Socialism and Democracy in Europe. Samuel Peter Orth
are only the prelude to other and better institutions 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 God 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 mass of learning, a diligence of research, and acumen 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 régime.
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 classes? 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 classes and gave a sudden and princely power to capital, establishing 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 succumb to the stress of new and cruel circumstances. 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 classes are necessary: a capitalist and a non-capitalist class; a class that dominates, and one that succumbs. There have always been these two classes. 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 classes, the large class of laborers and the small class of the "appropriators" of their common toil.
These factories, where labor is herded, spring up willy-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 succumb to the inevitable laws of struggle and survival. The survivors fatten on the corpses of their fallen competitors. Thus the factories grow larger and larger, the number of capitalists fewer and fewer; the number of proletarian dependents multiplies; the middle class 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 analyze. 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 association 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 association 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 association 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 formulæ of this epoch-making study may be summarized as follows:
1. Labor gives value to all economic goods. The laboring class is the producing class, but it is deprived of its just share of the products