In offering this book to the public, we have to say that we thought it useless to
go over the ground covered by so many treatises on Socialism, large and small,
hostile and friendly, that have appeared of late years. We have dealt with our
subject from the historical point of view ; this, we are aware, is a less exciting
method than the building up of "practical" Utopias, or than attempting the solution
of political problems within the immediate purview of the Socialist struggle of to
day. On the other hand, a treatise on abstract economics, furnished with a complete
apparatus of statistics, would have been more congenial to another class of mind.
Nevertheless, a continuous sketch of t... (From: Marxists.org.)
In one of Edgar Allen Pe's tales he recounts how a little group of wrecked
seafarers on a water logged vessel, at the last extremity of starvation, are
suddenly made delirious with joy at seeing a sail approaching them. As she came
near them she seemed to be managed strangely and unseamanly as though she were
scarcely steered at all, but come near she did, and their joy was too great for
them to think much of this anomaly. At last they saw the seamen on board of her,
and noted one in the bows especially who seemed to be looking at them with great
curiosity, nodding also as though encouraging them to have patience, and smiling at
them constantly, showing as he did so a set of very white... (From: Marxists.org.)
In beginning this series on Socialism, we think it
necessary to prelude the matter which may appear to interest more immediately us
now living, by a brief allusion to the history of the past.
Our adversaries are sometimes forward to remind us that the present system with
which we are so discontented, has been made by the growth of ages, and that our
wills are impotent to change it; they do not see that in stating this fact they are
condemning their own position. Our business is to recognize the coming change, to
clear away obstacles to it, to accept it, and to be ready to organize it in detail.
Our opponents, on the contrary, are trying consciously to stay that very evoluti... (From: Marxists.org.)
We have now to deal with that Mediæval Society
which was based on the fusion of ideas of tribal communism and Roman individualism
and bureaucracy. The fullest, and one may say the most pedantic type of this
society is to be found in the Mediæval German Empire; it was modified
somewhat in other countries; in France by the fact that several of the other
potentates, as, eg., the Duke of Burgundy, were theoretically independent of the
King, and practically were often at least as powerful. In England, on the contrary,
the monarchy soon gained complete predominance over the great barons, and a kind of
bureaucracy soon sprang up which interfered with the full working of the feudal... (From: Marxists.org.)
The period of change from the feudal system into that of
commerce is so important, and so significant to our subject, that it demands a
separate chapter.
The beginning of the sixteenth century found, as we have said, the craft-gilds
corrupted into privileged bodies holding within them two orders of workmen -- the
privileged and the unprivileged -- the two forming the germ of a society founded on
capital and wage-labor. The privileged workmen became middle-class; the
unprivileged, proletarians.
But apart from the gilds, the two classes were being created by the development of
commerce, which needed them both as instruments for her progress. Mediæval
... (From: Marxists.org.)
By the beginning of the seventeenth century the
centralizing, bureaucratic monarchies were fairly established: nay, in France at
least, they were even showing the birth of modern party-government, which since -
carried on, indeed, under the veil of constitutionalism -- has been the type of
modern government. Richelieu -- the Bismarck of his time and country -- begins the
series of prime ministers or real temporary kings, who govern in the interest of
class society, not much encumbered and a good deal protected by their cloaks, the
hereditary formal sham kings. In England this prime-ministership was more
incomplete, though men like Burleigh approached the type. Elizabeth reduced the
... (From: Marxists.org.)
The English seventeenth century revolution was from the
first purely middle-class, and as we hinted in our last [chapter] it cast off most
of its elements of enthusiasm and ideality in Cromwell's latter days; the burden of
the more exalted Puritanism was felt heavily by the nation and no doubt played its
part in the restoration of Monarchy; nor on the other hand was England at all ripe
for Republicanism; and so between these two disgusts it allowed itself to be led
back again into the arms of Monarchy by the military adventurers who had seized on
the power which Cromwell once wielded. But this restoration of the Stuart monarchy
was after all but a makeshift put up with because the defe... (From: Marxists.org.)
As we have said, Louis XIV succeeded in making the French
monarchy a pure autocratic bureaucracy, completely centralized in the person of the
monarch. This with an ambitious king like Louis XIV involved constant war, for he
felt himself bound to satisfy his ideal of the necessary expansion of the territory
and influence of France, which he looked upon as the absolute property of the king.
The general success of Louis XIV brought with it the success of these wars of
aggrandisment, and France became very powerful under his rule. Under the rule of
his minister Colbert industrialism in France became completely commercialized.
Colbert spared no pains or energy in bringing this about. Often,... (From: Marxists.org.)
The bankruptcy towards which France was staggering under
the régime of an untaxed privileged noblesse drove the Court into the
dangerous step of attempting to do something, and after desperate efforts to carry
on the old corruption by means of mere financing operations, under Calonne and
others, aided by an assembly of the 'Notables', or kind of irregular taxing
council, the Court was at last, on the 4th May, 1789, compelled to summon the
States-General, a body which was pretty much analogous to a Parliament of our
mediæval kings, that is a kind of taxing machine, but which attempted to sell
its granting of taxes to the king for redress of certain grievances. This
S... (From: Marxists.org.)
The insurrection of the 10th August, which culminated in
the final downfall of the monarchy and the imprisonment of the king and royal
family in the Temple, was headed and organized by a new body definitely
revolutionary, intended to be the expression of the power of the proletariat, the
new Commune of Paris, the moving spirit of which was Marat, who even had a seat of
honor assigned to him in the Council. Already, before the king had been sent to
the Temple, the Girondin Vergniaud, as president, had moved the suspension of the
'hereditary representative' and the summoning of a national convention. Danton was
made minister of justice; Robespierre was on the Council of the Commune. A ne... (From: Marxists.org.)
In our last two chapters we had to deal with a revolution
which was as rich in dramatic interest, and as obviously so, as any period in the
history of the world. We have now to note a series of events the well-spring of
which was Great Britain. This series is not usually connected by modern historians
so as to be dignified by the name of a Revolution; but it is one nevertheless, and
is at least as important in its bearing on the life of the modern world as that
more startling and, on the surface, more terrible one in France.
In the last chapter wherein the condition of England was dealt with, we left it a
prosperous country, in the ordinary sense of the word, under the rule... (From: Marxists.org.)
During the French Revolution, especially during its
earlier stages there was a corresponding movement in England. It made some noise at
the time, but was merely an intellectual matter, led by a few aristocrats --
eg., the Earl of Stanhope -- and had no sympathy with the life of the
people; it was rather a piece of aristocratic Bohemianism, a tendency to which has
been seen in various times, even our own. For the rest, there certainly was in
England a feeling, outside this unreal republicanism -- a feeling of which Priestly
the Unitarian may be looked on as a representative; this feeling was of the nature
of that felt by respectable and thoughtful Radicals of later days, and was
... (From: Marxists.org.)
When the great war which Napoleon waged against Europe
came to an end by his defeat and ruin, France was once more handed over to the
Bourbons, and Europe fell into the arms of reaction and sheer absolutism. The Holy
Alliance, or union of reactionary monarchs, undertook the enterprise of crushing
out all popular feeling, or even anything that could be supposed to represent it in
the persons of the bourgeois.
But the French Revolution had shaken absolutism too sorely for this enterprise to
have more than a very partial success even on the surface. The power of absolutism
was undermined by various revolutionary societies, mostly (so-called) secret, which
attracted to t... (From: Marxists.org.)
In dealing with the great event of the Paris Commune, we
must take for granted a knowledge of the facts, which are in a brief form
accessible to all since the publication by the Socialist League of its pamphlet on
the subject.
As we have stated before, the International was founded in 1864, under the
leadership of Beesley, Marx, and Odger. In 1869, at the Congress of Basle, Marx
drew it into the compass of Socialism; and though in England it still remained an
indefinite labor-body, on the Continent it became at once decidedly Socialistic
and revolutionary, and its influence was very considerable.
The progress of Socialism and the spreading feeling
... (From: Marxists.org.)
It is now necessary for us to turn for a while from the
political progress of Socialism, to note the school of thinkers who preceded the
birth of modern scientific or revolutionary Socialism. These men thought it
possible to regenerate Society by laying before it its short-comings, follies, and
injustice, and by teaching through precept and example certain schemes of
reconstruction built up from the aspirations and insight of the teachers
themselves. They had not learned to recognize the sequence of events which forces
social changes on mankind whether they are conscious of its force or not, but
believed that their schemes would win their way to general adoption by men's
percept... (From: Marxists.org.)
Of the Socialist thinkers who serve as a kind of link
between the Utopists and the school of the Socialism of historical evolution, or
scientific Socialists, by far the most noteworthy figure is Proudhon who was born
at Besançon in 1809. By birth he belonged to the working-class, his father
being a brewer's cooper, and he himself as a youth followed the occupation of
cowherding.
In 1838, however, he published an essay on general grammar, and in 1839 he gained a
scholarship to be held for three years, a gift of one Madame Suard to his native
town. The result of this advantage was his most important though far from his most
voluminous work, published the same ye... (From: Marxists.org.)
The foregoing chapters on modern Socialists may be
regarded as leading up to the full development of the complete Socialist theory, or
as it is sometimes called, 'scientific' Socialism. The great exponent of this
theory, and the author of the most thorough criticism of the capitalistic system of
production, is the late Dr Karl Marx.
He was born in 1818 at Treves, his father being a baptized Jew holding an official
position in that city. He studied for the law in the University of Bonn, passing
his examination with high honors in 1840. In 1843 he married Jenny von Westphalen,
sister of the well-known Prussian statesman of that name. Philosophy and political
economy, w... (From: Marxists.org.)
We have now come to the point where it is necessary to
consider the circulation of commodities; the first means to this circulation is the
establishment of a tertium quid, or universal equivalent. And in order to
have a really universal equivalent it is necessary that use-value should be
eliminated from it, since such an equivalent is required to express not the diverse
qualities of all the various commodities, but the relative quantity of
embodied human labor which they severally contain.
Money as a mere measure of value is imaginary and ideal, but the bodily form of it
must express quantitively equivalent abstract value -- ie., labor -- and
takes the form of the pr... (From: Marxists.org.)
Says Marx: 'The circulation of commodities is the
starting point of capital: the production of commodities, their circulation, and
that more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the
historical groundwork from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from
the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a
world-embracing market.
The great representative of this circulation is money, which is the first
form in which capital appears. In history, money presents itself to us as
opposed to land: the merchant is opposed to the landowner; an antithesis
which struck people so much at one period that they expressed it by ... (From: Marxists.org.)
The problem to be resolved is as follows. The owner of
money has to buy his commodities at their value, and to sell them at their value,
and nevertheless at the end of the process to realize a surplus. This is the end
and aim of his existence as a capitalist, and if he does not accomplish it, he is
as a capitalist a mere failure. So that his development from the mere money owner
to the full-blown capitalist has to take place at once within the sphere of
circulation and without it: that is, he must follow the law of the exchange of
commodities, and nevertheless must act in apparent contradiction to that law. This
problem cannot be solved merely by means of the money which he owns, the v... (From: Marxists.org.)
Marx goes on to develope (sic) further the
process by which the capitalist exploits the laborer under the present system of
wages and capital.
We now come to the two instruments which the capitalist uses in his exploitation of
labor, and which are named constant and variable capital; constant capital being
the raw material and instruments of production, and variable the labor power to be
employed in producing on and by means of the former.
The laborer, as we have seen, adds a value to the raw material upon which he
works; but by the very act of adding a new value he preserves the old; in one
character he adds new value, in another he merely preserves what... (From: Marxists.org.)
Capitalism cannot be said even to begin before a number
of individual owners of money employ simultaneously a number of workmen on the same
terms, that is to say before the development of a concert of action towards profit
among the employers, and a concert of action towards production for the profit of
the employers among the employed.
'A greater number of laborers working together at the same time in one place (or
if you will, in the same field of labor) in order to produce the same sort of
commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically
and logically the starting-point of capitalist prodiuction.'
It differs from the med... (From: Marxists.org.)
Marx now goes on to trace the development of the
capitalist in the present epoch, indicating the latest phase of the class-struggle;
he points out the strife of the workman with the machine, the intensification of
labor due to the constant improvement of machinery, etc. He then gives what may be
called a history and analysis of the Factory Acts, the legislation to which the
employing class found themselves compelled, in order to make it possible for the
'free' workman to live under his new conditions of competition; in order, in short,
to keep the industrial society founded by the machine revolution from falling to
pieces almost as soon as it was established.
The poi... (From: Marxists.org.)
We have now arrived at the most exciting part of our
subject, since it has to do with what we may fairly call the practical politics of
Socialism, with matters which all who call themselves Socialists must of necessity
consider, unless they chose to relegate themselves to the position of theorists
pure and simple. What lies in the scope of these chapters is the giving some idea
of the relative position of the attack and defense in the passing time, when armies
are definitely gathering for the battle, and it is beginning to be perceived that
Socialism is the one serious question of the epoch, since it covers every interest
of modern life.
Let us turn our attention fir... (From: Marxists.org.)
The movement was begun in
Germany by Lassalle (1) about 1863 as a national
movement; it grew in that form after his death for some years. Meantime 'the
International' had been founded, and had gradually come under the guidance of Karl
Marx and Frederic Engels, who won for themselves two energetic and able coadjutors
in Liebnecht and Bebel, men untiring in gaining converts to the ideas of the
International from the followers of Lassalle and of Schulze- Delitsch, the
bourgeois co-operationist, to which latter party indeed Bebel himself once
belonged.
The scope of this article prevents us from going into details as to the fortunes of
the German party; it must be ... (From: Marxists.org.)
It is possible to succeed in a manner in picturing to
ourselves the life of past times: that is, our imaginations will show us a picture
of them which may include such accurate information as we may have of them. But though the picture may be vivid and the information
just, yet it will not be a picture of what really took place; it will be made up of
the present which we experience, and the past which our imagination, drawing from
our experience, conceives of, -- in short, it will be our picture of the
past(1). If this be the case with the past, of
which we have some concrete data, still more strongly may it be said of the future,
of which we have none -- nothing but mere abstract dedu... (From: Marxists.org.)
It remains to say something on the religious and ethical
basis of which the life of Communal Society may be called an expression, although
from another aspect the religion may be said to be an expression of that life; the
two together forming an harmonious whole.
The word religion has been, and is still in most minds, connected with supernatural
beliefs, and consequently the use of the word has been attacked as unjustifiable
where this element is absent. But, as we shall proceed to show in a few words, this
is rather accessory to it than essential.
In the first instance religion had for its object the continuance and glory of the
kinship -- Society; wheth... (From: Marxists.org.)
