[1001] See the works of MM. Jaurès, Études socialistes; George Renard, Le Régime socialiste; Fournière, L’Individu, l’Association, et l’État.
[1002] Labriola, op. cit. Vandervelde (L’Idéalisme Marxiste, in La Revue socialiste, February 1904) says that “upon final analysis it will be found that Marx’s whole argument rests upon a moral basis, which is that justice requires that every man should get all that he produces.”
M. Landry, in a book of lectures delivered by different authors entitled Études sur la Philosophie morale au XIXe Siècle (p. 164), is of an entirely different opinion. He thinks that Marx’s moral basis is simply potentiality. In other words, everything that has been created in the ordinary course of economic development is moral, everything that has been destroyed is immoral.
[1003] Hence the alliance of the Marxians with what appears to be a directly opposite philosophy—that of William James and Bergson (see Guy Grand, La Philosophie syndicaliste).
[1004] Manifesto. It is impossible to do away with the intellectuals altogether, but they may be reduced to the rank of mere wage-earners. “The Marxians always regarded revolution as the special privilege of the producers, by whom, of course, they understood the manual workers, who, accustomed as they are to nothing but the factory régime, would force the intellectuals also to supply some of the more ordinary wants of life.” (Sorel, Décomposition du Marxisme, p. 51.)
[1005] Manifesto, § 2. It is necessary that we should be reminded of the fact that the Saint-Simonians had already emphasised the antagonism by speaking, not of rich and poor, but of idlers and workers. The differentiation, that is to say, was economic. The Marxian distinction is quite different, for the Saint-Simonians included within the category workers, bankers, and employers, for example, who are excluded by the Marxians. In some cases the Saint-Simonians thought they had even better claims to inclusion than the ordinary worker.
[1006] The first of these means, namely, the acquiring of public works by the State, is spoken of as unified socialism in France, whereas the second, which relies upon direct action without the assistance of any political organisation, is known as syndicalism and is represented by the Confédération générale du Travail (see [p. 480]).
[1007] Marx, Misère de la Philosophie. “What does the word ‘revolt’ imply? Simply disobedience to law. But what are these laws that govern our lives? They are just the products of bourgeois society and of the institutions which they are supposed to defend. Revolution will simply mean replacing these laws by others which will have an entirely different kind of justification.”
[1008] “It is the worst side of things that begets movement and makes history by begetting strife.” (Ibid., 2nd ed., p. 173.)
[1009] Preface to Kapital, p. xix.