Chapter X: Introduction (4)

Oh the misuses which are made of this word _science_! Once these misuses were the monopoly of metaphysics, to whose despotic nature they appeared suitable. And the strangest instances could be quoted, even from great philosophers, from Hegel, from Schopenhauer, from Rosmini, which would show how the humblest practical conclusions, made by the passions and interests of men, have often been metaphysically transformed into inferences from the Spirit, from the Divine Being, from the Nature of things, from the finality of the universe. Metaphysics hypostatised what it then triumphantly inferred. The youthful Marx wittily discovered in the Hegelianism of Bruno Bauer, the _pre-established harmony of critical analysis_ (Kritische Kritik) under German _censorship_. Those who most frequently have the word in their mouths make a sort of Sibyl or Pythia of a limited intellectual function. But the _desirable_ is not science, nor is the practicable.[61]

Is scientific knowledge then in fact superfluous in practical questions? Are we to assent to this absurdity? The attentive reader will be well aware that we are not here discussing the _utility_ of science, but the possibility of _inferring_, as some claim to do, _practical programmes from scientific prepositions_; and it is this possibility only which is denied.

Science, in so far as it consists in knowledge of the laws governing actual facts, may be a legitimate means of simplifying problems, making it possible to distinguish in them what can be scientifically ascertained from what can only be partially known. A great number of things which are commonly disputed, may be cleared up and accurately decided by this method. To give an example, when Marx in opposition to Proudhon and his English predecessors (Bray, Gray, etc.) showed the absurdity of creating _labour bonds_, _i.e._ labour-money; and when Engels directed similar criticisms against Dühring, and then again, perhaps with less justification, against Rodbertus[62] or when both established the close connection between the method of production and the method of distribution, they were working in the field proper to scientific demonstration, trying to prove an inconsistency between the conclusions and the premisses, _i.e._ an internal contradiction in the concepts criticised. The same may be said of the proof, carefully worked out by the free traders, of the proposition: that protection of every kind is equivalent to a destruction of wealth. And if it were possible to establish accurately that law of the tendency of the rate of profits to decline, with which Marx meant to correct and widen the Ricardian law deduced from the continuous encroachments of the rent of land, it could be said, _under certain conditions_, that the end of the bourgeois capitalist organisation was a scientific certainty, though it would remain doubtful what could take its place.

This limitation '_under certain conditions_' is the point to be noticed. All scientific laws are abstract laws; and there is no bridge over which to pass from the concrete to the abstract; just because the abstract is not a reality, but a form of thought, one of our, so to speak, abbreviated ways of thinking. And, although a knowledge of the laws may _light up_ our perception of reality, it cannot become _this perception itself_.

Here we may agree with what Labriola justly felt, when, showing his dissatisfaction with the term _scientific socialism_, he suggested, though without giving any reasons, that that of _critical communism_ might be substituted.[63]

If then from abstract laws and concepts we pass to observations of historical fact, we find, it is true, points of agreement between our ideals and real things, but at the same time we enter upon those difficult calculations and conjectures, from which it is always impossible to eliminate, as was remarked above, the diversity of opinions and propensities.

In face of the future of society, in face of the path to be pursued, we have occasion to say with Faust--Who can say I believe? Who can say I do not believe?

Not indeed that we wish to advocate or in any way justify a vulgar scepticism. But at the same time we need to be sensible of the relativity of our beliefs, and to come to a determination in practice where indetermination is an error. This is the point; and herein lie all the troubles of men of thought; and hence arises their practical impotence, which art has depicted in Hamlet. Neither shall we wish, in truth, to imitate that magistrate, famous for miles around the district where he officiated for the justice of his decisions, of whom Rabelais tells us, that he used the very simple method, when about to make up his mind, of offering a prayer to God and settling his decision by a game of odd and even.[64] But we must strive to attain personal conviction, and then bear always in mind that great characters in history have had the courage to _dare_. '_Alea jacta est_,' said Cæsar; '_Gott helfe mir, amen!_' said Luther. The brave deeds of history would not be brave if they had been accompanied by a clear foresight of the consequences, as in the case of the prophets and those inspired by God.

Fortunately, logic is not life, and man is not intellect alone. And, whilst those same men whose critical faculty is warped, are the men of imagination and passion, in the life of society the intellect plays a very small part, and with a little exaggeration it may even be said that things go their way independent of our actions. Let us leave them to their romances, let them preach, I will not say in the market places where they would not be believed, but in the university lecture rooms, or the halls of congresses and conferences--the doctrine that science (_i.e._ their science) is the ruling queen of life. And we will content ourselves by repeating with Labriola that 'History is the true mistress of all us men, and we are as it were _vitalised_ by History.'

V

OF ETHICAL JUDGMENT IN FACE OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

_Meaning of Marx's phrase the 'impotence of morality' and his
remark that morality condemns what has been condemned by
history: Profundity of Marx's philosophy immaterial:
Kant's position not surpassed._

Labriola, with his usual piquancy, lashes those who reduce history to a _case of conscience_ or to an _error in bookkeeping_.

With this he recalls us to the two-fold consideration (1) that for Marx the social question was not a moral question, and (2) that the analysis made by Marx of capitalism amounts to a proof of the laws which govern a given society, and not indeed to a proof of _theft_, as some have understood it, as though it would suffice to restore to the workman the amount of his wrongfully exacted surplus labour, so that the accounts may turn out in order, and the social question be satisfactorily solved.[65]

Leaving the second consideration, which yet gives us an instance of the ludicrous travesties which may be made of a scientific theory, let us pause for a moment over the first formula, which usually gives the greatest offence to non-socialists; so much so that many of them wish to put a little salt in the broth and complete socialism by morality.

In actual fact, offence and moral indignation have never been caused less appropriately.

Those remarks in Marx's writings which savour of moral indifference, bear a very limited and trivial meaning. Consider a moment, as indeed has been considered many times, that no social order of any kind can exist without a basis of slavery, or serfdom, or hired service; that is to say that slavery, or serfdom, or hired service are natural conditions of social order, and that without them a thing cannot exist, which is so necessary to man that, at least since he was man, he has never done without it, viz., society. Faced by such a fact, what meaning would our moral judgment have, directed against these governing human beings who call themselves slave owners, feudal lords and bourgeois capitalists, and in favour of these governed human beings who call themselves slaves, serfs, free labourers; neither of whom could be different from what they are, nor could otherwise fulfil the function assigned to them by the very nature of things.[66] Our condemnation would be a condemnation of the inevitable; a Leopardian curse directed against the _brutal power which rules in secret to the general harm_. But moral praise or blame has reference always to an act of will, good or bad; and such judgments would on the contrary be directed against a fact, which has not been willed by anyone, but is endured by every one because it cannot be different. You, indeed, may lament it; but by lamenting it, you not only do not destroy it, you do not even touch it, _i.e._, you waste your time.

This is what Marx calls the impotence of morality, which is as much as to say that it is useless to propound questions which no effort can answer and which are therefore absurd.

But when, on the other hand, these conditions of subjection are not conceived as necessary for the social order in general, but only as necessary for a stage in its history; and when new conditions make their appearance which render it possible to destroy them (as was the case in the industrial advance toward serfdom, and as the socialists reckon will happen in the final phase of modern civilisation in regard to wage earners and capitalism); then moral condemnation is justified, and, up to a certain point, is also effective in quickening the process of destruction and in sweeping away the last remnants of the past.

This is the meaning of Marx's other saying: that morality condemns what has already been condemned by history.[67]

I cannot manage to see any difficulty in agreeing to remarks of this kind, even from the standpoint of the strictest ethical theories. There is here no question of misunderstanding the nature of morality, and of wishing to make it into something fortuitous or relative; but simply of determining the conditions of human progress, turning the attention from the inevitable effects to the fundamental causes, and seeking remedies in the nature of things and not in our caprices and pious wishes. It must needs be thought that the opposition proceeds, not from intellectual error, but rather from human pride, or vanity it may be, owing to which many desire to retain for their wretched words a little of the virtue of the divine word, which created light by its decree.[68]

The same feeling must perhaps be present as the basis of the horror which usually greets the other practical maxim of the socialists; that the workman educates himself by the political struggle. But Labriola is fully justified in admiring in the advance of German socialism 'the truly new and imposing instance of social pedagogy; viz. that, amongst such an enormous number of men, particularly of workmen of the lower middle class, a new consciousness is developing, within which compete in equal degree, a direct sense of the economic situation, which incites to the struggle, and the socialist propaganda understood as the goal or point of arrival.' What means have the preachers of moral maxims at their disposal, to secure a result equal to this? Who are these workmen who combine in associations, who read their newspapers, discuss the acts of their delegates and accept the decisions of their congresses, if not _men who are educating themselves morally_?

But there is not only a question of vanity and pride in that feeling of aversion, which animates many with regard to the practical maxims of the socialists, and in the desire, which people also show, of undertaking in the name of morality or religion, the spiritual direction of the education of the working man; nor shall we wish to be so ingenuous and complacent as to confine ourselves to such a partial explanation. There is more, there is, I might almost say, an _apprehension_ and a _fear_. An apprehension, little justified, lest the political organisation of the proletariat may lead to a brutal and unrestrained outbreak of the masses and to I know not what kind of social ruin; as if such outbreaks were not recorded by history in precisely those periods in which it is usual to suppose that the dominion of religion over conscience was greatest,--as in the _jacqueries_ of the fourteenth century in France, and again in the _peasants' wars_ in Germany,--and in which there was no organisation and political culture amongst the common people.[69] A _fear_, which is on the contrary thoroughly justified and arises from the knowledge that instinctive and blind proletariat movements are conquered by force; whereas organisation combined with an enlightened consciousness, is not conquered or only suffers temporary reverses. Does not Mommsen remark, in reference to the slave revolts in ancient Rome; that _states_ would be very fortunate if they were in no other dangers besides those which might come to them from the revolts of the proletariat, _which are no greater than the dangers arising from the claws of hungry bears or wolves_?

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 surpassed; on the contrary, I see it strengthened by some of the most modern tendencies, and to me the way in which Engels attacks Dühring 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 Dühring, owing to the exigencies of scientific abstraction, takes for consideration the isolated individual and explicitly states that he is dealing with an abstract illustration (_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 assemblages of special rules and moral judgments, relative to definite social situations, which assemblages 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, analysis 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