[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.)