Cornell Uiiiversily Library HB 501.M5P85 Marx and modern thought. 3 1924 003 663 675 ^ b N. Y. S. SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL & LABOR RELATiOiiS CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS THE GIFT OF The Family of Morris and Vera Hillquit ^^^'""^■ilSliB«*^*«5 ' *s «s ^" ^^^r From the Library of MORRIS HILLQUIT Presented in the memory of MORRIS AND VERA HILLQUIT ^ A jAAAftAA' AA ii Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924003663675 W.E.A. Series of Ecai^omic, Political, and Social Studies. No. 4. MARX AND MODERN THOUGHT W.E.A. SERIES. Economic, Political, and Social Studies. Written in Australia. General Editor - - G. V. PORTUS, M.A., B. Litt. No. 1— "Democracy and Frekdom," by Elton Mayo, M.A., Professor of Psychology and Ethics in the Uni- versity of Queensland. No. 2.— "The New Social Order," a Study of Post War Reconstruction. By Professor Meredith Atkinson, M.A., Director of Tutorial Classes, and Member of (j^i^'pfessorial Board, University of MeXjSburne. No. 3. — "History of Trade Unionism IN Australia," by J. T. SutclifiEe, Secretary to the Federal Government's Basic Wage Commission, 1920. No. 4, — "Marx and Modern Thought" by G. V. Portus, M.A., B. Litt., Director of Tutorial Classes and I,ect- urer in Economic History in the University of Sydney. No. 5. — " Modern Economic History," (with special reference to Australia), by Herbert Heaton, M.A., M. Com., Lecturer in Economics and Director of Tutorial Classes, University of Adelaide. To PETER BOARD, Director of Education in N.S. Wales, this book is gratefully dedicated, in recognition of his great services to the cause of controversial education, in this country. 1'; I'^if'ti' First Published in igsi . Karl Marx MARX AND MODERN THOUGHT BY G. V. PORTUS, M.A.. B. Litt. m (Diredtor of Tutorial Classes and Ledlurer in Economic History in the University of Sydney.) STUDENTS' EDITION Sydney : WoRKBRs' Educational Association of N.S.W. 1921. GENERAL PREFACE. The scarcity of authoritative Australian books on economic, social and political problems has been severely felt during the development of the Workers' Educational Association in the Commonwealth. On the foundation of the Federal Council of the W.B.A. in 1918 a means of over- coming this difficulty -was sought. Among the professors, lecturers, and tutors, who have so readily assisted the tutorial class movement, some had collected valuable material bearing on these problems. Through the Federal Council it was thought possible to assemble some of this material for publication in a series of monographs intended for the use of students in tutorial classes and elsewhere. Thus has the W.E-A. Series of publications been founded, and it is hoped that its utility will extend beyond the immediate needs of members of the W.B-A. to the growing number of students of social problems in Australia. The chief aim of the scries being to encourage in-\ vestigation in fields of study hitherto surprisingly neglected in Australia, the IV.B-A. does not accept responsibility for the views expressed by the writers therein. Its purpose is to stimulate thought, not to propagate doctrines. A disclaimer of this kind may appear odd in a preface, but our experience of the persistency vlith which our critics insist on attribut- ing to the Association, the opinions of those who happen ta be connected with it, has convinced us that it is necessary. G. V. PORTUS, General Bditor- AUTHOR'S PREFACE. Any writer on Marx faces a difficult problem. The subject is not only exceedingly complex, it is also bitterly controversial. The followers of Marx have generally been noted for the intensity of their belief in their hero. So intense is this that it has sometimes passed over into a tendency to erect him into a kind of infallible high priest of socialism, whom to criti- cise is evidence both of intellectual presumption and of bad taste and bias. They seem, at times, to take the same attitude to his writings as old-fashioned, evangelical people assume towards the scriptures, that is, that they are of superior authority to subsequent productions and have a kind of guaranteed accuracy in every word. Criticism of Marx comes therefore to be regarded as hostility to socialism if not as evi- dence of capitalistic bias. Every writer who dis- agrees with the Master is a "fakir" — a man who is out to destroy the working class movement for ends of his own. This is not, of course, the attitude of all Marxians, but it will hardly be denied that it is characteristic of many of them. On the other hand, there is a tradition of animosity against Marx in certain circles which has made for XI. system. I trust that my readers will be able to dis- tinguish clearly between the account of the system and the criticisms of it. It ought not to be necessary to say that for the criticisms expressed herein I am alone responsible. They must not be taken to indicate the views of any society or institution, least of all must they be held to be the opinions of the Workers' Educational Association of New South Wales which is publishing this book. I feel that some explanation is necessary on the part of anyone who adds to the voluminous literature of exposition and criticism of Marxism. This book is being published to supply the need for a short and more or less popular introduction to the subject, which shall be accessible at a reasonable price. Most of the short expositions of Marxism are either parti- san or they are out of date, The recent events in Russia have brought Marx prominently to the fore again. He can no longer be easily relegated to the nineteenth century lumber room as a back number, because the orthodox economists have succeeded to their own satisfaction in refuting his economic theories. For his sociological and political ideas are the acknowledged doctrines which are animating the rulers of a great European state and — through them — the world-wide revolutionary section of the prole- tariate. We can support Marxism at the present time, or we can oppose it, or we can criticise it. But we cannot ignore it — that is, unless we are content Xll. to play the ostrich in the midst of the amazing ferment of humanity that is going on. Before concluding this preface 1 should like to thank my tutorial class in Marxian Economics, which impressed upon me, far more than any reading has done, the ways in which Marx's teaching appeals to students of his work. It would have been quite im- possible for me to have written the third chapter of this book without having had the advantage of a year's discussion with my tutorial class students. I have also to thank Mr. J. C. Stewart and Mr. W. N. Butler for their kind assistance in proof reading. Finally, I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to my wife, both for her ready help in preparing the index, and for her patient acquiescence in the arrangements which made the writing of this book possible. G.V.P. The University of Sydney, February, 1921. CHAPTER I. THE PEACE OF MARX IN THE HISTORY OF THOUGHT. The title of this chapter introduces us to a wider sphere than that of socialism only. Marx is not only a socialist and a matter for socialistic concern. If he had never made his deductions as to the inevit- ability of socialism, his work would still be of enormous importance to the sociologist and social historian. It is, therefore, important to try and point out Marx's place not only in the development of socialistic thought, but also in the general stream of political and social thought of his age. He offers us not only a system of economics, but also a philosophy of social . progress, and to understand this we have to inquire into his relation not only to the Utopian Socialists who immediately preceded him, but also to the whole political thought of the i8th and 19th centuries. In order to do this it seems to be necessary to give a brief account of his life. Neither the influence nor the content of a man's work can be understood without some knowledge of the times in which he lived. M^rx was what he was because he lived when he did. He wrote what he wrote because others be- fore him had written what they had written. Let us therefore briefly run over the salient facts of his career and of his environment. Marx was born at Treves (or Trier), in the Rhirie Provinces of Prussia, on the 5th May, 1818. His father was a Jewish lawyer, who shortly afterwards adopted the Christian faith in obedience, so it is said, to an anti-Semetic edict which commanded Jews holding official positions to be baptised or dismissed* The Rhine provinces had been occupied by the French during the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, and French liberalism, proclaiming equal rights for all men, had swept away much of the old feudal rub- bish from the political and social institutions of the provinces. But Prussia, with the provinces restored after the fall of Napoleon, was plainly going back to the old system of reaction and repression which had characterised her policy before the revolutionary era. This reactionary government and the correspondingly antagonistic liberalism which it engendered were the forces that moulded Marx during his impressionable years. His mother was a DuC.r'^^.Tian. His faith- ful sweetheart (afterwards his wife) was the grand- daughter of a Scotchman, so that Marx had oppor- tunities in his early days of learning the value of other cultures than the purely German, which may have influenced him towards the internationalism of * Liebknecht Biographical Memoirs of Karl Marx says Marx's "whole life was a reply and a revenge" for this (p. 11). On the other hand Spargo — Karl Marx — claims that the re>- nunciation of Judaism was quite voluntary on the part of the elder Marx. his later years. He proceeded to the Universities of Bonn and of Berlin, nominally to study law, but really spending his time at history and philosophy. He became mixed up with a set called "The New Hegelians," who were followers of the great German philosopher Hegel (1770-1831), but who were more radical than their master. Marx has been posed as an anti-Hegelian by some writers, but this is a hadf- truth. Really Hegel's influence on Marx was con- siderable, and Marx himself acknowledged his debt to Hegel in the preface to the second edition of the only volume of his great work "Capital" that was published during his own lifetime.* Any ade- quate account of Hegelian thought cannot be crushed into a couple of pages. Bearing this in mind we may say, roughly, that there are three outstanding ideas in Hegel's philosophy. (i) The Idea of Development. Hegel maintained that things and institutions existed because they fitted their age. When they fitted they were rational or reasonable. When they did not fit they were merely survivals which once were useful but now are use- less, like the vermiform appendix in the human body or the buttons on the back of a modern frock coat. Such things are irrational, unrealities, non-existent to the rational mind, and, being functionless, they will in time pass away. Thus to Hegel Truth is not a fixed quantity but a constantly changing thing— * Capital Vol. I, p. XXX (Preface). International Library Edition. always being made, never complete. So, in political affairs, there is no perfect state— but always a state in the process of becoming perfect. Evolution or de- velopment is the clue to an understanding of life both social and moral. From this standpoint we can glimpse the bearing of Hegel's famous remark, "All that is real is rational." (2) Idealism. To a certain extent Hegel's theory of evolution involved Idealism, since it looked at all progress in the light of a constantly chamging ideal. But Idealism is used in another and more exact sense in philosophy. Philosophical idealists are the thinkers who explain the world from the spiritual (or non- material) standpoint. Thus Berkeley maintained that the world of sense — the so-called material things we apprehended by sense— did not exist apart from the mind of the beholder. Mind is the first thing — other things exist because the mind perceives them. Otherwise they could not exist. Hegel did not say this; but he did say that the external material world, even if it existed apart from man's mind, was utter- ly unintelligible without that mind. And since unin- telligible things were irrational they were not worth bothering about. The mind was not the product of the external facts. Matter was the necessary coun- terpart of mind, but it was only intelligible if regarded as that in and with which the mind worked. (3) Dialectics. This was the method by which Hegel conceived the mind or idea to work. It may perhaps be illustrated by following out the course of an argument between two people. Suppose Brown to be maintaining that the real cause of social unrest is poverty and wretchedness. Smith observes that this explanation will not cover all the facts because there are many instances of poor races, especially in ancient times, who were comparatively contented with their lot. He therefore suggests that poverty is really a relative matter, and the real cause of social unrest is inequality which makes their poverty apparent to the poor. To this Brown replies that there are coun- tries like India and China where social inequality is actually encouraged by caste systems and yet they are not the centres of the world's unrest. He now is inclined to surmise that neither poverty nor inequality are the direct causes of unrest. Perhaps it is economic insecurity, which he has not hitherto considered, but which the argument itself has now suggested to him. And so on. Here it can be seen how in the course of the argument the causes of unrest become clearer and more synthesized and more approximated to Truth. Hegel applies the process, here taking place in a pair of individual minds, to the life and thought of society as a whole. He sees society as an organism with a fundamental unity which is its Truth and which it seeks to manifest. But it only does so by opposition, by clash of different individual groups in- side society. And the ultimate object of such clashes is better distribution of function and better recognition of each component part. This process Hegel called by the old Greek name — Dialectic— be- cause it fell naturally into argument or dialogue be- tween two opponents. Plato had reasoned in this same way by the juxtaposition of opposites. As ap- plied to history the method became known as the Dialectic Method, and it makes history very differ- ent from its previously conceived character as a mere catalogue of events. No event in history, if history be looked at in this way, is immoral or unnecessary; for each event is necessary, is part of an assertion or a contradiction without which society cannot ar- rive at Truth and cannot make progress. All history thus becomes an acted or spoken dialectic. It will be obvious to those who are acquainted with the Marxian system of thought, how much light this teaching of Hegel must have thrown upon the de- velopment of Marx's ideas. He was convinced of the truth of the dialectic method in social affairs, and of the conception of Evolution in society of which it was, so to speak, the process. It will also be seen from this that Philosophy had not waited for Biology to suggest the idea of Evolution. Hegel (1770-1831) made use of the idea before Darwin (1809-1882). And in 1859, the same year as the publication of the Origin of Species, we find Marx applying to society the conception of evolution through his theory of Dialectic Materialism, in the introduction to bis Critique of Political Bconomy. But Marx would not accept Hegel's idealism. He steadily swung away from the idea that the universe must be regarded as the working out of a spirit or guiding mind (not God necessarily but an ultimate rational principle existing in the world of mind or spirit which directs cosmic action and progress). And in this he broke from Hegel and joined the young Hegelians in criticising him. Later, as his own theory of historical material- ism developed, he broke from the young Hegelians and criticised them. One of the reasons why Marx was ready to break with the official Hegelian system was doubtless the use that had been made of it in politics. The ex- ploitation of philosophers by politicians was (and is) by no means uncommon. One has only to think of the Stuarts' use of Hobbes, the Whig utilization of John Locke, the eagerness of the French revolution- aries to exploit the philosophy of Rousseau and, in recent times, the maladroit adoption of Nietzchean ideas by the German bureaucrats, to understand how willingly early 19th century Prussia appropriated from the Hegelian system what it thought would be suitable for its purposes. Just at that time there existed in Prussia a profound distrust of everything the French revolutionaries had advocated. Whatever Napoleon or the French had blest, that reactionary Prussia was ready to damn. Now there had been a certain contemptuous attitude to the past in some of the writings and speeches of the French revolution- ists. There always is this attitude in revolutions. The revolutionaries are for the new future; the past is only shackles and fetters, ignorance and prejudice; therefore on to the glorious future! Confound the 8 old institutions ! They are stumbling blocks ! Sweep 'em away! We saw this in Russia recently. Hegel's attitude to the past was, in some respects, a reaction against this revolutionary fervour. For Hegel said the past did matter, and was extremely important, since without it the present was impossible. And similarly, he said that the present is important since it is "on the road" to the future. It therefore must be understood. Its institutions are now being tried. They have been evolved and are here because they "fit." They embody the experience of humanity in its striving forward. The reactionary Prussian gov- ernment was quick to exploit the implications of this point of view. If the present wss the crown of the past, then men must be exceedingly chary how they interfere with the accumulated wisdom of the ages. All this inspired meddling and tinkering with society ■ — sanctioned as it was by evolution — must be stopped. It did not matter that other parts of the Hegelian system enjoined a constant clash and conflict which would repudiate the stagnant political calm which these autocrats envisaged. They took what justified them in the theory — as political parties have always done — and ignored the rest with that lofty disregard for consistency which the parties of our own demo- cratic days have not yet abandoned. But to the young liberals of Germany in the forties of last century this particular political system, which Hegel's thought was being used to buttress, was anathema. And with Marx this feeling turned to a definite repudiation of the idealism of Hegel, and in 1844 he broke with it, announcing his conversion to materialism. But he never broke from the influence of the dialectic method nor from the evolutionary conception of history. They colour all that Marx has written. In 1841 Marx obtained his Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) at Jena, but the reactionary spirit of Prussia was so strong that no University appoint- nents were possible for Radicals, and in 1842, he became editor of the Rhenish Gazette — a liberal news- paper. But his attacks on the Government brought about the suppression of the paper by the next year. Marx (who had just married his early sweetheart — Jenny von Westphalen) decided to turn his attention to economics, and went to Paris in 1843, meeting there the leading French socialists of the day, and later meeting his life-long comrade, Frederich Engels. All these French socialists were more or less Utopians, and Marx had a good chance of testing the various theories they advanced. Early in 1845, ^^ the instance of Prussia, Marx was expelled from France by the Guizot government, and he settled in Brussels, where with the help of Engels he began to work out his economic and sociological ideas. Dur- ing this period he came into contact with the English classical school of political economists. Their work made a deep impression on Marx, as his theoretic economics show. In 1848 the famous Communist Manifesto was published as the programme of the Communist League. This body was a section which 10 was dissatisfied, on the one hand, with the Utopian Socialism of St. Simon, Proudhon, and Cabet, and, on the other, with the secret revolutionary school with which Bakunin and other subsequent anarchists were connected. There is no space in this short review to do more than briefly refer to this unique document, but men- tion will be made of it subsequently. It certainly should be read and digested by every student who desires to understand modem history, and certainly by every politician, and most certainly by every social reformer. "Full of mistakes," as one writer puts it, "and of immature thought, it still remains an unequalled tnasterpiece of convincing eloquence."* It contains all the typical Marxian doctrines ex- cept one — the theory of value — which was not elaborated by Marx until later. All the rest are indi- cated plainly here. Indeed some of them are never worked out to anything fuller than they attain in this sketch. We get the materialist conception of history, the class struggle of bourgeoisie and prole- tariate, the theories of capitalistic accumulation, of increasing misery, and of capitalistic suicide. It has the scientific colour that Marx and Engels strove to give all their work, the note of inevitability in the prophecies, and the ambiguous use of the term revo- lution which is so common and so confusing to-day. "It is," as another writer puts it, "a philosophy of his- ♦ Sombart: Socialism and the Social Movement p. 52. 11 tory, an analysis of contemporary society, ai scathing criticism of the Utopians, a prophecy of revolution, a party programme, and a complete set of battle cries."* During the revolutionary year of 1848 Marx re- turned first to Paris and then to Germany and sup- ported the cause of advanced democracy in the New Rhenish Gazette. But Marx's heart was hardly in ihe German _S,evolution of '48. It was to him a political movement born out of due time because the economic revolution which should have been the basis of it had not occurred. The established order gradually got the upper hand, and after a trial for libel and another for sedition, in both of which he was acquitted, Marx's paper was suppressed, and he wa's expelled from Prussia. Paris would not receive him this time, and this 19th century wandering Jew turned to the "Mother of Exiles," and came to Lon- don in 1849. He resided there until his death in 1883, and the story of his life is henceforth on the one hand a tale of unremitting literary toil and pro- duction, and on the other a history of the organisa- tion of International Socialism. With the latter as- pect of his work we are not concerned in this chap- ter, but we must refer to it afterwards. His literary activity we can only summarise by saying that he worked out in London the theories that he had al- ready formulated on the Continent, adding, in the ♦H. Heaton: Modern Economic History, p. 205. 12 economic field, his theory of value and surplus value. His industry was prodigious, his life heroic. He was seldom out of the grip of poverty and often the whole family were in want of food. It is incredible to think that he worked out his abstruse theories in one of two rooms in which three adults and three children lived, with the children playing round him, and every visitor interrupting him. And yet it was so. Towards the close of his life matters improved for him, mainly through the inexhaustible generosity of his friend En- gels, who was now a cotton spinner at Manchester.* He was able to move from Soho to a house on Haverstock Hill, to have his daughters decently edu- cated, to take his family to the seaside from time to time, and finally he accepted the traditional office of Constable of the Vestry of St. Pancras, taking the usual oath, and. on occasion, wearing the regulation uniform.f But his unremitting labours took toll of his health during his later years. After the publica- tion of Capital (1867), he was never really well, and was compelled to seek relief, from time to time, from the London climate. The death of his wife (1881), * "Engels will secure a splendid place in the history of Socialist thought were it only because of the way in which he devoted himself to Marx .... He gladly responded to his friend's unremitting requests for aid, succouring him in every etncrgency . . . He sent Marx weekly subsidies, and frequently despatched gifts of port wine ; he made presents of iiioo or £150 at a time; and at le^igth, when his business prospered, he gave his friend a regular allowance of £350 a year.". — Kail Marx by Achille Loria (Allen & Unwin) p. 47. t Achille Loria : Karl Marx p. 48. 13 and of his daughter Jenny (1883) were cruel shocks from which he never recovered, and he died suddenly in the afternoon of March 14th, 1883, while seated in his study chair. He was buried in the common ceme- tery at Highgate. His illustrious fellow worker in an- other field, Charles Darwin, who died a year before, had been buried in Westminster Abbey. We have passed over very briefly the events in Marx's life, from 1850 till his death, for the reason that his system of thought was really evolved in the first 30 years of his life. Thovigh it was developed and modified in the latter period, it was not essentially changed. The story of his London years'^ is really the story of his practical doings, his development of prin- ciples of action, of methods and tactics for the Labour movement. For Marxism is really two things — a the- oretic system and a plan of proletarian tactics. With the latter we shall be concerned in a later chapter. It is the former that engages our attention here. The circumstances of Marx's time led him to be an uncompromising opponent of rationalism in politi- cal and social thought. Now this word rational re- quires some explanation. We use it to-day with a variety of meanings. For example, a rational man is a reasonable, sane, or even moderate man. A rational theorist- in religion is one who doubts the truth of revelation; in fact, a rationalist has come to mean an agnostic, or even an atheist. Rational dress is a form of dress which for some reason rejects what is customary in attire. The connecting link of all these 14 uses of the word is the idea of relying on reasoning, of action taken only after thought, of something sys- tematically thought out. Now the word rational as applied to social and political thought in the i8th and 19th centuries has none of these meanings. A rational political thinker was, it is true, one who had arrived at his conclusions by the exercise of his rea- son or his thoughts ; but this came to mean little more than one who reliied on his reason alone to furnish his theories of social life, or, to put the matter more explicitly, one who proceeded deductively rather than inductively in his political and social speculation. Some explanation of the terms deduction and induc- tion is, perhaps, necessary. Deduction is the principle of argument by inference from the general to thie par- ticular. Induction is inference from the particular to the general. Suppose I have a fixed and pessimistic conviction that all men are liars, and I meet John Smith for the first time and treat him as a liar. My inference that John Smith is a liar will be arrived at deductively. Suppose, however, that in my bounding optimism I treat all men as truth-tellers at the outset of my career, and suppose I am continually deceived and tricked by my fellow man, until my bounding op- timism is undermined and I come to the pessimistic conclusion that all men are liars. I have inferred that large general fact from a variety of particular instances and have come to my conclusion by a pro- cess of induction. Take another example. Suppose that I am convinced that men are naturally just and 15 equal by nature and are meant to function in a uni- versailly just social system. Then I may construct a theoretical social order which shall be distinguished by the justice and equality of its arrangements. I .should then be proceeding deductively, fitting my fu- ture scheme to what I thought it ought to be according to men's natures. Suppose, however, that I surveyed the past history of mankind and saw, not that men were always just and naturally equal, but that, on the whole, there were certain tendencies of action being worked out. Suppose, further, that from my survey of those tendencies I should construct the future state of humanity as one which would embody the working out of those principles — whether I find them to be good or bad it matters not — then I should be proceed- ing inductively, fitting my future pictures to what I thought the social system would develop into accord- ing to its observed historical tendencies. In the former case I would be said to be constructing a rational sys- tem, appealing to men's judgment and intellect and reason to found a new order in which the qualities they admired most would be given a chance to flourish. In the latter case I should be constructing a historical system, not appealing to men's idea of the good and the beautiful at all, but simply pointing out facts and their future significance.* * It is interesting to notice that modern psychology has, to some extait, recovered this sense of the word rational, e.g., "When we give a wrong account of the causes that have led to an action it is generally the case that we have unconsciously 'faked' a set of 'reasons' on the grounds that appear to us as 16 If then we use the word rational in this sense in this chapter to describe certain systems of thought, we shall be using it in a sense which does not, like many of its present usages, exclude the exercise of the im- agination. The term reason is not thus opposed to imagination or idealism, its real opposite is historical inquiry. Social philosophers were of the school of reason or of the school of history. Western political thought since the Reformation had run very largely on rational lines. The favourite theme of the political philosophers during the 17th and i8th centuries was the doctrine of the Social Contract. This contract was conceived as an agree- ment made between the various members of society in order to found a social order. No trace of an actual original social contract among primitive people can be found. Nevertheless, the political philosophers argued that without some such social contract, society or the 'State could not have beei founded and certainly could not have progressed. This, we must observe, is ration- al argument, an appeal to men's reason. The social contract must have existed. How otherwise can we ex- 'rational,' and put them in the place of the real causes, o( which we are unconscious. This process of 'rationalization' is so exceedingly common as to be practically universal." (The New Psychology by A. G. Tansley, p. 11). Thus, a bad work- man blames his tools rather than recognize his own faults. The state of his tools is (to him) the rational reason of the bad work, but the historical reason of it is his own incompet- ence. So here, Hobbes, Locke, and Roussefau might be said to be "unconsciously faking" accounts of the origin of society on grounds that appeared to them to be "rational." They were rationalizing the origins of society. (See pp.' 17-19 of this chapter). 17 plain the origin of the State? Now, if this be admit- ted, at once the question arises, What were the terms of this social contract? The philosophers admitted that this was a legitimate question, and proceeded to answer it by quoting the terms of the contract. Since they had no access to any original contract, obviously they must have supplied its terms out of their own heads. They did so. They looked at society and de- cided that it could only be explained if the terms of the contract were what they said they must have been. It is, therefore, not surprising that, when diflferent philosophers stated their different ideas of what this contract contained, these ideas should differ. For not only do different men see society differently ; they see it at different times, and through the eyes of their own prejudices. Thus Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) maintained that the social contract was made between man and man in early society and that they agreed each with the others to give up their sovereign rights for ever to a superior, whose authority should be unquestioned for all time. Such a superior becomes the Sovereign. Hobbes calls him the Great Leviathan or Mortal God. Such a sovereignty is thus absolute, eternal, and irre- futable. This, of course, is nothing less than a justi- fication of absolutism. Hobbes, writing in the 17th century, was a firm partisan of the divine right ab- solutist theory of the Stuart Kings. John Locke (1632- 1704) maintained that the social contract was made, not between mam and man, but 18 between an already existing ruler and his subjects, and that they promised to respect each other's rights. The King had the sovereign power so long as he kept the terms of the contract. If he broke them, his sub- jects were freed from their obedience to him. This, you will see, does not justify absolutism, but it does justify a limited monarchy. Locke, writing at the end of the 17th century, was an adherent of the Whigs, who dethroned James II. on the ground of his abso- lutism, and who actually stated in a political document that the King had broken the terms of his contract, though there is no trace of any such contract explicit in the affair. Rousseaw (1712-1778) maintained, like HobbeS, that the social contract was made between man and man in primitive times. But it erected as sovereign not an absolute King, nor a limited one, but the will of the people. All exercises of sovereignty then are to be judged by this question — "Do they conflict with the sovereignty of the people?" Rousseau was writing in the i8th century. He had experienced the despotism of Louis XIV. His theory obviously justifies democracy, and it was freely used by the French revolutionaries in 1789 — eleven years aiter the death of Rousseau. How historical Rousseau's picture of man's primitive State was can be gathered from some of his expressions. "Wandering in the forest I sought for and found there the image of the primitive ages, of which I boldly traced the history," or again, "As I thought this I consequently uttered it." 19 The justification of these writers for their statements was that, if one did not imagine the existence of some- thing very like what they argued, one could not ex- plain the origin of existing human society at all. It did not matter what history said or did not say, the question was, how could one explain society if one did not admit that their presuppositions were correct. The weakness of this rationalizing appeal to the intel- lect and the imagination alone was that contemporary societ}' suggested different explanations of its origin to different men. The absolutism of the Stuarts sug- gested a primitively ordained despotism to Hobbes, the Tory. The failure of those same Stuarts to gov- ern properly suggested a primitively ordained con- stitutional King to Locke, the Whig. And absolutism and centralization run mad in France under Louis XIV. suggested a primitive authority for getting rid of Kings and governors to Rousseau, the anti- authoritarian. Thus the social contract, if it was imagined in different terms, could be made to justify almost anything in the shape of political machinery. But already there was setting in a reaction against this practice of writing imaginary history. We cannot, in this place, examine this reaction particularly with regard to the doctrine of the Social Contract, for we have only taken this doctrine to illustrate what is meant by the purely rational school of history, as it was understood in the i8th century. The reaction begins with Montesquieu (1689-1755), who has been 20 called "The father of modem historical research.' Montesquieu saw that political systems could not be explained by playing with ideas about what imaginary men might have done in imaginary circumstances be- fore the dawn of history. He therefore applied him- self to the study of political institutions and of their history in order to explain the present systems of so- ciety. We even get a glimpse of the dialectic con- ception in his insistence on the right of free contro- versy. "In a free nation," he says, "it often does not matter whether people discuss things well or badly. It is enough that they discuss them; from this comes the freedom that guarantees the good of these very discussions." Edmund Burke (1729- 1797) followed Montesquieu with a dignified protest against dogmatism, and in fa- vour of experience in political affairs. "I am re- solved," he writes, "not to be wise beyond what is written in the legislative record and practice." Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau with their imaginary accounts of origins attracted Burke, and he viewed the doctrine of the Social Contract, in his own words, as "chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man." The excesses of the French revo- lutionists, who had used Rousseau as part of their apologetic, still further discredited the rational school of social and political philosophers. And from now on- wards a historical conception of the State and of so- ciety begins to succeed the rationalist conception. * Pollock: History of the Science of Politics p. 86. 21 But the rationalist school did not perish. The French Revolution, which had discredited Rousseau, gave a new turn to the thoughts of subsequent think- ers, and a school of rationalistic social philosophy arose which did not fix its eyes on the imaginary past in order to explain the present, but which, rather, painted the future as the present might become if only men were to be true to themselves. And so the rational conception of society, discredited in Hobbes, Locke, aaid Rousseau, becomes vocal again in the so-called rational or Utopian Socialism of the early 19th century. Writers like St. Simon, Fourier, Cabet, Proudhon, Robert Owen, and Wcitling called on men to abjure the present order of things and found a new order based on reason, justice, and love. For, they argued, reason and justice and love are nat- ural to man, and the present order, with its injustice and unreason and hate, was unnatural and did not fit mankind. Let men then abandon this present so- ciety (Whatever might be its history or its justification, and move forward to a new society based on different and on better ideas. In order to get men to do this it was necessary to convince them of the reasonable- ness of the new systems which were proposed for their adoption. It is necessary to remember that these sys- tems differed widely. The panaceais offered by the Utopians varied from autocratic State control to demo- cratic and almost anarchic co-operation. But all of them assumed a perfect social order, designed by God or Nature, which men might forthwith enjoy if only B 22 they would follow the light of their reason. So, since man's reason was the implement which should first detect and then fashion the new society, to man's rea- son these Utopian philosophers appealed. And their method of appeal was a twofold system of propaganda — ^literary and practical. They published books out- lining their several rehabilitated social orders, and they persuaded their disciples to set up models of their fut- ure communistic societiies in the shape of experimen- tal communities, which should reveal the wastes of capitalism and the beauty ^nd truth of the new ideals. It is from this source that we get the crop of commun- istic societies, chiefly in the United States, which are a feature of the earlier 19th century. These Utopian Socialists were, it will be seen, just as unhistorical and rational as the i8th century radical political philos- ophers, but though they accomplished nothing practical in the way of direct attempt at solution, they did help to make men realise that there was a social question to be solved. The historical school quite naturally opposed the Utopian point of view. To themi the existing state was not a creation of pure reason, but it had come to be what it was through historic necessity. Constitutions arose naturally in the course of political development, which might or might not be logical, but which was certainly historical. There was no natural order of evolution to be discovered from the exercise of man's reason alone, but only a historical order to be dis- covered from what had actually happened. The his- 23 torical school, if such we may call it, for it was scarce- ly yet self-conscious, was not composed merely of soci- ologists or economists. Lawyers, philologists, geo- graphers, and statesmen all joined its ranks.* "In history, Guizot pointed out that the French Revolution was merely a political reflection of the struggle be- tween Feudalism and the bourgeoisie; in Jurispru- dence, Savigny demonstrated the relativity of legal systems of various stages in the progress of society; in Economics, Roscher was soon to found the histori- cal school. St. Simon's fertile pioneer efforts in the same field were being systematized and developed by his pupil, Comte. For the development of Marx, and of scientific socialism, however, the most important exponents of the new tendencies are Hegel and the Hegelians of the L,eft."t In contra-distinction to the unhistorical school, their test of the rationality of an institution was not whether it fitted in with a pre- conceived scheme of thought, but whether it had been adopted by mankind in the course of its political evolu- tion. Here tlien we see the significance to his age of Hegel's previously quoted remark, alt that exists is rational, i.e., the test of rationality is its agreement not with some fancied truth, but with history. The difficulty about the historical conception of the State, however, was that it justified almost any politi- cal party. Supporters of the existing order could * See Sotnbart Socialism and tht Social Movement chapter III. t O. D. Skelton Socialism p. 96. 24 argue that since the present order was the result of centuries of trial and error, it therefore embodied in- stitutions and political machinery which should only be interfered with very circumspectly, if at all. Burke's conservatism is an exaimple in point. He speaks of the British Constitution as sanctified by the ages. It is almost impious to touch it. On the other hand, oppon- ents of any existing order might argue that its ideas were already obsolete, that it was unreal and no lon- ger fitted human nature, that it ought to be swept away because it was preventing the emergence of something better. Marx's treatment of the social order of his time is an example of this. He took Hegel- ianism and the historical school of thought and found in it the justification for a social revolution. From this sketch we have tried to gather what Marx's relation was, not only to the trend of the socialist thought, but also to the ordinary political thought of his age. He continues the historical tra- dition of Montsequieu, Burke, Guizot, Hegel, and Sav- igny ; and though he, by the use of the historical me- thod, proclaims the inevitability of socialism, he bitterly opposes the socialism of the rational or Utopian type, condemning and reviling the theories of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, Cabet, Weitling, Proudhon, and Louis Blanc. Marx's devotion to the historical method re- sults in his proclamation of the doctrine of historic materialism, which is this: that the force which really causes changes in society has been (and will be) the changes in the methods of production and distribution. 25 As these methods evolve, so, slowly or quickly, there evolve corresponding changes in the structure of so- ciety. Legal, religious, artistic, political, and moral ideas all change and develope according to the changes in the method of production. The latter changes are primary, the former are derivative. That was Marx's great contribution to the historical school of political philosophy, and in making it he cut himself off, not only from the Utopian Socialists, but from many ad- herents of the Historical School who were not prepared to see in the economic factor the determinant of all change. But Marx did more than lay down the doctrine of historic materialism. In the light of it he examined the present order to find out whether it pointed to a new order. He claimed to find tendencies in it which jus- tified him in proclaiming that the new order would be a Socialistic order, and that the means by which this new order would be ushered in would be the class struggle. Socialism the end, the Class War the means ; on these two foundations the socialist movement of the next 20 years was built. The vagaries of the Utopians fell away and the only socialism that mattered became the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. This social- ism was called scientific, because it was regarded as being scientifically predicted as inevitable ; it was based on an examination of the facts which revealed, in the present order, the tendency towards socialism. What were the facts that Marx found which pointed to this ? He enunciated several. The concentration of industrial 26 property in fewer hands; the disappearance of the middle class ; the increasing tendency within capitalism itself to develope socialistic or co-operative methods of production, even though the accompanying methods of distribution remain individualistic or anti-socialistic ; the theory of capitalistic accumulation; the theory of the increasing misery of the proletariate ; the theory of the self-destruction of capitalism through the recurring commercial crises which were a law of capitalism's being. All these things pointed to the overthrow of capitalism and the ushering in of socialism. How that is actually to come about wc must reserve for future treatment. Here we can only note that the course of capitalistic development since Marx has not entirely borne out the prophecies which Marx made in the course of his forecast. The modern industrial system shows us certain contradictions of them. Neither con- centration nor accumulation nor the eviction of small farmers in agriculture seems to be proceeding uncheck- ed, and the proletariate is not driving down to increas' ing misery. These facts will be vigorously disputed by many Marxians, but the statistical evidence for them seems overwhelming.* It may, however, be acknowledged that in making use of such evidence certain facts need to be consid- * For this evidence reference may be made to Sombart's Socialism and the Social Movement as regards Germany, and to Simkhovitch's Marxism versus Socialism as regards the United States of America, which is generally held to be the home of modern capitalism and the place in which its characteristic evolution is least hindered by tradition. 27 ered. Thus, for example, the increase of small farms and small farmers in America may proceed along with a lessening of the general economic independence of such farmers, inasmuch as they become more dependent on cap- italism on account either of the credit it advances them, or of the dictation as to the prices of their pro- duce which its control of the markets enforces upon them. Still, this cannot justly be called concentration in the processes of agriculturail production. In Amer- ica, in fact, it would seem as if the days of the very large holdings worked by machinery are over, and that the average acreage is on the decrease, because the productivity gained by intensive cultivation imposes a limit on the amount of land that can be successfully understood by the intensive cultivator. Moreover, as Seligman points out, "land values tend to rise with growing prosperity. A given capital thus represents a constantly diminishing acreage and it becomes increas- ingly profitable to apply more labour and minor ma- chines to small areas rather than large capital and vast machines to great areas. That is, we have a tendency to more intensive rather than large scale farming."* There is, perhaps, more justice in the modem social- ist contention that Marx's theory of increasing misery of the proletariate is borne out by the fact that the gulf between the rich and the poor is growing wider, even though the position of the latter is improving. But to admit that this supports Marx's contention necessitates the use of the word misery to indicate a * Seligman Principles of Economics p. 336- 28 mental state of discontent induced in the poor by the contemplation of great riches. This does not seem to be the sense in which Marx used the word when he sketched his theory of increasing misery in The Com- munist Manifesto and Capital. He writes there of a misery that is, so to speak, absolute, because depen- dent upon an increasing lack of physical necessities, rather than of a misery which is relative and depends on the contemplation of a growing disparity of income in society. Nevertheless, we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the very spectacle of a growing disparity in income (even when lower grade incomes are moving upwards) is responsible for a great deal of modern social unrest. And it would seem that in proportion as the poor improve their position, the more restive will they become when they contemplate it. This, how- ever, does not seem to be the kind of misery which Mairx envisaged as a lever whereby capitalism would be automatically overthrown, although it may become just as potent a force in social disintegration as Marx imagined that physical misery would be. This is somewhat of a digression from our course. We have undertaken it merely to indicate some of the ways in which the development of the modem indus- trial system has diverged from Marx's prophecies con- cerning it. His forecast remains broadly true enough to stamp him as a thinker of extraordinary insight and to justify brilliantly his use of the historical method in sociological and economic affairs. But it has not been confirmed in detail, and in some respects it has been 29 seriously modified. Faced with these facts, the school of scientific socialism to-day has had to choose between affirming the infallibility of Marx or acknowledging the contradictions which the course of history has made in his forecasts. This has divided socialists into the Revisionist and Marxian camps, and this division has been deepened by the split over tactics in which the Revisionists have become Reformists, while their opponents have preferred to call themselves Revolu- tionaries. But this part of the subject must be treated at a lateiy stage in this volume. What, however, needs to be pointed out in closing is the fact that Marx, in imposing his scientific social- ism on the socialists of the world, effectually checked the growth of Utopianism. There was no need to im- agine new worlds — socialism was coming. This dic- tum has led to a certain attitude of inevitability within the movement. Scientific socialism has become inevit- able socialism, and this note of inevitability has, per- haps, been the cause of the dogmatism of so many of the orthodox Marxians. But it has had other effects. Inevitability has, not infrequently, passed over into fatalism in the adherents of the system. Marx himself was not without the fatalistic note. And fatalism makes for pessimism. If the New Jerusalem is coming, why worry? We must get through a lot of disagreeable happenings beforehand. It cannot be cured ; it has to be endured! In such an atmosphere idealism evapor- ates and the Socialist movement cannot afford to lose Idealism. Marx did great service to the cause of 30 social reform by emancipating the socialist movement from the vagairies and fads of the Utopians. And in doing so he furnished the followers with an armoury of scientific facts and a tremendous indictment of cap- italism. But to erect the Marxian system into a dog- matic orthodoxy, in which evolution is understood as fatalism, and idealism is crushed by pessimism, is a misuse of the weapons Marx supplied. By all means must modern socialists keep for their movement the historic character with which Marx stamped it ; but is it not possible to fill it, at the same time, with some- thing of the spirit which characterised the Utopian Socialists, a joyous enthusiasm for humanity at large, an enthusiasm which the class struggle doctrine seems to have undermined to some extent? This quality of enthusiasm for humanity, which pervaded the Utopian writings, gave them tlieir appeal, despite the fantasies in which they indulged. In throwing out the f'aintasies of the Utopians Marx does not appear to have supplied anything to take the place of their optimistic enthusi- asm. It has all become a grim and bitter business — with its class war and everyone alert in the trenches or with weapons on their hips. And one misses some- thing of the Utopian note of the flowers and light and laughter and happiness for all, that lies beyond the revo- lution whenever it shall come. One rather gets the impression of the prizes of war that are for the victors after the fight. It may be that this is not the result of fatalism induced by the belief in inevitability, but only of the intensity with which the fight is waged. 31 But, in any case, the modern socialist movement will do well to emphasise the free will of living human agents and to repel the notion that social development is automatic — a notion which Marx himself repudiated by his life, but which is easily gathered from his works. Outside the socialist movement Marx's place in the history of thought largely depends on his doctrine of historical materialism in the field of sociology, and of his doctrine of surplus value in the field of economics. These we shall examine in the next chapters. 32 CHAPTER II. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY. Even the most superficial acquaintance with history reveals the fact that there is continuous change in the affairs of men. Pessimists will argue that such change has been for the worse. Optimists will take the contrary view. But both will admit that there has been change and development. Is it possible then for us, studying the record of this development, to find a reason for the changes which take place in the lot of mankind? In other words, cam we find the motive force that underlies human social development? This, it will at once be seen, is an extraordinarily important question. For if we can find the underlying cause or causes of the changes and developments which have taken place in the past, we shall have the key to the future. We shall have the solution of what our atti- tude to life ought to be. We shall have the plan of progress, and we shall have the right to alter and to mould all social institutions in order to allow that force which is the cause of development to work without hindrance. Assuming that the developments which we trace in history really constitute progress, and assum- ing further that we desire progress, then we shall have the right to demand that Patrliaments, Churches, 33 States, Universities, Friendly Societies, and all other institutions shall be changed and modified in the light of what we discover about this principle of progress. Now there have been various attempts to discern the principle of change. For a long time they were not made by historians at all. Until the 19th century his- torians proper did little else than describe the facts of political and diplomatic history. They wrote long accounts of kings and great men and battles and dy- nasties and foreign policies. When they discussed the question of the cause of development generally they spoke vaguely about something which they called the spirit of the age, or else they ascribed far-reaching changes in the social structure to the influence of great men. Thus, for example, the spirit of the Tudor age is considered to be the explanation of the immense changes which took place in England in the i6th cen- tury, or else the influences of men like Cromwell or Napoleon are held to be sufficient to account for the whole trend of history during their respective periods. But what the historians did not attempt the philos- ophers did; and we have had several explanations of history, or philosophies of history, or, what is per- haps a better term, interpretations of history. The Religious Interpretation of History finds the key of progress in religion. Men's relations with the Unseen, as they develop into definite theories, are held to constitute the causes of change and development in the world. Thus Judaism emphasises the idea of duty, and this influences men's conduct to one another in 34 society, and so changes the institutions of that society. Confucianism is held to embody order, Mohammedan- ism justice, Buddhism patience (naturally engendering a static state of social relations, such as obtains in the East), while Christianity enshrines the practice of love as a sacred obligation, and issues, at all events, in its early stages, as ai social dynamic. Now this is very interesting, and a great deal of it is true, but it scarcely constitutes a satisfactory explanation of social develop- ment. For the same religion produces in different peoples entirely different results. From the social and institutional point of view, the effect of Christianity upon Ireland in the sixth century is quite different from its effect on Rome during the same period. Moreover, the same religion often persists in a coun- try after the most striking changes in political struc- ture. We have only to think of France before and after the Revolution of 1789, or to compare the submissive Protestantism of Germany in the nineteenth century with the subversive character it exhibited during the Thirty Years War, in order to see this. Is there, in fact, any guarantee that the form of religion itself, far from being the agent of change, is not the result of change in other activities of society? Mamy people attribute the rapid spread of Christianity during the first three centuries to the social and political condi- tions of the Roman Empire during that period. So, again. Protestantism and the Protestant Reformation are thought to owe their appearance to the rise of capitalism in economic relations. Such views makie 35 religion a product rather than a cause of change. On the whole, therefore, we can scarcely expect to find a satisfactory explanation of universal world develop- ment by following up the clue of religion. Meanwhile the Political Interpretation of History had been advanced. As early as Aristotle we can trace the theory that development depends on political ar- rangement.* Generally this theory suggests that there has been a regular progression along the politi- cal route from absolutism to freedom. Monarchy, in which power resides in the hands of one, gives place to aristocracy, in which power resides in the hands of a few, and this is succeeded by democracy, in which power has broadened into thei hands of many. This is an attractive theory.t Is it really an account of the facts? The early Roman Kings were supplanted by an aristocracy, and this was widened almost to a democracy — then came the Emperors. The Great Re- bellion in 17th century England began by toppling over a throne in the name of liberty. It ended in the des- potism of Cromwell. The French Revolution erected a democracy and culminated in a military autocracy. Moreover, it is by no means certain that the earliest hu- man rule was kingly and monarchial. The researches of anthropology show us many primitive societies which are far more republican than monarchical. Again, * See Aristotle Polities III Chap. xv. (Oxford: Ed. H. W. C. Davis). t For discussion of this theory see Woodrow Wilson The State Chap. II. and S. I