Hegel's, and is even its direct opposite. For Hegel it is the process of thought, which (under the name Idea) he even converts into an independent Subject, the Demiurgos of the actual world, which is only its outward manifestation. For me, on the contrary, ideas are only the material facts turned up and down in the human head. The mystifying look of the Hegelian dialectic was criticised by me nearly thirty years ago, when it was still in vogue. But at the time I was finishing the first volume of Kapital, these dreary pretentious mediocrities the Epigoni, who now have the ear of lettered circles in Germany, were treating Hegel as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, like a dead dog.' I therefore openly avowed myself a disciple of that great thinker, and even coquetted here and there (in the chapter on Value) with his peculiar phraseology. Dialectic certainly underwent mystification in Hegel's hands; but, for all that, it was he who first comprehensively and deliberately expounded its general movements. With him it is upside down. We have to turn it over if we would discover the rational kernel in the mystical shell. In its mystical form it became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to explain the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a terror to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, for it not only gives explanation, positively, of the existing state of things, but also of its negation, its necessary decay; it views every form of existence in its actual process of movement, and therefore on its perishable side; it lets nothing impose on it; it is essentially critical and revolutionary." We may add the words of Friedrich Engels, the chief prophet of the school since the death of Marx:"Readers will be surprised to stumble on the cosmogony of Kant and Laplace, on Darwin and modern physics, on Hegel and classical German philosophy, in a sketch of the growth of socialism. But scientific socialism, once for all, is an essentially German product, and could 1 Not only there (he might have added) but in such passages as Kapital, I. 793 (2nd German ed., 1872): "The capitalistic mode of production and capitalistic property are the first negation of the individual property founded on a man's own labour," etc., etc. only have come into being in the nation whose classical philosophy had kept alive the tradition of conscious dialectic, ie. in Germany or among Germans. The materialistic view of history and its special application to the modern war of classes (between proletariate and bourgeoisie) was only possible by means of dialectic; and, if the pedagogues of German bourgeoisie have so drowned the memory of the great German philosophers and their dialectic in the swamps of a barren eclecticism, that we need to appeal to modern physical science to vouch for the existence of dialectic in actual facts, we German socialists are proud to trace our descent not only from St. Simon, Fourier, and Owen, but from Kant and Hegel." Germany has been always revolutionary in the world of theory,-as once by her monks, so now by her philosophers." Hegel's dialectic (says Engels) has converted socialism from a Utopia into a science; German socialism is no mere reproduction of Owen and Fourier, nor even is it a more logical development of their principles; it contains an entirely new element, borrowed from philosophy. 1 We must ask ourselves, What is the nature of this contribution made by philosophy to socialism, and how far has it been taken up by the latter in a merely eclectic fashion? Hegel died in November, 1831. Ten years or so afterwards, while the fight for his mantle was still raging among German philosophers, his disciples in France and Russia had begun to interpret his doctrines in a revolutionary sense, and even his own countrymen were finding more than an official optimism in the Philosophy of Right. The spread of Hegelianism in "Young Russia was no doubt assisted by the fact that revolutionary writings could slip through the hands of the censors if well-wadded with seemingly harmless philosophy." 1 Development of Socialism from a Utopia to a Science, 3rd ed., 1883. Preface (dated 1882). Engels was born in 1820 and is happily still living. 2 Marx in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 79, 1844. 3 For the influence of Hegelianism on Young Russia, see the articles of G. Plechanoff on N. G. Tschernischewsky in Neue Zeit (Stuttgart) Aug. & Sept., 1890. But, if they had not actually contained a revolutionary element, these writings could hardly have stimulated, as they did, so many social and political movements on the Continent from 1840 to 1850, and still in 1883 be thought an essential part of modern socialism. It is significant that in the passage above quoted Engels speaks of Kant and Hegel, but says nothing of the socialist Fichte. Hegel held always the first place. Marx at one time (1845) had not only projected but written with Engels, a book which was to express their common attitude to German philosophy in the form of a criticism of Hegel's successors. It was never printed; but Engels gives us the substance of it in his paper on Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (Stuttgart, 1888, reprinted from Neue Zeit, 1886). In 1844 Marx had begun in the DeutschFranzösische Jahrbücher, which he was editing with Ruge in Paris, a review of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, giving more space, however, to his own views than to his author's. In the same year he wrote with Engels the Holy Family, a volume full of obsolete controversy, and discreditable scurrility, directed against mediocrities now forgotten, of whom Bruno Bauer was perhaps the most notable. Incidentally the statement of the writer's own opinions lends the book some interest. It is to be noted that P. J. Proudhon' is mentioned with friendliness and respect; and at first sight this seems very natural, for Proudhon was the first to found a revolutionary social philosophy professedly on Hegelian lines. To understand fully the position of Marx, we must know the position of Proudhon; and the substance of his views may be here given without real digression. Proudhon considers that Political Economy is still in his own time defective because it has been disjoined from philosophy. In his System of Economic Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty (1846), he states his belief that Hegel's formula has given us once for all the key to all science and logic. There is (he says) a political 1 See his Preface there; and compare Marx, Kritik der Polit. Ockon., 1859, Preface. 2 Born 1809; died 1865. 3 Contrad. (popular edition), II. 395, 396. economy which possesses "absolute certainty as well as progressiveness" by being the concrete objective realization of metaphysics.' But the old political economy of Adam Smith and J. B. Say is a collection of mere observations, a chronicle of the most obvious customs, traditions, and practices of men in the matter of wealth, and its production and distribution. It is (shortly) "tradition," and is confronted with "socialism," which is (shortly) Utopia. Socialism is essentially criticism, and there is nothing in it which is not in the political economy criticised by it, as "nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.” Proudhon opposes both of them; he would say not "il faut organiser le travail," or "il est organisé," but "il s'organise.' Political Economy has identified itself with the old jurisprudence and principle of property; it counts as permanent and definitive what is only transitory. Malthus spoke its death sentence when he uttered his allegory of "Nature's Mighty Feast," which meant in brief "Death to him who possesses nothing." On the other hand, socialism hands us over to arbitrary creations of our own brain, a priori ideals of reason, which lead to despotism.5 Philosophy" will reject both. What is the essential truth in political economy? Value is the central doctrine. Value is "the proportional relation according to which each part of the elements of wealth forms part of the whole." Its foundation is utility, but its proportion is fixed by labour. Proudhon finds an "economic contradiction" in the fact that value in exchange and value in use are indispensable to one another, and yet the result of the multiplication of "values" is to lower them.7 66 This is a fair example of Proudhon's indifferent skill in reasoning. When two phenomena, unlike in kind from each other, are yet necessarily related, so that they vary 1 Contrad., I., 35, 36; II., 172, 173.2 lb., I. 37, cf. 254. 3 Ib., I. 45. 4 Ib., I. 38, cf. 532. 5 Ib., I. 41, 55. 6 Ib., I. 74, 82. Compare, as regards the stress on proportionality, Jevons, Pol. Ec., ch. iv. 7 In Contrad. I. 60 (cf. II. 254), he says, "Exchangeable value is given by a kind of reflection of value in use, as the theologians teach that in the Trinity the Father, contemplating Himself from all eternity begets the Son,"-a profane analogy which reappears in Marx' Kapital. in degree inversely the one from the other, the variation is said by him to "contradict" the necessary relation. It is "antinomies" of this sort which he considers to form the essential feature of political economy. The contradiction (he conceives) is not in words only, but in deed and in truth-a real Kantian antinomy in the nature of things.' With the same show of philosophy, he goes on to trace the economic evolution of humanity, in stages or "epochs which come logically in a certain order, not always the same as the order of time. It passes through an epoch of analysis (Division of Labour) to that of synthesis (Machinery), and then to the epoch of Competition. Competition (still on Hegelian principles) destroys itself and results in its own opposite, Monopoly, which makes the fourth epoch. Its coming was inevitable, but lamentable, for it involves that man drains his fellows dry, and makes them mere means to his ends. An act of society, which would regulate the conditions of labour and exchange, and make all comers welcome to "Nature's mighty feast," would be a rational expression of the organic development of humanity. Falling back on the ideas of his earlier (and more famous) book, What is Property? (1840), Proudhon declares property in every form to be monopoly, and to be in contradiction with the notion of value common to himself with the older economists," which ascribes it to labour. On the other hand, socialism and communism seem to him chimerical. Property was the fourth stage. The fifth is that of Police and Taxation, where monopolists pay ransom by being taxed for public purposes. But to take the substance and leave the shadow of property, is only another "contradiction"; we should do better to take the whole. As it is, the taxes often fall most heavily on the poor." Religion, which teaches submission to such evils, is thereby interposing an obstacle to the removal of them. On 1 Contrad. I. 67. 3 Ib., I. 179, 229, etc. 2 Ib., 4 Ib., I. 248, 249. 5 The paradox of Brissot, "Property is Theft," has become identified with Proudhon. The notion that capital is accumulated labour (Contrad., I. 274, etc.) may be traced to English economists. 6 I., I. ch. vi., cf. ch. xi. 7 Ib., I., ch. vii. 8 Ib., I. 276, cf. 281, 282. |