Karl Marx


Page 4 of 18



On pp. 145 and 146 he tells us that we must "recognise in Marx the supreme merit of having been the first to introduce the evolutionary concept into the domain of sociology, the first to introduce it in the only form appropriate to social phenomena and social institutions; not as" an "unceasing and gradual upward movement," but as a "succession of age-long cycles rhythmically interrupted by revolutionary explosions." Speaking of Marx's "masterly investigation into the successive forms of the technical instrument, of productive machinery," he says that Marx may be termed "the Darwin of technology.... This physiology of industry, which is now the least studied and least appreciated of Marx's scientific labours, nevertheless constitutes his most considerable and most enduring contribution to science."

[Pg 40]

Loria wrote his Karl Marx nearly two years before the publication of William Paul's The State, of which pp. 2 to 7, the section on "Man and Tools" is devoted to a restatement of this aspect of Marxism; and the Italian economist is not acquainted with the thought-trend of Walton Newbold. As far as the young but rapidly growing and vigorous school of British Marxists is concerned, it is certainly no longer true that Marx's work as "the Darwin of technology" is the least studied and least appreciated of Marx's scientific labours.

To the class struggle Loria does not refer at any length in this essay on Karl Marx. We have already seen that he recognises the enormous part the class struggle has played in history; but he has throughout life remained the man of science, the man of the study; he has never entered the arena as what the French term a "militant." In 1904, when the Italian Socialist Party wished him to be socialist parliamentary candidate for Turin, Loria refused[Pg 41] on the ground that parliamentary life would interfere with his theoretical studies; and it may be that for these and other reasons he is less keenly impressed than are most left-wing socialists of the profound importance of diffusing among the workers awareness of the class struggle.

Economic determinism has been sufficiently considered in what has gone before. If in the present study Loria says less about it than about some of the other elements of Marxism, this is not because he considers it of minor importance, nor because he accepts it uncritically, but because he has devoted an entire volume to the exposition of this aspect of reality.

It remains, then, to discuss Loria's outlook on the Marxist theory of value. It is here that Lorianism will be most strenuously challenged by those more enthusiastic disciples of Marx who, even if they do not accept the dogma of Marx's infallibility, none the less regard the[Pg 42] doctrine of value, based on the labour theory of value, as the very heart of Marxist socialism.

We must remember that it is natural for persons who do not gain their subsistence by applying their labour power to the production of commodities, and whose claim to the title of "workers" will nevertheless hardly be disputed, to question the labour theory of value. Bernard Shaw, for example, in his pamphlet The Impossibilities of Anarchism, protests that it is "natural for the [manual] labourer to insist that labour ought to be the measure of price, and that the just wage of labour is its average product; but the first lesson he has to learn in economics is that labour is not and never can be the measure of price under a competitive system. Not until the progress of socialism replaces competitive production and distribution with individual greed for its incentive, by collectivist production and distribution with fair play all round for its[Pg 43] incentive, will the prices either of labour or of commodities represent their just value."

Leaving Shaw to the tender mercies of the orthodox Marxists who will not be slow to declare that if he means "value" he should not say "price," and that if he thinks that "price" and "value" are interchangeable terms he is not worth powder and shot, and without ourselves venturing to rush into the fray, we may suggest that our propagandists would be less inclined to make the Marxist theory of value an article of faith, "which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly"—if they could realise that the theory is perhaps no more than a difficult point of abstract economic doctrine which is not essential to the use of the conception of surplus value as a means of making the worker aware of the basic character of capitalist exploitation. Bernstein explains the matter very well in the book previously quoted (p. 35): "Practical [Pg 44]experience shows that in the production and distribution of commodities a part only of the community takes an active share, whilst another part consists of persons who either enjoy an income for services which have no direct relation to the process of production, or have an income without working at all. An essentially greater number of men thus live on the labour of all those engaged in production than are actively engaged in it, and income statistics show that the classes not actively engaged in production appropriate, moreover, a much greater share of the total produced than the ratio of their number to that of the actively producing class. The surplus labour of the latter is an empiric fact, demonstrable by experience, which needs no deductive proof. Whether the Marxist theory of value be correct or not, is quite immaterial to the proof of surplus labour. It is in this respect no demonstration, but only a means of analysis and illustration."

[Pg 45]

The professional economist, however, cannot rest content with these loose formulations. Loria feels that there is a void in the Marxist system, and it seems to us (though Loria nowhere tells us so in set terms) that the Lorian doctrine of differentiated income, the most essential part of the Italian economist's teaching, is really an attempt to restate the theory of surplus value in a form absolutely proof against enemy attack. Be this as it may, the conception, however interesting, is far less easy to convey to the uninstructed mind, and it is unlikely, for propaganda purposes, to replace the simple formula of surplus value. But is it not essential that those who undertake to teach socialist economics should themselves fully understand the objections to the Marxist theory of value, and that they should have a clear grasp of Loria's alternative doctrine of the nature of capitalist exploitation?

Let us return, in conclusion, to the Lorian[Pg 46] theory of revolution. If we may summarise that theory in colloquial phraseology, it is that, while economic evolution must pave the way for revolution, the final stages of revolution have been effected in the past, and can only be effected in the future, through the co-operation of "disgruntled intellectuals." These are the "unproductive labourers" of Loria's scheme, who have served as hirelings of the master class during the prosperous phase of an economic system: but in the declining phase of that system, when the diminution of income curtails the amount available for these secondary recipients of income, they turn against the primary recipients, their employers, make common cause with the subject class, and give the death-blow to the old order.

This may possibly have been true of the fall of the slave economy, and it may possibly have been true of the fall of the medieval economy; but we do not think it is true that a revolution of the non-proprietary classes under capitalism[Pg 47] is "foredoomed to failure" unless these classes secure the support of the unproductive labourers. Their support for a genuinely proletarian revolution can hardly be expected, on Loria's own theory. The intellectuals who aided in the overthrow of the slave economy, and the intellectuals who helped to subvert the feudal order and to promote the bourgeois and industrial revolution, did so, says Loria, in order to maintain their position as "recipients of income," to maintain their position as members of a privileged class. What have such as they to gain from a proletarian revolution, which will abolish class, will put an end to exploitation, will do away for ever with the private appropriation of income and surplus value?



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