FOOTNOTES:
[13] 'An immense monograph' (of economics understood) it is called by Professor Antonio Labriola, the most notable of the Italian Marxians, in his recent book (Discorrendo di filosophia e socialismo, Rome, Loescher, 1898). But in an earlier work (In Memoria del 'Manifesto dei Comunisti', 2nd ed. Rome, 1895, p. 36) he defined it as 'a philosophy of history'.
[14] I leave out those who regard the law of labour-value as the general law of value. The refutation is obvious. How could it ever be 'general' when it leaves out of account a whole category of economic goods, that is the goods which cannot be increased by labour?
[15] Werner Sombart: Zur Kritik des oekonomischen Systems von Karl Marx (in the Archiv für soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik Vol. VII, 1894, pp. 555-594). I have not by me the criticism (from the Hedonistic point of view) of this article by Sombart—on the third volume of Das Kapital—made last year by Bohm Bawerk in the Miscellany in honour of Knies.
[16] Loc. cit., p. 571, et seq.
[17] In the Neue Zeit xiv. vol. 1, pp. 4-11, 37-44, I quote from the Italian translation: Dal terzo volume del 'Capitale,' preface and notes by F. Engels, Rome 1896, p. 39.
[18] Sur la théorie Marxiste de la valeur (in the Journal des Economistes, number for March 1897, pp. 222-31, see p. 228).
[19] Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, p. 21.
[20] It must be carefully noticed that what I call a concrete fact may still not be a fact which is empirically real, but a fact made by us hypothetically and entirely imaginary or a fact partially empirical, i.e. existing partially in empirical reality. We shall see later on that Marx's typical premise belongs properly to this second class.
[21] I accept the term employed by Labriola so much the more readily since it is the same as that used by me a year ago. See Essay on Loria (Materialismio Storico, pp. 48-50).
[22] In making an hypothesis of this nature, Marx distinguished clearly that, in such a case, 'labour-time would serve a double purpose: on the one hand as standard of value, on the other as a standard of the individual share reckoned to each producer in the common labour' (andrerseits dient die Arbeitzeit zugleich als Mass des individuellen Antheils des Producenten an der Gemeinarbeit, und daher auch an dem individuell verzehrbaren Theil des Gemein products): See Das Kapital I, p. 45.
[23] This is a different thing from the workmen or operatives in our capitalist society, who form a class, i.e. a portion of economic society and not economic society in general and in the abstract, producing goods which can be increased by labour.
[24] It may be doubted whether this general application of labour-value to every working economic society was included in the ideas of Marx and Engels, when the numerous passages are recalled in which one or other has declared many times that in the future communistic society the criterion of value will disappear and production will be based on social utility, cf. Engels as early as in the Umrisse 1844, (Italian translation in Critica sociale a. v. 1895) Marx, Misère de la philosophie, 2nd ed. Paris, Giard et Brière. 1896, p. 83; Engels Antidühring, p. 335. But this must be understood in the sense that, not being a hypothetical communistic society based on exchange, the function of value (in exchange) would lose, according to them, its practical importance; but not in the other sense that in the opinion of the communistic society the value of goods would no longer equal the labour which they cost to society. Because even in such a system of economic organisation, value-labour would be the economic law which entirely governed the valuation of individual commodities, produced by labour. There would be that clearness of valuation which Marx describes in his Robinsonia, cf. Das Kapital, p. 43.
[25] Dal terzo volume del 'Capitale,' pp. 42-55.
[26] Hence also Marx in §4 of Chap. I.: Der Fetischcharakter der Waare und sein Geheimniss (I. pp. 37-50) gave a brief outline of the other economic systems of mediæval society, and of the domestic system: 'Aller Mysticismus der Waarenwelt, all der Zauber und Spuk, welcher Arbeitsprodukte auf grundlage der Waarenproduktion umnebelt, verschwindet daher sofort, sobal wir zu anderen Producktions formen flüchten' (p. 42). The relation between value and labour appears more clearly in the less complex economic systems, because less opposed and obscured by other facts.
[27] Das Kapital, Book III., sec. III., Chaps. XIII., XIV., XV., Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der Profitrate (vol. iii., Part I, pp. 191-249).
[28] The task of Marx's followers ought to be to free his thought from the literary form which he adopts, to study again the questions which he propounds, and to work them out with new and more accurate statements, and with fresh historical illustrations. In this alone can scientific progress consist. The expositions made hitherto of Marx's system, are merely materials; and some (like Aveling's) consist entirely in a series of little summaries, which follow the original chapter by chapter and prove even more obscure. For the law of the fall in the rate of profits, see below, chap. V.
[29] 'To follow out completely this criticism of bourgeois economics a knowledge of the capitalist form of production, exchange and distribution is not alone adequate. We ought similarly to study at least in their essential features and taken as terms of comparison, the other forms which have preceded it in time, or exist alongside of it in less developed countries. Such an investigation and comparison has hitherto been briefly expounded only by Marx; and we owe almost entirely to his researches what we know about pre-bourgeois theoretical economics.' (Engels, Antidühring, p. 154). This was written by Engels twenty years ago; and since then the literature of economic history has grown remarkably, but historical research has been seldom accompanied by theoretical research.
[30] 'Political economy is essentially an historical science.' (Engels, l.c., p. 150).
[31] What is strange is that Engels (in the passage quoted in the penultimate note) says himself most truly that Marx has written theoretical economics, nevertheless in the sentence quoted in the last note (which appears in the same book and on the same page) he states definitely that economics in the Marxian sense is nothing but an historical science.
[32] Antidühring, pp. 150, 155.
[33] Das Kapital, I, p. 67.
[34] F.A. Lange, Die Arbeiterfrage, 5th ed., Winterthur, 1894, (the author's last revision was in 1874) see p. 332; cf. p. 248 and on p. 124, the quotation from Gossen's book, then very little known.
[35] Adolf Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen œkonomie, 3rd Ed., Leipzig, 1892, vol. I, pt. I; Bk. I, ch. i. Die Wirthschaftliche Natur des Menschen, pp. 70-137.
[36] I may be allowed to remark that in similar discussions, economists usually make the serious mistake of making the concept economic coincide with the concept egoistic. But the economic is an independent sphere of human activity, in addition to all the others, such as the spheres of ethics, æsthetics, logic, etc. The moral goods and the satisfaction of the higher moral needs of man, just because they are goods, and needs, are taken into account in economics, but still only as goods and needs, not as moral or immoral, egoistic or altruistic. In like manner, a manifestation (by words or by any other means of expression) is taken into account in æsthetics; but only as a manifestation not as true, false, moral, immoral, useful, harmful, etc. Economists are still impressed by the fact that Adam Smith wrote one book of theory and of ethics, and another of economic theory; which may interpret to mean that one dealt with a theory of altruistic facts and the other with one of egoistic facts. But if this had been so, Adam Smith would have discussed, in both of his chief works, facts of an ethical character, estimable or reprehensible; and would not have been an economist at all; a ridiculous conclusion which is a reductio ad absurdum of the identification of economic action with egoism.
[37] Discorrendo di socialismo e di filesophia, l. vi.
[38] It is strange how among the students of pure economics also this need for a different treatment makes itself felt, leading them to contradictory statements and to insuperable perplexities. Pantaleoni, Principî di economia pura, Florence, Barbara, 1889, p. 3, Ch. iii § 3 (pp. 299-302), contradicts Böhm-Bawerk, inquiring whence the borrower of capital at interest is able to find the wherewithal to pay the interest. Pareto, Introd. critica agli Estratti del Capitale del Marx, Ital. trans. Palermo, Sandron, 1894, p. xxx, n.: 'The phenomena of surplus value contradicts Marx's theory which determines values solely by labour. But, on the other hand, there is an expropriation of the kind which Marx condemns. It is not at all proved that this expropriation helps to secure the hedonistic maximum. But it is a difficult problem how to avoid this expropriation.' A learned and accurate Italian work which attempts to reconcile the opinions of the hedonistic school with those of the followers of Ricardo and Marx, is the memorandum of Prof. G. Ricca Salermo, La theoria del valore nella storia delle dottrine e dei fatti economici, Rome 1894. (extr. from the Memorie dei Lincei, s. v. vol. I., pt. i.)
[39] See above, chap. I.
[40] The over-abused Dühring was not mistaken when he remarked that in Marx's works expressions occur frequently 'which appear to be universal without being actually so' (Allgemein aussehen ohne es zu sein). Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Socialismus, Berlin, 1871, p. 527.
[41] Gentile, Una critica del materialismo storico in the Studî storici of Crivellucci, vol. VI, 1897, pp. 379-423, throws doubt on the interpretation offered by me of the opinions of Marx and Engels, and on the method of interpretation itself. I gladly acknowledge that in my two earlier essays I do not clearly point out where precisely the textual interpretation ends and the really theoretical part begins; which theoretical exposition, only by conjecture and in the manner described above, can be said to agree with the inmost thoughts of Marx and Engels. In his recent book, La filosofia di Marx, Pisa, Spoerri, 1899 (in which the essay referred to is reprinted), Gentile remarks (p. 104), that, although it is a very convenient practice, and in some cases legitimate and necessary 'to interpret doctrines, by calling a part of their statement worthless or accidental in form and external and weak, and a part the real substance and essential and vital, it is yet necessary to justify it in some way.' He means certainly, 'justify it as historical interpretation,' since its justification as correction of theory cannot be doubtful. It seems to me that even historically the interpretation can be justified without difficulty when it is remembered that Marx did not insist, (as Gentile himself says) on his metaphysical notions; and did certainly insist on his historical opinions and on the political policy which he defended. Marx's personality as a sociological observer and the teacher of a social movement, certainly outweighs Marx as a metaphysician which he was almost solely as a young man. That it is worth the trouble to study Marx from all sides is not denied, and Gentile has now admirably expounded and criticised his youthful metaphysical ideas.
[42] I confess that I have never been able to understand—however much I have considered the matter—the meaning of this passage (which ought however to be very evident, since it is quoted so often without any comment), in the preface to the second edition of Das Kapital: 'Meine dialektische Methode ist der Grundlage nach von der Hegel'schen nicht nur verschieden, sondern ihr direktes Gegentheil. Für Hegel is der Denkprocess, den er sogar unter dem Namen Idee in ein selbständiger subjeckt verwandelt, der Demjurg des Wirklichen, das nur seine äussere Erscheinung bildet. Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Ideelle nichts Andres als das im Menschenkopf umgesetzte und ubersetzte Materielle.' (Das Kapital I, p. xvii.) Now it seems to me that the Ideelle of the last phrase has no relation to the Denkprocess and to the Hegelian Idea of the preceding phrase, cf. above pp. 17. Some have thought that by the objections there stated, I intended to deny Marx's Hegelian inspiration. It is well to repeat that I merely deny the logical relation affirmed between the two philosophical theories. To deny Marx's Hegelian inspiration would be to contradict the evidence.
[43] Answers to several of the questions suggested above are now supplied in the book already referred to, by Gentile: La Filosofia di Marx.
[44] Antidühring, pt. I. ch. xlii., especially pp. 138-145, which passage is translated into Italian in the appendix to the book by Labriola referred to above: Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, cf. Das Kapital, I. p. xvii, 'Gelingt dies und spiegelt sich nun das Leben des stoffs ideell wieder, so mag es aussehen, als habe man es mit einer Konstruction a priori zu thun.'
[45] Lange, indeed, in reference to Marx's Das Kapital, remarked that the Hegelian dialectic, 'the development by antithesis and synthesis, might almost be called an anthropological discovery. Only in history, as in the life of the individual, development by antithesis certainly does not accomplish itself so easily and radically, nor with so much precision and symmetry as in speculative thought.' (Die Arbeiterfrage, pp. 248-9.)
[46] With regard to the abstract classes of Marxian economics and the real or historical classes, see some remarks by Sorel in the article referred to in the Journal des Economistes, p. 229.
[47] G. Gentile, o.c. in Studî storici, p. 421. cf. 400-401.
[48] Labriola has indeed an exaggerated dislike for what he calls the scholastic: but even this exaggeration will not appear wholly unsuitable as a reaction against the method of study which usually prevails among the mere men of letters, the niggardly scholars, the empty talkers and jugglers with abstract thought, and all those who lose their sense of close connection between science and life.
[49] Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, l. ix.
[50] In torno alla storia della cultura (Kulturgeschichtein Atti dell Accad. Pont.; vol. xxv. 1895, p. 8.)
[51] 'If by Christianity is meant merely the sum of the beliefs and expectations concerning human destiny, these beliefs'—writes Labriola—'vary as much, in truth, as in the difference, to mention only one instance, between the free will of the Catholics after the Council of Trent, and the absolute determination of Calvin!' (L.c. ix.)
[52] Without referring to the somewhat unmethodical work of Westermarck, History cf Human Marriage, see especially Ernst Grosse's book, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirthschaft, Freiburg in B., 1896.
[53] This connection is shortly but carefully dealt with by Ingram, History of Political Economy, Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 1888, p. 62.
[54] See, amongst many passages, Marx, Misère de la philosophie, p. 167, et seq. Engels, Antidühring, p. 1, et seq.
[55] On the hedonistic maxima, cf. Bertolini-Pantaleoni, Cenni sul concetto di massimi edonistici individuali e collectivi (in Giorn, degli Econ., s II vol. iv.) and Coletti, in the same Giornale, vol. v.
[56] In regard to this metaphysical use of the word science; there even exists in Italy a Rivista di polizia scientifica! And the metaphor may pass here also.
[57] Cours d'économie politique, Lausanne, 1896-7.
[58] Cf. also his criticism of Marx already referred to: p. xviii.
[59] Sauf l'Angleterre, où règne le libre échange principalement parcequ'il est favourable aux intérêts de certains entrepreneurs, le reste des pays civilisés verse de plus en plus dans le protectionnisme (§. 964.)
[60] See the Giornale degli economisti, excellent in all its critical sections; and especially Pareto's chronicles therein.
[61] It may be remarked that in the difficulty of distinguishing the purely scientific from the practical lies the chief cause of the dangers and poverty of the social and political sciences. And we may even smile at those scientists or their ingenious admirers, who claim to accomplish the salvation of the social and political sciences, by applying to them the methods, as they say, of the natural sciences. (An Italian astronomer, ingenuous as clever, has suggested the formation of sociological observatories which, in a few years would make sociology something like astronomy!) Alas! the matter is not so simple; all sociologists intend indeed to apply exact methods; but how can this application succeed when one advances per ignes or over ground which moves; d'una e d'altra parte sì come l'onda chefugge e s'appressa? (From both sides like the wave which ebbs and flows.)
[62] See the preface of the German translation of Misère de la philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892, and now also in French in the reprint of the original text of the same work (Paris, Giard et Brière, 1896.)
[63] The word communism is also more appropriate, since there are so many socialisms (democratic state, catholic, etc.). On the relation between the materialistic theory of history and socialism, see Gentile, op. cit., passim.
[64] Pantagruel, III, 39-43.
[65] The absurdity of this interpretation will come out clearly if it is merely remembered that there are many cases in which the capitalist manufacturer pays for the labour of his workman, a price higher than what he then realises on the market; cases, it is true, where the capitalist is proceeding towards ruin and bankruptcy; but which he cannot, on this account, always avoid. 'Marx part des recherches faites par cette école Anglaise, dont il avait fait une étude approfondie; et il veut expliquer le profit sans admettre aucun brigandage.' (Sorel, art. cit., p. 227.)
[66] See in Antidühring, p. 303, the historical justification of class divisions.
[67] From among the many passages which support this interpretation, cf. Antidühring, pp. 152-3, 206 and especially pp. 61-2, and the preface to the German translation of Misère de la Philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892 pp. ix-x, cf. also Labriola, o.c. Lett. VIII.
[68] See Labriola, o.c. l. cit., the remarks on the difficulty with which the theory of historical materialism meets owing to mental dispositions, and amongst those who wish to moralise socialism.
One instance, in some respects analogous to this which arises from the discussions on Marx's ethics, is the traditional criticism of Machiavelli's ethics: which was refuted by De Sanctis (in the remarkable chapter devoted to Machiavelli, in his Storia della letteratura), but which continually recurs and is inserted even in Professor Villari's book, who finds this defect in Machiavelli: that he did not consider the moral question.
I have always asked myself for what reason, by what obligation, by what agreement, Machiavelli was bound to discuss all kinds of questions, even those for which he had neither preparation nor sympathy. Can it be said, by way of example, to some one who is researching in chemistry:—Your weak and erroneous spot is that you have not gone back from your detailed investigations to the general metaphysical enquiries into the principles of reality?—Machiavelli starts from the establishment of a fact: the condition of war in which society found itself; and gives rules suited to this state of affairs. Why should he, who was not cut out for a moral philosopher, discuss the ethics of war? He goes straight to practical conclusions. Men are wicked—he says—and to the wicked it is needful to behave wickedly. You will deceive him who would certainly deceive you. You will do violence to him who would do violence to you. These maxims are neither moral nor immoral, neither beneficial nor harmful; they become one of the two according to the subjective aims and the objective effects of the action, i.e. according to the intentions and the results. What is evident is that a morality which desired to introduce into war the maxims of peace would be a morality for lambs fit for the slaughter, not for men who wish to repel injustice and to maintain their rights. 'And if men were all good, this precept would not be good, etc., etc.' says Machiavelli himself. (Principe, ch. xviii). Villari is also troubled by the old formula concerning the 'end which justifies the means' and the 'moral end' and the 'immoral means'. It is however sufficient to consider that the means, just because they are means, cannot be divided into moral and immoral, but merely into suitable and unsuitable. Immoral means, unless as an expression in current speech, is a contradiction in terms. The qualification moral or immoral can only belong to the end. And, in the examples usually given, an analysis made with a little accuracy shows at once, that it is never a question of immoral means but of immoral ends. The height of the confusion is reached by those who introduce into the question the absurd distinction of private and public morality.
I may be pardoned the digression; but, as I said, questions which are really analogous re-appear now in connection with the ethical maxims of Marxism.
[69] And it would be to the point to draw a comparison between the peasants' rebellions, with which modern Italy has supplied us with another example in recent years, and the political struggles of the German workmen, or the economic struggles of the Trade Unions in England.
[70] See in particular P.I. ch. ix., Moral und Recht, Ewige Wahrheiten.
[71] See, in particular, Marx's ideas: Ueber Feuerbach, in 1845, in the appendix to Engels' book, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1895, pp. 59-62; and cf. Andler in Revue de metaphysique, 1897, Labriola, o.c. passim and Gentile, l.c., p. 319. From this point of view (i.e. limiting the statement to the theory of knowledge) we might speak like Labriola of historical materialism as a philosophy of practice, i.e. as a particular way of conceiving and solving, or rather of over-coming, the problem of thought and of existence. The philosophy of practice has now been designedly studied by Gentile in the volume referred to.
[72] Some interpretations would be merely verbal explanations. To some it will appear a very hard statement that socialism aims at abolishing the State. Yet it suffices to consider that the State, among socialists, is synonymous with difference of classes and the existence of governing classes, to understand that as in such a case, we can speak of the origin of the State, so we can speak of its end; which does not mean the end of organised society (cf. Antidühring, p. 302). The conception of the way in which capitalist society will come to an end demands no little critical working out; on this point the thought of Marx and Engels is not without obscurities and inconsistencies (cf. Antidühring, pp. 287 et seq. and p. 297).
[73] See Ch. Andler, Les origines du socialisme d'état en Allemagne, Paris, Alcan, 1897. Andler promises a book, and is now giving a course of lectures on the decomposition of Marxism.