated by Enrico Ferri, the Italian criminologist, in a recent lecture
before the students of the University of Naples:
"Without an ideal, neither an individual nor a collectivity can live,
without it humanity is dead or dying. For it is the fire of an ideal
which renders the life of each one of us possible, useful and fertile.
And only by its help can each one of us, in the longer or shorter course
of his or her existence, leave behind traces for the benefit of
fellow-beings."
Platitude though this may be, our greatest poets have not hesitated to
use their highest powers to impress it upon us. Robert Browning put this
truth into the mouth of Andrea del Sarto in one of the strongest lines
in all English verse,
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp."
Mr. George S. Street, in a very interesting paper in Putnam's Monthly
for November (1906), points out that the most significant contrast
between our time and Early Victorian days is a decrease in idealism.
"The most characteristic note," he tells us, "in the mental attitude of
the forties and fifties in England, and that in which they contrast most
sharply with our own times, was confidence.... In party politics this
confidence was almost without limit. There was a section of Conservatism
which really believed in things as they were, and thought it undesirable
to attempt any change for the better.... It was simply--I speak of a
section, not the party as a whole--the articulate emotion of privileged
and contented people and their parasites, and its denomination as
'stupid' was an accurate description, though hardly the brilliant
epigram for which, in our poverty of political wit, it has been taken.
On the other hand, there was a confident Liberalism which inspired a
whole party. Some wished to go faster, some slower, but all believed
sincerely in a broad scheme of domestic policy. They were to reform this
and that at home; they were to assist, or at least applaud, the
reforming of this and that abroad. So believing and intending, they
naturally conceived themselves made very little indeed lower than the
angels.