Part 5 (1/2)

These statements concerning ethics and socialist pedagogy having been explained, someone might yet ask:--But what was the philosophical opinion of Marx and Engels in regard to morality? Were they relativists, utilitarians, hedonists, or idealists, absolutists, or what else?

I may be allowed to point out that this question is of no great importance, and is even somewhat inopportune, since neither Marx nor Engels were philosophers of ethics, nor bestowed much of their vigorous ability on such questions. It is indeed of consequence to determine that their conclusions in regard to the function of morality in social movements and to the method for the education of the proletariat, contain no contradiction of general ethical principles, even if here and there they clash with the prejudices of current pseudo-morality. Their personal opinions upon the principles of ethics did not take an elaborate scientific form in their books; and some wit and some sarcasm are not adequate grounds upon which to base a discussion of the subject.

And I will say yet more; in ethical matters, I have not yet succeeded in freeing myself from the prison of the Kantian Critique, and do not yet see the position taken up by Kant surpa.s.sed; on the contrary, I see it strengthened by some of the most modern tendencies, and to me the way in which Engels attacks Duhring with regard to the principles of morality in his well-known book, does not in truth appear very exhaustive.[70] Here again the procedure is repeated which we have already criticised in connection with the discussions upon the general concept of value. Where Duhring, owing to the exigencies of scientific abstraction, takes for consideration the isolated individual and explicitly states that he is dealing with an abstract ill.u.s.tration (_Denkschema_), Engels remarks, wittily but erroneously--that the isolated man is nothing but a new edition of the first Adam in the Garden of Eden. It is true that in that criticism are contained many well-directed blows; and it might even be called just, if it refers only to ethical conceptions in the sense of a.s.semblages of special rules and moral judgments, relative to definite social situations, which a.s.semblages and constructions cannot claim absolute truth for all times, and all places, precisely because they are always made for particular times and particular places. But apart from these special constructions, a.n.a.lysis offers us the essential and ruling principles of morality, which give opportunity for questions which may, truly, be differently answered, but which most certainly are not taken into account by Marx and Engels. And, in truth, even if some may be able to write on the _theory of knowledge according to_ _Marx_,[71] to write on the principles of ethics according to Marx seems to me a somewhat hopeless undertaking.

VI

CONCLUSION

_Recapitulation: 1. Justification of Marxian economics as comparative sociological economics: 2. Historical materialism simply a canon of historical interpretation: 3. Marxian social programme not a pure science: 4.

Marxism neither intrinsically moral nor antimoral._

The preceding remarks are partly attempts at interpretation, and partly critical emendations of some of the concepts and opinions expressed by Marx and in the Marxian literature. But how many other points deserve to undergo revision! Beginning with that _concentration of private property in a few hands_, which threatens to become something like the discredited _iron law of wages_, and ending with that strange statement in the history of philosophy that _the labour movement is the heir of German cla.s.sical philosophy_. And attention could thus be given to another group of questions which we have not discussed (_e.g._ to the conception of future society) in regard to their detailed elucidation and their practical and historical applications.[72] If that _decomposition of Marxism_, which some have predicted,[73] meant a careful critical revision, it would indeed be welcome.

To sum up, in the meantime, the chief results which are suggested in the preceding remarks: they maintain.

1. In regard to economic science, the _justification_ of Marxian economics, understood not as general economic science, but as comparative sociological economics, which is concerned with a problem of primary interest for historical and social life.

2. In regard to the philosophy of history, the _purification_ of historical materialism from all traces of any _a priori_ standpoint (whether inherited from Hegelianism or an infection from ordinary evolutionism) and the understanding of the theory as a simple, albeit a fruitful, _canon_ of historical interpretation.

3. In regard to practical matters, the _impossibility of inferring_ the Marxian social programme (or, indeed, any other social programme) from the propositions of pure science, since the apprais.e.m.e.nt of social programmes must be a matter of empirical observations and practical convictions; in which connection the Marxian programme cannot but appear one of the n.o.blest and boldest and also one of those which obtain most support from the objective conditions of existing society.

4. In regard to ethics, the _abandonment of the legend_ of the intrinsic _immorality_ or of the intrinsic _anti-ethical_ character of Marxism.

I will add a remark on the second point. Many will think that if historical materialism is reduced to the limits within which we have confined it, it will not only no longer be a legitimate and real scientific theory (which we are indeed prepared to grant) but will actually lose all importance whatever, and against this second conclusion we once more, as we have done already on another occasion, make vigorous protest. Undoubtedly the horror expressed by some for pure science and for abstractions is inane, since these intellectual methods are indispensable for the very knowledge of concrete reality; but no less inane is the complete and exclusive wors.h.i.+p of abstract propositions, of _definitions_, of _theorems_, of _corollaries_: almost as if these const.i.tuted a sort of aristocracy of human thought.

Well! the economic purists (not to draw examples from other fields, though numbers could be found in pure mathematics) prove to us, in fact, that the discovery of scientific theorems,--strictly, unimpeachably scientific,--is frequently neither an over-important nor over-difficult matter. To be convinced thereof we need only remark how many _eponimi_ of new theorems issue from every corner of the German or English schools. And concrete reality, _i.e._ the very world in which we live and move, and which it concerns us somewhat to know, slips out, unseizable, from the broad-meshed net of abstractions and hypotheses. Marx, as a sociologist, has in truth not given us carefully worked out definitions of _social phenomena_, such as may be found in the books of so many contemporary sociologists, of the Germans Simmel and Stammler, or of the Frenchman Durckheim; but he teaches us, although it is with statements approximate in content and paradoxical in form, to penetrate to what society is in its _actual truth_. Nay, from this point of view, I am surprised that no one has thought of calling him 'the most notable _successor_ of the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli'; a Machiavelli of the labour movement.

And I will also add a remark on the third point--if the social programme of Marxism cannot be _wholly included_ in Marxian science, or in any other science, no more can the daily practice of socialist politics be, in its turn, _wholly included_ in the general principles of the programme, which programme, if we a.n.a.lyse it, determines (1) _an ultimate end_, (the technical organisation of society); (2) _an impulse, based on history_, towards this end, found in the objective tendencies of modern society (the necessity for the abolition of capitalism and for a communistic organisation, as the one possible _form of progress_); (3) _a method_ (to accelerate the final phases of the bourgeoisie, and to educate politically the cla.s.s destined to succeed them). Marx, owing to his political insight, has for many years in a striking manner, joined with, and guided by his advice and his work, the international socialist movement; but he could not give _precepts_ and _dogmas_ for every contingency and complication that history might produce. Now _the continuation of Marx's political work is much more difficult than the continuation of his scientific work_.

And, if, in continuing the latter, the so-called Marxians have sometimes fallen into a _scientific dogmatism_ little to be admired, some recent occurrences remind us of the danger, that the continuation of the former may also degenerate into a dogmatism with the worst effects, _i.e._ a _political dogmatism_. This gives food for thought to all the more cautious Marxians, amongst whom are Kautsky and Bernstein in Germany, and Sorel in France; Labriola's new book, too, contains serious warnings on the matter.

_November, 1897._

FOOTNOTES:

[13] 'An immense monograph' (of economics understood) it is called by Professor Antonio Labriola, the most notable of the Italian Marxians, in his recent book (_Discorrendo di filosophia e socialismo_, Rome, Loescher, 1898). But in an earlier work (_In Memoria del 'Manifesto dei Comunisti'_, 2nd ed. Rome, 1895, p. 36) he defined it as '_a philosophy of history_'.

[14] I leave out those who regard the law of labour-value as the _general_ law of value. The refutation is obvious. How could it ever be 'general' when it leaves out of account a whole category of economic goods, that is the goods which cannot be increased by labour?

[15] WERNER SOMBART: _Zur Kritik des oekonomischen Systems von Karl Marx_ (in the _Archiv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik_ Vol.

VII, 1894, pp. 555-594). I have not by me the criticism (from the Hedonistic point of view) of this article by Sombart--on the third volume of _Das Kapital_--made last year by BOHM BAWERK in the _Miscellany_ in honour of Knies.

[16] _Loc. cit._, p. 571, _et seq._

[17] In the _Neue Zeit_ xiv. vol. 1, pp. 4-11, 37-44, I quote from the Italian translation: _Dal terzo volume del 'Capitale,'_ preface and notes by F. Engels, Rome 1896, p. 39.

[18] _Sur la theorie Marxiste de la valeur_ (in the _Journal des Economistes_, number for March 1897, pp. 222-31, see p. 228).

[19] _Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia_, p. 21.

[20] It must be carefully noticed that what I call a _concrete fact_ may still not be a fact which is empirically real, but a fact made by us hypothetically and _entirely imaginary_ or a fact _partially empirical_, _i.e._ existing partially in empirical reality. We shall see later on that Marx's typical premise belongs properly to this second cla.s.s.