VI
Having thus disposed of some of the more prevalent criticisms of Marx as an economist, we are ready for a definite, consecutive statement of the economic theory of modern Socialism. First, however, a word as to the term "scientific" as commonly applied to Marxian Socialism. Even some of the friendliest of Socialist critics have contended that the use of the term is pretentious, bombastic, and altogether unjustified. From a certain narrow point of view, this appears to be an unimportant matter, and the vigor with which Socialists defend their use of the term seems exceedingly foolish, and accountable for only as a result of enthusiastic fetish worship—the fetish, of course, being Marx.
Such a view is very crude and superficial. It cannot be doubted that the Socialism represented by Marx and the modern political Socialist movement is radically different from the earlier Socialism with which the names of Fourier, Saint-Simon, Cabet, Owen, and a host of other builders of "cloud palaces for an ideal humanity," are associated. The need of some word to distinguish between the two is obvious, and the only question remaining is whether or not the word "scientific" is the most suitable and accurate one to make that distinction clear; whether the words "scientific" and "utopian" express with reasonable accuracy the nature of the difference. Here the followers of Marx feel that they have an impregnable position. The method of Marx is scientific. From the first sentence of his great work to the last, the method pursued is that of a painstaking scientist. It would be just as reasonable to complain of the use of the word "scientific" in connection with the work of Darwin and his followers, to distinguish it from the guesswork of Anaximander, as to cavil at the distinction made between the Socialism of Marx and Engels and their followers, and that of visionaries like Owen and Saint-Simon.
Doubtless both Marx and Engels lapsed occasionally into Utopianism. We see instances of this in the illusions Marx entertained regarding the Crimean War bringing about the European Social Revolution; in the theory of the increasing misery of the proletariat; in Engels' confident prediction, in 1845, that a Socialist revolution was imminent and inevitable; and in the prediction of both that an economic cataclysm must create the conditions for a sudden and complete revolution in society. These, I say, are Utopian ideas, evidences that the founders of scientific Socialism were tinctured with the older ideas of the Utopists, and even more with their spirit. But when we speak of "Marxism," what mental picture does the word suggest, what intellectual concept is the word a name for? Is it these forecasts and guesses, and the exact mode of realizing the Socialist ideal which Marx laid down, or is it the great principle of social evolution determined by economic development? Is it his naïve and simple description of the process of capitalist concentration, in which no hint appears of the circuitous windings that carried the actual process into unforeseen channels, or the broad fact that the concentration has taken place and that monopoly has come out of competition? Is it his statement of the extent to which labor is exploited, or the fact of the exploitation? If we are to judge Marx by the essential things, rather than by the incidental and non-essential things, then we must admit his claim to be reckoned with the great scientific sociologists and economists.
After all, what constitutes scientific method? Is it not the recognition of the law of causation, putting exact knowledge of facts above tradition or sentiment; accumulating facts patiently until sufficient have been gathered to make possible the formulation of generalizations and laws enabling us to connect the present with the past, and in some measure to foretell the outcome of the present, as Marx foretold the culmination of competition in monopoly? Is it not to see past, present, and future as one whole, a growth, a constant process, so that instead of vainly fashioning plans for millennial Utopias, we seek in the facts of to-day the stream of tendencies, and so learn the direction of the immediate flow of progress? If this is a true concept of scientific method, and the scientific spirit, then Karl Marx was a scientist, and modern Socialism is aptly named Scientific Socialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] An English edition of this work, translated by H. Quelch, was published in 1900 under the title The Poverty of Philosophy.
[138] Cf. F. Engels, Preface to La Misère de la Philosophie, English translation, The Poverty of Philosophy, page iv.
[139] The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, by Anton Menger, 1899.