However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's theory is, generally speaking, correct; distribution is carried out under the capitalist economic system not according to the amount of productive work done, but in proportion to the outlay of capital and the skill in commercial manœuvring which obtains in the sphere of circulation.
Unique as an investigator of the laws of the proletarian movement, eminent and even a great pioneer as a sociologist, Marx is, in respect of economic theory, predominantly an agitator. His system, more than any other system of Socialism or of political economy, is the revolutionary expression of proletarian thought and feeling. His doctrines of value, surplus value, the economic determination of history, the evolution from Capitalism to Socialism, the political and economic class struggle, will for long have the force of truth for the masses and will continue to move them.
Marx's heart must have been filled with joy and gladness when, out of the elements of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist school, out of his studies of the French Revolution, of the English Industrial Revolution, and of French and English Socialism there arose a unified system whose destiny it was to lead mankind out of the earth-bound history of the past into the new world wherein a spiritual civilisation should fully blossom forth. Man is to quit the realm of necessity and to enter into that of freedom, where he shall cease to be a tool for the profit of others and shall rise to have a purpose of his own, freely associating himself with his fellow men to work in the service of all.
"The realm of freedom, indeed, only begins there where work conditioned by necessity and external utility ceases. According to the nature of the thing, therefore, it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must struggle with nature for the satisfaction of his needs, for self-preservation and self-reproduction, so too must the civilised man, whatever be the form of society or the methods of production obtaining. Side by side with his own evolution develops this constitutional necessity, because his needs increase; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these needs likewise increase. Freedom in this sphere can only consist in this—that men in their social relationship, the associated producers, should regulate this material exchange with Nature in a rational manner and bring it under their united control, instead of being governed by it as by some blind power; it should be carried on with the minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most adapted to and most worthy of human nature. Yet it remains all the same a realm of necessity. It is beyond this where that development of human power, which may be called independent purpose, begins, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon the basis of that realm of necessity."—("Capital," Vol. III., 2, p. 355.)
The National Labour Press, Ltd., Manchester and London. 31258
Typographical errors corrected in text: