Socialism and Democracy in Europe Part 3

Proudhon has had a large influence on modern Socialism. His trenchant invectives against property and society are widely copied. From his utterances on government the Syndicalists of France, Italy, and Spain have drawn their doctrine. The general strike is the child of his paradoxes. He wrote as the motto for his most influential book, _What Is Property?_, "Destruam et aedificabo" (I will destroy and I will build again). But, while he pointed the way to destruction, he failed to reveal a new and better order.

The way to modern Socialism was paved in Germany. The teaching of Hegel cleared the way for the political unrest that spread over Europe in the '40's. Hegel was the proclaimer of the social revolution. He gave sanction to the tenets of destruction. Everything that exists is worth destroying, may be taken as the primary postulate at which the Young Hegelians arrived. Truth does not exist merely in a collection of inst.i.tutions or dogmatic axioms that could be memorized like the alphabet; truth is in the process of being, of knowing, it has developed through the toilsome evolution of the race, it is found only in experience. Nothing is sacred merely because it exists. Existing inst.i.tutions are only the prelude to other and better inst.i.tutions that are to follow. This was roughly the formula that the radical Hegelians blocked out for themselves when they split from the orthodox conservatives in the '30's.

In 1843 appeared Feuerbach's _Wesen des Christentums_ (Essence of Christianity), putting the seal of materialism upon the precepts of the Young Hegelians.[14] The G.o.d of the utopians was destroyed.

Things were not created in harmony and beauty and disordered by man.

Things as they are, are the result of evolution, of growth; nothing was created as it is, and even "Religion is the dream of the human mind."[15]

Out of this atmosphere of philosophical, religious, and political rebellion sprang the prophet of modern Socialism, Karl Marx,[16] a man whose intellectual endowments place him in the first ranks among Socialists and link his name with other bold intellects of his age who have forced the current of human thought. There have been many books written on Marx, and every phase of his theories has been subjected to academic and popular scrutiny. His treatise, _Capital_, is the sacerdotal book of Socialists. It displays a ma.s.s of learning, a diligence of research, and ac.u.men in the marshaling of ideas, and a completeness of literary expression that insures it a lasting place in the literature of social philosophy. Whatever may be said of the narrow dogmatism, of Marx, of his persistence in making the facts fit his preconceived notions, of his materialistic conception of history, or of the technical flaws in his political economy, he will always be quoted as the founder of modern scientific Socialism and the Socialist historian of the capitalistic regime.

I must content myself with a bare statement of his theories.

The economic basis of Marx is his well-known "Theory of Surplus Value." It was not his theory in the sense that he originated it.

Economists like Adam Smith and especially Ricardo, Socialists like the Owenites and the Chartists in England, and Proudhon in France, had enunciated it; and in Germany Rodbertus, a lawyer and scholar of great learning, had elaborated it in his first book, published in 1842.

Marx, with German thoroughness, developed this theory in all its ramifications.

All economic goods, he said, have value. They have a physical value, and a value given them by the labor expended on them. Labor is the common factor of economic values. And the common denominator is the time that is consumed by the labor. Labor-time, therefore, is the universal measure of value, the common medium that determines values.

But this labor is acquired in the open labor market by the capitalist at the lowest possible price, a price whose utmost limit is the bare cost of living. The reward for his labor is called a wage. This wage does not by any means measure the value of his services. What, then, becomes of the "surplus value," the value over and above wages? The capitalist appropriates it. Indeed, the great aim of the capitalist is to make this surplus value as big as possible. He measures his success by his profits.

"Surplus value," or profit, is, then, a species of robbery; it is ill-gotten gain, withholding from the workman that which by right of toil is his.

How did it come about that society was so organized as to permit this wholesale wrong upon the largest and most defenseless of its cla.s.ses?

It is in answer to this question that Marx makes his most notable contribution to Socialistic theory. With great skill, and displaying a comprehensive knowledge of economic history, especially of English industrial history, he traces the development of modern industrial society. He follows the evolution of capital from the days of medieval paternalism through the period of commercial expansion when the voyages of discovery opened virgin fields of wealth to the trader, into the period of inventions when the industrial revolution changed the conditions of all cla.s.ses and gave a sudden and princely power to capital, establis.h.i.+ng the reign of "capitalistic production."

Always it was the man with capital who could take advantage of every new commercial and industrial opportunity, and the man without capital who was forced to succ.u.mb to the stress of new and cruel circ.u.mstances. In every stage of development it has been the constant aim of the capitalist to increase his profits and of the workingman to raise his standard of living.

Marx then declares that, in order to have a capitalist society, two cla.s.ses are necessary: a capitalist and a non-capitalist cla.s.s; a cla.s.s that dominates, and one that succ.u.mbs. There have always been these two cla.s.ses. Originally labor was slave, then it was serf, and now it is free. But free labor to-day differs from serf-labor and slave-labor only in that it has a legal right to contract. The economic results are the same as they always have been: the capitalist still appropriates the surplus value.

The method of production, however, is very different in our capitalistic era from the earlier eras. The industrial system herds the workmen into factories. Property and labor is no longer individualistic; it is social, it is corporate. Marx calls it "social production and capitalistic appropriation." Here is the eternal antagonism between the cla.s.ses, the large cla.s.s of laborers and the small cla.s.s of the "appropriators" of their common toil.

These factories, where labor is herded, spring up w.i.l.l.y-nilly wherever there is a capitalist who desires to enter business. They flood the markets, not by mutual consent or regulation, but by individual ambitions. Each capitalist is ruled by self-interest; and self-interest impels him to make as many goods as he can and sell them at as big a profit as he can. Result, economic anarchy, called "over-production" or "under-consumption" by the economists. This leads to panics and all their attendant woes--woes that are further heaped upon the proletarian by the fact that he must compete with machinery, which, being more and more perfected, forces him out of the labor market into the street.

These crises have the tendency to concentrate industry in fewer and fewer hands; the weaker capitalist must succ.u.mb to the inevitable laws of struggle and survival. The survivors fatten on the corpses of their fallen compet.i.tors. Thus the factories grow larger and larger, the number of capitalists fewer and fewer; the number of proletarian dependents multiplies; the middle cla.s.s is crushed out of existence; the rich become richer and fewer, the poor more numerous and poorer.

In this turmoil of social production, capitalistic appropriation, and anarchic distribution, there is discernible a reshaping of social potencies. The proletarian realizes the power of the state and sees how he may possess himself of that power and thereby gain control of the economic forces and reshape them to fit the needs of a better society. This will mean the appropriation of the means of production and distribution by society. Private capital will vanish; surplus values will belong to the people who created them; the people will be master and servant, capitalist and laborer.

This is the Socialistic stage of society. It will be the result of the natural evolution of human industry. Its immediate coming will be the result of a social revolution. This revolution, this social cataclysm, is written in the nature of things. Man cannot prompt it, he cannot prevent it. He can only study the trend of things and "alleviate the birth-pangs" of the new time.

Of this new time, this society of to-morrow, Marx gives us no glimpse.

His function is not to prophesy, but to a.n.a.lyze. He is the natural historian of capital. He described the development of economic society and sought to ascertain its trend. In the first chapter of _Capital_ he says: "Let us imagine an a.s.sociation of free men, working with common means of production, and putting forth, consciously, their individual powers into one social labor power. The product of this a.s.sociation of laborers is a social product. A portion of this product serves in turn as a means of further production. It remains social property. The rest of this product is consumed by the members of the a.s.sociation as a means of living. It must consequently be distributed among them. The nature of this distribution will vary according to the particular nature of the organization of production and the corresponding grade of historical development of the producers."

This is the only mention of the future made by Marx. It is a dim and uncertain ray of light cast upon a vast object.

The formulae of this epoch-making study may be summarized as follows:

1. Labor gives value to all economic goods. The laboring cla.s.s is the producing cla.s.s, but it is deprived of its just share of the products of its labor by the capitalistic cla.s.s, which appropriates the "surplus value."

2. This is possible because of the capitalistic method of production, wherein private capital controls the processes of production and distribution.

3. This system of private capitalism is the result of a long and laborious process of evolution, hastened precipitately by the industrial revolution.

4. This industrial age is characterized (a) by anarchy in distribution, (b) private production, (c) the gradual disappearance of the middle cla.s.s, (d) the development of a two-cla.s.s system--capitalist and producer, (e) the rich growing richer and the poor growing poorer.

5. This will not always continue. The producers are becoming fewer each year. Presently they will become so powerful as to be unendurable. Then society--the people--will appropriate private capital and all production and distribution will be socialized.

It is necessary to keep in mind the leading events in the life of this remarkable man in order to understand the genesis of his theories.

Marx was born in Treves in 1818, of Jewish parentage. His mother was of Dutch descent, his father was German. When the lad was six years of age his parents embraced the Christian faith. His father was a lawyer, but his ancestors for over two hundred years had been rabbis.

The home was one of culture, where English and French as well as German literature and art were discussed by a circle of learned and congenial friends. Marx studied at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He took his doctorate in the law to please his father, but followed philosophy by natural bent, intending to become a university professor.

The turmoil of revolution was in the air and in his blood. There was no curbing of his fiery temperament into the routine of scholastic life. In 1842 he joined the staff of the _Rhenish Gazette_ at Cologne, an organ of extreme radicalism. His drastic editorials prompted the police to ask him to leave the country, and he went to Paris, where he met Frederick Engels, who became his firm friend, partner of his views, and sharer of his labors. The Prussian government demanded his removal from Paris, and for a time he settled in Brussels. He returned to Germany to partic.i.p.ate in the revolution of 1848, and in 1849 he was driven to London, where, immune from Prussian persecutions, he made his home until his death, in 1883.

In 1842 he married Jennie von Westphalen, a lady of refinement, courage, and loyalty, whose family was prominent in Prussian politics.

Her brother was at one time a minister in the Prussian cabinet.

Marx was an exile practically all his life, though he never gave up his German citizens.h.i.+p. He never forgot this fact. He concluded his preface to the first volume of _Capital_, written in 1873, with a bitter allusion to the "mushroom upstarts of the new, holy Prussian German Empire." He lived a life of heroic fort.i.tude and struggle against want and disease.

From his infancy he had been taught to take a world view, an international view, of human affairs. This gave him an immediate advantage over all other Socialist writers of that day. At Bonn he was caught in the current of heterodoxy that was then sweeping through the universities. This carried him far into the fields of materialism, whose philosophy of history he adopted and applied to the economic development of the race. He received not alone his philosophy from the "Young Hegelians," but his dialectics as well. It gave him a philosophy of evil which, blending with his bitter personal experiences, gave a melancholy bent to his reasoning, and revealed to him the misericordia of cla.s.s war, the struggle of abject poverty contending with callous capital in a b.l.o.o.d.y social revolution.

There are four points which gave Marx an immense influence over the Socialistic movement. In the first place, he put the Socialistic movement on a historical basis; he made it inevitable. Think what this means, what hope and spirit it inspires in the bosom of the workingman. But he did more than this: he made the proletarian the instrument of destiny for the emanc.i.p.ation of the race from economic thraldom. This was to be accomplished by cla.s.s war and social revolution. Marx imparts the zeal of fatalism to his Socialism when he links it to the necessities of nature. By natural law a bourgeoisie developed; by natural law it oppresses the proletarian; by natural law, by the compulsion of inexorable processes, the proletarians alone can attain their freedom. Capitalism becomes its own grave-digger.

Liebknecht said in his Erfurt speech (1891): "The capitalistic state of the present begets against its will the state of the future."

In the third place, Marx gave a formula to the Socialist movement. He defined Socialism in one sentence: "The social owners.h.i.+p of the means of production and distribution." This was necessary. From among the vague and incoherent ma.s.s of utopian and revolutionary literature he coined the sentence that could be repeated with gusto and the flavor of scientific terminology.

And finally, he refrained from detailing the new society. He laid down no program except war, he pointed to no utopia except co-operation.

This offended no one and left Socialists of all schools free to construct their own details.

The Marxian system was no sooner enunciated than it was shown to be fallible as an economic generalization; and the pa.s.sing of several decades has proved that the tendencies he deemed inevitable are not taking place. The refutation of his theory of value by the Austrian economist, Adolph Menger, is by economists considered complete and final. The materialistic conception of history, which is the soul of his work, lends itself more to the pa.s.sion of a virile propaganda than to a sober interpretation of the facts. Further, the two practical results that flow from the use of his theory of surplus value and his materialism--namely, the ever-increasing volume of poverty and the ever-decreasing number of capitalists--are not borne out by the facts.

The number of capitalists is constantly increasing, in spite of the development of enormous trusts; the middle cla.s.s is constantly being recruited from the lower cla.s.s; there is no apparent realization of the two-cla.s.s system. And finally, the method by revolution is being more and more discarded by Socialists, as they see that intolerable conditions are being more and more alleviated, that "man's inhumanity to man" is a constantly diminis.h.i.+ng factor in the bitter struggle for existence.[17]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _New Christianity_, p. 38, English edition, 1834.

[2] Saint-Simon's princ.i.p.al writings are: _Lettres d'un Habitant de Geneve_, 1803; _L'Organisateur_, 1819; _Du Systeme Industriel_, 1821; _Catechisme des Industriels_, 1823; _Nouveau Christianisme_, 1825. See A.J. BARTH, _Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism_, London, 1871; REYBAUD, _etudes sur les Reformateurs Modernes_, Paris, 1864; JANET, _Saint-Simon et le Saint-Simonisme_, Paris, 1878. _New Christianity_ was translated into English by Rev. J.E. Smith, London, 1834.

[3] The best popular exposition of Fourierism is GATTI DE GAMMONT'S _Fourier et Son Systeme_. His most eminent commentator is Victor Considerant, whose _Destinee Sociale_ is the most complete a.n.a.lysis of Fourier's System.

[4] It is interesting to note that the word "Socialism" first became current in the meetings of Owen's "a.s.sociation of All Cla.s.ses of All Nations," organized by him in 1835.

[5] _Le Vrai Christianisme_, Chap. XVIII, edition of 1846.

[6] An apt selection from the works of Fourier has been made by Prof.

Charles Gide, prefaced by an illuminating Introduction on the life and work of Fourier. An English translation by Julia Franklin appeared in London, 1901.

[7] _Le Nouveau Monde_, Vol. I, p. 26.

[8] _Theme de l'Unite Universelle_, Vol. II, p. 128.

[9] _New Christianity_, p. 2, English edition, 1834.