The class divisions of feudal society are not less obvious than those of

chattel slavery. The main division, the widest gulf, divided the feudal

lord and the serf. Often as brutally ill-treated as their

slave-forefathers had been, the feudal serfs from time to time made

abortive struggles. The class distinctions of feudalism were constant,

but the struggles between the lords and the serfs were sporadic, and of

comparatively little moment, just as the risings of their slave

forefathers had been. But alongside of the feudal estate there existed

another class, the free handicraftsmen and peasants, the former

organized into powerful guilds. It was this class, and not the serf

class, which was destined to challenge the rule of the feudal nobility,

and wage war upon it. As the feudal class was a landed class, so the

class represented by the guilds became a moneyed and commercial class,

the pioneers of our modern capitalist class. As Mr. Brooks Adams[117]

has shown very clearly, it was this moneyed, commercial class, which

gave to the king the instrument for weakening and finally overthrowing

feudalism. It was this class which built up the cities and towns from

which was drawn the revenue for the maintenance of a standing army, thus

liberating the king from his dependence upon the feudal lords. The

capitalist class triumphed over the feudal nobility, and its interests

became in their turn the dominant interests in society. Capitalism in

its development effectually destroyed all those institutions of

feudalism which obstructed its progress, leaving only those which were

innocuous and safely to be ignored.

In capitalist society, the main class division is that which separates

the employing, wage-paying class from the employed, wage-receiving

class. Notwithstanding all the elaborate arguments made to prove the

contrary, the frequently heard myth that the interests of Capital and

Labor are identical, and the existence of pacificatory associations

based upon that myth, there is no fact in the whole range of social

phenomena more self-evident than the existence of an inherent,

fundamental antagonism in the relationship of employer and employee. As

individuals, in all other relations, they may have a commonality of

interests, but as employer and employee they are fundamentally and

necessarily opposed. They may belong to the same church, and so have

religious interests in common; they may have common racial interests,

as, for instance, if negroes, in protecting themselves against the

attacks made in a book like _The Clansman_, or, if Jews, in opposing

anti-Semitic movements; as citizens they may have the same civic

interests, be equally opposed to graft in the city government, or

equally interested in the adoption of wise sanitary precautions against

epidemics. They may even have a common industrial interest in the

general sense that they may be equally interested in the development of

the industry in which they are engaged, and fear, equally, the results

of a depression in trade. But their special interests as employer and

employee are antithetical.

It cannot be denied that, in certain circumstances, these other

interests may become so accentuated that the class antagonisms are

momentarily lost sight of, or completely dwarfed in importance; nor is

such a denial implied in the Socialist theory. It is not difficult to

see that in the case of a general uprising against the members of their

race, in which their lives are imperiled, Jewish employers and employees

may forget their _class_ interests and remember only that they are Jews.

So with negroes and other oppressed races. The economic interests of the

class may be engulfed in the solidarity of the race. It is not

difficult, either, to see that in the presence of some great common

danger or calamity, class interests may likewise be completely

subordinated. An admirable example of this occurred at the time of the

San Francisco earthquake and fire. The enormous demand for labor

occasioned by that disaster practically enabled the artisans, most of

whom were organized into unions, to demand and obtain almost fabulous

wages. But there was no thought of taking advantage of the calamity. On

the contrary, the unions immediately announced that they would make no

attempt to do so. Not only that, but they voluntarily waived rules which

in normal times they would have insisted upon with all their powers. The

temporary overshadowing of the economic interests of classes by other

special interests which have been thrust into special prominence, is

not, however, evidence that these class interests do not prevail in

normal times. Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much

criticism of the theory.

The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the

largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The

interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure

from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as

possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept.

The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different

forces. They may be divided by racial differences, for instance; but

while preserving these differences in a large measure, they will tend to

unite upon the basis of their economic interests. Some of the great

labor unions, notably the United Mine Workers,[118] afford remarkable

illustrations of this fact. If the difference of religious interests

leads to division, the same unanimity of economic interests will sooner

or later be developed. No impartial investigator who studies the

influence of a great labor union which includes in its membership

workers of various nationalities and adherents of various religious

creeds, can fail to observe the fact that the community of economic

interests which unites them is a powerful factor making for their

amalgamation into a harmonious civic whole.

With the employers it is the same. They, too, may be divided by a

hundred forces; the competition among them may be keen and fierce, but

common economic interests will tend to unite them against the

organizations of the workers they employ. Racial, religious, social, and

other divisions and distinctions, may be maintained, but they will, in

general, unite for the protection and furtherance of their common

economic interests.

So much, indeed, belongs to the very primer stage of economic theory.

Adam Smith is rather out of fashion nowadays, but there is still much in

"The Wealth of Nations" which will repay our attention. No Socialist

writer, not even Marx, has stated the fundamental principle of the

antagonism between the employing and employed classes more clearly, as

witness the following:--

"The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as

possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the

latter in order to lower the wages of labor.... Masters are always and

everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination,

not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate. To violate this

combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of

reproach to a master among his neighbors and equals.... Masters too

sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of

labor.... These are always conducted with the utmost silence and

secrecy, till the moment of execution.... Such combinations, however,

are frequently resisted by a contrary defensive combination of the

workmen; who sometimes, too, without any provocation of this kind,

combine of their own accord to raise the price of labor. Their usual

pretenses are, sometimes the high price of provisions; sometimes the

great profits which the masters make by their work. But whether these

combinations be offensive or defensive, they are always abundantly heard

of. In order to bring the point to a speedy decision, they have always

recourse to the loudest clamor, and sometimes to the most shocking

violence and outrage. They are desperate, and act with the extravagance

and folly of desperate men, who must either starve, or frighten their

masters into an immediate compliance with their demands. The masters

upon these occasions are just as clamorous upon the other side, and

_never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate,

and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so

much severity against the combinations of servants, laborers, and

journeymen_."[119]

Thus Adam Smith. Were it essential to our present purpose, it would be

easy to quote from all the great economists in support of the Socialist

claim that the interests of the capitalist and those of the laborer are

irreconcilably opposed. That individual workers and employers will be

found who do not recognize their class interests is true, but that fact

by no means invalidates the contention that, in general, men will

recognize and unite upon a basis of common class interests. In both

classes are to be found individuals who attach greater importance to the

preservation of racial, religious, or social, than to economic,

interests. But because the economic interest is fundamental, involving

the very basis of life, the question of food, clothing, shelter, and

comfort, these individuals are and must be exceptions to the general

rule. Workers sink their racial and religious differences and unite to

secure better wages, a reduction of their hours of labor, and better

conditions in general. Employers, similarly, unite to oppose whatever

may threaten their class interests, without regard to other

relationships. The Gentile who is himself an anti-Semite has no qualms

of conscience about employing Jewish workmen, at low wages, to compete

with Gentile workers; he does not object to joining with Jewish

employers in an Employers' Association, if thereby his economic

interests may be safeguarded. And the Jewish employer, likewise, has no

objection to joining with the Gentile employer for mutual protection, or

to the employment of Gentile workers to fill the places of his

employees, members of his own race, who have gone out on strike for

higher wages.

III

The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of

social development, in capitalist countries, as a conflict between the

wage-paying and the wage-paid classes. That is the dominating and

all-absorbing conflict of the industrial age in which we live. True,

there are other class interests more or less involved. This is

especially true in the United States with its enormous agricultural

industry, to which the description of the industrial conflict cannot be

applied. There are the indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain

interests of that large, so-called middle class, composed of farmers,

retailers, professional workers, and so on. The interests of this large

class are not, and cannot be, as definitely defined. They vacillate,

conforming now to the interest of the wage-workers, now to the interest

of the employers. Thus the farmer may oppose an increase in the wages of

farm laborers, because that touches him directly as an employer. His

relation to the farm laborer is substantially that of the capitalist to

the city worker, and his attitude upon that question is the attitude of

the capitalist class as a whole. At the same time, he may heartily favor

an increase of wages for miners, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers,

printers, painters, factory workers, and non-agricultural laborers in

general, for the reason that while a general rise of wages, resulting in

a general rise of prices, will affect him slightly as a consumer, and

compel him to pay more for what he buys, it will benefit him much more

as a seller of the products of his farm. In short, consciously very

often, but unconsciously oftener still, personal or class interests

control our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and actions.

It is impossible with the data at our disposal at present to make such

an analysis of our population as will enable us to determine the

particular class interests of the various groups. Of the twenty-four

million men and boys engaged in industry there are some six million

farmers and tenants; three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm

laborers; eleven million mechanics, laborers, clerks, and servants; one

million five hundred thousand professional workers, agents, and the

like; and about two million employers, large and small. Accurately to

place each of these groups is out of the question until such time as we

have a much more detailed study of our economic life than has yet been

attempted. We may, however, roughly relate some of the groups.

First: It is evident that the interests of the eleven million

wage-earners are, as a whole, opposed to those of the employing class.

There may be exceptions, as in the case of those whose very occupation

as confidential agents of the capitalists, overseers, and the like,

places them outside of the sphere of working-class interests. They may

not receive a salary much above the wage of the mechanic, yet their

function is such as to place them psychologically with the capitalists

rather than with the workers. It is also evident that, while their

_interests_ may be demonstrably antagonistic to those of the employers,

not all of the wage-earners will be _conscious_ of that fact. The

_consciousness_ of class interests develops slowly among rural and

isolated workers, especially as between the small employer and his

employee. And even when there is the consciousness of antagonistic

interests among these workers it is very difficult for them actively to

express it. Hence they cannot play an important part in the actual

conflict of classes.

Second: We may safely place the three million seven hundred and fifty

thousand farm laborers, as regards their economic _interests_, with the

general mass of wage-workers, with one important qualification. So far

as they are in the actual relation of wage-paid laborers, hired by the

month, week, or day, and bearing no other relation to their employers,

they belong, in their economic interests, to the proletariat. But there

are many farm laborers included in our enumeration who do not hold that

relation to their employers. They are the sons of the farmers

themselves, expecting to assume their fathers' positions, and their

position as wage-paid laborers is largely nominal and fictitious. How

many such there are it is impossible to ascertain with anything like

certainty, and we can only say, therefore, that the position of the

class, as such, must be determined without including these. But while

this class has economic interests similar to those of the industrial

proletariat, because of their isolation and scattered position, and

because of the personal relations which they bear to their

employers--farmer and laborer often working side by side, equally hard,

and not infrequently having approximately the same standards of

living--these cannot, to any very great extent, become an active factor

in the class conflict in the same sense as the industrial wage-workers

can, by engaging in strikes, boycotts, and other manifestations of the

class war. Still, they may, and in fact do, play an important role in

the _political_ aspects of the struggle. Let a political movement of the

proletariat arise and it will be found that these agricultural laborers

will join it not less enthusiastically than their fellows from the

factories in the cities. It would probably surprise most thoughtful

Americans if they could see the organization maps in the offices of the

Socialist Party of the United States, dotted with little red-capped pins

denoting local organizations of the party. These are quite as common in

the agricultural states as in the industrial states. So, too, in

Germany. The movement is politically nearly as strong in the agrarian

districts as elsewhere. This is a fact of vital significance, one which

must not be lost sight of in studying the progress of Socialism in

America.

Third: Of the exact position of the remaining groups it is very

difficult to speak with anything like assurance. In an earlier chapter

we have noticed the persistence of the small farm in America, and the

fact that a class of small farmers forms a very important part of our

population. As already observed, the economic condition of the small

farmer is very often little, if any, superior to that of the laborers he

employs. Elsewhere, I have shown that the actual income of the small

farmer is not infrequently less than that of the hired laborer.[120]

This is just as true of the small dealer, and the small manufacturer.

But mere poverty of income, companionship in misery, the sharing of an

equally poor existence, does not suffice to place the farmer in the

proletarian class, as many Socialist writers have shown.[121] The small

farmers constitute a distinct class. They are not, as the small dealers

and manufacturers are, mere remnants of a disappearing class. The class

is a permanent one, apparently, as much so as the class of industrial

wage-workers. As a class it is just as essential to agricultural

production as the industrial proletariat is essential to manufacture. It

is thus a class analogous to the industrial proletariat, and Kautsky has

well said that the small farmer is the "proletariat of the country." The

exploitation of the small farmer is not direct, like that of the

wage-worker by his employer, but indirect, through the great capitalist

trusts and railroads. It also happens that these derive their chief

income from the direct exploitation of the wage-workers, so that the

small farmer and the wage-worker in the city factory have common

exploiters. As they become conscious of this, the two classes will tend

to unite their forces in the one sphere where such unity of action is

possible, the sphere of political action.

This is also true, in some degree at least, of a considerable fraction

of the one million five hundred thousand workers included in the

professional and agent classes, and of the two million employers, the

small dealers and manufacturers being included in this enumeration. That

there is such a considerable fraction of each of these two classes whose

interests lead them to make common cause with the proletariat is not at

all a matter of theory or speculation, but of experience. These classes

are represented very largely in the membership of the Socialist parties

of this country and of Europe.

IV

Although it is sometimes so interpreted, the theory that classes are

based upon commonality of interests does not imply that men are never

actuated by other than selfish motives; that a sordid materialism is the

only motive force at work in the world. Marx and Engels carefully

avoided the use of the word _interests_ in such manner as to suggest

that material interests control the course of history. They invariably

used the term _economic conditions_, and the careful reader will not

fail to perceive that although economic conditions produce interests

which form the basis of class divisions, it is not unusual for men to

act contrary to their personal _interests_ as a result of existing

_conditions_. In general, class interests and personal interests

coincide, but there are certainly occasions when they conflict. Many an

employer, having no quarrel with his employees and confident that he

will be the loser thereby, joins in a fight upon labor unions because he

is conscious that the interests of his class are involved. In a similar

way, workingmen enter upon sympathetic strikes, consciously, at an

immediate loss to themselves, because they place class loyalty before

personal gain. It is significant of class feeling and temper that when

employers act in this manner, and lock out employees with whom they have

no trouble, simply to help other employers to win their battles, they

are lauded by the very newspapers which denounce the workers when they

adopt a like policy.

It is also true that there are individuals in both classes who never

become conscious of their class interests, and steadfastly refuse to

join with the members of their class. The workingman who refuses to join

a union, or who "scabs" when his fellow-workers go out on strike, may

act from ignorance or from sheer self-interest and greed. His action may

be due to his placing personal interest before the larger interest of

his class, or from being too shortsighted to see that ultimately his own

interests and those of his class must merge. Many an employer, likewise,

may refuse to join in any concerted action of his class for either of

these reasons, or he may even rise superior to his class and personal

interests and support the workers because he believes in the justness of

their cause, realizing perfectly well that their gain means loss to him

or to his class. This ought to be a sufficient answer to those shallow

critics who think that they dispose of the class struggle theory of

modern Socialism by enumerating those of its leading exponents who do

not belong to the proletariat.

The influence of class environment upon men's beliefs and ideals is a

subject which our most voluminous ethicists have scarcely touched upon

as yet. It is a commonplace saying that each age has its own standards

of right and wrong, but little effort has been made, if we except the

Socialists, to trace this fact to its source, to the economic conditions

prevailing in the different ages.[122] Still less effort has been made

to account for the different standards held by the different social

classes at the same time, and by which each class judges the others. In

our own day the idea of slavery is generally held in abhorrence. There

was a time, however, when it was almost universally looked upon as a

divine institution, alike by slaveholder and slave. It is simply

impossible to account for this complete revolution of feeling upon any

other hypothesis than that slave-labor then seemed absolutely essential

to the life of the world. The slave lords of antiquity, and, more

recently, the Southern slaveholders in our own country, all believed

that slavery was eternally right. When the slaves took an opposite view

and rebelled, they were believed to be in rebellion against God and

nature. The Church represented the same view just as vigorously as it

now opposes it. The slave owners who held slavery to be a divine

institution, and the priests and ministers who supported them, were just

as honest and sincere in their belief as we are in holding antagonistic

beliefs to-day.

What was accounted a virtue in the slave was accounted a vice in the

slaveholder. Cowardice and a cringing humility were not regarded as

faults in a slave. On the contrary, they were the stock virtues of the

pattern slave and added to the estimation in which he was held, just as

similar traits are valued in personal servants--butlers, waiters,

valets, footmen, and other flunkies--in our own day. But similar traits

in the slaveholder, or the "gentleman" of to-day, would be regarded as

terrible faults. As Mr. Algernon Lee very tersely puts it, "The slave

was not a slave because of his slavish ideals and beliefs; the slave was

slavish in his ideals and beliefs because he lived the life of a

slave."[123]

In the industrial world of to-day we find a similar divergence of

ethical standards. What the laborers regard as wrong, the employers

regard as absolutely and immutably right. The actions of the workers in

forming unions and compelling unwilling members of their own class to

join them, even resorting to the bitter expedient of striking against

them with a view to starving them into submission, seem terribly unjust

to the employers and the class to which the employers belong. To the

workers themselves, on the other hand, such actions have all the

sanctions of conscience. Similarly, many actions of the employers, in

which they themselves see no wrong, seem almost incomprehensibly wicked

to the workers.

Leaving aside the wholesale fraud of our ordinary commercial

advertisements, the shameful adulteration of goods, and a multitude of

other such nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and

instructive to compare the employers' denunciations of "the outrageous

infringement of personal liberty," when the "oppressor" is a labor

union, with some of their everyday practices. The same employers who

loudly, and, let it be said, quite sincerely, condemn the members of a

union who endeavor to bring about the discharge of a fellow-worker

because he declines to join their organization, have no scruples of

conscience about discharging a worker simply because he belongs to a

union, and so effectually "blacklisting" him that it becomes almost or

quite impossible for him to obtain employment at his trade elsewhere.

They do not hesitate to do this secretly, conspiring against the very

life of the worker. While loudly declaiming against the "conspiracy" of

the workers to raise wages, they see no wrong in an "agreement" of

manufacturers or mine owners to reduce wages. If the members of a labor

union should break the law, especially if they should commit an act of

violence during a strike, the organs of capitalist opinion teem with

denunciation, but there is no breath of condemnation for the outrages

committed by employers or their agents against union men and their

families.

During the great anthracite coal strike of 1903, and again during the

disturbances in Colorado in 1904, it was evident to every fair-minded

observer that the mine owners were at least quite as lawless as the

strikers.[124] But there was hardly a scintilla of adverse comment upon

the mine owners' lawlessness in the organs of capitalist opinion, while

they poured forth torrents of righteous indignation at the lawlessness

of the miners. When labor leaders, like the late Sam Parks, for example,

are accused of extortion and receiving bribes, the employers and their

retainers, through pulpit, press, and every other avenue of public

opinion, denounce the culprit, the bribe taker, in unmeasured terms--but

the bribe giver is excused, or, at worst, only lightly criticised. These

are but a few common illustrations of class conscience. Any careful

observer will be able to add almost indefinitely to the number.

It would be easy to compile a catalogue of such examples as these from

the history of the past few years sufficient to convince the most

skeptical that class interests do produce a class conscience. Mr. Ghent

aptly expresses a profound truth when he says: "There is a spiritual

alchemy which transmutes the base metal of self-interest into the gold

of conscience; the transmutation is real, and the resulting frame of

mind is not hypocrisy, but conscience. It is a class conscience, and

therefore partial and imperfect, having little to do with absolute

ethics. But partial and imperfect as it is, it is generally

sincere."[125] No better test of the truth of this can be made than by

reading carefully for a few weeks the comments of half a dozen

representative capitalist newspapers, and of an equal number of

representative labor papers, upon current events. The antithetical

nature of their judgments of men and events demonstrates the existence

of a distinct class conscience. It cannot be interpreted in any other

way.

V

A great many people, while admitting the important role class struggles

have played in the history of the race, strenuously deny the existence

of classes in the United States. They freely admit the class divisions

and struggles of the Old World, but deny that a similar class antagonism

exists in this country; they fondly believe the United States to be a

glorious exception to the rule, and regard the claim that classes exist

here as falsehood and treason. The Socialists are forever being accused

of seeking to apply to American life judgments based upon European facts

and conditions. It is easy to visualize the class divisions of

monarchical countries, where there are hereditary ruling classes--even

though these are only nominally the ruling classes in most cases--fixed

by law. But it is not so easy to recognize the fact that, even in these

countries, the power is held by the financial and industrial lords, and

not by the kings and their titular nobility. The absence of a

hereditary, titular ruling class serves to hide from many people the

real class divisions existing in this country.

Nevertheless, there is a perceptible growth of uneasiness and unrest; a

widening and deepening conviction that while we may retain the outward

forms of democracy, and shout its shibboleths with patriotic fervor,

its essentials are lacking. The feeling spreads, even in the most

conservative circles, that we are developing, or have already developed,

a distinct ruling class. The anomaly of a ruling class without legal

sanction or titular prestige has seized upon the popular mind; titles

have been created for our great "untitled nobility"--mock titles which

have speedily assumed a serious import and meaning. Our financial

"Kings," industrial "Lords," "Barons," and so on, have received their

crowns and patents of nobility from the populace. President Roosevelt

gives expression to the serious thought of our most conservative

citizenry when he says: "In the past, the most direful among the

influences which have brought about the downfall of republics has ever

been the growth of the class spirit.... If such a spirit grows up in

this republic, it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it

has proven fatal to every community in which it has become

dominant."[126]

With the exception of the chattel slaves, we have had no hereditary

class in this country with a legally fixed status. But

"Man is more than constitutions,"

and there are other laws than those formulated in senates and recorded

in statute books. The vast concentration of industry and wealth,

resulting in immense fortunes on the one hand, and terrible poverty on

the other, has separated the two classes by a chasm as deep and wide as

ever yawned between czar and moujik, kaiser and vagrant, prince and

pauper, feudal baron and serf. The immensity of the power and wealth

thus concentrated into the hands of the few, to be inherited by their

sons and daughters, tends to establish this class division hereditarily.

Heretofore, passage from the lower class to the class above has been

comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing class

antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be

taken to disprove the existence of classes than the fact that so many

thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove

the existence of the German Empire.[127] The stereotyping of classes is

undeniable. That a few men pass from one class to another is no disproof

of this. The classes exist and the tendency is for them to remain

permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.

But passage from the lower class to the upper tends to become, if not

absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible,

and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom

in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious

coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but

such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own

plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern

times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of

royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state,

an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings?

The existence of classes in America to-day is as evident as the

existence of America itself.

VI

Antagonisms of class interests have existed from the very beginning of

civilization, though not always recognized. It is only the consciousness

of their existence, and the struggle which results from that

consciousness, that are new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and

ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory

symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental class division of

society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and

alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious

members of an inferior class to rise out of that class and join the

ranks of a superior class, so long will the struggle which ensues as the

natural outgrowth of opposing interests be postponed.

Until quite recently, in the United States, this has been possible.

Transition from the status of wage-worker to that of capitalist has been

easy. But with the era of concentration and the immense capitals

required for industrial enterprise, and the exhaustion of our supply of

free land, these transitions become fewer and more difficult, and class

lines tend to become permanently fixed. The stronger and more ambitious

members of the lower class, finding it impossible to rise into the class

above, thus become impressed with a consciousness of their class status.

The average worker no longer dreams of himself becoming an employer

after a few years of industry and thrift. The ambitious and aggressive

few no longer look with the contempt of the strong for the weak upon

their less aggressive fellow-workers, but become leaders, preachers of a

significant and admittedly dangerous gospel of class consciousness.

President Roosevelt has assailed the preachers of class consciousness

with all the energy of a confirmed moralizer. It is evident, however,

that he has never taken the trouble to study either the preachers or

their gospel. Never in his utterances has there been any hint given of a

recognition of the fact that there could be no preaching of class

consciousness had there been no classes. Never has he manifested the

faintest recognition of the existence of conditions which develop

classes, out of which the class consciousness of the propagandists

springs naturally. He does not see that there is danger only when the

preachers are not wise enough, nor sufficiently educated to see their

position in its historical perspective; when in blind revolt they

engender class hatred, personal hatred of the capitalist by the worker.

But when there is the historical perspective, wisdom to see that

economic conditions develop slowly, and that the capitalist is no more

responsible for conditions than the worker, there is not only no

personal hatred for the capitalist engendered, but, more important

still, the workers get a new view of the relationship of the classes,

and their efforts are directed to the bringing about of peaceful change.

The Socialists, accused as they are of seeking to stir up hatred and

strife, by placing the class struggle in its proper light, as one of the

great social dynamic forces, have done and are doing more to allay

hatred and bitterness of feeling, and to save the world from the red

curse of anarchistic vengeance, than all the Rooseveltian preaching in

which thousands of venders of moral platitudes are engaged. The

Socialist movement is vastly more powerful as a force against Anarchism,

in its violent manifestations, than any other agency in the world.

Wherever, as in Germany, the Socialist movement is strong, Anarchism is

impotent and weak. The reason for this is the very obvious one here

given. Class divisions are not created by Socialists, but developed in

the womb of economic conditions. Class consciousness is not something

which Socialism has developed. Before there was a Socialist movement, in

the days of Luddite attacks upon machinery, and Captain Swing's

rick-burners, there was class consciousness expressed in class revolt.

Modern Socialism simply takes the class consciousness of the worker and

educates it to see the futility of machine-destroying, or other foolish

and abortive attacks upon capitalists and their property, and organizes

it into a political movement for the peaceful transformation of society.

VII

Nowhere in the world, at any time in its history, has the antagonism of

classes been more evident than in the United States at the present time.

With an average of over a thousand strikes a year,[128] some of them

involving, directly, tens of thousands of producers, a few capitalists,

and millions of noncombatants, consumers; with strikes like this,

boycotts, lockouts, injunctions, and all the other incidents of

organized class strife reported daily by the newspapers, denials of the

existence of classes, or of the struggle between them, are manifestly

absurd. We have, on the one hand, organizations of workers, labor

unions, with a membership of something over two million in the United

States; one organization alone, the American Federation of Labor, having

an affiliated membership of one million seven hundred thousand. On the

other hand, we have organizations of employers, formed for the expressed

purpose of fighting the labor unions, of which the National Association

of Manufacturers is the most perfect type yet evolved.

While the leaders on both sides frequently deny that their organizations

betoken the existence of a far-reaching fundamental class conflict, and,

through ostensibly pacificatory organizations like the National Civic

Federation, proclaim the "essential identity of interests between

capital and labor"; while an intelligent and earnest labor leader like

Mr. John Mitchell joins with an astute capitalist leader like the late

Senator Marcus A. Hanna in declaring that "there is no necessary

hostility between labor and capital," that there is no "necessary,

fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist,"[129] a

brief study of the constitutions of these class organizations, and their

published reports, in conjunction with the history of the labor struggle

in the United States, in which the names of Homestead, Hazelton, Coeur

d'Alene and Cripple Creek appear in bloody letters, will show these

denials to be the offspring of hypocrisy or delusion. If this

much-talked-of unity of interests is anything but a stupid fiction, the

great and ever increasing strife is only a matter of mutual

misunderstanding. All that is necessary to secure permanent peace is to

remove that misunderstanding. If we believe this, it is a sad commentary

upon human limitations, upon man's failure to understand his own life,

that not a single person on either side has arisen with sufficient

intelligence and breadth of vision to state the relations of the two

classes with clarity and force enough to accomplish that end, to make

them understand each other.

Let us get down to fundamental principles.[130] Why do men organize into

unions? Why was the first union started? Why do men pay out of their

hard-earned wages to support unions now? The first union was not started

because the men who started it did not understand their employers, or

because they were misunderstood by their employers. The explanation

involves a deeper insight into things than that. When the individual

workingman, feeling that from the labor of himself and his fellows came

the wealth and luxury of his employer, demanded higher wages, a

reduction of the hours of labor, or better conditions in general, he was

met with a reply from the employer--who understood the workingman's

position very well, much better, in fact, than the workingman himself

did--something like this, "If you don't like this job, and my terms,

there are plenty of others outside ready to take your place." The

workingman and the employer, then, understood each other perfectly. The

employer understood the position of the worker, that he was dependent

upon him, the employer, for opportunity to earn his bread. The worker

understood that so long as the employer could discharge him and fill his

place with another, he was powerless. The combat between the workers and

the masters of their bread has from the first been an unequal one.

Nothing remained for the individual workingman but to join with his

fellows in a collective and united effort. So organizations of workers

appeared, and the employers could not treat the demands for higher wages

or other improvements in conditions as lightly as before. The workers,

when they organized, could take advantage of the fact that there were no

organizations of the employers. Every strike added to the ordinary

terrors of the competitive struggle for the employers. The manufacturer

whose men threatened to strike often surrendered because he feared most

of all that his trade, in the event of a suspension of work, would be

snatched by his rival in business. So, by playing upon the inherent

weakness of the competitive system as it affected the employers, the

workers gained many substantial advantages. There is no doubt whatsoever

that under these conditions the wage-workers got better wages, better

working conditions, and a reduction in the hours of labor. It was in

many ways the golden age of trade unionism. But there was an important

limitation of the workers' power--the unions could not absorb the man

outside; they could not provide all the workers with employment. That is

an essential condition of capitalist industry, there is always the

"reserve army of the unemployed," to use the expressive phrase of

Friederich Engels. Rare indeed are the times when all the available

workers in any industry are employed, and the time has probably never

yet been when all the available workers in all industries were employed.

Notwithstanding this important limitation of power, it is

incontrovertible that the workers were benefited by their organization.

But only for a time. There came a time when the employers began to

organize unions also. That they called their organizations by other and

high-sounding names does not alter the fact that they were in reality

unions formed to combat the unions of the workers. Every employers'

association is, in reality, a union of the men who employ labor against

the unions of the men they employ. When the organized workers went to

individual, unorganized employers, who feared their rivals more than

they feared the workers, or, rather, who feared the workers most of all

because rivals waited to snatch their trade, a strike making their

employees allies with their competitors, the employers were easily

defeated. The workers could play one employer against another employer

with constant success. But when the employers also organized, it was

different. Then the individual employer, freed from his worst terrors,

could say, "Do your worst. I, too, am in an organization." Then it

became a battle betwixt organized capital and organized labor. When the

workers went out on strike in one shop or factory, depending upon their

brother unionists employed in other shops or factories, the employers of

these latter locked them out, thus cutting off the financial support of

the strikers. In other cases, when the workers in one place went out on

strike, the employer got his work done through other employers, by the

very fellow-members upon whom the strikers were depending for support.

Thus the workers were compelled to face this dilemma, either to withdraw

these men, thus cutting off their financial supplies, or to be beaten by

their own members.

Under these changed conditions, the workers were beaten time after time.

It was a case of the worker's cupboard against the master's warehouse,

purse against bank account, poverty against wealth. The workers' chances

are slight in such a combat! A strike means that the employers on one

side, and the workers on the other, seek to force each other to

surrender by waiting patiently to see who first feels the pinch of

hardship and poverty. Employers and employees determine to play the

waiting game. Each waits patiently in the hope that the other will

weaken. At last one--most often the workers'--side weakens and gives up

the struggle. When the workers are thus beaten in a strike, they are not

convinced that their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are simply

beaten because their resources are too small to enable them to stand the

struggle.

When the master class, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their

forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor

organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on

the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly

experience that they could not play the interests of individual

employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have

learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as

buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the

Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle,

though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun

theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages

being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or

how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages

adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers

found that when prices fall, wages are _quick_ to follow, whereas when

prices soar high, wages are _slow_ to follow. Wages climb with leaden

feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are

consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend

practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a

serious matter.

But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely

powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to

protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its

tremendous importance.[131] The result has been that not a few of the

"victories" so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be

hollow mockeries. When better wages have been secured, prices have often

gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to

the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages

applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices

becoming general, the total result has been against the working class as

a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received

the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a

social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a

comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control

of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In

other words, the demand arises for independent, working-class action,

aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.

VIII

A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand,

who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with

the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates

of united political action by the working class, consciously directed

toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of

the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength

of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor

movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a

tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor

unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor

unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement

during the next few years.

The struggle between the capitalist and working classes must become a

political issue, the supreme political issue. This must result, not only

because the collective ownership of property can best be brought about

by political methods, but also because the capitalists themselves have

taken the industrial struggle into the political arena to suit

themselves; and when the workers realize the issue and accept it, the

capitalists will not be able to resist them. One is reminded of the

saying of Marx that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. In taking

the industrial issue into the political sphere, to suit their own

immediate advantages, the capitalists were destined to reveal to the

workers, sooner or later, their power and opportunity.

Realizing that all the forces of government are on their side, the

legislative, judicial, and executive powers being controlled by their

own class, the employers have made the fight against labor political as

well as economic in its character. When the workers have gone on strike

and the employers have not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing

rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of unemployed

workers outside, the natural resentment of the strikers, finding

themselves in danger of being beaten by members of their own class, has

led to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by all the

police and military forces at the command of the government. In many

instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to

violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus

made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state,

no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces

of our class government been used merely to punish lawless union men and

women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the

hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny strikers the

rights which belonged to them, and to protect capitalists and their

agents in breaking the laws. No one can read with anything like an

impartial spirit the records of the miners' strike in the Coeur

d'Alene mine, Idaho, or the labor disturbances in the state of Colorado

from 1880 to 1905 and dispute this assertion.

Most important of all has been the powerful opposition of the makers and

interpreters of the law. A body of class legislation, in the interests

of the employing class, has been created, while the workers have begged

in vain for protective legislation. In no country of the world have the

interests of the workers been so neglected as in the United States.

There is practically no such thing as employers' liability for accidents

to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations

which have been classified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries;

women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage

to the workers in their struggle has been passed, a servile judiciary

has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be

unconstitutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against

the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing

the workers of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizenship.

They have forbidden things which no law forbids, and even things which

the Constitution and statute law declare to be legal.

Mr. John Mitchell refers to this subject, in strong but not too strong

terms. "No weapon," he says, "has been used with such disastrous effect

against trade unions as the injunction in labor disputes. By means of

it, trade unionists have been prohibited under severe penalties from

doing what they had a legal right to do, and have been specifically

directed to do what they had a legal right not to do. It is difficult to

speak in measured tones or moderate language of the savagery and venom

with which unions have been assailed by the injunction, and to the

working classes, as to all fair-minded men, it seems little less than a

crime to condone or tolerate it."[132] This is strong language, but who

shall say that it is too strong when we remember the many injunctions

which have been hurled at organized labor since the famous Debs case

brought this weapon into general use?

In this celebrated case, which grew out of the Pullman strike, in 1894,

Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was arrested

and arraigned on indictments of obstructing the mails and interstate

commerce. Although arraigned, he was not tried, the case being

abandoned, despite his demands for a trial. President Cleveland's strike

commission subsequently declared, "There is no evidence before the

commission that the officers of the American Railway Union at any time

participated in or advised intimidation, violence, or destruction of

property." Realizing that it had no sort of evidence upon which a jury

might be hoped to convict, a new way was found. Debs and his officers

were enjoined in a famous "blanket" injunction directed against Debs and

all other officials of the union, and "all persons whomsoever." For an

alleged violation of that injunction, Judge Woods, without trial by

jury, sentenced Debs to six months' imprisonment and his associates to

three months'. The animus and class bias of the whole proceeding may be

judged from the fact that President Cleveland selected to represent the

United States Government, at Chicago, Mr. Edwin Walker, general counsel

at that very time for the General Managers' Association, representing

the twenty-four railroads centering or terminating in Chicago. And these

railroads were operating in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law at

the time.[133]

In 1899 an injunction was issued out of the United States Circuit Court

of West Virginia against "John Smith and others," without naming the

"others," in the interest of the Wheeling Railway Company. Two men,

neither of them being John Smith, nor found to be the agent of "John

Smith and others," were jailed for contempt of court![134] In 1900

members of the International Cigarmakers' Union, in New York City, were

enjoined by Justice Freeman, in the Supreme Court, from even approaching

their former employers for the purpose of attempting to arrange a

peaceable settlement! The cigarmakers were further enjoined from

publishing their grievances, or in any manner making their case known to

the public, if the tendency of that should be to vex the plaintiffs or

make them uneasy; from trying, even in a peaceful way, in any place in

the city, even in the privacy of a man's own home, to persuade a new

employee that he ought to sympathize with the union cause sufficiently

to refuse to work for unjust employers; and, finally, the union was

forbidden to pay money to its striking members to support them and their

families. In the great steel strike of 1901, the members of the

Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers were enjoined from

peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the men who were at

work, even though the latter might raise no objection. In Pennsylvania,

in the case of the York Manufacturing Company _vs._ Obedick, it was held

that workmen had "no legal right" to persuade or induce other workmen to

quit, or not to accept, employment.[135] In the strike of the members of

the International Typographical Union against the Buffalo _Express_, the

strikers were enjoined from discussing the strike, or talking about the

paper in any way which might be construed as being against the paper. If

one of the strikers advised a friend not to buy a "scab" paper, he was

liable under the terms of that injunction to imprisonment for contempt

of court. The members of the same union were, in the case of the Sun

Printing and Publishing Company _vs_. Delaney and others, enjoined by

Justice Bookstaver, in the Supreme Court of New York, from publishing

their side of the controversy with the _Sun_ as an argument why persons

friendly to organized labor should not advertise in a paper hostile to

it. In 1906 members of the same union were enjoined by Supreme Court

Justice Gildersleeve from "making any requests, giving any advice, or

resorting to any persuasion ... to overcome the free will of any person

connected with the plaintiff [a notorious anti-union publishing company]

or its customers as employees or otherwise."[136]

These are only a few examples of the abuse of the injunction in labor

disputes, hundreds of which have been granted, many of them equally

subversive of all sound principles of popular government. There is

probably not another civilized country in which such judicial tyranny

would be tolerated. It is not without significance that in West

Virginia, where, as a result of an outcry against a number of

particularly glaring abuses of the power to issue injunctions, the

legislature passed a law limiting the right to issue injunctions, the

Supreme Court decided that the law was unconstitutional, upon the ground

that the legislature had no right to attempt to restrain the courts

which were cooerdinate with itself.

Even more dangerous to organized labor than the injunction is what is

popularly known by union men as "Taff Vale law." Our judges have not

been slow to follow the example set by the English judges in the famous

case of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the officers of the

Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a powerful labor organization.

The decision in that case was most revolutionary. It compelled the

workers to pay damages, to the extent of $115,000, to the railroad

company for losses sustained by the company through a strike of its

employees, members of the defendant union. That decision struck terror

into the hearts of British trade unionists. At last they had to face a

mode of attack even more dangerous than the injunction which their

transatlantic brethren had so long been contending against. Taff Vale

law could not long be confined to England. Very soon, our American

courts followed the English example. A suit was instituted against the

members of a lodge of the Machinists' Union in Rutland, Vermont, and the

defendants were ordered to pay $2500. A writ was served upon each member

and the property of every one of them attached. Since that time,

numerous other decisions of a like nature have been rendered in various

parts of the country. Thus the unions have been assailed in a vital

place, their treasuries. It is manifestly foolish and quite useless for

the members of a union to strike against an employer for any purpose

whatever, if the employer is to be able to recover damages from the

union. Taff Vale judge-made law renders the labor union _hors de combat_

at a stroke.

IX

The immediate effect of the revolutionary judicial decision in England

was to arouse the workers to the necessity for class-conscious political

action. The cry went up that the unions must adopt a policy of

independent political action. There is no doubt whatever that the

tremendous advance of the Socialist movement in England during the past

few years began as a result of the attack made upon the funds of the

labor unions. From the moment of the Taff Vale decision the Socialist

movement in England took rapid strides. A similar process is going on in

this country, gathering momentum with every injunction against organized

labor, every hostile enactment of legislatures, and every use of the

judicial and executive powers to defeat the workers in their struggle

against capitalism. The workers are being educated to political

Socialism by the stern experiences resulting from capitalist rule.

Underneath the thin veneer of party differences, the worker sees the

class identity of the great political parties, and cries out, "A plague

on both your houses!" The Socialist argument comes to him with a twofold

force: not only does it show him how he is enslaved and exploited as a

producer, but it convinces him that as a citizen he has it in his power

to control the government and make it what he will. He can put an end to

government by injunctions, to the use of police, state, and federal

troops to break strikes, and to the sequestration of union funds by

hostile judges. He can, if he so decides, own and control the

government, and, through the government, own and control the essentials

of life: be master of his own labor, his own bread, his own life.

If we take for granted that the universal increase of Socialist

sentiment, and the growth of political Socialism, as measured by its

rapidly increasing vote, presage this great triumph of the working

class; that the heretofore despised and oppressed proletariat is, in a

not far distant future, to rule instead of being ruled, the question

arises, will the last state be better than the first? Will society be

bettered by the change of masters?

The very form of the question must be denied. It is not a movement for a

change of masters. To regard this struggle of the classes as one of

revenge, of exploited masses ready to overturn the social structure that

they may become exploiters instead of exploited, is to misread the whole

movement. The political and economic conquest of society by the working

class means the end of class divisions once and forever. A social

democracy, a society in which all things essential to the common life

and well-being are owned and controlled by the people in common,

democratically organized, precludes the existence of class divisions in

our present-day economic and political sense. Profit, through human

exploitation, alone has made class divisions possible, and the Socialist

regime will abolish profit. The working class, in emancipating itself,

at the same time makes liberty possible for the whole race of man, and

destroys the conditions of class rule.

FOOTNOTES:

[116] The _Communist Manifesto_, Kerr edition, page 8.

[117] In _Centralization and the Law: Scientific Legal Education, An

Illustration_, edited by Melville M. Bigelow.

[118] See, for instance, _The Coal Mine Workers_, by Frank Julian Warne,

Ph.D. (1905).

[119] Adam Smith, _The Wealth of Nations_, Vol. I, Book I, Chapter VIII.

[120] _The Common Sense of Socialism_, by John Spargo, page 131 (1908).

[121] See, for instance, _The American Farmer_, by A. M. Simons, page

130; _Agrarfrage_, by Karl Kautsky, pages 305-306.

[122] Mr. Ghent's excellent work, _Mass and Class_, and Karl Kautsky's

_Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History_, may be named as

excellent examples of what Socialists have done in this direction.

[123] In _The Worker_ (New York), March 25, 1905.

[124] Cf., for instance, _The Labor History of the Cripple Creek

District_, by Benjamin McKie Rastall (1908), and Senate Document No.

122, being _A Report on Labor Disturbances in the State of Colorado,

from 1880 to 1904, Inclusive_, by Carroll D. Wright (1905), for evidence

of this from sources not specially friendly to the miners.

[125] _Mass and Class_, page 101.

[126] _Message to Congress_, January, 1906.

[127] _Mass and Class_, page 53.

[128] Vide _War of the Classes_, by Jack London, page 17.

[129] _Organized Labor_, by John Mitchell, page ix.

[130] The remainder of this chapter is largely reproduced from my little

pamphlet, _Shall the Unions go into Politics?_

[131] This aspect of the exploitation of the laborers has been brought

to the front very dramatically by the many recent "strikes" against high

rents and high prices for meat and other commodities. Rent strikes and

riots against high prices have become common events in our large cities.

[132] _Organized Labor_, by John Mitchell, page 324.

[133] See _Report of Commission of Investigation_, Senate Ex. Doc. No.

7, Fifty-third Congress, third session.

[134] Particulars are taken from a pamphlet by five members of the New

York Bar and issued by the Social Reform Club, New York, in 1900.

[135] See the article by Judge Seabury, _The Abuses of Injunctions, in

The Arena_, June, 1903.

[136] See the New York daily papers, January 31, 1906.

CHAPTER VII

KARL MARX AND THE ECONOMICS OF SOCIALISM

I

The first approach to a comprehensive treatment by Marx of the

materialistic conception of history appeared in 1847, several months

before the publication of the _Communist Manifesto_, in "La Misere de la

Philosophie,"[137] the famous polemic with which Marx assailed J. P.

Proudhon's _La Philosophie de la Misere_. Marx had worked out his theory

at least two years before, so Engels tells us, and in his writings of

that period there are several evidences of the fact. In "La Misere de la

Philosophie," the theory is fundamental to the work, and not merely the

subject of incidental allusion. This little book, all too little known

in England and America, is therefore important from this historical

point of view. In it, Marx for the first time shows his complete

confidence in the theory. It needed confidence little short of sublime

to challenge Proudhon in the audacious manner of this scintillating

critique. The torrential eloquence, the scornful satire, and fierce

invective of the attack, have rather tended to obscure for readers of a

later generation the real merit of the book, the importance of the

fundamental idea that history must be interpreted in the light of

economic development, that economic evolution determines social life.

The book is important for two other reasons. First, it was the author's

first serious essay in economic science--in the preface he boldly and

frankly calls himself an economist--and, second, in it appears a full

and generous recognition of that brilliant coterie of English Socialist

writers of the Ricardian school from whom Marx has been unjustly, and

almost spitefully, charged with "pillaging" his principal ideas.

What led Marx to launch out upon the troubled sea of economic science,

when all his predilections were for the study of pure philosophy, was

the fact that his philosophical studies had led him to a point whence

further progress seemed impossible, except by way of economics. The

Introduction to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"

makes this perfectly clear. Having decided that "the method of

production in material existence conditions social, political, and

mental evolution in general," a study of economics, and especially an

analysis of modern industrial society, became inevitable. During the

year 1845, when the theory of the economic interpretation of history was

absorbing his attention, Marx spent six weeks in England with his

friend Engels, and became acquainted with the work of the Ricardian

Socialists already referred to.[138] Engels had been living in England

about three years at this time, and had made an exhaustive investigation

of industrial conditions there, and become intimately acquainted with

the leaders of the Chartist movement. His fine library contained most of

the works of contemporary writers, and it was thus that Marx came to

know them.

Foremost of this school of Socialists which had arisen, quite naturally,

in the land where capitalism flourished at its best, were William

Godwin, Charles Hall, William Thompson, John Gray, Thomas Hodgskin, and

John Francis Bray. With the exception of Hall, of whose privately

printed book, "The Effects of Civilisation on the People of the European

States," 1805, he seems not to have known, Marx was familiar with the

writings of all the foregoing, and his obligations to some of them,

especially Thompson, Hodgskin, and Bray, were not slight. While the

charge, made by Dr. Anton Menger,[139] among others, that Marx took his

surplus value theory from Thompson is quite absurd, and rests, as

Bernstein has pointed out, upon nothing but the fact that Thompson used

the words "surplus value" frequently, but not at all in the same sense

as that in which Marx uses them,[140] we need not attempt to dispute the

fact that Marx gleaned much of value from Thompson and the two other

writers. While criticising them, and pointing out their shortcomings,

Marx himself frequently pays tributes of respect to each of them. His

indebtedness to any of them, or to all of them, consists simply in the

fact that he recognized the germinal truths in their writings, and saw

far beyond what they saw.

Godwin's most important work, "An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice,"

appeared in 1793, and contains the germ of much that is called Marxian

Socialism. In it may be found the broad lines of the thought which marks

much of our present-day Socialist teaching, especially the criticism of

capitalist society. Marx, however, does not appear to have been directly

influenced by it to any extent. That he was influenced by it indirectly,

through William Thompson, Godwin's most illustrious disciple, is,

however, quite certain. Thompson wrote several works of a Socialist

character, of which "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution

of Wealth most Conducive to Human Happiness, Applied to the newly

proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth," 1824, and "Labour

Rewarded. The Claims of Labour and Capital Conciliated, or How to Secure

to Labour the Whole Products of its Exertions," 1827, are the most

important and best known. Thompson must be regarded as one of the

greatest precursors of Marx in the development of modern Socialist

theory. A Ricardian of the Ricardians, he states the law of wages in

language that is almost as emphatic as Lassalle's famous _Ehernes

Lohngesetz_, which Marx made the butt of his satire.[141] Accepting the

view of Ricardo,--and indeed, of Adam Smith and other earlier English

economists, including Petty,--that labor is the sole source of exchange

value,[142] he shows by cogent argument the exploitation of the laborer,

and uses the term "surplus value" to designate the difference between

the cost of maintaining the laborer and the value of his labor product,

assisted, of course, by machinery and other capital, which goes to the

capitalist. By a most labored argument, Professor Anton Menger has

attempted to create the impression that Marx took, without

acknowledgment, his _theory of the manner in which surplus value is

produced_ from Thompson, simply because Thompson frequently used the

_term itself_.[143] Marx never claimed to have originated the term. It

is to be found in the writings of earlier economists than Thompson even,

and Marx quotes an anonymous pamphlet entitled _The Source and Remedy of

the National Difficulties_. _A Letter to Lord John Russell_, published

in London in 1821, in which the phrase "the quantity of the surplus

value appropriated by the capitalist" appears.[144] Nor did Marx claim

to be the first to distinguish surplus value. That had been done very

clearly by many others, including Adam Smith.[145] What is original in

Marx is the explanation of the manner in which surplus value is

produced.

John Gray's "A Lecture on Human Happiness," published in 1825, has been

described by Professor Foxwell as being "certainly one of the most

remarkable of Socialist writings,"[146] and the summary of the rare

little work which he gives amply justifies the description. Gray

published other works of note, two of which, "The Social System, a

Treatise on the Principle of Exchange," 1831, and "Lectures on the

Nature and Use of Money," 1848, Marx subjects to a rigorous criticism in

"A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Thomas Hodgskin's

best-known works are "Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital,"

1825, and "The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted,"

1832. The former, which Marx calls "an admirable work," is only a small

tract of thirty-four pages, but its influence in England and America was

very great. Hodgskin was a man of great culture and erudition, with a

genius for popular writing upon difficult topics. It is interesting to

know that in a letter to his friend, Francis Place, he sketched a book

which he proposed writing, "curiously like Marx's 'Capital,'" according

to Place's biographer, Mr. Wallas,[147] and from which the conservative

old reformer dissuaded him. John Francis Bray was a journeyman printer

about whom very little is known. His "Labour's Wrongs and Labour's

Remedy," published in Leeds in 1839, Marx calls "a remarkable work," and

in his attack upon Proudhon he quotes from it extensively to show that

Bray had anticipated the French writer's theories.[148]

The justification for this lengthy digression from the main theme of the

present chapter lies in the fact that so many critics have sought to

fasten the charge of dishonesty upon Marx, and claimed that the ideas

with which his name is associated were taken by him, without

acknowledgment, from these English Ricardians. As a matter of fact, no

economist of note ever quoted his authorities, or acknowledged his

indebtedness to others, more generously than did Marx, and it is

exceedingly doubtful whether even the names of the precursors whose

ideas he is accused of stealing would be known to his critics but for

his frank recognition of them. No candid reader of Marx can fail to

notice that he is most careful to show how nearly these writers

approached the truth as he conceived it.

II

When the February revolution of 1848 broke out, Marx was in Brussels.

The authorities there compelling him to leave Belgian soil, at the

request of the Prussian government, he returned to Paris, but not for a

long stay. The revolutionary struggle in Germany stirred his blood, and

with Engels, Wilhelm Wolf, the intimate friend to whom he later

dedicated the first volume of "Capital," and Ferdinand Freiligrath, the

fiery poet of the movement, Marx started the _New Rhenish Gazette_.

Unlike the first _Rhenish Gazette_, the new journal was absolutely free

from control by business policy. Twice Marx was summoned to appear at

the Cologne assizes, upon charges of inciting the people to rebellion,

and each time he defended himself with superb audacity and skill, and

was acquitted. But in June, 1849, the authorities suppressed the paper,

because of the support it gave to the risings in Dresden and the Rhine

Province. Marx was expelled from Prussia and once more sought a refuge

in Paris, which he was allowed to enjoy only for a very brief time.

Forbidden by the French government to stay in Paris, or any other part

of France except Brittany, which, says Liebknecht, was considered

"fireproof," Marx turned to London, the mecca of all political exiles,

arriving there toward the end of June, 1849.

His removal to London was one of the crucial events in the life of Marx.

It became possible for him, in the classic land of capitalism, to pursue

his economic studies in a way that was not possible anywhere else in the

world. As Liebknecht says: "Here in London, the metropolis (mother city)

and the center of the world, and of the world of trade--the watch tower

of the world whence the trade of the world and the political and

economical bustle of the world may be observed, in a way impossible in

any other part of the globe--here Marx found what he sought and needed,

the bricks and mortar for his work. 'Capital' could be created in London

only."[149]

Already much more familiar with English political economy than most

English writers of his time, and with the fine library of the British

Museum at his command, Marx felt that the time had at last arrived when

he could devote himself to his long-cherished plan of writing a great

treatise upon political economy as a secure basis for the theoretical

structure of Socialism. With this object in view, he resumed his

economic studies in 1850, soon after his arrival in London. The work

proceeded slowly, however, principally owing to the long and bitter

struggle with poverty which encompassed Marx and his gentle wife. For

years they suffered all the miseries of acute poverty, and even

afterward, when the worst was past, the principal source of income, at

times almost the only source in fact, was the five dollars a week

received from the _New York Tribune_, for which Marx acted as special

correspondent, and to which he contributed some of his finest work.[150]

There are few pictures more pathetic, albeit also heroic, than that

which we have of the great thinker and his devoted wife struggling

against poverty during the first few years of their stay in London.

Often the little family suffered the pangs of hunger, and Marx and a

group of fellow-exiles used to resort to the reading room of the British

Museum, weak from lack of food very often, but grateful for the warmth

and shelter of that hospitable spot. The family lived some time in two

small rooms in a cheap lodging house on Dean Street, the front room

serving as reception room and study, and the back room serving for

everything else. In a diary note, Mrs. Marx has herself left us an

impressive picture of the suffering of those early years in London.

Early in 1852, death entered the home for the first time, taking away a

little daughter. Only a few weeks later another little daughter died,

and Mrs. Marx wrote concerning this event:--

"On Easter of the same year--1852--our poor little Francisca died of

severe bronchitis. Three days the poor child was struggling with death.

It suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in the small back

room; we all moved together into the front room, and when night

approached, we made our beds on the floor. There the three living

children were lying at our side, and we cried about the little angel,

who rested cold and lifeless near us. The death of the dear child fell

into the time of the most bitter poverty ... (the money for the burial

of the child was missing). In the anguish of my heart I went to a French

refugee who lived near, and who had sometimes visited us. I told him our

sore need. At once with the friendliest kindness he gave me two pounds.

With that we paid for the little coffin in which the poor child now

sleeps peacefully. I had no cradle for her when she was born, and even

the last small resting place was long denied her. What did we suffer

when it was carried away to its last place of rest!"[151]

The poverty, of which we have here such a graphic view, lasted for

several years beyond the publication of the "Critique," on to the

appearance of the first volume of "Capital." When this struggle is

remembered and understood, it becomes easier to appreciate the life work

of the great Socialist thinker. "It was a terrible time, but it was

grand nevertheless," wrote Liebknecht years afterward to Eleanor Marx.

As this is the last place in which the personality of Marx, or his

personal affairs, will be discussed in this volume, and in view of

constant misrepresentations on the part of unscrupulous opponents of

Socialism, a further word concerning his family life may not be out of

place. Those persons who regard Socialism as being antagonistic to the

family relation, and fear it in consequence, will find no suggestion of

support for that view in either the life of Marx or his teaching. The

love of Marx and his wife for each other was beautiful and idyllic. A

true account of their love and devotion would rank with the most

beautiful love stories in literature. Their friends understood that,

too, and there is a world of significance in the one brief sentence

spoken by Engels, when told of the death of his friend's beautiful wife,

who was likewise his own dear friend: "Mohr [Negro, a nickname given to

Marx by his friends when young, on account of his mass of black hair and

whiskers] is dead too," he said simply. He knew that from this blow Marx

could not recover. It was indeed true. Though he lingered on for about

three months after her death, the life of Marx really ended when the

playmate of his boyhood, and the lover and companion of all the years of

struggle, died with the name of her dear "Karl" upon her lips.

Marx was an ideal father as well as an ideal husband. Always

passionately fond of children, he could not resist the temptation to

join the games of children upon the streets, and in the neighborhoods

where he lived the children soon learned to regard him as their friend.

To his own children he was a real companion, always ready to amuse and

to be amused by them.

III

The studious years spent in the reading room of the British Museum

complete the anglicization of Marx. "Capital" is essentially an English

work, the fact of its having been written in German, by a German writer,

being merely incidental. No more distinctively English treatise on

political economy was ever written, not even "The Wealth of Nations."

Even the method and style of the book are, contrary to general opinion,

much more distinctly English than German. I do not forget his Hegelian

dialectic with its un-English subtleties, but against that must be

placed the directness, vigor, and pointedness of style, and the cogent

reasoning, with its wealth of concrete illustrations, which are as

characteristically English. Marx belongs to the school of Petty, Smith,

and Ricardo, and their work is the background of his. "Capital" was the

child of English industrial conditions and English thought, born by

chance upon German soil.

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, English economic thought

was entirely dominated by the ideas and methods of Ricardo, who has been

described by Senior, not without justice, as "the most incorrect writer

who ever attained philosophical eminence."[152] So far as such a

sweeping criticism can be justified by looseness in the use of terms, it

is justified by Ricardo's failing in this respect. That he should have

attained the eminence he did, dominating English economic thought for so

many years, in spite of the confusion which his loose and uncertain use

of words occasioned, is not less a tribute to Ricardo's genius than

evidence of the poverty of political economy in England at that time. In

view of the constant and tiresome reiteration of the charge that Marx

pillaged his labor-value theory from Thompson, Hodgskin, Bray, or some

other more or less obscure writer of the Ricardian school, it is well to

remember that there is nothing in the works of any of these writers

connected with the theory of value which is not to be found in the

earlier work of Ricardo himself. In like manner, the theory can be

traced back from Ricardo to the master he honored, Adam Smith.

Furthermore, almost a century before the appearance of "The Wealth of

Nations," Sir William Petty had anticipated the so-called Ricardian

labor-value theory of Smith and his followers.

Petty, rather than Smith, is entitled to be regarded as the founder of

the classical school of political economy, and Cossa justly calls him

"one of the most illustrious forerunners of the science of statistical

research."[153] He may indeed fairly be said to have been the father of

statistical science, and was the first to apply statistics, or

"political arithmetick," as he called it, to the elucidation of economic

theory. He boasts that "instead of using only comparative and

superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments," his method is to speak

"in Terms of Number, Weight, or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense;

and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature;

leaving those that depend upon the mutable Minds, Opinions, Appetites,

and Passions of particular Men, to the Consideration of others."[154]

The celebrated saying of this sagacious thinker that "labor is the

father and active principle of wealth; lands are the mother," is more

Marxian than Ricardian. Petty divided the population into two classes,

the productive and non-productive, and insisted that the value of all

things depends upon the labor it costs to produce them. This is, as we

shall see, entirely Ricardian, but not Marxian. But these are the ideas

Marx is supposed to have borrowed, without acknowledgment, from

comparatively obscure followers of Ricardo, in spite of the fact that he

gives abundant credit to the earlier writer. It has been asked with

ample justification whether these critics of Marx have read either the

works of Marx or his predecessors.

Adam Smith, who accepted the foregoing principles laid down by Petty,

followed his example of basing his conclusions largely upon observed

facts instead of abstractions. It is not the least of Smith's merits

that, despite his many digressions, looseness of phraseology, and other

admitted defects, his love for the concrete kept his feet upon the solid

ground of fact. With his successors, notably Ricardo and John Stuart

Mill, it was far otherwise. They made political economy an isolated

study of abstract doctrines. Instead of a study of the meaning and

relation of facts, it became a cult of abstractions, and the aim of its

teachers seemed to be to render the science as little scientific, and

as dull, as possible. They set up an abstraction, an "economic man," and

created for it a world of economic abstractions. It is impossible to

read either Ricardo or John Stuart Mill, but especially the latter,

without feeling the artificiality of the superstructures they created,

and the justice of Carlyle's description of such political economy as

the "dismal science." With a realism greater even than Adam Smith's, and

a more logical method than Ricardo or John Stuart Mill, Marx restored

the science of political economy to its old fact foundations.

IV

The superior insight of Marx is shown in the very first sentence of his

great work. The careful reader at once perceives that the first

paragraph of the book strikes a keynote which distinguishes it from all

other economic works comparable to it in importance. Marx was a great

master of the art of luminous and exact definition, and nowhere is this

more strikingly shown than in this opening sentence of "Capital": "The

wealth of those societies _in which the capitalist mode of production

prevails_ presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities, its

unit being a single commodity."[155] In this simple, lucid sentence the

theory of social evolution is clearly implied. The author repudiates,

by implication, the idea that it is possible to lay down universal or

eternal laws, and limits himself to the exploration of the phenomena

appearing in a certain stage of historical development. We are not to

have another abstract economic man with a world of abstractions all his

own; lone, shipwrecked mariners upon barren islands, imaginary

communities nicely adapted for demonstration purposes in college class

rooms, and all the other stage properties of the political economists,

are to be entirely discarded. Our author does not propose to give us a

set of principles by which we shall be able to understand and explain

the phenomena of human society at all times and in all places--the

Israel of the Mosaic Age, the nomadic life of Arab tribes, Europe in the

Middle Ages, and England in the nineteenth century.

In effect, the passage under consideration says: "Political economy is

the study of the principles and laws governing the production and

distribution of wealth. Because of the fact that in the progress of

society different systems of wealth production and exchange, and

different concepts of wealth, prevail at different times, and at various

places at the same time, we cannot formulate any laws which will apply

to all times and all places. We must choose for examination and study a

certain form of production, representing a particular stage of

historical development, and be careful not to attempt to apply any of

its laws to other forms of production, representing other stages of

development. We might have chosen to investigate the laws which governed

the production of wealth in the ancient Babylonian Empire, or in

Mediaeval Europe, had we so desired, but we have chosen instead the

period in which we live."

This that we call the capitalist epoch has grown out of the geographical

discoveries and the mechanical inventions of the past three hundred

years or so, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its

chief characteristic, from an economic point of view, is that of

production for sale instead of direct use as in earlier stages of social

development. Of course, barter and sale are much older than this epoch

which we are discussing. In all ages men have exchanged their surplus

products for other things more desirable to them, either directly by

barter or through some medium of exchange. In the very nature of things,

however, such exchange as this must have been incidental to the life of

the people engaging in it, and not its principal aim. Under such

conditions of society wealth consists in the possession of useful

things. The naked savage, so long as he possessed plenty of weapons, and

could get an abundance of fish or game, was, from the viewpoint of the

society in which he lived, a wealthy man. In other words, the wealth of

pre-capitalist society consisted in the possession of use-values, and

not of exchange-values. Robinson Crusoe, for whom the possibility of

exchange did not exist, was, from this pre-capitalist viewpoint, a very

wealthy man.

In our present society, production is carried on primarily for exchange,

for sale. The first and essential characteristic feature of wealth in

this stage of social development is that it takes the form of

accumulated exchange-values, or commodities. Men are accounted rich or

poor according to the exchange-values they can command, and not

according to the use-values they can command. To use a favorite example,

the man who owns a ton of potatoes is far richer in simple use-values

than the man whose only possession is a sack of diamonds, but, because

in present society a sack of diamonds will exchange for an almost

infinite quantity of potatoes, the owner of the diamonds is much

wealthier than the owner of the potatoes. The criterion of wealth in

capitalist society is exchangeable value as opposed to use-value, the

criterion of wealth in primitive society. The unit of wealth is

therefore a commodity, and we must begin our investigation with it. If

we can analyze the nature of a commodity so that we can understand how

and why it is produced, and how and why it is exchanged, we shall be

able to understand the principle governing the production and exchange

of wealth in this and every other society where similar conditions

prevail, where, that is to say, the unit of wealth is a commodity, and

wealth consists in an accumulation of commodities.

V

The visit to America, in 1907, of a distinguished English critic of

Socialism, Mr. W. H. Mallock, had the effect of thrusting into

prominence a common misconception of Marxian Socialism, and it is highly

significant that, except in the Socialist press, none of the numerous

comments which the series of university lectures delivered by that

gentleman occasioned, called attention to the fact that they were based

throughout upon a misstatement of the Marxian position. Briefly, Mr.

Mallock insisted that Marx believed and taught that all wealth is

produced by manual labor, and that, therefore, it ought to belong to the

manual workers. In order that there may be no misstatement of our

amiable critic's position, it will be best to quote his own words. He

says, in Lecture I: "The practical outcome of the scientific economics

of Marx is summed up in the formula which is the watchword of popular

Socialism. 'All wealth is due to labor; therefore all wealth ought to go

to the laborer'--a doctrine in itself not novel, but presented by Marx

as the outcome of an elaborate system of economics"[156] (page 6). The

careful reader will notice that Mr. Mallock does not profess to give

the exact words of Marx, nor refer to any particular passage, but says

that the formula quoted by him is the "practical outcome" of the

economic system of Marx, "presented by Marx" as such. But to quote

again: "Wealth, says Marx, not only ought to be, but actually can be

distributed amongst a certain class of persons, namely, the laborers....

Because these laborers comprise in the acts of labor everything that is

involved in the production of it" (page 7). Again: " ... Marx makes of

his doctrine that labor alone produces all economic wealth" (page 7).

Also: " ... that theory of production which the genius of Karl Marx

invested with a semblance, at all events, of sober, scientific truth,

and which ascribes all wealth to that _ordinary manual labor which

brings the sweat to the brow of the ordinary laboring man_" (page

12).[157] All the foregoing passages are taken from a single lecture,

the first of the series. We will take only a few from the others: " ...

the doctrine of Marx that all productive effort is absolutely equal in

productivity" (Lecture III, page 46); "Marx based the ethics of

distribution on what purported to be an analysis of production" (Lecture

IV, page 61); " ... Count Tolstoy, ... like Socialists of the school of

Marx, declares that ordinary manual labor is the source of all wealth"

(Lecture IV, page 76). "One is the attempt of Marx and his school,

which represents ordinary manual labor as the sole producer of wealth"

(Lecture IV, page 81); " ... the Marxian doctrine ... that manual labor

is the sole producer of wealth" (Lecture V, page 115). It would be easy

to add many other quotations very similar to these, but it is

unnecessary. From the quotations given we can gather Mr. Mallock's

conception of what Marx taught regarding the source of wealth.

It will be seen that Mr. Mallock alleges: (1) That Marx believed and

taught that all wealth is produced by ordinary manual labor; (2) that he

held, as a consequence, that all wealth ought to belong to the manual

laborers, thus basing an ethic of distribution upon production; (3) that

he taught that all productive effort is absolutely equal in productive

value, in other words, that ten hours' work of one kind is economically

as valuable as ten hours' of any other kind, so long as the labor is

productive.

It is not easy to command the necessary self-restraint to reply with

dignity to such wholesale misrepresentation as this. There is not the

slightest scintilla of a foundation in fact for any one of the three

statements. Not a single passage can be quoted from Marx which justifies

any one of them. As we shall see, Marx specifically repudiated each one

of them, a great deal more forcefully than Mr. Mallock does. That such

misrepresentations of Marx should have been permitted to pass

unchallenged in so many of our great colleges and universities is to our

national shame. We will briefly consider the teaching of Marx under each

of the three heads.

First, the source of wealth. It is true that such phrases as "Labor is

the source of all wealth" are constantly met with in the popular

literature of Socialism, but so far as that is the case it is not due to

the teaching of Marx, but rather in spite of it. In the writings of the

early Ricardian Socialists these phrases abound, but nowhere in all the

writings of Marx will such a statement be found. For many years the

opening sentence in the Programme of the German party contained the

phrase "Labor is the source of all wealth and of all culture," _but it

was adopted in spite of the protest of Marx_. The Gotha Programme was

adopted in 1875. A draft was submitted to Marx and he wrote of it that

it was "utterly condemnable and demoralizing to the party." Of the

passage in question, he wrote: "Labor is _not_ the source of all wealth.

Nature is just as much the source of use-values (and of such, to be

sure, is material wealth composed) as is labor, which itself is but the

expression of a natural force, of human labor-power."[158] That the

clause was adopted was a bitter disappointment to Marx, and was due to

the insistence of the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. To say that Marx

held labor to be the sole source of wealth is to misrepresent his whole

teaching.[159]

But while the Lassallians, and before them the Ricardians, used the

_phrase_, it is evident that they assumed the inclusion of what Marx

calls "Nature." They know very well that labor, mere exertion of

physical strength, could produce nothing. If, for instance, a man were

to spend all his strength trying to lift the pyramids, alone and unaided

by mechanical power, it is quite evident to the meanest intellect that

his exertions would not produce a single atom of wealth. It is equally

obvious that if we take any use-value, whether it be an exchange-value

or not being immaterial, we cannot eliminate from it the substance of

which it is composed. Take, for example, the canoe of a savage, which is

a simple use-value, and a meerschaum pipe, which is a commodity. In the

canoe we have part of the trunk of a tree taken from the primeval

forest, one of Nature's products. But without the labor of the savage it

would never have become a canoe. It would have remained simply part of

the trunk of a tree, and would not have acquired the use-value it has as

a canoe. But it is likewise true that without the tree the canoe could

not have existed. So with our meerschaum pipe. It is not simply a

use-value: it is also an article of commerce, an exchange-value, a

commodity. Its elements are, the silicate mineral which Nature provided

and the form which human labor has given it. We can apply this test to

every form of wealth, whether simple use-values or commodities, and we

shall find that, in Mill's phrase, wealth is produced by the application

of human labor to _appropriate natural objects_.

This brings us to the second point in Mr. Mallock's criticism, namely,

that Marx held that only "ordinary manual labor" is capable of producing

wealth, and that, therefore, all wealth ought to go to the manual

laborers. One looks in vain for a single passage in all the writings of

Marx which will justify this criticism. It may be conceded at once that

if Marx taught anything of the kind, the defect in Marxian theory is

fatal. But it must be proven that the defect exists--and the _onus

probandi_ rests upon Mr. Mallock. One need not be a trained economist or

a learned philosopher to see how absurd such a theory must be. Suppose

we take, for example, a man working in a factory, at a great machine,

making screws. We go to that man and say: "Every screw here is made by

manual labor alone. The machine does not count; the brains of the

inventors of the machine have nothing to do with the making of screws."

Our laborer might be illiterate and unable to read a single page of

political economy with understanding, but he would know that our

statement was foolish and untrue. Or, suppose we take the machine itself

and say to the laborer: "That great machine with all its levers and

wheels and springs working in such beautiful harmony was made entirely

by manual workers, such as molders, blacksmiths, and machinists; no

brain workers had anything to do with the making of it; the labor of the

inventors, and of the men who drew the plans and supervised the making,

had nothing to do with the production of the machine"--our laborer would

rightly conclude that we were either fools or seeking to mock him as

one.

Curiously enough, notwithstanding the frequent reiteration of this

criticism of Marx by Mr. Mallock, he himself, in an unguarded moment,

provides the answer by which Marx is vindicated! Thus, speaking of the

great classical economists, Adam Smith, Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill,

he points out that they included "all forms of living industrial effort,

from those of a Watt or an Edison down to those of a man who tars a

fence, grouped together under the common name of labor" (Lecture I, page

16). And again: "At present the orthodox economists and the socialistic

economists alike give us _all human effort_[160] tied up, as it were, in

a sack, and ticketed 'human labor'" (Lecture I, page 18). Now, if the

Socialist includes in his definition of labor "all human effort," it

stands to reason that he does not mean only "ordinary manual labor" when

he uses the term. Thus Mallock answers Mallock and vindicates Marx!

Of course, Marx, like all the great economists, includes in his concept

of labor every kind of productive effort, mental as well as physical, as

Mr. Mallock, to the utter destruction of his disingenuous criticism,

unconsciously--we must suppose--admitted. Take, for example, this

definition: "By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood

the aggregate of those _mental and physical_ capabilities existing in a

human being, which he exercises when he produces a use-value of any

description."[161] As against this luminous and precise definition, it

is but fair to quote that of Mr. Mallock himself. He defines labor as

"the faculties of an individual _applied to his own labor_"[162]--a

meaningless jumble of words. The fifty-seven letters contained in that

sentence would mean just as much if put in a bag, well shaken, and put

on paper just as they happened to fall from the bag.

Marx never argued that the producers of wealth had a _right_ to the

wealth produced. The "right of labor to the whole of its produce" was,

it is true, the keynote of the theories of the Ricardian Socialists. An

echo of the doctrine appeared in the Gotha Programme of the German

Socialists to which reference has already been made, and in the popular

agitation of Socialism in this and other countries it is echoed more or

less frequently. Just in proportion as the ethical argument for

Socialism is advanced, and appeals made to the sense of justice, the

rich idler is condemned and an ethic of distribution based upon

production becomes an important feature of the propaganda. But Marx

nowhere indulges in this kind of argument. Not in a single line of

"Capital," or his minor economic treatises, can any hint of the doctrine

be found. He invariably scoffed at the "ethical distribution" idea. In

the judgment of the present writer, this is at once his great strength

and weakness, but that is beside the point of this discussion. Suffice

it to say, though it involves some reiteration, that Marx never took the

position that Socialism _ought_ to take the place of capitalism,

because the producers of wealth _ought_ to get the whole of the wealth

they produce. His position was rather that Socialism _must_ come, simply

because capitalism _could not_ last.

Finally, we come to the charge that Marx taught that "all productive

effort is absolutely equal in productivity." Incredible as it may seem,

it is nevertheless a fact that everything Marx has to say upon the

subject is directly opposed to this notion, and that, as we shall see

later on, his famous theory of value is not only not dependent upon a

belief in the equal productivity of all productive effort, but would be

completely shattered by it. Not only Marx, but also Mill, Ricardo, and

Smith, his great predecessors, recognized the fact that all labor is not

equally productive. Of course, it requires no special genius to

demonstrate this. That a poor mechanic with antiquated tools will

produce less in a given number of hours than an expert mechanic with

good tools, for example, is too obvious for comment. The Marx assailed

by Mr. Mallock, and numerous critics like him, is a myth. The real Marx

they do not touch--hence the futility of their work. The Marx they

attack is a man of straw, not the immortal thinker. Endowed

"With just enough of learning to misquote,"

their assaults are vain.

VI

Having thus disposed of some of the more prevalent criticisms of Marx as

an economist, we are ready for a definite, consecutive statement of the

economic theory of modern Socialism. First, however, a word as to the

term "scientific" as commonly applied to Marxian Socialism. Even some of

the friendliest of Socialist critics have contended that the use of the

term is pretentious, bombastic, and altogether unjustified. From a

certain narrow point of view, this appears to be an unimportant matter,

and the vigor with which Socialists defend their use of the term seems

exceedingly foolish, and accountable for only as a result of

enthusiastic fetish worship--the fetish, of course, being Marx.

Such a view is very crude and superficial. It cannot be doubted that the

Socialism represented by Marx and the modern political Socialist

movement is radically different from the earlier Socialism with which

the names of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Owen, and a host of other

builders of "cloud palaces for an ideal humanity," are associated. The

need of some word to distinguish between the two is obvious, and the

only question remaining is whether or not the word "scientific" is the

most suitable and accurate one to make that distinction clear; whether

the words "scientific" and "utopian" express with reasonable accuracy

the nature of the difference. Here the followers of Marx feel that they

have an impregnable position. The method of Marx is scientific. From the

first sentence of his great work to the last, the method pursued is that

of a painstaking scientist. It would be just as reasonable to complain

of the use of the word "scientific" in connection with the work of

Darwin and his followers, to distinguish it from the guesswork of

Anaximander, as to cavil at the distinction made between the Socialism

of Marx and Engels and their followers, and that of visionaries like

Owen and Saint-Simon.

Doubtless both Marx and Engels lapsed occasionally into Utopianism. We

see instances of this in the illusions Marx entertained regarding the

Crimean War bringing about the European Social Revolution; in the theory

of the increasing misery of the proletariat; in Engels' confident

prediction, in 1845, that a Socialist revolution was imminent and

inevitable; and in the prediction of both that an economic cataclysm

must create the conditions for a sudden and complete revolution in

society. These, I say, are Utopian ideas, evidences that the founders of

scientific Socialism were tinctured with the older ideas of the

Utopists, and even more with their spirit. But when we speak of

"Marxism," what mental picture does the word suggest, what intellectual

concept is the word a name for? Is it these forecasts and guesses, and

the exact mode of realizing the Socialist ideal which Marx laid down, or

is it the great principle of social evolution determined by economic

development? Is it his naive and simple description of the process of

capitalist concentration, in which no hint appears of the circuitous

windings that carried the actual process into unforeseen channels, or

the broad fact that the concentration has taken place and that monopoly

has come out of competition? Is it his statement of the extent to which

labor is exploited, or the _fact_ of the exploitation? If we are to

judge Marx by the essential things, rather than by the incidental and

non-essential things, then we must admit his claim to be reckoned with

the great scientific sociologists and economists.

After all, what constitutes scientific method? Is it not the recognition

of the law of causation, putting exact knowledge of facts above

tradition or sentiment; accumulating facts patiently until sufficient

have been gathered to make possible the formulation of generalizations

and laws enabling us to connect the present with the past, and in some

measure to foretell the outcome of the present, as Marx foretold the

culmination of competition in monopoly? Is it not to see past, present,

and future as one whole, a growth, a constant process, so that instead

of vainly fashioning plans for millennial Utopias, we seek in the facts

of to-day the stream of tendencies, and so learn the direction of the

immediate flow of progress? If this is a true concept of scientific

method, and the scientific spirit, then Karl Marx was a scientist, and

modern Socialism is aptly named Scientific Socialism.

FOOTNOTES:

[137] An English edition of this work, translated by H. Quelch, was

published in 1900 under the title _The Poverty of Philosophy_.

[138] Cf. F. Engels, Preface to _La Misere de la Philosophie_, English

translation, _The Poverty of Philosophy_, page iv.

[139] _The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour_, by Anton Menger, 1899.

[140] Edward Bernstein, _Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer_, page

ix.

[141] _Criticism of the Gotha Programme_, from the posthumous papers of

Karl Marx.

[142] It should perhaps be pointed out here, to avoid misunderstanding,

that Ricardo hedged this doctrine about with important

qualifications--not always observed by his followers--till it no longer

remained the simple proposition stated above. See Dr. A. C. Whitaker's

_History and Criticism of the Labour Theory of Value in English

Political Economy_, page 57, for a suggestive treatment of this point.

[143] _The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour._

[144] Cf. _Capital_, Vol. I, page 644, and Vol. II, page 19, Kerr

edition.

[145] Cf., for instance, _The Wealth of Nations_, Vol. I, Chapter VI.

[146] Introduction to Menger's _The Right to the Whole Produce of

Labour_.

[147] _The Life of Francis Place_, by Graham Wallas, M.A., London, 1898,

page 268.

[148] For this brief sketch of the works of these Ricardian Socialist

writers I have drawn freely upon Menger's _The Right to the Whole

Produce of Labour_, and Professor Foxwell's Introduction thereto.

[149] _Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs_, by Wilhelm Liebknecht,

translated by E. Untermann, 1901, page 32.

[150] Much of this work has been collated and edited by Marx's daughter,

the late Mrs. Eleanor Marx-Aveling, and her husband, Dr. Edward Aveling,

and published in two volumes, _The Eastern Question_ and _Revolution and

Counter-Revolution_.

[151] The note is quoted by Liebknecht, _Memoirs of Marx_, page 177, and

in the Introduction to _Revolution and Counter-Revolution_, by the

editor, Eleanor Marx-Aveling.

[152] _Political Economy_, page 115.

[153] Luigi Cossa, _Guide to the Study of Political Economy_, English

translation, 1880.

[154] _The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty_, edited by Charles

Henry Hull, Vol. I, page 244.

[155] The italics are mine.--J. S.

[156] All quotations from Mr. Mallock are taken from the volume

containing the text of his lectures, entitled _Socialism_, published by

The National Civic Federation, New York, 1907.

[157] The italics are mine.--J. S.

[158] _Letter on the Gotha Programme_, by Karl Marx, published in the

collection of the posthumous writings of Marx and Engels, edited by

Mehring, 1902. See a translation of the letter by Dr. Harriet E.

Lothrop, _International Socialist Review_, May, 1908.

[159] I note that my friend, Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., "Whip" of the

Labour Party in the British House of Commons, so misrepresents Marx in

his admirable little book, _Socialism_, page 54.

[160] Italics mine.--J. S.

[161] The italics are mine. The passage occurs on page 186, Vol. I, of

_Capital_, Kerr edition. In the last of the series of lectures printed

in his book, Mr. Mallock attempts a reply to the criticism of an

American Socialist, Mr. Morris Hillquit who quoted this passage from

Marx to show that Mr. Mallock was in error in saying that Marx regarded

manual labor as the sole source of wealth. He evades the real point,

namely, that Marx clearly included mental as well as physical labor in

his use of the term, and with an ingenuity equaled only by the

disingenuousness of the argument, seeks refuge in the fact that it does

not cover the special "directive ability" which is a special function,

"a productive force distinct from labor." The trick will not do. The

fact is that Marx clearly and precisely covers that point in another

place. The reader is referred to Chapter XIII of Part IV, Vol. I, of

_Capital_, pages 363-368, Kerr edition, for a brilliant and honest

treatment of the whole subject of the place of the "directing few" in

modern industry. We shall treat the matter briefly later on.

[162] Italics mine.--J. S. The passage occurs in Lecture III, page 36.

CHAPTER VIII

OUTLINES OF SOCIALIST ECONOMIC THEORY

I

The _geist_ of social and political evolution is economic, according to

the Socialist philosophy. This view of the importance of man's economic

relations involves some very radical changes in the methods and

terminology of political economy. The philosophical view of social and

political evolution as a world-process, through revolutions formed in

the matrices of economic conditions, at once limits and expands the

scope of political economy. It destroys on the one hand the idea of the

eternality of economic laws and limits them to particular epochs. On the

other hand, it enhances the importance of the science of political

economy as a study of the motive force of social evolution. With Marx

and his followers, political economy is more than an analysis of the

production and distribution of wealth; it is a study of the principal

determinant factor in the social and political progress of society,

consciously recognized as such.

The sociological viewpoint appears throughout the whole of Marxian

economic thought. It appears, for instance, in the definition of a

commodity as the unit of wealth _in those societies in which the

capitalist mode of production prevails_. Likewise wealth and capital

connote special social relations or categories. Wealth, which in certain

simpler forms of social organization consists in the ownership of

use-values, under the capitalist system consists in the ownership of

exchange-values. Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between

persons established through the medium of things. Robinson Crusoe's

spade, the Indian's bow and arrow, and all similar illustrations given

by the "orthodox" economists, do not constitute capital any more than an

infant's spoon is capital. They do not serve as the medium of the social

relation between wage-worker and capitalist which characterizes the

capitalist system of production. The essential feature of capitalist

society is the production of wealth in the commodity form; that is to

say, in the form of objects that, instead of being consumed by the

producer, are intended to be exchanged or sold at a profit. Capital,

therefore, is wealth set aside for the production of other wealth with a

view to its exchange at a profit. A house may consist of certain

definite quantities of bricks, timber, lime, iron, and other substances,

but similar quantities of these substances piled up without plan will

not constitute a house. Bricks, timber, lime, and iron become a house

only in certain circumstances, when they bear a given ordered relation

to each other. "A negro is a negro; it is only under certain conditions

that he becomes a slave. A certain machine, for example, is a machine

for spinning cotton; it is only under certain defined conditions that it

becomes capital. Apart from these conditions, it is no more capital than

gold _per se_ is money; capital is a social relation of

production."[163]