Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx

by Benedetto Croce

I should also like to call Labriola's attention to another confusion, very common in Marxian writings, between economic forms of organisation and economic epochs. Under the influence of evolutionist positivism, those divisions which Marx expressed in general: the Asiatic, the antique, the feudal and the bourgeois economic organisation, have become four historical epochs: communism, slave organisation, serf organisation, and wage-earning organisation. But the modern historian, who is indeed not such a superficial person as the ordinary Marxians are accustomed to say, thus sparing themselves the trouble of taking a share in his laborious procedure, is well aware that there are four forms of economic organisation, which succeed and intersect one another in actual history, often forming the oddest mixtures and sequences. He recognises an Egyptian mediævalism or feudalism, as he recognises an Hellenic mediævalism or feudalism; he knows too of a German neo-mediævalism which followed the flourishing bourgeois organisation of the German cities before the Reformation and the discovery of the New World; and he willingly compares the general economic conditions of the Greco-Roman world at its zenith with those of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Connected with this arbitrary conception of historical epochs, is the other of the inquiry into the cause (note carefully; into the cause) of the transition from one form to another. Inquiry is made, for instance, into the cause of the abolition of slavery, which must be the same, whether we are considering the decline of the Greco-Roman world or modern America; and so for serfdom, and for primitive communism and the capitalist system: amongst ourselves the famous Loria has occupied himself with these absurd investigations, the perpetual revelation of a single cause, of which he himself does not know exactly whether it be the earth, or population or something else—yet it should not take much to convince us, (it would suffice for the purpose to read, with a little care, some books of narrative history), that the transition from one form of economic, or more generally, social, organisation, to another, is not the result of a single cause, nor even of a group of causes which are always the same; but is due to causes and circumstances which need examination for each case since they usually vary for each case. Death is death; but people die of many diseases.

But enough of this; and I may be allowed to conclude this paragraph by reference to a question which Labriola also brings forward in his recent work, and which he connects with the criticism of historical materialism.

Labriola distinguishes between historical materialism as an interpretation of history, and as a general conception of life and of the universe (Lebens-und-Weltanschauung), and he inquires what is the nature of the philosophy immanent in historical materialism; and after some remarks, he concludes that this philosophy is the tendency to monism, and is a formal tendency.

Here I take leave to point out that if into the term historical materialism two different things are intruded, i.e.: (1) a method of interpretation; (2) a definite conception of life and of the universe; it is natural to find a philosophy in it, and moreover with a tendency to monism, because it was included therein at the outset. What close connection is there between these two orders of thought? Perhaps a logical connection of mental coherence? For my part, I confess that I am unable to see it. I believe, on the contrary, that Labriola, this time, is simply stating à propos of historical materialism what he thinks to be the necessary attitude of modern thought with regard to the problems of ontology; or what, according to him, should be the standpoint of the socialist opinion in regard to the conceptions of optimism and pessimism; and so on. I believe, in short, that he is not making an investigation which will reveal the philosophical conceptions underlying historical materialism; but merely a digression, even if a digression of interest and importance. And how many other most noteworthy opinions and impressions and sentiments are welcomed by socialist opinion! But why christen this assemblage of new facts by the name of historical materialism, which has hitherto expressed the well-defined meaning of a way of interpreting history? Is it not the task of the scientist to distinguish and analyse what in empirical reality and to ordinary knowledge appears mingled into one?

IV

OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN FACE OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Socialism and free trade not scientific deductions: Obsolete metaphysics of old theory of free trade: Basis of modern free trade theories not strictly scientific though only possible one: The desirable is not science nor the practicable: Scientific law only applicable under certain conditions: Element of daring in all action.

It has become a commonplace that, owing to Marx's work, socialism has passed from utopia to science, as the title of a popular booklet by Engels expresses it; and scientific socialism is a current term. Professor Labriola does not conceal his doubts of such a term; and he is right.

On the other hand, we hear the followers of other leaders, for instance the extreme free traders (to whom I refer by preference honoris causa, because they, too, are amongst the idealists of our times), in the name of science itself, condemn socialism as anti-scientific and declare that free trade is the only scientific opinion.