12.9 Notes

1. As Gray wittily puts it, the dialectic often seems ‘to the illiterate and ignorant outsider to become a mere toy which enables every swing of every pendulum to be regarded as the embodiment of a great philosophical principle’. Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition (London: Longmans, Green, 1947), p. 300.

2. In Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 210.

3. Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History (1957, Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1985), pp. 111–2.

4. Ibid., pp. 109–10.

5. In the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx angrily denounced Proudhon for making this very point, that division of labour precedes machines.

6. See M.M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (2nd rev. ed., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), p. 9.

7. John Plamenatz, German Marxism and Russian Communism (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1954), p. 29.

8. Ibid., p. 27.

9. For a defence of technological monocausality as a key to Marxism by the founder of Russian Marxism, George V. Plekhanov (1857–1918), see Plekhanov, The Development of the Monist View of History (New York: International Publishers, 1973). Cf. David Gordon, Critics of Marxism (New Brunswick, MJ: Transaction Books, 1986), p. 22. For a critique of Marxism-Plekhanovism, see Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford: Oxford, University Press, 1981), pp. 340–2.

10. Von Mises, op. cit., note 3, p. 126.

11. David Gordon, ‘Mises Contra Marx’, The Free Market, 5 (July 1987), pp. 2–3.

12. For the refutation of another, allied point in Marx's ideology doctrine, that each economic class has a different logical structure of mind [‘polylogism’], see Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 72–91.

13. In the first, ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’ section of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels continually confuse the concepts of ‘caste’ and ‘class’, i.e. class as special privilege vs sets of individuals on the free market. Thus: ‘In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations, [i.e., classes as castes]’. Further, ‘The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has... established new classes, new conditions of oppression... [The unexamined leap from a caste-class to a free-market situation]’.

14. During the 1870s, Marx led Engels to believe that he was working hard and steadily on Volumes II and III of Capital, At Marx's death, Engels was astonished to find that Marx had done virtually no work on the manuscript since 1867, in short, that Marx had lied shamelessly to his friend and patron. See W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels (London: Frank Cass, 1976), 11, p. 563.

15. See below on the Ricardian contribution to the Marxian theory of class.

16. Cf. these insights from Marxism's outstanding twentieth century opponent, Ludwig von Mises: ‘The theory of irreconcilable class conflict is illogical when it stops short at dividing society into three or four large classes. Carried to its logical conclusions, the theory would have to go on dissolving society into groups of interests till it reached groups whose members fulfilled precisely the same function. It is not enough to separate owners into landowners and capitalists. The differentiation must proceed until it reaches such groups as cotton spinners who manufacture the same count of yarn, or the manufacturers of black kid leather, or the brewers of light beer.... No special common interest unites the owners of arable land, of forests, of vineyards, of mines, or of urban real estate... There are no common interests among labourers either. Homogeneous labour is as non-existent as the universal worker. The work of the spinner is different from the work of the miner and the work of the doctor... Nor is unskilled labour homogeneous. A scavenger is different from a porter’. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (4th ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981), pp. 300–301.

17. See James Bland Briscoe, ‘Saint-Simonianism and the Origins of Socialism in France, 1816–32’ (doctoral dissertation in history, Columbia University, 1980), p. 59.

18. It is difficult not to agree with Alexander Gray's assessment of Saint-Simon, as quoted from the French social philosopher Émile Faguet: ‘Saint-Simon is a rare example of incoherence in his life, incoherence in his character, and incoherence in his detailed ideas, combined with a fixity in his ruling views.’ (My translation.) Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 160n.

19. See F.A. von Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, 111.: The Free Press, 1952), p. 158.

20. Ibid., p. 159.

21. James Bilhngton, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 225.

22. Ralph Raico, ‘Classical Liberal Exploitation Theory: A Comment on Professor Liggio's Paper’, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1 (Summer 1977), p. 179.

23. Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections, ed. by J.P. Mayer and A.P. Kerr (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. 1970), p. 5.

24. Raico, op. cit., note 22, pp. 179–80. Professor Tucker, curiously enough, hails The Eighteenth Brumaire as a ‘brilliant masterpiece’, and an application of class struggle analysis and the materialist conception of history. But isn't this work a demonstration of quite the opposite? See Robert C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed„ New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), p. 594.

25. Raico, op. cit., note 22, p. 180.

26. Ibid., p. 180, 183n4.

27. Ibid., p. 180.

28. Von Mises, op. cit., note 16, p. 292; he notes that this passage in Vol 1 of Capital was not in the first 1867 edition, but was added by Marx in the French edition (1873). The insertion was connected to the desperate changes made by Marx in his theory in Volume HI of Capital, not published until after his death.

29. Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 271.

30. From Labour Rewarded. See Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 276.

31. Ibid., p. 290n.

32. Ibid., p. 294.

33. Ibid., pp. 294–5.

34. Quoted in G.D.H. Cole, Socialist Thought: The Forerunners, 1789-1850 (London: Macmillan, 1959), p. 137.

35. Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 287.

36. In Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606–1865 (New York: Viking Press, 1946), II, p. 688.

37. Ibid., p. 689.

38. Élie Halévy, Thomas Hodgskin (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd, 1956), p. 30.

39. Ibid., p. 31.

40. Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 278.

41. Piercy Ravenstone, A Few Doubts as to the Correctness of Some Opinions Generally Entertained on the Subjects of Population and Political Economy (London, 1821).

42. Halévy, op. cit., note 38, pp. 89n-90n. Ravenstone was apparently not a socialist either. Best indications are that he was either the Rev. Edward Edward, a High Tory Anglican clergyman, or Richard Puller, the equally Tory son of a director of the South Sea Company, the Tory speculative banking scheme. Ravenstone's goal was apparently to strike an effective blow against capitalism and free markets by one of their ancient enemies, the High Tory advocates of statism and big government.

43. Gray, op. cit., note 1, p. 282.

44. Ibid., p. 280. Gray, an adherent of the Austrian School, adds a teasing and witty note on his fellow Austrians: ‘Even an orthodox economist of these days, brought up on Tales from the Viennese Woods, may well be forgiven if his faith falters when invited to identify the price-system with the finger of Heaven.’

45. In Halévy, op. cit., note 38, pp. 148–9.

46. Ibid., p. 164.