Socialism and the Social Movement in the 19th Century

by Werner Sombart

First, it must be noticed that in all the writing's of Marx and Engels, whose "Anti-Duehring" always constitutes a necessary complement to all the theories of Marx, there is no proof of the asserted "necessity" of the social movement which fully satisfies the demands of our day as to scientific method. It is known that Marx stands upon the Hegelian dialectic, out of date now. What we demand is a psychological founding of social happening, and for this Marx cares little.

Now it seems to me easy to fill this gap. I shall attempt it so far as the limitations of time allow.

Why must the ideal of every proletarian movement be necessarily a democratic collectivism—that is, the communisation of the means of production? It seems to me that the following considerations contain the answer to the question.

The modern social movement strives after that which is represented by the battle-cry, "The emancipation of the proletariat." But this has two phases, an ideal and a material. Ideally a social class can consider itself as "emancipated" only when it as a class is economically and politically dominant or at least independent; the proletariat, that now finds itself in economic dependence upon capital, can only become "emancipated" by throwing off this connection. Perhaps we can conceive of the proletariat as using employers as agents to carry on the work of production. But even then the management will be no longer in the hands of the employers as to-day, but of the proletariat as master of the situation. So long as this supremacy is not reached in any such form, there can be no thought of an "emancipation" of a class. Nor can we speak of this "emancipation" in a material sense, so long as those conditions obtain which to-day, from a class standpoint, are looked upon as marking a social inferiority and are derived from the capitalistic social system. If the proletariat sets an aim clearly before itself, this goal can only be, from the class standpoint, the overthrow of this capitalistic order. Now this overthrow is possible in either of two ways. Either operations on a large scale, which have replaced the earlier and smaller methods of production, can be so reconstituted as that large interlocal and international production shall be again narrowed and localised—in which case the overthrow of the capitalistic order will be simply a retrogression to the "middle-class" system. Or this present order can be conquered in such a way that the existing forms of production on a large scale shall be retained—then the results will be socialism. There is no third possibility. If the proletariat does not vanquish capitalism by a return to the smaller forms of operation, it can accomplish this only by putting a socialistic organisation in place of the capitalistic. And further: the proletariat can attach itself only to the latter method, because its whole existence is interwoven with the system of production on a large scale; it is indeed only the shadow of the system, it exists only where this system rules. Therefore we can say that socialism as the aim of the social movement arises fundamentally and necessarily out of the economic situation of the proletariat. The whole demonstration falls to the ground in a moment, wherever a tendency to the development of proletarian production on a large scale does not exist in economic life.

What I would here show, let me say again, is the necessity of the ideal; but this must not be confused with the certainty of its realisation. In order to prove this, it would be necessary to present other considerations, which lie far from our subject. Thus, whether any such realisation of the ideal is scientifically possible seems to be doubtful. For this would not be proved even if it should be demonstrated that what the proletariat desires and strives for has been provided in the course of social development. I shall have opportunity later to draw attention to this, that the conception of socialism as a need of nature, and thus "necessarily" to be realised, does not rest upon clear thought.

What we must now hold fast as the result of our investigation is this, and it is a true Marxian thought, that social ideals are only utopianism so long as they are merely evolved in the head of the theorist. They obtain reality only when they are united to actual economic conditions, when they arise out of these conditions. The possibility of realising the good and beautiful is enclosed within the sheath of economic necessity. This covering, created out of capitalistic and proletarian conditions and historic economic circumstances, is of such a nature that the ideal of proletarian exertion can only lie in the direction of a socialistic order of society.

But why must the way towards the realisation of this aim lie through class strife? To this we answer in brief: modern society presents itself to us as an artificial medley of numerous social classes—that is, of certain groups of persons whose homogeneity arises out of their attachment to specific forms or spheres of economic life. We distinguish the "junker," as representative of feudal agrarianism, from the bourgeoisie, the representatives of capital; we distinguish the "middle class," the representatives of local production and distribution, from the modern wage-worker or the proletariat, etc. Each one of these groups of economic interests has its special adherents in the professional classes of society among the officials, scholars, artists, who stand outside the economic life, but who unite themselves by birth or position to one or another of the social classes.

This attachment to a social class works decisively in two directions. It implants in the mind of each individual member of a class the conception of the world and life characteristic of that group of men whose thoughts and feelings tend to become identical through the uniformity of the external circumstances that control them; similarity of aspiration and ideal is created. Further, this attachment accomplishes a positive control over the individual in the maintenance of that which is represented by the class—its social position as truly as its material interests; it creates what we may call class interest.

Everywhere and spontaneously there is developed a distinction between classes, and class interest is involved in this. The upholding of this class interest leads throughout to class opposition. Not always does the upholding of a class standard involve necessarily collision with the interests of other classes; at times an identity of interests arises; but this harmony never lasts. The interest of the "junker" must at a certain point come into conflict with that of the burgher, that of the capitalist with that of the proletariat, that of the hand-worker and tradesman with that of the large capitalist; for each class strives naturally for itself, and by that very fact excludes other interests. Then comes to pass the saying:

"Where one goes ahead, others go back;
Who would not be driven must drive;
So strife ensues and the strongest wins."