Socialism: Positive and Negative

by Robert Rives La Monte

The beauties of the positive ideals of the socialist Utopias have been sufficiently lauded by scores of writers from Sir Thomas More to Bellamy and Mr. H. G. Wells. What it is desired to emphasize here is the "negative and destructive" (from the standpoint of the established order) aspects of socialist ideals; for it is the Nihilism of Socialism that explains why Mr. Street's "educated and professional" socialists have more patience than confidence in awaiting the realization of their ideal. The Nihilism of Socialism turns aside many, who have felt the lure of the socialist ideal, into what Professor Veblen calls, "some excursion into pragmatic romance,"[7] such as Social Settlements, Prohibition, Clean Politics, Single Tax, Arts and Crafts, Neighborhood Guilds, Institutional Church, Christian Science, New Thought, Hearstism, or "some such cultural thimble-rig." Yet more, there are many of the "educated and professional classes" who call themselves socialists, because they cherish the charming delusion that it is possible to separate the positive from the negative ideals of Socialism, and to work (in a dilettante fashion) for the former while blithely anathematizing the latter.

It is the purpose of this paper to show that Socialism is not a scheme for the betterment of humanity to be accomplished by a sufficiently zealous and intelligent propaganda, but that it is, on the contrary, a consistent, (though to many repellent) monistic philosophy of the cosmos; that it is from its Alpha to its Omega so closely and inextricably interlocked that its component parts cannot be disassociated, save by an act of intellectual suicide; that, in a word, the Nihilism[8] of Socialism is of the very essence of Socialism.

But, here, a most important distinction should be noted. Socialism, viewed as a political propaganda, is purely positive in its demands. In fact, all its demands may be reduced to two—Collectivism and Democracy. That the people shall own the means of production, and the producers shall control their products—that is the sum and substance of all Socialist platforms. Socialist parties do not attack Religion, the Family, or the State. But socialist philosophy proves conclusively that the realization of the positive political and economic ideals of Socialism involves the atrophy of Religion, the metamorphosis of the Family, and the suicide of the State.

The Nihilism of Socialism springs from the Materialist Conception of History, and this is precisely the portion of the socialist doctrine that is usually ignored or half-understood by the enthusiastic young intellectuals who are in growing numbers joining the Socialist movement on both sides of the Atlantic. While the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847, is throughout founded on this conception, the first clearly formulated statement of the conception itself is to be found in the Preface to the "Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," published by Karl Marx in 1859, the same year in which Darwin and Wallace made public their independent and almost simultaneous discoveries of the theory of Natural Selection. This first statement runs thus:

"In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed."[9]

This statement contains a whole Revolution in embryo. Viewed from the standpoint of the established order, it is the very Quintessence of Nihilism. In a word, it teaches the material origin of Ideas. In the last analysis, every idea can be traced back to the economic and telluric environments. In the words of Joseph Dietzgen, "philosophy revealed to them (Marx and Engels) the basic principle that, in the last resort, the world is not governed by Ideas, but, on the contrary, the Ideas by the material world." This doctrine involves a new epistemology, the distinguishing mark of which is its denial of the immaculate conception of thought. The human mind, according to Marx and Dietzgen, can only bring forth thought after it has been impregnated by the objects of sense perception.[10]

Here we have a thorough-going system of materialist monism. "Ours is the organic conception of history," says Labriola. "The totality of the unity of social life is the subject matter present to our minds. It is economics itself which dissolves in the course of one process, to reappear in as many morphological stages, in each of which it serves as a substructure for all the rest. Finally, it is not our method to extend the so-called economic factor isolated in an abstract fashion over all the rest, as our adversaries imagine, but it is, before everything else, to form an historic conception of economics, and to explain the other changes by means of its changes."[11]

In another place he says: "Ideas do not fall from heaven, and nothing comes to us in a dream.... The change in ideas, even to the creation of new methods of conception, has reflected little by little the experience of a new life. This, in the revolutions of the last two centuries, was little by little despoiled of the mythical, religious and mystical envelopes in proportion as it acquired the practical and precise consciousness of its immediate and direct conditions. Human thought, also, which sums up this life and theorizes upon it, has little by little been plundered of its theological and metaphysical hypotheses to take refuge finally in this prosaic assertion: in the interpretation of history we must limit ourselves to the objective co-ordination of the determining conditions and of the determined effects." He reiterates: "Ideas do not fall from heaven; and, what is more, like the other products of human activity, they are formed in given circumstances, in the precise fulness of time, through the action of definite needs, thanks to the repeated attempts at their satisfaction, and by the discovery of such and such other means of proof which are, as it were, the instruments of their production and their elaboration. Even ideas involve a basis of social conditions; they have their technique; thought also is a form of work. To rob the one and the other, ideas and thought, of the conditions and environment of their birth and their development, is to disfigure their nature and their meaning."[12]

This socialist materialism does not refuse the inspiration of ideals. "By granting that society is dominated by material interests," Dietzgen explains, "we do not deny the power of the ideals of the heart, mind, science, and art. For we have no more to deal with the absolute antithesis between idealism and materialism, but with their higher synthesis which has been found in the knowledge that the ideal depends on the material, that divine justice and liberty depend on the production and distribution of earthly goods."[13]