[27] Das Kapital, Book III., sec. III., Chaps. XIII., XIV., XV., Gesetz des tendentiellen Falls der Profitrate (vol. iii., Part I, pp. 191-249).
[28] The task of Marx's followers ought to be to free his thought from the literary form which he adopts, to study again the questions which he propounds, and to work them out with new and more accurate statements, and with fresh historical illustrations. In this alone can scientific progress consist. The expositions made hitherto of Marx's system, are merely materials; and some (like Aveling's) consist entirely in a series of little summaries, which follow the original chapter by chapter and prove even more obscure. For the law of the fall in the rate of profits, see below, chap. V.
[29] 'To follow out completely this criticism of bourgeois economics a knowledge of the capitalist form of production, exchange and distribution is not alone adequate. We ought similarly to study at least in their essential features and taken as terms of comparison, the other forms which have preceded it in time, or exist alongside of it in less developed countries. Such an investigation and comparison has hitherto been briefly expounded only by Marx; and we owe almost entirely to his researches what we know about pre-bourgeois theoretical economics.' (Engels, Antidühring, p. 154). This was written by Engels twenty years ago; and since then the literature of economic history has grown remarkably, but historical research has been seldom accompanied by theoretical research.
[30] 'Political economy is essentially an historical science.' (Engels, l.c., p. 150).
[31] What is strange is that Engels (in the passage quoted in the penultimate note) says himself most truly that Marx has written theoretical economics, nevertheless in the sentence quoted in the last note (which appears in the same book and on the same page) he states definitely that economics in the Marxian sense is nothing but an historical science.
[32] Antidühring, pp. 150, 155.
[33] Das Kapital, I, p. 67.
[34] F.A. Lange, Die Arbeiterfrage, 5th ed., Winterthur, 1894, (the author's last revision was in 1874) see p. 332; cf. p. 248 and on p. 124, the quotation from Gossen's book, then very little known.
[35] Adolf Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen œkonomie, 3rd Ed., Leipzig, 1892, vol. I, pt. I; Bk. I, ch. i. Die Wirthschaftliche Natur des Menschen, pp. 70-137.
[36] I may be allowed to remark that in similar discussions, economists usually make the serious mistake of making the concept economic coincide with the concept egoistic. But the economic is an independent sphere of human activity, in addition to all the others, such as the spheres of ethics, æsthetics, logic, etc. The moral goods and the satisfaction of the higher moral needs of man, just because they are goods, and needs, are taken into account in economics, but still only as goods and needs, not as moral or immoral, egoistic or altruistic. In like manner, a manifestation (by words or by any other means of expression) is taken into account in æsthetics; but only as a manifestation not as true, false, moral, immoral, useful, harmful, etc. Economists are still impressed by the fact that Adam Smith wrote one book of theory and of ethics, and another of economic theory; which may interpret to mean that one dealt with a theory of altruistic facts and the other with one of egoistic facts. But if this had been so, Adam Smith would have discussed, in both of his chief works, facts of an ethical character, estimable or reprehensible; and would not have been an economist at all; a ridiculous conclusion which is a reductio ad absurdum of the identification of economic action with egoism.
[37] Discorrendo di socialismo e di filesophia, l. vi.
[38] It is strange how among the students of pure economics also this need for a different treatment makes itself felt, leading them to contradictory statements and to insuperable perplexities. Pantaleoni, Principî di economia pura, Florence, Barbara, 1889, p. 3, Ch. iii § 3 (pp. 299-302), contradicts Böhm-Bawerk, inquiring whence the borrower of capital at interest is able to find the wherewithal to pay the interest. Pareto, Introd. critica agli Estratti del Capitale del Marx, Ital. trans. Palermo, Sandron, 1894, p. xxx, n.: 'The phenomena of surplus value contradicts Marx's theory which determines values solely by labour. But, on the other hand, there is an expropriation of the kind which Marx condemns. It is not at all proved that this expropriation helps to secure the hedonistic maximum. But it is a difficult problem how to avoid this expropriation.' A learned and accurate Italian work which attempts to reconcile the opinions of the hedonistic school with those of the followers of Ricardo and Marx, is the memorandum of Prof. G. Ricca Salermo, La theoria del valore nella storia delle dottrine e dei fatti economici, Rome 1894. (extr. from the Memorie dei Lincei, s. v. vol. I., pt. i.)
[39] See above, chap. I.
[40] The over-abused Dühring was not mistaken when he remarked that in Marx's works expressions occur frequently 'which appear to be universal without being actually so' (Allgemein aussehen ohne es zu sein). Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Socialismus, Berlin, 1871, p. 527.
[41] Gentile, Una critica del materialismo storico in the Studî storici of Crivellucci, vol. VI, 1897, pp. 379-423, throws doubt on the interpretation offered by me of the opinions of Marx and Engels, and on the method of interpretation itself. I gladly acknowledge that in my two earlier essays I do not clearly point out where precisely the textual interpretation ends and the really theoretical part begins; which theoretical exposition, only by conjecture and in the manner described above, can be said to agree with the inmost thoughts of Marx and Engels. In his recent book, La filosofia di Marx, Pisa, Spoerri, 1899 (in which the essay referred to is reprinted), Gentile remarks (p. 104), that, although it is a very convenient practice, and in some cases legitimate and necessary 'to interpret doctrines, by calling a part of their statement worthless or accidental in form and external and weak, and a part the real substance and essential and vital, it is yet necessary to justify it in some way.' He means certainly, 'justify it as historical interpretation,' since its justification as correction of theory cannot be doubtful. It seems to me that even historically the interpretation can be justified without difficulty when it is remembered that Marx did not insist, (as Gentile himself says) on his metaphysical notions; and did certainly insist on his historical opinions and on the political policy which he defended. Marx's personality as a sociological observer and the teacher of a social movement, certainly outweighs Marx as a metaphysician which he was almost solely as a young man. That it is worth the trouble to study Marx from all sides is not denied, and Gentile has now admirably expounded and criticised his youthful metaphysical ideas.
[42] I confess that I have never been able to understand—however much I have considered the matter—the meaning of this passage (which ought however to be very evident, since it is quoted so often without any comment), in the preface to the second edition of Das Kapital: 'Meine dialektische Methode ist der Grundlage nach von der Hegel'schen nicht nur verschieden, sondern ihr direktes Gegentheil. Für Hegel is der Denkprocess, den er sogar unter dem Namen Idee in ein selbständiger subjeckt verwandelt, der Demjurg des Wirklichen, das nur seine äussere Erscheinung bildet. Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Ideelle nichts Andres als das im Menschenkopf umgesetzte und ubersetzte Materielle.' (Das Kapital I, p. xvii.) Now it seems to me that the Ideelle of the last phrase has no relation to the Denkprocess and to the Hegelian Idea of the preceding phrase, cf. above pp. 17. Some have thought that by the objections there stated, I intended to deny Marx's Hegelian inspiration. It is well to repeat that I merely deny the logical relation affirmed between the two philosophical theories. To deny Marx's Hegelian inspiration would be to contradict the evidence.
[43] Answers to several of the questions suggested above are now supplied in the book already referred to, by Gentile: La Filosofia di Marx.
[44] Antidühring, pt. I. ch. xlii., especially pp. 138-145, which passage is translated into Italian in the appendix to the book by Labriola referred to above: Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, cf. Das Kapital, I. p. xvii, 'Gelingt dies und spiegelt sich nun das Leben des stoffs ideell wieder, so mag es aussehen, als habe man es mit einer Konstruction a priori zu thun.'
[45] Lange, indeed, in reference to Marx's Das Kapital, remarked that the Hegelian dialectic, 'the development by antithesis and synthesis, might almost be called an anthropological discovery. Only in history, as in the life of the individual, development by antithesis certainly does not accomplish itself so easily and radically, nor with so much precision and symmetry as in speculative thought.' (Die Arbeiterfrage, pp. 248-9.)
[46] With regard to the abstract classes of Marxian economics and the real or historical classes, see some remarks by Sorel in the article referred to in the Journal des Economistes, p. 229.
[47] G. Gentile, o.c. in Studî storici, p. 421. cf. 400-401.
[48] Labriola has indeed an exaggerated dislike for what he calls the scholastic: but even this exaggeration will not appear wholly unsuitable as a reaction against the method of study which usually prevails among the mere men of letters, the niggardly scholars, the empty talkers and jugglers with abstract thought, and all those who lose their sense of close connection between science and life.
[49] Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosophia, l. ix.
[50] In torno alla storia della cultura (Kulturgeschichtein Atti dell Accad. Pont.; vol. xxv. 1895, p. 8.)
[51] 'If by Christianity is meant merely the sum of the beliefs and expectations concerning human destiny, these beliefs'—writes Labriola—'vary as much, in truth, as in the difference, to mention only one instance, between the free will of the Catholics after the Council of Trent, and the absolute determination of Calvin!' (L.c. ix.)
[52] Without referring to the somewhat unmethodical work of Westermarck, History cf Human Marriage, see especially Ernst Grosse's book, Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der Wirthschaft, Freiburg in B., 1896.
[53] This connection is shortly but carefully dealt with by Ingram, History of Political Economy, Edinburgh, A. & C. Black, 1888, p. 62.
[54] See, amongst many passages, Marx, Misère de la philosophie, p. 167, et seq. Engels, Antidühring, p. 1, et seq.
[55] On the hedonistic maxima, cf. Bertolini-Pantaleoni, Cenni sul concetto di massimi edonistici individuali e collectivi (in Giorn, degli Econ., s II vol. iv.) and Coletti, in the same Giornale, vol. v.
[56] In regard to this metaphysical use of the word science; there even exists in Italy a Rivista di polizia scientifica! And the metaphor may pass here also.
[57] Cours d'économie politique, Lausanne, 1896-7.
[58] Cf. also his criticism of Marx already referred to: p. xviii.
[59] Sauf l'Angleterre, où règne le libre échange principalement parcequ'il est favourable aux intérêts de certains entrepreneurs, le reste des pays civilisés verse de plus en plus dans le protectionnisme (§. 964.)
[60] See the Giornale degli economisti, excellent in all its critical sections; and especially Pareto's chronicles therein.
[61] It may be remarked that in the difficulty of distinguishing the purely scientific from the practical lies the chief cause of the dangers and poverty of the social and political sciences. And we may even smile at those scientists or their ingenious admirers, who claim to accomplish the salvation of the social and political sciences, by applying to them the methods, as they say, of the natural sciences. (An Italian astronomer, ingenuous as clever, has suggested the formation of sociological observatories which, in a few years would make sociology something like astronomy!) Alas! the matter is not so simple; all sociologists intend indeed to apply exact methods; but how can this application succeed when one advances per ignes or over ground which moves; d'una e d'altra parte sì come l'onda chefugge e s'appressa? (From both sides like the wave which ebbs and flows.)
[62] See the preface of the German translation of Misère de la philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892, and now also in French in the reprint of the original text of the same work (Paris, Giard et Brière, 1896.)
[63] The word communism is also more appropriate, since there are so many socialisms (democratic state, catholic, etc.). On the relation between the materialistic theory of history and socialism, see Gentile, op. cit., passim.
[64] Pantagruel, III, 39-43.
[65] The absurdity of this interpretation will come out clearly if it is merely remembered that there are many cases in which the capitalist manufacturer pays for the labour of his workman, a price higher than what he then realises on the market; cases, it is true, where the capitalist is proceeding towards ruin and bankruptcy; but which he cannot, on this account, always avoid. 'Marx part des recherches faites par cette école Anglaise, dont il avait fait une étude approfondie; et il veut expliquer le profit sans admettre aucun brigandage.' (Sorel, art. cit., p. 227.)
[66] See in Antidühring, p. 303, the historical justification of class divisions.
[67] From among the many passages which support this interpretation, cf. Antidühring, pp. 152-3, 206 and especially pp. 61-2, and the preface to the German translation of Misère de la Philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1892 pp. ix-x, cf. also Labriola, o.c. Lett. VIII.
[68] See Labriola, o.c. l. cit., the remarks on the difficulty with which the theory of historical materialism meets owing to mental dispositions, and amongst those who wish to moralise socialism.
One instance, in some respects analogous to this which arises from the discussions on Marx's ethics, is the traditional criticism of Machiavelli's ethics: which was refuted by De Sanctis (in the remarkable chapter devoted to Machiavelli, in his Storia della letteratura), but which continually recurs and is inserted even in Professor Villari's book, who finds this defect in Machiavelli: that he did not consider the moral question.
I have always asked myself for what reason, by what obligation, by what agreement, Machiavelli was bound to discuss all kinds of questions, even those for which he had neither preparation nor sympathy. Can it be said, by way of example, to some one who is researching in chemistry:—Your weak and erroneous spot is that you have not gone back from your detailed investigations to the general metaphysical enquiries into the principles of reality?—Machiavelli starts from the establishment of a fact: the condition of war in which society found itself; and gives rules suited to this state of affairs. Why should he, who was not cut out for a moral philosopher, discuss the ethics of war? He goes straight to practical conclusions. Men are wicked—he says—and to the wicked it is needful to behave wickedly. You will deceive him who would certainly deceive you. You will do violence to him who would do violence to you. These maxims are neither moral nor immoral, neither beneficial nor harmful; they become one of the two according to the subjective aims and the objective effects of the action, i.e. according to the intentions and the results. What is evident is that a morality which desired to introduce into war the maxims of peace would be a morality for lambs fit for the slaughter, not for men who wish to repel injustice and to maintain their rights. 'And if men were all good, this precept would not be good, etc., etc.' says Machiavelli himself. (Principe, ch. xviii). Villari is also troubled by the old formula concerning the 'end which justifies the means' and the 'moral end' and the 'immoral means'. It is however sufficient to consider that the means, just because they are means, cannot be divided into moral and immoral, but merely into suitable and unsuitable. Immoral means, unless as an expression in current speech, is a contradiction in terms. The qualification moral or immoral can only belong to the end. And, in the examples usually given, an analysis made with a little accuracy shows at once, that it is never a question of immoral means but of immoral ends. The height of the confusion is reached by those who introduce into the question the absurd distinction of private and public morality.
I may be pardoned the digression; but, as I said, questions which are really analogous re-appear now in connection with the ethical maxims of Marxism.
[69] And it would be to the point to draw a comparison between the peasants' rebellions, with which modern Italy has supplied us with another example in recent years, and the political struggles of the German workmen, or the economic struggles of the Trade Unions in England.
[70] See in particular P.I. ch. ix., Moral und Recht, Ewige Wahrheiten.
[71] See, in particular, Marx's ideas: Ueber Feuerbach, in 1845, in the appendix to Engels' book, Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der Klassischen deutschen Philosophie, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1895, pp. 59-62; and cf. Andler in Revue de metaphysique, 1897, Labriola, o.c. passim and Gentile, l.c., p. 319. From this point of view (i.e. limiting the statement to the theory of knowledge) we might speak like Labriola of historical materialism as a philosophy of practice, i.e. as a particular way of conceiving and solving, or rather of over-coming, the problem of thought and of existence. The philosophy of practice has now been designedly studied by Gentile in the volume referred to.
[72] Some interpretations would be merely verbal explanations. To some it will appear a very hard statement that socialism aims at abolishing the State. Yet it suffices to consider that the State, among socialists, is synonymous with difference of classes and the existence of governing classes, to understand that as in such a case, we can speak of the origin of the State, so we can speak of its end; which does not mean the end of organised society (cf. Antidühring, p. 302). The conception of the way in which capitalist society will come to an end demands no little critical working out; on this point the thought of Marx and Engels is not without obscurities and inconsistencies (cf. Antidühring, pp. 287 et seq. and p. 297).
[73] See Ch. Andler, Les origines du socialisme d'état en Allemagne, Paris, Alcan, 1897. Andler promises a book, and is now giving a course of lectures on the decomposition of Marxism.
Labriola's criticism of method and conclusions of preceeding essays answered: His criticism merely destructive: Tendency of ether thinkers to arrive at like conclusions.
I have always discussed frankly the views expressed in the writings of my eminent friend Professor Antonio Labriola. I am therefore glad that he has taken the same liberty with me, and has subjected to a vigorous criticism (in the French edition of his book on Socialismo e la filosofia),[74] my interpretation of the Marxian theory of value.[75] Labriola has been impelled to this also from a wish to prevent my opinions from appearing, 'to the reader's eyes,' as a supplement, approved by him, of his own personal ones. And though I do not think that 'to the reader's eyes' (I will however add intelligent readers), this would be possible, since, I have always carefully indicated the points, and they are neither few nor unimportant, where we disagree: yet being convinced that clearness is never superfluous, I welcome his intention to make it still plainer that I am not he, and that he thinks with his mind whilst I think with mine.
Labriola rejects entirely the method adopted by me, which he describes variously as scholastic, metaphysical, metaphorical, abstract, formal logic. When I take pains to point out the differences between homo œconomicus and man, moral or immoral, between personal interest and egoism,[76] he shrugs his shoulders, he does not refuse a certain indulgence to this traditional scholasticism, and compares me to the man in the street who speaks of the rising or setting of the sun, or of shining light and warm heat. When I firmly maintain the theoretical necessity for a general economics in addition to the heterogeneous considerations of sociological economics, he taxes me with creating, in addition to all the visible and tangible animals, an animal as such. And he charges me, moreover, with wishing to attack history, comparative philology and physiology in order to substitute for all these the plain Logic of Port Royal, so that instead of studying examples of epigenesis which have actually occurred, such as the transitions from invertebrates to vertebrates, from primitive communism to private property in land, from undifferentiated roots to the systematic differentiation of nouns and verbs in the Ariosemitic group, it might suffice to register these facts in concepts passing from the more general to the more particular, in the series A a1 a2 a3 etc.
But I hardly know how to defend myself seriously from such accusations, because it obliges me to repeat what is too obvious, i.e., that to make concepts does not mean to create entities; that to employ metaphors (and language is all metaphor), does not mean to believe mythology; that to construct experiences in thought, and scientific abstractions, does not mean to substitute either one or the other for concrete reality; that to make use, when needful, of formal logic, does not mean to ignore fact, growth, history. When Marx expounds historical facts I know no way of approaching him except that of historical criticism, and when he defines concepts and formulates laws, I can only proceed to recognise the content of his concepts, and to test the correctness of his inferences and deductions. Thus I have followed this second method in studying his theory of value. If Labriola knows another and better one, let him state it. But what could this other one possibly be? Real logic? In that case let us boldly re-establish Hegel, it will be the lesser evil, at least we shall understand one another. Or a still worse alternative, what monstrous empirical-dialectic or evolutionist method may it be, which confuses together and abuses two distinct procedures, and lends itself so readily to the lovers of prophecy? Or is it merely a question of new phraseology by which we shall go on humbly working, more or less well, with the old methods, whilst detesting the old words? Or again, is this dislike for formal logic nothing but a convenient pretext for dispensing with any vindication of the concepts which are employed?
Marx has stated his concept of value; has expounded a process of transformation of value into price; has reconstructed the nature of profit as surplus value. For me the whole problem of Marxian criticism is confined within these limits:—Is Marx's conception substantially erroneous (entirely, owing to false premisses, and partially, owing to false deductions)? or, is Marx's conception substantially correct, but has it been subsumed under a category to which it does not belong, and has search been made in it for what it cannot supply, whilst what it actually offers has been ignored? Having come to this second conclusion I have asked myself: Under what conditions and assumptions is Marx's theory thinkable? And this question I have tried to answer in my essay.
What Marx wished to do, or mistakenly thought himself to be doing is, I think, of interest to criticism up to a certain point; although the history of science shows that thinkers have not always had the clearest and plainest knowledge of the whole of their thought; and that it is one thing to discover a truth, and another to define and classify the discovery when made. It may be allowed that he who confuses ideological with historical research thus best reproduces Marx's spirit; but in this case the work will be an artistic recasting or a psychological reproduction, not a criticism; and will gather up with the sound also the unsound portion of Marx's thought.
To go into details. Labriola tries to prove the emptiness or vagueness of some of my definitions and the falsity of some of my reasoning. I having asserted that capitalist economics is a special case of general economics, Labriola remarks, 'en passant,' that it is nevertheless the only case which has given rise to a theory and to divisions of schools; and I acknowledge that I do not understand the point of this remark, although it is said to be made 'en passant.' Both Marx and Engels lamented that the ancient and medieval economic systems had not been studied in the same way as the modern. Thus there are conceivable at least three economic theories, ancient, medieval and modern, and is it not lawful to construct a general economics; i.e. to study in isolation that common element which causes these three groups of facts to be all three denoted by a common name? Labriola then asks what this general and extra-historical economics can consist of, and whether it can never be of service to the conjectural psychology of primitive man: he jests after the manner of Engels, who in truth has sometimes joked too much during a discussion on serious matters. Is it incredible that I too should jest? But I do not think there is occasion to do so! He wonders at my insatiability, because having accepted the hedonistic theories, I wish to accept Marx's theories too: as though my entire proof was not intended to make it plain that the antithesis between these theories exists only in imagination; and that Marx's theory is not an economic system entirely opposed to other systems ('quelque chose de tout-à-fait opposé' are Labriola's own words), but a special and partial inquiry; and as though by hedonism I meant all the personal convictions, philosophical, historical and political, of those who follow, or say that they follow, its guidance, and not indeed only what follows legitimately from its axiom. When I call the explanation of the nature of profits, offered by the hedonistic school, an economic explanation, he inquires sarcastically: 'Could it possibly be non-economic?' But my statement contains no pleonasm: the adjective economic is added to mark off the hedonistic explanation from that of Marx, which, to my thinking, is not purely economic, but historical and comparative, or sociological, if it is preferred. He wonders that I speak of a working society, and asks: 'As opposed to what?' 'Perhaps to the saints in paradise?' But I have pointed out the opposition between a hypothetical working society,—i.e. such that all its goods are produced by labour,—and a society, economic certainly, but not exclusively working, because it enjoys goods given by nature, as well as the products of labour. The saints in paradise form another irrelevant jest.
I called Marx's concept of surplus-value a concept of difference; and Labriola reproaches me for not being able 'to say exactly what I understand by these words.' And yet I am not in the habit of speaking or writing when I do not exactly know what I want to say; and here I believe that I have clearly expressed a thought which I had exceedingly clearly in my mind. Let us take two types of society: type A consisting of 100 persons, who, with capital held in common and equal labour, produce goods which are divided in equal proportions; type B consisting of 100 persons, 50 of whom own the land and the means of production, i.e. are capitalists, and 50 are shut out from this ownership, i.e. are proletarians and workmen; in the distribution, the former receive, in proportion to the capital which they employ, a share in the products of the labour of the latter. It is evident that in type A there is no place for surplus value. But neither in type B are you justified in giving the name surplus-value to that portion of the products which is swallowed up by the capitalists, except when you are comparing type B with type A, and are considering the former as a contrast to the latter. If type B is considered by itself, which is precisely what the pure economists do and ought to do, the product which the 50 capitalists appropriate, i.e. their profits, is a result of mutual agreement, arising out of different comparative degrees of utility. Turn in every direction and in pure economics you will find nothing more. The expropriatory character of profit can be asserted only when to the second society, we apply, almost like a chemical reagent, the standard, which, on the other hand, is characteristic of a type of society founded on human equality, a type 'which has attained the solidity of a popular conviction' (Marx). Profit 'is surplus-labour not paid for', says Marx, and it may be so; but not paid for in reference to what? In existing society it is certainly paid for, by the price which it actually secures. It is a question then, of determining in what society it would have that price which in existing society is denied it. And then, indeed, it is a question of comparison.
The following of Labriola's assertions is not original, but is nevertheless quite gratuitous: 'Pure economics is so little extra-historical, that it has borrowed the data from real history, of which it makes two absolute postulates: the freedom of labour and the freedom of competition, pushed to their extreme by hypothesis.' If I open Pantaleoni's well-known treatise, I read in the very first paragraph of the Teoria del valore, Ferrara's fundamental theory that: 'value is above all a phenomenon of the economics of the individual or isolated person.' So little do the legal conditions of society enter into the necessary postulates of pure economics.
After which, Labriola ought not to be horrified if I have written: 'that Marx has taken his celebrated equivalence[77] "between value and labour from outside the field of pure economics." He will ask me: from whence then has he taken it? And I reply: from a special and definite type of society, in which the legal organisation and the pre-supposed conditions of fact make value correspond to the quantity of labour.
Labriola does not consider justified the comparison which I have drawn, (metaphor for metaphor), between the commodities which in Marxian economics are presented as the crystallisations of labour and the goods which in pure economics might well be called quantities of possible satisfactions for crystallised wants. 'Hitherto—he exclaims—only sorcerers have been able to believe, or to cause it to be believed, that by desires alone a part of ourselves might be glutinised into any goods whatsoever.' But what does glutinise mean? To obtain the commodity a costs us x labour of a given kind, this is Marx's congealed labour. Pure economics, using a more general formula, states that it costs us that body of wants which we must leave unsatisfied: this is the form of congealment which pure economics might supply. There is no question, in the one case, of an objective reality, as Labriola seems to think, or in the other of an imagined sorcery; but in both cases it is a matter of the literary use of imaginative expressions to denote mental attitudes and elaborations. In this connection Labriola, as if to limit their range, says that Marx, as an author, belonged to the seventeenth century. May I be allowed, as a humble student of literature, and the author of several investigations into the character and origin of seventeenth century style,[78] to protest. Seventeenth century style consists in ingenuity, i.e. in putting cold intellectuality into an æsthetic form; hence the forced comparison, the lengthy metaphor, the play on words and the equivocations. But Marx, on the contrary, misuses poetic expressions, which give the content of his thought with unrestrained vigour. We find in him just the opposite of seventeenth century style: not a lack of connection between the form and the thought, but such a violent embrace of the former by the latter that the unlucky form sometimes runs the risk of being left suffocated.[79]
The reader will be tired of these replies to a negative criticism; but negative criticism is nevertheless all that Labriola offers us. What is his interpretation of Marx's thought? Or which does he accept, out of those offered? Here Labriola is silent. It is true that on another occasion I believed that I discerned in his statement that 'labour-value is the typical premiss in Marx, without which all the rest would be unthinkable,' an agreement with my thesis. But I see now that I must have been deceived, and that the words must have another meaning; which, however, warned by the unlucky attempt already made, I shall not attempt further to specify. In the meantime Sombart has built castles in the air; Sorel has made hasty or premature elaborations; the present writer has not understood (see p. 224). Are we then faced by a mystery? Our friend, Labriola, relates (p. 50) a story of Hegel who is said to have declared that one only of his pupils had understood him. (The anecdote, I may add, is recounted by Heinrich Heine in a much wittier manner).[80] Is the same thing to be repeated with regard to Marx's theory of value?
In truth, though without wishing to deny the difficulty of Marx's thought and of the form in which he expresses it, I think that the mystery may be at length cleared up. And I say this, not only on account of my inward conviction of the truth of my own interpretation, but also on account of the agreement in which I find myself with several critics, who, almost at the same moment, and by independent methods, have arrived at results nearly similar to my own.