[965] Marx calls attention to the fact that even Aristotle was puzzled by this common element which exchanged objects seemed to possess, and by the fact that exchange appeared to make them of equal value. We say that 5 beds = 1 house. “What is that equal something, that common substance, which admits of the value of the beds being expressed by a house? Such a thing, in truth, cannot exist, says Aristotle. And why not? Compared with the beds the house does represent something equal to them, in so far as it represents what is really equal, both in the beds and the house. And that is—human labour.” (Kapital, p. 29; Moore and Aveling’s translation—to which the Translator is indebted for the succeeding quotations also.)
“If we make abstraction from its use-value we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use-value.… Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight. Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour … there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour—human labour in the abstract.” (Ibid., p. 5.)
[966] “The capitalist epoch is therefore characterized by this, that labour-power takes in the eyes of the labourer himself the form of a commodity which is his property; his labour consequently becomes wage-labour.… Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence: in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer.” (Kapital, p. 149.)
[967] This demonstration implies that the wages drawn by the worker is necessarily only just equal to the value of the means of his subsistence. It is the old classic law of Turgot and Ricardo over again, which Lassalle, Marx’s contemporary and rival, graphically called the “brazen law of wages.” We are simply given a more scientific demonstration of it, that is all.
The demonstration is based upon a postulate which ought first to have been proved, namely, that the quantity of labour necessary to keep the worker alive is always less than the quantity which he provides for his master. But what is there to prove that a man who works ten hours a day does not require all those ten hours to produce sufficient for his upkeep? Is there some natural law that supports this contention? Marx simply regards it as an axiom and attempts no proof. Everyone would admit it to be true in a general way—as a kind of empirical law. For were it true that man’s labour was wholly absorbed by the necessaries of life there would be no increase of numbers, no saving of capital, and civilisation, which is the product of leisure, would never have been possible.
What we have here is the Physiocratic “net product” once again, with this difference, that instead of being confined to agricultural labour it is now regarded as an attribute of labour of every kind.
[969] It is necessary to point out that this proportion, which gives half the value to hand labour, leaving 100 per cent. surplus value, is put forward merely for the sake of illustration. Some Marxians, however, among whom is Jules Guesde, claim that this is actually the proportion in practice. Marx himself would probably have been more moderate in his estimate, because in one part of his thesis he accepts the statement of English manufacturers who declared that it was just the last hour that gave them their profits.
[970] The development of machinery, according to the Marxian theory, tends to reduce the cost of living, and consequently the price of labour, by producing cheaper clothes, furniture, etc., and to a lesser extent cheaper food.
By parity of reasoning ought it not to reduce the price of goods produced by the wage-earner and so lower the surplus value? We must be careful, however, not to confuse a reduction in the price of each unit with a reduction in the total value of the articles produced by machinery. A yard of cloth produced by a modern loom has not the same value as a yard produced by an old hand-loom. But the value of the total quantity produced each day must be equal to the value produced by hand, provided the same number of hours have been spent upon its production.
[971] Marx points out that there are other ways of increasing the amount of work done and of adding to the surplus value, such as the speeding up of labour. Speeding up does not increase the value of the goods, because the value depends upon the time spent upon them, and not upon the intensity of the effort put forth, but it does lower the cost of production.
[972] “Our friend Money-bags … must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at starting.… These are the conditions of the problem. Hic Rhodus! hic salta!” (Kapital, p. 145.) Cf. p. 215, where something is said about the different phases through which the idea of exploitation has passed.
Although Marx never says that the worker is actually robbed by the capitalist, but simply that the capitalist profits by circumstances which he is powerless to change, that has not prevented him treating the capitalist somewhat harshly and unjustly even, judging from his own point of view. He speaks of the capitalist as “a vampire which thrives upon the blood of others and becomes stouter and broader the more blood it gets.” He might have added that no blame could be attached to the vampire, seeing that it only obeyed the tendencies of its nature.
[973] “By turning his money into commodities that serve as the material elements of a new product, and as factors in the labour process by incorporating living labour with their dead substance, the capitalist at the same time converts value—i.e. past, materialized, and dead labour—into capital, into value big with value, a live monster that is fruitful and multiplies.” (Ibid., p. 176.)
[974] A potter working with his hands makes a vase in ten hours; each vase, then, costs ten hours’ labour. The same potter decides to make a wheel—a species of fixed capital. Setting up the wheel was a hundred hours’ task. If he still continues to produce only one vase per diem, which is a perfectly absurd proposition, for he would never have gone to the trouble of making the wheel if it did not mean some advantage to him, the value of each vase will now be 10 hours + 100 hours divided by x, which is the number of vases he would have produced had he not wasted his time making a wheel.
[975] Take two industries, A and B, each employing a capital of £1000. In A the amount of fixed capital is £100 and circulating £900. In B the fixed = £900 and the circulating £100. Admitting that surplus value is at the rate of 100 per cent., as in the example chosen just now, the total surplus value in A will be £900, equal to a profit of 90 per cent. on a capital of £1000. B, on the other hand, will only make £100 profit, which is equal to 10 per cent.
[976] This explanation only appears in the later volumes, which were published after his death.
It is true that Marx had drawn attention to the contradiction in the first volume, but no explanation was forthcoming until the later volumes appeared. Having stated that the greater quantity of surplus value is the direct result of the greater proportion of circulating capital employed, he proceeds: “This law clearly contradicts all experience based on appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton-spinner who, reckoning the percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant and little variable capital, does not, on account of this, pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker who relatively sets in motion much variable and little constant capital. For the solution of this apparent contradiction many intermediate terms are as yet wanted, as from the standpoint of elementary algebra many intermediate terms are wanted to demonstrate that 0/0 may represent an actual magnitude.… Vulgar economy, which, indeed, has really learnt nothing, here, as everywhere, sticks to appearance in opposition to the law which regulates and explains them.” (Kapital, p. 274.)
It is probable that Marx was not very well satisfied with his explanation, which may account for his reluctance to publish it during his lifetime.
[977] In the example just given suppose A and B represent the total industry of the country: the whole national industry will be made up of £900 + £100 circulating capital and £100 + £900 fixed—£2000 altogether. If the surplus value be at the rate of 100 per cent. of the circulating capital, the total capital value will be £900 + £100 = £1000 on a capital of £2000, or a percentage of 50.
[978] Taking the example given on p. 427, the mean of £900 + £100 = £500, and industry A, instead of 90 per cent., will draw only 50 per cent. profit, while industry B, instead of drawing only 10 per cent., will draw 50 per cent.
[979] We have indifferently employed the terms “profit” and “surplus value” simply because the former is a much more familiar word. But we must warn the reader against thinking that the two terms are synonymous. The surplus value is all that part of the value of the produce which is over and above the expenses of labour involved in its production—that enormous slice which becomes the property of every class in society except the workers, not merely the employers, but merchants, landlords, etc.; while profit is that part of the surplus value which the employers of labour keep for their own use. The rate of profit also is something quite different from the percentage of surplus value, as we shall see later.
We must call attention once more to the different interpretations which have been given of the term “profit.” Marx and the English economists take the word to comprise the whole revenue of capital under a régime of free competition, no distinction being drawn between profit properly so called and interest. To-day we understand by profit the income drawn by the entrepreneur—as distinct from the capitalist—as the result of certain favourable circumstances, notably imperfect competition.
It would be absurd to speak of a law of equality of profit, seeing that profit, as we have defined it, is, like rent, a differential revenue.
[980] We are fully aware of the fact that our method of approach must appear absurd from the Marxian standpoint, because it lays Marx open to the charge of starting with a preconceived idea, much after the style of economists like Bastiat, for example. Such a method, it is contended, is utterly unscientific and unworthy of a great mind like Marx’s.
However great he may have been, we cannot help thinking that, in common with most scientists, he discovered just what he was looking for, and it would be difficult to prove that Marx was not a socialist long before he began the writing of Kapital, even long before he had constructed a system at all.
Our object in stating the conclusion first of all is to help the reader to an understanding of the argument, but it is quite open to anyone who thinks differently to say that Marx had not the least idea where the analysis would lead him.
[981] The general use of the term “collectivism” is largely due to Marx. While “collectivism” occurs almost on every page of the Manifesto, the term “communism,” on the other hand, is never once employed.
James Guillaume, in the preface to the second volume of Bakunin’s works, p. xxxvi, gives the following account of the origin of the word “collectivism”: “At the fourth General Congress of the International, held at Bâle in 1869, almost every delegate voted in favour of collective property. But there were two distinct opinions cherished by the delegates present. The German-Swiss, the English, and the German delegates were really State communists. The Spanish, Belgian, French-Swiss, and most of the French delegates were federal or anarchist communists who took the name of collectivists. Bakunin belonged to the second group, and to this group also belonged the Belgian Paepe and the French Varlin.” Bakunin always spoke of himself as a collectivist and not a communist, and in this respect he differs from Marx. The habit of thinking that all anarchists are communists is largely due to Kropotkin.
[982] “We think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personæ. He who before was the money-owner now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but—a hiding.” (Kapital, p. 155.)
[983] Manifesto, § 1.
[984] One of the chief objects of the trusts is the avoidance of over-production, but that does not mean less unemployment; on the contrary, a part of their policy consists in closing down certain establishments which appear to be unnecessary.
[985] See the Manifesto for an eloquent statement of this.
[986] Labriola.
[987] Kapital, p. 647.
[988] Manifesto, § 1.
[989] Engels in his preface to the Manifesto admits that one of its objects was “to announce the inevitable and imminent downfall of bourgeois property.”
Nowadays, however, it is more usual to characterise the aim of collectivism as an attempt to abolish the wage-earning class—abolition of property being simply a step towards that. This is how Labriola writes in his Essai sur la Conception matérialiste (2nd ed., p. 62): “The proletariat must learn to concentrate upon one thing, namely, the abolition of the wage-earner.”
It is well to remember that such is also the aim of the Associationists, the co-operators, and the Radical Socialists. They proceed, however, from the opposite point of view, and would multiply property rather than abolish it, thinking that the latter process would merely universalise the wage-earner.
[990] “Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society. All that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.” (Manifesto, § 2.)
[991] To say that Karl Marx was the leader of a great socialist school is hardly the way to describe him, for it is necessary that we should remember that the vast majority of those who consider themselves socialists are more or less his disciples. The other socialist schools, the anarchists, the Fabians, the Collinsists, and the followers of Henry George, cut a very poor figure beside his.
The bulk of his adherents is drawn either from Germany or Russia, England being the country which has done least to swell the ranks of his followers. In France the pure doctrine has been vigorously preached since 1878 by MM. Jules Guesde and Lafargue—the latter of whom is Marx’s son-in-law. But a great many French socialists, though collectivists in name, refuse their adhesion to the Marxian doctrine in all its rigidity. They have accepted three of his main principles—the socialisation of the means of production, class war, and internationalism—but reject his theory of value and his materialistic conception of history. Moreover, they show no desire to break with the French socialist tradition, which was pre-eminently idealistic. Benoît Malon, the founder of the Revue socialiste (1885), was one of the earliest representatives of French collectivism, and among his successors may be reckoned M. George Renard and Fournière.
[992] Labriola, Essai sur la Conception matérialiste de l’Histoire, p. 24. The Saint-Simonians had already made a similar claim. It is hardly fair to class them among the Utopians, and some Marxians are quite ready to admit their claim to priority in this matter.
[993] Georges Sorel, one of Marx’s disciples, writing in no derogatory spirit, we may be certain, expresses himself as follows: “Our experience of the Marxian theory of value convinces us of the importance which obscurity of style may lend to a doctrine”—a remark that is applicable to other writers besides Marx.
[994] See Sorel’s article, Les Polémiques pour l’Interprétation du Marxisme, in the Revue internationale de Sociologie, 1900, p. 248. There is no such thing as a theory of value—in the accepted sense of the term in Marx. What we have is a theory of economic equilibrium which would only be true of a very rudimentary kind of society. It is assumed, for example, that all industries are equally easy or difficult, that all the workers are of one type, that ten men working for one hour will produce the same amount of wealth no matter what task they are engaged upon. It is this equality that enables comparison to be made between one commodity and another, and this constitutes their value. We are simply treated to an abstraction which shows that with the exercise of a little ingenuity it is at least possible to reconcile the theory of time-value and the theory of market price.
[995] Conception matérialiste, p. 91. Sorel says: “Marxism is really much more akin to the Manchester doctrine than to the Utopian. We must never forget this.” (La Décomposition du Marxisme, p. 44.)
[996] “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.… The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.… All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify, all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” (Manifesto, § 1.)
Besides, the Marxians themselves have tried to prove that capital is actively undermining its own existence, which is surely the ne plus ultra of the revolutionary temperament.
[997] “The result is that capital has managed to solve problems which the Utopians tackled in vain. It has also given rise to conditions which permit of an entrance into a new form of society. Thus socialism will not need to invent new machinery or to get people accustomed to them,” etc. (Sorel, loc. cit., p. 41.)
[998] “The economists regard the feudal institutions as artificial, the bourgeois as natural. The existing economic ties, in their opinion, are elemental laws that must always bind society.… They have had some history, that is all we can really say.” (Marx, Misère de la Philosophie, pp. 167-168.)
[999] Manifesto, § 2.
[1000] Whenever they change their method of production men also change their whole social outlook. “The hand-mill gave us the servile State; the steam-mill is the parent of the industrial, capitalist State.” (Misère de la Philosophie, 2nd ed., p. 156.) This oft-repeated phrase contains a picturesque antithesis rather than a scientific formula of historical materialism. In his preface to his Kritik der politischen Oekonomie Marx expresses himself with much more moderation. The following is the most important passage of that celebrated page (p. 5):
“In the course of their efforts at production men enter into certain definite and necessary relations which may be wholly independent of their own individual preferences—such industrial ties being, of course, correlative to the state of their productive forces. Taken together, all these links constitute the economic structure of society. In other words, it supplies a basis upon which the legal and political superstructure is raised, and corresponding to it are certain social forms which depend upon the public conscience. The method of producing commodities, speaking generally, fixes the social, political, and intellectual processus of life. A man’s conscience has less to do with determining his manner of life than has his manner of life with determining the state of his conscience.”
The word “fixes,” even when qualified by “speaking generally,” seems a little pronounced, and Marxism has substituted the term “explained,” which is somewhat nearer the mark. Labriola says that “it merely represents an attempt to explain historical facts in the light of the economic substructure.” (Conception matérialiste, p. 120.)
This materialistic conception is developed in a very paradoxical fashion in Loria’s La Constitution sociale. He shows how all history and every war, whether of Guelph or of Ghibelline, the Reformation and the French Revolution, and even the death of Christ upon Calvary, rest upon an economic basis. In Loria’s opinion, however, this basal fact is not industrialism, but the various types of land systems. See the chapter on Rent.
It would not be correct to regard Marxism as a mere expression of fatalism or out-and-out determinism. The Marxian pretends to be, and as a matter of fact he really is, a great believer in will-power. Once the workers see where their interests really lie he would have them move towards that goal with irresistible strength. It is not always even necessary to define the end quite clearly before beginning to move. “Everything that has happened in history has, of course, been the work of man, but only very rarely has it been the result of deliberate choice and well-considered planning on his part.” (Labriola, Conception matérialiste, p. 133.) Elsewhere: “The successive creation of different social environments means the development of man himself.” (Ibid., pp. 131-132.)
It would be beyond the scope of this work to enter into a metaphysical discussion of these theories, however much one would like to.
[1001] See the works of MM. Jaurès, Études socialistes; George Renard, Le Régime socialiste; Fournière, L’Individu, l’Association, et l’État.
[1002] Labriola, op. cit. Vandervelde (L’Idéalisme Marxiste, in La Revue socialiste, February 1904) says that “upon final analysis it will be found that Marx’s whole argument rests upon a moral basis, which is that justice requires that every man should get all that he produces.”
M. Landry, in a book of lectures delivered by different authors entitled Études sur la Philosophie morale au XIXe Siècle (p. 164), is of an entirely different opinion. He thinks that Marx’s moral basis is simply potentiality. In other words, everything that has been created in the ordinary course of economic development is moral, everything that has been destroyed is immoral.
[1003] Hence the alliance of the Marxians with what appears to be a directly opposite philosophy—that of William James and Bergson (see Guy Grand, La Philosophie syndicaliste).
[1004] Manifesto. It is impossible to do away with the intellectuals altogether, but they may be reduced to the rank of mere wage-earners. “The Marxians always regarded revolution as the special privilege of the producers, by whom, of course, they understood the manual workers, who, accustomed as they are to nothing but the factory régime, would force the intellectuals also to supply some of the more ordinary wants of life.” (Sorel, Décomposition du Marxisme, p. 51.)
[1005] Manifesto, § 2. It is necessary that we should be reminded of the fact that the Saint-Simonians had already emphasised the antagonism by speaking, not of rich and poor, but of idlers and workers. The differentiation, that is to say, was economic. The Marxian distinction is quite different, for the Saint-Simonians included within the category workers, bankers, and employers, for example, who are excluded by the Marxians. In some cases the Saint-Simonians thought they had even better claims to inclusion than the ordinary worker.
[1006] The first of these means, namely, the acquiring of public works by the State, is spoken of as unified socialism in France, whereas the second, which relies upon direct action without the assistance of any political organisation, is known as syndicalism and is represented by the Confédération générale du Travail (see p. 480).
[1007] Marx, Misère de la Philosophie. “What does the word ‘revolt’ imply? Simply disobedience to law. But what are these laws that govern our lives? They are just the products of bourgeois society and of the institutions which they are supposed to defend. Revolution will simply mean replacing these laws by others which will have an entirely different kind of justification.”
[1008] “It is the worst side of things that begets movement and makes history by begetting strife.” (Ibid., 2nd ed., p. 173.)
[1009] Preface to Kapital, p. xix.
[1010] For the evolution of Marxism see Sombart’s lively volume Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im 19 Jahrhundert (6th ed., 1908), and also Georges Sorel, La Décomposition du Marxisme (1908).
[1011] Labriola, Socialisme et Philosophie, p. 29. Others declare more unmistakably still that “these obscure formulæ [the writer is thinking of surplus labour] lead to equivocation and must be banished from the science altogether.” (Sorel, Revue internationale de Sociologie, 1900, p. 270.)
[1012] M. Sorel says of the revolutionary movement that everything connected with it is very improbable. (Décomposition du Marxisme.)
[1013] The Italian syndicalist Arthur Labriola (Revue socialiste, 1899, vol. i, p. 674) writes as follows: “While we Marxians are trying to repatch the master’s cloak political economy is making some headway every day. If we compare Marx’s Kapital with Marshall’s Principles—chapter by chapter, that is to say—we shall find that problems which required a few hundred pages in the Kapital are solved in a few lines by Marshall.” B. Croce (Materialismo storico ed Economia marxistica, 1900, p. 105) writes thus: “I am strongly in favour of economic construction along Hedonistic lines. But that does not satisfy the natural desire for a sociological treatment of profits, and such treatment is impossible unless we make use of the comparative considerations suggested by Marx.” Lastly, Sorel, in Saggi di Critica del Marxismo (1903, p. 13) says: “It is necessary to give up the attempt to transform socialism into a science.”
[1014] Especially in that passage to which Bernstein calls attention: “According to the law of value not merely must one devote the socially necessary amount of time to the production of each commodity, but each group of commodities must have such extra effort spent upon it as the nature of the commodity or the character of the demand requires. The first condition of value is utility or the satisfaction of some social need—that is, value in use raised to such a degree of potentiality as shall determine the proportion of total social labour to each of the various kinds of production.” (Kapital, vol. iii.)
Bernstein adds: “This admission makes it impossible to treat the themes of Gossen, of Jevons, and of Böhm-Bawerk as so many insignificant irrelevancies.” (Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus.)
[1015] “The surplus-value theory may be true or it may be false, but that will make no difference to the existence of surplus labour. Surplus labour is a fact of experience, demonstrable by observation, and requires no deductive proof.” (Bernstein, loc. cit., p. 42.) That Marx did not treat it with quite the same indifference is evident from the fact that the whole theory is developed, not incidentally in the course of the work, but at the very opening of the book.
[1016] In the book already quoted, which was published in 1899.
[1017] Sorel, Les Polémiques pour l’Interprétation du Marxisme, in the Revue internationale de Sociologie, 1900.
[1018] Sorel, Décomposition du Marxisme, p. 33.
[1019] Socialisme et Social-démocratie, p. 234. We have recently been told that syndicalism is just a literal application of Bergson’s philosophy.
[1020] This point of view is very neatly expressed in an article of M. Berth’s (Mouvement socialiste, May 1908, p. 393): “From a purely negative or critical point of view we agree with Bernstein rather than the orthodox Kautsky. But what does Bernstein propose to substitute for the revolutionary ideal—impracticable as it was—of the German Social Democratic party? The alternative offered is a simple democratic, reformist evolution, a political or economic development which would just be a pale imitation of the bourgeois Liberal régime, which it is hoped would result in the emancipation of the workers by getting rid of bourgeois Liberalism altogether. The complete democratisation of politics and economics would, it is hoped, effect the necessary improvement. On this point we syndicalists must definitely part company with Bernstein and his confrères, for what we want is not a mere evolution, but a revolutionary creation of new social forms.”
[1021] “An organisation of producers who will be able to manage their own affairs without having recourse to the superior knowledge which the typical bourgeois in supposed to possess.” (Sorel, Décomposition du Marxisme, pp. 60-61.)
[1022] “Revolutionary syndicalism is the great educative force which contemporary society has at its disposal to prepare it for the tasks which await it.” (Sorel, Réflexions sur la Violence, p. 244; 1909.)
“In the general ruin of institutions something new and powerful will remain intact. This will be what is generally known as the proletarian soul, which it is hoped will survive the general reassessment of moral values, but that will depend on the energy displayed by the workers in resisting the corruption of the bourgeoisie and in meeting their advances with the most unmistakable hostility.” (Ibid., p. 253.)
It is altogether a different point of view from that of the consumer, the shareholder, or the “literary idler,” who are only interested in the success of buyers’ social leagues, or in consumers’ societies. Cf. p. 342.
[1023] This incessant struggle is what Sorel has named violence, which he thinks is peculiarly healthy. “I have shown,” says he, “that proletarian violence has an entirely different significance from that usually attributed to it by politicians and amateur students of society.” It is incorrect, however, to say that he is in favour of sabotage. “Sabotage,” says Sorel, “belongs to the old régime, but does nothing to set the worker in the way of emancipation.” (Mouvement socialiste, 1905, November 1 and 15.)
One cannot fail to see the antagonism which exists in France between the Socialistes Unifiés (which is largely recruited from the old Marxian party) and the syndicalists, who condemn both universal suffrage and parliamentary action.
[1024] “One no longer thinks of drawing up a scheme which shall determine the way in which people in the future are to seek their own well-being. The problem now is how to complete the revolutionary education of the proletarian.” (Sorel, Décomposition du Marxisme, introduction, p. 37.)
[1025] This group is represented by the review called Le Mouvement socialiste, which is controlled by M. Lagardelle. Sorel has withdrawn from the group and is now leading a campaign in favour of Catholic nationalism.
The recent literature of syndicalism is very extensive. We have already mentioned M. Guy Grand’s La Philosophie Syndicaliste.
[1026] Réflexions sur la Violence, p. xxxv. We must note, however, that M. Sorel protests against any confusion being made between the myth as he understands it and Utopian socialism. The myth is obviously superior in the fact that it cannot be refuted, seeing that it is merely the expression of a conviction. See pp. xxv and 218 of the same work.
[1027] We need only recall the doctrine of usury and the legislation on the question—all of it the outcome of Canonist teaching.
[1028] A Catholic professor—long since forgotten—of the name of de Coux wrote as follows in a book entitled Essai d’Economie politique, published in 1832: “The practical application of Catholicism would result in the finest system of social economy that the world has ever seen.”
[1029] “Catholicism alone has the necessary cohesion and power to withstand socialism, which has been erected upon the ruins of the Liberal system.” (Comte de Mun, La Question sociale au XIXe Siècle, 1900.)
“There is no need to think of the Church as a kind of gendarme in cassock flinging itself against the people in the interest of capital. Rather it should be understood that it is working in the interests and solely for the defence of the weak.” (Comte de Mun, Discours, April 1893.)
[1030] The Social Christians somewhere make the remark that even if the orthodox account of creation is destined to disappear before the onslaughts of the evolutionary theory and Adam makes way for the gorilla, the problem would merely be intensified, for it would still be necessary to get rid of the “old man.” “We live,” says Brunetière, “in the strength of the victories won over the more primitive instincts of our nature” (Revue des Deux Mondes, May 1, 1895).
Kidd in his Social Evolution, a work which attracted great attention when it was first published in 1894, attempts to apply the Darwinian theory to Christianity. He accepts the Darwinian hypothesis that the struggle for existence and natural selection constitute the mainsprings of progress. But the struggle may demand, or the selection involve, the sacrifice of individual to collective interest, and the only force which can inspire such sacrifice is religion.