ON THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLE
TWO LETTERS TO PROFESSOR V. PARETO
I
Need for more comprehensive definition of the economic
principle: Reasons why the mechanical conception
erroneous, economic fact capable of appraisement: Cannot
be scale of values for particular action: Economic datum a
fact of human activity: Distinction and connection between
pleasure and choice: Economic datum a fact of will:
Knowledge a necessary presupposition of will: Distinction
between technical and economic: Analogy of logic and
æsthetic: Complete definition of economic datum 159
II
Disagreement (1) about method (2) postulates: (1) Nothing
arbitrary in economic method, analogy of classificatory
sciences erroneous: (2) Metaphysical postulate that facts
of human activity same as physical facts erroneous:
Definition of practical activity in so far as admits of
definition: Moral and economic activity and approval:
Economic and moral remorse: Economic scale of values 174
INDEX OF NAMES 187
INTRODUCTION
The Essays in this volume, as will be apparent, have all of them had
an occasional origin. They bear evident traces of particular
controversy and contain much criticism of authors who are hardly, if
at all, known in this country. Their author thought it worth while to
collect them in one volume and it has been, I am sure, worth while to
have them translated into English, because though written on different
occasions and in different controversies they have all the same
purpose. They are an attempt to make clear by philosophical criticism
the real purpose and value of Marx's work.
It is often said that it is the business of philosophy to examine and
criticise the assumptions of the sciences and philosophy claims that
in this work it is not an unnecessary meddler stepping in where it is
not wanted. For time and again for want of philosophical criticism the
sciences have overstepped their bounds and produced confusion and
contradiction. The distinction between the proper spheres of science
and history and moral judgment is not the work of either science or
history or moral judgment but can only be accomplished by
philosophical reflection, and the philosopher will justify his work,
if he can show the various contending parties that his distinctions
will disentangle the puzzles into which they have fallen and help them
to understand one another.
The present state of the controversy about the value of the writings
of Karl Marx obviously calls for some such work of disentangling. No
honest student can deny that his work has been of great historic
importance and it is hard to believe that a book like _Das Kapital_
which has been the inspiration of a great movement can be nothing but
a tissue of false reasoning as some of its critics have affirmed. The
doctrine of the economic interpretation of history has revivified and
influenced almost all modern historical research. In a great part of
his analysis of the nature and natural development of a capitalist
society Marx has shown himself a prophet of extraordinary insight. The
more debatable doctrine of the class war has at least shown the
sterility of the earlier political theory which thought only in terms
of the individual and his state. The wonderful vitality of the Marxian
theory of labour value in spite of all the apparent refutations it has
suffered at the hands of orthodox political economists is an insoluble
puzzle if it had no more in it than the obvious fallacy which these
refutations expose. Only a great book could become 'the Bible of the
working classes.'
But the process of becoming a Bible is a fatal process. No one can
read much current Marxian literature or discuss politics or economics
with those who style themselves orthodox Marxians without coming to
the conclusion that the spirit of ecclesiastical dogmatism daily
growing weaker in its own home has been transplanted into the religion
of revolutionary socialism. Many of those whose eyes have been opened
to the truth as expounded by Marx seem to have been thereby granted
that faith which is the faculty of believing what we should otherwise
know to be untrue, and with them the economic interpretation of
history is transformed into a metaphysical dogma of deterministic
materialism. The philosopher naturally finds a stumbling-block in a
doctrine which is proclaimed but not argued. The historian however
grateful he may be for the light which economic interpretation has
given him, is up in arms against a theory which denies the
individuality and uniqueness of history and reduces it to an automatic
repetition of abstract formulæ. The politician when he is told of the
universal nature of the class war points triumphantly to the fact that
it is a war which those who should be the chief combatants are slow to
recognise or we should not find the working classes more ready to vote
for a Liberal or a Conservative than for a Socialist. The Socialist
must on consideration become impatient with a doctrine that by its
fatalistic determinism makes all effort unnecessary. If Socialism must
come inevitably by the automatic working out of economic law, why all
this striving to bring it about? The answer that political efforts can
make no difference, but may bring about the revolution sooner, is too
transparently inadequate a solution of the difficulty to deceive
anyone for long. Lastly the economist can hardly tolerate a theory of
value that seems to ignore entirely the law of supply and demand, and
concludes with some justice that either the theory of labour value is
nonsense or that Marx was talking about something quite apart in its
nature from the value which economics discusses. All these objections
are continually being made to Marxianism, and are met by no adequate
answer. And just as the sceptical lecturer of the street corner argues
that a religion which can make men believe in the story of Balaam's
ass must be as nonsensical as that story, so with as little justice
the academic critic or the anti-socialist politician concludes that
Socialism or at least Marxianism is a tissue of nonsensical statements
if these ridiculous dogmas are its fruit.
A disentangler of true and false in so-called Marxianism is obviously
needed, and Senatore Croce is eminently fitted for the work. Much of
the difficulty of Marx comes from his relation to Hegel. He was
greatly influenced by and yet had reacted from Hegel's philosophy
without making clear to others or possibly to himself what his final
position in regard to Hegel really was. Senatore Croce is a Hegelian,
but a critical one. His chief criticism of Hegel is that his
philosophy tends to obscure the individuality and uniqueness of
history, and Croce seeks to avoid that obscurity by distinguishing
clearly the methods of history, of science and of philosophy. He holds
that all science deals with abstractions, with what he has elsewhere
called pseudo-concepts. These abstractions have no real existence, and
it is fatal to confuse the system of abstraction which science builds
up with the concrete living reality. 'All scientific laws are abstract
laws,' as he says in one of these essays, (III p. 57), 'and there is
no bridge over which to pass from the concrete to the abstract; just
because the abstract is not a reality but a form of thought, one of
our, so to speak, abbreviated ways of thinking. And although a
knowledge of the laws may _light up_ our perception of reality, it
cannot become that perception itself.'
The application to the doctrine of historic materialism is obvious. It
calls attention to one of the factors of the historical process, the
economic. This factor it quite rightly treats in abstraction and
isolation. A knowledge of the laws of economic forces so obtained may
'light up our perception' of the real historical process, but only
darkness and confusion can result from mistaking the abstraction for
reality and from the production of those _a priori_ histories of the
stages of civilisation or the development of the family which have
discredited Marxianism in the eyes of historians. In the first essay
and the third part of the third Croce explains this distinction
between economic science and history and their proper relation to one
another. The second essay reinforces the distinction by criticism of
another attempt to construct a science which shall take the place of
history. A science in the strict sense history is not and never can
be.
Once this is clearly understood it is possible to appreciate the
services rendered to history by Marx. For Croce holds that economics
is a real science. The economic factors in history can be isolated and
treated by themselves. Without such isolated treatment they cannot be
understood, and if they are not understood, our view of history is
bound to be unnecessarily narrow and onesided. _On the relative
importance_ of the economic and the political and the religious
factors in history he has nothing to say. There is no _a priori_
answer to the question whether any school of writers has unduly
diminished or exaggerated the importance of any one of these factors.
Their importance has varied at different times, and can at any time
only be estimated empirically. It remains a service of great value to
have distinguished a factor of such importance which had been
previously neglected.
If then the economic factor in history should be isolated and treated
separately, how is it to be distinguished? For it is essential to
Croce's view of science that each science has its own concepts which
can be distinguished clearly from those of other sciences. This
question is discussed in Essay III Q. 5 and more specifically in Essay
VI. Croce is specially anxious to distinguish between the spheres of
economics and ethics. Much confusion has been caused in political
economy in the past by the assumption that economics takes for granted
that men behave egoistically, _i.e._ in an immoral way. As a result of
this assumption men have had to choose between the condemnation of
economics or of mankind. The believer in humanity has been full of
denunciation of that monstrosity the economic man, while the
thorough-going believer in economics has assumed that the success of
the economic interpretation of history proves that men are always
selfish. The only alternative view seemed to be the rather cynical
compromise that though men were sometimes unselfish, their actions
were so prevailingly selfish that for political purposes the unselfish
actions might be ignored. Croce insists, and surely with justice, that
economic actions are not moral or immoral, but in so far as they are
economic, nonmoral. The moral worth of actions cannot be determined by
their success or failure in giving men satisfaction. For there are
some things in which men find satisfaction which they yet judge to be
bad. We must distinguish therefore the moral question whether such and
such an action is good or bad from the economic whether it is or is
not useful, whether it is a way by which men get what they, rightly
or wrongly want. In economics then we are merely discussing the
efficiency or utility of actions. We can ask of any action whether it
ought or ought not to be done at all. That is a moral question. We may
also ask whether it is done competently or efficiently: that is an
economic question. It might be contended that it is immoral to keep a
public house, but it would also have to be allowed that the discussion
of the most efficient way by keeping a public house was outside the
scope of the moral enquiry. Mrs Weir of Hermiston was confusing
economics with ethics when she answered Lord Braxfield's complaints of
his ill-cooked dinner by saying that the cook was a very pious woman.
Economic action according to Croce is the condition of moral action.
If action has no economic value, it is merely aimless, but it may have
economic value without being moral, and the consideration of economic
value must therefore be independent of ethics.
Marx, Croce holds was an economist and not a moralist, and the moral
judgments of socialists are not and cannot be derived from any
scientific examination of economic processes.
So much for criticisms of Marx or rather of exaggerated developments
of Marxianism, which though just and important, are comparatively
obvious. The most interesting part of Signor Croce's criticism is his
interpretation of the shibboleth of orthodox Marxians and the
stumbling-block of economists, the Marxian theory of labour value
with its corollary of surplus value. Marx's exposition of the doctrine
in _Das Kapital_ is the extreme of abstract reasoning. Yet it is found
in a book full of concrete descriptions of the evils of the factory
system and of moral denunciation and satire. If Marx's theory be taken
as an account of what determines the actual value of concrete things
it is obviously untrue. The very use of the term surplus value is
sufficient to show that it might be and sometimes is taken to be the
value which commodities ought to have, but none can read Marx's
arguments and think that he was concerned with a value which should
but did not exist. He is clearly engaged on a scientific not a Utopian
question.
Croce attempts to find a solution by pointing out that the society
which Marx is describing is not this or that actual society, but an
ideal, in the sense of a hypothetical society, capitalist society as
such. Marx has much to say of the development of capitalism in
England, but he is not primarily concerned to give an industrial
history of England or of any other existing society. He is a scientist
and deals with abstractions or types and considers England only in so
far as in it the characteristics of the abstract capitalist society
are manifested. The capitalism which he is analysing does not exist
because no society is completely capitalist. Further it is to be
noticed that in his analysis of value Marx is dealing with objects
only in so far as they are commodities produced by labour. This is
evident enough in his argument. The basis of his contention that all
value is 'congealed labour time' is that all things which have
economic value have in common only the fact that labour has been
expended on them, and yet afterwards he admits that there are things
in which no labour has been expended which yet have economic value. He
seems to regard this as an incidental unimportant fact. Yet obviously
it is a contradiction which vitiates his whole argument. If all things
which have economic value have not had labour expended on them, we
must look elsewhere for their common characteristic. We should
probably say that they all have in common the fact that they are
desired and that there is not an unlimited supply of them. The pure
economist finds the key to this analysis of value in the consideration
of the laws of supply and demand, which alone affect all things that
have economic value, and finds little difficulty in refuting Marx's
theory, on the basis which his investigation assumes.
A consideration of Marx's own argument forces us therefore to the
conclusion that either Marx was an incapable bungler or that he
thought the fact that some things have economic value and are yet not
the product of labour irrelevant to his argument because he was
talking of economic value in two senses, firstly in the sense of
price, and secondly in a peculiar sense of his own. This indeed is
borne out by his distinction of value and price. Croce developing this
hint, suggests that the importance of Marx's theory lies in a
comparison between a capitalist society and another abstract economic
society in which there are no commodities on which labour is not
expended, and no monopoly. We thus have two abstract societies, the
capitalist society which though abstract is very largely actualised in
modern civilisation, and another quite imaginary economic society of
unfettered competition, which is continually assumed by the classical
economist, but which, as Marx said, could only exist where there was
no private property in capital, _i.e._ in the collectivist state.
Now in a society of that kind in which there was no monopoly and
capital was at everyone's disposal equally, the value of commodities
would represent the value of the labour put into them, and that value
might be represented in units of socially necessary labour time. It
would still have to be admitted that an hour of one man's labour might
be of much greater value to the community than two hours of another
man, but that Marx has already allowed for. The unit of socially
necessary labour time is an abstraction, and the hour of one man might
contain two or any number of such abstract units of labour time. What
Marx has done is to take the individualist economist at his word: he
has accepted the notion of an economic society as a number of
competing individuals. Only he has insisted that they shall start fair
and therefore that they shall have nothing to buy or sell but their
labour. The discrepancy between the values which would exist in such
a society and actual prices represent the disturbance created by the
fact that actual society is not a society of equal competitors, but
one in which certain competitors start with some kind of advantage or
monopoly.
If this is really the kernel of Marx's doctrine, it bears a close
relation to a simpler and more familiar contention, that in a society
where free economic competition holds sway, each man gets what he
deserves, for his income represents the sum that society is prepared
to pay for his services, the social value of his work. In this form
the hours worked are supposed to be uniform, and the differences in
value are taken to represent different amounts of social service. In
Marx's argument the social necessity is taken as uniform, and the
difference in value taken to represent differences in hours of work.
While the main abstract contention remains the same, most of those who
argue that in a system of unfettered economic competition most men get
what they deserve, rather readily ignore the existence of monopoly,
and assume that this argument justifies the existing distribution of
wealth. The chief purpose of Marx's argument is to emphasise the
difference between such an economic system and a capitalist society.
He is here, as so often, turning the logic of the classical economists
against themselves, and arguing that the conditions under which a
purely economic distribution of wealth could take place, could only
exist in a community where monopoly had been completely abolished and
all capital collectivised.
Croce maintains that Marx's theory of value is economic and not moral.
Yet it is hard to read Marx and certainly Marxians without finding in
them the implication that the values produced in such an economic
society would be just. If that implication be examined, we come on an
important difficulty still remaining in this theory. The contention
that in a system of unfettered economic competition, men get the
reward they deserve, assumes that it is just that if one man has a
greater power of serving society than another he should be more highly
rewarded for his work. This the individualist argument with which we
compared Marx's assumes without question. But the Marxian theory of
value is frequently interpreted to imply that amount of work is the
only claim to reward. For differences in value it is held are created
by differences in the amount of labour. But the word amount may here
be used in two senses. When men say that the amount of work a man does
_should_ determine a man's reward; they commonly mean that if one man
works two hours and another one, the first ought to get twice the
reward of the second. 'Amount' here means the actual time spent in
labour. But in Marx's theory of value amount means something quite
different, for an hour of one man's work may, he admits, be equal to
two of another man's. He means by amount a sum of abstract labour time
units. Marx's scientific theory of value is quite consistent with
different abilities getting different rewards, the moral contention
that men should get more reward if they work more and for no other
reason is not. The equation of work done by men of different abilities
by expressing them in abstract labour time units is essential to
Marx's theory but fatal to the moral claim sometimes founded upon it.
Further the great difficulty in allowing that it is just that men of
different abilities should have different rewards, comes from the fact
that differences of ability are of the nature of monopolies. In a pure
economic society high rewards would be given to rare ability and
although it is possible to equate work of rare ability with work of
ordinary ability by expressing both as amounts of abstract labour time
units, it surely remains true that the value is determined not by the
amount of abstract labour time congealed in it but by the law of
supply and demand. Where there are differences of ability there is
some kind of monopoly, and where there is monopoly, you cannot
eliminate the influence of the relation of supply and demand in the
determination of value. What you imagine you have eliminated by the
elimination of capital, which you can collectivise, remains
obstinately in individual differences of ability which cannot be
collectivised.
But here I have entered beyond the limits of Croce's argument. His
critical appraisement of Marx's work must be left to others to judge
who have more knowledge of Marx and of economics than I can lay claim
to. I am confident only that all students of Marx whether they be
disciples or critics, will find in these essays illumination in a
field where much bitter controversy has resulted in little but
confusion and obscurity.
A.D. LINDSAY.
_CHAPTER I._ CONCERNING THE SCIENTIFIC FORM OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
Historical materialism is what is called a fashionable subject. The
theory came into being fifty years ago, and for a time remained
obscure and limited; but during the last six or seven years it has
rapidly attained great fame and an extensive literature, which is
daily increasing, has grown up around it. It is not my intention to
write once again the account, already given many times, of the origin
of this doctrine; nor to restate and criticise the now well-known
passages in which Marx and Engels asserted the theory, nor the
different views of its opponents, its supporters, its exponents, and
its correctors and corruptors. My object is merely to submit to my
colleagues some few remarks concerning the doctrine, taking it in the
form in which it appears in a recent book by Professor Antonio
Labriola, of the University of Rome[1].
For many reasons, it does not come within my province to praise
Labriola's book. But I cannot help saying as a needful explanation,
that it appears to me to be the fullest and most adequate treatment of
the question. The book is free from pedantry and learned tattle,
whilst it shows in every line signs of the author's complete knowledge
of all that has been written on the subject: a book, in short, which
saves the annoyance of controversy with erroneous and exaggerated
opinions, which in it appear as superseded. It has a grand opportunity
in Italy, where the materialistic theory of history is known almost
solely in the spurious form bestowed on it by an ingenious professor
of economics, who even pretends to be its inventor[2].
I
_1. Scope of essay: Labriola's book implies that historical
materialism is not a philosophy of history: Distinction
between a philosophy of history and philosophising about
history: Reason why two have been confused: Materialistic
theory of history as stated by Labriola not an attempt to
establish a law of history: This contrasted with theories
of monists, and teleologists: Engels' statement that it
is a new method erroneous: New content not new method._
Any reader of Labriola's book who tries to obtain from it a precise
concept of the new theory of history, will reach in the first instance
a conclusion which must appear to him evident and incontestable, and
which I sum up in the following statement: 'historical materialism,
so-called, _is not a philosophy of history_.' Labriola does not state
this denial explicitly; it may even be granted that, in words, he
sometimes says exactly the opposite.[3] But, if I am not mistaken, the
denial is contained implicitly in the restrictions which he places on
the meaning of the theory.
The philosophical reaction of realism overthrew the systems built up
by teleology and metaphysical dogmatism, which had limited the field
of the historian. The old philosophy of history was destroyed. And, as
if in contempt and depreciation, the phrase, 'to construct a
philosophy of history,' came to be used with the meaning: 'to
construct a fanciful and artificial and perhaps prejudiced history.'
It is true that of late books have begun to re-appear actually having
as their title the 'philosophy of history.' This might seem to be a
revival, but it is not. In fact their subject is a very different one.
These recent productions do not aim at supplying a _new philosophy of
history_, they simply offer _some philosophising about history_. The
distinction deserves to be explained.
The possibility of a philosophy of history presupposes the possibility
of reducing the sequence of history to general concepts. Now, whilst
it is possible to reduce to general concepts the particular factors of
reality which appear in history and hence to construct a philosophy
of morality or of law, of science or of art, and a general philosophy,
it is not possible to work up into general concepts the single complex
whole formed by these factors, _i.e._ the _concrete fact_, in which
the historical sequence consists. To divide it into its factors is to
destroy it, to annihilate it. In its complex totality, historical
change is incapable of reduction except to one concept, that of
_development_: a concept empty of everything that forms the peculiar
content of history. The old philosophy of history regarded a
conceptual working out of history as possible; either because by
introducing the idea of God or of Providence, it read into the facts
the aims of a divine intelligence; or because it treated the formal
concept of development as including within itself, logically, the
contingent determinations. The case of positivism is strange in that,
being neither so boldly imaginative as to yield to the conceptions of
teleology and rational philosophy, nor so strictly realistic and
intellectually disciplined as to attack the error at its roots, it has
halted halfway, _i.e._ at the actual concept of development and of
evolution, and has announced the philosophy of evolution as the true
philosophy of history: development itself--as the law which explains
development! Were this tautology only in question little harm would
result; but the misfortune is that, by a too easy confusion, the
concept of evolution often emerges, in the hands of the positivists,
from the formal emptiness which belongs to it in truth, and acquires
a meaning or rather a pretended meaning, very like the meanings of
teleology and metaphysics. The almost religious unction and reverence
with which one hears the sacred mystery of _evolution_ spoken of gives
sufficient proof of this.
From such realistic standpoints, now as always, any and every
philosophy of history has been criticised. But the very reservations
and criticisms of the old mistaken constructions demand a discussion
of concepts, that is a process of philosophising: although it may be a
philosophising which leads properly to the denial of a philosophy of
history. Disputes about method, arising out of the needs of the
historian, are added. The works published in recent years embody
different investigations of this kind, and in a plainly realistic
sense, under the title of _philosophy of history_. Amongst these I
will mention as an example a German pamphlet by Simmel, and, amongst
ourselves a compendious introduction by Labriola himself. There are,
undoubtedly, still philosophies of history which continue to be
produced in the old way: voices _clamantium in deserto_, to whom may
be granted the consolation of believing themselves the only apostles
of an unrecognised truth.
Now the materialistic theory of history, in the form in which Labriola
states it, involves an entire abandonment of all attempt to establish
a law of history, to discover a general concept under which all the
complex facts of history can be included.
I say 'in the form in which he states it,' because Labriola is aware
that several sections of the materialistic school of history tend to
approximate to these obsolete ideas.
One of these sections, which might be called that of the _monists_, or
_abstract materialists_, is characterised by the introduction of
metaphysical materialism into the conception of history.
As the reader knows, Marx, when discussing the relation between his
opinions and Hegelianism employed a pointed phrase which has been
taken too often beside the point. He said that with Hegel history was
standing on its head and that it must be turned right side up again in
order to replace it on its feet. For Hegel the idea is the real world,
whereas for him (Marx) 'the ideal is nothing else than the material
world' reflected and translated by the human mind. Hence the statement
so often repeated, that the materialistic view of history is the
negation or antithesis of the idealistic view. It would perhaps be
convenient to study once again, accurately and critically, these
asserted relations between scientific socialism and Hegelianism. To
state the opinion which I have formed on the matter; the link between
the two views seems to me to be, in the main, simply _psychological_.
Hegelianism was the _early inspiration_ of the youthful Marx, and it
is natural that everyone should link up the new ideas with the old as
a development, an amendment, an antithesis. In fact, Hegel's
_Ideas_--and Marx knew this perfectly well--are not human _ideas_,
and to turn the Hegelian philosophy of history upside down cannot give
us the statement that ideas arise as reflections of material
conditions. The inverted form would logically be this: history is not
a process of the _Idea_, _i.e._ of a rational reality, but a system of
forces: to the rational view is opposed the dynamic view. As to the
Hegelian dialectic of concepts it seems to me to bear a purely
external and approximate resemblance to the historical notion of
economic eras and of the antithetical conditions of society. Whatever
may be the value of this suggestion, which I express with hesitation,
recognising the difficulty of the problems connected with the
interpretation and origin of history;--this much is evident, that
metaphysical materialism, at which Marx and Engels, starting from the
extreme Hegelian left, easily arrived, supplied the name and some of
the components of their view of history. But both the name and these
components are really extraneous to the true character of their
conception. This can be neither materialistic nor spiritualistic, nor
dualistic nor monadistic: within its limited field the elements of
things are not presented in such a way as to admit of a philosophical
discussion whether they are reducible one to another, and are united
in one ultimate source. What we have before us are concrete objects,
the earth, natural production, animals; we have before us man, in whom
the so-called psychical processes appear as differentiated from the
so-called physiological processes. To talk in this case of monism and
materialism is to talk nonsense. Some socialist writers have expressed
surprise because Lange, in his classic _History of Materialism_, does
not discuss historical materialism. It is needless to remark that
Lange was familiar with Marxian socialism. He was, however, too
cautious to confuse the metaphysical materialism with which he was
concerned, with historical materialism which has no essential
connection with it, and is merely a _way of speaking_.
But the metaphysical materialism of the authors of the new historical
doctrine, and the name given to the latter, have been not a little
misleading. I will refer as an example to a recent and bad little
book, which seems to me symptomatic, by a sufficiently accredited
socialist writer, Plechanow.[4] The author, designing to study
historical materialism, thinks it needful to go back to Holbach and
Helvetius. And he waxes indignant at metaphysical dualism and
pluralism, declaring that 'the most important philosophical systems
were always _monistic_, that is they interpreted matter and spirit as
merely two classes of phenomena having a single and indivisible
cause.' And in reference to those who maintain the distinction between
the factors in history, he exclaims: 'We see here the old story,
always recurring, of the struggle between eclecticism and monism, the
story of the dividing walls; here nature, there spirit, etc.' Many
will be amazed at this unexpected leap from the materialistic study
of history into the arms of monism, in which they were unaware that
they ought to have such confidence.
Labriola is most careful to avoid this confusion: 'Society is a
datum,' he says, 'history is nothing more than the history of
society.' And he controverts with equal energy and success the
_naturalists_, who wish to reduce the history of man to the history of
nature, and the _verbalists_, who claim to deduce from the name
materialism the real nature of the new view of history. But it must
appear, even to him, that the name might have been more happily
chosen, and that the confusion lies, so to speak, inherent in it. It
is true that old words can be bent to new meanings, but within limits
and after due consideration.
In regard to the tendency to reconstruct a materialistic philosophy of
history, substituting an omnipresent Matter for an omnipresent Idea,
it suffices to re-assert the impossibility of any such construction,
which must become merely superfluous and tautologous unless it
abandoned itself to dogmatism. But there is another error, which is
remarked among the followers of the materialistic school of history,
and which is connected with the former, viz., to anticipate harm not
only in the interpretation of history but also in the guidance of
practical activities. I refer to the teleological tendencies (abstract
teleology), which also Labriola opposes with a cutting attack. The
very idea of _progress_, which has seemed to many the only law of
history worth saving out of the many devised by philosophical and
non-philosophical thinkers, is by him deprived of the dignity of a
law, and reduced to a sufficiently narrow significance. The idea of
it, says Labriola, is 'not only empirical, but always incidental and
hence limited': progress 'does not influence the sequence of human
affairs like destiny or fate, nor like the command of a law.' History
teaches us that man is capable of progress; and we can look at all the
different series of events from this point of view: that is all. No
less incidental and empirical is the idea of _historical necessity_,
which must be freed from all remnants of rationalism and of
transcendentalism, so that we see in it the mere recognition of the
very small share left in the sequence of events, to individuals and
personal free will.
It must be admitted that a little of the blame for the teleological
and fatalistic misunderstandings fall on Marx himself. Marx, as he
once had to explain, liked to 'coquette' with the Hegelian
terminology: a dangerous weapon, with which it would have been better
not to trifle. Hence it is now thought necessary to give to several of
his statements a somewhat broad interpretation in agreement with the
general trend of his theories.[5] Another excuse lies in the impetuous
confidence which, as in the case of any practical work, accompanies
the practical activities of socialism, and engenders beliefs and
expectations which do not always agree with prudent critical and
scientific thought. It is strange to see how the positivists, newly
converted to socialism, exceed all the others (see the effect of a
good school!) in their teleological beliefs, and their facile
predeterminations. They swallow again what is worst in Hegelianism,
which they once so violently opposed without recognising it. Labriola
has finely said that the very forecasts of socialism are merely
_morphological_ in nature; and, in fact, neither Marx nor Engels would
ever have asserted in the abstract that communism must come about by
an unavoidable necessity, in the manner in which they foresaw it. If
history is always accidental, why in this western Europe of ours,
might not a new barbarism arise owing to the effect of incalculable
circumstances? Why should not the coming of communism be either
rendered superfluous or hastened by some of those technical
discoveries, which, as Marx himself has proved, have hitherto produced
the greatest revolutions in the course of history?
I think then that better homage would be rendered to the materialistic
view of history, not by calling it the _final and definite philosophy
of history_ but rather by declaring that properly speaking _it is not
a philosophy of history_. This intrinsic nature which is evident to
those who understand it properly, explains the difficulty which exists
in finding for it a satisfactory theoretical statement; and why to
Labriola it appears to be only in its beginnings and yet to need much
development. It explains too why Engels said (and Labriola accepts the
remark), that it is nothing more than a new _method_; which means a
denial that it is a new _theory_. But is it indeed a new method? I
must acknowledge that this name _method_ does not seem to me
altogether accurate. When the philosophical idealists tried to arrive
at the facts of history by inference, this was truly a new method; and
there may still exist some fossil of those blessed times, who makes
such attempts at history. But the historians of the materialistic
school employ the same intellectual weapons and follow the same paths
as, let us say, the philological historians. They only introduce into
their work some new _data_, some new _experiences_. The content is
different, not the nature of the method.
II
_2. Historical materialism a mass of new data of which
historian becomes conscious: Does not state that history
is nothing more than economic history, nor does it
provide a theory of history: Is simply investigation of
influence economic needs have exercised in history: This
view does not detract from its importance._
I have now reached the point which for me is fundamental. Historical
materialism is not and cannot be a new philosophy of history or a new
method; but it is properly this; a _mass of new data_, _of new
experiences_, of which the historian becomes conscious.
It is hardly necessary to mention the overthrow a short time ago of
the naïve opinion of the ordinary man regarding the objectivity of
history; almost as though events spoke, and the historian was there to
hear and to record their statements. Anyone who sets out to write
history has before him documents and narratives, _i.e._ small
fragments and traces of what has actually happened. In order to
attempt to reconstruct the complete process, he must fall back on a
series of assumptions, which are in fact the ideas and information
which he possesses concerning the affairs of nature, of man, of
society. The pieces needed to complete the whole, of which he has only
the fragments before him, he must find within himself. His worth and
skill as a historian is shown by the accuracy of his adaptation.
Whence it clearly follows that the enrichment of these views and
experiences is essential to progress in historical narration.
What are these points of view and experiences which are offered by the
materialistic theory of history?
That section of Labriola's book which discusses this appears to me
excellent and sufficient. Labriola points out how historical narration
in the course of its development, might have arrived at the theory of
_historical factors_; _i.e._, the notion that the sequence of history
is the result of a number of forces, known as physical conditions,
social organisations, political institutions, personal influences.
Historical materialism goes beyond, to investigate the interaction of
these factors; or rather it studies them all together as parts of a
single process. According to this theory--as is now well known, and as
Marx expressed it in a classical passage--the foundations of history
are the methods of production, _i.e._ the economic conditions which
give rise to class distinctions, to the constitution of rank and of
law, and to those beliefs which make up social and moral customs and
sentiments, the reflection whereof is found in art, science and
religion.
To understand this point of view accurately is not easy, and it is
misunderstood by all those who, rather than take it in the concrete,
state it absolutely after the manner of an absolute philosophical
truth. The theory cannot be maintained in the abstract without
destroying it, _i.e._ without turning it into the _theory of the
factors_, which is according to my view, the final word in abstract
analysis.[6] Some have supposed that historical materialism asserts
that history is nothing more than economic history, and all the rest
is simply a mask, an appearance without reality. And then they labour
to discover the true god of history, whether it be the productive tool
or the earth, using arguments which call to mind the proverbial
discussion about the egg and the hen. Friedrich Engels was attacked by
someone who applied to him to ask how the influence of such and such
other historical factors ought to be understood in reference to the
economic factor. In the numerous letters which he wrote in reply, and
which now, since his death, are coming out in the reviews, he let it
be understood that, when together with Marx, upon the prompting of the
facts, he conceived this new view of history, he had not meant to
state an exact theory. In one of these letters he apologises for
whatever exaggeration he and Marx may have put into the controversial
statements of their ideas, and begs that attention may be paid to the
practical applications made of them rather than to the theoretical
expressions employed. It would be a fine thing, he exclaims, if a
formula could be given for the interpretation of all the facts of
history! By applying this formula, it would be as easy to understand
any period of history as to solve a simple equation.[7]
Labriola grants that the supposed reduction of history to the economic
factor is a ridiculous notion, which may have occurred to one of the
too hasty defenders of the theory, or to one of its no less hasty
opponents.[8] He acknowledges the complexity of history, how the
products of the first degree first establish themselves, and then
isolate themselves and become independent; the ideals which harden
into traditions, the persistent survivals, the elasticity of the
psychical mechanism which makes the individual irreducible to a type
of his class or social position, the unconsciousness and ignorance of
their own situations often observed in men, the stupidity and
unintelligibility of the beliefs and superstitions arising out of
unusual accidents and complexities. And since man lives a natural as
well as a social existence, he admits the influence of race, of
temperament and of the promptings of nature. And, finally, he does not
overlook the influence of the individual, _i.e._ of the work of those
who are called _great men_, who if they are not the creators, are
certainly collaborators of history.
With all these concessions he realises, if I am not mistaken, that it
is useless to look for a theory, in any strict sense of the word, in
historical materialism; and even that it is not what can properly be
called a _theory_ at all. He confirms us in this view by his fine
account of its origin, under the stimulus of the French Revolution,
that great school of sociology--as he calls it. The materialistic
view of history arose out of the need to account for a definite
social phenomenon, not from an abstract inquiry into the factors of
historical life. It was created in the minds of politicians and
revolutionists, not of cold and calculating _savants_ of the library.
At this stage someone will say:--But if the theory, in the strict
sense, is not true, wherein then lies the discovery? In what does the
novelty consist? To speak in this way is to betray a belief that
intellectual progress consists solely in the perfecting of the forms
and abstract categories of thought.
Have approximate observations no value in addition to theories? The
knowledge of what has usually happened, everything in short that is
called experience of life, and which can be expressed in general but
not in strictly accurate terms? Granting this limitation and
understanding always an _almost_ and an _about_, there are discoveries
to be made which are fruitful in the interpretation of life and of
history. Such are the assertions of the dependence of all parts of
life upon each other, and of their origin in the economic subsoil, so
that it can be said that there is but one single history; the
discovery of the true nature of the State (as it appears in the
empirical world), regarded as an institution for the defence of the
ruling class; the proved dependence of ideals upon class interests;
the coincidence of the great epochs of history with the great economic
eras; and the many other observations by which the school of
historical materialism is enriched. Always with the aforesaid
limitations, it may be said with Engels: 'that men make their history
themselves, but within a given limited range, on a basis of conditions
actually pre-existent, amongst which the economic conditions, although
they may be influenced by the others, the political and ideal, are
yet, in the final analysis, decisive, and form the red thread which
runs through the whole of history and guides us to an understanding
thereof.
From this point of view too, I entirely agree with Labriola in
regarding as somewhat strange the inquiries made concerning the
supposed forerunners and remote authors of historical materialism, and
as quite mistaken the inferences that these inquiries will detract
from the importance and originality of the theory. The Italian
professor of economics to whom I referred at the beginning, when
convicted of a plagiarism, thought to defend himself by saying that,
at bottom, Marx's idea was not peculiar to Marx; hence, at worst, he
had robbed a thief. He gave a list of forerunners, reaching back as
far as Aristotle. Just lately, another Italian professor reproved a
colleague with much less justice for having forgotten that the
economic interpretation had been explained by Lorenzo Stein before
Marx, I could multiply such examples. All this reminds me of one of
Jean Paul Richter's sayings: that we hoard our thoughts as a miser
does his money; and only slowly do we exchange the money for
possessions, and thoughts for experiences and feelings. Mental
observations attain real importance through the realisation in thought
and an insight into the fulness of their possibilities. This
realisation and insight have been granted to the modern socialist
movement and to its intellectual leaders Marx and Engels. We may read
even in Thomas More that the State is a conspiracy of the rich who
make plots for their own convenience: _quaedam conspiratio divitum, de
suis commodis reipublicae nomine tituloque tractantium_, and call
their intrigues laws: _machinamenta jam leges fiunt_.[9] And, leaving
Sir Thomas More--who, after all, it will be said, was a communist--who
does not know by heart Marzoni's lines: _Un' odiosa Forza il mondo
possiede e fa nomarsi Dritto_....[10] But the materialist and
socialist interpretation of the State is not therefore any the less
new. The common proverb, indeed, tells us that interest is the most
powerful motive for human actions and conceals itself under the most
varied forms; but it is none the less true that the student of history
who has previously examined the teachings of socialist criticism, is
like a short-sighted man who has provided himself with a good pair of
spectacles: he sees quite differently and many mysterious shadows
reveal their exact shape.
In regard to historical narrative then, the materialistic view of
history resolves itself into a warning to keep its observations in
mind as a new aid to the understanding of history. Few problems are
harder than that which the historian has to solve. In one particular
it resembles the problem of the statesman, and consists in
_understanding the conditions of a given nation at a given time in
respect to their causes and functioning_; but with this difference:
the historian confines himself to exposition, the statesman proceeds
further to modification; the former pays no penalty for
misunderstanding, whereas the latter is subjected to the severe
correction of facts. Confronted by such a problem, the majority of
historians--I refer in particular to the conditions of the study in
Italy--proceed at a disadvantage, almost like the savants of the old
school who constructed philology and researched into etymology. Aids
to a closer and deeper understanding, have come at length from
different sides, and frequently. But the one which is now offered by
the materialistic view of history is great, and suited to the
importance of the modern socialist movement. It is true that the
historian must render exact and definite in each particular instance,
that co-ordination and subordination of factors which is indicated by
historical materialism, in general, for the greater number of cases,
and approximately; herein lies his task and his difficulties, which
may sometimes be insurmountable. But now the road has been pointed
out, along which the solution must be sought, of some of the greatest
problems of history apart from those which have been already
elucidated.
I will say nothing of the recent attempts at an historical application
of the materialistic conception, because it is not a subject to hurry
over in passing, and I intend to deal with it on another occasion. I
will content myself with echoing Labriola, who gives a warning against
a mistake, common to many of these attempts. This consists in
retranslating, as he says, into economic phraseology, the old
historical perspective which of late has so often been translated into
Darwinian phraseology. Certainly it would not be worth while to create
a new movement in historical studies in order to attain such a result.
III
_3. Questions as to relation between historical materialism
and socialism: Only possible connection lies in special
historical application: Bearing of historical materialism
upon intellectual and moral truth: Throws light on
influence of material conditions on their development,
but does not demonstrate their relativity: Absolute
morality a necessary postulate of socialism._
Two things seem to me to deserve some further explanation. What is the
relation between historical materialism and socialism? Labriola, if I
am not mistaken, is inclined to connect closely and almost to identify
the two things. The whole of socialism lies in the materialistic
interpretation of history, which is the truth itself of socialism; to
accept one and reject the other is to understand neither. I consider
this statement to be somewhat exaggerated, or, at least, to need
explanation. If historical materialism is stripped of every survival
of finality and of the benignities of providence, it can afford no
apology for either socialism or any other practical guidance for life.
On the other hand, in its special historical application, _in the
assertion which can be made by its means_, its real and close
connection with socialism is to be found. This assertion is as
follows:--Society is now so constituted that socialism is the only
possible solution which it contains within itself. An assertion and
forecast of this kind moreover will need to be filled out before it
can be a basis for practical action. It must be completed by motives
of interest, or by ethical and sentimental motives, moral judgments
and the enthusiasms of faith. The assertion in itself is cold and
powerless. It will be insufficient to move the cynic, the sceptic, the
pessimist. But it will suffice to put on their guard all those classes
of society who see their ruin in the sequence of history and to pledge
them to a long struggle, although the final outcome may be useless.
Amongst these classes is the proletariat, which indeed aims at the
extinction of its class. Moral conviction and the force of sentiment
must be added to give positive guidance and to supply an imperative
ideal for those who neither feel the blind impulse of class interest,
nor allow themselves to be swept along by the whirling current of the
times.
The final point which I think demands explanation, although in this
case also the difference between myself and Labriola does not appear
to be serious, is this: to what conclusions does historical
materialism lead in regard to the ideal values of man, in regard that
is to intellectual truth and to what is called moral truth?
The history of the origin of intellectual truth is undoubtedly made
clearer by historical materialism, which aims at showing the influence
of actual material conditions upon the opening out, and the very
development of the human intellect. Thus the history of opinions, like
that of science, needs to be for the most part re-written from this
point of view. But those who, on account of such considerations
concerning historical origins, return in triumph to the old relativity
and scepticism, are confusing two quite distinct classes of problem.
Geometry owes its origin no doubt to given conditions which are worth
determining; but it does not follow that geometrical truth is
something merely historical and relative. The warning seems
superfluous, but even here misunderstandings are frequent and
remarkable. Have I not read in some socialist author that Marx's
_discoveries_ themselves are of merely historical _importance_ and
must necessarily be _disowned_. I do not know what meaning this can
have unless it has the very trivial one of a recognition of the
limitation of all human work, or unless it resolves itself into the no
less idle remark that Marx's thought is the offspring of his age. This
onesided history is still more dangerous in reference to moral truth.
The science of morality is evidently now in a transformation stage.
The ethical imperative, whose classics are Kant's _Kritik der reinen
Vernunft_, and Herbart's _Allgemeine praktische Philosophie_, appears
no longer adequate. In addition to it an historical and a formal
science of morality are making their appearance, which regard morality
as a fact, and study its universal nature apart from all
preoccupations as to creeds and rules. This tendency shows itself not
only in socialistic circles, but also elsewhere, and it will be
sufficient for me to refer to Simmel's clever writings. Labriola is
thus justified in his defence of new methods of regarding morality.
'Ethics,--he says,--for us resolves itself into an historical study of
the subjective and objective conditions according to which morality
develops or finds hindrances to its development.' But he adds
cautiously, 'in this way alone, _i.e._, within these limits, is there
value in the statement that morality corresponds to the social
situation, _i.e._, _in the final analysis_ to the economic
conditions,' The question of the intrinsic and absolute worth of the
moral ideal, of its reducibility or irreducibility to intellectual
truth, remains untouched.
It would perhaps have been well if Labriola had dwelt a little more on
this point. A strong tendency is found in socialistic literature
towards a moral relativity, not indeed historical, but substantial,
which regards morality as a vain imagination. This tendency is chiefly
due to the necessity in which Marx and Engels found themselves, in
face of the various types of Utopians, of asserting that the so-called
social question is not a moral question,--_i.e._ as this must be
interpreted, it cannot be solved by sermons and so-called moral
methods--and to their bitter criticism of class ideals and
hypocrisies.[11] This result was helped on, as it seems to me, by the
Hegelian source of the views of Marx and Engels; it being obvious that
in the Hegelian philosophy ethics loses the rigidity given to it by
Kant and preserved by Herbart. And lastly the name _materialism_ is
perhaps not without influence here, since it brings to mind at once
well-understood interests and the calculating comparison of pleasures.
It is, however, evident that idealism or absolute morality is a
necessary postulate of socialism. Is not the interest which prompts
the formation of a concept of _surplus-value_ a moral interest, or
social if it is preferred? Can surplus value be spoken of in pure
economics? Does not the labourer sell his labour-power for exactly
what it is worth, given his position in existing society? And, without
the moral postulate, how could we ever explain Marx's political
activity, and that note of violent indignation and bitter satire which
is felt in every page of _Das Kapital_? But enough of this, for I find
myself making quite elementary statements such as can only be
overlooked owing to ambiguous or exaggerated phraseology.
And in conclusion, I repeat my regret, already expressed, concerning
this name _materialism_, which is not justified in this case, gives
rise to numerous misunderstandings, and is a cause of derision to
opponents. So far as history is concerned, I would gladly keep to the
name _realistic view of history_, which denotes the opposition to all
teleology and metaphysics within the sphere of history, and combines
both the contribution made by socialism to historical knowledge and
those contributions which may subsequently be brought from elsewhere.
Hence my friend Labriola ought not to attach too much importance, in
his serious thoughts, to the adjectives _final and definite_, which
have slipped from his pen. Did he not once tell me himself that Engels
still hoped for other discoveries which might help us to understand
that mystery, made by ourselves, and which is _History_?
_May, 1896._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Del materialismo storico, dilucidazione preliminare_, Rome, E.
Loescher, 1896. See the earlier work by the same author: _In memoria
del 'Manifesto dei communisti,'_ 2nd ed. Rome, E. Loescher, 1895.
[2] I refer to the works of Professor Achille Loria.
[3] He calls it on one occasion: 'the final and definite philosophy of
history.'
[4] _Beiträge zur Geschichte des Materialismus_, Stuttgart, 1896.
[5] See, for example, the comments upon some of Marx's statements, in
the article _Progrès et développement_ in the _Devenir Social_ for
March, 1896.
[6] For this reason I do not, like Labriola, call the theory of the
factors a _half-theory_; nor do I like the comparison with the ancient
doctrine, now abandoned in physics, physiology and psychology, of
physical forces, vital forces and mental faculties.
[7] See a letter dated 21st September 1890, published in the Berlin
review, _Der Socialistische Akademiker_, No 19, 1st October 1895.
Another, dated 25th January 1894, is printed in No 20, 16th October,
of the same review.
[8] He even distinguishes between the _economic interpretation_ and
the _materialistic view of history_. By the first term he means 'those
attempts at analysis, which taking separately on the one hand the
economic forms and categories, and on the other for example, law,
legislation, politics, custom, proceed to study the mutual influences
of the different sides of life, thus abstractly and subjectively
distinguished.' By the second, on the contrary, 'the organic view of
history' of the 'totality and unity of social life,' where economics
itself 'is melted into the tide of a process, to appear afterwards in
so many morphological stages, in each of which it forms the basis
relatively to the rest which corresponds to and agrees with it.'
[9] _Utopia_, L. ii (THOMÆ MORI angli _Opera_, Louvain 1566, _f._ 18.)
[10] 'Hateful Force rules the world and calls itself Justice.'
[11] From this point of view it is worth while to note the antipathy
which leaks out in socialist writings towards Schiller, the poet of
the Kantian morality æsthetically modified, who has become the
favourite poet of the German middle classes.
_CHAPTER II._ CONCERNING HISTORICAL MATERIALISM VIEWED AS A SCIENCE OF
SOCIAL ECONOMICS
_1. Relation between Professor Stammler's book on historical
materialism and Marxism: Distinction between pure
economics and general historical economics: Socialism not
dependent on abstract sociological theory: Stammler's
classification of the social sciences: His definition of
society: Of social economics: Of social teleology: Nature
of Stammler's social science does not provide abstract
sociology: Social economics must be either pure economics
applied to society or a form of history._
The attentive reader of Professor Stammler's book,[12] realises at the
outset that it treats of the materialistic theory of history not as a
fruitful guide to the interpretation of historical fact, but as a
_science_ or _philosophy of society_.
A number of attempts have been made, based in the first instance on
Marx's statements, to build up on these statements a general theory of
history or of society. It is on these attempts then, and not on the
least bold amongst them, that Stammler bases his work, making them the
starting point of his criticism and reconstruction. It may be
precisely on this account that he chooses to discuss historical
materialism in the form given to it by Engels,--which he calls the
most complete, the _authentic_(!) statement of the principles of
social materialism. He prefers this form to that of Marx, which he
thinks too disconnected; and which is, indeed, less easily reduced to
abstract generalities; whereas Engels was one of the first to give to
historical materialism a meaning more important than its original one.
To Engels, also, as is well known, is due the very name _materialism_
as applied to this view of history.
We cannot, indeed, deny that the materialistic view of history has in
fact developed in two directions, distinct _in kind_ if not _in
practice_, viz.: (1) _a movement relating to the writing of history_,
and (2) _a science_ and _philosophy of society_. Hence there is no
ground for objecting to Stammler's procedure, when he confines himself
to this second problem, and takes it up at the point to which he
thinks that the followers of historical materialism have brought it.
But it should be clearly pointed out that he does not concern himself
at all with the problems of historical method. He leaves out of
account that is, what, for some people--and for me amongst them--is
the side of this movement of thought which is of living and scientific
interest.
Professor Stammler remarks how in the propositions employed by the
believers in historical materialism: '_the economic factor dominates
the other factors of social life_,' '_the economic factor is
fundamental and the others are dependent_,' and the like, the concept
economic has never been defined. He is justified in making this
remark, and in attaching the greatest importance to it, if he regards
and interprets those propositions as assertions of _laws_, as strict
propositions of social science. To use as essential in statements of
this kind, a concept which could neither be defined nor explained, and
which therefore remained a mere word, would indeed be somewhat odd.
But his remark is entirely irrelevant when these propositions are
understood as: 'summaries of empirical observations, by the help of
which concrete social facts may be explained.' I do not think that any
sensible person has ever expected to find in those expressions an
accurate and philosophical definition of concepts; yet all sensible
people readily understand to what class of facts they refer. The word
_economic_ here, as in ordinary language, corresponds, not to a
concept, but to a _group_ of rather diverse representations, some of
which are not even qualitative in content, but quantitative. When it
is asserted, that in interpreting history we must look chiefly at the
_economic factors_, we think at once of technical conditions, of the
distribution of wealth, of classes and sub-classes bound together by
definite common interests, and so on. It is true these different
representations cannot be reduced to a single concept, but no matter,
there is no question of that: here we are in an entirely different
_sphere_ from that in which abstract questions are discussed.
This point is not without interest and may be explained more in
detail. If _economic_ be understood in its strict sense, for example,
in the sense in which it is employed in pure economics, _i.e._, if by
it be meant the axiom according to which all men seek the greatest
satisfaction with the least possible effort, it is plain that to say
that this _factor_ plays a part (essential, dominant, or equal to that
of the others) in social life, would tell us nothing concrete. The
economic axiom is a very general and purely a formal principle of
conduct. It is inconceivable that anyone should act without applying,
well or ill, the very principle of every action, _i.e._, the economic
principle. Worse still it _economic_ be taken in the sense which, as
we shall see, Professor Stammler gives to it. He understands by this
word: 'all concrete social facts'; in which sense it would at once
become absurd to assert that the economic factor, _i.e._, _all social
facts in the concrete_ dominated, a part of these facts! Thus in order
to give a meaning to the word _economic_ in this proposition, it is
necessary to leave the abstract and formal; to assign definite ends to
human action; to have in mind an 'historical man,' or rather the
average man of history, or of a longer or shorter period of history;
to think, for example, of the need for _bread_, for _clothes_, for
_sexual relations_, for the so-called _moral satisfactions_, esteem,
vanity, power and so on. The phrase _economic factor_ now refers to
groups of concrete facts, which are built up in common speech, and
which have been better defined from the actual application made of the
above-mentioned propositions in historical narrative and in the
practical programmes of Marx and his followers.
In the main, this is recognised by Professor Stammler himself when he
gives an admirable explanation of the current meaning of the
expressions: _economic facts_ and _political facts_, revolutions _more
political than economic_ and vice versa. Such distinctions, he says,
can only be understood in the concrete, in reference to the aims
pursued by the different sections of society, and to the special
problems of social life. According to him, however, Marx's work does
not deal with such _trifling matters_: as, for instance, that
so-called economic life influences ideas, science, art and so on: old
lumber of little consequence. Just as philosophical materialism does
not consist in the assertion that bodily facts have an influence over
spiritual, but rather in the making of these latter a mere appearance,
without reality, of the former: so historical materialism must consist
in asserting that economics is the true _reality_ and that law is a
fallacious _appearance_.
But, with all deference to Professor Stammler, we believe that these
_trifling matters_, to which he contemptuously refers, are precisely
what are dealt with in Marx's propositions; and, moreover, we think
them neither so trifling nor of such little consequence. Hence
Professor Stammler's book does not appear to us a criticism of the
most vital part of historical materialism, viz., of a movement or
school of historians. The criticism of history is made by history; and
historical materialism is history made or _in the making_.
Nor does it provide the starting point for a criticism of _socialism_,
as the programme of a definite social movement. Stammler deceives
himself when he thinks that socialism is based on the materialistic
philosophy of history as he expounds it: on which philosophy are
based, on the contrary, the illusions and caprices of some or of many
socialists. Socialism cannot depend on an abstract sociological
theory, since the basis would be inadequate precisely because it was
abstract; nor can it depend on a philosophy of history as rhythmical
or of little stability, because the basis would be transitory. On the
contrary, it is a complex fact and results from different elements;
and, so far as concerns history, socialism does not presuppose a
_philosophy of history_, but _an historical conception determined by
the existing conditions of society and the manner in which this has
come about_. If we put on one side the doctrines superimposed
subsequently, and read again Marx's pages without prejudice, we shall
then see that he had, at bottom, no other meaning when he referred to
history as one of the factors justifying socialism.
'The necessity for the socialisation of the means of production is not
proved scientifically.' Stammler means that the concept of _necessity_
as employed by many Marxians, is erroneous; that the denial of
teleology is absurd, and that hence the assertion of the socialisation
of the means of production as the social programme is not logically
accounted for. This does not hinder this assertion from being possibly
quite true. Either because, in addition to logical demonstrations
there are fortunate intuitions, or because a conclusion can be true
although derived from a false premiss: it suffices, obviously, that
there should be two errors which cancel one another. And this would be
so in our case. The denial of teleology; the tacit acceptance of this
same teleology: here is a method scientifically incorrect with a
conclusion that may be valid. It remains to examine the whole tissue
of experiences, deductions, aspirations and forecasts in which
socialism really consists; and over which Stammler passes
indifferently, content to have brought to light an error in the
philosophical statement of a remote postulate, an error which some, or
it may be many, of the supporters and politicians of socialism commit.
All these reservations are needed in order to fix the scope of
Stammler's investigation; but it would be a mistake to infer from them
that we reject the starting point of the inquiry itself. Historical
materialism--says Professor Stammler--has proved unable to give us a
valid _science of society_: we, however, believe that this was not its
main or original object. The two statements come practically to the
same thing: the science of society is not contained in the literature
of the materialistic theory. Professor Stammler adds that although
historical materialism does not offer an acceptable social theory, it
nevertheless gives a _stimulus of the utmost intensity_ towards the
formation of such a theory. This seems to us a matter of merely
individual psychology: suggestions and stimuli, as everyone knows,
differ according to the mind that receives them. The literature of
historical materialism has always aroused in us a desire to study
history in the concrete, _i.e._, to reconstruct the actual historical
process. In Professor Stammler, on the contrary, it arouses a desire
to throw aside this meagre empirical history, and to work with
abstractions in order to establish concepts and general points of
view. The problems which he sets before himself, might be arrived at
psychologically by many other paths.
There is a tendency, at present, to enlarge unduly the boundaries of
social studies. But Stammler rightly claims a definite and special
subject for what ought to be called _social science_; that is
_definite social data_. Social science must include nothing which has
not _sociability_ as its determining cause. How can ethics ever be
social science, since it is based on cases of conscience which evade
all social rules? _Custom_ is the social fact, not _morality_. How can
_pure economics_ or _technology_ ever be social science, since those
concepts are equally applicable to the isolated individual and to
societies? Thus in studying _social data_ we shall see that,
considered in general, they give rise to two distinct theories. The
first theory regards the concept _society_ from the _causal_
standpoint; the second regards it from the _teleological_ standpoint.
Causality and teleology cannot be substituted the one for the other;
but one forms the complement of the other.
If, then, we pass from the general and abstract to the concrete, we
have society as existing in history. The study of the facts which
develop in concrete society Stammler consigns to a science which he
calls _social (or political, or national) economics_. From such facts
may still be abstracted the mere form, _i.e._, the collection of rules
supplied by history by which they are governed; and this may be
studied independently of the matter. Thus we get _jurisprudence_, or
the technical science of law; which is always bound up inseparably
with a given actual historical material, which it works up by
scientific method, endeavouring to give it unity and coherence.
Finally, amongst social studies are also included those investigations
which aim at judging and determining whether a given social order is
as it ought to be; and whether attempts to preserve or change it are
objectively justified. This section may be called that of practical
social problems. By such definitions and divisions Professor Stammler
exhausts every possible form of social study. Thus we should have the
following scheme:
{ General Study { Causal.
{ of Society. { Teleological.
{ { of the form
{ { (technical science
{ { of law).
{ {
SOCIAL SCIENCE. { {
{ Study of Concrete { of the matter
{ Society. { (social economics).
{ { of the possible,
{ { (practical problems).
We believe that this table correctly represents his views, although
given in our own way, and in words somewhat different from those used
by him. A new treatment of the social sciences, the work of serious
and keen ability, such as Stammler seems to possess, cannot fail to
receive the earnest attention of all students of a subject which is
still so vague and controversial. Let us examine it then section by
section.
The first investigation relating to society, that concerned with
causality, would be directed to solving the problem of the _nature_ of
society. Many definitions have been given of this up to the present:
and none of them can be said to be generally accepted, or even to
claim wide support. Stammler indeed, rejects, after criticism, the
definitions of Spencer or Rümelin, which appear to him to be the most
important and to be representative of all the others. Society is not
an _organism_ (Spencer), nor is it merely something opposed to
_legalised society_ (Rümelin): Society, says Stammler, is '_life lived
by men in common, subject to rules which are externally binding_.'
These rules must be understood in a very wide sense, as all those
which bind men living together to something which is satisfied by
outward performance. They are divided, however, into two large
classes: rules properly speaking _legal_, and rules of _convention_.
The second class includes the precepts of propriety and of custom, the
code of knightly honour, and so on. The distinctive test lies in the
fact that the latter class are merely _hypothetical_, while the
former are imposed without being desired by those subjected to them.
The whole assemblage of rules, legal and conventional, Stammler calls
social _form_. Under these rules, obeying them, limiting them and even
breaking them men act in order to satisfy their desires; in this, and
in this alone, human life consists. The assemblage of concrete facts
which men produce when working together in society, _i.e._, under the
assumption of social rules, Stammler calls _social matter_, or _social
economics_. Rules, and actions under rules; these are the two elements
of which every social datum consists. If the rules were lacking, we
should be outside society; we should be animals or gods, as says the
old proverb: if the actions were lacking there would remain only an
empty form, built up hypothetically by thought, and no portion of
which was actually real. Thus social life appears as a single fact: to
separate its two constituent factors means either to destroy it, or to
reduce it to empty form. The law governing changes within society
cannot be found in something which is extra social; not in technique
and discovery, nor in the workings of supposed natural laws, nor in
the influence of great men, of mysterious racial and national spirit;
but it must be sought in the very centre of the social fact itself.
Hence it is wrong to speak of a causal bond between law and economics
or vice versa: the relation between law and economics is that between
the rule and the things ruled, not one of cause and effect. The
determining cause of social movements and changes is then ultimately
to be found in the actual working out of social rules, which precede
such changes. This concrete working out, these actions accomplished
under rules, may produce (1) social mutations which are entirely
_quantitative_ (in the number of social facts of one or another kind);
(2) mutations which are also _qualitative_ consisting that is in
changes in the rules themselves. Hence the _circle of social life_:
rules, social facts arising under them; ideas, opinions, desires,
efforts resulting from the facts; changes in the rules. When and how
this circle originated, that is to say when and how social life arose
on the earth, is a question for history, which does not concern the
theorist. Between social life and non-social life there are no
gradations, theoretically there is a gulf. But as long as social life
exists, there is no escape from the circle described above.
The form and matter of social life thus come into conflict, and from
this conflict arises change. By what test can the issue of the
conflict be decided? To appeal to facts, to invent a causal necessity
which may agree with some ideal necessity is absurd. In addition to
the law of social _causality_, which has been expounded, there must be
a law of ends and ideals, _i.e._, a _social teleology_. According to
Stammler, historical materialism identifies, nor would it be the only
theory to attempt such an identification, _causality_ and _teleology_;
but it, too, cannot escape from the logical contradictions which such
assertions contain. Much praise has been given to that section of
Professor Stammler's book in which he shows how teleological
assumptions are constantly implied by historical materialism in all
its assertions of a practical nature. But we confess that the
discovery seems to us exceedingly easy, not to be compared to that of
Columbus about the egg. Here again we must point out that the _pivot_
of the Marxian doctrine lies in the _practical problem_ and not in the
_abstract theory_. The denial of finality is, at bottom, the denial of
a merely subjective and peculiar finality. And here, too, although the
criticism as applied to historical materialism seems to us hardly
accurate, we agree with Stammler's conclusion, _i.e._, that it is
necessary to construct, or better to reconstruct, with fresh material,
a theory of social teleology.
Let us omit, for the present, an examination of Stammler's
construction of teleology, which includes some very fine passages
(_e.g._ the criticism of the anarchist doctrine) and ask instead: What
is this social science of Stammler, of which we have stated the
striking and characteristic features? The reader will have little
difficulty in discovering that the second investigation, that
concerning social teleology, is nothing but a modernised _philosophy
of law_. And the first? Is it that long desired and hitherto vainly
sought _general sociology_? Does it give us a new and acceptable
concept of society? To us it appears evident that the first
investigation is nothing but a _formal science of law_. In it
Professor Stammler studies _law as a fact_, and hence he cannot find
it except in _society subjected to rules imposed from without_. In the
second, he studies law as an _ideal_ and constructs the philosophy
(imperative) of law. We are not here questioning the _value_ of the
investigation, but its _nature_. The present writer is convinced that
social data leave no place for an abstract independent science.
Society is a _living together_; the kind of phenomena which appear in
this life together is the concern of descriptive history. But it is
perfectly possible to study this life together from a given point of
view, _e.g._, from the legal point of view, or, in general, from that
of the legal and non-legal rules to which it can be subjected; and
this Stammler has done. And, in so doing, he has examined the nature
of law, separating the concrete individual laws and the ideal type of
law; which he has then studied apart. This is the reason why
Stammler's investigation seems to us a truly scientific investigation
and very well carried out, but not an abstract and general science _of
society_. Such a science is for us inconceivable, just as a formal
science of law is, on the contrary, perfectly conceivable.
As to the second investigation, that concerning teleology, there would
be some difficulty in including it in the number of sciences if it be
admitted that ideals are not subjects for science. But here Professor
Stammler himself comes to our assistance by assigning the foundation
of social teleology to philosophy, which he defines as the science of
the True and of the Good, the science of the Absolute, and understands
in a non-formal sense.
Professor Stammler speaks readily of a _monism_ of the social life,
and accepts as suitable and accurate the name _materialism_ as applied
to Marx's conception of history, and connects this _materialism_ with
metaphysical materialism, applying to it also Lange's statement, viz.,
that 'materialism may be the first and lowest step of philosophy, but
it is also the most substantial and solid.' For him historical
materialism offers truth, but not the whole truth, since it regards as
real the _matter_ only and not the _form_ of social life; hence the
necessity of completing it by restoring the _form_ to its place, and
fixing the relation between _form_ and _matter_, combining the two in
the unity of _social life_. We doubt whether Engels and his followers
ever understood the phrase _social materialism_ in the sense which
Stammler assigns to it. The parallel drawn between it and metaphysical
materialism seems to us somewhat arbitrary.
We come to the group of concrete sciences, _i.e._, those which have
for their subject society as given in history. No one who has had
occasion to consider the problem of the classification of the
sciences, will be inclined to give the character of independent and
autonomous sciences to studies of the practical problems of this or
that society, and to jurisprudence, and the technical study of law.
This latter is only an interpretation or explanation of a given
existing legal system, made either for practical reasons, or as simple
historical knowledge. But what we think merits attention more than
these questions of terminology and classification, is the conception
of _social economics_, advanced by Stammler; of the second, that is,
of the concrete social sciences, enumerated above. The difficulties
arising out of this conception are more serious, and centre on the
following points; whether it is a new and valid conception, or whether
it should be reduced to something already known; or finally whether it
is not actually erroneous.
Stammler holds forth at length against economics regarded as a science
in itself, which has its own laws and which has its source in an
original and irreducible economic principle. It is a mistake, he says,
to put forward an abstract economic science and subdivide it into
economic science relating to the individual and social economic
science. There is no ground of union between these two sciences,
because the economics of the isolated individual offers us only
concepts which are dealt with by the natural sciences and by
technology, and is nothing but an assemblage of simple natural
observations, explained by means of physiology and individual
psychology. Social economics, on the other hand, offers the peculiar
and characteristic conditions of the _externally binding rules_, under
which activities develop. And what can an economic principle be if not
a hypothetical maxim: the man who wishes to secure this or that object
of subjective satisfaction must employ these or those means, 'a maxim
which is more or less generally obeyed, and sometimes violated'? The
dilemma lies then between the natural and technological consideration
and the social one: _there is no third thing_. '_Ein Drittes ist nicht
da!_' This Stammler frequently reiterates, and always in the same
words. But the dilemma (whose unfortunate inspiration he owes to Kant)
does not hold, it is a case of a trilemma. Besides the concrete social
facts, and besides the technological and natural knowledge, there is a
third thing, viz., the economic principle, or hedonistic postulate, as
it is preferred to call it. Stammler asserts that this third thing is
not _equal in value_ to the two first ones, that it comes as a
_secondary_ consideration, and we confess that we do not clearly
understand what this means. What he ought to prove is that this
principle _can be reduced_ to the two former ones, viz., to the
technical or to the social conditions. This he has not done, and
indeed we do not know how it could be done. That economics, thus
understood, is not social science, we are so much the more inclined to
agree since he himself says as much in calling it _pure_ economics,
_i.e._, something built up by abstraction from particular facts and
hence also from the social fact. But this does not mean that it is not
applicable to society, and cannot give rise to inferences in _social
economics_. The social factor is then assumed as a medium through
which the economic principle displays its influence and produces
definite results. Granted the economic principle, and granted, for
example, the legal regulation of private property in land, and the
existence of land differing in quality, and granted other conditions,
then the fact of rent of land arises of necessity. In this and other
like examples, which could easily be brought forward, we have laws of
social and political economics, _i.e._, deductions from the economic
principle acting under given legal conditions. It is true that, under
other legal conditions, the effects would be different; but none of
the effects would occur were it not for the economic nature of man,
which is a necessary postulate, and not to be identified with the
postulate of technical knowledge, or with any other of the social
rules. _To know_ is not to _will_; and _to will in accordance with
objective rules_ is not _to will in accordance with ideals which are
merely subjective and individual_ (economic).
Stammler might say that if the science of economics thus interpreted
is not properly a social science, he leaves it on one side, because
his object is to construct a science which may be fully entitled to
the name of _social economics_. But--let us, too, construct a
dilemma!--this social economics, to which he aspires, will either be
just economic science applied to definite social conditions, in the
sense now indicated, or it will be a form of historical knowledge. No
third thing exists. _Ein Drittes ist nicht da!_
And indeed, for Stammler an _economic phenomenon_ is not any single
social fact whatever, but a group of homogeneous facts, which offer
the marks of _necessity_. The number of economic facts required to
form the group and give rise to an economic phenomenon cannot be
determined in general; but can be seen in each case. By the formation
of these groups, he says, social economics does not degenerate into a
register of data concerning fact, nor does it become purely mechanical
statistics of material already given which it has merely to enumerate.
Social economics should not merely examine into the change in the
actual working out of one and the same social order, but remains, now
as formerly, the seat of all knowledge of actual social life. It must
start from the knowledge of a given social existence, both in regard
to its form and in regard to its content; and enlarge and deepen it up
to the most minute peculiarity of its actual working out, with the
accuracy of a technical science, the conditions and concrete objects
of which are clearly indicated; and thus free the reality of social
life from every obscurity. Hence it must make for itself a series of
concepts, which will serve the purpose of such an explanation.
Now this account of the concept of _social economics_ is capable of
two interpretations. The first is that it is intended to describe a
science, which has indeed for its object (as is proper for sciences)
_necessary_ connections, in the strict sense of the word. But how
establish this _necessity_? How make the concepts suitable to _social
economics_? Evidently by allowing ourselves to be guided by a
principle, by abstracting a single side from concrete reality; and if
it is to be for economics this principle can be none other than the
_economic principle_, and social economics will consider only the
economic side of a given social life. Profits, rent, interest, labour
value, usury, wages, crises, will then appear as economic phenomena
necessary under given conditions of the social order, through which
the economic principle exerts its influence.
The other interpretation is that Stammler's social economics does not
indeed accomplish the dissolving work of analysis but considers this
or that social life in the concrete. In this case it could do nothing
but _describe_ a given society. To _describe_ does not mean to
_describe in externals and superficially_; but, more accurately, to
free that group of facts from every obscurity, showing what it
actually is, and describing it, as far as possible in its naked
reality. But this is, in fact, historical knowledge, which may assume
varied forms, or rather may define in various ways its own subject. It
may study a _society_--in all its aspects during a given period of
time, or at a given moment of its existence, or it may even take up
one or more aspects of social life and study them as they present
themselves in different societies and at different times, and so on.
It is history always, even when it avails itself of _comparison_ as an
instrument of research. And such a study will not have to make
_concepts_, but will take them as it needs them from those sciences,
which do, in fact, elaborate concepts.
Thus it would have been to great interest to see the working out of
this new _social economics_ of Stammler a little more clearly, so that
we might determine exactly in which of the aforesaid two classes it
ought to be placed. Whether it is merely political economy in the
ordinary sense, or whether it is the concrete study of single
societies and of groups of them. In the latter case Stammler has added
another name or rather two names; _science of the matter of social
life_ and _social economics_, to the many phrases by which of late the
old _History_ has been disguised (social history, history of
civilisation, concrete sociology, comparative sociology, psychology of
the populace and of the classes, etc.). And the gain, if we may be
allowed to say so, will not be great.
_September 1898._
FOOTNOTES:
[12] _Wirthschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen
Geschichtsauffassung_, eine socialphilophische Untersuchung, DR
RUDOLPH STAMMLER, Professor at the University of Halle, A.S., Leipzig,
Veit U.C., 1896, pp. viii-668.
_CHAPTER III._ CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM OF SOME
CONCEPTS OF MARXISM
I
OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM IN MARX'S 'DAS KAPITAL'
_Das Kapital an abstract investigation: His society is not
this or that society: Treats only of capitalist society:
Assumption of equivalence between value and labour:
Varying views about meaning of this law: Is a postulate
or standard of comparison: Question as to value of this
standard: Is not a moral ideal: Treats of economic
society in so far as is a working society: Shows special
way in which problem is solved in capitalist society;
Marx's deductions from it._
Notwithstanding the many expositions, criticisms, summaries and even
abbreviated extracts in little works of popular propaganda, which have
been made of Karl Marx's work, it is far from easy, and demands no
small effort of philosophical and abstract thought, to understand the
exact _nature_ of the investigation which Marx carried out. In
addition to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, it does not
appear that the author himself always realised fully the peculiar
character of his investigation, that is to say its theoretical
distinctness from all other investigations which may be made with his
economic material; and, throughout, he despised and neglected all such
preliminary and exact explanations as might have made his task plain.
Then, moreover, account must be taken of the strange composition of
the book, a mixture of general theory, of bitter controversy and
satire, and of historical illustrations or digressions, and so
arranged that only Loria, (fortunate man!), can declare _Das Kapital_
to be the _finest and most symmetrical_ of existing books; it being,
in reality, un-symmetrical, badly arranged and out of proportion,
sinning against all the laws of good taste; resembling in some
particulars Vico's _Scienza nuova_. Then too there is the Hegelian
phraseology beloved by Marx, of which the tradition is now lost, and
which, even within that tradition he adapted with a freedom that at
times seems not to lack an element of mockery. Hence it is not
surprising that _Das Kapital_ has been regarded, at one time or
another, as an economic treatise, as a philosophy of history, as a
collection of sociological laws, so-called, as a moral and political
book of reference, and even, by some, as a bit of narrative history.
Nevertheless the inquirer who asks himself what is the _method_ and
what the _scope_ of Marx's investigation, and puts on one side, of
course, all the historical, controversial and descriptive portions
(which certainly form an organic part of the book but not of the
fundamental investigation), can at once reject most of the
above-mentioned definitions, and decide clearly these two points:
(1) As regards _method, Das Kapital_ is without doubt an _abstract_
investigation; the capitalist society studied by Marx, is not this or
that society, historically existing, in France or in England, nor the
modern society of the most civilised nations, that of Western Europe
and America. It is an ideal and formal society, deduced from certain
hypotheses, which could indeed never have occurred as actual facts in
the course of history. It is true that these hypotheses correspond to
a great extent to the historical conditions of the modern civilised
world; but this, although it may establish the importance and interest
of Marx's investigation because the latter helps us to an
understanding of the workings of the social organisms which closely
concern us, does not alter its nature. Nowhere in the world will
Marx's categories be met with as living and real existences, simply
because they are abstract categories, which, in order to live must
lose some of their qualities and acquire others.
(2) As regards _scope_, Marx's investigation does not cover the whole
field of economic fact, nor even that one ultimate and dominant
portion, whence all economic facts have their source, like rivers
flowing from a mountain. It limits itself, on the contrary, to one
special economic system, that which occurs in a society with private
property in capital, or, as Marx says, in the phrase peculiar to him,
_capitalist_. There remained untouched, not only the other systems
which have existed in history and are possible in theory, such as
monopolist society, or society with collective capital, but also the
series of economic phenomena common to the different societies and to
individual economics. To sum up, as regards _method, Das Kapital_ is
not an historical description, and as regards _scope_, it is not an
economic _treatise_, much less an _encyclopedia_.
But, even when these two points are settled, the real essence of
Marx's investigation is not yet explained. Were _Das Kapital_ nothing
but what we have so far defined, it would be merely an _economic
monograph on the laws of capitalist society_.[13] Such a monograph
Marx could only have made in one way: by deciding on these laws, and
explaining them by general laws, or by the fundamental concepts of
economics; by reducing, in short, the complex to the simple, or
passing, by deductive reasoning, and with the addition of fresh
hypotheses, from the simple to the complex. He would thus have shown,
by precise exposition, how the apparently most diverse facts of the
economic world are ultimately governed by one and the same law; or,
what is the same thing, how this law is differently refracted as it
takes effect through different organisations, without changing itself,
since otherwise the means and indeed the test of the explanation would
be lacking. Work of this nature had been already carried out, to a
great extent, in Marx's time, and since then it has been developed yet
further by economists, and has attained a high degree of perfection,
as may be seen, for instance, in the economic treatises of our Italian
writers, Pantaleoni and Pareto. But I much doubt whether Marx would
have become an economist in order to devote himself to a species of
research of almost solely theoretical, or even scholastic, interest.
His whole personality as a practical man and a revolutionist,
impatient of abstract investigation which had no close connection with
the interests of actual life, would have recoiled from such a course.
If _Das Kapital_ was to have been merely an economic monograph, it
would be safe to wager that it would never have come into existence.
What then did Marx accomplish, and to what treatment did he subject
the phenomena of capitalist society, if not to that of pure economic
theory? _Marx assumed, outside the field of pure economic theory, a
proposition; the famous equivalence between value and labour; i.e. the
proposition that the value of the commodities produced by labour is
equal to the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce them._
It is only with this assumption that his special investigation
begins.
But what connection has this proposition with the laws of capitalist
society? or what part does it play in the investigation? This Marx
never explicitly states; and it is on this point that the greatest
confusions have arisen, and that the interpreters and critics have
been most at a loss.
Some of them have explained the law of labour-value as an _historical_
law, peculiar to capitalist society, all of whose manifestations it
determines;[14] others rightly seeing that the manifestations of
capitalist society are by no means determined by such a law, but
comply with the general economic motives characteristic of the
economic nature of man, have rejected the law as an absurdity at which
Marx arrived by pressing to its extreme consequences an unfortunate
concept of Ricardo.
Criticism was thus bewildered between entire acceptance, combined with
a clearly erroneous interpretation, and entire and summary rejection
of Marx's treatment; until, in recent years, and especially after the
appearance of the third and posthumous volume of _Das Kapital_, it
began to seek out and follow a better path. In truth, despite its
eager defenders, the Marxian doctrine has always remained obscure;
and, despite contemptuous and summary condemnation, it has always
displayed also an obstinate vitality not usually possessed by nonsense
and sophistry. For this reason it is to the credit of Professor Werner
Sombart, of Breslau University, that he has declared, in one of his
lucid writings, that Marx's practical conclusions may be refuted from
a political standpoint, but that, scientifically, it is above all
important to _understand_ his ideas.[15]
Sombart, then, breaking openly with the interpretation of Marx's law
of value as a _real_ law of economic phenomena, and giving a fuller,
and I may say, a bolder expression to the timid opinions already
stated by another (C. Schmidt), says, that _Marx's law of value_ is
not _an empirical but a conceptual fact_ (Keine empirische, sondern
eine gedankliche Thatsache); that Marx's value is a _logical fact_
(eine logische Thatsache), which aids our thought in understanding the
actual realities of economic life.[16]
This interpretation, in its general sense, was accepted by Engels, in
an article written some months before his death and published
posthumously. To Engels it appeared that 'it could not be condemned as
inaccurate, but that, nevertheless, it was too vague and might be
expressed with greater precision.'[17]
The acute and courteous remarks on the theory of value, published
lately in an article in the _Journal des Economistes_ by an able
French Marxian, Sorel, indicate a movement in the same direction. In
these remarks he acknowledges that there is no way of passing from
Marx's theory to actual phenomena of economic life, and that, although
it may offer elucidation, in a somewhat limited sense, it does not
appear further that it could ever _explain_, in the scientific meaning
of the word.[18]
And now too Professor Labriola, in a hasty glance at the same subject,
referring clearly to Sombart, and partly agreeing and partly
criticising, writes: 'the theory of value does not denote an empirical
_factum_ nor does it express a merely _logical proposition_, as some
have imagined; but it is the _typical premise_ without which all the
rest would be unthinkable.'[19]
Labriola's phrase appears to me, in fact, somewhat more accurate than
Sombart's; who, moreover, shows himself dissatisfied with his own
term, like someone who has not yet a quite definite concept in view,
and hence cannot find a satisfactory phrase. '_Conceptual fact_,'
'_logical fact_' expresses much too little since it is evident that
all sciences are interwoven from logical facts, that is from concepts.
Marx's labour-value is not only a logical generalisation, it is also
_a fact conceived and postulated as typical_, _i.e._ something more
than a mere logical concept. Indeed it has not the inertia of the
abstract but the force of a concrete fact,[20] which has in regard to
capitalist society, in Marx's investigation, the function of a term of
comparison, of a standard, of a _type_.[21]
This standard or type being postulated, the investigation, for Marx,
takes the following form. Granted that value is equal to the labour
socially necessary, it is required to show _with what divergencies
from this standard_ the prices of commodities are fixed in capitalist
society, and how labour-power itself acquires a price and becomes a
commodity. To speak plainly, Marx stated the problem in unappropriate
language; he represented this typical value itself, postulated by him
as a standard, as being the _law_ governing the economic phenomena of
capitalist society. And it is the law, if he likes, but in the
_sphere of his conceptions_, not _in economic reality_. We may
conceive the divergencies from a standard as the revolt of reality
when confronted by this standard which we have endowed with the
dignity of law.
From a formal point of view there is nothing absurd about the
investigation undertaken by Marx. It is a usual method of scientific
analysis to regard a phenomenon not only as it exists, but also as it
would be if one of its factors were altered, and, in comparing the
hypothetical with the real phenomenon, to conceive the first as
diverging from the second, which is postulated as fundamental, or the
second as diverging from the first, which is postulated in the same
manner. If I build up by deductive reasoning the moral rules which
develop in two social groups which are at war one against another, and
if I show how they differ from the moral rules which develop in a
state of peace, I should be making something _analogous_ to the
comparison worked out by Marx. Nor would there be great harm (although
the expression would be neither fortunate nor accurate) in saying, in
a figurative sense, that the _law_ of the moral rules in time of war
is the same as that of the rules in time of peace, modified to the new
conditions, and altered in a way which seems, ultimately, inconsistent
with itself. As long as he confines himself to the limits of his
hypothesis Marx proceeds quite correctly. Error could come in only
when he or others confuse the hypothetical with the real, and the
manner of conceiving and of judging with that of existing. As long as
this mistake is avoided, the method is unassailable.
But the formal justification is insufficient: we need another. With a
formally correct method results may be obtained which are meaningless
and unimportant, or mere mental tricks may be performed. To set up an
arbitrary standard of comparison, to compare, and deduce, and to end
by establishing a series of divergencies from this standard; to what
will this lead? It is then, the _standard itself_ which needs
justification: _i.e._ we need to decide what meaning and importance it
may have for us.
This question too, although not stated exactly in this way, has
occurred to Marx's critics; and an answer to it has been already given
some time ago and by many, by saying that the equivalence of value and
labour is an ideal of social ethics, a _moral ideal_. But nothing
could be imagined more mistaken in itself and farther from Marx's
thought than this interpretation. What moral inference can ever be
drawn from the premiss that value is equal to the labour socially
necessary? It we reflect a little, _absolutely none_. The
establishment of this fact tells us nothing about the needs of the
society, which needs will make necessary one or another ethical-legal
system of property and of methods of distribution. Value may certainly
equal labour, nevertheless special historical conditions will make
necessary society organised in castes or in classes, divided into
governing and governed, rulers and ruled; with a resulting unequal
distribution of the products of labour. Value may certainly equal
labour; but even supposing that fresh historical conditions ever make
possible the disappearance of society organised in classes and the
advent of a communistic society, and even supposing that in this
society distribution could take place according to the quantity of
labour contributed by each person, this distribution would still not
be a deduction from the established equivalence between value and
labour, but a standard adopted for special reasons of social
convenience.[22] Nor can it be said that such an equivalence supplies
in itself an idea of perfect justice (even though unrealisable), since
the criterion of justice has no relation to the difference often due
to purely natural causes, in the ability to do more or less social
labour and to produce a greater or smaller value. Thus neither a rule
of abstract justice nor one of convenience and social utility can be
derived from the equivalence between value and labour. Rules of either
kind can only be based on consideration of a quite different grade
from that of a simple economic equation.
Sombart, avoiding this vulgar confusion, has been better advised in
looking for the meaning of the standard set up by Marx in the nature
of society itself, and apart from our moral judgments. Thus he says
that labour is _the economic fact of greater objective importance_,
and that value, in Marx's view, is nothing 'if not the economic
expression of the fact of the socially productive power of labour, as
the basis of economic existence.'
But this investigation appears to me to be merely begun and not yet
worked out to a conclusion; and if I might suggest wherein it needs
completion, I should remark that it is necessary to attempt to give
clearness and precision to this word _objective_, which is either
ambiguous or metaphorical. What is meant by an economically objective
fact? Do not these words suggest rather a mere _presentiment of a
concept_ instead of the distinct vision of this concept itself?