Chapter 12. Scientific Socialism

¹ Engels: Anti-Dühring, p. 25.

²Ibid. p. 168.

³Ibid. p. 292.

⁴ Not always without producing rather grotesque effects. Thus the official biography of Lenin tells us (p. 35) that ‘Lenin discerned the processes that were going on in the womb of capitalist society.’ Not even Socrates, who has some claims to be the originator of this long line of metaphor, regarded himself as so skilful a midwife.

⁵ Mr. Fox Strangways, in a private letter.

¹ The examples of the ‘negation of the negation ‘given by Engels (Anti-Dühring, pp. 151–159) may be sound Hegelianism, but otherwise they appear rather silly. A seed of barley falls into the ground and germinates: negation of the seed. In the autumn it produces more grains of barley: negation of the negation. A butterfly comes from an egg: negation of the egg. After many transformations, the butterfly mates and dies: negation of the negation. Negate a, and you get—a; negate—a (this time by multiplying by—a), and the result is a²: negation of the negation, in which both a and—a are firmly embedded, since the square of each is a². Hegel is surely something more than this.

² Marx's summary of Hegelianism is not without entertainment value, especially so, perhaps, if left in the French of La Misère de la Philosophie: ‘Le oui devenant non, le non devenant oui, le oui devenant a la fois oui et non, le non devenant a la fois non et oui, les contraires se balancent, se neutralisent, se paralysent.’

¹The Wealth of Nations, Book V, chap. 1.

¹ Preface to The Class Struggles in France, p. 10.

¹Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 55.

²The German Ideology, p. 7.

³Ibid. pp. 14–15.

⁴Ibid. p. 28.

⁵The Poverty of Philosophy (edition published by Martin Lawrence), p. 92. The concluding sentence is frequently quoted in German literature as a convenient and easily remembered summary of the whole theory: ‘Die Handmiihle ergibt eine Gesellschaft mit Feudalherren; die Dampfmiihle eine Gesellschaft mit industriellen Kapitalisten.’

¹Anti-Dühring,p. 294.

² Prefixed to most editions of The Communist Manifesto; also Marx: Selected Works, vol. 1, p. 16.

³ Lenin: The Teachings of Karl Marx, p. 11.

⁴Ibid. p. 24.

¹ The author of The Interest of Scotland (1700), offers an interesting, if provocative, example of the operation of the Materialist Conception of History in one of its aspects. He is discussing the venerable question of the differences between the Englishman and the Scot. ‘Although the Nobility and Gentry of both Kingdoms are the same in Humor, and Conduct of Living; yet there is a great Disparity between the Common People, both as to Humor and Constitution of Body, by reason of their different way of Feeding. The English is Self-conceited, Lovers of their Belly, and daring; Whilst the Scots are patient, sober in Diet, and hath something of a Timorous Civility.’ Happily the justice of this judgment need not be considered; but obviously’ der Mensch ist was er isst.’

¹The German Ideology, pp. 21–22; see also pp. 8–9.

²Ibid. p. 65.

³ Engels: The Origin of the Family, p. 193.

⁴ Engels: Anti-Diihring, p. 309.

¹ For a more general discussion, see the concluding chapter, pp. 499–504.

² Penty: Post-Industrialism, p. 94.

³The German Ideology, p. 57.

⁴ Bertrand Russell: Freedom and Organisation, p. 249.

⁵ Gonnard: Histoire des Doctrines Economiques, vol. 3, p. 124.

¹ Wilbrandt: Karl Marx, p. 98.

¹ Wilbrandt: Karl Marx, p. 100.

¹ Mr. Joseph (The Labour Theory of Value in Karl Marx, e.g. pp. 39, 66, 73) has shown clearly how utterly confused Marx became when he began to play about with averages.

¹ R. W. Postgate: Karl Marx, p. 78.

¹ Kautsky: Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, p. 125.

¹ Kautsky: Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, p. 54.

²Ibid. p. 124.

³ Emile Burns: What is Marxism? p. 21.

⁴Ibid. p. 62.

⁵ In this phase of the Marxian tradition, the almost proverbial clergyman's widow, with an income of £150 derived from industrial shares, is more typically a capitalist than Lord Nuffield or Lord Melchett.

¹ Lindsay: Karl Marx's Capital, p. 55.

² Croce: Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx, p. 48.

³Ibid. p. 50.

⁴ Loria: Karl Marx, p. 78.

⁵Ibid. pp. 83–84.

¹ Wilbrandt: Karl Marx, p. 96. ‘Aber der erste Band, dem erst nach Jahrzehnten die anderen folgten, gab so wenig Fingerzeige für das richtige Verständnis, dass er missverstanden werden musste, solange man den dritten Band nicht hatte.’

²Ibid. pp. 100, 106.

³ Introduction to Croce: Historical Materialism and the Economics of Karl Marx, p. xx.

⁴Ibid. p. xviii.

¹ Loria: Marx, p. 77.

² Lindsay: Karl Marx's Capital, p. 71.

³ Cole: What, Marx Really Meant, p. 207.

⁴Ibid. p. 211.

⁵Ibid. p. 221.

¹ Cole: What Marx Really Meant, p. 228.

² Croce, op. cit. p. 49.

³ Engels: Anti-Dühring, p. 119.

⁴ Sorel: La Decomposition du Marxisme, pp. 58–59.

¹ Beer: The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx, p. 129.

² Joan Robinson: An Essay on Marxian Economics, p. 27.

¹ Perhaps one does not naturally turn to the novels of Vicki Baum for guidance in these matters; nevertheless the narrator in Marion Alive obviously speaks from experience:

‘The writings of Karl Marx were given to me like a sort of Bible, to learn the fundamentals of socialism from them. Like the Scriptures, they were deeply absorbing in stretches and absolutely barren in others. Like the Scriptures, they contained much intentional or unintentional darkness. Like the Scriptures, they contradicted themselves and, as with the Bible, it was a hopeless undertaking ever to get through reading it all’ (p. 135).

Apart from the suggestion that it is a hopeless undertaking to read the Scriptures, this judgment is not so far out.

¹Manifesto of the Communist Party.

² Lindsay: Karl Marx's Capital, p. 25.

¹ Muckle: Die grossen Sozialisten, vol. 2, p. 116.

² In The Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 7.

³ Cole: What Marx Really Meant, p. 57.

⁴Ibid. p. 59.

⁵Ibid. pp. 112–113.

¹The German Ideology, p. 59.

²The Class Struggles in France, p. 36.

³ Introduction to Civil War in France, p. 19.

¹ Introduction to Civil War in France, p. 17.

²Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 28.

¹Anti-Dühring, pp. 308–309.

² Engels: Origin of the Family, p. 198.

³ Some interest attaches to a passage in Fichte in which, writing in 1794, he lays down in all its essentials the doctrine of the withering-away of the State. It will be found in the lecture bearing the title Über die Bestimmung des Menschen in der Gesellschaft, which is the second of the Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten. He is here concerned with the distinction between Society and the State. The State is merely a means to an end, and like all human institutions which are merely means to an end, it tends to bring about its own destruction: ‘Es ist der Zweck aller Regierung, die Regierung überflüssig zu machen.’ He hastens to add that this event is not imminent; indeed myriads of years, if not myriads of myriads of years, may be necessary. But as a theoretical proposition there lies ahead of us a time ‘wo alle Staatsverbindungen überflüssig seyn werden.’ That time will come when reason, in place of strength and cunning, will be universally recognised as the supreme judge. This does not mean that in this remote period, after these myriads of myriads of years, men will no longer err, and by their errors injure their fellow-men; but it does mean that in that remote future any chance criminals will be of the type known to Godwin and Bertrand Russell, that they will in fact be open to conviction, and on being convinced of their error, they will forthwith reform (Fichte's Sammtliche Werke (1845 edition), vol. 6, pp. 306–307).

¹Anti-Dühring, p. 322.

²The German Ideology, p. 22.

¹ Wilbrandt: Karl Marx, p. 14.

¹ Wilbrandt: Karl Marx, p. 128.

¹ His name was really Lassal. As a very young man he went to Paris Lassal, and came back Lassalle. It is somehow characteristic and symptomatic.

²The Tragic Comedians is undisguisedly the story of Lassalle, idealised and transfigured.

³ Brandes: Ferdinand Lassalle, p. 222.

¹E.g.:

Zu Breslau ein Kirchhof,
Ein Todter im Grab;
Dort schlummert der Eine,
Der Schwerter uns gab.

¹Arbeiter-Programm, p. 32. (In the Reclam edition, No. 6048.)

²Ibid. p. 23.

³Ibid. pp. 36–37.

⁴Ibid. p. 39.

⁵Ibid. p. 47.

⁶Hen Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, pp. 105–106. j

¹Arbeiter-Programm, pp. 50–51.

²Offenes Antwortschreiben (Buchhandlung Vorwärts edition), p. 39.

¹ See, e.g. Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, p. 44. The point is put more bluntly elsewhere; for example, it is argued that if the worker is given ‘die iibliche Nothdurft—seien Sie unbesorgt, den Jungen wird er sich schon erzeugen, wenn auch nicht gerade um des Unternehmers willen!’ (ibid. p. 195).

² Lassalle's words are worth quoting: ‘Er (Ricardo) hat die bürgerliche Oekonomie bis zu ihrem Gipfel entwickelt, d.h. bis hart zu dem Abgrund, wo ihr vermoge ihrer eignen theoretischen Entwicklung selbst nichts mehrübrig bleibt, als umzuschlagen und Sozial-Oekonomie zu werden. Die Soziale-Oekonomie ist nichts als èin Kampf gegen Ricardo, ein Kampf, der eben so sehr eine immanente Fortbildung seiner Lehre ist (Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, pp. 156–157).

³Ibid. p. 110.

⁴Ibid. pp. 210–213.

¹Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, pp. 107–108.

²Ibid. p. 37.

³Ibid. p. 41.

⁴Ibid. p. 215.

⁵Ibid pp. 114, 217. Labour to-day is described, if one can get one's tongue round it, as ‘eine streng in einander eingreifende gemeinschaftliche Vereinigung Vieler zur Hervorbringung desselben Produkts’ (ibid. p. 57).

⁶Ibid. p. 57.

⁷Ibid. p. 216.

¹ ‘das Kapital wieder zum todten, dienenden Arbeitsinstrument zu degradiren’ (ibid. p. 217).

²Offenes Antwortschreiben, p. 44.

³Ibid. pp. 45–46.

¹Offenes Antwortschreiben, p. 46.

²Ibid. pp. 53, 57. Lassalle's words may be quoted as a striking contrast to the main Marxian tradition: ‘Ihnen also, meine Herren, den notleidenden Klassen, gehört der Staat, nicht uns, den höheren Ständen, denn aus Ihnen besteht er! Was ist der Staat? frage ich, und Sie ersehen jetzt aus wenigen Zahlen handgreiflicher als aus dicken Büchern die Antwort: Ihre, der ärmeren Klassen, grosse Assoziation—das ist der Staat!’ (p. 53).

¹Arbeiter-Programm, p. 65.

²Ibid. pp. 66–67.

³Offenes Antwortschreiben, p. 48.

⁴Ibid. pp. 31,58.

¹ It is significant and symptomatic that Lassalle largely survives on the strength of two imaginative and effective phrases, and one short passage of ironical sarcasm. The two phrases which serve as Lassalle's lifebuoy down the waves of the years are, of course, the ‘Iron Law’ and the comparison of the bourgeois State to a ‘nightwatchman.’ The ironical passage is that in which he makes merry over the conception of interest as the ‘reward of abstinence,’ with special reference to the House of Rothschild as a supreme example of the rewards that go to ascetic and, if possible, total abstinence. As it is one of those passages which somehow are generally known about, without being known, and as it affords an example of Lassalle's effective but not too scrupulous tinsel, it may perhaps be reproduced in the compressed type of a footnote:

‘Der Kapitalprofit ist der ‘Entbehrungslohn’! Glückliches Wort, unbezahlbares Wort. Die europäischen Millionäre Asketen, indische Büsser, Säulenheilige, welche auf Einem Bein auf einer Säule stehen, mit weit vorgebogenem Arm und Oberleib und blassen Mienen einen Teller in's Volk streckend, um den Lohn ihrer Entbehrungen einzusammeln! In ihrer Mitte und hoch über all seine Mitbüsser und Entbehrer das Haus Rothschild! Das ist der Zustand der Gesellschaft! Wie ich denselben nur so verkennen konnte!’ (Bastiat-Schulze, p. 121).

¹ Introduction to Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil II, p. xxv.

²Erster Brief an Von Kirchmann.

³Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil I, Zweiter Brief, p. 51.

⁴Off ener Brief an das Comité des Deutschen Arbeitervereins zu Leipzig, reprinted as Appendix to Kozak, Rodbertus-Jagetzow's Socialökonomische Ansichten, p. 339.

¹ The Law of the Diminishing Wage Share is so recurrent and so fundamental in Rodbertus, that one of his more precise statements may be given: ‘Die Vertheilung des Nationalprodukts nach den “natiirlichen” Gesetzen des Tauschverkehrs bringt es mit sich, dass bei steigender Produktivität der Arbeit, der Lohn der Arbeiter ein immer kleinerer Antheil am Produkt wird’ (Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil I, p. 47). Elsewhere he uses the phrase: ‘eine immer kleinere Quote des Nationalprodukts’ (Vorwort to Erster Brief an von Kirchmanri).

²Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil I, p. 50.

¹ Most of this is drawn from the Zweiter Brief an von Kirchmann.

²Dritter Brief an von Kirchmann.

³Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil II, p. 20.

¹Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil II, pp. 64–66.

²Ibid. pp. 58–60.

¹Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Drifter Brief, pp. 82–85.

¹ Conclusion of Dritter Brief, Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, pp. 221–222. Also Zweiter Brief p. 28.

² ‘Es ist dies deshalb von Bedeutung, weil, sobald ein ernstes Vorgehen beabsichtigt wird, es nur von Vortheil sein kann, wenn das Königthum als Schöpfer und Führer der Reform erscheint’ (Sendschreiben an den Arbeit er congress, etc.).

³Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen.

¹Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen.

² Adler: Rodbertus, der Begründer des wissenschaftlïchen Sozialismus, p. 83.

³ ‘Da ich kein Agitator bin und sein will, sondern nur nach wissenschaftlicher Wahrheit trachte’ (Zur Beleuchtung der Sozialen Frage, Theil II, p. 19).

¹ ‘Der Schmutz und die Noth werden ewig zu nichte machen, was der Unterricht der Schulen bewirken will’ (Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klasseri).

²Er ster Brief an von Kirchmann; also Die Forderungen der arbeitenden Klassen.