Communism Unmasked

Book One: Communism ― Emerging Master-Class Ideology

I. MARXISM AND MARXIANITY

1. The Double-Faced Mask

MARXISM AS A TEACHING is composed of two elements. One is effervescent, volatile. The other is, by comparison, solid matter, sound and sane judgment, if overstatements made by it are overlooked, or, rather understood and, therefore, forgiven. One part of Marxism, if we may say so, represents oriental ardor, revivalistic fervor, emotionally volcanic eruptions of condemnation and, as a counter-balance, geyser-like gushings of salvation. This part we shall call “Marxianity”. It is an inheritance that fell to his lot, and Marx took possession of it all too willingly, utterly uncritically, from Weitling et Co. variety of Communism. The other half of the Marxian teaching is hard-boiled, cold-blooded, realistic; we shall call it Marxism proper. There is still a third part, a cross between Marxism and Marxianity; we shall style it Marxianism.

Marxism contends that competition of the cutthroat kind, as well as its milder forms, is baleful. For it injects the virus of antagonism into the economic organism which, like every organic whole, must not be divided against itself if it is to thrive. Marxism, further, points out that capitalism as a system of management of our national economic affairs is not sufficiently coordinated, and that is why it cannot be efficient. It is lacking in planning, prevision. Demand and supply run a wild race, and there is none to stop them. Scarcity and abundance, want and glut precipitately replace one another, not unlike currents and counter-currents caught funneling in a frantic whirlpool. Blind forces, unregulated or unregularized, sway and shake the economic structure. The ebb and flow of the commercial tide rock the economic boat. The rise and fall of the volume of production and consumption, never balanced, threaten to smash our industrial craft to smithereens, or, at least, to capsize it now and then. In other words, periods of depression alternate with those of prosperity.

“Each boom period and... each crash period that follows on its heels proves that it (the capitalist class) has become incapable of any longer controlling the productive forces, which have grown beyond its power; a class under whose leadership society is racing to ruin like a locomotive whose jammed safety valve the driver is too weak to open.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, p. 179.)

These theses-no matter what one thinks of them, whether one be inclined to subscribe to or take issue with one cannot help admitting their sobriety, their, if not strictly scientific, then, at any rate, pseudo-scientific approach to economic phenomena. And these very contentions form the more or less healthy core, the rather wholesome essence of Marxism. Out of these premises Marxism draws one conclusive demand, and that is rationalization of industry achieved by purely political means, through socialization or nationalization of the instruments of production and agencies of distribution.

“The emancipation of the working class demands the transformation of the instruments of labor into the common property of society and the cooperative control of the total labor.” (Programme of the Socialistic Working Men's Party of Germany, Gotha, May, 1875.)

“The emancipation of the working class can only be achieved through the socialization of the means of production, distribution and exchange.” (Social Democratic Federation, Programme and Rules, Bradford, Easter, 1906.)

“The real emancipation of the working class requires a social revolution... i.e., the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production, their transformation into the property of the state.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party of Russia, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 225, Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, Moscow.)

But this part of the Marxian doctrine taken by itself, as its severe criticism of the existing order of things so its project for politico-economic readjustment, would not entice the laboring masses, would not stimulate their will, could not inflame their imagination and drive them to heroic action and into historic shambles, would not whip them into social venture and political adventure. How can one get enthused to self-forgetfulness, work oneself up into a trance, over a dust-dry, sang-froid problem of management and the determination of the size of the economic units?

And for the devotees of the cause Marxism has in store a mask. One half of it is grinning gloomily, gnashing its teeth, while the other half is keeping on smiling winningly, its eyes screwed skyward toward heaven and bliss.[1] This mask is the thesis on capitalist exploitation in conjunction with the antithesis of Communist salvation, the creation of the harmonious commonwealth, the erection of the New Jerusalem upon the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah of present-day society.

2.“Exploitation” Without an Historical Time-Limit

A. Topsy-Turvy Economy

THE LABORERS are being exploited! Marxianity, echoing the old teaching of Communism, raises a hue and cry.

How is one to prove this thesis about the exploitation of the working masses taking place under the given industrial system called capitalism?

Well, this is easily done by Marx with the aid of his “surplus-value” theory.

Now, let us presume, without further argument, that the exploitation doctrine is well-grounded. The question arises, by whom are the workers exploited? Who are those exploiters of theirs? The capitalist class, runs the articulate answer. Those who, according to Marx's own testimony, have developed commerce, introduced large scale industry. The laborers are exploited by a class that has originated, with the assistance of scientists, in general, and inventors and creative engineers, in particular, our machine-age and our mechanical civilization,

“It (the bourgeoisie) has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 33, New York, 1926.)

“The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor.” (Ibid. pp. 35-36.)

“To concentrate and enlarge these scattered, limited means of production, to transform them into the mighty levers of production of the present day, was precisely the historic role of the capitalist mode of production and of its representative, the bourgeoisie.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 301.)

Such a class of energetic enterpreneurs, who make two blades grow where one grew before-to say the least of this class and not apotheosize it as Marx and Engels do-how can it be branded as exploitative? Still more astonishing is the fact that the same authors who tell us about the unparalleled achievements of this prodigy class stigmatize it as spoliatory. And this is done by them, if not in the same breath, in the same two pages. They begin with exaggerated praise and finish with still more exaggerated blame and overdone condemnation. One and the same class cannot play such mutually excluding parts at one and the same time. Marx's theory of exploitation, based on his teaching of value and surplus value, has no time-limit clause attached to it. It is supposed to be valid for the whole period of capitalism, from its very beginning to its very close. And how can one consider the capitalist class as highly useful, indispensable, the representative of an historical period, contributing to the welfare of humanity in a positively active way, and yet, in spite of all its unusual services and achievements as a leading class, put it down as a “bunch of blood-suckers,” a class that has no right to claim any remuneration whatsoever on its own merits, a class that can make no honest living, no matter at which period one takes it, a class that deserves nothing, and lives off the labors of another class which is exploited by it.

“The capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry useless in our present stage of industrial development as any other parasite in the animal or vegetable world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which it feeds.

“The working class is the victim of this parasite-this human leech, and it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in its power to oust this parasite class from its position which enables it thus to prey upon the vitals of labor.” (James Connoly, Socialism Made Easy, pp. 28-29, Chicago, 1909.)

“So also we find that the Marxian theory that history has consisted in class struggles is given a very broad interpretation; indeed, it may amount to nothing more dogmatic than the assertion that a systematic parasitism is always in evidence after a certain stage of culture has been reached.” (William English Walling, The Larger Aspects of Socialism, p. 101, New York, 1913.)

Marxian theory is more than dogmatic, it is contradictory. The Marxian teaching of class struggle, as well as his theory of exploitation having no time-limit reservation, militates against Marx's own views and utterances about the historical usefulness of capitalism and the capitalists. A class cannot be useful economically and yet gain nothing legitimately economically. A class cannot fulfill a useful function in society, and yet not get paid for it by society, and be “compelled” to take recourse to “exploitation” as a means of gaining a livelihood.

“Both from the biological, and from the sociological point of view one may say that the parasite is a being which lives at the expense of another without destroying it and without doing it service.” (Jean Massart and Emile Vandervelde, Parasitism, Organic and Social, p. 1, London, 1895.)

But here we have a special case of a being that had done service and then stopped doing it. It was useful, and it is no useful any longer. It “has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all the preceding generations together,” but now it is played out, deteriorated. It has outlived its useful So that the beginning of its career was glorious indeed, only its end, its old-age putting to shame its youth, is sheer ignominy. But, notwithstanding its youthful deserts, it has been keeping on living all the time, those periods of its great deeds included, by the same category of “profits” that are, according to Marx's economic teaching, “unpaid labor” and nothing more. So that the passage from extraordinary usefulness to extra ordinary uselessness and parasitism was not registered in the mode of appropriation of the class. Political economy, thus, assumes quite fantastic aspects. The bourgeoisie is an enigmatic class, it has created enormously great productive forces, and has never been paid for it, for its creative efforts, but, therefore, in its turn, it has been keeping another class, that of the laborers, unpaid, and in this bizarre fashion it has managed to exist. It makes its ends meet not by receiving compensation for its own “labors,” but by depriving another class of the compensation for its work it is entitled to. In this point, Marxian economy is a topsy turvy economy. It is more of the nature of a burlesque, a travesty, than a “science”.

Furthermore, how is parasitism possible to be manifested in such an appalling form : the parasites, in the shape of the good-for-nothing industrialists and financiers, go the whole hog, grab the whole produce; and the actual producers, the alleged creators of all values, let them get away with it, allow them to suck their blood, eat their flesh and crack their bones, and feel con tented and happy to receive back a meager portion of their own flayed skins.

“The mere fact that the ruled and exploited class has at all times been far more numerous than the rulers and exploiters, and that therefore it is the former who have had the real force in their hands, is enough to demonstrate the absurdity of the whole force theory. The relationships based on domination and subjection have therefore still to be explained.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 203.)

“We say, the working people are enslaved... by the rich; but who are those men who form... the wealthy class? Are they heroes, each of whom can vanquish tens and hundreds of working people? Or are there very many of them, while there are but few working men? Or are these men, the rulers and the wealthy, the only ones who know how to make everything necessary and to produce everything the people live by? Neither the one, nor the other, nor the third. These men are no heroes, but, on the contrary, weakened, helpless people, and not only are they not numerous but they are even hundreds of times fewer than the working people. And everything men live by is produced not by them, but by the working men, while they are both unable and unwilling to do anything, and only devour what the working men produce. Why, then, does this small band of feeble people, idle men, who cannot and will not do anything, rule over millions of working men?” (L. N. Tolstoi, To the Working People, p. 166, Works, Vol. XII, Part II, Boston, 1905.)

A class so big that it outnumbers its enemies by one hundred to one, at least-in high industry the pro portion is much larger – a class so skillful, so gifted that it is capable of creating real values, and more than that, that had succeeded in actually monopolizing the bound less field of productive activity; this great class is, at the very same time, so stupid and helpless as to prove itself utterly incapable of protecting its rightful acquisitions. It is unable to take care of itself and the abundant yield of its labors, to shield it from a handful of flabby de generates, scum of humanity, called capitalists. Is it not astonishing? Is it not bewildering that two such extreme opposites as gigantic power and absolute impotence should be embodied in one and the same aggregate of individuals?

“It is a capitalistic or profit system which allows the laborer, who creates wealth, an average of approximately $ 1.50 per day, while wealth is appropriated in sums running up into millions in a single year by others who produce nothing.” (Charles C. Hitchcock, The Socialist Argument, p. 78, Chicago, 1912.)

“The capitalist regimen is so constructed that it compels the industrious, thrifty, and sober to divide. Indeed it compels it with such a compelling force that the division leaves them but a beggarly pittance, while the lion's share goes to the lazy, the drunkard, and the spendthrift.

“Paul Lafargue condensed the process of division under the capitalist system in the terse motto : ' Wealth is a product of labor and the reward of idleness. '“ (Daniel De Leon, Fifteen Questions, p. 110, New York, 1914.)

“The workers are also, and permanently and essentially, the exploited. They labor, they produce, they create the sum of wealth. But they create it for the benefit of others, those who own the means of production-the capitalist class.

“The latter concedes to them a portion of it, which assures their existence, and retains the balance.... The workers pro duce and the capitalists are enriched..” (Edgard Milhaud, The March Toward Socialism tr. by H. J. Stenning, p. 68, London, 1920.)

What is still more puzzling is the fact that this highly efficient class, the maker and breaker of our material civilization, is not cognizant of its situation. It is not aware of its being exploited, and it is entirely lacking in pride and dignity that usually go with the realization of one's extraordinary greatness and significance. Odd! This class stands in need of agitators, of the “scientific,” professorial brand, or the vulgar, soap boxing species, that they should come and tell it about its unsuspected powers, its unlimited possibilities and opportunities.

These splay-mouthed ranters, in their loving kindness to oppressed humanity and boundless devotion to the interests of all those who are wronged, come to the working class and teach its more advanced members lessons of political economy, and thus force open their eyes and make them see the basic fact of their existence: first, that they belong to the elite of the productive community, they constitute the Chosen Class in society, and, secondly, that they are being robbed by their employers.

“All the other classes of contemporary society stand for preserving the foundations of the existing economic order.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft-Programme for S. D. P. of Russia, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 225.)

“. . . The laboring class, in contrast to which all other classes are only a reactionary mass.” (Programme of the Socialistic Working Men's Party of Germany, Gotha, May, 1875.)

“Those by whose hands all that wealth which is the pride of our civilization is produced, whose hands have brought forth all these products without which society could not live for a single day-it may well be demanded that these should be secured an ample and unfailing income....” (F. Lasalle, Science and the Workingmen, p. 64, New York, 1900.)

Stranger than fiction! Those demigods of economy cannot do without the Patron Saints, Marx, Lenin... self-appointed trustees and guardians of the proletariat.

B. Brahmana as the Prototype of the Proletarian

“Man is stated to be purer above the navel (than below); hence the self-existent (Svayambuh) has declared the purest (part) of him (to be) his mouth.

“As the Brahmana sprang from (Brahman's) mouth, as he was the first born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the lord of the whole creation.

“For the self-existent (Svayambuh), having performed austerities, produced him first from his mouth, in order that the offerings might be conveyed to the gods and manes and that this universe might be preserved.

“What created being can surpass him, through whose mouth the gods continually consume the sacrificial viands and the manes the offerings of the dead?

“Of created beings the most excellent are said to be those which are animated; of the animated, those which subsist by intelligence; of the intelligent, mankind; and of men, the Brahmanas....

“The very birth of a Brahmana is an eternal incarnation of the sacred law; for he is born to (fulfill) the sacred law, and becomes one with Brahman..

“A Brahmana, coming into existence, is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law.

“Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Brahmana; on account of the excellence of his origin the Brahmana is, indeed, entitled to it all.

“The Brahmana eats but his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in alms; other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahmana.” (The Laws of Manu tr. by G. Buehler, I, 92-101, Oxford, 1886.)

These quoted passages are the pattern upon which the workingman-ideology was shaped. The Marxian Communists, excellent imitators as they surely are — they idealize the continuous imitative process called labor — did not have to spend any too much labor on revamping the Manu-doctrine. Without much exertion on their part they adapted the Hindu teaching to their purpose, incorporating it into “scientific” Communism. It was all a matter of inserting a few minor alterations. All they had to do was to substitute brawn for brain, muscles for intelligence, the “hand” for the “mouth”. It was an operation almost as good and as skillfully carried out as that performed by Marx on the Hegelian philosophy. Instead of the absolute idea of Hegel, Marx introduced the "matter" of the productive forces. Here the same procedure was followed. The place of the Brahmana was taken by the worker.

Whatever exists in society is the property of the worker - Brahmana, on account of his being a member of the only progressive class, all the other classes being a reactionary mass . . . . The worker - Brahmana eats his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in wages; other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the worker - Brahmana.

The most curious thing about all this is that the worker - Brahmana does not know that he is a worker Brahmana on whose sufferance all the rest of mankind subsists…

The giant, the Samson of economics, is blind , and some wretched dwarf - surgeons, in the person of half baked wizards and incandescent zealots, must operate upon him, remove the cataracts from his afflicted eyes, and make him behold and comprehend reality, and, primarily , his own omnipotence . And this is no easy task at all. It takes plenty of time and effort to achieve this, to knock “Communistic" ideas into the numskulls, the proletarians, the confirmed ignoramuses . . . who know nothing of their genius for economics and are utterly devoid of “class - consciousness" meaning "class chauvinism." Hundreds of thousands of ballyhooers and barkers are engaged in this business of shouting into the deaf ears of the almighty proletariat the axiomatic truth that it is the ivory tower upon which all the golden shields of industry, commerce and finance are hung.

“The immense Socialistic literature is increasing every day ; thousands of organs of the press in the old and the new worlds endeavor to elaborate , develop and spread Socialistic ideas.” (Tugan - Baranovsky, Modern Socialism , p.1, London, 1910.)

“The party has, also, its own journalism . . . . Journalism and schools besides.” (Reginald Wright Kauffman, What Is Socialism ? pp . 174-75 , New York, 1910.)

Thousands of books and booklets, millions of tracts are written and disseminated by members of another class, another layer of society with the sole purpose of mesmerizing the workers into the acceptance of a Communist world-view, a doctrine based on fulsome flattery, but which, if we credit its exponents, is the very essence of the working class psychology and ideology, is nothing but an exact, somewhat refined, reflection of its economic existence, industrial standing and functioning in communal life, is but a precise delineation of its place in present day society.

“A class ... from which the consciousness of the necessity for a thoroughgoing revolution, the communist consciousness, proceeds . . . .” (Marx and Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Otto Ruehle, Karl Marx, p. 96, New York, 1935.)

“Modern Socialism is nothing but the reflex in thought of this actual conflict, the ideal reflection in the minds of the class which is directly suffering under it - the working class. (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 301.)

“In fact, these two, Socialism and the militant proletariat, tend constantly to become identical.” (Karl Kautsky, Class-Struggle, p. 183.)

“Socialism is the workers' side of the class-struggle.” (Joseph E. Cohen, Socialism for Students, p. 47, Kerr Publ.)

We must do justice to the working masses. They show unusual sanity, robustness of intellect and strength of will-power in their resisting with all the forces of their mental equilibrium the deadly effects of this megalomania-poison administered to them by Marxianity.

3. Class - Struggle Horizontal or Vertical

How is the class-struggle to be visualized graphic ally? How is it drawn? In other words, does the class struggle run along horizontal or vertical lines? More light should be thrown on this all too obscure subject.

There are sociological formations which are, so to say, anti-pathetically symbiotic. They are situated historically on one plane. They dwell contiguously, like neighbors, in one epoch.

“As is well known, however, from the moment when, like a butterfly from the chrysalis, the bourgeoisie arose out of the burghers of the feudal period, when this 'estate' of the Middle Ages developed into a class of modern society, it was always and inevitably accompanied by its shadow, the proletariat.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 122, New York, 1935.)

These aggregates come into being, grow up, and march through social life resembling the proverbial, legally married, quarrelsome couple that always tiff and bicker, but never contemplate a separation or divorce. They are indissolubly tied together by the very act of their clashing constantly, by the very fact of their colliding and yet doing team-work, acting, functioning jointly.

“Closer investigation also shows us that the two poles of an antithesis, like positive and negative, are just as inseparable from each other as they are opposed, and that despite all their opposition they mutually penetrate each other.” (Ibid. p. 29.)

Opposition does not always lead to separation, quite often it keeps the opposites together.

They realize that they are unable to discharge their duties separately. For they are halves of one whole, counter-agents of the self same process.

On the other hand, there are societary groupings that make their entry upon the stage of history in a way reminding us somewhat of the succession of generations. The van of the one and the rear of the other come into hostile contact on the border-lines of a given epoch. They supersede one another.

Now, how are we to understand the class-struggle phenomenon, as a battle pitched between those that are in time, or as a fight going on between those that are in space, in co-existence or in succession? In brief, does the class-war resemble the struggle of sexes, male and female, or the battle of ages, old and young, “Fathers and Sons”?

The answer to this question is that class-struggle is fashioned after both patterns, it takes place in both succession and co-existence. Class-struggle runs along criss-crossing lines, along, intersecting one another, horizontal and vertical planes. The truth of the matter is, that while the 'masses' struggle horizontally, the 'masters' fight vertically. From the standpoint of philosophy of history-sociologically examined into, not merely politically – class-struggle was always and invariably a fight of rulers, of successive and, therefore, different gradations and styles, among themselves, a fight of the future masters against the past-masters.

“Later, with the cities, but younger than they, Buergherdom, bourgeoisie, arises as the “Third Estate”'. The Burgher, too, now looks with contempt upon the countryside, which lies about him dull, unaltered, and patient, and in contrast with which he feels himself more awake and freer and therefore further advanced on the road of the culture. He despises also the primary estates ' squire and parson ', as something lying intellectually below him and historically behind him.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. II, p. 334, New York, 1932.)

So that, from a deeper, more penetrating view, it was a struggle of the “top” against the “bottom”, these two words taken in their connotation of potentially topographic positions in the spheres of economic, political and cultural endeavor. A higher stratum, but unrecognized as such and, therefore, not given its proper place, combats the factually lower, though “erroneously” juridically, or, rather, traditionally situated higher, stratum.

The fight is carried on and brought to a successful end, as we call it, vertically, but this is done with the direct aid and unqualified and unreserved assistance of the “oppressed” masses that fight their battle horizontally. That is why the latter always plow and sow the social field that is irrigated with their blood, but never reap the harvest, never garner in the new crop of progress. That is why the “oppressed” always plant the tree of liberty, but never eat of its fruit, for when it comes to do the “eating” there are always on the spot other claimants with sharper teeth and keener appetites, more will-power and quicker alertness.

“But side by side with the antagonism between the feudal nobility and the bourgeoisie was the general antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited, the rich idlers and the toiling poor. And it was precisely this circumstance that enabled the representatives of the bourgeoisie to put themselves forward as the representatives not of a special class, but of the whole of suffering humanity.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 24.)

In other words, there is an antagonism running vertically and one asserting itself horizontally, an antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, two ruling classes situated in succession, and an antagonism between the exploited and the exploiters, the ruling class and the subordinated mass. “And it is precisely this circumstance” that allows the vertical antagonism to utilize the horizontal antagonism.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight-a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in common ruin of the contending classes.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 31.)

Well, this is the two-horned dilemma of class struggle as described in the Communist Manifesto: it invariably ends either “in a revolutionary reconstruction of society at large, or in common ruin of the contending classes.” The fatal horn of “common ruin” threatening us with a collapse of our civilization, we shall break off and chuck away. Let us avert our eyes from the ghastly scene depicting both classes, in the given case, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the modern Israel and Egyptians as being drowned in the Red Sea of bloodshed of a civil war.... We shall, therefore, confine ourselves to considering the other, the brighter possibility-alternative, namely, the “revolutionary reconstruction of society at large,” the great hope and brilliant promise held out to “the whole of suffering humanity.”

Let us be a little bit inquisitive about the future, within the limits of general outlines, not trying to anticipate utopian particulars upon which a ban was placed, as a measure of precaution, by the Marxian concept, and ask, What will we find after the period of revolutionary reconstruction of society at large has drawn to its glorious close? A millennium of loving kindness? An era of solidarity reigning supreme?

Not having a gift for prophecy, all we can do is to go, in search for an answer, to the past, to recorded revolutionary reconstruction periods, and measure the distance between the promises and the fulfillments in the preceding epochs, and this way gain an understanding of the hiatus that is bound to yawn between the promises and fulfillments of our epoch. In other words, we must take an historical perspective.

“Hegel was certainly right when he said that the only thing we can learn from history is that neither rulers nor peoples have ever learned anything from it.” (Rudolf Eucken, Socialism, An Anlysis, tr. by Joseph McCabe, p. 157, New York, 1922.)

Not belonging to either of the two categories, “rulers” or “peoples”, but to the third, the philosophers who do learn from history, no matter how little, even according to the pessimistic view of Hegel-we shall consult the ungarbled record of history.

And what does it tell us? It tells us in plain language, without any circumlocution, that the cloth of our society went back to the social mill for renovation and amendation a number of times. And that the interlacement existing between the masses and the high classes was more than once rewoven and retwined, but each time, without fail, without exception, were designed new meshes wherein to entwine and entangle the low masses. Upon having disclosed the “treacherous” character of the horizontal class-struggle, how can we, in good faith, recommend it to the proletariat as the only means conducive to its liberation! The plodding along the historical groove, the old trodden routinous path of class struggle cannot lead the workers to their goal of full emancipation. The toilers should beware of methods that had proved fatal to the aims and aspirations of the masses so many a time. It would be stupid, and may be even felonious, to call upon the working class to follow confidently in the ruts of the historical “beneficent” process and believe that this itinerary will bring them to their glorious destination, and still more stupid-if not altogether too cunning and malignant-would it be to counsel the toilers to place their glowing hopes in the natural tendencies inherent in our society, that in the long run must raise the bottom layers to the top, and thus break up our sociological pyramidical structure and make of it a one-storied affair all built on one level.

Marxism assures the laboring masses that their deliverance, not unlike a pie-a-la-mode, will be served to them upon a golden platter by the mythical waiters called “objective conditions,” “proletarization” and “concentration of capital,” ostensibly mischievous, but at core friendly trolls and laprecawns of the Scientifico-Communistic fairyland.

"... 1) Concentration of means of production in a few hands, whereby they cease to appear as the property of the immediate laborers and transform themselves into social power (our italic) of production... 2) Organization of labor itself into social labor....” (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, p. 312, Chicago, 1909.)

“A growing concentration of capitals... is therefore one of the material requirements of capitalist production as well as one of the results produced by it. Hand in hand with it, and mutually interacting, goes a progressive expropriation of the more or less direct producers. It is then a matter of course for the capitalists that they should control increasing armies of laborers.” (Ibid. p. 257.)

“As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the laborers are turned into proletarians, their means of labor into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor and further transformation of land and other means of production into socially exploited and, therefore, common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form.” (Ibid., Vol. I, p. 836.)

“The theory of concentration of capital, which had first been advanced by Louis Blanc, is worked out in great details by Marx... This theory lays it down that... the unit of capital will tend to increase, until eventually all the small capitalists will be destroyed or absorbed, and industry will be controlled nationally or internationally by one huge unit of capital. The concentration of capital is preparing for the social ownership and control of it-in other words, capitalism is preparing the way for socialism.” (Philip Snowden, Socialism and Syndicalism, p. 71, London, 1913.)

These are the natural tendencies leading toward socialization. But this process, though sure, is quite slow. And in order to accelerate it, to speed it up, Marx prescribes the class-struggle, in itself again a natural phenomenon that light of class-consciousness being thrown upon can be utilized more effectively for the cause of labor. So far so good. But what does history say to the Marxian mythically optimistic interpretation of its tendencies, intents and purposes? Marx settled all accounts with the high classes in favor of the low masses, to the satisfaction of many a social evangelist, but he did it without the hostess-history. Recorded similar settlements were not honored by the actualities of social life, and why should this one fare any better?

History, through its registered events, described transitions, recorded revolts, successful ones, not abortive, warns us time and again that the class-struggle of the masses, being, according to its very nature, confined to one horizontal plane, can do no more than lead them out of the old regions of misery, and lead them right back into new ones, take them out of old spheres of exploitation, and bring them right back into new ones.... The midwifing and nursing of the hulking oaf of progress has never as yet brought into the world of social relationships the expected Immanuel, the charming prodigy-child of salvation.

The slaves revolted, rose in arms against their ancient masters. But neither Greece nor Rome was wrecked and ruined, stormed and conquered by its respective mutinous bondmen. Greece succumbed to the onslaught of Rome which in its time and historical turn was vanquished by the vandals. Sure enough, the ancient civilization was undermined, rocked to its very foundations by the tumultuous uprisings of its slaves, the revolts of its downtrodden masses. The rebelling slaves, the discontented low masses largely contributed to the final destruction of the antique world, but they were neither the initiators nor the executors of its downfall. Furthermore, the collapse of the ancient commonwealth along with its civilization did not signify the triumph of its slaves. They did not become, as a con sequence of the overwhelming catastrophe, the ruling class of ancient society, and still less was achieved by them in the direction leading towards the complete liberation of suffering mankind from all forms of subjugation, oppression and domination exercised by man over his fellow-man.

True, slavery as a predominant institution was abolished. The stigma was obliterated from the countenance-not the body-of civilization. New characters were engraved upon the tables of economic intercourse. But the new scribblings were very far from being love letters, effusions of sympathy. The newly indited chapters were very much like those deleted. Feudalism fol. lowed upon the heels of slavedom. The serf replaced the slave as a predominant social economic factor. And when the feudal system had gone bankrupt, serfdom discarded, the nobility shorn of its privileges-who rushed in and occupied its place of honor, leadership, wealth, power? The bourgeoisie, the capitalists, the industrial magnates, the commercial barons, the princes of finance.

The classes and the masses came to close quarters, the peasantry and serfs fought quite valiantly against the landed aristocracy. But, contrary to all expectations, disappointing all the visionaries, the levelling down of the high estates, the truncating of the feudal pyramid, did not yield the promised results, namely, the enthronement of the serfs, the turning the oppressed into a ruling class, the breaking up and dissolving of all forms of oppression. Upon the sites of the torn down seigniories and baronial castles not the husbandman, nor the crafts man, but the 'bourgeois' has erected his skyscraper of power and glory, magnificence and exploitation, grounded this time neither in slavery nor in serfdom but in so called free wagedom. Hiredom and firedom is a mitigated form of economic dependence and subordination, mitigated only juridically, but most thoroughgoing socially, economically. Class-struggle, according to its historical record covering thousands of years and the area of the entire civilized world, is invariably complemented by class-succession. New magnates, youthful, vigorous high strata, take the place, move into the palaces, of the old and worn-out potentates....

The oversanguine contention that by means of the class-struggle, conducted horizontally, will the proletariat gain the position of a ruling class, what is it based upon? Where are the historical data to substantiate such an all too optimistic prophecy? What is the purpose of manufacturing and selling such fantasmogorias to the naive, indiscriminating masses?

To our mind, the eager to become masters befuddle, though unknowingly, unintentionally, the brains of the rebellious proletarians and thus blind them to the obvious fact that they are being deceived by the expectant rulers who, themselves self-deceived and vision-drunk, keep busy plotting against the “masses,” forging newly patented chains wherewith to fetter them right after the short breathing spell of liberty enjoyed by them during the brief interregnum stretching between the two regimes, one demolished, the other as yet not solidified. The future bosses, themselves glowing with radiant expectations, destined to become realizations in so far as they are concerned and which will be shattered, cruelly belied at their attempts to go behind their inner closed circle of beneficiaries of the new order of things-keep the working and suffering low layers of the population in a state of effervescent agitation and ebullient trance. The overabundant and somewhat justified optimism of the prospective rulers is contagious, the masses catch the fever of the “future” that holds in store domination and grandeur, not for them, but for their “leadership”, the emerging masters of the emerging situation.

“Man is a mystical-religious-emotional-instinctive animal, not a reasonable or scientific animal.” (Benjamin de Casseres, Mencken and Shaw, p. 86, New York, 1930.)

“Religion is apriori, like hunger, sex and the instinct to steal.” (Ibid. p. 36.)

The instinctive messianic spark glimmering in the heart of the laborer, his inborn ardor, his flickering ecstasy, the future masters fan into a blaze which devours his hard-won common sense, his healthy realistic look on life, and he forgets himself and becomes an easy victim of fantasms.

“Historically, indeed, Socialism is more closely related to religious than political propagandism. It is from the prophets, apostles and saints, the religious mystics and heretics, rather than from statesmen, economists and political reformers, that the Socialist movement derives the example and ideals that inspire its nobler enthusiasm and hopes today.” (John Bruce Glasier, The Meaning of Socialism, pp. 225-26, London, 1919.) The “nobler enthusiasm and hopes” of Communism are administered to the workers as some kind of an eschatological opiate with the purpose of making them overlook, in their state of spiritual inebriation, the snares spread by the objective, cold-blooded process of historical unfoldment and its representative the emerging rulers in their way which they tread with so much confidence that is so little warranted. The innocent and guileless toilers do not surmise that traps and ambushes await them right around the first curve on the Red Road...

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle.”

But in the long course of this continuous and protracted one-dimensional, as far as the masses are concerned, struggle we have never as yet reached a state at which the high classes in general, not of a definite historical shape and form, have disappeared, or, which would be more miraculous, that the masses have gained the upper hand over the classes for any considerable length of time.

4. Class Struggle as Old as History

THE KNOWLEDGE THAT class-struggle is no callow chick just now hatched out of the addled egg of modern industrialism, but a venerable, super-annuated cock whose crowing awakened the very dawn of recorded civilization and whose roosting pole could be found in all the backyards of communal habitations as the statement that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class-struggle” explicitly tells us this know ledge should have made the exponents of the horizontal class-struggle panacea less cock-sure. Should... but they are Hegelians in that sense that they are ever so reluctant to learn anything from past history. History tells us that the class-struggle is as old as the hills and dales in the crust of society, and its effectiveness, under the best of circumstances, went never one step beyond causing slight modifications in the inter-relationship of the lower and higher classes.

“Greece made its entry into history, as far back as the heroic epoch, with a class-structure which itself was evidently the product of a long but unknown previous history.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 201.)

Where there was a class-structure there, certainly, was a class-struggle in evidence. No class-regime could have been introduced without overcoming resistance of one kind or another. A class-structure presupposes the existence of upper and lower strata in society, and the stratification process is invariably accompanied or preceded by social earthquakes, shocks or tremors.[2]

"... There were in the lower classes elements capable of taking an interest in politics, namely, the plebeians of the town, small artisans and shop-keepers, workmen and laborers, fisher men and sailors, the humblest of the craftsmen whom the epic calls demiourgoi and the whole mass of the hired men whom it classes under the name of thetes. This proletariat lived from hand to mouth on wages which the increasing use of that human chattle, the slave, was ever forcing down.... The army for the revolt was ready; it lacked only leaders. The bourgeoisie fitted by its courage, its habit of work and intelligence to exercise the political rights which were denied to it, placed itself at the head of the force which it found ready to its hand. From that time the city was split into two camps. The time was past when the discontented were content to groan and invoke the Gods.... Mystics gave place to men of violence. The conflict of classes had begun.

“It was long and bitter. From the seventh century to the time of the Roman conquest Greek history is full of revolutions and counter-revolutions, of massacres, banishments and confiscations. Party hatred was never expressed with more ferocity than in the small cities where the intestine struggle assumed the form of veritable vendettas.” (G. Glotz, The Greek City, p. 104, London, 1929.)

“The next struggle, extending over centuries, was the struggle of the organized proletariat for effective participation in the government. The resistance was stubborn. In 494 B. C. the people obtained special officers called tribunes as their leaders, but their power was so limited that nothing was gained in the way of sharing in the government of the State. In 451 B. C. the publication of the Ten Tables made a legal tradition common property and wrested from the patricians one privilege. In 449 the plebeian assembly began to legislate.... In 445 B. C. the legal barrier against intermarriage was removed.... Seventy-eight years went past; the Gaul came down on Rome in 390, compelling for a time the unity that is bred of common danger; and then in 367 B. C. the consulship was open to plebeians, at first in junction with a patrician and afterwards, if it so happened, both consuls might be plebeians.

“By the victory of 367 B. C. the plebeians seem to have won all that they cared to demand.” (G. S. Brett, The Government of Man, pp. 126-27, London, 1913.)

“The class struggle of the ancient world took the form chiefly of a contest between debtors and creditors, which in Rome ended with the ruin of the plebeian debtors.... In the middle ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors who lost their political power together with the economical basis on which it was established.” (Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, p. 152, Chicago, 1918.)

One is almost tempted to quote the Preacher:

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes, I, 9.)

There is, certainly, nothing new about the horizontal class-struggle being crossed, and double-crossed, by the vertical one. The only difference between the ancient class-struggle and the modern is that the circumstances, under which they are being fought, were in antiquity more favorable for the militant lowly. For besides the horizontal class-struggle of the masses that were led by the “bourgeoisie” that fought its own battle vertically, revolts of slaves used to break out from time to time.

“Slave revolts broke out in 501, 498, 497 and 419 B. C. In 190 B. C. Italian agriculture employed a million and a half slaves, who from time to time throughout the succeeding century were involved in formidable revolts (198, 196, 185, 40B. C.)” (Paul Louis, art.” Agrarian Movements” in Encyclop. of Social Sciences, Vol. I, p. 494.)

Under such conditions, the higher-ups should have been more willing to “listen to reason,” to negotiate and compose the differences, existing between them and the masses, peacefully, realizing the precarious state the whole Greek society was in. Their glory and grandeur was built upon a volcano that as a rule was sup posed to be dormant, but not extinct, and the contingency of its awakening and doing mischief at any moment was by no means precluded. This constant threat of eruptions imperiling the very existence of “civilized” Greece was hanging like a gusty cloud over their heads and it counselled moderation. Yet what were the net results of the class-struggle? It never yielded more than crumbs of reforms, negligible concessions, political and economic modifications rather than amendations, changes rather than real improvements, and even that was not always the case.

And the abolition of slavery that took place many a century later could not be accredited to the class struggle of the free, urban or rural, population. There was no “united front” effected between free and compulsory labor.

“In classical Rome the class war was carried on only within the pale of the privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor. The slaves, who formed the great productive mass of the population, were nothing more than a passive pedestal upon which the struggle was waged.” (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, preface, p. 19, New York, 1926.)

They were very far from being passive. Revolts and insurrections are no passivity. But the rebellions of the slaves were not connected, were not synchronized with the political struggles taking place within the community of the free. The rising of the slaves constituted a chapter for itself, not unlike the national wars of our times that are an external affair whereas class-struggle is an internal occurrence.

“In like manner, should the common's champion find the populace so very compliant that he need make no scruples of shedding kindred blood-should he, with unrighteous charges, as is the wont of such persons, prosecute his victims and render himself blood guilty, making away with human life, and tasting the blood of his fellows with unholy tongue and lips-should he banish, and kill, and give the signal for cancelling debts and redistributing the land; is not from henceforth the inevitable destiny of such a man either to be destroyed by his enemies, or to become a tyrant, and be metamorphosed from man into wolf? There is no escape from the alternative. Such is the fate of the man who is at feud with the moneyed class.” (Plato, Republic, VIII, 566.)

Plato treats the subject in terms of the individual, the outstanding personality of the leader, the champion of the militant commons. And he arrives at a strictly realistic, which is not over optimistic-overdone optimism is the fool's paradise, and a philosopher is not supposed to be found there, in the Sociological Eden, where all the morons of all times and nations are quartered conclusion, and that is that “there is no escape from the alternative.” It is a plain, but as inexorable as fate, case of either or.

Either one is defeated, bodily destroyed by one's class enemies, or one is victorious, and being victorious means to do, be forced by circumstances, by the unstoppable march of events, to do henceforth the very same economic and political things that those who were defeated by one had done hitherto, in Plato's concrete expression, become a tyrant.

Now, let us translate Plato's sound and basic sociological thought into terms of classes and their modes of interrelationship. Class-struggle has no escape from the alternative. It is either defeat, which in the given case would not spell physical annihilation of the totality of the warring class, but the destruction of a number of its best members, the staunchest, fearless and most audacious fighters or victory which can be registered only in one direction, namely, vertically and will be bringing along with it the unavoidable repetition, with slight alterations, of the deeds, economic and political, that were condemned and fought against; in a word, victory will mean not more than a duplication, with minor variations, of the existing sociological order of things, and the emerging of a new master-class instead of the dis carded, routed one.

“The oligarchs in certain towns took this oath : ' I will be an adversary of the people and in the Council I will do to it all the evil which I can.” (Aristotle, Politics, VIII, 7, 9.)

“But of your wars with oligarchies, there were different causes : with those you fought for your constitution, your liberty... for it is not possible that a few can entertain an affection for the many; or the friends of arbitrary power for the men who chose to live in free equality.” (Demosthenes, De Rhod. Lib. 17-18; tr. Leland Orations, 275-277.)

Demosthenes being an orator, not a philosopher, is not bound to tell the truth, his task is to encourage, not to discourage, to arouse emotions, not thoughts about the future, about the events subsequent to the victories scored...

Like all agitators he dangles before the eyes of his listeners the dazzling words of “liberty” and is even speaking of “free equality” without troubling himself any too much about the realities of the Greek commonwealth, an island submerged in a sea of slavery. Could upon a basis of slavery be erected a free equality, even when understood in a circumscribed application concerning only the free citizens? But orators, propagandists are not supposed to bother about scientific exactitudes, and thus compete with the “philosophers”

Now we shall quote an oration that sounds as good as any a speech delivered to any labor audience by the hottest rebel of our own time. But the oration dates back to the first century.

“Lucius Sergius Catiline... spoke to them in the following manner:

“... Is it not better to die in a brave attempt than to drag a wretched and infamous life, and to lose it at last shamefully, after having been the sport of other men's indolence? But I take gods and men to witness, that success is in our hands.... All that is necessary is only to make the attempt.... For who that has the spirit of a man can bear with patience, that they should have such a superfluity of riches, as to lavish with them, in raising mighty edifices on the deep, and leveling mountains, whilst we have not so much as the necessaries of life, that they should be multiplying their seats, whilst we have no fixed habitations; that, though they are constantly buying pictures, statues and vessels of curious workmanship, pulling down new houses, and building others; in short, though they waste and dissipate their wealth by every extravagant method; yet, by all their efforts of profusion, they are unable to exhaust it. As for us, we have poverty at home, and debts abroad; our condition is bad, our expectation much worse; finally, what have we left but a wretched life. Rouse then to action! Behold the object you have often wished for, behold liberty! and in her train, riches, glory and honor, all full in your view! All these rewards fortune has prepared for the conquerors... Let your dangers, your poverty, and the glorious spoils of war animate you more powerfully than any words of mine!’” (C. C. Sallust, The History of Catiline's Conspiracy, pp. 19-20, London, 1751.)

Evidently class demagogism was not invented by the Communists, neither can they claim the discovery, both in theory and practice, of class-struggle. The battle of classes goes on for thousands of years, according to the very testimony of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. But no matter how doggedly the oppressed masses fought-and annals dripping with blood bear witness to their unsurpassed prowess and intrepidity-yet the class-structure of society remained intact. How many a wave of stormy rebellion surged over the cliff of Differentiation in its audacious attempt to carry it off and hurl it into the abyss of oblivion, and yet, despite all those repeated strenuous efforts, this rock of hatred, this boulder of antagonism stands as erect and as unshakable now as ever.

The working class is confronted with a twofold task to which it cannot sociologically prove equal. Class struggle in order to be efficacious, in the sense of eradication of classes in general and obliteration of all social stratifications, must be carried on by the low masses in two directions, horizontally and vertically, simultaneously. And this is beyond their powers, no matter how hard they try, if they do, which will never be the case. It is as easy as to square a circle. Concerning our present times and situation, the expulsion of the bourgeoisie is the minor part of the reconstruction program; the forestalling of the advent of new masters, the frustrating of their aims and ends, the vertical class-struggle, this is the major issue, this would be an exploit worthy of daring and doing, but this is historically unachievable. A low class as such cannot carry on its fight vertically, upward, anticipatorily. It is not possessed of such intuitive anticipations. It, according to its very nature, follows historical epochs, but it cannot precede them. It understands them, their meaning, their mechanism, their modes of functioning, and that quite dimly and after having been propagandized by an emerging class of new rulers, post factum, when the existing systems have matured, exposed themselves, but it cannot grasp their essence, it cannot evaluate them properly in pre-vision, in prospect. Even in retrospect it does it in a quite faltering way.

The workers must come, sooner or later, to the realization of the great truth, that it is not sufficient to oust the capitalists, to wage a horizontal class-war, but, if they want to get rid of the higher classes, they must watch and guard each opening and crevice through which new masters will, inevitably, unforestallably, squeeze themselves in almost unnoticed. For the exit of one ruling class becomes the entrance for another dominating class, the egress of the ex-masters serves as an ingress for the emerging masters. And this is unpreventable. The working class is in no position to stem the tide of history, to reverse the course of the stream of social life. And that was the reason why the horizontal class-struggle, when it went beyond bargaining and haggling about conditions of work, like shortening of hours, of days, of raising wages and similar demands, had but one effect and that was the hastening of the process of succession of classes, the replacement of one class of rulers by another, the ushering in a new class of masters and ushering out an old one.

5. Dishistorization of History

Marx and his collaborator Engels, a Communist thinker and scholar in his own right, assuage all these painful fears about the delinquency, historically proven beyond any reasonable doubt, of the horizontal class struggle carried on by the masses, with the salve of an asseveration:

“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up without the whole super incumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 42.)

“The history of these class-struggles forms a development in which a stage has now been reached where the exploited and oppressed class the proletariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class the bourgeoisie without at the same time and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-struggles” (F. Engels, Preface to the Communist Manifesto, p. 28.)

To our mind, it is axiomatic that the proletariat designating by it the working class, the class of manual laborers, cannot raise itself up to the very top of society unless, as a preliminary or in the very act of its uplift, it breaks up the whole make-up of modern society.

But how do we know that the proletariat is going to do it, that it is going to achieve this extraordinary, unparalleled exploit of raising itself so as to reach to the very surface of social life? This is the question. It may behave more in accord with historical precedence, and confine its efforts to improving its condition. This, surely, would not be tantamount to rising to the top and would not presuppose a springing into the air of “the whole superincumbent strata of official society.” The amelioration of status and conditions under which the laborers live and function as producers would be registered as a result of a common increase in well-being. In such a fashion the proletariat would rise and the whole of society, meaning the other classes, would rise simultaneously with it, so that its relative position within society would not be changed radically. The assertion of Marx-Engels is too general, on the one side, and too “prophetic”, groundless, unhistorical, on the other. It is not a question of revolution as something more effectual than mere reform. Revolutions, no less than other social phenomena, are, too, behaving “historically”, they do not go out of their orbits. A revolution is not a sociological omnipotent.

What Marx said of the proletariat would be true of any bottom-layer, it could not raise itself up unless it caused a general perturbation, a readjustment of all the interrelations existing between the various groupings of the given social complex unit. And that is the very reason why such things, touching upon the border line of the impossible, of the preternatural in sociology, never happened as yet. No sociological bottom-stratum as a whole without undergoing a process of decomposition and recomposition, no submerged social formation taken in its entirety, in its totality or overwhelming majority of members, ever rose to the surface, to the sea-level of social life. And where are the convincing proofs that what has never happened is going to happen right now, in our time? Where are the data to show us clearly that history is on the eve of a total reversal, of a drastic change of its age-long course?

"... In the formation of a class in radical chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it, an order which shall break up all orders, a sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering, which lays claim to no special right, because no particular wrong but wrong in general is committed upon it, which can no longer invoke a historical title, but only a human title, which stands not in a one-sided antagonism to the assumptions of the... community, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all the other spheres of society, which represents, in a word, the complete loss of mankind, and can therefore only redeem itself through the complete redemption of mankind. The dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat.” (Karl Marx, Hegelian Philosophy of Right, Selected Essays tr. by H. J. Stenning, p. 37, New York, 1926.)

This dissertation of Marx about the proletariat is an abortive attempt at dishistorization of the labor movement. Marx describes the proletariat as a class situated on the outskirts of all given historical epochs, outside of all limitations and characteristics that go with a definitive environmental and chronal setting. And upon having secured the proletariat in that envious position of Utopia, outside of place and time, in the great and charming “beyond” of anti-historical speculation, Marx can, with a calm conscience and unperturbed intellect, assure us that the proletariat is adequate, not unlike Archimedes armed with his lever and in possession of the point outside the globe, to turning upside down the whole machinery of history.

An arch-radical quasi-prophecy, a bubble-like inflated prediction that clashes with the well-established rule, that knows of no exceptions, and course, that knows of no deviations, of universal history has not got much of a chance with the hard “conservative” actualities of social life, even if the seer Marx fathers it; and it takes no great amount of prophecy to foretell with utmost sureness the outcome of this fatal collision, and which of the two is going to be the worse for it...

“A class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it”. Such a depiction could befit an emerging master-class, an aggregate fighting vertically its way through to domination, but not the working class, a class that was born together with the bourgeoisie, that is its actual corollary, that lives alongside of it, and is reared and brought up in the very process of industrialization, the fount out of which the bourgeoisie draws its strength and sustenance.

“A sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering”. No class of living beings if it is not a category of a theological character that suffers universally for suffering humanity, suffers universally, in general, but if it does it at all, it does it in a limited, circumscribed way as a definite grouping occupying a definite position in production and, consequently, in distribution. No class can afford to leave, all of a sudden, by fiat of a revolution or by inspiration of a “mission” its historical set-up, its historical background, and act and behave as a vague, formless entity belonging to all times and all milieus and, therefore, belonging nowhere altogether, to no time and no milieu.

The statements of Marx quoted above are the crudest negation of history ever to be found in writings claiming to be “scientific” and basing their assertions or foretellings upon an historical process and tendencies. Marxism when it comes to prognostications is an attempt at violation of history, to force it to get off its own track and stop developing along its own lines, to cease to be its own self. Fourier called himself “inventor” and claimed to be near omnipotence in matters sociological. Marx branded that school of thought and experimentation as Utopian and discarded their psychology and methodology. Marx follows history to a certain point. But upon reaching it he turns against his guide and assumes the disguised role of leader and forces his guide, history, to lead him according to his own directions. In this way he unhistorizes history, he would like to compel history to overcome its own limitations and hemmed-in possibilities.

The mere fact that the proletariat “can no longer invoke a historical title” does not free it from its historical moorings, does not detach it from its historical anchorage. The bourgeoisie did not claim a historical title either. What of it? To abstain or to be deprived of the privilege of claiming a historical title, is one thing, and to step out of one's own historical frame, is quite a different thing. And no class, a concrete living social formation, not an abstraction, an apparition spun out of pure imagination by a transcendental speculator for a special “mission” to upset history, to do away with its basic laws – can work such a wonder as to abandon its own historical sphere and orb and walk off into a historyless infinite…

“But only a human title”... The proletarian does not invoke any title, but if it does consider necessary to invoke a title, that will not be the vague, meaning less, for it is too broad and too all inclusive, “human title”, but a laborer's title, whatever that may be.

“The dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat”. No more so than the dissolution of feudal society reduced to a special order was the serf-proletariat, no more so than the dissolution of ancient society reduced to a special order was the slave-proletariat. The generality should be particularized. If the wage-proletariat can be said to be the “dis solution of society reduced to a special order”, we must lend that “society” color and style, consign to it its place and specify its time, and formulate it as follows : the dissolution of capitalist society reduced to a special order is the wage-proletariat, and even this will contain but a half-truth. The dissolution cannot occur unless there is a process of re-evolution, no destruction without the corrective of reconstruction, and a society is not decomposed with the purpose of recomposing it unless there is a combination of the lower and higher layers of society in full intensified operation. “The dissolution of capitalist society reduced to a special order is the wage-proletariat “could be true, if by dissolution was meant a total collapse, a breakdown, a disbandment of society and a decay of civilization, but even in this case it would require a combination of forces, external, like invasions of vandals, famine, plagues, devastating national wars, and internal, like civil clashes, upheavals of the discontented proletarians.

The way Marx formulates it, the categorical, sweeping manner, all it conveys is that the proletariat is going to dissolve society in general, and after that heroic act of the proletariat all we shall have to do is scatter humanity over the solar systems, billet them on the stars, and thus break up society altogether, and put an end to social life . Human beings henceforth will go hundred percent individualist, not unlike the First Individualist of the realm, the Almighty.

Marx's imagination, though quite flighty and winged, does not go that far. "Scientific" prophecy is not without stints. But the proletariat is not going to pull any of the lesser stunts either. It cannot dissolve society in general, for it is a class living and asserting itself within the frame - work of society and the mold of history, and as such it has to do with an historical style, an historical mode of a given society, and not with society as such.

In a word, the proletariat cannot help being "historical". It is subject to the laws of history no less, if not more so, than any other class, whether ruling or ruled.

"People have forgotten Sismondi's notable utterance: "The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society, whereas modern society lives at the expense of the proletariat'. So extensive are the differences between the material, the economic, conditions of the class - war in classical and modern times, that the political incidents born out of the struggle in one epoch and the other can have no more semblance to one another than the Archbishop of Canterbury has to the High Priest Samuel" (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, preface, p. 19.)

The fact of its being different, makes the proletariat of our modern time no less rooted in its environment, attached to its historical soil and conditions. The proletariat of modern time is a part of modernity no less than the ancient proletariat was a part of antiquity. And it must behave historically, which means acting, in broad outline, in the same way other subjugated classes acted before it, naturally allowing for more or less significant modifications which the march of historical events always brings along in order to relieve its monotony and make advancement possible. But advancement, Progress, too, outside of Hebrew and other varieties of exalted prophecy, is subject to the basic rules and binding regulations of historical procedure.

The proletariat, as well as any other class, no matter how revolutionary and radical it may profess to be, cannot break up the continuity of the historical process.

“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”... The mere fact of the proletariat constituting the lowest stratum of present day society does not give it any special privileges, any safe conduct along the high ways and by-ways of history, a carte blanche concerning matters sociologique. It can take no liberties with historical trends.

6. Marxism and the Lumpen-Proletariat.

“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”

First of all, it is not correct, anyway, not exact. Beneath the working masses one finds cadres of roust-abouts, legions of tramps and hoboes, battalions of pan handlers, blobs, ragamuffins and the like wreckage and driftwood tossed about by the social current.

“The 'dangerous class', the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may here and there be swept into the movement by the proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, Essentials of Marx, p. 42, New York, 1926.)

“The slum proletariat which in all large cities forms a class entirely distinct from the industrial proletariat, and which is a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds. Its members living on the refuse of society, are without any definite occupation... diversified as the structure of the nation to which they belong, and always 'lazzaroni'“ (Karl Marx, Die Klassenkaempfe in Frankreich, p. 34.)

“For them there is nothing but to beg, steal or prostitute themselves. They were compelled either to perish or to throw overboard all sense of shame, honor and self-respect. They prolong their existence only by giving precedence to their immediate wants over their regard for their reputations. That such a condition cannot but exercise the most demoralizing and corrupting influence is self-evident.

Furthermore, the effect of this influence is intensified by the fact that the unemployed poor are utterly superfluous to the existing order; their extinction would relieve it of an undesirable burden. A class that has become superfluous, that has no necessary function to fulfill, must degenerate. And beggars cannot even raise themselves in their own estimation by indulging in the self-deception that they are necessary to the social system; they have no recollection of a time when their class performed any useful services; they have no way of forcing society to support them as parasites. They are only tolerated. Humility, consequently, is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor. Like the menial, this class of the proletariat is servile toward the powerful; it furnishes no opposition to the existing social order. On the contrary, it ekes out its existence from the crumbs that fall from the tables of the rich.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, pp. 168-69, Chicago, 1934.)

Thus the thesis that the proletariat is “the lowest stratum of our present society” is refuted by its very originator, by Marx and his most distinguished and able disciple and popularizer, Karl Kautsky. Now, as the proletariat is deprived of the high “distinction” of constituting the “lowest stratum of our present society” it cannot any more claim, by the law of passage into the opposite, called dialectics, the privilege of becoming, after the overthrow of the system and the transvaluation of all social values, the highest stratum of our future society. The last shall become first, but not the middle that is “conservative” and stays put... The proletariat not being the lowest stratum cannot fulfil the duty or “historical mission” assigned to it by Marx and Engels, namely, the liberation of all suffering humanity,” emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression and class-struggles”. It could be thought of as being in a state of breaking up, in a revolutionary salavationary way, society from its position upwards, but it, surely, would not be able to do this kind of work down wards. So that the emancipation of the proletariat cannot mean any longer the emancipation of all mankind, for there is a portion of it that is situated much lower than the proletariat and it would not reach them. For this duty one must choose the lowest of the low, a rock-bottom layer. And, then, command it to rise, and when it does so, it rises, it, quite naturally, will lift up along with itself the whole under-world, underground dwellers. Mut Marxianism shrunk from this, extremely difficult and exceedingly praiseworthy, task. Marxianity proved to be too shy to look into that unfathomed well of human misery and affliction and draw out of its depth of perdition the water of salvation to be offered free to all the thirsty children of lost mankind without regard of status or standing, position or conduct, right or wrong. And, thus, the picture of the Class-Christ, the Collective Messiah came out pale, anemic, achromatic, for lack of prophetic color and humanitarian vision. Christianity sank its shaft much deeper into the heart of man and its cravings, and it went much farther in its audacious-and, therefore, so irresistibly appealing to all oppressed, fallen, lost, shipwrecked, choice. Christianity, armed with deep penetrating psychological insight was neither ashamed nor afraid to take its Individual Savior right off the gallows, off the cross, where He was dangling in the bad company of thieves, criminals, underworld characters... Marxianity is too much of a philistine doctrine, too moderate and “respectable”, or, plainly pusillanimous, to venture to duplicate the prototype, the divine image of the Savior. And it stopped in its traces, short of its goal. That is why Marxianism is neither here nor there. It is not realistic and modest enough to be truly scientific, nor is it mythical and mystical enough to become virtually religious. It is a hybrid. It sucks two breasts, but gets out of them too little nourishment. For it does not go in the right way about it. It tries to combine the uncombinable. It arrays forces and moods that clash and mutually neutralize each other. Marxianity was venturesome enough to borrow the grand and alluring, capable of stirring the deepest emotions and calling forth the noblest feelings, symbol of the Savior. But it had no courage to “pick” the right kind of a class for it. The proletariat is too “capitalistic”, its “capital” is its skill, labor-power, its job, employment, and, therefore, too materialistic and realistic to fit into the hallowed and haloed picture of a Class-Christ.

“To carry through this world-emancipating act is the historiacl mission of the modern proletariat.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, p. 318.)

The Proletariat wears a crown of labor, not of thorns...

It has a trade to ply, a vocation to follow, a function to fulfil. It is not “utterly superfluous to the existing order.” The proletariat is not a “futilitariat”. And that is why it cannot call to all sufferers to rally to its banner. It has nothing to offer them, neither comfort, nor solace...

“In speaking of the 'lowest stratum of society' Marx was thinking, not of a community divided into numerous strata, but chiefly of three classes, the large capitalist, the workers, and the middle class. It was the lowest of these three, and not the lowest of their many subdivisions, that he had in mind. From the first the whole Socialist movement has recognized the almost complete hopelessness, as an aid to Socialism, of the lowest stratum in the narrow sense, of what is called the 'lumpen proletariat,' the bulk of the army of beggars...”, (William English Walling, Socialism As It Is, p. 333, New York, 1912.)

“The lowest ranks of the workers are referred to in German Socialist literature as the ' Lumpen-proletariat '. Lumpen means rags and also rabble. Lump means ragamuffin or even black guard. So all the connotations of this conveniently elastic word are anything but flattering.” (William English Walling, Progressivism And After, p. 233, New York, 1914.)

Neither Marx nor his disciple Kautsky, nor any of the Communist theorists have a friendly word, a brotherly feeling for these “social invalids”.... Marx and his followers, being utilitarians, not humanitarians, fully realized, “from the first”, that this wreckage of humanity could not be made use of “as an aid to Communism”. These anti-social types could not be propagandized, pressed into shock-troops, disciplined, officered and made to fight the battles of the Organisateurs, and thus help break up the old system and aid in ushering in the new one. Nor can they be exploited in the field of production, planned on a national scale, after the period of revolution has closed. In a word, the Communists hate and denounce these “sick and meek” for they see clearly that they are unrecruitable in the prerevolutionary time, – humility, consequently, is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor”, – and unemployable in the post-revolutionary time. They are no asset, but an out and out liability. A burden, a charity proposition... And the Marxians keep away from the “poor relations” of the proletariat.

“The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society”…

Were it true, which it is not, as shown above, it would not have proved the Marxian contention, but served rather as a plump refutation thereof. Was not the ancient slave still lower, was he not sunk in misery a few fathoms deeper than the present day toiler, and yet his deliverance, his salvage did not sound the death knell for all oppression, but it only chimed out the old, who overstayed their time, masters, and chimed in new The riving of the chains of the bondman, his emergence from the netherland of wretchedness did neither signalize, nor symbolize the proclamation of freedom for all subjugated and oppressed. In spite of all the Good Tidings of Christianity, not the Savior, but the serf put in his woebegone appearance in actual, secular life. And in the Middle Ages who could have possibly been lower, in the social scale, than the human being appended to the soil he tilled? He was, no doubt, near the very bottom of society, and, nevertheless, his emancipation, all assurances, given by the liberal minded journalists of that time, to the contrary, not the last triumphing accord of the social, not so excellently conducted, concert…

“That as in the order of the social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all man kind... That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.” (Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.)

“That as the proletariat is the last class to achieve freedom, its emancipation will mean the emancipation of the whole of mankind.” (Social Democratic Federation, Programme and Rules, Bradford, Easter 1906.)

“This proletarian revolution will completely abolish the division of society into classes and, consequently, all the social and political inequality arising out of that division.” (V. I. Lenin, Draft-Programme for S. D. P. of Russia, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 225.)

“The capitalist relations of production constitute the last antagonistic form of the social process of production.” (Karl Marx, Critique of Political Economy.)

What about the cleavage between the producers, the direct participants of the process of production, and the directors, the indirect participators? What about the antagonism between the toilers and the planners of the social industry? Marx is reticent about these imminent clashes of interests and contrasts of positions. Marx, in this respect as in many other, constitutes no exception to the rule of conduct applied by all the scholar spokesmen, reformers, champions of the former master classes: with them their epoch, the epoch they live in and fight against is always the last... The literature of all the movements, of a secular or religious character, is abounding in assurances that the antagonistic forms inveighed against of the given epoch are the ultimate and final ones. And no sooner is this bitter leaf turned over than a new chapter begins, a chapter that will be as full of harmony and solidarity as its preceding ones were full of antagonism, hatred, strife, in a word, of evil.

7. Communist Eschatology.

“That the end of the world was at hand was a common idea of the day. No one was more thoroughly possessed by it than Luther.” (Cambridge, Modern History, vol. II.)

Marxianity, in as much as it is a “quasi-religion”, a class-messianic Faith, has, which is quite natural, developed its own eschatology, its teaching about the “last days”. This teaching, as a matter of fact, is more than a mere prediction about the impending collapse of Capitalism. This pseudo-doctrine is more than a statement, claiming scientific validity, about the approaching end of the capitalist system as such, as a species of the genus of economo-political orders. Such a meager prophecy about the imminent fall of Capitalism would contain only the prosaic foretelling that our economic system was going to be, in the near future, replaced by a basically similar, though somewhat different order of things economic. Such a qualified prognosis would, thus, acknowledge the law of continuity whether asserted in a revolutionary or evolutionary way, a law which excludes both the “end”, “consummation”, and its opposite, “the beginning”. Marxianity goes much further than that. It is bold enough to bring the Good Tidings about the disappearance of all, whether or not resembling Capitalism, antagonistic, irrational, disorderly and, therefore, condemned, found wanting, systems that ever existed within the time-limit of recorded history. By the way, History, both as a whole and a part, taken universally or nationally, was never as yet properly systematized. It was always and at all times shot though with “chaoticalities”. It was framed by a series of shapeless and formless events, factors and causes that came and went without strict control being exercised over them by the consciousness of man. History until now was a plaything of blind inimical powers. It could not, therefore, have contained within its scope anything nicely-fitted, dove-tailed, well-knit, properly co-ordinated, so harmonized and arrayed as to deserve the name of a “rational system” in distinction from “Anarchy”, whether of production, distribution-consumption, or of the whole social intercourse, in general.

And upon the “last days” of social Chaos breaks the First luminous Day of social Creation. The social Cosmos emerges as a result of a conscious act of Man.

Marxianity, in its philosophy of history, draws a deeply incising demarcation line that separates “light” from “darkness”, Prehistory of all our “past” from History that, like the career of the genuine artist that always starts on the morrow, begins with our next period, with our “future”! Marxianity forgets that our “future” will some day be looked upon as a part and parcel of the long and continuous “past” and that our “past” was for centuries and for many a generation of dreamers a dreamed of “future”. In a word, Marxianity, in its prognostications, its analysis of our miserable present in contradistinction to the days to come in full glory, asserts that this time is a special time, when “the history of these class-struggles forms a development in which a stage has now been reached, where the exploited and oppressed class the proletariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class without at the same the bourgeoisie time and once for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-struggles”. Marxianity assures us that we are approaching this time not the brink of an epoch, the usual butt-end of a usual social period, an ordinary transformation that has already materialized a few times previously and “consisted in the development of class-antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs” (Communist Manifesto, pp. 51-52), but that a catastrophe of an extraordinary nature, something exceptional is about to occur; and that it comes to pass for the first time in history. It is definitely unequalled. In short, according to Marxian philosophy of history we are at present times at a turning point, we are entering upon a redemption era. A complete renewal of the social order is the history-overwhelming event of our days. Marxianity teaches that a brand-new, never as yet tried, never precedented for the whole stretch of recorded history mode of living and behaving, economically, politically and culturally, will be ushered in upon the breakdown of the capitalist system.

“... The most profound revolution in the history of man kind... the first transference of power from the exploiting minority to the exploited majority that has ever occurred in the world....” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 230.)

“And at this point (our italics), in certain sense, man finally (our italics) cuts himself off from the animal world, leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are really human. The conditions of existence forming man's environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point (our italics) pass under the dominion and control of man, who now for the first time (our italics) be comes the real conscious master of Nature.... It is only from this point (our italics) that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history; it is from this point (our italics) that the social causes set in motion by men will have, predominantly and in constantly increasing measure, the effects willed by men.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 318.)

Engels stresses with full force the idea of the “end”, of the “point” lying on the long line of uniform history and the breaking off of its drab continuum. From now on, from this point men will fashion their own history, they will be masters of the situation, shapers and makers of their historical destinies. It is a full-fledged social eschatology.

Engels does not bother himself to ask: Who are going to be those New Adams, those “men”? Will they belong to some definite groupings? Will they be differentiated, set in definite strata of a sociological or “psychological” crust? They will be just “men” without any affiliations with and loyalties to special subdivisions within the collective, men in the nude of abstraction, and, nevertheless, they will go on living and acting and fashioning history that probably will not be empty, void of any content of events, occurrences, enterprises, great or small deeds, exploits, achievements. Those abstract New Adams will always be in completely unanimous agreement among themselves concerning all matters, all problems, all emergencies, so that their wills and their minds will always be in accord. They will constitute one will and one mind that is always at one with itself, and never clashes, never regrets, never cancels adopted resolutions, never recalls made decisions, never contradicts itself, never argues, never splits and thus breaks up into many factions. It will have to be so, for otherwise there will soon appear different “men” with different “views” on various subjects concerning the “fashioning of their own history,” and a controversy or a clash will ensue as regards the very course their own history has to take. And thus some individual or group will have to decide upon it, and overrule other wills in such a way that not all “men” will be actively directly making their own history, but a “few” will make it, and the rest will “suffer” it, and another “few” will do their best in trying to break it. “Man” in the singular could be said to be able to fashion his own history. Of course, under such conditions, it would be no history which is a record of events that have a collective significance, that occur within the circle of a communal life, but a plain autobiography, not written post factum, but lived through according to one's desires and ideas, if he be a new Robinson Cruso dwelling on an island-star without a wife and without children. The latter, naturally, would interfere with his making or fashioning his own history, for in the last case it would become a history of a family with a few authors to compose it. But “men” in plural, as mere men, in their abstract capacity of human beings, belonging neither to classes nor groupings of any kind, being subject neither to gradations, nor differentiations, of a psychological, physiological or sociological nature for these variations must according to their very character breed some kind of antagonism, a thing that is non extant after the turning of the “crucial point” -how are such perfect beings going to fashion their own history? The very attempt at doing it will divide them, stratify them, gradate them. And there will spring up as many “fashions” of history as there will be “fashioners” and for some that “history” will be “their own”, and for others it will be an imposition, and not “their own”. Fashioning of history is a dangerous business. This activity contains all the germs of class, group or party divisions.

“The social causes set in motion by men will have... the effects willed by men. ' All depends on who are going to be those “men”. If those men are kings, rulers of an economic or political character, there is nothing “messianic” about it. Tyrants, exceptional men of one kind or another, distinguished men, whether in the realm of economics, politics or culture, religion or science, always did the “willing” and their wills were counted as laws or advices, or powerful suggestions that became “social causes”. But if by “men” Engels under stands all men and women, old and young, then, again, the question arises as to how can “social causes” be “the effects willed by men”, unless all men are endowed with one will that is always equal to itself, otherwise the “social causes” are bound to be “the effects” willed by prominent men, by outstanding personalities, or powerful groupings, and remain plain “social causes” for the rest of the commonwealth.

“The condition of existence forming man's environment, which up to now have dominated man, at this point pass under the dominion and control of man.”

What does the word “man” in the quoted passage stand for?

If it be the abstract man, a non-entity, then Engels' statement is mere empty phraseology, so many words void of any practical social meaning.

If it connotes the collective man, the group as a unit, the whole of society as a body economic and politic, in this case, Engels expresses the thought that on the morrow, after the great overthrow has taken place, society will control the conduct of its economic affairs. But these transitions, from non-control to control, from chaos to order, from primitive anarchy to authority, describe for the individual an inevitable transference of his subjection, he passes from the “jurisdiction” of physical nature to that of social, and from that of social (disorganized) to that of political (organized as a volitional unit) “Nature”.

“As the savage must struggle with nature to satisfy his needs to preserve and to reproduce his life, so must the civilized man, and he must do this in all forms of society and under all possible ways of production. As he develops, this realm of necessity extends, because men's needs extend, but his powers of production which satisfy these needs extend at the same time. There can be freedom in this sphere only to the extent that men in society, the associated producers, govern rationally the material given them by nature, and bring it under their common control, instead of being governed by it as by a blind force; develop it with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions worthy of and adequate to their human nature.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 954.)

This “freedom” is originated not by the totality of the “associated producers”, but by a few, by the “associators” of the “associated producers”, by an “initiative minority”. The majority all it does is passing from one state of governance into another. Hitherto it was governed by a blind physical or social force, henceforth it will be governed “rationally” more or less by a human force, by a class-force. For the “control” is never “common” in the full sense of the word, it requires the segregation of “controllers” who while controlling the blind forces of nature, or “the material given them by nature”, control, at the same time, the people, the producers.

The “noble savage” was free socially when and if he lived outside the social pale, avoiding any social inter course, not being tied by any of the social bonds, regulations and obligations without which no community, no matter how primitive, could function. This imaginary “social freedom” all it could have registered was the total absence of communal life, of social interrelation ships, and the considerable sum of real advantages that went with it as a compensation for the compulsions placed by it upon the individual members of the collective family, tribe, group, horde, or nationhood. This “freedom” of the under-social or ante-social existence, if it ever was more than mere speculation, could but have one meaning and that was full-measured “slavery”, duress, constraints imposed on the fictitious liberty-loving individual savage by physical nature, and its rigors and severities, surely, outweighed those practiced by social nature.

Savagery passing to barbarism, or barbarism to civilization, recorded a shifting of vassalage, from the Lords Physical, the feral forces and furious powers of physical nature, to the Lords Social, the comparatively mild agencies and factors of social nature.

Returning to Engels' contention, so long as “he conditions of existence forming man's environment” are not regulated, have their free play, they “dominate men” directly. When they are subdued and made to “pass under the dominion and control of man,” at this very moment, when this act takes place, the conditions change, from social they become political, and the man, exercising his dominion and control over them, splits up into two types; one, a minority engaged in the acts of con trolling and dominating the conditions; the other, a majority dominated and controlled, henceforth, not directly by the “conditions of existence forming man's environment,” but directly by those men, formed into a social political aggregate, who are busy controlling and dominating those conditions, and indirectly by those conditions.

Man cannot control and dominate his “environment” unless he takes hold of it politically, or economically organizationally, and thus, juridically or circumstantially, dominates and controls other men besides himself who constitute that environment; and a stratification is immediately effected, a cleavage separating the controllers from those controlled by them.

But when an allegedly secular teaching reaches “this point”, it is futile to argue against it, to debate its validity. “This point” is altogether beyond limited, fallible, human reasoning. It belongs somewhere in the prohibited realm of revelation. And in this part Marxism as Marxianity represents a class-christology, and has nothing to do with social science. It is a Collective-Messianism. And the social revolution, as the culminating point of the long series of class-struggles, preached by Marxism, is not a revolution in the secular sense of the word, meaning a more or less accelerated process of evolution. It is decidedly a new start upon a new road achieved by the dialectical process. Marxianism does not envisage evolution as a straightforward, recti-linear process of development, a slow, gradual advancement sped up and quickened at intervals by revolutionary periods, leaps and bounds. Marxism considers a dialectical shuttling, a shifting from positive to negative, from thesis to anti-thesis, a process of making and breaking, doing and undoing, some kind of a mythical trans formation, conversion of objects and relations into their very opposites, a manipulation reminding somewhat the theological teaching about the sudden transmutation of sins into virtues by the magic touch of repentance.

According to the Marxian concept, each succeeding order of things does not represent a continuation, a prolongation coupled with complication, variation and involvement, of its antecedent, but is its diametrical contrariety, its contradiction. As if social “systems” were scientific concepts that ever so often clash and refute one another. As if the coming generation inheriting all the acquisitions and achievements of the preceding one is rebutting its predecessor, rejecting its parentage. With out taking recourse to dialectics, Marxism could hardly explain the passing from capitalism-a system it describes in the darkest colors as being chockful of “sin”, iniquity, oppression, exploitation, antagonisms, wars, prostitution, etc., to Communism that is supposed to be the sum total of good, a dove of peace and loving kindness, full of harmony and solidarity. Neither an evolutionary process, nor a revolutionary act could easily account for such a transition. And here dialectics offers its services, it is a continuation, a development, and yet an opposition, a full negation. So that a trained Marxian is neither an evolutionist, nor a plain revolutionist, he is a dialectical revolutionist and revolutionary.

But to be conscientious about it, even dialectics with its bag full of tricks, of thesising and anti-thesising, with its allowance of thaumatology, falls short when it comes to account for the promise of consummation, the Communist eschatology. For dialectics, according to Marx and Engels, is no modern agency, it has been operative, even before the class-struggle that made its appearance with recorded history, from the beginnings of times, and permeates whole of nature, physical nature, not only social. So that it was present and took an active part in the long chain of transitions and transformations gone through by our present society. And yet all it had managed to accomplish in days of yore was to call forth some modifications of the antagonistic forms of social life, and was absolutely unequal to the task of removing them altogether and changing them into their opposites of solidarity. This being the case, why should it now, while passing from capitalism to Communism, outdo itself and prove unusually efficacious. For such an unprecedented operation we would need a new factor, a new “force”. And wherefrom will come the new broom that shall sweep the community-floor clean from all dust and impurities of hatred, strife, antagonism, class-struggle? The Social Revolution, the way it is described by Marxianity, has something of the “advent” about it, and there is no accounting for it in an ordinary, natural way of reasoning. Marxian Leninists, other militants belonging to various schools of the same evangelist faith included, are not social revolutionists, but Social Adventists. They firmly believe that social nature is capable of overcoming its own nature and acting in a super-natural way, not as it behaved till now. They believe and teach that history is approaching its “finis”, and social relations will be rewoven after a new pattern, in a new fashion. Rationalism and solidarity are going to replace emotionalism and antagonism completely and for good.

“But the typical Socialist of Germany, France, England, and America, the man or woman who gives his or her energies to educating and organizing and disciplining the wonderful, world-wide army, ever growing, ever marching forward, undismayed by defeat, sure of ultimate victory, already thirty million strong the largest army under a single banner the world has ever seen-this typical work-a-day, militant Socialist does not look upon himself or herself as a patent medicine vendor, but as a John the Baptist proclaiming with no uncertain sound the advent (our italics) of a New Order.” (Robert Rives La Monte, Men Versus the Man, Correspondence Between La Monte and H. L. Mencken, p. 3.)

The parvenant class always shouts itself hoarse, vociferating, with the high tonalities of its apostles and the top-speeding pens of its scribes, about its sacred and exclusive “mission” to remedy all faults, straighten out all curves, rectify all bents in the highways and byways of the commonwealth. And it always proves that society and the evils contained therein have matured and are ready for the operation it is going to perform upon the body economic and politic, and that these days are “the last days”, and all the signs of time testify to that effect.

“If Socialist eschatology has forged for itself, in the domain of revolutionary romanticism, an appropriate lay symbolism, we find, also, that there is no lack of mythical and symbolical creations which link it up closely with Christian eschatology.

“Almost all the attempts to connect chronology with the hopes of the masses have a religious trend. Thanks to this principle, the various forms of Christian eschatology, from that of the early believers in Christ's second coming to the later chiliasts and millenarians, those who expected the end of the world in the year 1000, and so on, are closely connected with the chronology of the calendar.” (Henry de Man, The Psychology of Socialism, p. 145, New York.)

“The general picture of the millennial kingdom on earth includes such features as that the earth will be renewed. Men would be perfectly righteous and happy and would have numerous offspring. There would be no sorrow, no labor. The earth would produce abundantly, and a table would always be spread with food.... The present state of things (temporal, evil, corruption) is often contrasted with the future state (blissful, eternal, incorruptible). Hence arose the doctrine of two ages.... The end, completion, or consummation of the age, or the times, or of all things, is often referred to and confidently awaited....

“The Ebionites (Jerome, Com. on Is. 66, 20) and Montanists also cherished millennial views of an unspiritual kind. With the latter Christ was speedily to come and found an earthly Kingdom of the Saints... to be established at Peruza in Phrygia. Montanus wished to separate believers from all worldly affairs and so prepare them for the kingdom, by gathering them together in the region where Christ would have his seat.” (J. A. MacCulloch, art. “Eschatology” in Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics ed. by James Hastings, vol. V, pp. 381-88.)

The difference between the two kinds of eschatology,[3] the Christian and the Marxian, lies not so much in the nature of the expectance and the preparations made to meet the occasion, the imminent “advent”, the “coming”, as in the character of the “comer”, the Messiah. Christ as man, as son of God, is an individualist, a personality, and Christianity, therefore, is an individualist teaching, is concerned about man, his sorrows, tribulations and shortcomings, and these are more than mere social perplexities. There is such a fatality as sin that dogs the heels of man, a calamity such as sickness, a catastrophe as death, the humble state of humanhood, in general, the very fact of man being an animal and a social animal is a stigma, a disgrace for a son of God. He should have been neither animal nor social, but elevate himself to the status of a pure personality and thus leave far behind him all the foibles and imperfections or impurities that biological flesh and sociological body politic are heirs to. Marxianity preaches the gospel of the collective Messiah, the class-savior is an entity that is not biological, but exclusively sociological. That is why he is not afflicted with any of our biological infirmities : he does not age, he does not die, does not fall sick. Marxianity because of this peculiarity could not elaborate a “biological” redemption, like the over coming of death in future, immortality, and in the past, resurrection. A collective, a class, does not need it, is possessed of it, anyway. And the individual believer, the Marxian, what about him? He is submerged in the class, his consciousness is supposed to fuse with the class consciousness to self-forgetfulness.

“Man, who now for the first time becomes the real conscious master of Nature.” Not of biological nature, he does not after the advent, called Social Revolution, live forever and evermore, he does not rise above mortality. He drops only his animality, and that is sufficient. He “leaves the conditions of animal existence behind him and enters conditions which are purely human.” And even this overcoming of “animality” is effected in a very narrow sense-men, surely continue to eat, love and multiply, all these are animal functions being reduced to “social animality”, whatever that may be. And the conscious mastery over nature, promised by Engels, implies but mastery over social nature, physical nature being affected by it in a circuitous way and to a very slim extent.

So that, after all is said, the Marxian variety of Messianism is of a very much diluted vintage and is hardly satisfactory. It can make an appeal and offer some allurement only to individuals who are underdeveloped, who lack in self-assertion, who are deficient in ego consciousness, and feel themselves merged, to self-loss, self-obliteration, in their collective, in their class, and have no problems of their own that should demand an answer, an individual answer, an individual guarantee against the onslaught of inimical forces touching the personality as such.

Marxianism, those parts of it that are busy with the outlining of the blissful future allegedly following upon the close of the class-struggle period, is of a very crude make, when looked upon as a 'religious aspiration', for it harkens back to group-primitivity and socio-psychology antedating the rise of the individual and his self-determination, when taken as a ' scientific doctrine ', it is of still lower quality and coarser stuff, it cannot stand the slightest breath of sober analysis altogether. In short, Marxianism is a hybrid born of quasi-religion and pseudoscience.

8. Conclusion

“THE PROLETARIAT is the lowest stratum of our present society.” This is the rub. Just because slavery was situated in the subterranean regions of ancient community life therefore its abolition could by no means have signified the elimination of all contradictions inherent in the social order. To employ gospel imagery : the straining off of a camel is no safeguard against swallowing a gnat. The condemning and junking of the crude and rude forms of oppression do not indicate that its milder forms will, also, be done away with in the same process of reformatory reconstruction.

The working class, just because it is a groundling, must go about its business of self-liberation very care fully, and show a high degree of deliberation and level headedness, and not allow itself to be swept off its feet by the flourishes of the trumpets of angel Gabriel heralding in the coming of a new order of things social. Religion with its messianic tendencies cannot be mixed with social doctrine. Political aspirations and economic demands cannot be made an eschatological proposition with promises of full-measured salvation being at hand, with à millennium around the left corner coming as a sequence to class struggle. Not that the proletariat should oppose these all-too human and, therefore, divine cravings and longings, but leave them stay there where they have been staying for the last hundreds of years, since the Anabaptists' uprising of 1534, in the domain of poetic sublimity and holiness, ideal metaphysics and ideal psychology, and keep them out, at all costs, of politics and economics. Where shop should be talked, business trans acted in full realistic sobriety, there is no place for reveries, day-dreamings, ecstatic fits and prophetic visionarism. Marxianism mixes not only politics with economics, but politics and economics with religion, disciplines that civilization has long ago separated.

The working class must realize, if it wants to understand the social difficulties we are confronted with, that the breaking or easing of the yoke of private capital is by far not identical with the lifting of all social burdens and the solving of all social problems.

The working class must realize that if it intends to abolish classes in general it would have to fight on two planes, horizonally with the present ruling class, and vertically with the emerging class, and all this simultaneously and in a way that should bar the springing up of any kind of labor-leadership, which contains the embryos of high class formation. And it would have not only to fight, but to be victorious. And this is an utter impossibility, a utopia of the purest water. A labor-movement without leadership would be absolutely impotent. A labor-movement with leadership, well trained and well disciplined, constitutes a socially stratified formation, for either labor borrows its leadership, as far as the individuals, the personnel is concerned, from other higher classes, like the case is with Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc., or it raises its own leadership, as far as individuals are concerned, for instance, the prominent figures of the British labor, trade-unions and party-crystallizing them and bringing them up, gradually separating them from itself, and forming them into a higher class.

It is high time the workers comprehended that they are clapped in three pairs of shackles and that the snapping of one brace of manacles not only does not herald their complete liberation – an obvious outright absurdity, which is the basic credo of Marxianity and serves as cornerstone for the Marxian Temple of Labor redemption-but that the very act of snapping the first brace of manacles is achieved by combined forces, of labor and the organizers of labor, which means by the working class and a new ruling class. These two classes are at the present time allied, united, fraternized, but by no means identical, and they will part company right after the act of “snapping” is carried out more or less successfully.

A tripled cordon made of finance, political authority and social organization guard and bar the entrance into the garden of the imaginary social Eden and block the way leading to the imaginary tree of social life....

II. MARXISM-VULGAR OR PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC

1. Numbers

“Because it is impossible to emerge from a society in which one class oppresses another except by establishing the dictatorship of the oppressed class. Because the proletariat alone is able to conquer the bourgeoisie and overthrow it, for it is the only class that is united and ' schooled ' by capital ism....” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 222.)

“The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their involuntary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 43-44.) Marx's thesis on the gradual increase of the forces of the proletariat and their eventual overwhelming those of the bourgeoisie courts a critical interpretation.

The growth of capitalism, according to Marxian concept, leads in the long run to its decay and downfall. The concentration of capital inevitably causes a diminution in the numbers of the capitalists engaged in industry, commerce or banking, on the one hand, and brings about an intensification and extensification of the continuous process of proletarianization of the impoverished masses, on the other hand.

The question now arises whether dominance, in the economic or political field, is virtually conditioned by or connected with a preponderance in numbers. History teaches us the great truth, at first sight bewildering and even repelling, that it is always the minority that rules, governs and controls all things social, economic enterprises, political affairs, and cultural achievements. And the minority manages to do it not despite the fact of its being small numerically, but right down due to this very condition which is a sine qua non for mastership as well as excellence.

“The sovereign body is always the less numerous. But numerical inferiority is supplemented by mental superiority and greater military discipline.” (Ludwig Gumplovitcz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 116, Philadelphia, 1899.)

“The sovereignty is always exercised by a minority organized control of the minority over the majority.” (Ibid. p. 118.)

“Minority... possesses the instincts of statesmanship and represents the rest of the nation in the struggle of history... It is always a definite minority that represents the world historical tendency of a state; and within that, again, it is a more or less self-contained minority that in virtue of its aptitudes... actually holds the reins.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. II, pp. 369-70, New York, 1932.)

And the reason for this political paradox, or absurdity, is easy to grasp. The smaller the social grouping the more facilities it commands for effecting its own unification. It has less centrifugal forces to hem around, less friction to overcome, less resistance to subdue, less contrasting ambitions to rein in.

“It is much easier to organize things on a small than on a large scale. Hence, in particular, little communities may be quite effectively organized for their limited purposes. As the community grows, a much higher technique is required to secure any effective cooperation.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Social Development, pp. 33-34, New York, 1924.)

The same concerning the nucleus, the commanding staff of a political, economic, or military character, within the community. Leaning upon its inner stalwart cementation, strong cohesiveness, the minority manages to take hold of the affairs of society. It is, ordinarily, successful in bending to its crystallized will the majority of the community. The latter, not being coordinated, usually, in the nature of things, clash and thus neutralize one another, and sometimes reduce, in such a fashion of unintentional balance and counter-balance, their common power to the very zero point. The minority either scares the majority into a state of undemurring obedience, or, still better, crushes it, in single, sporadic combats with small portions thereof, into pulp of utter submission, spineless self-abnegation. Rulership is seldom, if ever, for that matter, based on mere quantity. It is quality, of a negative or positive character, that it looks for.

Returning to the subject under consideration. Does it really matter so much that the capitalists become, in the process of evolution of the industrial system, fewer, and the laborers, reversely, larger in bulk and size? The money-men will be few and far between, but to offset their numerical insignificance, they will grow big of power, in monopolistic grandeur. With their drop in numbers, they are sure to register an ascent in opulence, in economic and political weight, through the very fact of their having amassed a greater amount of riches which is being distributed, in large quantities, within a constantly becoming smaller circle. Capital growing centralized grows stronger and along with it the class of capitalists is being elevated to high, dizzy altitudes of unprecedented glory, magnificence, and munificence which shall express itself in distributing small shares of wealth among constantly growing larger and wider circles, a luxury of “bountifulness” it can easily afford.

The bourgeoisie and the proletariat, let us say, are two knights engaged in a joust. Capital got the better of Labor at the dawn of the industrial era, bested it, brought it down to the ground. And we witness now, at noontide of industrialism, as the sun, the golden yellow sun, displays its blinding splendor, the same situation, Labor prostrate before Capital.

How is the drastic change bound to come about in the evening? Where are the new forces that are ready to rally to Labor's succor? Wherefrom are the reinforcements to be drawn and rushed to the tilt in order to turn the course of the tournament-taking place be tween these two classes-from continuous defeat for labor to its sudden victory? Where are we to procure the novel make-weight to be thrown into the scales of fortune and tip them in favor of Labor?

“In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed, a class of laborers who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 37.)

With the further development of capitalism the proportional relation, concerning their economic strength, not physical, existing between the two “combatants”, rather, factors, participants of one process, either remains static, or else its social center of economic and political gravitation slides, slowly but surely and constantly, toward capital.

The ranks of the proletarians swell, the size of the battalions of those engaged directly in the productive process bulges, inflates, while the figure of the financier grows slimmer and lankier.

“The proletariat grows concomitantly with the bourgeoisie. Under the identical circumstances wherein the bourgeoisie gains wealth, the proletariat gains in numbers. Since proletarians can only be employed where capital is available and since capital can only increase when it employs labor, the growth of the proletariat must go hand in hand with the growth of capital.” (F. Engels, Principles of Communism, Appendix F, Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels with an Intr. and Expl. Notes by D. Ryazanov, pp. 325-26, New York, International Publ.)

Reality with its tabled data in the form of employment statistics does not bear out these prognostications of Engels. And he knew it very well, and said so explicitly.

“But the perfecting of machinery means rendering human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery meant the displacement of millions of hand workers by a few machine-workers, the improvement of machinery means the displacement of larger and larger numbers of the machine workers themselves, and ultimately the creation of a mass of available wage workers exceeding the average requirements of capital for labor-a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it as long ago as 1845-a reserve that would be available at periods when industry was working at high pressure, that would be thrown out into the streets by the crash inevitably following the boom.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 307-08.)

The seeming contradiction between these two statements of Engels can easily be composed: Proletarization with Engels means converting large masses of independent laborers, artisans or ex-shopkeepers into proletarians seeking employment as hired men, though virtually employed only at intervals, part of the time or at boom periods. Our understanding of the role of the machine is somewhat different. To our lights, and it is proven by figures, the ripening of capitalism does not keep an even pace with the process of converting free men into wage-earners. It does not convert them altogether. It cannot absorb them even at boom times. The unemployed, a large portion of them, are no reserve army, for they are never mobilized, never recruited.

“The absolute decrease of the demand for labor necessarily following therefrom will naturally be so much greater, the more these capitals going through the process of rejuvenation have become accumulated in masses by means of the movement of centralization. On the one hand, therefore, the additional capital formed in the course of accumulation attracts fewer and fewer laborers in proportion to its magnitude. On the other hand, the old capital periodically reproduced with change of composition, repels more and more of the laborers formerly employed by it.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 689.)

The labor saving devices, a straight result of the highly complimented concentration of capital, perceptibly reduce the numerical strength of the cohorts of the proletarians. The proletariat does not grow in numbers any longer. And if measures would not be taken in a drastic way to shorten the hours of labor, it would have been shrinking quite noticeably.

2. Association and Associators

Besides numbers the proletariat evinces strength, according to Marx, due to another factor, namely, concentration and organization.

“But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in numbers; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more... The collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trades ' Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision before hand for these occasional revolts.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 39-40.)

The sentence “Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations against the bourgeois” is misleading in more than in one way. It is deficient in precision and in comprehension of the phenomenon. The combination of the workers does not face the single bourgeois, but the no less fortified positions of the combination of the bourgeoisie.

“The workers to-day are confronted not by individual employers, but by huge combinations of employers, great in financial resources, perfectly organized and in every way well equipped for whatever contingency may arise.” (Tom Swan, Fraternity and Evolution, p. 55, London, 1926.)

“Every improvement in the organization of labor is answered with an improvement in the organization of capital.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class-Struggle, p. 200.)

Trade unions clash with associations of bosses, of manufacturers. Marx, alluding in the quoted phrase to the proletariat as a unified force and treating the bourgeoisie as something sociologically amorphous, tries, may be unwillingly, unintentionally, to create in the mind of the reader a false impression, that the problems confronting the workers are easy of solution, and the victories are easy of attainment. There is nothing so harmful as the overestimation of one force and the underestimation of the power opposing it.

Further, “the collisions... take more and more the character of collisions between two classes.” Two classes one situated above the other cannot clash unless there is a third class in the middle, between the two. A low, subordinated class does not rise against its commanding class, unless it is led into battle by an emerging commanding class of a higher order than that of the present ruling one. History does not go backward into the future.

Marx does not, or, rather, as the ideologist of the politico-economic variety of organisateurs, does not want, for it does not pay him historically, from his own class-standpoint, to notice that the “strength” of the proletariat indicated by him is not as “strong” as he would like us to believe. It contains an element of weakness. For that additional strength that comes with concentration and association, though it serves as if the cause of labor, assisting the laborer in his struggle for higher wages and shorter hours against his “archenemy,” the bourgeoisie, is ultimately directed against labor even more than against capital. That strength which is generated by organization is not proletarian strength. It belongs to those elements that organize labor. First the laborers are organized purely industrially by the capitalists, by the “bosses”. Having them organized industrially, they appropriate the products produced by them. Now, an additional force enters and modifies the inter relationships existing between labor and capital. True, labor grows stronger. In other words, the laborers produce a surplus of force above that they were capable of producing while being unorganized into associations. This “surplus” of strength which is registered in their proportional weight against the bourgeoisie, not unlike the economic surplus product, does not go to labor, it is appropriated by their organisateurs. And as labor and organization of labor did not coincide in the first move, when labor was involuntarily cooperated by capital, so now, when labor is being organized semi-politically trade unionally, politico-professionally, labor and organization are two different entities, two different social formations. Capital is the expression of the economo-industrial embodiment of organization, and the capitalist is its living representative. The organisateur, the organizer of labor is the representative of the complication of the process, namely the politico-industrial combination of the laborers. These two formations, labor and organization of labor, are in a relation of domination and subordination, it is a connection built between higher and lower, it is a stratification, a gradation. And in the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie a combination of two classes is to be seen, an alliance against the third. The bourgeoisie is attacked by two forces, one situated above it, the politico-economic variety of the type of organisateurs, and one placed beneath it, and that is the working class.

“It is also confirmed by the whole science of political economy, by the whole content of Marxism, which explains that under any system of commodity production the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is economically inevitable and that nothing can take the place of the latter except the class that is developed, multiplied, organized and consolidated by the very development of capitalism, viz., the proletarian class.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 230.)

“They club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations.”

Each association when it is permanent segregates “associators.” These associators by the very nature of their activity and position are situated above plain labor, for they must control it, they must lead it, in a word, they must head it, and thus form a sociological super structure erected upon the foundations of labor and laborers. The founding of an association requires initiative, daring, understanding even for the mere act of execution, running it, keeping it up, the more so, for ' inventing ' it, introducing it for the first time in opposition to the bosses, the economic organisateurs who resent the interference of an heterogeneous body, and look upon the trade-unionists either as rebels or interlopers, busy-bodies, and offer resistance, and, sometimes, even persecute and prosecute the organizers of the trade unions and discriminate against its membership. All this must be overpowered, and the “overpowerers” rate above the average worker energetically, intellectually, “characterally,”and in time they are to form a higher class ranking above labor. Nothing can stop these tendencies from asserting themselves in spite of all opposition.

Marx while reasoning on this subject of organization of labor effected either purely economically, by the bosses, or semi-politically, by the organizers, shows himself either as one who is naive, when we take his statements as they were made by him personally sincerely, or as one who is altogether malignantly cunning, when we take his statements as a part of a strategy, or conspiracy of an emerging master-class, and look upon him as its unconscious spokesman.

The proletariat being “unorganized” politico-economically, on a trade-union scale, but “organized” exclusively within the factory and purely economically in the production process through division of labor and its functions, is “bossed” by the capitalists, being organized industrially, professionally in a trade union, is “bossed” by the organizers of the union. And with the growth of that organizational institution, the “syndicate” or Labor-party, with its capture of power, seizure of industry, as the case was in Russia, the worker is transferred from the jurisdiction, sway and domination of the purely economic boss to that of the politico-economic boss. And so long as the tug-of-war between these two “masters” is going on, and this is an historical affair and quite protracted in some countries, both will try their best to ingratiate themselves with the laboring masses.

The capitalist all he does, after some half-hearted resistance, is give in, make concessions to his employees, hire lings. A great many strikes lead to agreements that meet more than halfway the demands of labor. Capital is yielding, retreating all the time along the whole frontal line. And as regards the labor-lord, it goes without saying, to the utmost of his ability and resources of skill he furthers the interests of the workers, that are entrusted to him. He conducts their class-struggles, he manages their peace-affairs, he settles their quarrels, he composes their differences. And all this is done by him with a considerable amount of sincere devotion to the cause of labor. But this idyl of unselfishness will not outlast the period of war raging between the two clashing forces, two varieties of labor-lordship, a war the prize of which is undivided mastery and full sway over the proletarian. And no sooner is the victory won, and one “master” remains to run the economic affairs, than the worker is treated as a slave. The new boss, fearing no rivals, finding himself monopolistically autocratically situated, exploits the workers no less than the old one, when the latter being confronted with dangerous competitors fully realized his precarious situation, but more so. And that is what actually happened in Soviet Russia.

“Moreover, no way has been discovered to prevent the organization of workers around the instrument of production. On the contrary, given the machine, organization around that machine becomes imperative; it is practically automatic and cannot be avoided... Thus arises what may be termed an organization intelligence which is well able to grasp the mechanism and the extent of the machine process as are the capitalists themselves.

This development grows ever more rapidly, so that the proletariat of to-day, at least in the persons of its most active members, who may be called the thinking apparatus of the organization, is gaining a breadth of view commensurate with the scope of the machine process itself.” (Austin Lewis, Militant Proletariat, pp. 94-95, Chicago, 1911.)

About the automatic “character” of the organization, it is sufficient to mention the fact that there are paid staffs of organizers. Things done automatically do not require such effort, so much propaganda, force and violence against the so called “scabs” and so much persuasion coupled with rough or mild intimidation of a moral and physical nature against the bulk of labor, the indifferentism of the workers at large. The “organization intelligence” is not a spirit, it is embodied in persons who combined constitute the nucleus of an emerging class, and their grasp of the mechanism must exceed that of “the capitalists themselves,” for that amount of intelligence possessed by the capitalists would suffice to run industry only along the same lines of “anarchy of production,” and not otherwise. But the organisateurs are intending to have it “organized” and managed on a national scale, have it transformed into a political concern.

“For the party of the proletariat and its vanguard have no experience of independent work in organizing giant enterprises which serve the needs of scores of millions of people.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 375.)

True, the proletariat has no experience either of an economo-organizational or politico-organizational character, but this cannot be said of the “party of the proletariat”, it has plenty of experience gained by it in the process of organizing the proletariat, creating a mass movement. And this experience, though of a politico organizational character, it turns to good account, it utilizes it to its full, while transforming the economic gigantic enterprises into colossal political concerns.

“The most active members, who may be called the thinking apparatus of the organization,” all these expressions are calculated to cover a stubborn fact of labor reality and of social life in general, and that is that a process of segregation sets in, a new stratification develops, a new layer is emerging.

“The point is to test their sincerity, to compare their words with their deeds, not to be satisfied with idealistic or charlatan phrases, but to get down to class reality.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. VII, p. 172.)

A very good advice. We take it.

And the class reality is the fact of the emergence of a new class, no phraseology can cover it, disguise it.

3. Natural Non-Selection.

“Along with the constantly diminishing magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. (Karl Marx, Capital vol. I, pp. 836-37.)

Well and good, the capitalists sustain heavy losses in their numbers. They grow weak quantitatively, but, therefore, do they wax strong qualitatively. The process of survival of the fittest and fattest exhibits its tendencies in all their naked and merciless efficacy. Competition, natural selection in the field of economics, weeds out those human plants who are not acquisitive, aggressive enough to get, grab all the sunshine, all the dew, rain, soil-nourishment for themselves, to the exclusion of their rivals. Capital grows more complex, more intensive, and because of that the capitalists gain in vigor.

While the proletariat is being driven by the industrial process in the very opposite direction. It gains in magnitude, in mere bulk, but not in selectivity, refinement, intensivity. Its numerical increment is a sheer accrue, and not a result of a purposive act, of cultivation, culturization or fosterage. It is not a case of picking out the best, the choicest specimens, assorting them by grades and rates, separating the sheep from the goats…

“Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians had lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, the most monotonous and most easily acquired knack that is required of him.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, pp. 37-38.)

So that labor's qualifications, standards of virtuosity, skill and dexterity are lowered, and the laborers along with the drop in their standards are pressed down, lose in their expertness and deftness.

“Already in the days of the first division of labor on an extended scale, in the days when town and countryside became divorced from one another, the rural population was condemned to long centuries of mental torpor, while the town workers were condemned to be enslaved each by his special occupation With the division of labor, man himself became a divided being

.. This crippling of men's capacities increases concomitantly with the growth of the division of labor which finds its highest development in manufacture.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 314-15.)

“The independent peasant or handicraftsman develops knowledge, insight and will, even though it be only to a moderate extent. The savage exercises all the arts of war as manifestations of personal cunning. Under the manufacturing system, these faculties are now needed only by the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production is amplified in one direction because it disappears in numerous other directions, what the detail workers lose, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. As a result of the manufacturing division of labor, the worker is confronted by the intellectual powers of the material process of production, whose property, whose slave, he has become. This process begins in simple cooperation, in which the capitalist, as against the individual workers, represents the unity and the will of the associated working organism. It goes further still in manufacturing, which cripples the workers by making them into detail workers.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 382.)

Marx and Engels worked out an impoverishment theory, a doctrine about the pauperization of the proletarian, covering both spheres, that of economics, material culture, and that of psychology, intellectual culture. The workers are all the time on the glissade.

“The modern laborer... instead of rising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. is unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under the bourgeoisie.” (Communist Manifesto, p. 43.)

And these “paupers,” the starving workers, who sink deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of their own class, these good for nothing, who, instead of feeding society and fulfilling their function of direct producers, are fed by society, which, according to Marx, is incapable of producing anything and is wholly dependent on labor and its productive capacities, its surplus-value, in order to make its both ends meet,-in a word, these beggars whom the labor-saving devices made superfluous by having them crowded out of their trades, are going to become, due to a sudden change, the rulers of society, the dominating class... And how is this supernatural metamorphosis, from beggars to bosses, from tatters to purple and throne, going to take place, in a natural way? The omnipotence, revolution, is certain to intervene in their behalf. Providence is about to transform their ruin into rulership.

"... Civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.” (Ibid.)

Pauperism does not lead, as it is supposed, in an ordinary way, to do, to degredation, degeneration, but to regeneration and triumph... Sable instead of sack clothes... And these stupefied and “crippled” workers, these “degenerates” regenerates will replace the bourgoisie in the latter's capacity of high-skilled directors of the industrial and commercial processes, and manage success fully, by far excelling the bunglers, the capitalists, the “anarchists of production,” in systematization, coordination, harmonization of supply and demands, the affairs of our economics on a planned basis, on a national scale. And all this will be accomplished by the over throw of the old regime, a magic that will rejuvenate, intellectualize, culturize, and lift up the low masses and place them on the pinnacles of glory and achievement! And the crippled and maimed will become whole and hale! Credo quia absurdum esto!

It is social messianism of the purest water!

Furthermore, according to Marx, society makes of the working class some kind of a dumping ground. All those broken and vanquished on the battlefield of economic enterprise, shipwrecked on their voyage amid the stormy sea of speculation, all failures, all flops, culls and discards, economic invalids and business cripples flock to the proletariat and are welcomed into its ranks.

“The lower strata of the middle class the small trades people, shop-keepers and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which modern industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 39.)

“The working class is likewise swelled by persons drawn from the higher strata of society. Numerous petty industrials and lesser recipients of unearned income find their way into the ranks of the proletariat, and side by side with the workers, offer their hands for sale in the labor market... The small scale factory owners who are... qualifying for entry into the proletarian army.” (Karl Marx, Wage-labor and Capital, Essentials of Marx, p. iii, New York, 1926.)

By one and the same canvass belonging to the brushmanship of one and the same painter we are being treated to the sight of two entirely different scenes presenting the same identical hero in two contradicting one another roles.

One depicts the proletariat as a conglomerate constituted of heterogeneous elements, loosely held together, but mostly made up of derelicts, maimed and lamed, overrun and crushed by the wheels of the juggernaut of high finance, flattened out, bruised and broken by the merciless blows of the sledge hammers of cruel economic competition. The other portrays the proletariat as an impregnable tower of strength, bristling with courage, bubbling over with audacity, breathing with inflexible will to power, bursting with challenge and hurling defiance at its exploiters in full and unshakable confidence in the final and decisive victory over its class-enemies that it is about to score in the very near future.

Two armies, in full war formation, are arrayed, confronting one another, the decimated battalions of the capitalists are pitted against the multitudes of the militant workers.

“To bring the rest of mankind into alignment with some symmetry, as though they, too, are magnitudes of the same order, prepared to march with automatic step against a bourgeoisie which they are to annihilate by sheer weight of numbers for victory belongs to the big battalions to imagine two armies in perfect alignment and perfect order, one of which, continually adding to its recruits, crushes the other with its weight, all this is merely the conception of a Prussian corporal.” (Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies, pp. 132-33, New York, 1910.)

We fully agree with Guyot that the Marxian concept of sociology is quite militaristic, meaning civil militaristic, and, consequently, crudely schematic. Life does not become simpler, but grows more and more complicated. The more so, that social life is yet all too young to wax sterile, it is still teeming, now as ever, with new forces, new possibilities, new unexpected contingencies. And classes split up, and give birth to new formations, and those that stay more or less “static” fissure intern ally, calling forth new subdivisions. The proletariat is not monolithic, neither is the bourgeoisie, nor any social aggregate, for that matter, and the higher layers of a low class come very near the low layers of a higher class, they fraternize, and even migrate from one camp into another.

“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, how ever, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 31.)

Our epoch could not have simplified the antagonisms unless it had beforehand simplified the class formation and the class-interrelationship, a thing it could not accomplish without being aided by a process of decomposition. Normally the course runs from the simple to the complicated. But in spite of all its distortions let us accept the Marxian picture of society.

“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (Ibid.)

Were we to apply to this struggle, the prize of which is our national economy, a democratically ethical criterion, based upon the cardinal principle, the validity of which is above questionableness in the realm of mathematics, of the whole being always preferable to its part, then the issue of the struggle would be a matter of a foregone conclusion and the path of duty would be lying before us clearly marked off, and we could tread it without any hesitation whatsoever. The proletarians, being many, are right, the capitalists, being few who oppose the many, are wrong; the proletarians, being many, are strong, the capitalists, being few, are weak. And who would care to fight for a cause that has neither moral support nor physical backing? And it would not have taken any too much courage and moral fortitude on the part of any one to espouse the cause of those who are sure winners, for right and might, con science and muscle-power are siding with them. According to the Marxian concept, the overwhelming majority of the nation will be, sooner or later, included in the ranks of the proletariat that fights not its own egotistic battle, but that of humanity and progress.

But the problem before us is not a moral one. Still more so that Marx and Engels ridicule the moralists, the Utopians who were busy preaching justice and trying to establish a just order.

“They wish to establish the kingdom of reason and eternal justice... To all these Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and needs only to be discovered to conquer the world by virtue of its own power.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, pp. 25-26.)

“What you think just or equitable is out of question. The question is : What is necessary and unavoidable with the given system of production.” (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Essentials of Marx, p. 146.)

Marx claims to be, first of all and last of all, an economist, an objective investigator of the capitalist mode of production and the tendencies inherent therein, and, in addition to it, a hard-boiled materialist who believes that the productive forces are the all in all in social life, and the juridical concepts and ethical notions are mere “ideas,” shadowy reflections in the brain of man, that are more or less in correspondence with the economic actualities. This being the case, all we have to do in order to gain a proper understanding of the trends of our times and be thus in a position to adumbrate the course the future of economics is going to take, is not to consult a textbook on morals, nor one on strategy and military science, but to take a good look at our industry and see which of the two claimants, if one of them and not a third party, is entitled, – not morally, according to the idealistic notions of right and wrong, or according to the dictates of the absolute imperative, and not physicaly, for it is not a militaristic affair, not numerically, for it is no voting, no election proposition, but socially and technically, – to run our industry and manage the distribution of its products in a more or less satisfactory way. The decision rests with our industry as such. And its verdict is the verdict of history, and irrevocable. There is no higher court of appeals, according to the Marxian concept.

Upon reaching this point, we are impelled, upon the basis of Marx's own premises, to arrive at the disillusioning conclusion that the bigger our industry grows, the wider its scope waxes, the larger its scale expands, the less chance there is for the working class, — not for those who organize the working class, to take hold of it and conduct its affairs. The higher rises the level of productivity and complexity in our national economy the farther it is being removed from the grasp and grip of the proletariat, from its ability to comprehend its involved processes, the less opportunity our economy offers to the worker to orientate himself both as concerning its ramified particularizations and practices so its all encompassing generalizations and theoretic implications.

The bare fact that the workers are crowded, congested in the plants, means very little. Their concentration was not of their own choosing. It is a case of involuntary cooperation, not unlike that of an army based on compulsory military service... And the bene fits thereof do not accrue to them. Their amassment presupposes an “amasseur,”and it fortifies therefore not their position, but that of their “boss,” the class that concentrates them. For along with it, the bringing and keeping the workers together, the billeting them in one industrial barracks, goes the complication of the manipulations involved in the process of production and distribution.

“Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither the one nor the other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia.” (Karl Kautsky, Neue Zeit, 1901-02, XX, I, No. 3, p. 79.)

Lenin endorses this statement:

“Profoundly true and important utterance by Karl Kautsky.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 61. Marx Engels-Lenin Institute. Moscow.)

The proletarians are absolutely in no position to seize our industry and manage it without the guidance and direction of another class which is situated above them, which leads them, directs them, rules them. Thus it is a question of a choice between two masters, choosing the better one, but not of getting rid of masters altogether, and, henceforth, to go scotfree, masterless...

4. Large-Scale Production.

“Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into factories, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants.” (Communist Manifesto, p. 38.)

“The workers are advancing towards socialism through the capitalist management of trusts, through gigantic machine industry, through enterprises having a turnover of several mil lions per annum-only through such a system of production and such enterprises.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 374.)

“Socialism is impossible unless it makes use of the achievements of the technique and culture created by large-scale capitalism.” (Ibid, p. 375.)

The smaller the scale of production, the more primitive the means of distribution, the closer their resemblance to the artisan's methods of work and management, the easier it would be for the workers to master them and take possession of our industry. It, the working class, could then control production, industry and commerce, with its own forces, though limited, but adequate enough to handle miniaturized, simplified, de composed industrial concerns, and, consequently, could dispense entirely with the “hierarchy of officers and sergeants,” a fungus that grew up upon the “unhealthy” soil of modern large scale industry. And the fact is that when industry was in its childhood, in the phase of handicraft, it actually belonged to the “workers,” to the direct producers, who worked separately, individually or in small combinations of guilds. They were not recruited, were not pressed into an industrial army. They did not place above them drill sergeants, over seers, managers, and the like “parasites”. But our industry matured, came of age, grew larger and more complicate, and in such a way it grew out of the individual or small group control and private possession of the workers. And how is it now to be reshaped and remodeled in order to be able to return to the control, possession of the workers, unless it is dismembered, simplified, decomposed. But Marxism stands for the very opposite policy, namely, the enlargement of the size, and the complication of the processes. It advocates the nationalization of industry and commerce, socialization of the means of production and distribution. And if our small-scale industry, controlled by the bourgeoisie, we design it as small-scale for in comparison with the gigantic scale advocated by the Marxians it is surely dwarfish, was already beyond the control, capacity to control, of the ordinary worker who was unable to take care of it, the more so the colossal scale industry planned by the Communists.

“… It is obvious that large scale farming always gives rise to a distribution which is quite different from that of small-scale farming; that large-scale agriculture presupposes or creates a class-antagonism slave-owners and slaves, feudal lords and serfs, capitalist and wage-workers while small scale agriculture does not necessarily involve class-differences between the individuals engaged in agricultural production.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 168.)

The same holds true concerning industry in general: the larger the scale, the more complicated the processes involved, the more stratification it presupposes, and with it come class-antagonisms, friction, “exploitation.” All this is inevitable. Physical division of labor calls forth a sociological division of functions. Communism championing large-scale industry, planned economy, must pre mise the existence of a commanding class that will take care of our nationalized industry. For the individual worker, surely, cannot do it. Only the “association of the workers,” or the workers as a class would be able, willing and ready to manage the affairs of production and distribution. But the whole association as such, again, is unable to do it, only the “associators” will be equal to the task, in other words, those who will manage, organize the workers, will manage, organize, and plan our industry. But no class is expected to do something for nothing, to discharge duties without being remunerated for its labors. And, no doubt, history and class nature warrant it, a commanding class is never naive or idealistic enough to “serve” for the mere pleasure it derives from “service”... The new Communist bosses may run our industry not on the basis of property, for if it be enlarged to encompass the political unit, to encircle the national territory, it may be treated as a political concern, and the same methods that are employed in the sphere of political activities would be applied in the sphere of economic endeavors. But this circumstance should not weaken the class-character of the commanding top, but, on the contrary, intensify it, put it in bolder relief.

The process of evolution does not bring industry, its management and control, nearer unto the workers, but, the very reverse, removes it, the further the more, from the workers, the manual participants of its low processes. And there is not a scheme, no matter how ingenious, that could show a way how to bring them together, how to cut out the distance lying between labor and capital, a distance that keeps on all the time growing, expanding.

Wealth concentrates in the sense that its units as functional mechanisms grow bigger and better. Indus trial capital converts into high finance. Production reaches its height of intricacy, of complicatedness. The market assumes a cosmopolitan character, being spread all over the civilized and semi-civilized world.

“The world market forms itself the basis of this mode of production. On the other hand, the imminent necessity of this production to produce on an even enlarged scale tends to extend the world market continually.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 392.)

“The sudden expansion of the world market, the multiplication of the circulating commodities, the zeal displayed among the European nations in the race after the products of Asia and the treasures of America, the colonial system, materially contributed toward the destruction of the feudal barriers of production.” (Ibid. p. 391.)

Capitalism has long ago created a world market. In proportion as the export of capital increases, and as foreign and colonial relations extend on every side, things tend “naturally” towards an international agreement among these associations and toward the formation of international cartels. This is a new degree of world concentration of capital, and production, infinitely higher than any predecessor.” (Nikolai Lenin, Imperialism, p. 52, New York, 1926.)

“While capitalist concentration in the national market leads to the super-trust, it leads, on the other hand, to inter national trusts. This, too, is a necessary development. First of all, the national trusts strive with each other to capture their own markets, and the world market. The struggle is carried on by means of dumping, or selling at a loss in order to snatch away customers from each other; until, at last, the point is reached when they decide to abandon this ruinous strife and to share the world market.” (Edgard Milhaud, The March Toward Socialism , tr. H. J. Stenning, p. 144, London, 1920.)

"It has been said that electricity has given the world a common nervous system. Nations are knitted together by the radio, cable, telegraph and telephone in a way that was undreamt - of a century ago. Moreover, rail and ocean shipping make it possible to exchange goods rapidly and cheaply between countries. In a word, modern methods of communication and transportation have made the world smaller . . . This may be seen by observing the constant growth of imports and exports of the world nations since 1850. At the present time (1930) the combined value of world trade is over 65 billion dollars a year. U. S. Department of Commerce, Commerce Year Book, 1928, vol. II, p. 735. " (Francis Haas, Man and Society, pp . 408-09, London, New York, 1930.)

The balancing of import and export becomes an operation subtle far beyond the understanding of the usual business man and his single firm, and trusts are a usual phenomenon of our economic life . New mergers crop up daily. The State as the most powerful and gigantic combine is being called upon, by some elements who are politically, may be quite a bit too much politically, minded, - to take care of, to watch over, our economic affairs, much to the delight of the Marxians. In the face of all these tendencies and facts, how can one , if he be neither a man's fool, nor a social - nature faker, suppose that we have reached a point in our industrial development, when and where the only course prescribed for us is to hand over the management and control of our industry to the working class. How can one honestly and sincerely believe that the laboring class, in all its simple - mindedness, narrowness of view and outlook, ignorance and backwardness, is the only class, in our present society, that is appointed by history to handle our economy, conduct our business on a large scale, on a planned basis, adequately. Furthermore, after the industry has been still more enlarged through nationalization and complete concentration, in strict obedience to the Marxian program and project.

“The economic quintessence of socialistic programme. is as follows: To replace the system of private capital by a system of collective capital, that is, by a method of production which would introduce a unified organization of national labor, on the basis of collective and common ownership of the means of production.” (Prof. A. Schaeffle, Quintessence of Socialism, p. 8, The Humboldt Library, March 25, 1880.)

“Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist technique based on the last word of modern science; it is inconceivable without planned state organization which subjects tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a single standard in production and distribution.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 365.)

“Socialism is nothing but the next step forward after state capitalist monopoly... State monopoly capitalism is the fullest material preparation for socialism, it is its threshold, it is that rung on the historical ladder between which and the rung called socialism there are no intervening rungs.” (Ibid, p. 367.)

Private capital presupposed private capitalists, collective capital, all the more, presupposes collective capitalists, or, rather, collectivizers. For this transformation demands effort. The replacing of one system by another would not come about by itself, in a natural way, effected by inner forces. A system of things social has systematizers back of it, and a change of the system means a change in the personnel of the systematizers, the representatives of the system. An organization has organizers, a unified organization presupposes the existence of unified, hierarchysized, organizers.

“I think we shall come nearest to the essence of socialism by defining it as the advocacy of communal ownership of land and capital.” (Bertrand Russel, Proposed Roads to Freedom, p. 1, New York, Blue Ribbon Book Publ.)

“All the various schools of Socialist thought, Collectivist, Communist, Guild Socialist, Syndicalist set out to provide a basis for economic equality on the principle, not of the general diffusion and distribution, but of the concentration of social ownership of the means of production.” (G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory, p. 152, London, 1920.)

Even private ownership of the means of production upon reaching the phase of manufacture could not function without the segregation of a special class taking care of the means of production. Social ownership will, surely, have as its precondition, as its indispensable preliminary, the crystallization of a special class to take care of the socially owned and socially operated means of production.

“Socialism is a system of industrial and social organization where the common needs of individuals will be supplied by the organized co-operative efforts of society.” (Philip Snowden, What is Socialism? A Symposium ed. by Dan Griffiths, pp. 69-70.)

“The Socialist program advocates a reorganization of the existing industrial system on the basis of collective or national ownership of the social tools. It demands that the control of the machinery of wealth creation be taken from individual capitalists and placed in the hands of the nation, to be organized and operated for the benefit of the whole people.” (Morris Hilquit in “Everybodys”, October, 1913, p. 487, quoted from Joseph J. Mereto, The Red Conspiracy, p. 81, New York, 1920.)

Nothing can be done within the confines of society without individuals doing it, and the individuals, the “doers” constitute a special class occupying a specific position determined by its function in the given community. The individual's needs must be supplied. But supply is not automotive or automobile, it requires “suppliers”. Under capitalism they are merchants, wholesalers and retailers. Under Communism they, surely, will be called by another name, but this would not make them give up their existence as a special class, on the very contrary, their function rising in significance, in complication, will raise along with it its functionary. There is no co-operative without co-operators, as there is no operation without operators. Control of wealth creation cannot be accomplishtd without controlleurs. We can place nothing in the “hands” of the nation for the simple reason that the “nation” has not got any hands for holding economic objects. These hands must be made.” “Organs” must be shaped. For their shaping we need shapers, thus, not only the the collective “hands” will occupy a special position in the body economic and politic, but above them will be placed the “social hand-makers.” The same concerning the “benefit of the people,” there must be benefiters, a group of individuals who will make it their business to “benefit” the people and tell the people when and how and why it is being benefited.

“It is the general good of them and all the people in the Kingdom. That's the question, what's for their good, not what pleases them.” (Cromwell, 1647, Camden Society, The Clarke Papers ed. by C. H. Firth, 1891, vol. I, p. 209.)

It is not so much a question as to what the good is as who is going to say what is good, for it is the “sayer” who makes the things good or bad. And the “sayer” is usually not an individual sociologically, if even he is only a single person politically.

“Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Comm. Manifesto, p. 36.)

“The dominant great bourgeoisie has fulfilled its historical mission, that it is no longer competent to lead society on the forward march and has actually become a hindrance to the development of production (as we can see from the occurrence of commercial crises, and especially from the last great collapse and from the depressed condition of industry in all lands.” (Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist, a symposium ed. by D. Ryazonov, p. 31, New York, 1927.)

“The private undertaker cannot possess the necessary over sight over the wants of the nation.” (John Karl Rodbertus, Das Kapital, vierter sozialer Brief, 1884, 152 footnote.)

“In all things that make for the social and moral progress and for the right government of men, the ruling class of the traders has steadily failed in its duty. It has not only failed utterly in actual administration, but as a class has failed to comprehend the social need. It has now played its part, and must in time, by reason of resistless forces everywhere at work, give way to the rule of another class.” (William James Ghent, Mass and Class, p. 241, New York, 1904.)

Quite explicitly Marx, Engels and their followers assure us that the bourgeoisie, this shrewd, highly efficient class, is no longer able to attend to our present day business which has grown out of its control, and that is why it will be forced to quit the arena of its historical activity for good, it will be impelled to resign its social leadership.

If the bourgeoisie, the sorcerer, is not skillful enough, not resourceful enough, to control the forces of our industry, how can this function be discharged by the proletariat, that never was a “sorcerer,” a class much inferior to its masters, the bourgeoisie, as regards business-understanding and executive ability?

There can be but one answer to this question: society will have to form a new ruling class, a type of organisateurs par excellence, and this new formation will take care of the Communist nationalized industry, planned economics, mapped out production and chartered and systematized distribution.

“The social forces of production, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, only await seizure by the associated proletariat in order to bring about a state of affairs in which every member of society will not merely participate in the production of social wealth but will have an equal share in the distribution and administration of wealth.” (Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Man, Thinker and Revolutionist, a symposium ed. by D. Ryzanov, p. 31, New York, 1927.)

The humble word “associated” throws light on the obscure subject: the “associators” will attend to it. This is the only interpretation that can read any more or less realistic meaning into Engels ' statement, if we do not want to discard it as an expression of sheer visionarim. Concerning the promised “equal share in distribution” we cannot help saying that it is an absurdity. Distribution when it is “socialized” must have special distributors who, if they be not angels, a rare quality among humans no matter under which system they are to live and act, so long as that system is outside of a cover of a propaganda booklet, will help themselves to bigger shares than those given to the non-distributors, plain and simple laborer-producers…

“The cry for an equality of wages rests, therefore, upon a mistake, is an insane wish never to be fulfilled. It is an offspring of that false and superficial radicalism that accepts premises and tries to evade conclusions.” (Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, Essentials of Marx, p. 146.)

Wages or shares in distribution cannot be equal unless all the functions fulfilled within society are equal, which is an impossibility.

“Thus, no matter from which standpoint one looks upon the question, one arrives at the same sad result, the governance of the great majority of the masses by a privileged minority. But this minority, say the Marxians, will consist of workers, yes, likely, of former workers, who no sooner will they become rulers or representatives of the people, than they will be workers no longer, and will begin to look down upon the whole world of unskilled manual labor from the height of statesmanship.” (M. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, IInd ed. Russian, p. 234, Moscow, 1922.)

“The ‘Communist Manifesto' makes it a supreme con sideration to ' centralize the means of production in the hands of the State.’

There will be at least two classes, one consisting of officials to distribute the burdens and the results of labor, the other of the drudges to execute their commands. Such a dispensation would not bring with it social peace.” (Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies, p. 256, New York, 1910.)

“Such a task, in all its baffling complexities, is clearly not for the man on the street... We must have a wise, experienced director at the helm, surrounded by a corps of highly trained specialists, each dealing with some phase of our complex problem. The one great need of the hour, proclaimed by spokesmen everywhere, is purposeful and intelligent social planning. And in answer to this call a troop of expert planners, groomed in economics, statistics, engineering and finance are coming forward laden with solutions.” (Floyd Henry Allport, Institutional Behavior, pp. 281-82, University of North Carolina Press, 1933.)

But such an admission on the part of the Communists would prove to be fatal for the messianic elements of Marxianism. This would knock the bottom out of this peculiar doctrinaire-demagogy. And Marxism conceals its hidden plans, its esoteric intents, from the masses, the multitudes of its blind and blinded followers. Marxism does not dare utter explicit statements in a plain everyday language. It prefers to speak “scientific” Greek, to use metaphysical formulae in addressing its highbrow adepts, on the one side, and to air beatific platitudes, and to foam at its mouth with prophetic promises, sometimes eclipsing the apocalypse, for the benefit of the deluded masses, on the other side.

How impelling is the Communist prophecy of salvation, the kingdom of labor, being at hand! Capital concentrates more and more, in the hands of an ever growing smaller circle, the ways and means of production and exchange grow more intricate, the laboring masses sink lower and lower economically and culturally, because of the machine that makes their skill worthless, and themselves superfluous therefore a catastrophe will soon break loose, and as a result of the cataclysm, we shall find the capitalists discarded, “laid off,” and the workers, stupefied by the drudgery of their accursed mechanical, imitative, repetitive labors, placed at the helm of industry. They will pilot our boat of national economy, tossed about on the storm-plowed ocean between Scylla of demands and Charybdis of supplies, and bring it safely into haven of harmony, solidarity, peace and well-being for all.

How will this come about? asks the man of little social faith. How will such an overwhelming transformation take place? questions the social infidel.

“What the bourgeois democracy of 1848 could not accomplish, just because it was bourgeois and not proletarian, namely, to give the laboring masses a will whose content was in accord with their class position-Socialism will infallibly secure.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 194.)

The bourgeois democracy promised no less than the politico-economic organisateur – Communist. It could not keep its promise, though it was given in no less good faith than the Communist promise. For its assurances went against the grain of history which could do either of the two, rising upwards or sinking downwards. But it cannot sink upwards or rise downwards. It cannot make progress, evolve and at the same time register a dissolution, a set-back, from a higher formation to a lower, from the capitalists to the laborers. The bourgeoisie will be replaced, but not by a lower class, only by a higher one.

5. Erroneous Analogies

“The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself. But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons-the modern working class, the proletarians.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 37.)

“The bourgeoisie destroyed the feudal conditions of property; the proletariat will put an end to the bourgeois conditions of property. Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie a struggle, an implacable war, a war to the knife, is as inevitable as was, in its way, the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the privileged estates. But every class war is a political war. In order to do away with feudal society the bourgeoisie had to seize upon political power. In order to do away with capitalist society the proletariat must do the same. Its political task is therefore traced out for it beforehand by the force of events themselves, and not by any abstract consideration.” (George Plekhanoff, Anarchism and Socialism, p. 35, Chicago, Kerr Publ.)

The proletariat in its historical role is likened to the capitalists and the part played by them in their struggle against the nobility.[4] This analogy, used quite often by Marx and his disciples, throws abundant light on their understanding of the class interrelationship existing in our present time. All the proletariat has to do is to follow in the historical footsteps of the bourgeoisie and thus, by imitating its predecessor, come by power and dominance. But here the analogy breaks off abruptly, for the proletariat is a class sui generis, a class not with an “historical” similar to that of the bourgeoisie, but a special super-historical, or, rather, anti-historical mission. Its task is to put an end to all oppression, exploitation, to all classes itself included. In a word, it is supposed to usher in the collective Messiah. But how can a savior-class imitate a sinner-class like that of the bourgeoisie? And how can it, as a result of this imitation, achieve its messianic goal?

It is confusion confounded, and not because the analogy is not drawn to its conclusive end, namely, that the proletariat is bound to play the part of a “bossing” class, begin its career under the disguise of a savior and then, with its maturity, unmask and display itself as a burly sinner, the way the bourgeoisie acted. No, not this alone. The trouble with the analogy is that its very beginning is utterly wrong. The position occupied by the proletariat, by the working class, in its relation to the bourgeoisie, is not in the least analogous to that held by the bourgeoisie in its relations to the feudal lords, to the nobility of the previous historical epoch. The position of the worker in our era is identical with that of the serf, in the preceding historical segment of inter class nexus. The feudal magnates were replaced, by whom? Not by the serfs, but by a new ruling class, namely, the bourgeoisie.

“A new social class appeared, greater in numbers and power than the pre-existing: the middle class. This astute middle class possessed one thing, above and before all: talent, practical talent. It knew how to organize and discipline, how to give continuity and consistency to its efforts.” (Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 129, New York, 1932.)

Now, by whom are the capitalists harassed and by whom will they be superseded? By the working class, reads the answer of the “vulgarian” Marxian; by a new ruling class, an emerging class of politico-economic organisateurs, must be the answer of the student of “scientific” Marxism.

“In the 'People's State' of Marx, they tell us, no privileged class will be found.... There will be a new class, a new hierarchy... and society will split into a dominant minority.. and an immense majority....” (Michael Bakounine, Oeuvres, vol. IV, pp. 476-77, Paris, 1910.)

“They will concentrate the reins of administration in their firm hand, for the ignorant people require a vigorous tutelage; they will found a Central State Bank that holds in its hands all the commercial, industrial, agricultural and even scientific production; and the masses of the populace will be divided by them into two armies : the industrial and the agricultural, under the direct command of state engineers who will constitute a new privileged scientifico-political estate.” (M. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy, 2nd ed. Russian, p. 237, Petersburg, 1922.)

“But if it be granted that, through some plan not yet imagined, the division of labor will be effected satisfactorily in socialdom, there arises the further question : How will it be directed? No doubt the direction of labor will then be as necessary as it is now. Direction is necessary to the simplest motion; there is not human action that is not directed by the human brain! So long as the act of one person has no immediate connection with that of another, one's own brain directs the act. But when the acts of two or more persons are connected in their immediate and unexpected consequences, the direction of another than the actor comes into play.” (Benedict Elder, A Study in Socialism, p. 264, London, 1915.)

Communism will require directing power to a much larger extent than that which was employed by capital ism. A new ruling class of politico-economic organisateurs will be segregated. Its rule will be cast of iron, its regime-blood-drenched. The new masters will act tough. Their eagerness to domination will clash with both the reluctance of the lowly to grant them recognition and the stubborn resistance of the recalcitrant elements of the ousted master-class. The broad masses remembering full well the time when the “comrades” were courting them, flattering them, outdoing themselves in their efforts to prove to the “forgotten man” that they are a “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh”, will not bend any too easily their will to that of the new rulers. The plebs will not kotow before the new Patricians submissively, obsequiously out of sheer habit and tradition the way it was wont to do before the “legitimate” lords, the “powers to be”. The elevated position, the enthronement of the upstarts is of too recent a date to have the halo of history to sanctify and sanction it. The new power-wielders have had no time as yet to put caste-distance artificially between themselves and the common people, and that is why they have at their disposal no other obedience-commanding agency but bare and brutal force majore, unstinted fear and fury; the only course of action open to them is full measured intimidation. The only conformity-bringing expedience at their service is to strike red terror into the hearts of the refractory individuals, and “scare to death” the rebellious sections of the citizenry so as to prove beyond doubt that they, the hardly recognized, scarcely seriously taken, new masters, are in dead earnest about the imposition of their “arbitrary” will and the enforcement of the “impossible” decrees issued by them. Thus the new rulers are being impelled-by circumstances of an internal and external character, of a psychological and sociological nature, over which they may have mighty little control-to display in their dealings officially and otherwise with their inferiors or subordinates in their close entourage as well as with the populace at large much more despotism, much more cruelty than the “softies”, the mollycoddles, the capitalists and the old rulers have ever done; of course, the “ever” will not go to cover the whole length of their domination-era, but only the latter periods thereof when the authority of the commanding higher-ups was well established and rather enjoyed a considerable measure of popularity among the population, so that the common man thought its burden light and lawful instead of awful....

“If the crises revealed the incapacity of the bourgeoisie any longer to control the modern productive forces, the con version of the great organizations for production and communication into joint-stock companies and state-property shows that for this purpose the bourgeoisie can be dispensed with. All the social functions of the capitalists are now carried out by salaried employees. The capitalist has no longer any social activity.... Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers, so now it discards the capitalists, relegating them, just as it did the workers, to the superfluous population.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 312.)

The bourgeoisie can be dispensed with, but who will take its place? This is the question, the most serious, consequential problem of our modern time.

The bourgeoisie can be superseded either by the politico-economic organisateurs, in plain language, by “proletarian” politicians usurping the functions and privileges of the captains of industry; or by a higher stratum of its own class.

The first plan, namely, the bureaucratization or politicalization of economics, is advocated by Marx and Engels and their followers, the Communists. Of course, they do not say it in so many plain words, for they are busy agitating, arousing the masses, and they are compelled to take recourse to economic messianism, without which they would have no mass-appeal, and no mass following. And without mass-action they stand no chance to capture our industry. They, as political organizers of proletarian parties or even trade-unions, can approach our industry and take hold of it only via the seizure of political power by the proletariat, which means, naturally, capture of the state machinery by the organizatory minority of the laboring masses. This plan militates against laissez faire, understanding this formula as the achieved, to a certain extent, separation of economics from politics and as the supreme command never to allow the latter to tyrannize, brutalize the former. For these two operate on two basically different principles. One, economics, on the basis of contractual relations not free under actual circumstances from economic pressure brought to bear on the weaker party. The other, politics, on the basis of juridical compulsion and force. And it is quite doubtful whether the state, an institution that was founded for another purpose, could be re-adapted to the new role of an economic establishment. Anyway, since the days of primitive slavery, which was a national institution run by the community of conquerors as a political and military unit-these two main branches of human activity, economics and politics, have been kept somewhat apart, autonomous to some degree, though quite often interfering with one another. Under “protectionism” and “mercantilism” the separation was running on a very narrow margin, still, even then, there was no absolute absorption, no fusion.

The second plan, rather, trend: out of economic feudalism will emerge an economic absolutism, as the monarchy grew out of the seingiorial manors, the national state out of the local governments, reigning families. The monarch was one of the nobility, the first gentleman, so now some strong and mighty firm will create a vertical and horizontal trust, or combination of trusts. This amalgamation will control all our industrial and commercial activities. It will integrate them, centralize them after a certain fashion. Indications of these tendencies are in evidence in all highly industrialized countries. The big national trusts are the first steps on this road leading from industrial feudalism to industrial absolutism. A third possibility, which is, rather, a modification of the second, is not excluded. We may go with the trends of industrial development and yet avoid the pitfalls of absolutism. For even in the field of political endeavor absolutism was not a universal institution, many a civilized nation escaped it. We may pass over from industrial feudalism, with its manufacturing and banking houses, to some form of industrial democracy and fashion a network of trusts wherein physiological labor and organizational effort would be properly represented. Thus an economic commonwealth, based on a broad foundation of share-holding, would be constituted eventually. This formation could preserve the liberties and some of the opportunties of economic feudalism and, at the same time, enjoy all the advantages that an organization, on a national scope, can offer.

“Just as at first the capitalist mode of production displaced the workers.”... The capitalist mode of production never displaced the workers, all it did was to organize them into multi-individual units, pressing them into in voluntary co-operation. Labor saving devices, machines, technical inventions displaced, to a considerable degree, physical labor. But this is a phenomenon which lies in another realm altogether. Where are the “inventions”, the organization-effort-saving devices of a mechanical nature that could be said to be at hand ready to displace the managerial, the organizatory class? Engels uses pseudo-scientific phraseology intending to replace therewith facts... or working hypotheses. He would like to see and make us see an evolutionary process, where we see none. His analogy is meaningless, or highly misleading. If the capitalist is bound to be displaced in the same fashion as the worker was displaced by the machine, it is the task of the engineers, first, to invent such “machines”, and, then, to install them. The workers did not install the machines that displaced them. They quite often fought against them. A higher class introduced machinery. Who will introduce the machinery that will displace the bourgeoisie, and where is that machinery? Where is that class that stands above the bourgeoisie and is willing and capable of introducing those capital-saving devices that will make the capitalists superfluous?

The capitalist mode of production did not displace the workers; what it did was to interindividualize them, bring them and hold them together. The same will, probably, happen now. Super-capitalism, joint-stock companies, trustism, may organize, interindividualize the individual capitalists, force them to fall in line, abolish competition and make economy function jointly, do team-work on a national and international scale.

The worker was displaced by something superior, not inferior to plain muscular labor. If the capitalist is destined to be displaced, this will be done by economic organization, by super-capitalism, but not by labor that is below capital in its evolution and involvement. Labor did not go, in the course of history, save periods of degeneration and utter decay, backwards to primitivity, neither can capital, barring a calamity like the breakdown of our entire civilization, fall back upon its primitivity, labor. Labor went upward, to machinery, so will capital do; it will overcome itself in a progressive way, not in a reactionary. And “scientific” Marxism must admit this thesis. For Marxism is a scientific or, rather, pseudo scientific doctrine, in its heavy treatises on economics and history, though an entirely anti-scientific concoction, a crude imitation of religious messianism, in its pamphlets.

The “scientific Marxist” never speaks his mind freely.... He always lets his double, the “vulgarian Marxianist”, do for him all the talking, soap-boxing, stump-orating and tub-thumping. No denying, the latter made a hit with the deception-relishing masses of the skilled laborers and unskilled intellectuals.

“We must, therefore, carefully distinguish between informing the people and inflaming them. Indignation, resentment and fury are to be deprecated; and all we should ask is sober thought, clear discernment and intrepid discussion.” (William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, ed. and abridged by Raymond A. Preston, vol. I, pp. 133-34, New York, 1926.)

No agitator, who knows anything about his business, will ever take this sincere, but utterly naive, advice. It would mean suicide. It would leave him without a mass-following, without a “movement”, things that are achieved by economo-political jazz and jesuitism combined. The “vulgarian Marxianist” knows his vulgar “customers”.

To sum up:

Marxism, understood as an ideology of the working class, is the crudest piece of vulgarity ever conceived by the human mind. It is an out and out absurdity. But Marxism interpreted critically as an ideology of the emerging class of the party-political or trade-union political, or their combination, organisateurs, that conceals its aspiration to tripled power and unprecedented grandeur under the thick veil of “proletarianism”, Marxism thus construed is a scientific doctrine that does honor to human genius of subtlety and sophistry.

III. THE PERIOD OF AGITATION

“... An agitational means in order to rouse the workers against the capitalist.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 123.)

“An agitator... will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses... The agitator operates with living word.” (V. I. Lenin, What is to be done, Selected Works, vol. II, p. 86.)

“It is this late appearing mass and not ' mankind ' that is the object of Stoic and Socialist propaganda... It appeals not to the best, but to the most, and it values its means according to the number of successes obtained by them. It substitutes for the old thoughtfulness an intellectual male prostitution by speech and writing, which fills and dominates the halls and the market-places of the megalopolis.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I, pp. 359-60.)

1. The False Hope and the False Alarm

A. False Hope

The agitation-period is unique in its essence. It is possessed of a specific characteristic. It could be properly described as a critical, transitory time of painful, rapid readjustments. It is the epoch of “storm and stress”, when the bombardment, theoretical and actual, of the citadels of the master-class takes place.

These are the seasons when the millennial promises blaze and the social messianic pledges flare.

“The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled or numbered and docketed like any other merchandise in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialists ' ideal, but its anti-thesis... With the advent of Socialism, the whole of the capitalist state, and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its brotherhood of man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.” (Socialist, December, 1907.)

“There is no such a thing as a hierarchical system under Socialism.” (August Bebel, Woman in the Past, Present and Future, p. 181, William Reeves, London.)

“Socialism will raise the struggle for existence into a sphere where competition will be emulation, where the treasures are boundless and eternal, and where the abundant wealth of one does not cause the poverty of another.” (Philip Snowden, The Individual Socialism, p. 1, Independent Labor Party, London.)

“Under Socialism there will be no classes, but all the people will form one class (Ibid. p. 12.)

“Such a society (Socialist society) would shift the emphasis from possession to creation (production) by rewarding the workers rather than the owners. The result may be accomplished quite simply by giving the chief awards to those who create.

When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own.” (Scot Nearing, p. 157, The Next Step, New Jersey, 1922.)

“The sailors and stokers (under Socialism) will be well fed and lodged as the captain or passengers, and the captain and the stoker will have the same pay.” (William Morris, Communism, pp. 14-15, Fabian Society, London 1903 and 1907.)

“It shall be a rational society that abolishes class, and builds a creative peace on the cooperation of all who work.” (Henry Noel Brailsford, Property or Peace, p. 329, New York, 1934.)

“We shall be of the army of the workers who seek to create the federation of the cooperative commonwealths of mankind in which peace and plenty shall be universal heritage, and freedom and fellowship the law of life.” (Norman Thomas, As I See It, p. 173, New York, 1932.)

Obese checks of staggering sums are issued by the agitators on the banks of the future to be cashed in the days to come. They are made out for the large masses of the populace, to all those who are maltreated, dis contented with the existing order of things. This is the fee offered for the help that the low masses are to render in the great cause of liberation of all mankind.

“Bolshevism has supplied the new religion. It promises glorious things: an end of the injustice of rich and poor, an end of economic slavery, an end of war. It promises an end of the disunion of classes which poisons political life and threatens our industrial system with destruction. It promises an end to commercialism, that subtle falsehood that leads men to appraise everything by its money value, and to determine money value often merely by the caprices of idle plutocrats. It promises a world where all men and women shall be kept sane by work, and where all work shall be of value to the community. It is to sweep away listlessness and pessimism and weariness and all the complicated miseries of those whose circumstances allow idleness and whose energies are not sufficient to force activity. In place of palaces and hovels, futile vice and useless misery, there is to be wholesome work, enough but not too much, all of it useful, performed by men and women who have no time for pessimism and no occasion for despair.” (Bertrand Russel, Bolshevism, Practice and Theory, p. 15, New York, 1920.)

At such times of agitation pretty words and sweet phrases are turned out by the bushels for the consumption of the candy-minded children of man. Most brilliant prospects and most fascinating vistas are projected upon the retina of vision for the benefit of all mirage-seekers.

Agitation eras take a special pride in announcing with great solemnity that they are about to wipe clean the slate of the past with its hag-ridden nightmares, and to make a new unparalleled start. A new heaven and a new earth, a new social life and a new society are served on the red platter, to be gotten for the mere asking, or, rather, clamoring vociferously.

The Renaissance, in some of its aspects, could be characterized as an agitation-period. It declared or decreed the liberation of the flesh, spirit and conscience. A quite odd combination. But such periods are not discriminating. The declarations were made under an impressive fanfare, flourishing of trumpets and blaring of bugles. All that swagger, spiritually revolutionary rodomontading, boiled down in actual life to the revocation of certain punky inhibitions, definitely decrepit “don'ts” imposed upon civilized humanity by medieval institutional religion, with which science, represented by its institution, namely, the university, had entered into a contest for dominance over the minds and hearts of the multitudes.

B. False Alarm

“All the oracles of the departing gods exclaim with terror that the abomination of desolation is in the holy places and that the end of the world has come... The slightest progress cannot be realized without spreading panic among the peoples,” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions, vol. I, p. 325.)

In periods of social transformation, when old structures are being reshaped, ancient injunctions countermanded, antiquated laws revoked, outlived regulations rescinded, naive-thinking people are inclined to imagine themselves witnessing the total collapse of civilization, the irretrievable discard of ordinances and statutes, the liquidation of authority in general, and not but the substitution of certain particular commandments. It seems to those unsophisticated that vandalism is about to swamp our spiritual life, that a diabolic devaluation of all values is promulgated. Whereas, in actuality, some slight tinkering is taking place, some scrapping of junk is done, form-deep changes are carried out in a quite timid fashion.

The outdated behests, the moss-covered imperatives are thrown overboard, or, what happens more frequently, are being remodelled, refurbished, are driven through a process of renovation. That is about all the din and racket and high-falutin phraseology used by the arch-destroyers amount to. Under the cover of the artillery-barrage of deafening catchwords full of defiance, the heavily stepping infantry of vigorous rules and tightly binding norms are introduced.

“Laws, decrees, edicts, ordinances, resolutions, will fall like hail upon the unfortunate people. After a time the political ground will be covered with a layer of paper, which the geologists will put down among the vicissitudes of the earth as the papyraceous formation.” (P. J. Proudhon, The General Idea of the Revolution, p. 132, London, 1923.)

“No doubt, in the early days of the Commonwealth, a rage of positive legislation set in, which was rather an anticipation, by some two or three centuries... of the constitution than a denial or contradiction of it.” (Sheldon Amos, Science of Politics, p. 437, New York, 1883.)

The faint-hearted are alarmed. They are panic stricken: all maxims of moral conduct are swept away by the tornado of criticism, by the hurricane of animadversion. The foundations of regulated communal life are shaken. The beams and rafters of the social buildings are carried away by the tidal waves of the unruly freshet. All the tin-gods are smashed to pieces; potentates dethroned, pedestals overthrown; the reign of chaos is at hand. Pandemonium stalks along our streets.

Wild, sanguine passions break loose, uncontrollable appetites take hold of the heart of man and woman. Debauch and debacle walk arm-linked and threaten to trample underfoot our domestic and along with it our social life. Decadence is gripping at the heart of civilization.

“The most threatening danger at present is that we shall have a new barbarian invasion, this time coming from the interior of society itself to lay waste custom, civilization and wealth.” (Rodbertus, in 1850.)

“This confession, that the future belongs to the communist, I make in sorrow and great anxiety. This is no way a delusion. In fact, it is only with fear and shuddering that I think of the epoch when these dark iconoclasts come to power; with their callous hands they will destroy all the marble statues of beauty....” (Heinrich Heine) (Quoted from the Social Revolution by Karl Kautsky, p. 44, Chicago, Kerr ed.)

"... This is what it destroys by its notion of the Fourth Estate, the Mass, which rejects the culture and its matured forms, lock, stock and barrel. It is the absolute of formless ness, persecuting with its hate every sort of form, every distinction of rank, the orderliness of property, the orderliness of knowledge... Thus the Fourth Estate becomes the expression of the passing of a history over into historyless. The mass is the end, the radical nullity.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, v. II, p. 358.)

“The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select.” (Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 19, New York, 1932.)

“…The mass-man in revolt.. If that human type continues to be master in Europe, thirty years will suffice to send our continent back to barbarism...’The masses are advancing ', said Hegel in apocaliptic fashion. ' Without some new spiritual influence, our age, which is a revolutionary age, will produce a catastrophe ', was the pronouncement of Comte. ' I see the flood-tide of nihilism rising, ' shrieked Nietzsche from a crag of the Engadine.” (Ibid. pp. 56-58.)

Nothing of the sort!

Pretty soon, and instead of the worm-eaten weirs and lichen-coated sluices, right now plucked down, new solid, iron-clad dams will be installed!

Before long, and the sites, upon which the torn down edifices stood, will be graced, after the wreck and debris have been cleared away, with palatial palaces and sumptuous temples.

The king is dead long live the king! The old laws have been outlawed, former authorities banished in order to make elbowroom for the new comers...”..

2. Discontentment and Its Vitalization.

“But tell me, have you found on the earth a government, of whatsoever kind, which claimed to make happy all the people it governed? But this would mean the squaring of the circle! Whatever government, be it even directed by men participating in the Divine Wisdom, whatever measures it takes, will make some people discontented.” (Mussolini as Revealed in his Political Speeches, p. 356, New York, 1923.)

At all times and seasons there is plenty of malcontentment. There are multitudes of instinctively or thoughtfully disgruntled individuals walking about our streets in the cities, or tramping along the highways and byways in the country, with curses and abuse, called for or uncalled for, on their parched lips.

“The good feelings and the good sense of mankind are rising up in judgment against it. The earth is weary of it, the voice of the weak and the poor and the overtasked masses is rising to witness against it. The ear of the just and clear spirits everywhere is open to their cry.” (Frederick Harrison, On Society, p. 183, London, 1918.)

But they, the fault-finders, seeing everything dark, make no effective political showing. These “weak and poor and overtasked masses” constitute no socially active factor, force to reckon with, so long as they continue in their primitive state of lone, disorganized individuals, so long as they are not united, and their personal grudges and individual grievances and com plaints are not incorporated into a commonly adopted platform; in a word, so long as they are not tied together by a more or less unified program of action.

The “weak and the poor” are grouchy. They grumble against certain social conditions. But they are in no position to offer remedies for those ills, real or imaginative, they privately and disjointedly so enjoy inveighing against. In brief, they are socially raw material...

The discontentment of the “overtasked masses” lies fallow, is a virgin soil overgrown with weeds and brambles. A new social layer aspiring to leadership, must take possession of it, plow it up, and sow therein seeds of rationally conceived, articulately expressed, dissatisfaction and deliberately made accusations and indictments.

“Development is effected by the free play of individual energies, the mass is by its nature barren, passive, and hostile to everything new. It is, if I may venture to use the comparison, the womb, sterile by itself, but to which come to deposit themselves the germs created by private activity, which, in hermaphroditic society, really performs the functions of the male organ.” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contra dictions, vol. I, pp. 277-78.)

“The average citizen crying aloud that his feudal shoe pinches is fitted with the leg-irons of laissez faire; protesting next that his fetters are more than he can bear, he is promptly clapped into the iron-boots of modern quasi-nationalization and monopoly. At each stage of his progress he is either told to be grateful that he is so well shod or he is offered as an alternative some equally menacing piece of foot-wear. Never is he permitted to fashion shoes to his liking or to go barefoot. He must limp as best he may in the handiwork of political patchers and economic cobblers.” (Collin Brooks, Our Present Discontents, p. 20, New York, 1933.)

The upstart class, grown up and reared under the very wing and protection of the “liberal” section of the old master-class, is seeking power, domination, rulership. Its schemes and designs are concentrated upon one point, and that is how best and speedier to shove aside the present ruling class and occupy their significant, leading, commanding, and accordingly remunerative, positions.

Where could it probably find forces adequate to the task and willing to take the risk of an encounter, a fight for life and death with the present ruling class? A thorough search is constituted. The would be master class is looking for a “bearer” of its hidden aspirations and plans. And social simulation, historical masquerading, social mimicry is resorted to.

What do the future rulers need the “bearer” for?

They who advocate the radical reforms, and propagate the reconstruction-plans are unable to be the “bearers” of their own social devices. They are unequal to the job of putting the designs of theirs directly into action and materialization.

“In no modern revolution have the privileged classes been known to fight their own battles. They always depend on the armies of the poor (Elise Reclus, Evolution or Revolution, p. 16, London, 1885.)

Not only the present privileged classes, but the prospective privileged classes do not fight their own battles. “They always depend on the armies of the poor.” They cannot do their own fighting. Their numbers are too small for that. This quantitative smallness is the tragic and comic, weak and strong point of every ruling class which must be, according to its very nature, a numerically insignificant minority.

“It has already been pointed out that it is not the size of the social group which determines its power. The lords were always in the minority, and in modern states with millions of inhabitants the power rests with the ' upper ten thousand ', The intimacy of the union and the resultant organization and discipline together with mental superiority complement numerical inferiority giving the minority the preponderancy... The masses always lack unity and organization as the result partly of their great bulk, partly of indolence. Since the result of the social struggle depends on discipline the minority has the advantage because it is small.” (Ludwig Gumplovicz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 143.)

The new aspirants are a handful of people, and they are in no state to unseat the dominant class. A fight between two comparatively diminutive groups would ensue. And the old entrenched minority would, in all probability, carry the day, repulse and rout the daring assailants.

The prospective rulers are resourceful. They do not throw themselves into battle without the preparatory work having been carried out in advance. They go out into the slum-districts, they call upon the hovel and hut-dwellers.

“He will tear off the fine clothes that burn into his very flesh; he will put on the rough coat and the wooden shoes of the peasant, and, abandoning the splendid paternal palace, which oppresses him like the reproach of a crime, he will go forth ' among the people ' in some remote district, and there, the slender and delicate descendant of a noble race he will do the hard work of the peasant, enduring every privation in order to carry to him the words of redemption, the Gospel of our age What to him are exile, Siberia, death? Full of the sublime idea, clear, splendid, vivifying as the midday sun, he defies suffering, and would meet death with a glance of enthusiasm and a smile of happiness. It was thus that the Revolutionary Socialist of 1872-74 arose.” (Stepniak, Under ground Russia, pp. 11-12, New York, 1885.)

“Thus in the winter of 1872, in one of the hovels in the outskirts of St. Petersburg, a number of working men gathered round Prince Peter Kropotkin who expounded to them the principles of Socialism, and of the Revolution. The rich Cossack Obuchoff, though consumptive and dying, did the same upon the banks of his native Don. An officer, Leonidus Sciscko, became a hand-weaver in one of St. Petersburg's manufactories, in order to carry on the propaganda there. Two other members of the same society- an officer, Demetrius Rogacheff... and a friend went into the province of Tver as sawyers for the purpose of carrying on the propaganda there among the peasants.” (Ibid. p. 20.)

The future bosses cement those elements of the populace who bear a grudge, nurse a grievance, of one or another nature, against the present potentates and the existing system personified by them.

The future masters start their activities with the organization of the discontented. of the discontented. They incite them. They enlighten them. They array them in marching, ready for battle, columns. They drill them. They instruct them in class struggle tactics and strategy.

"... The Party must be merely the vanguard, the leader of the enormous mass of the working class, the whole of which (or nearly the whole of which) works under the control of the Party.” (V. I. Lenin, Speech at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, 1903. Collected Works, vol. II, pp. 276-78, Russian ed.)

“The proletariat is their army, which they love in the same way that a colonial administrator loves the troops which enable him to bring large numbers of negroes under his authority; they apply themselves to the task of training the proletariat, because they are in a hurry to win quickly the great battles which will deliver the State into their hands; they keep up the ardor of the men, as the ardor of troops of mercenaries has always been kept up, by promises of pillage, by appeals to hatred, and also by the small favors which their occupancy of a few political places enables them to distribute already. But the proletariat for them is food for cannon.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 190.)

The prospective masters instill into the masses the spirit of negation and indignation. They provoke and cultivate their combativeness. And with the direct help of these disciplined cohorts, officered, marshalled by them, they overthrow the throne of the hated ruling class.

To this great and sacred purpose, their historical mission, they sacrifice their emotions and feelings, their deep-seated antipathies. They sham. They pretend. They lie without being conscious of it. They confess their boundless love and devotion to the needy and destitute. They cloak their genuine class-aspirations. They never allow their cherished, but suppressed and secreted within themselves, desires to grow articulate, and, for still greater safety, they tuck them away in the thick volumes of their “scientific” literature, which being couched in Greek and Latin terminology with quite a dose of metaphysical reasoning, remain undiscovered by their ignorant, quite often outright illiterate, followers.

“The monument of the proletarian culture of our day is Marxist doctrine... But Marx's creation, which as a scientific achievement is a titanic whole, transcends the plain demands of the proletarian class struggle for whose purposes it was created.” (Rosa Luxenberg, ' Stagnation and Progress of Marxism ', Karl Marx, a Symposium ed. by D. Ryazanov, New York, 1928.)

Marx's obscurity of exposition serves a purpose and that is to hide the real aims and claims of Communism under the thick cover of metaphysical circumlocution and speculative equivocation.

The coming masters play pretty skillfully the game of pursuing the common interest of the community, or, still better, of oppressed mankind as a whole. They affect to be absolutely unselfish, saintly, idealistically minded, self-abnegated servants of the downtrodden. They submerge their semi-crystallized class-Ego in the vast amorphous mass of the pariahs, the manual laborers, in order to be able to emerge later on all the more victorious, all the more glorious. They stoop to conquer. They secrete their pride and the contempt they cannot help but feeling for the lowly, the stupid, unconscious masses that allow themselves to be “exploited” and have neither sense nor courage to shake off the yoke of capital..

“He (Marx) knew almost nothing of love for his fellows. On the other hand, he was amazingly prone to hate, so that in him hatred of the oppressors had extinguished love of the oppressed.” (Tugan Baranovsky, quoted from Karl Marx, Symposium ed. by D. Ryazanov, p. 262.)

Marx, as the ideologist of the future master-class, hated both, labor as well as capital. His love he preserved exclusively for his own class of politico-economic organisateurs...

The emerging master class submits its will, and bends its arrogant head to the rule of the slaves, flattering their vanity, currying favor with them, in order eventually to lord it over them all the more ruthlessly and with vengeance for past, though temporary, but deeply felt, humiliation.

What distinguishes the given master-class from the rest of society? Let us say that this class of superiors is set off from the common ruck by a sum total of privileges, certain prerogatives which it enjoys to the detriment, at a certain period and stage of development, of the overwhelming majority of the nation.

This being the case the prospective ruling class will necessarily advocate, and do it quite vociferously, with out sparing its vocal cords, the unqualified abolition of all privileges.[5] *) Thus the future bosses make sure of the adherence to their program of all those who are, under the given conditions, deprived of privileges. The plebeians, the riffraff will flock to their recruiting offices and enlist without hesitation, to serve under their banner which they take to be the banner of social justice in general.

After the victory is won, the former ruling class ousted, shoved aside politically or economically, the new positions fortified, the privileges, as a matter of course, will be restored. But now they will be based on new foundations and more solidly and unshakably entrenched, differently explained and justified by new reasons, even sanctified by the same individuals who condemned them in their old shape.

In our present time, when the prospective masters of the proletariat, the politico-economic organisateurs, are contemplating the overthrow of the capitalist regime, the first thing they do is to institute an investigation of the power sources of the bourgeoisie. What forms the backbone, the pith and marrow of this class? What are its actual forces composed of?

Its vigor and sap are contained in accumulated wealth, in amassed capital. Its counterpart, its counter-agent is hired labor.

Under these circumstances, those who groom themselves for rulership and are bent upon breaking the capitalist class in order to inherit its leadership in society, will grab the first opportunity to issue a manifesto wherein they will proclaim that their sincere intention is to establish equality, or, still better, to do away with capital, with private property in general, and all those who suffer under the present economic system, who are employed but badly paid for their work, or unemployed, will surely subscribe to that manifesto, will accept it as their gospel. The existing order of things economic divides society into two antagonistic camps, that of the proprietors and that of the propertyless, the dispossessed. The good tidings of the abolition of worldly possessions will cheer up the sad spirits of the unfortunate. All those who have a complaint to make against the heartless domination of the capitalist class will fall an easy prey to the class-wolves parading in the skins of lambs. They will admire their new leaders who promise to free them from the bondage of capital. Little suspecting that a new yoke is kept ready for them by their new masters who appear now, as all master-classes in the beginning of their career, in the shape of comrades, friends, well wishers, rescuers, idealists, knights without fear and foibles, fighters for justice, but who will not be slow to unmask, strip themselves of all shammed benevolence, feigned charitableness, simulated humaneness and show right afterwards, not without flourish and cynical frankness, their true face and genuine character of ruthlessly exacting masters. They will pursue their class-egotistic aims with the utmost severity and grim determination so characteristic of political parvenues. They will unleash their dogged ambitions of caste, unbridle their racy appetites for distinction and rank with complete disregard for their previously given pledges and blank oblivion of their indebtedness to the multitudes of their “fellow travelers” and collective aides-de-camp.

3. Words and Deeds.

“As early as 1438 a prophet of German reform had declared: 'It is a shame which cries to heaven, this oppression of tithes, dues, penalties, excommunications and tolls of the peasant, on whose labor all men depend for their existence.”“ (Hayes, Political and Social History of Modern Europe, vol. I, p. 127.) (Quot. from Development of Social Theory by James P. Lichtenberger, p. 153, New York, London, 1923.)

Each coming ruling class goes through two periods. One period is wholly dedicated to the comparatively easy and even pleasurable occupation of mouthing high sounding words, forging felicitous, metallically clanking, phrases. In brief, this time is given without reserve to high-strung oratorical exercises. The other period is consecrated to irksome drudgery, to social chores, to positive, constructive activity. The time of sermonizing and speechifying, of disseminating subversive ideas, is over. Now has struck the moment of materialization of the ideal championed by the prospective master-class. This group of ambitious individuals is coming into its own, is grasping the reins of power, is taking possession of the wealth of the nation.

“To the tasks of destruction, new tasks are added, in credibly difficult tasks, viz., organizational tasks.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 286.)

Between the years given to recruiting and training the army of rebels, awakening the slaves to the realization of their situation, stirring them up, inciting them, calling to the final battle, and the years following closely upon the victory, stretches a period of transition, a time for re-equipment. The passing from the state of war, of aggression, of militancy, of attacks upon the existing establishments of the community and the attempts to carry by storm the strongholds of the upper class-to that of peaceful, conscientious masonry, of building up new institutions, or repairing the old and damaged ones, this passage is a gradual, evolutionary process. And it has, as a concomitant, which is quite natural, deep shiftings, far-reaching shuntings effected in the whole make-up of the given militant body and in its ideological constitution.

“After the repartition is accomplished the second period sets in the stabilization of the plunder and the development of the deteriorated reflexes of ownership. A decree is issued, proclaiming the sacred right of ownership. Every attempt to violate it is rigidly put down. All socialistic, communistic movements are repressed (Babeuf and others). Society throws itself avariciously into stock-jobbing and spoliation. Greed of wealth, of material values possessed it; we see a new class... a new profiteering zoological bourgeoisie.” (Piterim A. Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, p. 78, Philadelphia and London, 1924.)

"’The revolutionists forgot their promises and showed themselves more greedy than the old rulers. Those that were loudest in clamoring that all property should be in common, excluded their own comrades from a participation in it. Riches, which were considered criminal as long as they belonged to Catholics, were ruthlessly appropriated by themselves. They had promised absolute freedom of the use of the forests, waters and meadows and they were the first to prohibit it and reduce the people to a state of serfdom, ' E. Denis : Huss et la guerre de Hussites 1878, pp. 348-48.” (Ibid, p. 75.)

An oppressed class is different from a ruling one. Its ways and forms of rationalizing and emotionalizing are other, are entirely dissimilar. A ruling class occupies a special position in society. And its methods of arguing and judging, being a reflection, to a certain extent, of its actual conditions of existence, must necessarily differ from those of the oppressed group.

The prospective master-class, while being still in a position of oppression, inferiority, degradation, or, more exactly, during the time preceding that of its domination, when it feels sure of its imminent success and near victory, is busying itself exclusively with rallying round its slogans and barricades adherents, devotees, staunch fighters. It finds them, without much looking around, among the weak and the meek, among the economo-political derelicts. And it dangles before their bleary eyes the prospects of a glaring abundance, well-being for all and sundry. It paints for them, the hungry and thirsty, lecherous pictures, appetizing landscapes, rivers flowing with milk and honey between banks made of wheat cakes.

The same class acts differently in the period of its ascendancy. Now as an emerged master class, it is in need of strong characters, whom it promises nothing, for its new adepts are no man's fools, they are realistically minded individuals. And the master-class, on the other hand, must not take recourse to fooling any longer, it is in a position to conduct its business, of State and Municipality, on the solid basis of “cash and carry.” It offers advantages, lucrative jobs. The weak and the meek, the ne'er-do-wells, it brushes now aside. It needs them no more. They are no help, they are rather an hindrance, a disturbing element. And it shakes them off. The new master-class is in a hurry to detach itself, dissociate itself from the “negative” types who would hold on to it and drag it down to the bottom, to the low level of their wretched existence.[6] And as a rule it enters into conflicts and bloody clashes with its own erstwhile faithful myrmidons. For some of them, who took the pledges and promises, given by the prospective master class in time of hardships and bitter struggles, for Gospel truth, assessed them at their face value, are now fuming and fretting. They clamor about their having been betrayed, deceived. Why, they were promised comforts, an easy life, a super-abundance, an over flowing of goods, of luxuries, and all they are offered now are crumbs shaken contemptuously from the over laden table at which the new lords are feasting. They were assured that they would be domiciled in palaces, and now they are quartered in barracks, in huts and hovels.[7]

The real facts are that the “initiative minority” of them, of these social warriors, get their deserts. Those select “few” who prove to be aggressive and acquisitive enough, without clashing with their class interests, without discrediting the class prestige and position by over-hasty acts, receive their rewards quite lavishly.

The majority of them, lacking in initiative and adventuresomeness, being afflicted with sloth and laziness, or, some of them, being victimized by their over refined susceptibilities, unnecessary scruples, or, being devoid of them altogether, letting their personal egotism outrun that of the class, part of which they are, remain on their self-same level, or, which is more corresponding to post-revolutionary reality, suffer, at the outset, a precipitating throwback, as regards their standard of living, are flung downward to the bottom of misery, penury and starvation.

4. The Bourgeoisie and the Politico-Economic Organisateurs Passing Through Two Periods.

The bourgeoisie went through two such periods, one of agitation, the other of materialization; one of rabid radicalism, the other of mild, staid conservatism; a period of challenging youth and that of reconciliatory middle age.

“Conservatism, then... has, for political and economic reasons, taken hold of the middle class, which a generation ago was the backbone of liberalism. Owing to the very success of liberal efforts there has been a great transfer of material interests from the reforming to the conservative side. I would not suggest that all ardor for political and social justice is merely collective self-interest.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, pp. 65-67, New York, 1905.)

We would do more than merely suggest it, we would assert it and quite strongly. All mass-movements have a collective egotism back of them. Neither classes nor masses are idealistically inclined.

In its infantile state the bourgeoisie proclaimed with the pens of Rousseau, of the Declaration of Inde pendence and similar historical documents, that all men were born equal and free.

“Man is born free and everywhere he is found in chains.” (J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, p. 10, London, 1895.)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, in Congress July 4, 1776).

“It (Declaration of Independence) was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the humanizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.” (Thomas Jefferson, Writings select. and ed. by Paul Leicester Ford, vol. X, p. 343, New York, 1899).

Upon its reaching maturity, the middle class employed all the incantations and exorcistic formulae it could get hold of to lay the mischievous ghost of equality. It substituted for the equality principle the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, formulated the law of natural selection and the struggle for existence. It found itself, it unmasked itself.

“If variations useful to any organic being ever do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life... This principle of preservation, or the survival of the fittest, I have called natural selection.” (Charles Darwin, The Origin of the Species, p. 125, New York, 1927, repr. from the 6th ed.)

“When we reflect on this struggle we may console ourselves with the full belief that... the vigorous, the healthy and the happy survive and multiply.” (Ibid. p. 73.)

“Those individuals whose functions are most out of the equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those who die; and those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest . " (H. Spencer , Principles of Biology , vol . I , pp . 530-31 , New York , 1904.)

As a matter of fact the bourgeoisie as a practical minded class was shocked at the mispresentation of social relations found in our political creed , was indignant at the distortion of them reflected in the ad nauseam sweet sermons on equality .

"But arguments of another kind are brought forward, which have at least the merit of not being based upon a lie. The reign of the strongest is now evoked . . . Darwin's theory, which has lately made its appearance in the scientific world ... " (Elisee Reclus, Evolution and Revolution, p . 15, London, 1885.)

It was the Third Estate in France that was so diligent in shouting down from the housetops about egalitarism . . . an estate of penniless and pantless people, a conglomeration - chrysalis out of which the golden winged butterfly, the class of capitalists , had gradually evolved and grown out . And it were the great grandfathers of the magnates on Wall Street , who incorporated the plum of equality into the wedding cake of the new Union.[8]

"In point of fact such equality is approximately realized under colonial conditions . It was approximately realized in early American life . . . Approximately they were in fact equal and free, as the political writers assumed. " (Franklin H. Giddings , 'Sovereignty and Government' in Political Quarterly, vol. XXI, p. 26, New York, 1906.)

The same fate, we may rest assured on this score, will befall the party or Trade-Union organizers of the proletariat. They will soon leave behind them, with contempt mixed with longing, due and paid to childhood by adolescence, the period of agitation, and pass over, with heavily clumping steps, and quite clumsily, as the case is in U. S. S. R., to the period of action and practice.

Before long and the political bosses of the proletariat will slough off their “infantile leftism”, their childish-poetical and saintly prophetical concerns about the remote future with its perfect society, eschatology and visionism. The new master-class will settle down to present day actualities with their petty and annoying problems.

How widely, abysmally, will these two periods differ from one another! How endlessly vast will yawn their chasm!

“The misfortune of the ' Lefts ' is that they have missed the essence of the ' present situation ', viz., the transition from confiscating (the carrying out of which requires above all a determined policy) to socialization (the carrying out of which requires a different quality in the revolutionary).

“Yesterday, the main task of the moment was, as determinedly as possible to nationalize, confiscate, beat down and crush the bourgeoisie, and break down sabotage. Today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalized, confiscated, beaten down and broken more than we have been able to keep count of. And the difference between socialization and simple confiscation lies precisely in the fact that confisca tion can be carried out by means of ' determination ' alone, without the ability to count up and distribute properly, whereas socialization cannot be brought about without this ability.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, “Left Wing” Childishness, p. 359).

In the first period the labor-vanguard, the handful of individuals busy organizing and leading the working masses, is engaged in the business of alluring, attracting at all costs of hot-air pledges, the under-dog, the hoi poloi, enlisting their sympathies first and then pressing them into the valiant legion of the uprooters, the crew of the wreckers, whose task is to smash up the existing order of things social.

The second period, invariably, in case of a success, following upon the first, is a time of construction, a time of erecting palaces and stables, temples and shacks, a time of harnessing the masses, of putting a new and onerous yoke upon their unwieldy necks, hitching the nags to the heavy chariots of production, and providing them with ruthless jockeys and heartless charioteers armed with new fangled whips... to urge them uphill, through one five year plan to another, ad infinitum …

During the second period all forms of inequality that existed and were condemned and nearly demolished during the social scuffle, are now rigorously restored. Of course, they are refashioned, modernized, readapted to the new times and new demands... And some supplementary weight is thrown into the scales of inter class relationship, for full measure. The pluses are added as an allowance for natural growth, increment and”progress”. And all the sallies of the new rebels are repulsed. The mutineers start, in the usual routine way, organizing uprisings, and carrying on”scientific”attacks on the newly established institutions. And thus they assure the rotation of the wheels in the mill of history...

“The disappointment of the masses follows very quickly, it follows even before their vanguard has cooled off after the revolutionary struggle. The people imagine that with a new blow they can carry through, or correct, that which they did not accomplish decisively enough before. Hence the impulse to a new revolution... On the other hand, those... layers which have arrived at the power are in a way only waiting for a stormy outbreak from below, in order to make the attempt decisively to settle accounts with the people.” (L. Trotzky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. II, p. 78, New York, 1932.)

Book Two: Communism Is Not “Socialism”; It Is “Politicalism”

I. OBJECTIVE AIMS OF THE MARXIAN COMMUNISTS

1. Two In One.

Within the womb of Marxism a twin is enclosed. Marxism offers simultaneously an answer to two questions: one concerning the size of the separate economic unit, and the other-the composition of the given unit, its structure, its stratification. The first problem may be termed external, while the second is an internal one. The external problem is puzzling over the inter relations of the various semi-independent economic concerns. It tries to elaborate an intricate system of balances and checks adequate to prevent collisions and clashings taking place, under the capitalist chaotic system, between the competing firms and warring trading houses. The internal problem concentrates upon the investigation of the anomalies afflicting the interrelation ship woven between the two counter-agents of the same process of production, namely, labor and capital. Its solution is an attempt to devise ways and means how to do away, once and for all, with the conflicts and friction, enmity and hatred raging within the confines of every and sundry economic unit taken separately or combinedly.

“Modern Socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one hand, of the class antagonism, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 47, Chicago, Kerr pub.)

In other words, there is a problem of production in general, of national economy as a whole, the felt necessity for its unification, adjustment of its parts, so as to make of them one harmonious, well-coordinated whole. And there is, alongside of it, the labor problem, the desire and intention to eliminate the contradictions prevailing between the employer and his employees, perturbances that shake, on some occasions, the industrial edifice to its very foundations.

2. Marxism-Leninism As A Plan.

Marxism assures us that it is able to solve both problems with one stroke. And its plan is quite simple, somewhat too simple.

“All the citizens are here transformed into the hired employees of the State All the citizens become the employees and workers of one national State “syndicate”. It simply resolves itself into the question of all working to an equal extent, of all carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them...” (Nikolai Lenin, State and Revolution, pp. 204-05, New York, 1929.)

This is Marxism, as a plan, as a State-practice, in a nut-shell.

Let us analyze the statements made by Lenin.

“All the citizens are here transformed into the hired employees of the State.” Lenin stressed and underscored the word “all”? He instinctively feared the exception.... “The citizens are here transformed.” They will not transform themselves, not all of them anyway, they must be transformed, partly by persuasion and partly by force. These processes are acts carried out with great difficulty. And there will appear on the stage of social life “transformers” called revolutionists, or they will go by another name describing their party affiliations. They shall be set off from the common ruck of citizenry. For those are transformed, and these ones are the transformers. Further, all citizens are employees of the State. Who constitutes the State, the employer? The same citizens who are employees. How are they going to fulfil two functions which negate one another? A minority of the citizenry will discharge the duties of the employers, and the rest those of the employees. It can hardly be other wise.

“It simply resolves itself into the question of all working to an equal extent, of all carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them.”

This is not “simple”, it is a highly complicated affair. “All working to an equal extent.” In order that “all” shall work there must be “some” whose work consists in making the “all” work, in supervising their work, coordinating their work, planning out the work for them, so that not “all” are working, for the majority will “work” and a minority will be busy “directing” the work done by others, the more so that “all” must be “carrying out regularly the measure of work appointed to them”. In order that work should be carried out regularly there must be regulators who take care of this end of the “work”. Functions, tasks are not self regulatory. They require regulation, and regulation presupposes a group of people engaged in the business of regulating. And if the work be appointed, some one, an individual or a collective, must do the appointing. Behind these acts human beings, flesh and blood, are standing. Nothing is performed by itself. If all the citizens become the employees and workers of one national State “syndicate”, somebody, a body politic, is situated above those employees and workers, whose office it is to keep that national State syndicate functioning as one, as a coordinated, well-knitted whole. The social cosmos must have a personal, a collective, creator, regulator, supervisor, whose duty it is to see to it that chaos does not swallow the “order”, the rational system. For chaos surrounds it, washes it on all sides, and is lurking in every shaded corner, patiently waiting for an opportune moment to pounce upon it and devour it, put an end to it. The forces of “disorder” must be kept in leash. They may be subdued, but never annihilated. And this function of “chaining up” the mad dogs of social chaos is discharged by a special group, not by the common run of citizenry. And Marxism proposing to integrate the separate concerns and plants and weld them into one state-merger, presupposes implicitly the segregation of a group of “mergerers”, “integrators” who are constantly on the job. This task is neither a process, nor a singular act, but a function to be fulfilled day-in day-out, for it is not enough to “merge” separate plans, they must be kept operating together.

3. Anarchy Of Production.

“Anarchy reigns in social production. But commodity production, like all other forms of production, has its own laws, which are inherent in and inseparable from it; and these laws assert themselves in spite of anarchy, in and through anarchy. These laws are manifested in the sole form of social relationship which continues to exist, in exchange, and enforce themselves on the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 305.)

If by “anarchy” Engels designates the absence of government control, legislative measures prescribing in details the conduct of economic affairs, “anarchy” is the only form that can be prevalent in social production, for law enactment and law-enforcement are political phenomena. Social production being non-political may be described as “free” or as “anarchy”. The word “anarchy” is employed by Engels to give us a “scare”, by an effect of verbal magic. A social phenomenon is not necessarily a political phenomenon. All social activities, that are not regulated politically, by means of legislature or police ordinances, are, so to say, “anarchic”, meaning nothing more frightful, nothing more prejudicial, than non-political. “Social production” being “social” cannot have other laws, save the immanent law-conformity, so to say, embodied, in a socially natural way, in its own processes, in its actions and interactions and their systematizations. As far as government and juridical law formulation and decree issuance are concerned, “anarchy” reigns supreme in the immense domain of physical nature. The laws regulating its processes and phenomena, their sequels and co-existences are of a cause-and-effect character. They are by no means legislative acts originated by parliaments or other political legislative bodies. The same holds true as regards social nature. It manages to keep out of chaos, of disorder, of disarray and confusion by applying its own inherent devices, in such a way it accomplishes order, maintains a certain discipline without taking recourse to political instrumentalities. In other words, it shuns both extremes : governance and “anarchy”, if the latter word stands for absence of all kinds of laws and regulations. It is law-abiding, it is disciplined, but not politicized, not subject to political laws, to fiats, to ukases issued by a body politic. Instead of “anarchy”, a word that may have misleading connotations, we would prefer to use the term “freedom” in our describing social production.

Language is surely a “social” phenomenon. There are not as yet individual languages shaped for the purpose of “internal” intercourse, for thought-clarification. But language is surely not a political phenomenon, and the language activities of the group, whether of a creative or imitative character, coining words or phrases or borrowing them for use in interhuman inter course, are not regulated politically. There are no laws, norms, enjoining us to talk so much and not more, to use this word and not that, this idiomatic, or slangy expression and tabooing the others by a legislative act. There are no linguistic, philological “offences”, felonies, misdemeanors for which one can be arraigned before a magistrate or judge of peace and speech. Some countries muzzle their talkers and writers, but this is as far as content goes, the “form” is “free”. The use of a language is, certainly, regulated, and quite strictly so, but this is achieved not by political means.

The same is applicable to our intellectual and artistic productions. They are, no doubt, “social”, meaning: interindividual as far as effort, creative strain or impulse, is concerned and “social” as far as the linguistic integument, their form, is concerned, yet they are free from political usurpation, sway and dominance.

The truth of the matter is that most of the compositions of art and sciences are first of all “works”. products, if not exactly made to order, then, anyway, fabricated with a view to satisfy demands expressed by a market. They are commodities. The halcyon days when the individual was wont to “create” logical or aesthetical values for his own delectation, his own amusement, were long gone, if not forgotten. The delicious fruits, the lascivious berries, fall no longer from the tree of knowledge, or the bush of imagination, shaken down ripe and red by the evening breeze leisurely swinging and winging its way through the garden of personal delight. Creative worths are no longer rolled up to the surface by the incessantly bubbling well of overabundance. The self-sufficient, self-contained closed inner circle of the primitive not-trafficking spiritual household is an idyl of the past. Then things cultural were produced for home consumption. Only on very rare occasions were they offered to strangers as a treat. Now is come the age of barter and swop. All goods, whether of wisdom or naivete, whether of science or of art, are equally stamped as wares, marketable articles. And yet every one who is capable of “producing” theories, doctrines, views, has a right to do so, he may, if he can, elaborate them, express them and propagate them. The same applies to the creation of artistic values, one has a right to “sell” them to the public that is willing to buy, to capture the market or part of it. Anarchy reigns in mental and emotional production, in fact, in all social endeavors, save those that are marked “political” and are univolitional, instead of being multi-volitional.

“These laws”, the immanent social laws, “assert themselves in spite of anarchy, in and through anarchy”. There is hardly any spite work done. “These laws” and ”anarchy” do not clash, do not militate against one another. For “anarchy” is a political term that describes a political situation, indicating the disorder resulting from the absence of political laws where those laws are supposed to be, and are considered indispensable for the enforcement of unity and discipline, but it does not designate the absence of laws in general, the lack of certain conformities without which nothing that exists as any kind of a unit, can exist and function.

The non observance of grammatical rules is not tantamount to the non-observance of philological rules, linguistic immanent laws. All sins against grammar, etymology or syntax “anarchy”, are regulated, dictated by immanent laws that are operative within those very infractions of the grammatical “laws”.

“These laws are manifested in the sole form of social relationship”, this is the only way in which a social law can exhibit itself without transgressing upon the domain of the political.

4. Marxism As Politicalism.

Marxism, being the most elaborate school of Communist thought, is, virtually, more than Communism Communalism. It is “Politicalism”. It is the advocacy that economo-social phenomena should be treated, should be forced to become “political”. Nationalization of industry and commerce, or, more exactly, the statization of the means and instruments of production this is, in short, applied Marxism.

“It is the proletarian masses who will ultimately put an end to the anarchy of production.” (Ibid. p. 307.)

The two problems, the external and the internal, instead of being treated separately, are fused by Engels to the detriment of both. “Anarchy of production”, meaning the looseness of the connections existing between the economic units of national economy, will be remedied, and should be remedied, economically, through the establishments of trusts. And this is done daily, this is the means our economy applies as a cure against the “disease” of cut-throat competition. The proletarians have another grievance which is located in the inter relationship existing within each industrial unit. The workers have absolutely nothing to do with the question of how best and more expedient to connect the independent units. But the Marxian attitude toward them, toward he workers is tinged politically, for Marxism being politicalism would like to make use of the workers, not as producers, but as citizens who have votes and hands to support their votes, namely, as soldiers, as militants which means civil militarists, in the civil war waged as if in their interests…

The workers as such, as producers, are not concerned about the “anarchy” or “order” end of the productive system any more than the independent crafts men or small shopkeepers. Why should they bother with this? Why should they shoulder this extremely onerous burden. Their interest is focused on another problem altogether, and that is the question of wages or property rights to, or share holding in, the given economic unit. All other problems, though of exceedingly great moment, may interest them exclusively as citizens, as human beings, as consumers in general, but not as producers, as “proletarian masses”. And in their former capacities or titles they do not constitute any special category with any special intensivity or exclusiveness of interest-taking as a productive body.

The ”proletarian masses” as such have nothing to gain from this drastic reform, namely, the putting “an end to the anarchy of production”. And why should they go to the trouble of carrying out this piece of strenuous work even “ultimately”? Unless they are just fine fellows, good Samaritans who are going to do “historical” favors, and accomplish this act for the sake of Marx and Engels, more exactly, for the benefit of the new master class of organisateurs whose vital interest, reason d'etre lies in this very point, in this heroic exploit of establishing a new politico-economic regime, of calling forth a “political” cosmos out of a political “chaos”, more precisely of substituting a “political” for a “social” cosmos.

5. Industrial Feudalism And Industrial Democracy.

“We are marching with rapid strides toward a commercial feudalism... We shall thus see the reappearance of feudalism in an inverse order, founded on mercantile leagues and answer ing the baronial leagues of the middle ages.” (Charles Fourier, Social Destinies, p. 141, Sociological Series no. 1, part II, New York, 1876.)

“These corporations contain the germ of a vast feudal coalition which is destined soon to invade the whole industrial and financial system, and give birth to a commercial feudalism.” (Ibid. p. 149.)

Thus anarchy of production and commerce is left behind, we enter upon an era of feudalism, in our modern language, trustism which resembles the feudal political forms of the preceding epoch. And as the passing from “anarchy” to feudalism in economics was achieved by economic means, not political, so the further development should go along the same lines. And out of feudalism two ways are open; they lead us either toward industrial absolutism, a monocapitalistic system based on trustification, or toward industrial republicanism based on joint-stock companies in which the masses at large hold shares.

But Marxism offers to reroute the march forward, to detour it and direct it along political highways. Instead of industrial feudalism that sprang up, that came into being industrially, commercially, financially, with its semi-independent trading houses and their associations and leagues, Marxism advocates the establishment of a politico-economic absolutism, a politico-eco nomic autocracy, a governmental economy, a state mono economy, a political economy living up to its name and placing all the emphasis upon the adjective POLI TICAL.

“In this way, to avoid commercial absolutism, you would rush into administrative absolutism.” (P. J. Proudhon, System of Economic Contradictions, vol. I, p. 81, Boston, 1888.)

“Commercial absolutism” is in the offing. The highly industrial and commercial countries are still in the feudal stage. Commercial absolutism can be avoided by directing the integrating, centripetal forces toward commercial and industrial republicanism. What Marxism offers is a case of usurpation, an attempt to put an end not to “anarchy” of production by introducting a “monarchy of production”, but to put an end to production as an autonomous economic concern, a special discipline, and by force and violence, through legislative measures, or civil military maneuvres, convert it into a political discipline, a political concern run and controlled by the state and its functionaries, the politicians of the proletarian brand, or the politico-economic organisateurs. Marxism aims not at combining and unifying our eco nomics by the application of economic means, following up the economic tendencies inherent in modern industry and commerce and letting them mature, attain to fruition, but it wants to subjugate it, conquer it by political means, dominate it, enslave it politically, destroy its home-rule and run it as an appanage of the state.

On this score Marxism is unequivocal, emphatic and outspoken.

6. Marxism and the Labor Problem.

As regards the labor problem, the readjustment of the not all too wholesome and proper relationship existing between the capitalist and his laborer, or the operative and the organizer, Marxism is, to say it as mildly as possible, inarticulate and ambiguous. It is satisfied with the carrying out of puny reforms. It hardly goes beyond a juridical fetishism. It does not examine into the sociological essence of the antagonism. It confines itself to scratching the surface of the legal formulae, and is done with it. Concerning the internal problem Marxism is utterly ineffective. The replacement of the capitalist, the private owner, by the public “servant”, the organizer, to direct labor, to supervise it, makes a difference, as far as the laborer is concerned, and that judged purely subjectively-naively, of a legalistic character, but nowise of a sociological nature. And the objectively sociological difference constitutes a change not for the better for labor, but for the worse. And Marxism, looked upon from the angle of labor, does not deal, in the positive sense, with the kernel and meaty content of the social process, with the de-facto, namely, with the vertical division and distance that lies between labor and organization of labor, the gulf separating plain physiological labor from sociological effort spent in the very act of making labor more productive, but engages in sporting with the integument and husks of the de-jure. Marxism, concerning the internal problem, does not touch upon the sociological substance, but chases the law-shadows, thus beating around the bush of juristic categories, and overlooking the sociological root and cause of all internal “disharmonies”, to wit, the split of society into organisateurs and organisees.

Marxism, viewed from the labor standpoint, even when taken in good naive faith, is but a timid shifting of scenes, a petty reformism. It does not revolutionize the base, the mode of the interrelationship existing in our present society, but contents itself with offering superficial modifications. It tinkers with legal trappings. Marxism champions the abolition of private ownership, the discarding of the ruling class of proprietors, capitalists, and thus, intentionally, or rather subjectively unintentionally, it aims at enthroning another ruling class in their capacity of plenipotentiary politico-economic autocrats, political Czars of nationalized, usurped industry. Marxism alters the law-expression, the juridical status of the commanding class, but does by no means weaken, rather on the contrary, class-rule as such.

“But every society, based upon the production of commodities, has this peculiarity : that the producers have lost control over their own social interrelations... No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his cost of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialized production.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, pp. 105-06.)

“Free competition which would be better named anarchical competition.” (Charles Fourier, Theory of Social Organization, p. 213, New York, 1870.)

When were there so many abuses, so much anarchy in the industrial world as now.” (Charles Fourier, Social Destinies, p. 143, Sociological series, no. 1, part II, New York, 1876.)

Marxism has a clear-cut proposition, a ready-made-irrespective whether we agree with it or reject to the question of “anarchy”, as Engels prefers to design the state our industry is in, it offers a full blooded tyranny. But Marxism is entirely impotent, helpless when it comes to the solution of the inner problem, the readjustment of the constituent elements of the productive process, namely labor and organization of labor. Not only does it not try to answer this question, it ignores it, or rather does not suspect its very existence.

“Labor shall rule the world.”

What kind of labor, whether the toil, the sweat of the brow of the skilled or unskilled manual worker, or the strain and exertion of those who organize labor? On this point Marxism is non-committal, is reluctant to make its stand clear.

“He (the worker) cannot become en masse sole owner and master of a scheme of things he did not make and is incapable of directing... The workers at a low level may be flattered by dreams of “class-conscious” mass dominion from which all sense of inferiority is banished, but they will remain dreams.” (H. G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, pp. 92-93, New York, 1928.)

The worker cannot become en masse the ruler of present society but he, who does rule labor en masse politically through the labor-parties and politico-eco nomically through the trade unions, is very eager to become the ruler, the master of economics and politics.

“Yet this is the ambition implicit in an exclusively ' labor ' movement.” (Ibid.)

This is the explicit ambition of those who “move” the “labor” movement... This is their ambition, but they will not say it explicitly. On this point they are either ambiguous or reticent

What makes the usually garrulous Marxism so taciturn? The fear of the proletariat, of the working class. It makes use of the toilers, of their numbers, energy and enthusiasm, it employs them for the rough and tough task of breaking up the existing system, and, consequently, it cannot afford to tell the laboring masses the whole truth about their situation and the Marxian aspirations.

7. Communist Leadership.

Marxism, considered objectively, aims at the formation of a social aggregate, a privileged class of politico economic organisateurs.

“Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labor arises a class freed from directly productive labor, which looks after the general affairs of society; the direction of labor, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning their social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, pp. 130-31.)

Social leadership tends toward “intensified exploitation of the masses”, the more so Communist leadership. At the light of this rule how easily one can grasp the full meaning of the Communist objective : turning social leadership into an intensified exploitation of the masses. And the milestones along the red road are calcimined so that one should without difficulty discern them and keep to the right course and proceed in the right direction along the historical highway of rulership that begins with modest, innocent and self-sacrificing leadership. They embark upon their career as labor-leaders. They will go the whole length of the way, to overt “intensified exploitation” of labor. For leadership and exploitation are the two extreme ends of the self same road.

And the whole history of mankind, from the view point of objective “scientific” Marxism, should be under stood as a preparatory process, a paving of the road for the advent of the new class, not of laborers, but of directors of labor.

“The great division of labor between the masses discharging simple manual labor and the few privileged persons directing labor.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 207.)

This is the realistic politico-economic content of the Marxian millennium, the splitting history into two sections of ante and post, before the emergence of the commanding type, and after. A class is subjective, and it cannot help seeing the march of historical events as reflected in the mirror of its own selfish interests.

8. Marxism Objectively Considered.

“The extension of enterprise and the increasing forms of production especially by intensification has tended rather to minimize more and more the value of individual capitalists and, consequently, has caused capital to become more and more Inhuman, disembodied, and to exercise the silly pranks of an occult agency as the individual is being more and more over shadowed by his wealth which constitutes his chief recommendation for the privileges he enjoys materially and even socially.” (Jacques Cohen, Social and Economic Values, p. 33, London, 1922.)

Capital is objectified, and this is the reason why the state is being tempted to take hold of it, appropriate it, confiscate it, and discard the capitalist. The new class is different, its power and potence is intrinsic, not externalized and, therefore, absolutely inseparable from the personalities of its members, and, consequently, not subject, under any means, to expropriation. For the new class deals with an entity that stands under the sign of imperium and not dominium, it is a politico-economic class, not an economic occupational group. At the beginnings of history the organizing class appears in the form of a slave-owning corporation. Later on, it becomes a mere land-owning group. Then it is trans formed into a capital-owning class. In its next metamorphosis, the epoch-making occurrence of our time, it will grow to become a social type of organisateurs. This is a socially natural process. What Marxism-Communism is after is the distortion of the natural growth of organisateurship taking place to a certain extent autonomously on the plane of economics, by wrenching our economy out of its own sphere and transplanting it into the soil of political endeavor, and thus fusing the two species, the economic and the political, of the genus organisateur into one, and shape a titan ruling class, an hierarchisized, all-powerful monopolistically commanding group.

Marxism dwells at length on the topic of exploitation. It discourses about value and surplus-value, employing scientific formulae and terminology, going into a painstaking analysis of the capitalist mode of production, ostentatiously bent upon the difficult task of solving the problem of “exploitation”, cutting the Gordian knot of large-scale industry, whereas in reality it has focused its attention upon a matter of quite a different nature. What it wholeheartedly is in for is the elimination of competition, the eradication of the particularistic tendencies prevailing in the capitalist system, the banishing of personal initiative that stirs and ruffles the smooth surface of social economics. The cardinal, overshadowing all other, task of Marxism is the abolition of the separation of the factory, not unlike that of the church, from the state, a separation that splits the ruling class into two somewhat independent units, that some times, though very seldom, clash, but quite often do not see eye-to-eye about things, anyway, have a different psychology and a different, conditioned by their different positions, approach to social affairs. The realistic goal of Marxism is the introduction of a unified discipline, a rigid constitution that would put a stop to the “licentious”, semi-independent behavior not only of the magnates of industry, which is a minor issue, but of our whole industry as such. Marxism is the advocacy of the suppression of the autonomy of interindividual and interclass economy.

“The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organization of production in the individual work shop and the anarchy of production in society generally.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 110.)

“All actual social life is part organized and part unorganized. Thus in a competitive industry, though it is without an organization as a whole the competitive units may be highly organized houses of business.” (L. T. Hobhouse, Social Development, p. 211, New York, 1924.)

“The social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual.” (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 126.)

Who is able to carry out this “revolutionizing” plan? Who is called upon by the objective process of history to fulfil this mission? One answer can be given to this question : the type of politico-economic organisateurs, those who are possessed of a special talent for this kind of social activity. They and only they will find here an application for their capacities. The capitalist proprietor, being attached to economics exclusively, is not, and cannot become, a highly qualified politico-eco nomic organisateur, for in his person he contains two types in one, he is proprietor and organisateur on a small economic scale, and the very essence of capitalism is the holding apart the two spheres of social endeavors, economy and administration of state affairs. Only Marxism Communism when materialized in the form of a fusion of economics and statesmanship will widely open the portals of opportunity for the glorious entrance of the special variety of the new type of organisateurs and offer it a vast field of activity where it could exhibit in full, without restraints, its capabilities and qualities, for it would need to share its organisatory monopoly with no other independent social formation. In the previous historical stages of development the organisateur was obscured by the proprietor, the owner of slave, soil or capital. He could not unfold, to full capacity, his powers and endowments so long as he was basically a particularist, a separatist. The petty firm, the single concern was of too narrow a scope and it cramped his grand style, the property conditions offered very little playroom, they hemmed him in on all sides and restricted his possibilities.

“…Beneficial ownership is centrifugal, tending to divide and subdivide, to split into ever smaller units and to pass freely from hand to hand.” (Adolfe A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation, p. 9, New York, 1933.)

Competition, warfare raging between firm and firm is the greatest obstacle to organization, and the economic remedy for it is trustification.

“…The stock company business, which represents an abolition of capitalist private industry on the basis of the capitalist private industry, on the basis of the capitalist system itself and destroys private industry in proportion as it expands and seizes new spheres of production.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 519, Chicago, 1909.)

The trust, the cartel, the combine are not destructive, but reconstructive. Growth is not decay. It is the introduction of organisateurship of a purely economic character to supplement proprietorship, but not to annihilate it. This is the economic answer to the problem of systematization of interindividual and interclass economy. This is but the first timid step, but it is made in the right direction and carried out by the proper means, by economic means. Trustification is some kind of an industrial feudalism, following, in a natural way, upon the strictly “individualistic” small-scale financing of privatism-capitalism. It is a modification, an enlargement, of partnership, an institution that begins with two individuals but which has the capacity for growth, while holding to its own sphere of economics and its own factors of development, and can, eventually, encompass a whole industry with all its participants as well as a sum of industries with their full cadres of direct and indirect operators.

The politico-economic variety of the organisateur type being specialized in political intrigue and activities militating against the purely economic organisateur-type, elaborates its doctrine called Marxism. It pleads, with all the cogent vigor of its arguments, for concentration, centralization of industry, achieved by purely political means, which would terminate the fight of the proprietors among themselves : The prerequisite condition for the coming domination of the politico-economic variety of the organisateur-type is an economy submerged in politics and run as a governmental concern on a national scale.

9. Marxism And The Most Advanced Class.

“Marxism claims its general validity precisely for the reason that it is the theoretical expression of the most advanced class, whose ' needs ' of knowledge are far more audacious than those of the conservative and, therefore, narrow-minded mode of thought of the ruling classes in capitalist society.” (Nikolai Bukharin, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Classes, p. 8, New York, 1927.)

Marxism is the “theoretical expression of the most advanced class”, but not of the working class, a class, that is basically, in as much as it is “class-conscious” and guards and is jealous of its own class interests and objectives, more “conservative”, less advanced than the bourgeoisie. Marxism is the ideology of a new, emerging formation, a variety of the oranisateur-type, a class of the future. It has no past of its own, in so far as its own variation is concerned, and it cannot be “conservative”. It is “radical” to the very limit, for it has nothing to lose and everything to gain, a world of economics and politics to conquer. And it, surely, is “audacious”, venturesome, for it is young and hungry for power and domination.

“’Nothing in society shall belong in singular property to anyone ', says the first article of this code (Code de la Nature by Morelly). ' Property is destestable, and whosoever shall attempt to re-establish it, shall be shut up for life, as a maniac or an enemy of mankind. Every citizen is to be supported, maintained, and employed at the public expense”, says article II... Such a book... appeared in 1755 …” (Alexis de Tocqueville, France Before the Revolution of 1789 tr. by Henry Beeve, p. 301, London, 1856.)

“Private property is the demon which arises from the absurd belief, opposed to all facts, that man forms himself, and not God and society. Truth and honesty or goodness and happiness, could never exist with the injustice and cruelty of private property.” (Robert Owen, The Inauguration of the Millennium, p. v., London, 1855.)

“With private property there can be no union of mind, and feeling such as the Millennial State requires.” (Ibid. p. vi.)

”No one having a knowledge of human nature will expect truth, honesty, goodness, or common sense, under a system based on a principle leading to individual responsibility and to the practice of private property.” (Ibid. p. viii.)

“Property, in short, is the principle of anarchy and the enemy of society. It must conspire against an ordered economic plan, nor can it tolerate an authoritative organization of international life.” (Henry Noel Brailsford, Property or Peace, p. 249, New York, 1934.)

Property is the enemy of mankind and society, for who is humanity and who is society, if not the politico economic organisateur? The ruling class is always trying its best to identify itself with the totality of society. Property must conspire against a political plan trying to usurp the economic functions of production and distribution. Property opposes usurpation and imposition, for property is the rock upon which the independence of the individual is built. But property does not “conspire against an ordered economic plan” if the latter is introduced by economic means.

In order that the politico-economic national scale organisateur should live and thrive, the class of proprietors, small scale and medium-size economic organisateurs, must die and thus make room for the new arrivals. And this attempt at elaborating an anti-property ideology and striving to turn it into practice, organizing a mass movement round it, and with the help of the aroused mobs remove by force and violence the class of proprietors under the pretext that property, being the root of wealth, of earthly acquisitions, is, at the same time and because of it, the source of all evil, was repeated many a time during the length of recorded history. There is not much news value about it.

“Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold. And laid them down at the apostles ' feet : and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And Josef, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas... a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it and brought the money, and laid it at the apostles ' feet.” (Acts, IV, 34-37.)

“Nature poured out all things in common to all men; for so God commanded the whole stock of things to be produced, that men should have a general supply of sustenance and should hold the earth as a general seat.” (St. Ambrose, De Off. Lib. I, c. 28.)

“Gratian says that by the law of nature all things are the common property of all men; and that this principle was not only followed in the primitive Church of Jerusalem, but was also taught by the philosophers... Gratian cites an important passage from a spurious letter of St. Clement in the pseudo Isidorian collection, in which it is stated that the use of all things in the world ought to be common to all men, but through iniquity it has come about that men claim things as their private possessions (Gratian, ' Decretum ' C.XII, Q.I., c.2) and the writer refers to Plato and to the example of the Apostles and their disciples.” (R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, vol. II, pp. 136-37.)

“The traces of common ownership which are also found in the early stages of the new religion can be ascribed to the solidarity of a proscribed sect rather than to real equalitarian ideas.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 120.)

The real reason of it is the intention of the political organisateurs to do away with the independence of the individual and his property serving him as protection against encroaches.

A strong frontal attack on the institution of property was led by the Christian Church in its primitive existence. Being young, vigorous, and not realizing, as the case is always with youth, its own limitations, it desired to usurp all economic activities, to control them, to “organize” them on the basis of pseudo-religious concepts. These attacks were repeated at long intervals, chiefly during transition periods, when the Church imagined itself rejuvenated and felt an influx of inspiration and strength as a throwback to its apostolic simplicity and youthfulness.

The private owner and the nascent organisateur fight a desperate battle in the bosom of the modern capitalist. The owner demands that the factory, plant, estate, concern be his own. The organisateur hankers for an amalgamation of many firms into one, though decidedly not his own. The trust is an outgrowth of this inner battle. It came into existence by way of a synthesis, of a reconciliation of two principles. Marxism makes one step farther, which is a misstep, since it is a side-step, and in another direction. Marxism would take the economic train off the industrial rails and propel it along political lines. Marxism insists upon the ousting of the proprietor-class. But the doing away with the property-class means, willingly or unwillingly, the ushering in of a new ruling class, a new type of politico-economic organisateurs. For classes cannot be done away with, they must be substituted.

The religiously robed political organisateur, in the past, working as a Christian in the interests of his totalitarian Church, bitterly opposed its rival institution, private property, and sought, with all means at his disposal, to annihilate this competitor. He did it with no less fervor, insistence and quasi-idealism than his colleague across many ages, the scientifically garbed politico-economic organisateur of our own time, the Marxian, who is trying his best to abolish this inimical institution in the interests of the proletarian, totalitarian all the same, though differently named, – state. And as the pseudo-religious attack on private property, the only refuge and standby of the individual man, the citadel of his independence, was repulsed by sane and sound humanity, so now, we hope, will the pseudo-scientific onslaught on this universal and civilizational institution be repelled with the same determination and success.

II. COMMUNISM AND EXPLOITATION

1. The Organisateurs as “Exploiters”.

How does Marxism intend to solve the problem of exploitation? How does it propose to redress this wrong existing in our economic life?

Marxism assures us that it is going to eliminate the evil of exploitation by a plain device, namely, the socialization of the means of production.

Let us stop for a while to consider, at some length, the Marxian plan.

Our comparatively small-scale industry, the fragmentary, helter skelter economic enterprise, has made imperative for its proper functioning, for a certain period of time at least, the segregation of a whole class of industrial organisateurs, like manufacturers, promoters, managers, superintendents, financiers, etc.

The politically socialized, nationalized large-scale production will, all the more, necessitate, the calling into life and maintaining a whole host of politico-economic organisateurs without whose directorship, supervision, the process of production would not run smoothly, regularly. And if we accept the theory of exploitation in its dogmatically unqualified interpretation as meaning the spoliation of the direct producers effected by the indirect producers, under Communism this new class of functionaries-organisateurs will, certainly, exploit the laborers engaged in the industries supervised and managed by the higherups, the bureaucratic organisateurs. According to the Marxian concept, they will live off the workers.

“The transmission of power from one privileged class to another would take place, and... the mass of producers would merely change masters. These new masters... would make more flowery speeches than the capitalists, but there is every evidence that they would be much harder and much more insolent than their predecessors.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 202, New York, Huebsche pub.)

So long as there is in existence a directing class and direction is synonymous with exploitation, the directing class will, surely, exploit the directed class, which means exercise its functions and receive remuneration, in one form or another, for it. Who is going to stop them? What considerations can prevail against this most natural mode of interrelations existing between the higher and the lower strata from times immemorial? Certainly not the disinterestedness, unselfishness of the commanding class. Classes, no matter which, are essentially egotistic, cannot help being self-seekers. No moral law is written for them. And if it were written, it would not be morally binding anyway, for who could have enforced the moral prescription through purely psychological means, like persuasion, pressure of environ mental approval, crystallized class-opinion, besides the rulers themselves, and this would be the most unnatural thing for them to do.

“Individuals can consider ethical requirements, they have consciences, but societies have none. They overfall their victims like avalanches with irresistible destroying power. All societies, large and small, retain the character of wild hordes in considering every means good which succeeds.” (Ludwig Gumplovicz, The Outline of Sociology, p. 146, Philadelphia, 1899.)

Would it not be fatally easy for them, without altering economic structure reintroduce the old inequalities of wealth? What motive would they have for not doing so? What motive is possible except idealism, love of mankind, non-economic motives of the sort Bolsheviks decry... If human nature is what Marxians assert it to be, why should the rulers neglect the opportunities of selfish advantage? It is sheer nonsense to pretend that the rulers... when they have become accustomed to power, retain the proletarian psychology, and feel that their class-interest is the same as that of the ordinary working man.” (Bertrand Russel, Bolshevism, Practice and Theory, pp. 158-59, New York, 1920.)

The organizing classes exploit the organized ones, they have done it from the beginning of history, and who can put an end to this practice now, after the social revolution has been achieved, a revolution the sole mission of which is the inauguration, installation, or, rather, the solidification of a new politico-economic master-class? Their scruples, their moral susceptibilities acquired and developed in the period of the revolution and civil war, a time hardly opportune for the cultivation of noble, humanitarian feelings? Will ethical factors, usually weak and insufficient, proverbially so, prove all of a sudden effectual enough to serve as a curb for the cormorant appetites of the upstarts, of the class militarists, and force them to abstain from fleecing the innocent sheep and lambs of labor? The more so that the latter ordinarily come around bleating and clamoring for this very thing, explicitly begging to be sheared, to be relieved from excess income... The masses always meet and greet a new master class as their friend, proclaiming it to be their benefactor. They kick out the old ruling class after it has grown somewhat senile and unable to attend to its business of exploitation. Then, never before, they brand it, under the instigation of emerging rulers, as a bunch of blood-suckers, exploiters, robbers.[9] * And the new rulers who rush in, riding on the tidal waves of the victorious revolution will, no doubt, harness the gullible and beguiled laborers, hitch them to their gilt chariot of luxury and comfort.

2. Profit Unessential For “Exploitation”.

“But is not the profit-system bound to be abolished on the next day of the successful social revolution? and where there is no profit-making, but production for use, there can be no exploitation” – will argue the not over-sophisticated Communist.

In all earnestness and truth, the last assertion, though accepted by all social naivists for sound reasoning, is utterly erroneous.

The element of profit was, certainly, non-extant in the self-contained and self-sufficient estate-household of the medieval Baron. He did not sell the produce of his land, he did not traffic in the products of his serf artisans, consequently, he could not derive any profit, commercially speaking, from the labor of his retainers, and production, under those special circumstances, was, certainly, for use. The question was but hinging on a trifle, who was going to be the user? The phenomenon of exploitation was there in its full bloom, and, we safely dare say, in no lesser degree than under the profit-making, or price-system. Production for use is no guarantee against exploitation, unless it is meant as “production for the exclusive use of the direct producers”. But, then, in this formulation, it would become a para phrase of the absurd demand that the “whole product” belong to the worker, which is an utter impossibility for the plain reason that the “product” in its entirety is neither produced by the single worker, nor can his share in the product be established with any precision. The more so that the workers, under modern complicated conditions, do not work unless they are directed. So that “exploitation” did not begin with “profit” and, naturally, it could not be removed with the abolition of the latter. These two categories are not indissolubly bound together. “Exploitation” under capitalism is realized under the historical form, a form which is not essential, does have mighty little bearing on the contents, of “profit”. Without “profits” exploitation may rise higher than its rate is with “profits”.

“Under a natural economy in a feudal structure we dis cover maintenance of king and feudal superiors out of the product of labor upon the land, surplus to what is requisite for the maintenance of laborers, this surplus accruing to them by feudal right.” (R. T. Evans, Aspects of the Study of Society, p. 130, New York, 1923.)

“But by kings, nobles, and ecclesiastical bodies, this sur plus was either consumed in luxury or accumulated as treasure, and was therefore not available to be used in organizing business for the making of profit.” (Ibid. p. 131.)

“In most of the German States, as late as 1788, a peasant could not quit his domain... To the service of that master a large portion of his time was due. Labor-rents (corvees) existed to the full extent, and absorbed in some of these countries three days in the week. The peasant rebuilt and repaired the mansion of his lord... drove his carriage, and went on his errands. Several years of the peasant's early life were spent in the domestic service of the manor-house.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, France Before the Revolution of 1789, tr. by Henry Beeve, p. 39, London, 1856.)

Were the slaves of the ancient world or the slaves and serfs of the Middle Ages not exploited, or exploited to a smaller degree than the modern proletarians only because their masters were, unlike the capitalists, no profiteering speculator - tightwads, but rather splurgy wastrels?

3. "Exploitation " Not Conditioned By Ownership .

"Capital has not invented surplus - labor. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the laborer free or not free must add to the working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian Kalos Kagathos, Etruscan Theocrat, Civis Romanus, Norman Baron, American slave-owner, modern landlord or capitalist." (Karl Marx, Capital, vol . I , p . 260.)

"Exploitation" not being invented, brought into being, by capitalism, but inherited, so to say, by it, taken over from its predecessor - systems and modified, would not end its existence with the expiration of capital, but be handed over by capitalism, for further modification, to its successor - systems. The phenomenon of "exploitation” is not necessarily connected with "ownership" concerning the means of production. This connection, manifested under the capitalist system and even under the feudal system, is not logically, economically a sine qua non of the existence of "exploitation". If the means of production are owned by the community as a whole, but this community is divided into classes, like that pictured by Plato in his Communistic Republic, then the higherups, the directors of the productive process, will, of necessity, human nature taken for what it is, exploit the direct, the directed, participants of the productive processes. Though, not being private owners of the means of production, they are, certainly, not supposed to sell the products produced by the laborers working under their director ship, and, of course, they will, by no means, be able to make “profits” out of the exchange transaction that may never, if the distribution within the political unit is more or less organized, take place altogether. the element of “exploitation” will be there, nevertheless, if the directors, from the Marxian standpoint considered as non-producers, as idlers, will share in the products, and get, naturally, a bigger share than the plain worker producers or distributors. For the directors will direct and supervise not only the process of production, but the process of distribution as well. Politically organized, centralized, unified production will, of necessity, be accompanied by centralized, unified distribution. So that the directing class having no share in the process of direct production, neither in the process of direct distribution, will have the largest share in direct consumption. For the distributors, no less than the producers will be under its direction, sway and control, and no class is liable to underestimate its own services and not remunerate itself generously, if it has the power to do so, if it occupies a commanding position. And this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “profit-system” as such, or with ownership rights to the means of production.

The more so that according to Marxian concepts the stranglenoose of “exploitation” has a very remote, if any, relation to the traffic shuttle running through the transactions of buying and selling.

4. "Exploitation” Unified.

“Marx says expressly that merchants ' profit also forms a part of surplus value, and on the assumption made this is only possible when the manufacturer sells his product to the merchant below its value, and thus relinquishes to him a part of his booty.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 242.)

“Exploitation”, to the Marxian understanding, is realized in the very process of production, and not in the manipulations of commodities-exchange. Commerce, barter, are a case for themselves, they get a rake-off. Not the squeezing, the “robbing”, only the sharing of the “booty” gotten in the process of production, a relinquishing of a part of the spoils, is done here, in the field of exchange, of commerce. For their go-between services, useless, nay, harmful operations unqualifiedly condemned by the Marxian dogma, the wholesalers as well as the retailers see their way how to squeeze out some excess remuneration. The “squeezing” is done not on the bled white workers who have nothing left to them above their bare means of subsistence, but on the arch fiend, the first appropriator of surplus-value, the accursed manufacturer.

“The capitalist who produces surplus-value, i. e., who extracts unpaid labor directly from the laborers, and fixes it in commodities is, indeed, the first appropriator, but by no means the ultimate owner, of this surplus-value. He has to share it with capitalists who fulfill other functions in the com plex of social production, with land-owners, etc. Surplus-value, therefore, splits up into various parts. Its payments fall to various categories of persons, and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants ' profit, rent, etc.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 618-19.)

Surplus-value is the bosom wherefrom “exploitation” sucks its nourishment. The real profits are pro cured not in the marts, but in the plants that under Communism will be unified, organized on a national scale, so that there will be much greater possibilities and much easier facilities for “exploitation”. The appropriated surplus-value will not be shared with any one situated outside the commanding class. Since the new master-class, like production and distribution, will be unified, cemented upon a strict principle of hierarchy.

So that “its payments” will not “fall to various categories of persons and take various forms, independent the one of the other, such as profit, interest, merchants ' profit, rent, etc.” Surplus-value appropriation, being connected with industry, with economic endeavors, with political services, will be unified, centralized and intensified to its highest degree. The commanding class will “relinquish” no “part of his booty” but hold it wholly to itself. Unified production, unified distribution will have as its result unified “exploitation”, a surplus-value realized on national scale and appropriated by a unified directing class. Marx enumerated in the above quoted passage a whole host of exploiters, “the Athenian Kalos Kagathos, Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus, Norman Baron, American slave-owner, modern landlord or capitalist”, we would add but one more exploiter, and that is the Russian Communist Commissar. This would complete his list and make it look more up-to-date.

“This (surplus value)... is a value newly created by the laborer during the process of production materialized labor. But it does not cost the owner of the entire product, the capitalist, anything. This circumstance permits the capital ist to consume the surplus-value entirely as his revenue, unless he has to give up some portions of it to other claimants This same circumstance was also the compelling motive which induced the capitalist to engage in the first place in the manufacture of commodities.

But neither his original benevolent intention of securing some surplus-value, nor its subsequent expenditure as revenue, by him or others, affect the surplus-value as such. They do not impair the fact that it is coagulated, unpaid labor.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. II, p. 448, Chicago, 1915.)

The only difference between Communism and capitalism concerning the appropriation of the surplus value created, according to Marx, “by the laborer during the process of production”, would consist therein : 1) the capitalist class calls itself “owner of the entire pro duct,” the Commissar-class would never describe itself as owner of the surplus-value product; 2) the capitalist class in spite of its claimed ownership “give up some portions of it to other claimants,” the Commissar-class, on the contrary, disclaiming all ownership rights would give up no portions thereof but appropriate it completely as well-deserved remuneration for its organisatory labors, and “consume the surplus-value entirely.” “The subsequent expenditure “of surplus-value does not affect “the susplus-value as such.” Ownership has nothing to do with surplus-value appropriation, or, rather, consumption. Sur plus-value came ages before capitalism and it, no doubt, would linger ages after capitalism, in the limited sense of the world, has been long gone. All it is necessary for surplus-value to materialize and be turned into a phenomenon of “exploitation” is that the laborer work hard or skillful enough, be productive enough to produce a sur plus above that he consumes. In other words, he should be frugal enough, or rather made frugal by a commanding class. These two conditions, being one, namely, to produce over and above the average mass-standard of living and consume beneath it, these circumstances that make for the existence of a directing class that forces the laborer to produce more than he consumes, are present under Communism. The name of the directing class, the mode of production, the methods it applies in enforcing its rule, in controlling labor, are not essential. What is essential is this, that the productivity of the masses definitely outrun their consumptivity. And this is easy of achievement when there is a controlling class that takes care of these two processes. It forces labor to be operative, and it forces it to abstain from too much con suming. All other things do not matter, “they do not impair the fact that it is coagulated, unpaid labor”, unpaid labor means labor that produces more than it consumes in the process of its materialization, and the”surplus”is consumed by a higher class, by a command ing group standing above labor and directing its operations.

5. Imposed Overproduction And Underconsumption

“Exploitation” is a result of the plain fact that the capitalist, or the commissar, or the ruler, offers to the laborer less than the latter earns, or produces under the given circumstances. There is a part of labor that is not paid for, not recompensed with the products of its own making, that the capitalist, or some one else occupying a similar position of command, of control of labor, gets gratuitously, without a direct participation in the process of production in which those very products were produced. Wages constitute part of the products given back to the laborer in compensation for his efforts in order to keep him in a fit condition to continue his work. The surplus is the resultant of additional energy spent in the productive process, the extra labor-hours put in by the worker above his salary, or its equivalent in pro ducts consumed by him and his family. And this residue, or surplus, which remains after wages have been subtracted, is not divided, as should be done, among the producers, the legitimate proprietors, the entitled consumers, thereof, but appropriated by the capitalists, or by some other class that preceded the capitalists historically or would succeed them historically. The laborers produce more, they are made, commanded to produce more than they are given a chance, or, rather, allowed by their bosses, of an economic or political character, to consume. The part a commanding class plays, or, rather, the function it fulfills, is a double one. It forces, in one way or another, either economically or juridically politically, or plainly physically, the laborer to produce and forces him to abstain from consuming too much. While naturally the “laborer” would not produce but would rather like to consume. The business of a commanding class is to bring about a state of overproduction, meaning to drive the masses of laborers to produce more than they need, and an underconsumption, meaning to keep them in check so that they do not consume all they were instrumental, in a direct way, in producing. And as their “overproduction” is imposed upon them, so is their “underconsumption”. The wages, or their equivalent in products, in items of consumption, of the laborers are, as a rule, niggardly doled out to them. They run pretty close, according to the Marxian concept, to the margin of starvation. The laborers receive a poor allowance which enables them to keep body and soul together, to stave off hunger, to maintain a small family. Nothing more.

“What, then, is the value of laboring power?

“Like that of every other commodity, its value is determined by the quantity of labor necessary to produce it. The laboring power of a man exists only in his living individuality. A certain mass of necessaries must be consumed by a man to grow up and maintain his life. But the man, like the machine, will wear out, and must be replaced by another man. Beside the mass of necessaries required for his own maintenance, he wants another amount of necessaries to bring up a certain quota of children that are to replace him on the labor market and to perpetuate the race of laborers After what has been said, it will be seen that the value of laboring power is determined by the value of the necessaries required to produce, develop, maintain, and perpetuate the laboring power.” (Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit, Essentials of Marx, pp. 145-46.)

6. Intensification Of “Exploitation”.

The workers forge wealth, amass fortunes, but not for themselves, they do not get more than a subsistence minimum, they slave and enrich their employers, their exploiters, who appear at different historical epochs under different disguises. Now, “exploitation” that is as old as history, and has changed forms with every new era, new mode of production, but has never as yet been eliminated, why shall it perish with the collapse of capitalism? Why shall it expire on the same day that the capitalist breathes his last? In other words, where is the guarantee that “exploitation” that underwent many modifications, but survived all structural changes effected in our economics, is going to be abolished this time with the ushering in of Communism? Why should it not adapt itself to the new circumstances? Systems came and systems went, but “exploitation” stood its ground all the time, through the whole length of recorded history, why should it fall this time with the downfall of capitalism? If it was vigorous and vital and adaptable enough to survive the collapse of ancient civilization, slavery, and after that, the abolition of serfdom, why could it not survive the system of hiredom and continue existing and flourishing, thriving better than hitherto, under the new system called Communism? Does Marxism pledge the elimination of “exploitation”, and if it pledges, does it intend to live up to its pledge?

“And then (under Socialism), no longer will the profit taker, the despoiler of labor-the appropriator of surplus value stand legally entrenched between the working people and the fruits of the soil.” (Ward H. Mills, Evolution of Society, p. 225.)

“Socialism is the political movement of the working class which aims to abolish exploitation by means of the collective ownership and democratic management of the basic instruments of production and distribution.” (Jessie Wallace Hughan, What is Socialism? p. ii, New York, 1928.)

To our mind, the very reverse will happen. Social ism-Communism would lay down the most solid foundations upon which class-domination and, consequently, class-exploitation would erect its skyscrapers. For it makes the existence of an upper class a sine qua non for the very functioning of a unified, centralized industry. And if Capitalism is branded by the Marxist Leninists as an economic system that is based on exploitation of the producers by their employers, Communism should be stigmatized as a politico-economic system founded upon the intensification of exploitation of the producers, the laborers, by their “political employers”, the governmental functionaries who usurped the role and privileges, in addition to their bureaucratic commanding positions, of the captains of industry.

An industry socialized, according to the Marxian plan and program, is an industry politicalized, statisized, organized politically, upon the principle of service, coming mighty near servitude with its elimination of private ownership, on a national scale. Thus the various branches of the hitherto independent productive enter prises are brought together, by political compulsion, force and violence, anti-economic factors, under one head. They are incorporated, in an unnatural, unindustrial way, unlike the process of transformation asserting itself in the transition from small handicraft to manufacture that was carried out by economic forces and means, into one complex-unit that becomes a political concern operated by political means. Such a mammoth industry submerged in politics would require, for its proper functioning, a whole caste of highly qualified “virtuosos”, a whole host of politico-economic captains. It would demand the fusion of two ruling classes, the economic directors and the political directors, into one politico-economically directing class. And its regime would mark the height of tyrannical class-rule.

The plain worker is hardly developed enough to cope even with the problems placed before him by the small workshop, the miniature plant of the capitalist system. Under the new puzzling conditions called forth by the ramified net of colossalized works and complicated processes of production and distribution, the rank and file will lose their bearings altogether. They will be utterly bewildered and entirely helpless. The common laborer will be in constant need of a nurse-class, tutor-class and naturally be absolutely disregarded, ordered about, tyrannized, by the expert organisateurs, men of special training, endowed with unusual capacities for handling the gigantic apparata of politicalized, incorrectly called socialized, economics.

7. Bukharin On “Exploitation”.

“This thought (of Socialist exploitation) is wrong from start to finish It will be a matter of indifference to a socialist society whether labor is applied to the direct production of articles of consumption or to some ' more remote purpose ', since labor in such a society is performed according to an economic plan drawn up in advance, and the various categories of labor are considered as parts of a general social labor, all of which is necessary for an uninterrupted progress, reproduction and consumption. Just as the products of the units of various remoteness are being consumed uninterruptedly and simultaneously so the processes of labor, however different their goals, also proceed with the same quality of continuousness and simultaneity. All the parts of the general social labor are fused in a unified indivisible whole, in which only one sector is of importance in determining the share of each member. namely, the amount of labor put in.” (N. Bukharin, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Classes, p. 177, New York, 1927.)

Bukharin speaking of labor under Communism obliterates quite arbitrarily, and, certainly, unscientific ally, all distinctions existing between imitative, repetitive muscular or brain work and creative flashes, ingenuity effort, origination strain. He recognizes only quantitative differences, “the amount of labor put in”. Thus quality is gone overboard which is, of course, absurd, for no society can allow itself to ignore quality as such. But even so quantity stays with us under the wonder working system of Communism. “One factor is important in determining the share of each member namely, the amount of labor put in”. Now, if the “amount” amounts to so much that it is playing a paramount part in future society, in the Communist commonwealth, there must be some one whose office it is to measure that “amount”. And now the question arises as to the labor spent in the most important, in fact, the only important act upon which the whole Communist economy hinges, namely, that of measuring labor.

“The regulation of the labor-time and the distribution of the social labor among the various groups of production, also the keeping of accounts with this, become more essential than ever.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, p. 992.)

That kind of highly qualified labor which is to render decisions concerning the total and individual quantity of labor, assign quotas, allotments, that sort of labor will of necessity be of a higher quality than ordinary labor, if it be true that “quantity”, “amount” will occupy the highly exclusive position consigned to it by Bukharin. As an Hegelian, every Marxian must be an Hegelian, Bukharin, surely, knows that “quantity” passes into “quality”. In our case, the measuring of quantity would give birth to a new quality of labor. This would be a stunt pulled by “dialectics”. And as we have already discovered a new “quality”, we may rest assured that quantity will not be decisive any longer, for it plays its grand part only among equals, and it is out of place where qualitative differences are to be found. Plain labor and labor measuring labor will not be measured by the same yardstick or weighed on the same scales, and, consequently, will not be remunerated equally.

“Labor in such a society is performed”, informs or, rather, enlightens us the quoted author,” according to an economic plan drawn up in advance”. This point is of the utmost significance. There must be a plan and the plan must be drawn up in advance. All right! But, again, some one will have to go to the trouble of drawing up the plan. The plan, not being automotive, will not, even under Communism, draw itself up of its own free accord. Some one will have to work it out. And that labor involved in drawing up the plan and the following labor spent in supervision, in seeing to it that the plan drawn be executed according to its blue prints, will never be equal in its quality, in its significance, in its bearing upon the whole make-up of nationally politicalized economy, to ordinary skilled or unskilled labor applied in the direct production of articles of consumption or of “some more remote purpose”. For the latter are dependent on the former, they must materialize them selves in accord with its dictates, they are subordinated to it in the very nature of things, and therefore cannot help being “inferior”. And this “inferiority” of theirs must keep the workers, the performers of these inferior duties or tasks in an inferior position economically, politically, sociologically. In other words, they must be “exploited” by their superiors. Bukharin overlooked the most obvious truth that behind each national eco nomic plan must be standing a “planner” or, rather, a class of “planners”. And planners as a class, being busy planning out not only the quantity of labor and quality of it needed for the given commonwealth but the positions of the laborers and their categories within the framework of the planned economy and planned community, will not place themselves, unless it be a class of secular saints, idealists, holy men, a thing existing only in social messianic literature,-on one plane with the plain laborers to whom they assign their places and niches. Such an act of placing the “planner”, in other words, the “placer”, on one level with those for whom the plan is made, and places assigned, is contrary to common sense and sound, realistic policy, and would be militating against national economy.

“All the parts of the general social labor are fused in a unified indivisible whole”. This is the very quint essence of Communism. No gainsaying. But we should realize that the various parts of labor are not possessed of an inherent quality that drives them toward fusion in an irresistible spontaneous way. Some one will have to do the “fusing” and “unifying” of labor. And these “fusers” and “unifiers” will constitute a privileged group under Communism, and they will do all the “exploiting”. Only those who are blinded either by social-religious fanaticism, the worst kind of obscurantism, or are biased by class-egotism, themselves aiming to be incorporated into the new emerging class, the monopolists of economic and political and cultural activities, do not see the self-evident truth of it.

8. Lenin On “Exploitation”

“The exploitation of one man by many, will have become impossible because it will be impossible to seize as private property the means of production, the factories, machines, land and so on.” (Nikolai Lenin, State and Revolution, p. 197, New York, 1929.)

“The exploitation of one by many will have become impossible under socialism-communism, assures us Lenin showing by this very statement of his that he fell a “theoretical” victim of Commissar-class-egotism. Why will it be impossible? "Because it will be impossible to seize as private property the means of production, the factories, machines, land and so on.” First, though this is not essential, “exploitation” is not a case of “one by many”, but of “many by one”. On rare occasions it would ever pay the “many” to combine in order to exploit the “one”. The yield of surplus-value created by “one” would hardly be enough to go round and keep the “many” satisfied. Exploitation is rather a case of “many” being taken advantage of by “one” or more exactly by “few”.

“Exploitation of the many by the few.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 45.)

The exploited outnumber the exploiters in our times, and the same outnumbering, though not in the same proportion, existed in the Middle Ages and antiquity. Secondly, and this is basic, “exploitation” in general, not the modification thereof effected under capitalism, has nothing, essentially, to do with private ownership of the means of production.

The feudal barons exploiting their serfs were no private owners of the estates the serfs tilled, cultivated. The land as far as ownership rights were concerned belonged to the Crown. The landlords were merely land-holders, fief-holders. True, it is no easy task to unravel the property entanglements of that time, and it is quite difficult to define with precision the exact meaning and contents of the legalistic category and formula of land-tenure under feudalism. Anyway, the nobleman under feudalism was by no means a landowner in the modern sense of the word. And yet this was not in his way when he came to exploit his dependents. No system will stop functioning because of lack of a juridical norm to clothe its actualities in.

History offers us a brilliantly striking example by which to prove conclusively that private ownership and exploitation are not connected, and that the absence of private property rights to the means of production is not only no obstacle to exploitation, but, on the very contrary, is a facility, if not an outright encouragement. And that is the Catholic Church which was “holding fully one third of the soil of the Catholic world”. (F. Engels, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, p. 24.)

The Catholic Church, no less than the Marxian Communist of our present time, was opposed to private ownership of the means of production, or, rather, of wealth, of land, for this terminology is quite a bit too modern to suit the Church of the Middle Ages.

“The earth is common to all and therefore produces its fruits for the common use of all.” (Gregory I, Regulae Pastoralis Liber, pars III, admonitio 22.)

“God's will was that the possession of the earth and enjoyment of its fruits should be common to all, but avarice has controlled the distribution of the rights of possession.” (Ambrose, PS. CXVIII, sermo VIII, No. 22.)

“For one to use his property only for himself is to rob the poor of it, that is, to play the robber with the property of another, and subject himself to all the penalties which threaten him who steals. What thou mayest keep for thyself is that which is really necessary, the rest belongs to the poor. It is his property not thine.

The blessings dwelt among them, because none suffered want... All turn what they have into a common treasury. No one would have to worry, neither rich nor poor. How much money would come together?... If this has been such a brilliant success among two to five thousand (the early Chris tians) so that none suffered want, how much better would it work with a great multitude? Division leads to waste, but con centration brings about saving on that which exists. This is the way they live in convents now and so lived the Saints.” (St. Chrysosto, Bibliothek der Kirchenvaeter, vol. 19, pp. 27-52.)

“God twice gave us the earth as a common stocke and patrimony to live on, after the Creation and after the Deluge, act. XVII, 26. Men then lived at ease enough, feeding only on herbes and those things which nature prepared for them, without their labour: And this state of Community might have lasted still, if we had but two qualities which were proper to those times, Charity and Simplicity.” (Ascham, Of the Confusions and evolutions of Governments, p. 8, London, 1649.)

"... He who byes, and he who sells the earth to a fellow Creatture removes the land-marke from a third person, to who the same land belongs as well as to the other two, from whence come all the great mischiefs of Property and of Law which defends it, under both which the Creation groans.” (Ibid. p. 18.)

No cleric, no matter how high his rank in the Church hierarchy, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal or even the Supreme Pontiff, could have claimed Church Estate as his own private property. The land belonged to the body religious, politic and economic as a unit, and to no individual in particular. So that the institution of private property concerning the land held under the jurisdiction of the Church was as good as non-existent. In spite of all that, contrary to Lenin's categorical assertion that without private property rights to the means of production no exploitation was possible, the serfs sweating on those estates, the Church-Communal proper ty, tilling the ground, though they were themselves Chris tians, and as such were members of the Church, and in their capacity of members of the Church were themselves owners of the estates, nevertheless, they were exploited by the clergy, by the Lords Spiritual. And what the Holy Church did, the Communist State would, surely, not be too squeamish to duplicate. “The factories, machines, land and so on” will belong to the State, will belong to the proletarians organized as a State, like the Church and all its possessions belonged and still be long to the sum total of believers, members of the Catholic Church, and the laborers will slave and labor, and be exploited by the secular clergy of the Marxian State-Church, by the Communist Bishops, Cardinals called in Russia Commissars. And the absence of private property will serve as an excellent excuse to get rid of protective social legislation and to prohibit strikes and trade-unions organized by the laborers. For the workers will be told that they need not protect themselves against themselves since now everything belongs to them and they work for the well-being of the community, forgetting thereby that the community is divided into two classes, one class slaving, the other class driving the slaves of manual labor. For, though capitalism, contrary to Marxian prediction, did not simplify the class interrelation, the class structure of modern society, Bolshevik-Communism would. The minority of the politico-economic and cultural organisateurs, a combination of the three factions of the ruling class, will exploit, and quite mercilessly, the majority of the economically dependent, politically enslaved and through high-pressure propaganda, control of news and information, of the press and the spoken word, school, club, library, printing shop and publishing house, culturally bewildered and besotted masses.

9. Tugan Baranovsky On “Exploitation”.

“We can therefore define Socialism as the social organization in which, owing to equal obligations and equal rights of all to participate in the communal work, as also owing to the equal right to participate in the produce of this work, the exploitation of one member of the community by another is impossible.” (Tugan Baranovsky, Modern Socialism, p. 14, London, 1910.)

The diapason of naivete, concerning the phenomenon of “exploitation” and the guarantee against it allegedly offered by Socialism-Communism, was struck by Prof. Tugan Baranovsky whom Lenin mockingly called “ours”.

“Owing to equal obligations and equal rights of all to participate in the communal work... the exploitation of one member of the community by another is impossible.” Rights even when they are equal do not amount to much, and, surely, cannot stem the tide of actual life. Communal life is rather a sum of de-facto's than that of de-juro's. In defining Socialism Tugan Baranovsky uses all the time juridical categories not suspecting that he describes Socialism in terms applicable exclusively to feudalism, or rather mercantilism. “Equal rights to participate in communal work and in the produce of this work” would mean nothing at all in the face of actual inequality existing between those few who organize labor and those many who are engaged in the very process of laboring. He defines Socialism as a “social organization”, which is, by the way, not exact, for Socialism-Communism of the Marxian school is a political, more than a “social”, organization. One can too easily see that the law-fences erected by him for the protection of labor against the contingency of exploitation will be of no avail outside his own book... Where there is organization, a cleavage between the organisateurs and the organized is inevitable. This cleavage means a stratification. Where there is stratification, a division into higher and lower, exploitation, in the Marxian interpretation of the word, must necessarily be in evidence, sooner or later.

The profit-maker will be removed, and between the working people and the fruit of their labor will stand a whole host of commissars, economo-political and cultural monopolist-organisateurs, some novel variety of governmental functionaries. Names make no difference. It is the function that counts.

10.“Exploitation” Under Communism.

“The authors of all inquiries into moderate socialism are forced to acknowledge that the latter implies a division of society into two groups : the first of these is a select body, organized as a political party... second is the whole body of producers... This division is so evident that generally no attempt is made to hide it.” (George Sorel, Reflections on Violence, p. 183.)

There is no basic difference, save details of tactics-that only to those who are engaged in the squabbles of factions seem to be of a colossal magnitude and great significance, between the Bolsheviki-Leninists, Communists, or the Trotskyists, Maximalists. They are all identical in the fundamental thing, and that is the segregation of a special class of organisateurs, monopolists of economics, politics and culture. They leave the masses without any means of protection against the tyranny of the master-class. Since they all concur in their demand for abolition of private property of the laborers and the transference of industry to a collective body, dictatorial state or corporate state, to own and control it. Communism of any variety, -with the exception of the purely ethical which has nothing to do with the mass-movements that are fundamentally political whether they say so or not, whether they are parliamentarian, dictatorial or anti-parliamentarian and anti dictatorial but corporative,-has as its definite aim the formation of a new master-class. And this master-class will be constituted by men who as individuals are taken from different classes or subclasses of modern society. These men, composing the special class of masters of a novel style and fashion, being human, not angelic, rather, diabolic in the beginning of their career while they burn with zeal and limitless egotism, will insist upon their being rewarded according to the significance of the services rendered by them and appraised by themselves. A class, occupying a singular position in production, must necessarily occupy a corresponding position in distribution. Classes, collective aggregates, never were and never would be altruistic. They are fanatical self-seekers.

“When we consider the vast powers that will be wielded over the individuals by the Socialist edition of this conservative idea, powers more personal, more inquisitive, and less easy to evade than any previous despotism, we may well pause to ask ourselves, not that conundrum so dear to philosophy, ' What is the State? ' but that far more important and more easily overlooked question, ' Who is the State.”“ (Oliver Brett, A Defense of Liberty, pp. 190-91, New York, 1921.)

And the answer to the question will ring out loudly : the politico-economic and cultural organisateurs, all three classes combined in one tyrannical master-class of usurpers and super-exploiters. For the relative share of the worker in the product produced by his direct effort and energy expenditure will naturally, with each step made in the direction of socialization, nationalization, centralization of industry, become smaller and smaller. And his sociological weight, and, consequently, his eco nomic and political value will grow less and less with the concentration of powers achieved by the combination, the sociological trustification-unification, of three master-classes and their formation into one super-master class. And this must necessarily have its effect upon the laborer's portion in distribution. In other words, the worker will be paid less, comparatively, for his contribution to the social product. And this means he will be exploited more.

“Exploitation appears not only where things are administered capitalistically, but very often elsewhere as well. The destruction of capitalism will not signify the end of exploitation, but will merely prevent the appearance of some of its forms and will open new possibilities for others.” (Leopold von Wiese, Systematic Sociology adp. and ampl. by Howard Becker, London, New York, 1932.)

New possibilities and incomparably bigger and better ones will open for the masters in their “exploitation” of the masses. For Communism means the magnification, the colossalization of the defects of capitalism and the elimination of its redeeming features. We can safely predict that the worker under Communism will get less in wages or products or comfort, life amenities, than under the present mode of production, for the part played by him in industry and in political life, in general, will show an outspoken trend toward decline and diminution. The category of physical labor will go down, the relative weight of the masses will grow slighter with the ascendancy of the masters, the socializers.

The privileged, highly remunerative positions will be occupied by the political planner-schemers, by the state dictators, by the autocratic commissars.

III. COMMUNISM, OR STATISM.

1. State Or Society.

“State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict The solution can only consist in the recognition in practice of the social nature of the modern productive forces; that is, therefore, the mode of production, appropriation and exchange must be brought into accord with the social character of the means of production. And this can only be brought about by society, openly and without deviation, taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control other than that of society itself. Thereby the social character of the means of production and of all products-which today operates against the producers themselves, periodically breaking through the mode of production and exchange and enforcing itself only as a blind law of Nature, violently and destructively-is quite consciously asserted by the producers, and is transformed from a cause of disorder and periodic collapse into the most powerful lever of production itself.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 313.)

“State-ownership is no solution of the conflict...“ assures us Engels. Why is it no solution? It, surely, is adequate to solve the external problem of “anarchy of production” by introducing regimentation and compulsory unification, bringing into close correspondence the two magnitudes of supply and demand, and thus putting a stop to the crises periodically devastating industry. State-ownership would coordinate all the various branches of production and commerce and thus create order out of chaos, archy and hierarchy out of the pandemonium of “anarchy”. Yet Engels is outspokenly against it. He insistently reiterates that state-ownership can offer no solution whatsoever to the problem of conflict.

Why is statization of industry and commerce not a satisfactory answer to the problems we are confronted with?

Not because of the conviction that under no circumstances should politics be allowed to usurp eco nomics, a separate domain of human endeavor. Our present society is, under prevailing conditions, divided into three groupings, those who control economic enter prises, those who run the political institutions of the given community and those who care for and administer to the spiritual needs and intellectual wants, educational necessities included, of the members of the commonwealth.

Through the act of statization and usurpation of economic activities the master-class would grow into a monstrosity of a monopolist and concentrator of powers which would crush and grind into dust the masses, the entirety of the population by the sheer weight of its tripled tyranny. Engels ' rejection of statization could not be based on these apprehensions. For in such a case he would be forced by his own reasoning to admit the dangers lurking in the Marxian and his own scheme.

State-ownership is no solution of the internal conflict, offers no satisfactory answer to the problem of adjusting the interrelationship existing between capital and labor.

“The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished, it is rather pushed to an extreme.” (Ibid.)

What is the essence of the “capitalist relationship”? Why would it stay intact under state-ownership? Is it merely because the state would pay its workers, compensate them for their services in the form of wages expressed in a monetary medium? Well, this being the trouble, its abolition would present no great difficulties for the state as owner of our industry. It could easily offer to the workers payment in kind, or introduce some other mode of compensation, like that practiced in the army, for instance, or in the monasteries. The state, without having to overcome unsurmountable obstacles, may establish, we safely suppose, a whole net of dormitories, refectories and the like mass-institutions that would not bear upon them the “abhorrent” stamp of individualistic liberty and choice in matters of remuneration of the individual producers. Would state-ownership with these innovations satisfy Engels? Certainly not. Engels mentions the condemned “capitalistic relationship” as argument against state-ownership only because of his sureness that the state, meaning the liberalistic, more or less democratic state as it functions under capitalism, will never dare to go to such lengths of tyranny and enslavement of the laboring population, as turning them into its serfs or peons.

Now, let us ask, what is the solution of the conflict? The answer given by Engels reads as follows:

“Society openly and without deviation taking possession of the productive forces.”

The answer leaves us entirely bewildered. If under “society” we are to understand something that is altogether different from the state, and society-ownership being not identical with that of state-ownership, then, what is it expressed in concrete terms, in clear-cut concepts, not mere words? Who or what, after all, is “taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control other than that of society itself”? And, further, where and what are those productive forces that outgrew state control and demand nothing short of societary control? Are they situated and operative outside the national state boundaries? Are they crossing countries, cutting through border-lines without respect for political geography and fully ignoring tariff-walls and military fortifications, so that they cannot be crammed into the Procrustean bed of national territory and state jurisdiction? Are they essentially, organically, structurally and functionally, international, universal and have, naturally, outgrown the state, an institution confined to its limited area and limited population?

This being the case, the only society that could handle more or less properly the “productive forces” would be nothing short of civilized humanity organized on the basis of its cosmo-economic resources; or expressing it in a somewhat more concrete way, a combination of international trusts would be equal to attend to the business of our economics that is no more national, but universal, having left behind it the national state-scope and its limited means. But this is not in accordance with the Marxian teaching. And the “society” Engels speaks about is confined within the boundaries of a definite state and territory.

The state should not control the “productive forces”, “society” must do it, for it alone can do it in a satisfactory way.

“Society” as such, as a natural social formation, consists of farmers, workers, merchants, capitalists, landowners, soldiers, lawyers, politicians, preachers, writers, painters, musicians, lecturers, explorers, travelers, inventors, engineers, promoters, financiers, beggars, physicians, philosophers, poets, saints, criminals, tramps, hoboes, policemen, administrators, idlers, and what not.

“Society” being a multifarious conglomerate of multi tudes of individuals of the most various occupations, how can such a chaotic body, that like every natural formation is the very embodiment of “anarchy”, take hold of our “productive forces”, control our industry and lay the mischievous ghost of “anarchy”? This is absolutely beyond our comprehension.

Society to be in a position, no matter how precarious, to undertake anything whatsoever, no matter how insignificant it may be, leave alone controlling the totality of the economic activities of its individual member's, must preliminarily assume some shape, some definite form, be constituted in a certain way. And which shape it is going to assume if not that of an organized state that as such, as a political unit, takes possession of our industry and controls it, owns and manages it as a political concern, is entirely above our powers of understanding. And if state-ownership is no solution, we take Engels at his word, where is the solution offered by Marxian Communism?

“Society” should control the productive forces!

Society in its social way does control the productive forces. But Engels brands that way as “anarchy”. What Engels demands is that society control the productive forces not socially, loosely, “anarchistically”, through the free play of supply and demand and unhampered competition, nor through a complicated network of trustification and a combined banking system, but “politically”, in a strictly organized, coordinated, regularized fashion. But “society” used in contradistinction to the state is a term designating not a political body, but merely a social organism, a social aggregate, that itself being non political, multi-volitional, disorganized, unplanned, un chartered, decentralized in behavior, how could it possibly control our industry in a univolitional, centralized, planned, political way?

If “society” does organize itself into a body politic, and afterwards takes over the management and owner ship of our productive means, then that “society” is no society any longer, but the state to all intents and purposes. And such society-ownership and society-control is nothing more and nothing less than outright state ownership and state-control. And if “state-ownership is no solution of the conflict”, Marx and Engels have no solution to offer us. Society-ownership and society control in juxtaposition to state-ownership and state control is meaningless word-jugglery that deceive only the illiterates, the Communist propaganda-fodder.

2. Producers Or “Socializers”.

“Thereby the social character of the means of production and of the products... is quite consciously asserted by the producers…

The “producers” are engaged in the process of production. They are busy producing and are in no position to assert anything besides the bare fact of their being kept busy transforming matter, changing its shape or quality, adapting it to certain human needs. The “producers” create commodities that are under definite conditions marketable or exchangeable or distributable, have value outside the narrow circle of the participants of the given productive process themselves. And this has been done by the “producers” all the time, so long as they have had in mind exchange and not personal use. In order to assert consciously the “social character” of the productive forces and of the products, the producers will be impelled to delegate for that purpose special “socializers”. As a matter of fact, the socializers will assert themselves as such and only through this assertion of theirs will the social character of the productive forces and products controlled by them be asserted or established. This, consequently, will amount to much more than a mere assertion of the “social character of the productive forces and products”. It would be a declaration made to the effect that the “productive forces and products” hitherto having been merely social now attained a political character, for they were controlled by a political body. This transformation is not so easily done as written about. This “assertion” will require regular, energetic, insistent “asserters”. First, they will have to talk part of the producers into the acceptance of their “assertions”, of their politico-economic leadership, and they will be forced to engage in “proselytizing” activities for a certain period of time. They will have to “convert” the workers to their Communist creed, next, force the rest of the producers, all those who cannot be prevailed upon by mere propaganda, to bow to their iron-rule. They must do it, for political concerns, unlike economic enterprises, are, according to their very nature, uni-volitional, controlled from one centre, and allow of no secession, of no splits, independent or semi-independent existence and self-determination. Within the body politic strict uniformity is required. And the producers will have to be organized by the “assertors” into an industrial army, hierarchically constructed. And only under these conditions will they be in a state to assert consciously the so called “social character”, actually, the political, or, still better, military character of the productive forces and the products.

But under these, right now described by us circumstances, again, the “assertion” of the “social character” could not pass for a solution of the “conflict”. For the “capitalist relationship”, concerning its essence, not bare, insignificant, “historical” form, -was not abolished. The cleavage displayed between the plain “producers” and their socializers, the politicalizers of the productive forces, the producers themselves included, for by this act of socialization they are demoted to the low level of usual productive agencies and factors, will-less, personality-less, disindividualized forces, is not only not abolished, but, on the very contrary, widened, enlarged, deepened, in Engels ' own words, “pushed to the extreme” by the tripled master-class.

“The producers” as a body, as a conglomeration, as a part of disorganized society, are amorphous, when a standard of political design and symmetry is applied to them. The producers are chaotical, “anarchical”, and they can, by no means, while continuing in that disorderly state of theirs, impress a “political character” upon the “productive forces”. Unless they are previously brought into order, licked into form, politicalized, framed into a well-knit unit. And who is equal to this task of disciplining the unruly producers? Surely, not the producers themselves.

“But once their nature (of the productive forces) is grasped, in the hands of the producers working in association, they can be transformed from demoniac masters into willing slaves.” (Ibid. p. 314.)

Grasping alone is not sufficient. Something more than mere comprehension is required. Understanding by itself will not do. It must be followed up by action, by an organization, by a sum of systematized acts based upon penetrating understanding.

“The producers working in association...” The producers work in association under capitalism, too, in large scale industry. But that association is too small. The largest of it does not encompass the totality of the producers even of one branch of industry. “The association of the producers” under Communism will be one and indivisible, commensurate with the body politic, with the state. It will be congruous with citizenship.

Capitalism is a social system. This means it is pluralistic in its outlook and economic endeavor. It allows the parallel existence alongside it of other systems, other modes of production and distribution, not only juridically, but even factually, economically. Primitive barter, self-sufficiency, cooperation of producers and consumers, private ownership of capital and labor combined, handicrafts, all these are tolerated. The greatest variety of styles and fashions in weaving and regulating inter individual economic relations operative on different planes and in various keys somehow manage to stay together and cooperate loosely, vaguely and freely. The “capitalist system” is not one system but a multitude of systems with one mode predominating economically, not exclusively. Communism is a rigid system, is a monistic discipline. It is jealous. It suffers no rivals. It tolerates no deviations from its uniformed course. Capitalism is inclusive, Communism is exclusive. It forbids any other system of economics, any other independent unit of affairs, to function within its territorial jurisdiction. In other words, capitalism is a social, while Communism is a political system.

Who is to effect this tremendous change, involving the tabooing of our prevailing economic pluralism and the establishing instead of it a politico-economic and cultural monism? And who are those who will take charge of that monistic system and keep it operating on a monistic basis without allowing it to backslide, fall into the “vices” of pluralism? Who are those who will be re straining and holding in check the centrifugal forces every society abounds in? Who will be the transformers and the constant unifiers?

The productive forces will be “transformed from demoniac masters into willing servants”... By whom? Surely, not by the producers, but by the political bosses of the producers. And the impersonal demoniac masters will be replaced by personal demoniac class-masters. These masters upon becoming an organ of the modified state will control and manage all the economic affairs of the given community. In other words, the industry will be state-owned and state-controlled. But Engels assures us that he is opposed to state-ownership which he considers as “no solution of the conflict” for in this way “the capitalist relationship is not abolished”…

Whatever way we may turn, we hit against an iron enclosure. We are within a vicious circle. And there is no way out, no logically legitimate way. We must force our exit through a maze of contradictions and sophistications, or escape through a loophole of a brazen confession that “state-ownership is no solution of the conflict” so long as the state is not captured, not controlled by the Communists and the like new political bosses; but state-ownership is “the solution of the conflict” as soon as the state is owned by Marx, Engels, Lenin et Com., meaning captured by the emerging master-class of compulsory planners, political coordinators, the self-appointed socializers of all shades and nuances.

And now one should stop talking about “society” and its imperative hold-taking of “the productive forces that have outgrown all control other than that of society”. State and society from now on, since the state is in the firm grip of the Communists, are identical entities, for the state is controlled no longer by the inefficient, hemmed in on all sides by pluralistic tendencies, bourgeois politician, but by the omnipotent monopolist, the Communist politician, who is economist, politicist, and culturist, all three in one.

3. Seizure Of The State By The Proletariat.

“By more and more transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production brings into being the force which, under penalty of its own destruction, is compelled to carry out this revolution. By more and more driving towards the conversion of the vast socialized means of production into state property, it itself points the way for the carrying through of this revolution. The proletariat seizes the state power, and transforms the means of production in the first instance into state property.” (Ibid.)

For the sake of capturing state power, and Mammon into the bargain for full measure, why should not one be willing to part with a bit of one's possession, namely, that of mnemic power? Engels forgets, when circumstances press, the statements made by him so solemnly, and with so much pomposity about his great discovery, a few pages back in the same book, that the capitalist mode of production replaces the workers, makes them utterly superfluous. The “contradictory” capitalist mode of production can not accomplish, no matter how willing it would be to accommodate Engels, two such mutually excluding acts, as making the workers superfluous, pauperizing them, crowding them out by machines, and at the same time “transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians” ... What about his theory concerning the reserve army?! Lumpen proletarians, unemployables, those who instead of feeding society are fed by it, are a charge, an object for charity, and not a revolutionary power. They are unfortunate sufferers appealing to benevolent society, or threatening it with riots, but not proud, militant proletarians, pillars of the social edifice. “Superfluous” people are no “force” that is “compelled” to carry out this revolution”. “Humility… is the first duty of the beggar and the highest virtue of the poor,” instructs us Kautsky.

The seizure of the state by the proletariat means practically the capturing of the state power by those who as a small cunning minority, an emerging master class, have captured, through high-pressure propaganda, pseudo-prophetic promises, futuristic fantasmagorias, jazzed “social science”, burlesque-economy, a part of the proletariat. And these new emerging barons, bullies of labor, are, certainly, no more identical with society at large than the capitalist class, but, rather, much less so. And state-ownership of our industry, in case the state is owned and controlled autocratically by this numerically small minority of labor-lords, slave-labor drivers, is, undoubtedly, “no solution of the conflict”…

But the questions considered are not of an academical nature, and they cannot be treated as such. The mistakes are not “scientific” misjudgments that come under the excuse of erring is human. Marxism is not a pure theory. It is a movement first and last, it has a class-background, it is dictated by class-interests. The logic of Marxism is quite too often weak, indeed, and not convincing at all. But, in compensation thereof, the appetites of the emerging labor-lords, their hunger and thirst after domination are strong enough to override roughshod any illogicalities. Such a prize as a full measured monopoly over all the activities of a nation is at stake! Who can have patience to listen to reasoning and critical remarks when the winning ticket is in full sight and within grabbing reach.

It is folly to be wise, when wisdom does not serve the holy cause of fooling the innocent fools of labor. Reason itself becomes unreasonable, when unreason offers reasons for capturing the state and our industry. Such a Paris is worth more than a mess of reasoning.

“State ownership is no solution of the conflict” so long as the state is bourgeois, meaning liberalistic, democratic, and the conflict is allowed to continue, and people are allowed to continue asking social questions and looking for answers to them, and upon finding them, examine them, consider them and have a choice to reject them. State-ownership is a solution as soon as the state becomes proletarian, is controlled by the high moguls of labor, by the communists. The communist state solves all problems by the clever device of prohibiting to pose, to formulate openly, problems ...

“But in doing this, it puts an end to itself as the proletariat, it puts an end to all class differences and class-antagonisms, it puts an end also to the state as the state.” (Ibid.)

There is no use arguing any longer. Now the fount of foul and falsified eschatology is opened wide, and its waters of pseudo-salvation flood the earth of reality and wash off common sense and all sense of pro portion and measure. A spiritual sailor is on a spree!

However, this quasi-prophetic raving when soberly interpreted amounts to nothing more millennial than this:

The proletariat is put an end to, for one part of it unmasks and shows its true colors of a commanding minority, a new master-class. The rest of the working class do not exist any longer as proletarians, as free workers who have a right and a chance to enter into contractual relations with their bosses. They exist and function as slaves of the communist state. The state is put an end to means, in plain prose, that the democratic, capitalist state with its division of political powers, legislature, judiciary and administration kept somehow apart, and the division of sociological powers, the separation of the master-classes, capitalists, politicians and intellectuals, secular or religious, “is put an end to”, does not exist any longer. Its place is taken by the tripled tyranny, by the three-headed hydra of despotism enthroned by Communism.

The top on the list of the marvelous “abolitions” is graced by the paramount abolition of reason and reasoning, of free discussion. All social problems are solved with one stroke of the pen in a most thorough going way. Classes do not exist any longer, neither do antagonisms mar the idyl, nor do clashes of interests disturb the calm and peace of the communist society, for who dares to say that they do exist, is locked up, exiled to Siberia, to Solovetzky, or silenced by a bullet, the final and most conclusive argument. And this is the best, pragmatically speaking, proof that classes do not exist, that they are abolished. The communist millennium is ushered in by the Secret Police in conjunction with the firing squad. And the Messiah of Marxianity walks the promised land of the proletariat flanked, accompanied and preceded by a swarm of spies and agent provocateurs…

IV. COMMUNISM OR INTERINDIVIDUALISM AND INTER-CLASSISM

1. Preliminary Remarks.

Society in its primordial shape of family, horde, tribe or community of any other style of structure, antedates the existence of its self-conscious individuals. Its members, its component parts are immersed, beyond separate recognition, self-identification, within the whole. And when, in the course of historical development, the individual does show up, he comes forward in a heroic fashion as the representative of the social. He appears not in his own right as a self-sufficient being, but in the capacity of Patriarch, Priest, King, etc., etc., as the miniaturized embodiment, as the epitome, of the collectivity, as the absorber of the communality. He is, so to say, its soul, its spirit, its essence.

In this peculiar, at first sight seeming contradictory, way the individual puts in his timid, somewhat disguised, appearance. And the social, due to this, complicating the situation, circumstance, is given a new start. It is being transformed, unnoticeably, through a replacement of its parts, into the embryo of an inter-class formation, a new sociological entity. For the relation of the representative individual, providential personality, to the rest of the social body constitutes not a plain and simple interindividual relation, which as such could not have existed within a primitive social unit that is, according to its nature, monolithic, carved out of one sociological piece, — but forms forthwith, simultaneously with the most rudimentary emergence of the inter-individual, that is not pure, for it is unilateral, the individual being placed at one end of the connection and the group, at the other, an inchoate inter-class linkage. The out standing individuals, priests, shamans, angekoks, chieftains of any sort, form a higher stratum. So that the birth of the individual signals and signifies the rebirth of the social. The emergence of the individual serves as a symptom and indication of, and is virtually but a derivation from, the fact that a process of stratification and gradation has set in, is already at work, indites an elementary stratigraphy of sociology.

Within each stratum the relations of its members, upon their having attained to a certain level of minimal self-consciousness, are shaped by them interindividualistically, they are being woven on the plane of plain and pure, more or less, excluding or overlooking internal subdivisions that are too insignificant to be taken cognizance of as modifiers, interindividualism. The relations of the higher and the lower strata when they act as units, as sociological wholes, overlooking the fact that these relations can be woven only via representative individuals, are, again, but plain and pure, more or less, inter-class connections. But when a member of a higher stratum in his capacity of a superior, in the economic, political or cultural field, contacts a member of a lower, subordinated stratum, in the latter's capacity of an inferior, that relation begotten by this act is an inter class relation disguised as an interindividual relation, or, more exactly, it is a combination, a crossing of the interindividual and the inter-class.

A collectivity in its state of “nature”, existing and functioning as a unit subconsciously, is one entity.

Upon attaining to self-consciousness, it undergoes a process of transformation and splitting up, and it becomes, imperceptibly, another entity. A “natural” class and a “class-conscious” class are two different entities.

A class, a nation, or any collectivity for that matter, upon its becoming, so to say, self-conscious, forms its “loyalty” in an artificially rational way. It elaborates a certain design of “patriotism”. It develops an obligatory, in the moral sense, “devotion”. It makes some kind of a secular “cult” out of its cohesiveness, of its living and functioning as an “organism”, a sociological unit. It tries to embody certain emotionalizations and intellectualizations into self-conscious communal acts. Such a body sociologic is, virtually, doing the very reverse of what its obvious intents are. While apparently embracing its cause so ardently, so fervently, it, actually, abandons it, betrays it due to a subtle process of substitution, a replacement taking effect unnoticeably.

The class acting self-consciously, not naturally instinctively as an indivisible whole, is, as a matter of fact and deeper penetration, acting not as its own self, but as one overridden by another entity. A super-class brings, surreptitiously, all the pressure to bear upon it and makes it behave in a definitive way, which can, rather, be characterized as anti-class. For its class self-consciousness is never, under no circumstances, a consciousness of its own class-self, of its own real formation, but an articulate consciousness of another self, of a formation of another nature. That other self-claims to be the corporealization, the social quint-essentiation of the class-self, while virtually it alone is its own in the true sense of the word. It is a social entity in its own right and title. And it succeeds in achieving its self sufficiency, its independence just because it denies its own identity, and is utterly void of rational ego-centrism.

It is unaware of its own existence as a social unit. It does not suffer its own self-determination to come to assertion. This super-class sincerely believes in its non-existence as a separate entity, and claims to be the receptacle of the very essence of “classiness”, the mere crystallization of the class-spirit, a substantiation of pure class-solidarity.

The analysis and proper understanding of the sociological actualities taking place in our daily, civilized, complicated, not primitive, life would spare us many a blunder and miscomprehension found so frequently in statements, made by the not-deep-enough-penetrating theorists, concerning such highly delicate subject-matters, as, for instance, the interrelationship existing between the social, the interindividual and the inter-class processes of communication. Various combinations of the interindividual and the international, inter-class and international and interindividual intercourse, and their intersections and recrossments, all of them are involved in our economic, political and cultural activities.

2. Community or Interindividual Association.

“A community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labor power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labor-power of the community.

The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion among the members is consequently necessary.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 90).

An association of free individuals is, according to its very nature, not a plain, primitive social formation, but an interindividual creation. The genuine “social” is there where the individual does not as yet exist, does not assert himself more or less voluntarily as a self-determined unit that enters at its own risk, of its own free, more or less, accord, into a union, into a combination with other, equally self-willed, deliberately acting, individuals. Such an association would be not unlike the union of egoists, the dream of Stirner's. This is no community in the usual sense of the word. This is no “society” which is a natural growth preceding that of its individual-members. And the product produced by such a cooperation would be, by no means, a social product, but an interindividual product, to the creation of which contributed each individual laborer as such, as an independent and freely cooperating partner of an economic enterprise. In the shaping of this product each individual worker, as a normally active member of the producing association, had embodied a part of his individual energy, personal effort, muscular, and other wise, strain. And the combined shares of labor-power of the sum of individual toilers have materialized into a fabricated, remodelled, readapted object suiting the taste, or coming up to the requirements, expectations, of the individuals engaged in the process of production.

“A community of free individuals”... is a contradiction in terms, free individuals do not constitute a community, if they have been free and they still stay free, without leaving their freedom on the threshold of the community. They constitute a union, a productive coalition. “Free individuals”, if they were free not in the abstract juridical, political meaning of the term, but in its concrete, economic interpretation, would become co-proprietors, share-holders, partners. They would be “free” to enter and quit the union, without running the risk of losing their shares, in labor or capital embodied in the means of production and the raw material, they had placed at the disposal of the producing coalition for a certain period of time, not for all eternity, and under certain conditions stipulated beforehand and made obligatory in the form of a written document, charter, agreement, covenant, or constitution, Such "free individuals" are no easily catchable game for "communistic hunters"… They are too "egotistic" for that. And they would not be " carrying on their work with the means of production in common", they have too much sense to "fall" for that folly, but in partnership, in interindividual possession.

"That form of socialization of huge masses of means of production which we find in the various kinds of joint - stock companies." (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 311.)

This is not socialization, but interindividualization. It is a case of an enlarged partnership, partnership on a more or less large scale. Neither Marx nor his aide de camp Engels understood that a big difference lay between these two notions, one of which negated or ignored the individual, and the other affirmed him through a higher and a larger sphere of activity offered him.

"Means of production in common . . . To whom do those means belong? To the community as a unit. Such an arrangement could have been quite satisfactory to members of a primitive ante - civilizational community, who were not individuals either in the political or economic sense. As "economic subjects" they did not exist as yet in those antediluvian times. They were not self-conscious. They had nothing of their own, and they claimed nothing. They were utterly submerged in their family, horde, tribe or "natural" community.

How can "free individuals" hold things in common if not on the solid basis of differentiated partnership, unless the things be of a special character that makes them unfit for personal avail, and as such they are given up, sacrificed to the community, and the individuals, as independent subjects, have nothing to do with them. But such could never be the case with means of production, so long as the "free individuals" had an understanding of economic problems and they took their productive activities seriously. Means of production are no pavements, lanterns illuminating the streets of a city, objects acquired by city or borough administrations on money procured through taxation and the like revenues.

What Marx, and the Marxians following him, cannot realize is the plain fact, that "free individuals" who are free economically, meaning , are more or less independent, and would like to stay independent to some extent, will never form a "social" combination, but an interindividual corporation. Unless they are resolved to commit economic and political suicide, to give up their economic and along with it their political freedom. Or they be so ignorant and innocent of sociological analysis as a good Marxian is supposed to be, and they would not know the difference between institutional ownership, property belonging to no one in particular, but controlled by a juridical body representing the given institution under certain conditions of trusteeship or stewardship, and partner co-ownership, property in which each partner has a certain share that he can claim and withdraw under certain afore- agreed to conditions.

This is the "community" considered from the interindividual standpoint. But there is yet another side to it, and that is the inter-class relation which is totally ignored by Marx and his disciples, who live theoretically, sociologically in a fool's paradise ... or a felon's Eden ...

If the "community of free individuals" consists of a small number of "free individuals", the community as such, in its totality of membership of "free individuals”, is capable of discharging all its functions that, naturally, will be of a very much limited scope. As its membership is not big, it can well attend to its business, transact most of its affairs, in plenum. But if the "community of free individuals" were numerically more or less considerable, it would, by all means, differentiate and stratify. In a large community “the labor power of all the different individuals" cannot be "consciously applied as the combined labor - power of the community" unless a special class is segregated with the express purpose to take care of this highly important function consisting in consciously applying the combined labor - power of millions of producers belonging to the community. The average worker, the "free individual" of the large-scale community, is, as a rule, unfit for the discharge of such a highly qualified duty that, according to its very nature, must tower above all other commonly productive activities of the totality of the participants of the productive process. And even if the average worker were fit to do it psychologically, mentally, he would be unfit sociologically, for this could not obviate the necessity of choosing a certain number of individuals for this job, and thus take recourse to an embryonic class-structure. Fitness in psychological abstract is not sufficient. A definite sum of individuals will be assigned, rather, self- assigned, to attend to it, to fulfil this highly complicated and involved, exceedingly significant function, upon which the welfare of the whole community is contingent, namely consciously, in a planned , calculated way , to apply the combined labor- power. And while doing this, they will, unwillingly, maybe, from the start, but very much willingly after keeping on at it for a certain period of time, build up a higher class whose office it is to coordinate, control, and, consequently, dominate, the lower class of laborers. And the products produced by this “community of free individuals”, under the best of conditions, with all available measures for the protection of the members taken and efficiently applied, will not be, as Marx, in his naive benevolence as a personal thinker and malign mischief as an ideologist of an emerging master-class, fancies, “a social product”, but an interindividual product with an incisive inter-class cachet. And this fact of production being carried on in an inter-class way will necessarily reflect itself in distribution, which will become, inevitably following the lines along which the production activities run, a class divided operation. And inter-class considerations and antagonisms would insert themselves in the decisions as to which portion of the total product of the community should “serve as a fresh means of production” and which portion of it might be “consumed by the members as means of subsistence.” The notion of subsistence is a very elastic one and easily subject to contracting and expanding manipulations. The conscious appliers of the combined labor-power, the conscious distributors of energy of the given community will be, which is quite natural, anxious to broaden out the field of productive activities and to accelerate its momentum as much as possible, and for this purpose they will demand the biggest share of the total product to be made use of as “fresh means of production”, in Marx's naive expression, to keep it social. And their colleagues, the conscious distributors of the total product, will see to it that the laborers go not in their allotted consumption beyond the skillfully drawn class-line of subsistence, so that the expansion of production be carried out at the expense of the toilers kept near starvation and not at the inconvenience of the lords of labor for whom a different line be demarcated. And the Marxian sweetly idyllic picture will be marred by class-egotism and brutal group-selfishness.

“That such a complete harmony of selfish interests could be brought about by collectivism or by any other kind of change in the means of production is surely an optimism only less fatuous than the individualist view that it was to be brought about by laissez faire.” (A. D. Lindsay, Karl Marx's Capital, p. 44.)

In the Marxian sketches of society the human element, that passes almost of itself into a class-element with its not too pleasant implications and unavoidable, advantages and defects, complications, -is conspicuously absent. We find there either the demoniac, Satan incarnate in the shape of the hoof-cloven capitalist, or the angelic, in the shape of the winged and dove-hearted proletarian who includes all men without exception. And Marx himself, not unlike his society portraitures, is a combination of both elements held in a precarious balance. He is angelically innocent, naive as a child and idealistically minded as an oriental saint who knows nothing of the sinful earth, perverted society with its alluring, irresistible temptations, this is when he is taken as an individual thinker and abstract theorizer, a speculator about a future perfect society. But he is, at the same time, satanically malevolent, pernicious and vicious, when taken as the spokesman of the now emerging master-class, the labor-lords, the tripled monopolists, when looked upon, what he actually has been, as the representative of a broadcast political movement. For his very naivete, just because it is so much overdone travesty, touching upon the quasi-prophetic suiting an unworldly, sequestered monk, but not an economist and politician of the first rank, the like of which he was, – is suspicious and is, rather, fathered by an explicit desire to play the naive fool of futuristic economy, the harbinger and herald of a social millennium, of a perfect, classless, stateless, almost society-less, society. The pantomime is staged in order the easier to deceive his followers among the half-baked intellectuals and entirely raw laborers, and thus, the surer, with greater facility, to attain his great objective, the establishment of a new super-class domination under the very deafening din and racket of shoutings about the doing away with all classes existing as well as imaginable.

3. Contradiction Between Production And Appropriation.

“But the social means of production and the social products were treated as if they were still, as they had been before, the means of production and the products of individuals.

Thus, therefore, the products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the means of production in motion and really produced the products, but by the capitalists. Means of production and production itself had in essence become social. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which has as its presupposition private production by individuals, with each individual owning his own product and bringing it on the market.” (F. Engels, Anti Duehring, pp. 303-04.)

The individual producers leave their sanctuaries of individual endeavor, their castles of production. They take their products, a result of individual effort and personal, physiological and psychological, labor and strain expenditure, and desecrate them by bringing them to the anti-individualistic market. They offer them for sale, as so many impersonal objects, prostitute things, commodities. No sooner is this done than the contradiction between production and appropriation, pointed out by Engels as something peculiar to the capitalist mode of production and appropriation, is present, though in a reversed order, in all its glaringly flagrant manifestation. The market being a social institution, according to the not too precise terminology of Marx and Engels, and production, in its primitive stage of handicrafts, being individualistic, how could these two strangers, opposite poles, cooperate, enter into any communication, without contradicting one another, clashing antagonistically, and parting enemies without being able to effect a transaction?

It is clear enough, that the contradiction, discovered by Marx and Engels and made so much of by their “scientific” followers, is not of capitalistic origin, but goes back all the way down to the very beginning of exchange, to the first break-up of the self-contained household.

“These surplus products, thrown into social exchange, offered for sale, become commodities. The town artisans, it is true, had to produce for exchange from the very beginning.” (Ibid. p. 306.)

This presumably appalling contradiction is contained within each commodity as such, within each product, object that is produced by an individual and yet, despite its individualistic extraction, its personalistic parentage, is negotiable. A commodity makes an appeal to out siders, to “foreigners”, indiscriminatingly. It looks for adoption, solicits patronage from whomever it may come. It promises to serve the purposes of stranger-individuals, no less but more so, than those of the individual maker. If this contradiction is allegedly the mortal sin of the capitalist mode of production, a sin the wages of which is death, and it must tear capitalism apart, all exchange economy without exclusion, whether dealing in objects, trafficking in individual labor embodied in things, in goods, or in deeds, in acts, services, is born in this unforgivable transgression and is chock-full of this iniquity.

“We saw that the capitalist mode of production thrust itself into a society of commodity producers, individual producers (italics ours), whose social cohesion (italics ours), resulted from the exchange of the products.” (Ibid. p. 305.)

So that alongside individual producers we find a social cohesion in ante-capitalistic production, and the abominable thing, the contradiction is right there staring fully into the face of our logical consistence.

The plain truth of the matter is that the awful contradiction contradicts nothing, for it is no contradiction at all, it is a synthesis, a combination of two factors. And it can easily be traced to the problem of the interrelationship existing between the individual as such, as a separatist, and his environment, society, out of which he emerges through a long and painful process of evolutionary analysis.

The mere fact that an act or an object is created, made, invented, discovered, found, produced, brought to light, originated, through the agency of an individual does not, necessarily, imply that the given act, process, method or object is of an individualistic character, of an idiosyncratic make-up, and can be made use of, appreciated, utilized, exploited only and exclusively by its personal originator.

“But the organization of labor touches only such labors as others can do for us, e. g., no one can in your stead elaborate your musical compositions, carry out your projects of painting, etc.; nobody can replace Raphael's labors. The latter are labors of a unique person, which only he is competent to achieve, while the former deserved to be called 'human', since what is anybody's own in them is of slight account, and almost 'any man' can be trained to it.

Now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, human labors, he who does anything unique remains without its care; nay, he may find himself disturbed by its intervention. The unique person will work himself forth out of society all right, but society brings forth no unique person.” (Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, pp. 354-55, Tucker series, London, New York, 1915.)

There is imitative, repetitive labor which is utterly impersonal. There is creative strain, ingenuity effort, which is personal as far as the endeavor, the process of accomplishment is concerned, but the result, the product, the creation as embodied and objectified, is not personal any more.”Nobody can replace Raphael's labors”, but many can and do enjoy the results of his labors, his paintings, that though they are “unique” in their way of coming into existence, in production, are not “unique” in the sense of exclusion of others beside their creator artist from their “consumption”. For they make an appeal to the human sense of beauty and symmetry, coloration and portrayal.

That is why Stirner is wrong, when he asserts that “now, as society can regard only labors for the common benefit, human labors, he who does anything unique remains without its care”. All inventors, all creative geniuses, all discoverers, explorers, great scientists, poets, artists, do something unique and yet it is for the common benefit, and as much as society does not consist exclusively of blockheads, they do not remain “without its care”.

The interindividualistic characteristics of man were overlooked by both, by the Communist as well as by the individualistic school. An individual is not all the way individualistic, he is much more social and interindividualistic than individualistically particularistic. And human intercourse is based on this fundamental fact. The individual personality, the pure EGO, in as much as he is unique in the full sense of the word, is hermetically closed up within his own inner microcosm which internally, purely subjectively considered, is his real macrocosm, his own internal world out of which he never sallies forth, and he has nothing whatsoever to do with the outside world of other individuals. He can have nothing whatsoever to do with them, for he can establish no connection, no relations. He is the self-contained absolute, the psychological all in all. But the individual insofar as he is one of the many, a member of a certain grouping, of a certain aggregate, is not individualistic at all, but interindividualistic. He asserts himself actively, volitionally, and socially. He is acted upon, framed, shaped prenatally and post-natally, as far as his national affiliations and natural linguistic preferences or racial marks, stampings, etc., etc., are concerned. Man as an “interindividual being”, neither as a social animal, nor as a unique God-ego, enters freely and ever so much willingly into connections with other individuals who are interindividualistically minded like himself and are, therefore, members, with certain rights attached to them that are inalienable, inviolable to that degree that their possessors are interindividual beings and by the deprivation of them of those rights they would have been reduced to the status of “mere social animals”, – of the same commonwealth or of another social-political association. The actions, performances of the individual, to that extent to which they are considered and valued by his environment, have a validity far transcending his own inner soul-sealed circle. For what he can use, his fellow-man, his neighbor, far or near, can use as well. And production activities, though performed sometimes individually, within a certain enclosure as if partitioned off from the rest of the community, are not, according to their very nature, individualistic phenomena, but interindividualistic. And they evidence their interindividual characteristic, beyond any reasonable doubt, and materialize, objectify it in the act of exchange, by marketing their products. The more so that the latter were brought into existence with the explicit aim of making of them goods that are accessible to a large patronage, and not confined to home-consumption, suiting the individual taste of the individual producer.

Now, let us take up the same contradiction in its reversed manifestation.

The product is produced, in the Marxian defective terminology, socially, meaning interindividually, by a smaller or larger number of producers working together in cooperation. The product, it is self-evident, is not changed basically by the mere fact that it is fabricated not by a single producer putting in it, let us say, ten or twenty hours, but by ten or twenty producers storing up in it each one an hour or two of skilled labor. The product, as regards its appeal, its ability to satisfy certain human needs, stays intact, is unaffected by the change in the personnel of its operators. The fact that modifications took place in the interrelations of the producers has no effect, neither for the better nor for the worse, upon the marketability of the product. It neither deletes nor incises more deeply its interindividual features, it neither weakens nor strengthens its almost indifferently even appeal to various individuals as prospective buyers. A hat made by an isolated hatter, or made by ten hatters working cooperatively, – other factors and conditions, like shape, make, quality of material used, style, elegance, durability, prices, being equal, – will proceed to the market with the same even and sure step, and make its bid for an unknown head with the same success. For it has not become a different, a social, a multi-individual, product by the mere fact that it had been produced socially, as the Marxians erroneously term it, or multi-individually. The sociological change in the mode of production does not oblige it to look for a multitudinous, let us say, a tenheaded poll, for a head made of ten separate heads, in order to keep in consonance with the ways of its having been produced. A social product, to our understanding, would be an object, an item of use-value that society as a unit, and not individual persons as such, is able to employ, utilize, consume. The hat, we talk of, is still a usual commonplace hat fitting a usual common place head. And that is all there is to it. And that is why we see no contradiction between the fact that the hat was made by ten individuals and yet it is offered on the market for sale and wear to an indefinite sum of single heads of single individuals; and the highest bidder, in case of “appropriation ' of the hat, will wear it as a headgear fitting the head of an individual, and not of a collective, and thus make its consumption to disharmonize with its process of production.

Exchange, as well as production, is an interindividual phenomenon. Whether the producer works single handed or does team-work, makes no difference, does not affect in the least bit the essentially sociological character of production as such. It alters only the technical form of its expression, but touches not its content. The same holds true concerning exchange. Whether the buyer and seller face one another as single individual merchants or as associations of commercers, does not have any bearings upon the interindividual characteristics of exchange and market as sociological economic phenomena. It may, though, considerably modify their technicalities, methods of procedure applied in particular transactions.

From the producer, individual or multi-individual, the product, the stream of goods, flows invariably, unalterably in the once for all times established direction, and that is to the consumer. It stops, on its way to its ultimate destination and eternal rest, temporarily at the marketplace, sometimes physically, other times figuratively.

“The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation became manifest as the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 305.)

“Into this society of individual producers, producers of commodities, the new mode of production thrust itself, setting up, in the midst of the primitive planless division of labor which then existed throughout society, the planned division of labor organized in the individual factory; alongside of individual production, social production made its appearance... The factories in which labor was socially organized produced their commodities more cheaply than the separate small producers.” (Ibid. pp. 302-03.)

“The products, now socially produced, were not appropriated by those who had really set the production in motion and really produced the products, but by the capitalists.” (Ibid. pp. 303-04.)

The miscomprehension is caused by the impersonal, the classless treatment of the subject. The passages run as follows: “Social production made its appearance, “setting up, in the midst of primitive planless division of labor... the planned division of labor,” “the new mode of production thrust itself”... As though all these changes were brought about either by “production” as a living and evolving entity outside of men, or by a certain sum of individual producers, who, not unlike the society-builders in the schemes of the speculative jurisprudents of the Natural School, upon having made up their mind as to the advantages of “social production,” clubbed together and introduced a new mode of production. And then, after the thing was completed, and was working in the most satisfactory way to all concerned, a band of capitalists showed up, and swooping down upon the “social producers” and their socially produced products appropriated them individually, carried off the spoils.

The ”robbers,” the capitalists, do not appropriate the products that were “produced socially” without them, without their assistance. They act not as outsiders, as spectators of the process of production that assumed, upon the initiative of the producers, a social character. These statements are propaganda absurdities of the lowest order.

The raw material out of which the products are made were acquired beforehand, and it was done upon the usual, legitimate basis of purchase. So that that part, a very considerable one, at that, was not appropriated as a particle of the “social product,” but it belonged to the capitalist right along, before the “social producer” ever had a chance to come near it, to bestow upon it his social skill. Now, the labor-power-as Marx erroneously prefers to call the quantity of labor embodied in the product and hired tentatively for the explicit purpose of being immediately embodied into a certain quantity of raw material-was bought in advance and when it was procured by the capitalist it was still in its presocial state. In other words, the capitalist purchased the labor-power of so many separate individual workers. And while purchasing them, they were not social, they were not as yet combined. In such a way the capitalists appropriate the two component parts, the two elements out of which the product is made before it ever has any claims to any “social” quality, and out of these two separate purchases the appropriation of the product results but as a derivation. The product, consisting of two elements that are both owned by the capitalist, is anticipatorily appropriated by the capitalist; in other words, it belongs to him to whom it has belonged all the time, beginning as a piece of raw material and ending up as a more or less worked over product. And it runs all the way along an individualistic, or interindividualistic and inter-class line, without any break, any hitch of a special contradiction, unless purchase as such, or hiredom as such is contradictory according to its very nature; but this is out of the point in the present argument.

“The bourgeoisie was unable to transform those limited means of production into mighty productive forces except by transforming them from individual means of production into social means of production, which could be used only by a body of men as a whole.” (Ibid.)

The bourgeoisie did more than that, it transformed the very producers, the individual, separate producers, and formed them into “a body of men” acting productively, on the basis of division of labor,” as a whole, ' not on a national scale, but within a considerable group size. After the capitalist has bought the individual labor-powers of the individual workers, he “socializes” them, to use the confusing terminology of Marx and Engels, he interindividualizes or multi-individualizes them, in plain words, he combines them. And thus, by this very act of his, by bringing them together and making out of them a multi-individual combination, they are, simultaneously, inter-classified, stratified. Through the act of productive interindividualization, the capitalist be comes an active economic interindividualizer on a more or less considerable scale and with a certain measure of regularity about it.

Further, let us imagine that the producers are really operating in a “socialized” manner upon their own and exclusive initiative as a fully developed association. They own their tools, and the raw material belongs to them, and they keep on embodying their unsold labor-power in it, and the goods created by them in such a “social” fashion are now full-blooded “social products.” Now, the capitalist, the villain in the economic piece, makes his sudden unheralded appearance at the gate of the work-shop and forces its entrance into the sanctum santrorum of “social” labor, and he tries, audacious and shameless as he is, to “appropriate,” in plain language, to purchase the product. The cooperative workers would, surely, not stone him for his attempt to “appropriate” for the proper price their social products which they produced with the sole purpose and hope to get rid of as soon as possible, to find a buyer for them. And there would be no contradiction here, to talk of, between “social production” and “individual-capitalist appropriation” if the price offered would look alluring enough to the sellers. For the process of production carried all the time an interindividual character which is demonstrated, no less emphatically, by the supplementary process of acquisition. The latter looks ostensibly to be an individualistic act. But this is mere appearance. It will not mislead the observer. The capitalist buys the products for the market. And even if he purchases them as a consumer, coming direct to the producer, skipping all exchange complexities of the market and avoiding the various manipulations of the go-betweens, this would not change the basic feature of the products as being marketable, popular, good mixers, being interindividualistic and not snobbishly unique and exclusive.

The worker-cooperators will command their price. The procedure gone through will be equal in every typical detail to that of any commodity transference, the transaction of selling and buying.

The same thing is done with slight variations under the general usage of the capitalist mode of production. A legitimate argument can be put up about the “price,” about the wages, their scale. That is all. The contention that the so-called capitalist “appropriation,” coming in wake of “social production,” commits, thus, some kind of an “economo-logical” sin of unforgivable contradictoriness, belongs to a special variety of subtle stupidity.

This accusation, or flaw-finding, is groundless. The capitalist mode of production being based upon the foundation of buying and selling is not more contradictory than buying and selling in general.

How can one acquire the other man's product created by him through his personal effort by so prosaic an act as fatuous exchange or barter?

The answer is plain, the producer creates nothing that is purely personal or unique, but a most common commodity, and it is done by him with the express aim of offering it without regret to any one who will come across and meet his price-requirements.

There is nothing to be indignant about or puzzled over. Still less cause is here for a dialectical discourse, Engels so rapturously indulges in to the detriment of the subject and utter confusion of economic categories pre valent from times almost prehistoric.

“In Capital, Marx proved with absolute clarity... that at a certain stage of development, the production of commodities becomes transformed into capitalist production, and that at this stage the laws of appropriation or of private property, laws that are based on the production and circulation of commodities, become, by their own inner and inexorable dialectics, changed into their very opposite. The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labor-power is itself but a portion of the product of others ' labor appropriated without an equivalent; and, secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer, but replaced together with an added surplus… At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labor… Now, however… property turns out to be the right, on the part of the capitalist, to appropriate the unpaid labor of others or its product, and, on the part of the laborer, the impossibility of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity.”“ (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 185.)

“The laws of appropriation of private property… changed into the very opposite.” We do not see it. All Marx and Engels do is beg the question. Instead of proving their thesis, they go on reasoning as though it requires no proof, it is axiomatic. Of course, if the theory of exploitation is true, there is a change into opposites, but not otherwise. The laws of appropriation are effective here as elsewhere. It is a case of buying services and paying for them. It started with an exchange of equivalents and it continued so, all the time in the same direction. It is only an apparent exchange, why? Because Marx is anxious to fashion a theory that would be of great use for the propagandists of Communism and would serve the interests of the labor-lords. Economic science and practice is not bound to substantiate Marxian sophistry.

“At first the right of property seemed to us to be based on man's own labor.” There hardly was such a time when property was based exclusively on man's own labor without the laborer's having a right to dispose of his product through exchange.

There are three methods of acquiring property, one is considered criminal, and that is the acquisition of property by physical force and violence called robbery or theft; the other two are either by productive labor, physiological force and skill or by purchase, through exchange. The last two modes are considered equally legitimate. Either one produces a thing, or one buys it, pays for it with an equivalent. Under capitalism, the artisan is allowed, juridically anyway, to produce his commodities and own them, consume them if he wants to or sell them, dispose of them, if he so wishes; or to sell the labor placed in those commodities, which means to hire himself out. Under the latter conditions, he does not own the products produced by him, for, first, he did not acquire the raw material into which his labor went; secondly, he received compensation for his labor in the form of wages, so that he cannot get both, wages for his labors and the products in addition to his compensation received for his labor-services. If he had labored without being paid for it, without hiring himself out, and placed his labor into raw material owned by him through a pre liminary purchase or any other form of acquisition, none could legitimately claim his products, appropriate them without his consent.

The individual producer, the artisan, has a full right to sell the products produced by him and of which he is the full owner. What does he sell in that owned by him product? Not the raw material which he re-sells, for he has acquired it with the explicit purpose of selling it. So, what is he selling actually as an owner, not as a go-between trader, who buys to dispose of? His labor skill embodied in the products created by him. And for this item, namely, his energy and ability embodied in the products, he gets paid. For instance, if he receives on the market two dollars for his product and the raw material is worth one dollar, he actually gets one dollar, for the other dollar he immediately transfers to the owner of the raw material. Either he transmits it now, after the transaction, or before, in advance. Under capital ism, if he is an employee, he sells his labor-skill embodied in the products minus the raw material which he does not own and therefore is not forced to resell. The artisan buys raw material and resells it while selling his labor embodied therein, and the industrial worker sells his labor embodied in the products without buying and reselling the raw material. Nothing strange or “dialectical” occurs here. It is a case of division of functions. The laborer drops his function of trader, of buyer of raw material and reseller thereof, and remains a seller of his own labor, exclusively.

Marx sees an “anomaly” in the fact that the worker works and does not own the product produced by him. For how long a period should the producer stay a full owner of the products created by him? If the shoe makers were going to own all the shoes they produced all the time, what would they eat? They could not feed on shoes. The shoes are produced not for the purpose of owning them, but for getting rid of their ownership as soon as possible. Their “ownership”, if it continued beyond a certain time limit, would spell the ruination, the starvation of the producers of commodities, of articles made not to own but to dispose of, to be deprived of their ownership the sooner the better.

Marx sheds “scientifico”-economic tears over the deplorable fact that the industrial laborers are no owners of the products they produce. Let us fancy they do own those products. For how long a period would they enjoy the property rights to their products without detriment to their economic situation? The real “owners” are the consumers, the rest enjoy not their ownership but their “sellership”. And the industrial workers “sell” their “products”, that part in the products which belongs to them, namely, their labor and skill that they stored up in the products by transforming them from raw material into marketable goods. And this they sell as soon as they produce, as soon as their services are rendered. For hiredom means to prepare the “purchaser” beforehand so as to be sure of the “buyer”.

The workers do not “own” their products for the plain reason that they have sold them. They would own them anyway but for a short space of time after their production and before the expected appearance of the buyer; now the “production” and the appearance of the buyer is synchronized, for the industrial laborer does not produce unless the buyer is ready at hand and under obligation to acquire the products produced, that part therein which belongs to the laborer, namely, his labor; and the guarantee is given by the fact of the other constituent part of the products already belonging to their “purchaser”, the capitalist. Property rights are based on labor and are alienated by selling and acquired by the other party through purchase. Here the same thing is taking place. The laborer sells his “product” minus the raw material, and the capitalist buys it, and pays for it. The “hiring” is but a preliminary preceding and preparing the smooth completion of the bilateral transaction.

The whole mess is caused by the misuse of the word “appropriation”. Had Marx-Engels said that products produced cooperatively are bought seemingly individually, everyone would have understood them, and immediately rejected their doubly inaccurate statement. For the products while they are bought are not yet social, and when they become social, they are not bought, but stay with their owners that acquired them before they had undergone any change, besides that the products are not social altogether, and neither is their acquisition purely individualistic.

4. The One And The Many.

“Means of production and production itself had in essence become social. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which has as its presupposition private production by individuals, with each individual owning his product and bringing it to the market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it removes the presuppositions on which the latter was based.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 304.)

“There is no need here to explain that although the form of appropriation remains the same, the character of the appropriation is revolutionized by the process described above, to no less a degree than production. My appropriation of my own product and my appropriation of another person's product are certainly two very different forms of appropriation.” (Ibid., footnote.)

“… The character of the method of appropriation and the social character of the method of production. The means of production are the property of individual capitalists who appropriate to themselves the results of the production, but the production itself has become a social process; that means, a production of commodities for use made by many workers on a basis of systematic division and organization of labor.” (Edward Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism tr. by Edith C. Hardey, pp. 18-19, New York, 1909.)

The “contradiction” between “social production” and “individual appropriation” comes easily enough under the head of the common “contradiction”, if one insists on designating this phenomenon by a term that outside of logic has hardly any valid application, between the one and the many, a contradiction-phenomenon that is to be found in nearly the totality of human activities in which a number of individuals are involved. For instance, one teaches, many are taught, one discovers, many use the discovery, one invents, many imitate, one blazes the path, many follow. This is in an especially striking way evidenced in the political or in the military field : one commands, many obey, one rules, many are ruled, one leads, many are led. Overabundant proof that such a “contradiction” contradicts nothing at all is to be gathered by handfuls from every page of recorded history. Not only is this no “contradiction”, which invariably has the under-connotation of being something objectionable, anomalous, prejudicial, hurtful, out of the proper order of things, but it is, on the very contrary, the most usual, the most frequently practiced, the most resultful, effort-saving, age-old modus operandi of nearly all human relations. In Science, Art and Religion, – it is the master and the disciples; in other branches, – the originators and their imitators, initiative act and the endless number of its repetitions, original and copies.

In economics, a realm wherein power, achievement is translated in terms of property, this general, universal phenomenon, of the one leading and the many being led, whether the one is a person or an outstanding process, act, is expressed in the relation of the many workers being found under the supervision of one capitalist, in other words, Capital as leader and Labor as led. Capitalism renders in its own, proper terms of economics a system of relationship existing in all fields of human intercourse.

Now, let us pass from the indication and description of the character of the “contradiction” to its “solution”, plan for elimination, offered by Marxian Communism. What does it propose? The handing over of our industry, of all national economy, to the Communist state or society.

Does this “solution” solve anything? Nothing, absolutely nothing. All this proposal amounts to is the transmutation of relations grounded in possession into relations grounded in power. Both ends by this scheme would seemingly be reconciled, “production” and “appropriation” would apparently be brought under one denominator, for both would, superficially looked upon, become “social”, and to the dull-witted appear to be situated in one sphere, but, actually, the contradiction of the one and the many, between “production” and the “direction of production”, would not only remain in its previous state, but gain a tremendous increase, grow more out spoken. All Marxian Communism could achieve by its nationalization or socialization plan would amount in actualities, not phraseology, to the doing away with the specific character of economic activities, so that there would be, under the new system introduced by the Communists, no private, individual “appropriation”, but class-appropriation.

5. Laissez Faire As Separation Of Economics From Politics.

In the Middle Ages property concepts, possession notions tinged, if not fashioned, all political activity, thus polity was, so to say, dominated by “economy”, “economized”. Monarchy is a patrimonial institute, it is Dominium intermixed with Imperium. With the establishment of Republics, – or modified Kingdoms that are governed approximately on the same principles and run pretty close to republican forms of government, with the addition of the throne and court that have a rather decorative, more than administrative, value, yet serve as a national emblem and symbolization of unity with mighty little constitutional prerogatives, imperium was freed, purified from its slag, from its economic vestiges, from the dominional heterogeneous elements. Modern time saw the separation of these two concepts and spheres of endeavor. Politics was emancipated and it became independent. It has, under present conditions of statesmanship, very little, or nothing at all, to do with the concept of power-property, with ownership concerning political authority. Laissez faire was double-edged, and worked both ways. It demanded a divorcing act, it liberated politics from the sway of economics, it allowed it to be shaped in its own image and after its own peculiar likeness; and politics was henceforth cast in the mold of pure power.

Marxian Communism combating laissez faire, branding it as bourgeois, and prejudicial, would have politics overwhelm economics. The Marxian advocates the application to economic activities of a mode of relations employed in the realm of social polity, he recommends that we adopt the concept of authority in a sphere wherein possession notions are dominant. Marxism Communism champions the fusion of the two domains and the discard of the notion of dominion, of possession altogether, thus expanding the conception of imperium and its region of influence and making it cover the whole field of economics. In other words, what Marxism proposes is to “politicalize” economy, and reverse medievalism, instead of the economic polity of the Middle Ages it intends to introduce a political economy. The private impress of appropriation would thus be obliterated, and along with it would go into discard private economy as well as partner, trust, combine, merger economy, with all their peculiarities, derivations from the specificity of the economic discipline.

But this transformation would have no effect, -un less in the reverse from the promised direction, namely, of sharpening, instead of dulling, the tapering, -upon the pyramidal shape of societal relationship. For in “production” proper would be occupied the many, the multi tudes, and in “appropriation”, meaning now, under Communism, rendered into political terms, compulsory, authoritative supervision and regulation of production, would be engaged “the few”. And in the still higher brackets, the lofty altitudes where the “supervising of the supervisors”, the commanding of the minor commanders was taking place, still fewer individuals would be kept busy, till we would reach the peak, the pinnacle of the political structure, and there find stationed, in all the splendor of an unlimited authority, one, or two or three, exceptionally powerful individuals.

The capitalist mode of production presents to us the same picture, though not thrown into such a clear-cut relief. The capitalist-proprietor, as the hidden, remote, indirect, asserting himself through the intermediary of finance and ownership, director of the productive process, is on the one side, and the producers, the many, are placed on the other side. There is nothing exceptionally alarming, and there is nothing removable, eliminable, about this situation. It is only a case of the one placed in juxtaposition of the multitude of a smaller or larger bulk. There is nothing specifically “capitalistic” in all this, save the form which is that of property. It is a particular application, expressed in economic terminology and, consequently, in concepts of possession, of a general societary rule.

6. Private And Public.

“The private character of the method of appropriation and the social character of the method of production.”

How are we to suppose this putative “contradiction” to be equal to the strenuous and quite consequential task of breaking-up, disintegrating the capitalist system, when it is found, upon any, no matter how furtive, examination into the matter, to be nothing else but the very essence, the pith and marrow of the economic system as an economic system as well as of any other “system” in as much as it contains elements of “systematization” however rudimentary. Capitalism was born and brought up by this so called pernicious “contradiction”. The same way as its predecessors, its antecedents, the previous orders, were made and were sustained, nursed and nourished by this very “contradiction”. One appropriates, controls, disposes of that which is produced by many. Under slavery, under serfdom as well as under hiredom, called capitalism, we witness all the time the same, basically constant, phenomenon. One owns, uses, the produce, the labor results, the effort-fruits of the many. The special characteristic of capitalism begins with the modification of the juridical and economic character of the one and the many and the transformation of the legal and factual mode of their interrelationship. The one is no longer a political potentate who exercises authoritative dominion over the many, his retainers, slaves or serfs. The many are “free”. They are not forced to work altogether, if they do not want to. They must not belong to the laboring masses, as individuals they can quit their ranks, disperse, attach themselves to any group in existence in society. No legal status, no juridical norms coerce them to belong to the labor-camp. They are compelled to do so, in most cases, allowing for individual exceptions, by economic circumstances. A certain economic pressure is brought to bear upon them, a whole chain of factual difficulties holds them bound to their benches. But while they are forced factually to labor, to hire themselves out, they are free to change their hirers, their occupations or the places where they are kept occupied. They are not tied up, neither juridically, not factually, with a certain definite individual or firm beyond their contractual time-limits.

According to Marx, Engels, Bernstein, etc., “appropriation” as such, as a complement of “production”, is not objectionable. There is no unbridgeable abyss separating these two functions, these two extremities of the economic pursuit. No more so than there is a “contradiction” between “production” as such and “consumption” as such. as such. The former leads straight forward, or through intermediate connections in a round about way, to the latter, and the latter gives the former meaning and purpose. The trouble starts not with the nouns, production, appropriation, that would get along nicely without any altercations, but with the cantankerous adjectives, the “social” and the “private”, it is they that are to blame for the clash, for the antagonism, and conflict.

What is the matter with them, anyway?

Do not all “social” affairs and functions realize themselves through the medium of private agencies, no matter how socially veneered those agencies, individuals, private persons, may be? If the “social” clashes with, militates against, the “private”, then it does it in all the spheres of “social” activity, economics being no exception, but, on the other hand, it is not the only one that constitutes the rule. In the realm of economics this very “conflict”, if there be one, is, naturally, supposed to be expressed in economic terms, in the political field it would assume a political manifestation, in the domain of ideologies, an ideological, a psychological, one. A President of a Republic signing and thus turning into law a decree, a Mayor of a city issuing a regulation, and an endless amount of similar acts, testify clearly to the effect that an individual is made to serve as a substitute for society, for a smaller or larger aggregation of individuals. Thus a basically “social” function that concerns the many, is carried out by one single individual or by a delegation or committee of them.

The ”private character” of the functionary and the “social character” of the function fulfilled by him contradict one another along the whole length of the frontal line of public endeavor. And in the political field it is much more palpable than in the economic. For the duties, the functions, are here, in most cases, if not in all, genuinely “social”, concern the entirety of the commonwealth as an integrated whole, and not only a small fraction, a nucleus of it.

So that the “social” passes all over into the “private”. And we cannot help it. There is no way of abolishing it. The sphere of economic activities is less affected by it than the political or ideological. This is conditioned by the very nature of society as such and by the very nature of the individual as such. And so long as individuals keep on living in compact masses that are constituted in a certain political way, we are utterly unable to cope with this difficulty or defect, if we choose to describe this circumstance with such censorious epithets.

7. Size: Social or Corporational.

“The social character of the method of production.” “Means of production and production itself had become social.”

How did it become “social”? By what means did it come by its social characteristics? By the mere fact that “many”, a number of workers are being employed simultaneously on one job? Do all activities in which more than one individual is engaged become because of that “social”? This being the case we shell be obliged in each particular case to indicate clearly the sum of the individuals, to specify the size of the concern, so that we be able to get some information about the measure, the magnitude, described with some degree of precision, of the “socialiness”, the rate and grade of the “social” character of the activity or phenomenon. We would have a whole scale of “socials”: vicinity social, local social, state social, national social, partner ship social, trade-union social, family social, stock company social.

Production in our present time, under capitalism, organizationally and technologically considered, is a synthetic abstraction, a far-fetched generalization, for it does not exist in actuality as an integral unity, but as a sum of many units, independent or semi-independent, or quite precariously related, anarchically or feudalistically detached. And the “social character” of such a production is, surely, not nationally, still less internationally, social.

If we intend to talk concrete economics, we cannot soar in the blue skies of generalities, but must keep close to the gray ground of particulars. We must come down to the separate or interconnected workshop, plant operating under a certain definite firm, one individual boss, or a company. And when we look upon the economic subject of production at such a close range, all we behold is smaller or larger groups of workers employed on the basis of hiredom, by one individual capitalist, or by a partnership, a group of capitalists. The appropriation in the latter case would be no less “social”, concerning its character, than the “production”. Though the “appropriators” usually, as a rule, belong to an aggregation that is numerically smaller than that of the producers. And it would be a case of a group of producers facing another group of “appropriators”. If the character of the first process, that of “production is grandiloquently described as “social”, then the second process, that of “appropriation”, cannot legitimately be denied the same meaningless, though high-sounding, title. A question may, then, arise as to the queerness of the economic system that allows a separation line to run between these two functions, and the principle of specialization, of “division of labor” to be applied in such a peculiar way and concerning such delicate matters, so that as a result of such “perversity” we witness such an odd spectacle: they who “produce” do not appropriate, and they who appropriate do not produce. This would have been quite shocking to common usage no less than to common sense. But it would have absolutely nothing to do with the alleged conflict of the “social” and the “private”.

If production were of a private character and appropriation of the same private character, but these functions were being carried out by two separate individuals, the same absurdity, the peculiar and unaccountable change of personnel, would be present and quite unbearable. The same if production were fully social, and appropriation not lagging behind it in “socialness”, and as regards the number of the appropriators even transcending numerically that of the producers, so that the latter's socialness would be of a higher co efficient, but the separation being present, namely, the participants of the process of production having no share in appropriation, and the lucky appropriators taking no part whatsoever in production, the same phenomenal paradoxicality would be staring at us. So that is another problem altogether.

Such a bizarre “relation”, one agent doing all the appropriating and the other doing all the producing, and between the two no exchange of a compensatory nature, could be tolerated by no economic system. This would signify outright robbery, and economics as a system of internal replenishment making for its perpetuity, a mechanism provided with a reproductive apparatus, could not operate for any length of time under such an exclusively thoroughgoing dichotomy.

“What therefore, the wage-laborer appropriates by means of his labor, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence.” (Karl Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 46.)

So that even the Communist Manifesto must acknowledge that the “robbed” producer is receiving some compensation, has a share, no matter how meager, in appropriation which he is getting under one form or another. For otherwise the producer would be unable to continue slaving and the economic contraption would collapse of its own inanity. And, on the other hand, the “robber”, appropriator is fulfilling some kind of a function, he takes chances, pays out advances, carries some load, no matter how light, of responsibility for the concern. This being the case, the issue loses all its strange incomprehensibleness touching upon plain absurdity, and reduces itself to the problem of proportional distribution, how much productive activity, how much effort is invested by them, and how much appropriative gain does one and the other net as a result of their combined efforts as two counter-agents of one process. On the face of it, it is an economic litigation, an argument of two participants of the processes of production and appropriation concerning their respective givings and takings. The settlement of the difference would engage the attention and painstaking studies of practical and theoretical economists so as to bring into some dynamic, variable, shifting, harmony the investments in effort and strain and the returns in the shape of results derived from the amount of products produced and paid out in one form or another. This is a highly interesting subject for study, and a great field for scientific arbitration.

But the trumped up “contradiction” between the private character of capitalist appropriation and the allegedly social character of production is a bubble filled with hot air of Marxist argumentativeness, and the slightest prick of criticism deflates it irretrievably, frees it from all its quasi-scientific pomposity.

Production, taken in concrete, as a functioning system, not a metaphysical concept, has no “social character”. We deal nowhere, outside of theoretical speculation and statistical generalization, with “production” in general as a unit on a national or international scale, but with workshops, factories. And then, standing upon the solid ground of practice, daily actualities of industry and commerce, we see clearly that the “sociality” of production is an imagination of the Communist doctrinaire. This sociality, shorn of its extravagant exaggeration, comes down to involuntary cooperation, to the prosaic fact that a certain number of workers, through a method called hiredom, are brought together, held together, and made to function productively together. They constitute a small unit that is controlled by a still slimmer unit, and that is a corporation of capitalists.

“The means of production are the property of individual capitalists who appropriate to themselves the results of production, but the production itself has become a social process; that means, a production of commodities... made by many workers on a basis of systematic division and organization of labor.”

The “social character” of production is rather a matter of philosophical insight. But such a speculative “socialness” we detect in “production” carried out by a single individual as well. An isolated producer so long as his eye is focused on the market, and he does ply his trade, not a hobby to satisfy his personal whims, producing goods, objects capable of supplying a public demand, is fulfilling a social function in spite of his apparent sequestration, hermit fashion of working. The “socialness” in the given case is of a very tenuous nature and it is based exclusively upon the fact that the producers are creating commodities, objects of common use, items of goods that bear no individualistic marks, that have no uniqueness stamp on them. From this angle, things economic, all performances carried out in this field, are of a social character. And this was the very standpoint of the classical school. The capitalist as well as the individual laborer, tradesman, artisan, shopkeeper, farmer, all of them without exception fulfil a social function despite their own wishes, their own egotistic desires, personal objectives, selfish aims and petty, narrow ends. For they all, while striving for their own good, contribute to the good and welfare of the community as a whole of which they are but the constituent parts, and their personal good becomes, through a process of natural synthetization, the good of the public at large.

But when the Marxist, the Communist points out the social character of production as contradicting that of individual appropriation, he has in mind some special kind, a more intensified manifestation of “socialness” than that indicated by the classical economists. Otherwise appropriation, no matter what it may look like on the surface, should be considered as basically social in no less degree than the process of production. The classical school of political economy played no favorites. It took a bird's-eye view of all economic activities. It saw the trees and the forest, it overlooked the groupings of the trees, their varieties, their classification. This was its fatal mistake. But, at least, no charge of inconsistency can be brought against it. Whereas the Marxian Communist is so busy chasing after the contradictions of the capitalist system that he does not notice how he gets himself caught in a net of self-contradictory statements. At one moment he sees the classes and their relations embodied in productive activities, at the other moment, he does not see them. At one moment he is cognizant of the latently “social” character of economic pursuits, at the other moment, concerning another item of the same unit, he is entirely unaware of it. His arbitrariness in ideology is a prefiguration of the coming arbitrariness of his politico-economic regime. It is dictatorial reasoning done by fiats.

Our production, even when it is carried on on the largest scale of trustification, is not yet “social” in the economic, matter of fact, sense of the term, but corporational, not more, even when looked upon from the angle of mere size, overlooking the internal functioning that is invariably, under all conditions, an inter-class phenomenon, and by no means purely “social”.

Practically economically, all we see, from the stand point of bulk, is a portion of workers, an infinitesimal fraction of the working class taken as a whole, a certain definite group, being kept busy in a separate local that constitutes an independent tiny bit of an island in an ocean of a trade. The division of labor and form of organization, the economic regime established within the four walls of the single plant could not have made that segment of production look “social” in the broad sense of the word. It is a division of labor that is confined to a dwarfish association. The same concerning the “organization” of labor. It does not reach out, strictly economically productively, beyond the precincts of the individual workshop, factory, plant or field-estate. It is not “social” even structurally, not only functionally. Unless the Marxian Communist takes his wish, his plan, his project concerning the future and treats it as an actuality of our present economic life. The Marxian Communist intends to introduce systematization, unification, and that only on a narrow national state scale, and thus put an end to the feudalism of modern economics. But intentions are not counted for realizations. The Marxian Communist, whether he admits it or not, is an economic nationalist. He advocates the nationalization of industry and commerce. But these are planks in a program elaborated by “theorists”, and not pieces of economic reality concerning bourgeois economic life. National economy is a misnomer. Our economy is not “national” in its connotation of state and nation unitariness; economy is not, outside the Communist speculation and experimentation meaning compulsory imposition, a well-knit together, rigidly regimented national state concern directed from one centre through the embodiment of one general will. Capitalist economy is not “social”. Capitalism is private, in some parts of it, and corporational, in other parts.

8. Political-Social or Economic Interindividual.

Economic activities are not cut-and-dried after one measure, according to one standard. Economics allows a number of degrees and various levels of development to co-exist. For it is a voluntary, an interindividual, system and, therefore, it is not uniformal. It is not a “system”, but a multiple of systems combined together. Economics is pluralistic, not monistic. We are not permitted to have at the same time in one and the same country three political systems operating alongside one another. Feudalism, monarchism and republicanism will not dwell in peace, like the prophetical lamb and wolf, in one body politic, in one polity. It is always either a monarchy or a republic or a kingdom, a combination of principles and practices borrowed from both. And this combination, again, is strictly defined, its elements indicated precisely in a constitutional formula. While the very essence of economic activities, under the so called capitalist “system”, is their manifoldedness, multifariousness, nondescriptness, intermingledness. Here is a private individual plying his trade in a way that his small “capital” and his no less insignificant “labor” are kept, through his personality of a laborite-capitalist, harmoniously together as emanating from one and the same source. He either produces and consumes his own products, or, else sells them. Nearby, within a stone's throw is located a workshop based on hired labor of many employed by one. Its production activity assumes the form of a cooperative controlled and manipulated, – because originated, brought into existence and, consequently, into motion, – by one so that its form of appropriation, as a result, is of a private character. And right across it, on the same street, there is an establishment that is run by a cooperative of producers on the basis of their joint stock. To think of economic activities in terms of politics and its special methodology derived from the monolithic nature of its unit, is no less irrelevant than to consider technics in the light of statesmanship. Let us take locomotion as an illustration: one walks, the other runs, the third goes horseback, the fourth drives a horse and buggy, the fifth speeds in an automobile, the sixth boards a train that is pulled along by a steam engine, and the seventh is piloting an aeroplane or an airship, while the eighth sails on a boat. The same applies to economic pursuits.

Political systems are “systems” in the full sense of the word. They are mono-typed, one-tracked. For they are based essentially on “sociality”, on the unity of the aggregate, of the social organism preceding in time the separate existence of its organs, the self-consciousness of its individual members.

Economic systems, with the exclusion of the “Communist system”, are no systems in the strict sense. For economic activities are interindividual acts. And that is why the economic units do not coincide with the national political unit. On the one side, it is much smaller, it is sometimes private altogether, infinitesimal; on the other hand, it unrolls, like a long ribbon, traversing one fatherland after another, crossing borders, spanning deserts, bridging oceans, covering continents, enveloping the globe. The reason of it is its character as an individual and interindividual process and activity. Ford's factories must not stop on the border-line of the political unit called U. S. Ford's economic enterprises must not be commensurate with the nationally political territory. Economics is not and should not be “patriotic”, fatherlandish. The wedding of economy to polity, the design of Marxism and non-Marxian Communism, National Socialism, is a distortion of economics and a violation of politics. This fusion is pregnant with the most disastrous consequences for our human civilization, it would usher in a neo-imperialism, a super imperialism the like of which history had not known.

Economics is based on voluntarism, physical and juridical. Politics is based on force and compulsion, physical and juridical. To combine economics with politics, as advocated by the Communists, in a way that the former should be subject to the latter, would lead invariably to the most maddened form of chauvinism, that of economic imperialism; and oceans of bloodshed in wars motivated by national economic jealousies and rivalries, substituting our present more or less mitigated forms of competition, conducted by political, armed to their teeth and quick on the jump, units acting in their double capacity of politico-economic monstrosities, would deluge our earth and wipe off completely humanitarian ism, the little bit of religious culture, of morality in interhuman relations we are still in possession of. For political units, as collectivities are subject to no other law save that of the jungle. They are as blood-thirsty as tigers and as ravenous as rapacious wolves.

Economic activities have for their basis an interindividual and an interclass relation. They are not “social” in the sense of oneness of the group-action involved in them to the extent of effacing the individual. And they are not “social” in the sense of the oneness of the group-action involved in them to the elimination of the class. Economic combinations are based on a double partnership, in them the individual participant preserves his integrity and identity, and the class attains in them its manifestation and clear-cut incision. And that is why it is preposterous, from the scientific standpoint, and dangerous, for considerations of humaneness, to demand the politicalization of economic activities, to insist that they be organized and run on a political unit basis.

Society as such does not produce. Production cannot and must not be handed over to society. Society has nothing to do with these activities. Men produce, men labor, men strain themselves and combine as separate individuals entering into contractual, or of some other kind, connections. But when they do this, they do it not on the basis of their being social animals, but as individuals who weave voluntarily weave voluntarily their inter individual relations.

9. Social or Interindividual Relation.

“Large production, on the contrary, means co-operation, social production. In large production the individual does not work alone, but a large number of workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole.” (Karl Kautsky, Class-struggle, p. 94, Chicago, 1934.)

Two concepts are here interchanged, that of “co-operation” and that of “social production”. “Co-operation” is by no means identical with “social production”. A “co-operation”, first, concerning its structural dimensions must not necessarily encompass the whole of the commonwealth, the totality of the society-members. A “co-operation” is a nucleus formed artificially within society for a certain productive or consumptive purpose. It enlists or incorporates only those individuals who are interested personally in the work to be done and are fit, more or less, for its proper accomplishment on a basis of an average standard. Society, in comparison with it, is a natural growth, a natural organism. Co-operation is a micro-interindividual mechanism placed within a macro-social organism. Co-operation is constituted by a sum of persons who are going about this business of its construction more or less consciously and purposefully. They have set before them a definite task to fulfil.

So much as regards its size, the number of the individuals it contains and the active roles played by them as constituent parts of the whole.

Secondly, a “co-operation” of that kind Kautsky speaks of is, according to its very nature, an inter-class combination, and cannot, therefore, be defined as merely “social”. It is too vague and too misleading a term for it. A “social” construction can be, and was in its primeval architectural styles, a one-storeyed building. Whereas an industrial co-operation of the capitalistic type, and of this Kautsky discourses, is inevitably two-storeyed, at least. It could not be built otherwise. Large scale production must have as its prerequisite an inter-class relation incorporated into its very frame.

Two gross errors lie at the bottom of Karl Kautsky's thesis. And he is not to blame for his mistakes. It is Marxism that he, as an ardent apostle and most able popularizer, is expounding. And these misconceptions constitute the very essence of the Marxian doctrine.

Blunder number one:

Co-operation, as it clearly says even literally, meaning co-work, team-action, joint-labor, incorporates a certain definite number of individuals answering to certain definite requirements. It assembles, clubs together individual laborers who are, though, may be, exceedingly minimally, self-conscious, and who become, in the act of their being associated, interindividualized. Under the capitalist mode of production, this act of interindividualization of the individual workers is carried out, directly or indirectly, by a member or a few members of a class that is situated, sociologically economically, not politically juridically, above the laboring masses. Co-operation, therefore, is an interindividual formation. It is not nationally social, and surely not universally social. It does not encompass all and everybody. It is restricted concerning its magnitude. It is limited regarding the number of individuals it contains. And its size should, therefore, be indicated, specified. There can be a co-operation of ten individuals, of twenty, of hundred or thousand and We should know where we stand. The size in the given case is the most decisive factor and must not be overlooked. Further, the individuals co-operating do not form thereby an organic whole, they do not constitute a unit that absorbs, by its right of priority, on the basis of its preceding in time of origination, its constituent parts to the complete annihilation of their separate existences in the given act or process. They as such are active contributors to the sum. They make the sum, they are not made by it.

Blunder number two:

A “co-operation” is not “social”. It is an inter class affair, though mitigated by interindividual connections. For in a co-operation not two classes as fully manned, plenary units are supposed to be engaged as counter-agents, but members of one class, one or few of them, are entering into an economic interrelationship with members, usually by far outnumbering them, of another class-formation, and thuswise do team-work of a double character, in an interindividual and inter class fashion combined. It is not an exclusively inter class relation, but an inter-class relation realized as an inter-individual connection, or an interindividual relation materialized and modified, complicated by an inter-class linkage.

Production to be genuinely “social” would have to be conducted on an exceptionally small scale and be of an extremely low grade concerning its developmental facilities and only in that case could it be held in a favorable position that would enable it to operate wholly and exclusively on one plane, without being pressed to take recourse to a sociological division of labor. And, besides, the “social unit” that acts in its capacity of a collective producer, as the active agent of the whole “social production” enterprise, would have to be, again, of an exceedingly diminutive size and of an extraordinarily rudimentary structure, so that it might be in a state to assert itself, to function productively without being compelled to split up, as a matter of necessity and expedience, into various tier-like arranged stratifications.

“In large production the individual does not work alone, but a large number of workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole…”

In large scale production the individual laborer does not operate alone, in an isolated way, but a large number of individual toilers are combined and they work together in a more or less disciplined fashion. But this combination is not an outcome of their volition, their own intents and plans, their own initiative, their own organisatory capacities and associative inclinations, co-operative predilections. Not so. But a member or members of a superior, economically, class of proprietors hire them, in most cases, – excluding those of collective bargaining and trade-union representation which again is an inter class formation though of a somewhat different character, – separately as individuals and then, upon the act of hiring being completed, incorporate them into association and, thus, keep them working as a mechanism constructed of various well-assorted, properly assembled parts. Otherwise, in large production the worker would have been confronted with a double task that would, naturally, overtax his limited abilities, namely, that of discharging simultaneously two functions, one of laboring, exerting oneself in the direct process of production, and the other of herding together many laboring units and welding them, and keeping on regulating and directing the multi-individual labor-process in a way that averted its becoming an inter-class case.

Consequently, the salient feature of large scale production is its obvious, well-defined, sharply expressed, inter-class character, the fact that a member, or a small group of members, of one class is the originator of an interindividual relation realized between members of another class. In other words, the essential point about large scale production is the outstanding circumstance that the director,-taken financially, economically, not technically, these two concepts should not be inter mingled and mangled thereby, belongs, according to the very nature of his function, to one class, and the direct participants of the process of production, again, according to the very nature of their functions, belong to another class, to another, lower stratum.

This understanding of the situation exhibited by large scale production proves the close of the sentence of Kautsky's to be utterly obscure and meaningless, “Many workers, the whole commonwealth, work together to produce a whole.” Since the beginning of civilization there never was a collectivity of one kind or another that went on record as one that worked and did not, in the process of its work accomplished, break up into two strata, one consisting of workers, the other of directors, of one style or another, magicians, priests, chieftains, taskmasters, of work and workers. Even if the “commonwealth” be but another name for the most primitive patriarchal family, it could not function as a whole without setting off a process of differentiation. In our times, the words of Kautsky's sound like a faintly reverberating, somewhere lost, detained for millennia on its way, many a time relayed, echo of prehistory descending to us as a message about things of a forgotten bygone. Where can we find, under capitalism or under any “ism”, for that matter, the enchanting, heart gladdening and mind-bewildering, scene of a common wealth of considerable proportions working together in an organized fashion and being localized, quartered in a series of plants that are interlocked, and all this done without the segregation of a superior class of regulators, directors.

Perhaps Kautsky purports to convey to us, in his own words and a somewhat distorted fashion, the old reflection of the classical school in political economy that, philosophically looked upon, the whole commonwealth, – though many of its members are “idlers”, fulfil various non-productive functions, some of them being engaged in purely political activities, others committing anti-social acts, others, again, in their turn, checking and hunting them down, discharging duties of internal protection, like those of the police-force and the detectives, or of external, like those of the army and navy men, others, again, being busy with ideological matters of an emotional, intellectual or semi-intuitional character, notwithstanding the remoteness of all these multifarious activities from the field of production proper, yet the commonwealth with all its branches of ramified and scattered endeavors, of the most dis similar points of application of its energies, works together, not organizationally, as one concern directed and motivated from one power-station, but sociologically as a unit of a high complexity. In this interpretation of the end of the quoted passage of Kautsky's, it would assert the underlying systematicality of the unrelated activities of the commonwealth, despite their glaring discrepancies and disparities. But this characteristic of the commonwealth as such could have absolutely nothing to do with the particular of “large production”. The classical school saw altruistic social order emerging out of egotistic chaotic pursuits everywhere, along the whole range, without confirming its vision to large scale production. Small scale production, any kind of production, would have given them the same impression.

When production was going through its elementary stages, and social life was not far removed from its fountainhead, then the commonwealth as a unit was more cohesive, more agglutinated than it is now, for the plain and obvious enough reason that its centrifugal forces generated by the individual and the class were then almost entirely absent. In near our own epoch, when production was still in its adolescence, though there was already in evidence a market of a somewhat considerable scope, the commonwealth could have been said, with quite a number of reservations, to be working together in solidarity, with the exclusion of those who were not engaged in productive pursuits altogether, “to produce a whole”. But in modernity such and similar contentions are absolutely out of place and tune. They are all too anachronistic.

Large scale production has very little to contribute to the “social” character of our economic activities, if under the “social” we understand what it stands for, namely the absence of conflicts of an individualistic and class character. The larger production grows, the more it expands, the more involved it becomes, and the more, consequently, inter-classified and interindividualized it waxes, and the less and less it is “socialized”.

“Society” itself in urban parlance becomes synonymous with a high class.

Do not Marxian Communists advocate to hand over our industry to “society” in the sense of a high stratum of elite?

Our language is a racial, national phenomenon, it is a social creation. No less social is ancient culture with its oral unnamed tradition and scripture of anonymity, its penmanship being attributed to the maker of all, meaning the socially undifferentiated aggregate as a whole. But our modern literature which has at its foundation individual authorship can by no means be described as being merely “social”. Each literary production is accredited to a definite personality, or to a conclave of them, as the case is with encyclopedias. No less so economic pursuits, where each drop of energy is accounted for, registered, checked up and put on record to be drawn against it by a definite economic subject, a productive agent who conducts his own bookkeeping, despite all the Communist propaganda.

Neither the “social” nor the “interindividual” magnitude is constant. The “social”, the sum of relations strictly social, is on the decrease, on the decline in modern society, under normal conditions of evolution taking place without artificial state-interference. The “interindividual” element, on the contrary, is all the time on the steady, slow, but sure, increase. For the individual becomes more and more self-conscious, and his activities, his connections, his co-operative work assumes more and more an “interindividual” coloration and stylization.

Progress of civilization and culture tends in the direction of undermining, sapping the “social”, and transforming it through a slow process of evolution into an interindividual and inter-class relation. Industry, economic activities through the whole length and breadth of history, with the exception of primeval epochs, when the tribe, or a grouping of some formation, was acting as one man in a natural way, without artificial make shifts, contrivances, of a juridical and purely ideological nature, – those taken recourse to, for the lack of better, more effective means, by modern sociological and poli tical manipulators and soul-string-pullers, have been and are emphatically, unequivocally of an interindividualistic and inter-class expression. Man is no longer an exclusively social or political animal, but an interindividual personality. And his interindividuality grows more and more manifest with the rise of his internal soul-culture and the unfoldment of his psychological and logical endowments.

The ”social” is to a certain degree a residue of the past, it is to a considerable extent anachronistic. It fights a losing battle against the advancement of Man, and that is why it is so reckless and so aggressive, so barbaric in its methods. Its policies of savagery are dictated by despair. The factor of time and development works against it.

Marxian Communism is enveloped in half-truths that are worse than patent lies, full-blooded falsehoods. It recognizes the fact of the existence of classes, but it does it reluctantly. For it looks upon it as an anomaly of social intercourse, an excrescence upon the body sociologic. And the Marxian assures us that he is about to remove this unhealthy growth by a surgical operation that is nothing short of the miraculous in the sphere of applied sociology and has all the signs and symptoms of the pseudo-messianic about it. The Marxian is body and soul for class struggle that he considers as the means with which the class-cancer is to be cut out of the social system. He does not see, and he does not want to see, — himself being a member and spokesman of an emerging top-class of society and as such being interested to minimize the class-issue of society and treat it as something transitory, accessory, evanescent, — that this pretended removal of the class-division is but an excuse, a pretext, under the cover of which a new solidified super-class is ready to break in and take the fore-stage of history by force and violence.

Nations were not abolished by wars. No matter how many of them were waged, no matter how bloody and how destructive of human life they were and will be. And internationalism was formulated as the only way out of the horrors of chauvinism and as a legitimate and historically logical sequence to nationalism, as its complement and sublimation. Even so, and much more so, classes. Class-wars, serial civil fights, no matter how blood-drenched, how cruel they may be, revolutions no matter how thoroughgoing, how left-radically executed, will not and cannot, by any means in social existence, even taking recourse to wholesale physical annihilation of the members of the superior stratum, as advocated by the arch-revolutionaries who show more zeal than rea son, -will not and cannot put an end to the existence of classes. Alongside classism, inter-classism should be formulated. For classes, of one formation or another, are going to be with us for ever and ever more. Society is split into strata, and will stay split, and never be made whole, under no circumstances of natural sociology. Its classlessness, its wholeness was a deep primitive, a primevalism, an ante-civilizational state to which society, without its complete decomposition and set-back hurling it down the ladder of evolution to a depth of ten thousand years ago, will not return. This so considered radical idea of classlessness is either the most reactionary or most social messianic thought ever conceived by men laying futile claims to modernity, unless it be looked upon as one of the subtle subterfuges employed by a cleverly manipulating, fooling itself in order to have a moral right to fool others, emerging super-class.

Industry is an inter-class and interindividual phenomenon combined and it will never be anything else till its last days of existence as a human endeavor.

A scientific investigation of economic processes and activities must proceed from these two cardinal premises, interindividualism and interclassism.

The so called Utopian Socialism was to its great credit a Utopia of love and kindness, whereas the Marxian Communism is a Utopia of hatred and civil war, but it is the same Utopia, only magnified, enlarged, – when we take it seriously at its word and aspiration, and do not interpret it as a pernicious class-maneuver. The Utopians wanted to invent a perfect harmonious society. But this did not satisfy Marx at all. He wanted to charge History itself to do for him all the inventing and thus produce for his delectation the perfect society.

Classes are a sociological formation of an inter individual character. Classes, unlike races, castes, nations, tribes are occupational, not biological, not blood-bound, birth-determined combinations. – To premise the existence of classes, the co-workings and clashings in our industrial activities and then arbitrarily deny the inter-class and consequently interindividual character of our economic enterprises and treat production and distribution as a “social” endeavor that will take place in a vacuum of classlessness and individuallessness, to insist upon the ushering in or coming in, being introduced by “natural” tendencies, of Communism as an anti-thesis to classism, is more than a scientific approach to and treatment of sociological phenomena can stand.

V. COMMUNISM-COLLECTIVISM OR INTER-PRIVATISM.

1. Absence of Economic Guarantees.

The Marxian Communist, insisting upon the “social” character of our economic activities and coming, on the ground of it, to the conclusion that they be subjected to a political treatment, goes one better on modern, more or less democratic, political methods. The Marxist does not recognize the right of the laborer to a share, on the basis of partnership-property, of labor. trust ownership, in the “socialized” means of production. Democratic states offer to their citizens constitutional rights, guarantees of civil safety, remedies against abuses on the part of the agencies of the government. The democratic state does not treat its citizens as a “mass”, but as a sum of individuals, separate units with separate interests, to some extent, at least. Suffrage becoming universal, freedom of speech, press and assembly, testify to the fact that the liberal state is operating upon the principle of “atomism”, a charge brought against it by the theorist of French syndicalism, George Sorel, who unwittingly became the spiritual father of the corporate state. His accusation we consider as the best compliment ever paid the state. For atomism means, translated in terms of sociology, individualism and inter individualism as its corollary. These rights, offered us by the “bourgeois” state, rendered into economic expression, would mean the recognition of the property rights of the individual producer or individual citizen.

Marxism leaves the individual laborer, – the toiler upon whom it is generous enough to bestow highly laudatory epithets bordering on fulsome flattery and adulation, but which carry with them not one grain of economic substance or recognition of labor-claims, – helpless and hopeless to the tender mercies of the monopolistic Communist state. Under the pretext of abolishing capital, it wipes off with one sweep private ownership rights to the means and products of production, and thus along with capital it discards the individual and interindividual labor-rights. Instead of economic guarantees, instead of economically constitutional rights, Marxism-Leninism offers the workers promises of a quasi-prophetic nature, – that count for less than nothing in life actualities, – about the coming abolition of classes and antagonisms and evil, etc., etc. So that there is no use for them, for the wretches of labor, for them who eat their bread in the sweat of their brow to watch their step in their dealings with their fellow men belonging to a superior class of labor-regulators, labor-lords. The Marxian Communist assures the workers that there will be no friction between higher and lower strata in society under his regime. Full har mony is the order of the Communist day, a day of light without shadows, a day of love without hate…

2. Bourgeois Property an Invention of Marx.

“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property… In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 45.)

Is there in existence such a category of special characteristics as that of “bourgeois property”? Property is nothing more and nothing less than plain and simple ownership. Whether the proprietor is a bourgeois, a laborer, a farmer, a small tradesman, an artisan, a functionary, a beggar in all these particular cases the category of property as such stays unchanged. It reduces itself to the question of the object of property and its quantity. What does one own, and how much does he own of it?

Under slavery one was allowed to own a man, a number of men, women, children. They were stationed juridically on one level with cattle, with beasts of burden or domestic animals, in general. Under feudalism one could command a sum of services, for a life time, of a man, or a number of men, considered as attached to the soil, to the estate one owned or held in fief. In modern times, man and his services for a life time in one continuum cannot be acquired in toto, but in parts, for definite time-limits and that independently, not as an appendage to another object of property, but on the basis of contractual relationship.

As regards the objects or services that are legally acquirable under our present economic system and political regime called capitalism and democratism, all hinges on their amount. The difference of one acquisition from the other is quantitatively. The capitalist, the banker, the big real estate man, owns more quantitatively, commands objects, controls services in bigger blocks and for longer periods of time than the average member of the commonwealth. Concerning the essence of property per se there is not such a special juridical or economic entity which can be described as “bourgeois property”, a form of property attached in a specific way to the bourgeoisie.

Marx invented this category of “bourgeois property” in order to use it as an excuse for the advocacy of abolition of private property in general, a legislative fiat that would deprive every individual of his basic rights in the community, and reduce him to the status of an economic pariah, wholly dependent on the will and whim of his superiors, the state functionaries, the organisateurs of labor, the planners of production and regulators of distribution.

To abolish “bourgeois property” has as much sense and meaning as to abolish “bourgeois money”. Money as a medium of exchange is no respecter of persons or classes. It operates in the same way whether it is in the hand of the capitalist, or small-shop-keeper, or laborer. One may have a cent to his name, the other a billion dollars. In both cases they are possessors of money. One makes out a check for a dollar, the other for thousands of dollars. The check in both cases is identical, and the way of making it out is, also, the same, basically. Though the sums indicated are quantitatively different. The “bourgeois” owns in the self same fashion in which any other individual, not belonging to the bourgeoisie, exercises his property rights. In his capacity of an “owner” there is nothing “bourgeois” about the bourgeois. What makes of him a capitalist manufacturer is the category of hiring. Individual or interindividual hiredom functioning on a, more or less, systematic, not sporadic, and, on a more or less, large scale constitutes an inter-class relation. And this is the very, and only, thing that makes a “capitalist” out of a manufacturer. Ownership is not the salient feature of the capitalist system, even when looked upon from the exclusively industrial angle.

3. Marxism as Anti-Laborism.

In order to do away with “capitalism” as regards its essence as a sociological division of labor and regulation of functions, we would have to discard large scale industry, and go back either to exclusively individual or to small size corporational production that could be run without the admixture of inter-class elements. Then labor would be in a position to operate self-regulatorily, self-organisatorily, and be subject in the long run, exclusively to the free play of supply and demand as registered by the fluctuations of the prices and feats of the market.

In order to do away with “capitalism” not substantially, but formally, as far as its historical integument is concerned, all there is to be done is to interdict, outlaw hiredom, salariat, on a large and continuous, more or less, perpetual scale, barring casual, exceptionally brief short-term service-rendering for monetary compensation. The steady, organized, productively engaged employees would, then, become either part-owners, of the means of production, or profit-sharers, in some measure. Or “firedom” which is a counterpart of hiredom, of the salariat, should be taken remedies against through the introduction of certain methods or forms of seasonal security.

But Marxism runs along different lines altogether. It scorns reformatory ameliorative policies, branding them as ineffective palliatives. It promises to do away with “capitalism” in a substantial way. At the same time it champions not only the preservation of high scale industry, but its further development in that direction, namely, colossalization, nationalization. By these so called “revolutionary” changes, thoroughgoing over whelming reforms, Marxist Communism not only cannot alter the essence of “capitalism”, the substance of the capitalistic mode of production, but it is unable to mitigate in the slightest degree its “formal” evils. All it can and wants to do is to make bad things worse. Marxism-Leninism in stark economic actualities, shoving aside its revivalistically sermonizing exercises it indulges in with the sole purpose of recruiting soldiers for the civil war it intends to declare and wage, aims at modifying the historical expression of the capitalist mode of production. And this will be carried out by it after a fashion that will not ease the burden of labor, but, on the contrary, make it more onerous. Marxism Leninism is directed with its sharp point more against labor than against capital. That is why Marxism-Leninism, Communism, concentrates its attack not upon “hiredom and firedom”, the salient features of capitalism, but upon the only economo-democratic establishment that the masses are still in possession of and are still able, though to a very narrow limit, to make use of, namely, the civilization-old institution, the strong hold of liberty, the citadel of economic independence, – private property. This institution blocks their way to the complete enslavement of labor and laborer. And they batter away at it with all their fury.

Marxism-Communism abolishes private ownership of the laborer, the right of the worker to own his share in the means of production, no less than that of the capitalist. This is done under the false and groundless pretext of production being “social” and, therefore, belonging to society at large.

According to Marxian lucubrations industry be longs neither to capital nor to labor, but to the totality of the given commonwealth, to the body politic, to all the members of the collectivity, whether they work, or they do not work, and contribute absolutely nothing to production as such. And the “belonging to all” is materialized not on the basis of interindividual property, of shares, of joint stock companies organized on a national scale, but on the basis of negation of property, and the proclamation of communality, of communism. Holding things in common can have practically one meaning, and that is the handing them over to the political organisateurs of the given state for control and disposal according to their wishes and whims.

Marxism, as a matter of deeper understanding, is opposed to the rights and claims of labor no less, but more so, than to those of capital. Naturally, it advocates the appropriation of capital, and not the expropriation, — meaning militarization, rock-bottom subsistence wage scales, and the like “reforms” it holds in store for the laboring masses, – of labor carried out by the fictitious classless society, the Communist state. This plank of its program it keeps for the time being under the cover of silence, hidden away in the shadowy corners of its books to which the common laborer has no easy access. The more so that the advocacy of expropriation of labor does not require propagandizing, soap-boxing about, for this policy of confiscation of labor will be carried out by the Communist state as a matter of course without meeting with active opposition. After the low layers, the farmers, artisans and small shop-keepers, and the higher layers, the merchants, manufacturers, business people, of the middle class have been crushed economically and politically, expropriated and compulsorily proletarianized or pauperized, declassed, the working class is all at the mercy of its lords. The working masses re main now all by themselves, without any help to expect and receive, without any reinforcements, to rely upon in cases of emergency, from their ally-classes, fraternal groups that were somewhat economically independent. The toilers, all alone, isolated, are facing now their autocratic bosses, their hierarchically built, functionally tripled commanding super-class of organisateurs. The laboring masses are confronted with a dilemma, one horn of which spells starvation, while the other reads supine submission. This is their not very seductive alternative when they as an inferior class of laborers remain alone with their cruel rulers, their organisateurs.

“We Communists have been reproached with the desire to abolish the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of man's own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form?

There is no need for us to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, or is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean modern bourgeois private property? But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.” (Ibid.)

“A form of property that preceded the bourgeois form.” It preceded and it runs parallel with the “bourgeois form”. The capitalist system, unlike Communism, is not grounded in a monistic principle. The capitalist class is not organized politically upon the foundation of a juridical hierarchy. Its gradations, as far as the personnel is affected, are shiftable, moveable, replaceable, they are of an economic nature. It is always a case of possessing wealth in a larger or lesser degree, of being able to run, own, control a bigger or smaller amount of business concerns. But all this is indefinite and unstatic. No fixety of charters, of muniments, no hide bound conservatism, norm-stagnancy about it. The same holds true concerning capitalism as a whole. It is not subject to a “militaristic” discipline. It is not regimentally, governmentally pedantic. It is fluid and flexible. “The property of the petty artisan,” of the small dirt farmer, of the small shop-keeper, of the push cart-peddler, of anyone who managed somehow to save up a few cents in one way or another, mostly by denying himself his elementary necessaries, and become a savings bank depositor, no matter how microscopic that sum may be, or a policy-holder, a flivver-owner, no matter in what condition, of what make and of which hand, or a stock holder, no matter how small the share, the property of all these individuals, non-capitalists, lives and exists unhampered juridically alongside “bourgeois property”.

Capitalism cannot, and will not, for such a policy goes against its grain, make a clean job of it. Certain tendencies are predominant. But they dare not usurp the whole field of economic pursuits, they are no whole hoggers. Their very “predominance” is of an economic nature which is pluralistic, tolerant, and not monomaniac fanatical, as the case is always with a political regime or devotional bigoted exclusiveness.

“But does wage-labor create any property for the laborer? Not a bit.”

Suppose labor does not create any property for itself under the capitalist conditions of production and distribution, meager labor-remuneration, which, by the way, is not accurate. But suppose it is so, what of it? Must Communism be the duplicate of capitalism concerning the latter's treatment of labor? Why should not Marxism, claiming to be the avowed friend, the only friend of labor, restore labor-property to the laborers organized either as a stock-company or labor-trust, and give them a share, on the basis of joint-property, in the means of socialized production which they co-operatively “set into motion”?

Capitalism did not do it. It was considered contrary to its policies. Is the behavior of capitalism exemplary, a model worthy of emulation, a maxim of conduct raised to the dignity of an imperative, of a moral law that the future system of economics must not dare impinge upon? Capitalism, the Marxist-Leninists keep on reiterating ad nauseam, is condemnable, exploitatory, is a wage slave system, and that is why it must be overthrown, obliterated by militant labor. Why should not the Marxist-Leninists, the Communists, redress the wrong labor has suffered at the hand of the greedy capitalists, the appropriators, the “robbers”, and reinstate labor-property?

Besides, capitalism, capitalist economic, when collated with Marxist Communism and its gargantuan production, is a poor and petty affair. And the workers, being deprived of, or, rather, not given a chance to acquire, property, a considerable share in the means of production, have at their disposal some other guarantees that serve as some kind of a bulwark against the encroachments of their boss-class. First, the master-class is more of a “class” nominally than actually, it is not unified, it is not united. Competition saps its foundations, undermines its class-loyalty, class solidarity. And due to this factor of hostility raging between the members of the higher class, the individual worker has a right, and a possibility to apply his right, to change his individual boss, his particular patron. Further, he has a right, and a possibility, in case he be organized and connected with other workers of the same trade through a trade-union, to strike, and even to picket, measures of protection that under Marxist Communism would have become obsolete, even if not juridically ruled out. The workers under Marxist Communism face a united master. They cannot, or are not permitted, to lay down their tools. Their trade-unions, being enclosed within the national territory that is under the state-authority, in case they are not usurped or disbanded or reorganized and taken over by state-appointed functionaries, would be less effective than a company union. They would amount to nothing at all as defenders of labor and instruments of collective bargaining, if even they were not placed under a ban. One cannot come forward armed with bow and arrows and face a squad of trained machine-gunners, and expect to get the better of them.

So that the capitalist conditions are more favorable to labor than the communistic ones. The reason for it is all too obvious to demand much dwelling upon. The weight of the worker relative to that of his hirer employer under capitalism is greater than it will be relative to that of his militarizer-employer under communism. Under hiredom-wagedom the toiler is still able somehow to protect his position, no matter how precariously. Under Marxian Communism the individual laborer as well as the working class as a whole stand in dire need of some guarantees of an economic nature. And labor-property, if it would not do a great deal of good, in the way of easing the yoke imposed upon the laborer by the state as a usurper of economics, would still be better than no property at all. And where are the guarantees offered the laborer against the contingencies of abuse on the part of the labor-lords, the Communist master-group?

All labor is offered by Marxism-Communism is dubious sermonology, futuristic emotionalism, feat-throwing ecstatism, quasi prophetism, pseudo messianism, things that can deceive only outright fools, the deceiving of whom would constitute a case of supererogation.

The Russian Communist-Leninists are brazen enough to preach and practice openly full-fledged autocracy served under the sauce of proletarian dictatorship meaning the dictatorship of the commissars of labor, the modern slave-drivers. But even political democracy would not be a sufficient guarantee under Communism to safeguard labor against the Communist tyranny. Democracy of modern times, with its institution of representation, was designed, developed and has been introduced and operated, under the capitalist mode of production, not as an economic term or system, but as a political method.

In the sphere of politics, under capitalism and laissez faire, Democracy is more or less effective. But under Communism it would turn out to be utterly impotent, unless it were translated into economic terms, meaning private property rights, for the individual producer, the artisan, the handicraftsman, the small trader, and inter private property rights, for the industrial proletarians, to the means of corporational production that are super vised, controlled by the state, but owned by the trusts of laborers. But this scheme is contrary to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism.

4. Interindividual Ownership.

“Accordingly, the modern instruments of production are extensive and powerful. It has become wholly impossible that every single worker should own his own instruments of production. Once the present stage is reached by large production, it admits of but two systems of ownership.

First, private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor; that means the existing system of capitalist production... Second, ownership by the workers in common of the instruments of production; that means a co-operative system of production and the extinction of exploitation of the workers, who become masters of their own products and who themselves appropriate the surplus... To substitute common, for private, ownership in the means of production, this it is that economic development is urging upon us with ever increasing force.” (Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle, pp. 94-95.)

Overlooking the roseate pictures of the future and the exaggerations of the statement about the workers becoming masters, and the like nonsense, all of which is an integral part of the Marxian-Communist conspiracy against labor, we have to point out that there is a third system which would have neither “private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor”, nor “substitute common, for private, ownership in the means of production”, but establish inter-private ownership in the means of production.

The Marxian proposal would deliver the toilers, tied hands and feet, hapless and hopeless as a bunch of ragamuffins, beggars depending for their living on state charity and favors, into the blood-stained hands of the soulless satraps of the despotic communist-state.

If it is true that the modern means of production and distribution have outgrown the control of the private individual laborer, it is no less true that they are still within that of the cooperation of the individual workers. And the body of the laborers organized as a corporation or a trust should control and own those means of pro duction and distribution not on the basis of common property as proposed by the Marxists, but on the ground of interindividual property.

To proclaim common ownership means to go back to antiquity, to the antedeluvian time when private ownership was as yet not in existence, because there was no private individual as a self-conscious being to claim it, to assert himself as the subject of this elementary right and humanly personal privilege. But how can it be done now, having to deal not with anthropoids, but with he-men who are individualistic, egoistic to some extent?

“It has become wholly impossible that every single worker should own his own instruments of production.”

What are the capitalists doing in such a predicament when the acquisition and upkeep of the enterprise is beyond the financial means of the individual owner? They do not substitute “common, for private, ownership in the means of production”, do they? Well, the capitalists are too well trained in economic discipline to talk so out of the way and act so impractically. They do not organize “communes”, but mergers, stock-companies. In a word, instead of private ownership, when the latter turns out to be inoperative, insufficient, they introduce inter-private ownership, partnership.

Common ownership is the abolition of private ownership, whereas interprivate ownership is its continuation, straightforward development, its healthy and further advancement. “Ownership by the workers in common of the instruments of production” in juxta position to “private ownership by the individual in the means of production used by co-operative labor; that means the existing system of capitalist production” is faulty, jumpy reasoning, to common – from private.

The existing system of capitalist production is based, under present circumstances, predominantly not on private ownership, but interprivate ownership in the means of production. And all the Marxist has to do – if he were what he claims to be, namely, pro labor and anti-capital, and not what he actually is, namely, pro the state and the emerging class of politico-economic organisateurs and anti-labor and anti-capital, — is to substitute, not common ownership which savors of ancient ante individualism and spells the enslavement of labor and the laborer, making of him a serf of the state, but labor inter-private ownership for capital inter-private ownership, instead of the capitalist trusts to establish labor trusts protected and supervised by the proletarian state.

5. The Primitive and the Modern Man.

“Man has always been a social being, as far back as we can trace him. The individual has always been thrown upon co-operation with others in order to satisfy some of his principal wants; others had to work for him and he, in turn, had to work for others.” (Ibid. pp. 95-96.)

Man has been a social being, and he is still a social being, though less so than he used to be. But he is surely no social being while being engaged in high scale production, an activity, a system that cannot be traced back.

“Cooperation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among races who live by chase, or say, in the agriculture of Indian communities is based, on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and on the other hand, on the fact, that in those cases, each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community than each bee has freed itself from connection with the hive.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 366-67.)

As an economic subject modern man is no social being, but an interindividual being. He, it is true, combines with others, but he does not lose thereby his identity, he still keeps in mind his own interest, guards it, protects it, and is quite careful in his dealings with other men as co-workers or co-partners.

Employees when they combine, they still exist individually and receive their pay individually, every one getting his share. They do not get a common wage, a common remuneration, the way the Communist, in his “benevolence” as the staunch “fighter” for labor-rights, offers him, to hold all things in common.

Employers combine, and they, surely, do not lose their identities within their close mergers, trusts, cartels, and the like combinatory associations. It is either labor property individual or interindividual, or capital-property, individual and interindividual and their mutual interaction. What Marxian Communism intends to establish, and that upon a basis of exclusiveness, is state property, which it misleadingly designates as common property. Marxism-Communism is in opposition to both counter-agents of the productive process, capital and labor; its opposition and hostility to capital is open and vociferous for with it it covers its no less determined and bitter, though temporarily kept under a damper, opposition to labor. What Communism champions is the cause of the politico-economic organisateur, the monopolistically ruling class of new oligarchs.

Labor-ownership, private and interprivate, could have exercised a mitigating, mellowing, influence upon the hardships and strictures that Communism would of necessity have imposed upon labor, under the best of conditions, barring those of the Asiatic variety, the policies practiced in Moscow. That is why Marxism is against labor-property. It fears and shuns the bit it would have put into the mouth of the unbridled and coltish ambitions of the monopolistic class. And Marx-Engels try their best, employing all manners of sophistry, the ends justify the means, to talk the workers out of this heresy of ownership.

6. Capital as an Embodiment of an Interclass Relation.

“Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore not personal, it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, in the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class-character. (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 46.)

The quoted passage contains as many errors as there are words in it. Capital can be set into motion only by the united action of all members of society. What kind of capital, that of the flighty imagination of the authors, or that functioning in the markets, banks, workshops, plants, mines? Which capital? Which capital? And how does it tally with the statements of the same authors characterizing capitalist production as anarchistic production? Where do we find under capitalism, not under primitive patriarchate or matriarchate, a united action of all members of society? Invalids in the hospitals, lunatics in the asylums, professors on the cathedras, thieves in the jails, scribes in their offices and studios, all of them keep on in a united way moving capital which “only by the united action of all members of society can be set in motion”. What kind of motion do the authors have in their minds? And the society they are mentioning of what size is it?

Wherever any group of men come together as hirelings of one, or of a few individuals, and they create products, using the employer's raw material and tools, as a result of which the employer, or employers, becomes owner of those products, and he markets them and makes profit by this transaction, the phenomenon of capital is right there.

Capital travels freely, more or less, from country to country, from land to land, from nation to nation, with much greater ease and alacrity than individual men change their abodes. It is always on the go, in flux.

It knows of no national, or state boundaries. And what for does it need the united action of all members of society to set it in motion?

Capital under Communism would become sedentary, attached to a certain territory beyond which it would not be allowed to go, under usual conditions, unless the Communist state starts acting not unlike a private firm. Under Communism capital would become nationally social, “social” meaning attached to a definite social grouping, to a definite political unit. Under capitalism, capital is scot-free, is a wander-foot, goes where it listeth.

Capital is not a “social” power, but an inter-class and inter-individual power. When it is converted into common property, into state or society property, society taken as a whole regarding the separate existences of its individual members, it is not converted “into the property of all members of society”. In the latter case, it would have become interindividual property, every member having his share therein. This would not harmonize with the above-mentioned statement of the same authors about the abolition of private property being the distinguishing feature of Communism.

Further, what capital loses by the Communist operation is not its class-character, but its interindividual characteristics. Capital cannot lose its class-character, for the latter is immanent and it is impossible to remove it by effecting changes in the category of property. The property-relation is not essential for the class-relation, for the inter-class connection is able to utilize any mode of production and appropriation so long as it offers a chance for a class of regulators of one variety or another to rise above labor and to lord it over it, command it through means of superior organization and sociological division of functions. What capital sheds through the effected Communist transformation is its interindividual character. Capital becomes, under the Communist regime, an outspokenly inter-class phenome non manifest within the national state-frame.

Marx and Engels ' assurance to the contrary is based either on a pious, pseudo-religiously naive, wish, or, rather, on self-deception as an introduction to mass deception.

“In communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.” (Ibid.)

Why not to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of those who promote labor, those who organize the laborers, make them work?

Wherefrom such boundless optimism and such groundless altruism? In communist society accumulated labor is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the Communists, of the labor-lords, of those who drive the laborers, compel them to sweat, toil and moil and amass wealth for the Communist state and its functionaries, while the laborers will feel lucky if and when they get a subsistence wage according to the “iron law” that fits so marvelously into the “iron regime”.

7. Dialectics.

For the purpose of giving the laborer everything and all, and yet, at the same time to give him nothing at all, a highly intricate piece of sophistry is employed. For the performance of this Communist piece of magic, the superlatively clever act of prestidigitation, there is nothing so suitable as the dialectical method. Dialectics is Marx's demiurge, as good a factotum as its double, the class-struggle, the highly acclaimed wonder-worker in Marxian revolutionarism. Marx's flirtations with Hegelian phraseology and metaphysics are not, as he would like us to believe, of an exclusively platonic nature.

Dialectics comes in handy whenever something must be put over on labor. No denying, it is an exceedingly subtle method and maneuver wherewith to get back from the untrained in metaphysics proletarians what they might have gotten from the capitalists.

“The capitalist mode of production and appropriation, and hence capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property founded on the labors of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era; i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 837.)

The sinuous path of Marx's reasoning runs over hill and dale... The workers owned their tools in the previous, somewhat rudimentary, stage of economic development. The workers are now separated from their tools and means of production. A reunion of the tools and the workers will soon take place under the auspices of the benevolent proletarian state. It is a case of the omnipresent thesis, antithesis and synthesis, the holy trinity of Hegel and Marx, displaying its putative virtues and powers in the historical process, in its application to the particular of labor and its problems.

But the working class is hardly equal to the task of stomaching and digesting such a chunk of metaphysical raw meat. If the workers really are interested in getting the tools and the means of production, either by a slow process of gradual reforms, or by an accelerated process of revolts, naturally, they would have preferred to get those implements in a plain human way, to own them, and not in the Marxian cabalistic interpretation of “individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era”.

The only “acquisition of the capitalist era” that any economist, – who does not juggle souls with tricky words and notions, who uses no legerdemain in order to confuse one's own brains and thus get a legitimate alibi to confuse the brains of other individuals on a mass production scale, — sees clearly is partnership property, interindividual property.

“This does not re-establish private property for the producer.”

Why does it not establish interindividual property for the producers? This surely would be more firmly based “on the acquisition of the capitalist era” than the Marxian “possession in common of the land and the means of production”.

What the workers, in their overwhelming majority, are really after are shorter hours and higher wages. And when their desire and ambition, – their desire and ambition and not those of their propagandists, the Communist-Leninists who plague labor as pernicious parasites, feed on it, harass it, badger it, – would run above the mark of a “full day's wages for a short day's work,” then it would be to become owners, or part-owners of the tools and means employed by them in the process of pro duction, namely, to be labor-co-proprietors of the plants they work in. They, certainly, would not resort to the trickery of the Hegelian “synthesis” which was adopted by Marx and readapted with the sole purpose of befogging the minds of the laborers and thus the easier to cheat them out of their own or of that which might become their own.

8. Splitting the Ranks of Labor.

“The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and fortify. Their mission is to destroy all previous securities for and insurance of private property.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 42.)

The workers, under no circumstances, can become the plenipotentiary masters of the productive forces, for they are not alone in the field, there are other agencies, no less important than manual labor, to reckon with. But why cannot the proletarians become co-proprietors of the means of production, and stop, at least, being “slaves” of the Marxian state, between mastery and slavedom there are many gradations? Why? Because such a plan would run counter to the centralistic and monopolistic interests of the politico-economic organisateurs, the oligarchs of labor.

If the workers have nothing to secure and fortify, according to Marx and Engels, why should they engage in battles altogether? What have they to fight for? For whose benefit should they sacrifice their lives and limbs? Because they are assigned a task by their present and future taskmasters, the Communists? The Marxian Communists “discovered” a “historical mission” for their recruits. And what does the “mission” consist in?

“Their mission is to destroy”, proclaims the Communist Manifesto,” all previous securities for and insurance of private property”. Why should the workers be opposed to “all previous securities for and insurance of individual property”? They could be opposed to capitalist monopoly, for they have no share in it in form of ownership, only in that of wages. But why should they destroy individual property based on labor ownership?

The proletarians cannot be, according to their eco nomic position, enemies of individual property grounded in labor. Why should they combat the property rights of the artisan, of the farmer, of the low layers of the middle class? They cannot be interested in abolishing all previous modes of appropriation, but, rather, in securing and fortifying their positions as labor-owners, as trade-skill-owners, as job-owners, demanding security for their occupation, and co-owners of the tools and instruments used by them jointly, if they wish to.

The Marxists, in placing with the workers such a large order of destruction have one purpose in view, and that is to sow seeds of dissension in the camp of the laboring masses and thus break up their ranks, impair the instinctive, natural solidarity existing between the industrial workers, handicraftsmen, farmers, etc.

The emerging masters of labor follow the example of all rulers whose maxim has been : divide and rule. They aim at isolating industrial labor, separating it from its counter-agent as well as from its natural allies and friends, the lower strata of work and commerce, and then, upon having achieved their pernicious aim of mutual antagonization, attack them separately and crush them one by one with the very help of, blinded to its own interests, industrial labor, and ultimately to enslave their very helpers, their unwitting tools of destruction...

VI. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OR POLITICAL STAMPEDE.

1. Competition as a Problem of Capital.

"The contradiction between social production and capitalist appropriation reproduces itself as the antagonism between the organization of production in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole. " (F. Engels, Anti - Duehring, p. 307.)

“. . . The antagonism (between labor and capital) conceals in itself, or has, a second conflict, as a supplement: the systematic division and organization of work within the establishments for production (workshops, factory, combination of factories, etc.) is opposed by the unsystematic disposal of the produce on the market. " (Edward Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism, pp. 18-19.)

The antagonism between labor and capital has nothing to do with the fact that our whole industry as a unit, or that production as a whole, is not organized, not systematized. In other words, the external problem of industry, the interconnection existing between its units, is not necessarily interlinked with the internal problem, the interconnection existing between the counter-agents enclosed within each unit.

Let us suppose for a moment that the individual factory is owned by the workers who are organized on the basis of voluntary co-operation. Anarchy of production, meaning competition between the individual factories though they be owned by co-operations of producers, would thereby, through the mere shift in owner ship, from capital to labor-capital, not be abolished. Now let us take the reversed case, anarchy of production is done away with, our industry as a unit is fully and completely trustified by the capitalists who have eliminated competition altogether and have taken hold of the market and control it definitely. This would have no effect, from the Marxian class-struggle standpoint, upon the antagonism of labor and capital.

“Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i. e., the class of capitalists, and collective labor, i. e., the working class.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, p. 259.)

Marxism asserts that the two classes, that of labor and that of capital, clash, wage war upon one another, are as collective aggregates irreconcilably antagonistic. We do not share this gloomy view. We recognize that a conflict between labor and capital takes place. But it is caused by the fact that labor is split into fractions, and capital, in its turn, is fragmentary, is crumbled into tiny bits. We are thus confronted with an inter-class situation that is aggravated, distorted by an interindividual relation. The unification, the formation of labor into a whole of a considerable size, which would bring about a combination of the laborers, and a full trustification of capital having its reflection in the cementation of the capitalists as a unified, interconnected class, would have a pacifying effect upon all labor-capital relations. It would press down their friction and hostilities to the zero-point. These two classes, upon facing one another as units, could not help but see that they were counter-agents of one and the same productive process, that they were two halves of one whole. Capital cannot fight labor. The capitalists need the laborers as their patrons, as their customers, besides the fact of their being their helpers, the “direct” producers. Labor cannot fight “capital”! The laborers need regulators of labor. They cannot “produce” and “direct” the process of production at the same time. Labor and capital must bargain, negotiate and co-operate, applying the principle of inter-classism.

But this is not a Marxian idea. This will be branded by any Marxist as heresy. This undermines the class-struggle doctrine, the foundation of the Marxian edifice.

The Marxians confuse the two problems, the internal and external, with the purpose of inducing, in this subtle way, labor to fight a battle that is not its own. They want to enlist labor in a fight for socialization. An issue that has nothing to do with labor as such. Labor is not “social”. And the so called “sociality” that the Marxians discovered in large scale production was not a contribution made by labor, but by capital. Production from the standpoint of labor, of the labor-elements contained therein, contrary to the biased assertions of the Marxists, is not “social”, for the so called erroneously “social character” is of capital's making. It is the capitalist who makes the laborers work together. When they are outside of the sphere of capital's influence, they work separately, individualistically. Labor is either individual, when it is left to its own devices and resources, in small scale handicraftsmanship, or it is interindividual, as the case is in large-scale production, but then it is manipulated by an inter-class power, namely, by capital.

Capital is either private or partnerized, trustified. That is concerning itself, its ownership relation, but in its attitude toward labor it is outspokenly interindividualistic. For its own good, for its thriving and multi plying it must keep many laborers together as some kind of a unit.

The question of the elimination of the disturbances that stunt the growth and hamper the smooth function ing of industry is by no means a labor problem, but an industrial problem. And capital, being more advanced than labor, has more to do with it than labor. The problem about the interrelationship existing between the independent units within our industry or production is, primarily, a capital-problem, and, secondarily, a labor problem.

The same as the mere fact of having a Monarchy constituted would not by itself have solved the question of the proper interrelationship between the ruler and the ruled. Monarchy is an autocracy, sovereign authority vested in one single individual. Thus it put an end to “anarchy” and to feudalism, to the multiplicity of the reigning families through the establishment of one dynasty. But this institution or hereditary rulership did not grant universal suffrage, or any other inalienable human rights, to its subjects. It did not make citizens out of them. This was done by Democracy. Similarly in the realm of economics. The elimination of “anarchy” by itself would not turn a labor-subject into a labor citizen, a wage-earner subject to hiring and firing into an independent worker.

2. The Size of the Economic “Society”.

Furthermore, the question of size cannot be over emphasized, for upon its determination the whole issue pivots.

How big must be the economic unit not to allow the derogatory epithet of “anarchy” to be plastered upon it? The outside “chaos” or “anarchy” is not supposed to interfere with the inside order. No monarchy was absolute in that sense that it enclosed within its iron vise the whole of political existence on a universal scale, encompassing the totality of humanity. A monarchy is established within a certain geographically limited area. And as far as the interrelationship existing between the sovereign monarchies is concerned there is “anarchy”. And nobody having any elementary knowledge about statesmanship ever thought of this situation as being a contradiction, or an antagonism, or a conflict of systems. Organization within does not presuppose organization without, meaning an inter-organization, linking together various organizations, to be functioning on the same principle and in the same organic way. All living organisms live and function, conduct themselves on that basis. They carry within themselves a systematized unit, a monarchy, and outside of them there is an “anarchy”. The Marxians have discovered this “anomaly” in the realm of economy, an anomaly which is the basic modus of the organic kingdom!

“The antagonism between the organization of pro duction in the individual factory and the anarchy of production in society as a whole” is going to be with us till we are able to create a cosmo-economy and, maybe, an interplanetary economy-unit. Economics knows of such a thing as export and import. Why should organization, the laying of the ghost of “anarchy”, stop at the edge of the national territory right on the state line, on the political furrow drawn, in most cases, by the plow of war and conquest, or, in some cases, by the hand of physical geography, both of them agencies that have little to do with economic activities as such.

A Prussian militaristic thought lies in the back ground of Engels ' reasoning. “Society as a whole” concerning economic, industrial problems, is not conterminous with the national political state unit. Products as well as capital cross borders easily enough, if they are not disturbed by makeshifts. Wheat is produced in many a country, not in one, the same is meat, and many other items of consumptive quality.

Some vulgarians, demagogues speak of international banking. Banking is not international for the plain reason that it never was as yet national. It is interindividual and individual, and loans and investments because of their being interindividual disregard, on many an occasion, the political border-lines drawn for polity, not economy, purposes.

“Society as a whole” regarding matters economic is the whole of civilized humanity, and not the given political governmental sector. But with Engels the “society as a whole” means the state. And that is what the Marxian Communists have in their mind when they use the word “society”. Let Engels say so, and not hide behind “society”, a word that misleads and confuses the issue. Engels points out the alleged “antagonism” between the organization of the individual factory and the anarchy of production in “the state as a whole”. In other words, he indicates that the economic unit, the individual factory, does not coincide, as regards its size, with the state unit. And this “incongruity” he chooses to designate, for some reason, by the negative term “antagonism”. Such antagonisms are aplenty within the political unit of the state. To pick one out of many, let us take, for instance, the family. Is the family unit commensurate with the state unit?

3. An Economic Answer to an Economic Question.

Order and discipline prevail within the confines of the individual factory, the actual, the real living organism of modern production taken as it is, not as it should be according to speculation. Outside of it, the relations between the various factories are materialized through the medium of the market and the organizationally free behavior of their products, the commodities and their price fluctuations. It is quite natural that the smaller unit should precede the larger one concerning this matter of being well-knit, strictly systematized. There is no antagonism here that we can see. It is a case of evolution, a process that begins with small-sized units and passes gradually to larger ones. The road of advancement leads from the individual factory to the interindividual factory, to the trust, merger, combine. Production as a whole does neither from the labor, nor from the financial end, operate as an organized unit. Competition, the civil economic war, rages between the individual capitalists, or between the “feudal leagues” of capitalists, between the companies. The economic answer to all this is given by economy itself, by its own natural unfoldment, and that is trustification as an answer to individual competition, and supertrustification, inter-trustification as a remedy for company-competition. The point of direction of this economic process of growth is clearly indicated and that is a world-economy. A universal economy based on interindividualization and interclassification is the ultimate goal.

This is an economic answer to an economic problem thought and worked out, immanently by the internal forces and tendencies inherent in this discipline, economically, without political usurpation or “invention” of political and otherwise Utopias, without screeching pseudo-salvationist slogans and revivalistic ballyhoo.

“That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the laborer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many laborers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many... The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. I, pp. 836-37.)

So far so good. The question is but about the means, in what way will this “expropriation of the expropriators” take place, whether in the same style and fashion as the previous expropriation, that of the laborer working for himself, or some new methods will be applied? Marx tells us, “this expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself”, now, what about the impending “expropriation of the expropriators”, will it materialize in the identical way, namely, economically, be carried out by the immanent laws of production itself, of the so called by Marx “socialized” production, without outside extra-economic interference?

“One capitalist always kills many”… How does he do it? Surely not by extra-legal means like organizing a gang and himself becoming their ringleader and going to war on the bloody capitalists, to “put them on the spot” or put them out of business by acts of violence, and undoubtedly not by arousing the masses of the propertyless, of the dispossessed and call them and lead them to plunder and sack these “many” capitalists.

And, also, not by the magic word of legislature, by laws issued against them, not by legal means does one capitalist do the killing of the many. He achieves it through the medium of competition, applying economic means. The capitalist does not capture the state machinery and via this juridico-political instrumentality lay low all his economic enemies, his competitors. It is a case of the survival of the fittest and fattest financially, of the shrewdest and the most alert. In other words, it is a particular of the general struggle for existence.

“The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument.” What kind of capital becomes a fetter? Individual capital is too narrow, too small to contain the productive forces, it called into being, and operate them successfully, that is why it “bursts asunder”, or rather, combines, trustifies, it merges and meets the occasion, the new demands put to it by the process of development. Labor was interindividualized by capital, now capital, the interindividualizer of labor, in its turn, undergoes a process of interindividualization and, simultaneously, of interclassification, the super-capitalist, high finance becomes the director of the show of economy. All this is effected economically, according to the immanent laws inherent in the very process of economic development.

If competition is wasteful, it shall be eliminated economically. But not by the clever device of the Marxists, which amounts approximately to that, to eliminate competition by eliminating economics altogether and turn it into a political state-affair.

4. Civil Militarism Versus Industrialism.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state.” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, p. 52.)

What has this to do with the “immanent laws” of production? This is a political venture or adventure that has nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual unfoldment of the productive forces. No use making a “scientific thesis” out of a militaristic, civil war maneuver. The Marxian train of reasoning is derailed, taken off the economic lines and placed on political ones. Marx starts out with one thesis and, then, without noticing it, he passes to another one that has no connection with the first.

Capital centralizes. Yes. But how? not politically, but purely economically. Centralization of capital is achieved not through a political civil war conducted by one group of capitalists against the other. This battle is fought out economically; competition is the weapon that is used, and instead of marching battalions of soldiers or armed “militants” we see squads of trained salesmen and lots of advertising…

“Marx merely shows from history that just as the former petty industry necessarily, through its own development, created the conditions of its own annihilation, i.e. of the expropriation of the small proprietors, so now the capitalist mode of production has likewise created the material conditions which will annihilate it. The process is a historical one.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 152.)

Marx plays with the word “expropriation”. But he uses it in the same passage in two different connotations. He employs it as a term designating an economic form of “conquest”, in the first part of his statement, and then, in the end, he uses it to describe by it “confiscation” effected by the state. In such an undignified, scientifically speaking, way Marx switches off the economic plane and lands right into the political field without being aware of the change of regions, shifting of scenery, modification of methods. That is why Marx's reasoning is so helplessly defective, contradictory. The analogies he adduces are, almost always, out of place, tune and key. He never continues his line, he breaks it off, and spins a “historically irresponsible” yarn born of his glowing imagination and scientific recklessness.

“It would be an irretrievable mistake to declare that since there is a discrepancy between our economic forces ' and our political ' forces ', it follows ' that we should not have seized power.” (V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 371.)

Lenin is certainly right. Seizing of power has mighty little to do with the high state of economic development. Power lies in another sphere. Lenin does not refute Marx theoretically. He sticks to the Marxian thesis, but he would not sacrifice for the glory of the Marxian faulty reasoning the golden opportunity of capturing political power in an economically backward country. Practically he understood that these two phenomena, advancement of capitalism and seizure of power by the organisateurs, are not connected necessarily, and Lenin acted accordingly.

Capital is growing. Small private capital is being overpowered by big private capital, by interprivate capital, by trusts, cartels, super-trusts, super-combines of a universal character. But what has the state to do with all this? What has labor as a political force embodied in the Government to do with this process of growth, with this evolution? How does capitalism, all of a sudden, by mere fiat of legislature and political violence and force, heterogeneous agencies, factors lying outside the economic sphere and its tendencies of growth and complication, transform itself into state-Communism? The state can do anything, this is understood, but its action of overpowering and usurping economics does not follow naturally out of the development of economics. Unless growth means decay and economics dies of its own abundance and prosperity amid its bloom and boom. It is an absurdity. The state as a tyranny, as a dictatorial power can do anything short of turning men into women and vice versa, and this limitation is of a temporary nature, so long as the sexes are considered fixities. But the usurpation of economics by politics carried out by state-despotism cannot be looked upon as a natural step in the course of economic development.

5. From Polycapitalism to Monocapitalism – Not Politicalism.

Furthermore, centralization of capital is a result of the growth of capital, and, consequently, of the capitalists. Did the centralization of the estates, of land-possessions, spell the ruination of the Lords, of the titled nobility? It contributed, maybe, to the emergence of the Monarchy, as a theory and an institution. But the Monarch was no outsider, he was one of their own, “the first gentleman”, he was the super-lord. Centralization is an inner force. It cannot fight against itself. Centralization of capital all it can achieve is mono-moneyism, monocapitalism, mono-finance. And this will be accomplished by the economic order economically without falling a prey to political ambitions and machinations, plots and conspiracies entered into by the labor lords with the express aim of subjugating economics and making of it a slave of politics.

The fact that centralization of capital centralizes the working masses and thus facilitates their trouble making, their revolts, if it were true, it would have meant very little positively. For not the revolts of the serfs have broken feudalism and ushered in monarchism and commercial capitalism, and, then, broken monarch ism, and ushered in liberalism and industrial capitalism. “Commerce”, “industry” were the positive factors in originating all these transformations. And Marx knew it very well. Engels said it in so many words.

“The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal nobility is the struggle of the town against the country, of industry against landed property, of money economy against natural economy; and the decisive weapon of the burghers in this struggle was their economic power, constantly increasing through the development first of handicraft industry, at a later stage progressing to manufacturing industry, and through the extension of commerce.” (F. Engels, Anti-Duehring, p. 186.)

The setback of the nobility was caused by the growth and prosperity of the cities. A new economic order emerged and its centre was situated outside the villages and the estates. The city as the representative of a new mode of production and distribution, of commerce, handicrafts and manufacture, pitted itself against the village with its old, backward form of production and barter, mainly focused in the realm of agriculture. The nobility was attached indirectly, through the medium of its serfs, to the soil to which the serfs were attached directly. Both were beaten by the upcoming city, by the new order of things. Both were shoved aside by the upsurge of the new forces, both, meaning the ruling class and its correlative, subordinated class. For when a system is bankrupt, both counter-agents, both constituent elements of the system, both hemispheres, the upper and the lower, go into the cool shadows out of the sunny spots.

Passing to our epoch, the question arises as to which and where are the new economic institutions that are being framed under the very eyes of the bourgeoisie and yet are situated outside of its reach, sphere of influence and sway? Where does the new class, that boasts that it is going to take the place of the bourgeoisie, have its habitat? Where is its stronghold? In the very camp of the bourgeoisie, in the factories controlled by the bourgeoisie, in the “masses” that are massed and clubbed together by the bourgeoisie. What achievements does it claim to its credit as an independent class, as a class asserting itself without being tutored and led and mustered and “socialized” by its enemy? What exploits can it indicate as having been accomplished by it on its own initiative?

Marxism, when driven into these tight corners is pathetically helpless and vague...

The bourgeoisie existed as a powerful class eco nomically. It was not recognized politically; juridically it was hampered, hemmed in on all sides. And it broke these barriers. It jumped over the hurdles. It conducted a revolution, and thus adapted the political institutions, the legal relations to the new economic situation. The bourgeoisie, the third estate, had been a tremendous economic power before it ever seized political power. Whereas the proletariat, according to the tactics prescribed for it by Marx and Engels, must seize political power first and then wrest all capital from the bourgeoisie.

Marxism at its best has very little to do with the economic actualities, contingencies and eventualities of our epoch.

Monocapitalism knocks at the gate of economy, not Marxian Communism, and it is going to make its triumphal entry by economic means.

What Marxism is trying to do is to force the economic slow development into a political stampede, to accelerate economic evolutionary revolution by poli tical explosions, volcanic eruptions, by a cataclysm made to order through a mass-movement artificially created, demagogically directed.

VII. ETHICS AND POLITICS.

1. Ethical and Political Concepts and Their Interaction.

Concerning ethical and political concepts, their interaction, upon examination, shows peculiar features worthy of special scrutiny.

The extremely ethical notions and demands, when taken up by the so called “radical” movements and championed by the would-be commanding groups, are not made use of by them, but manifestly made “abuse” of. The “abuse” turns these notions into their negation through a queerly operating “dialectical process”.

Let us take for an example the two lofty moral concepts and formulae: “Property is theft”, “Authority is violence”.

“Property is theft... Ethically treated, properly applied, this dictum would lead us to the unequivocal rejection of personal property and the disowning of all earthly possessions as unworthy of a moral personality of high standing and standards. Politically applied it would stand for the very reversal of its ethical content, namely, for plain robbery that inevitably brings in its wake the right of property. For property is but one of the forms of stealth, of thievery practiced on a small or large scale.

“Property is theft”, when read straightforward in a moral mood and connotation, is overdone, out of close contact with wholesome reality, “extreme” ethics, but when read backwards:”Theft is property”, it constitutes the political variant of the self-same moral adage, and means, instead of the superficially interpreted condemnation of property, the deeper lying, the carefully hidden, justification of theft.

The backward reading must not necessarily be done physically with the mouth, it can be done mentally, in the mind. The formula contains a double meaning, one is the negating of property because of its being tantamount to theft, the other is the acceptance of theft because, after a more penetrating analysis, it is the basic form of property. Thus extremes meet, saintship and crime. The gangster and the moral Communist apply both one and the same formula, and its enunciation leaves one guessing as to who is the enunciator, the ethical property-opponent or the perverted property-friend, the highwayman. And still more difficult it is to decide with any measure of precision in each case the proportion of the banditical and “communistical” elements contained within the enunciated dictum and within the individual making the solemn enunciation.

“Killing an animal is an act of assassination”, would likewise stand for two interpretations. One would convey the condemnation of zoophagy, the other the recommendation of anthropophagy. This saying could serve as a meeting ground for both the ethical vegetarian and outspoken cannibal, for the low and the high as two extremes are indiscernible in their radical expression. “Killing a chicken is like killing a man,” could mean the advocacy of abstaining from killing any living creature, or the acceptance of homicide as one of the customary varieties of life-destruction practiced by men.

Here lies the source of deceptiveness of all radically ethical demands. Their broadcast is fraught with danger. For all of them are double-edged.

The same holds equally true concerning the other formula, “Authority is violence”, “Right is might”. These sentences are ethical when read, irrespective of letter mouthing, in the spirit, from left to right. They are “political” when read, mentally, from right to left. The first construction is a negation of authority; no matter how little violent, how much considerate, hedged around by guarantees, how little intrusive it may be. Authority is rejected, for at its core it is coercion, compulsion, and, therefore, must be looked askance at by high morality that, by its very nature, is voluntary. The second interpretation of the same formula, verbatim left intact, is of a political coloration. It conveys the very opposite idea, namely, the glorification of violence, of brutal, open, shameless, brazen despotism, so long as it is instituted by those who claim to be vested with authority, though they establish their usurpatory regime, their tyrannical rule, their gangdom styled “authority” through the most inhuman acts of violence and terror.

And the apparently ethical condemnation contained in the dictum is but a disguised preparation of the ground for the prospective apology for the incoming “banditry”, an apology carried out by the clever trick of anticipatorily repelling all criticism and accusation that might be afterwards advanced against the bloody regime. It is done with the aid of a high-sounding moral concept asserting that, anyway, all authority as such is nothing more than sheer violence, no matter how nicely pedicured are its paws and claws, and what is here to be indignant about! So that the moral dictum is exposed to the danger of being all too easily reversed.

And the reversal takes place in a most natural, inobtrusive way. It is merely a result of “quantity” being turned into very low “quality”. It is merely an outcome of the growth of the numbers of the devotees, of the “followers” of the too lofty, too elevated moral doctrine contained within the shell of the formula.

When few adhere to it, it is, naturally, kept in the realm of morals, and self-edification, and it is only “used”. Upon the “few” making headway, spreading the glorious teaching, and thus becoming “many”, the formula unnoticeably passes the prohibitive borderline separating individual conduct from political mass behavior, mob-action. At this newly arrived stage the formula is no longer “used”, it is inevitably “abused”.

The ethical elevation upon which stood those exceptional personalities who originated this sentence due to their over-sensitiveness, highly refined conscience-consciousness, is too high an altitude for the average man in the street and his quite low level of moral culture. And the moral utterance can be understood and accepted by the many, by the broad masses, by individuals lacking those higher susceptibilities, only in its coarse misconstruction, namely, as a political demand, not as an ethical command. Upon becoming the basic principle of a mass-movement, the moral dictum cannot help being transmuted into its opposite, into a new insidious form of hyper-hypocrisy. This hypocrisy is not satisfied with preaching one way and acting the other way, but it signifies a preaching and behaving according to the very preachment but taken in its diametrical opposite.

“Right is might”, ethically deciphered advocates the rejection of juridical norms and their substitution by an inner quest after righteousness that soars high above the vault of jurisprudence and its unsatisfactory, unsavory to the gourmet of manners, means for the regulation of inter-individual relations. Politically decoded the same formula conveys the insistence upon the employment of outright fist-force, it posits the validity of violence by sanctifying it through an act of identification with right.

2. Communism as a Political Movement Is Antithetic To Communism as a Moral Teaching.

“In spite of the foreground appearance, Socialism is not a system of compassion, of humanity, peace and kindly care, but one of will-to-power. Any other reading of it is illusory. The aim is through and through imperialist; welfare, but welfare in the expansive sense, the welfare... of the energetic man who ought to be given and must be given freedom to do, regardless of obstacles of wealth, birth and tradition... The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to organize and recast it in form and substance, and fill it with his own spirit. The Socialist commands. He would have the whole world bear the form of his view. This is the ultimate meaning of the categorical imperative which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike act as though the maxims that you practice were to become by your will the law of all.” (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, vol. I. pp. 361-62, New York, 1932.)

Marxian Communism is political, exceedingly so, exclusively so. It is not ethical altogether. Marxism deals not with the free-willed man, who is only socially “static”, environmentally set, but who as an individual is responsible for his actions, has his own account of a personal debit and credit, whose conduct may be regulated by voluntary ethical maxims or not be regulated, not systematized internally, volitionally, and, therefore, be considered as not moral; man is not its concern. Marxism-Communism is busy with the transformable, dynamic, floating group whose conduct is preordained historically and predetermined by antecedents, scientifically explained and classified.

Marxian Communism is the expression of the will-to-power and the tantalizing hunger for authority and communal life-control of the politico-economic organisateurs . These labor-lords as an aggregate are naturally composed of individuals. But the single individuals, with the exception of a few outstanding personalities of "leaders", are looked upon and considered as immersed in the group-will, in the collectivity-consciousness.

To speak of Marxian Communism in terms of individualistic philosophy and concepts is to commit a theoretical misdemeanor. It means treating Communism liberalistically, and this should not be done.

"In reading Marx, 'class', in phrases like 'class-struggle ' and 'class consciousness', should be regarded as a species of community held together by some kind of group loyalty , by its members being prepared to sacrifice their individual interests to the interests of the community . " (A.D. Lindsay, Karl Marx's Capital, p. 45.)

Not to the "community" in general, but expressly to the "class-community".

Marxian Communism, therefore, should be treated accordingly, not as a doctrine conceived, elaborated by an academician, by an individual theorist, who as a man is subject to errors of an individual nature resulting from the natural limitations of human intellect, but as a class-ideology. Marxian Communism must be dealt with on its own ground and scrutinized in the light of class tactics and class-interrelationships. This doctrine is not a doctrine in the usual sense of the word, it is a class maneuver, a class-weapon.

Marxian Communism is the embodiment of the aspiration after welfare, glory, domination and stardom on the historic stage of the type of political mass-organizers who strive to capture the national state-machinery, economy and culture and fuse and centralize these three separate branches of communal activity in the hands of one dominating group that through this very accomplishment transforms itself into a threefold master-class , a super-class. This great "revolutionary" modification of communal life and class-structure would pry wide open the floodgates for the most intensive and extensive exploitation of the masses, a rate and grade of exploitation that for its prototype would have to hark back to ancient slavery and find there only its timid prefiguration.

Communism, in its stage of so called Utopia, was launched upon its career as an ethical doctrine, it was inaugurated as a humanitarian praiseworthy endeavor. It made, in those days, its aristocratic appeal to philanthropists, to those few and chosen who felt deep compassion for the sufferings of their fellow-men. Being moral, Communism was charitable, touching the noble chords in the hearts of the elite, it advocated humaneness. It taught love and kindness.

Then Marxian Communism became a "mass-movement", a grandiose political affair. Upon becoming political, Communism passed into its diametrical contrariety. From morality it turned to immorality, from love to hatred, the most intensified expression of which is Leninism. It “is not a system of compassion, of humanity, peace and kindly care". Instead of peace it brings the sword of "civil war", the holy class struggle with its concomitant civil, internal, militarism disguised as "militantism" and economic super-imperialism under the mask of the one and indivisible Internationale. Instead of mankind it posits either a class or a state, championing class-patriotism and state-patriotism and their odd combination. And the Marxian theory of exploitation is not, as it is superficially understood, a condemnation of exploitation but a preliminary justification of, and theoretical prelude to, the augmentation of the volume and enhancement of the rate of exploitation that is going to take place under state-Communism.

How does this strange metamorphosis of Communism come about? It materializes so gradually, so possibilistically that the unsophisticated, and quite often outright intellectless, part of the intelligentsia is hardly cognizant of the drastic change, scarcely aware of the complete shifting of positions occupied by the champions of Communism, from vanguard to rearguard, from enlightenment to the most benighted obscurantism, from progressivism to reactionarism.

Marxian Communism is a case of ideological alchemy applied in the reversed direction, that of trans muting the precious metals of morality, the silver and gold of love and kindness into the brass and iron of politics and warfare, civil and national.

"The Stoic takes things as they are."

This is the only path, which is not infected with poisonous class-ambitions, open to the true moralist. The ethical personality cannot act otherwise. The moralist should do nothing more, if he desire to stay pure and clean and not lose his own moral standard from over - anxiety, too much zeal for hasty reform, which would inevitably lead him to take a plunge, head and heart first, into the morass of politics, and thus, belie and bedraggle his own moral precepts. Ethics is the longest road, not the short-cut. The mill of ethics grinds exceedingly slow, but, therefore, exceedingly fine. Ethics is a modifier of human realities, of interindividual, interclass or international relations. But its modification work it carries out via the individual person. It refines, improves the human material, and leaves, meanwhile, intact the social status quo which will alter of itself as a result of the alteration to the better wrought in man, in the atom. Reform work, revolutionary work, the changing of a social system carried out on a mass-scale at one time, encompassing a whole country with all its inhabitants without discrimination, this is political activity. And ethics being forced down to the political level does not give the effect expected by the short sighted, narrow-hearted and shallow-minded immature amateur-intellectual or “radical” philistine, namely, that of ennobling politics, but that of unnobling ethics. The result of this confusion, the hitching of the star of ethics to the bandwagon of politics, is the total demoralization of society, the lowering of all moral standards, the temporary eclipse of the constellation of conscience.

“The Stoic takes the world as he finds it, but the Socialist wants to organize and recast it in form and substance.”

The “Communist”, taken not singularly, but plurally, as a collective is surely busy rebuilding the social system, recasting it in form and substance so that it should suit his class-interests. So long as the Communist, or any other adept of any other moral teaching, for that matter, is a seeker after truth, a thirster for justice, a hungerer after righteousness, without political class-ambitions, he is a positive factor in the community, he is a contribution to the moral, and otherwise, welfare of the commonwealth. But the Communist as a collective, as a militant congregation, as the embodiment of a mass-movement, as an army of drilled and trained cohorts for the purpose of conducting a bloody civil war and a ballyhooing political campaign, is a highly negative factor, is a detriment to society. For he abuses his erstwhile ethical, lofty aspirations. He degrades them, drags them down and sinks them in mire and mud. He desecrates the Holy of Holies, the temple that is in the heart of man conscience, he unlaws and outlaws the moral law, the categorical imperative.

“This is the ultimate”, political, abusive, reversed, negational “meaning of the categorical imperative which he brings to bear in political, social and economic matters alike”. The Communist movement applies this imperative not individualistically, for which purpose and application it was formulated by Kant, but collectivistically, not as a moral command that is externally facultative and only internally obligatory, but as a police ordinance, a state-fiat, an ukase, which is, on the contrary, internally facultative and externally obligatory, comminatory.

“Act as though the maxims that you practice”, and which practice consists exclusively in preaching to others to practice them, “were to become by your will”, by the will of the emerging super-class, the will of the commanding group, “the law of all”, for it will be imposed upon them by violence and terror of usurpers.

OTHER BOOKS BY ABBA GORDIN

I. Anarkhia Dukha. Moscow, 1919.

II. Anarkhia v Mechte. Moscow, 1919.

III. Interindividualism, 2 vols. Moscow, 1920-22.

IV. Egotica. Moscow, 1922.

V. Yiddishe Etik. New York, 1937.

VI. Gruntprincipn fun Yiddishkeit. New York, 1938. VII. Di Froi un di Bibl. New York, 1939.

VIII. Yiddisher Weltbanem. New York, 1939.

[1] “That ideology (Socialism) was in its origins a class ide ology, and as such served to rouse important masses of workers to a sense of the iniquity of modern capitalism and the necessity for its suppression by a better social system.... For it is this working class social ideology which has been its motive force, and which will ultimately be its historical justification.” (G. W. Thomson, The Grammar of Power, pp. 47-48, London, 1924.) In its origins Socialism was no class-ideology, but a moral teaching.

[2] "The rectified annals place the political revolution in the year 510 B. C. and the social in the years 495-494 B. C.... The strict enforcement of the law of debt-so runs the story-excited the indignation of the farmers at large. When in the year 495 B. C. the levy was called forth for a dangerous war, the men bound to serve refused to obey the command; so that the consul Publius Servilius suspended for a time the application of the debtor-laws, and gave orders to liberate the persons already imprisoned for debt as well as prohibited further arrests. The farmers took their places in the ranks and helped them secure the victory. On their return from the field of battle the peace, which had been achieved by their exertions, brought back their prison and their chains : with merciless rigor the second consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the debtor laws, and his colleague, to whom his former soldiers appealed for aid, dared not offer opposition... They endured, however, what could not be changed. But when in the following year the war was renewed, the word of the consul availed no longer. It was only when Manius Valerius was nominated dictator that the farmers submitted.... The victory was again with the Roman standards; but when the victors came home and the dictator submitted his proposals of reform to the senate, they were thwarted by its obstinate opposition. The army still stood in its array, as usual, before the gates of the city. When the news arrived, the long threatening storm burst forth.... The army abandoned its general and its encampment, and under the leader ship of its commanders of the legions-the military tribunes, who were at least in great part plebeians-marched in martial order into the district of Crustumeria between the Tiber and the Anio, where it occupied a hill and threatened to establish in this most fertile part of the Roman territory a new plebeian city... the senate gave way. The dictator negotiated an agreement; the citizens returned within the city walls; unity was outwardly restored. The people gave Manius Valerius thenceforth the name of “the great” (Maximus) and called the mount beyond the Anio “the sacred mount”. There was something mighty and elevating in such a revolution, undertaken by the multitude itself without definite guidance, under generals whom accident supplied....” (Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, Everyman's Library, p. 269-70.)

[3] "Moimeme, en 1918, j'ai publié un livre ' Le christia nisme et le marxisme ou la sociomagie et la sociotechnologie ', qui parut en russ à Moscou, puis fut confisqué par la Guépéou (ou Tchéka). Dans cet ouvrage philosophico-sociologique et culturologique, j'avais exposé les éléments messianiques, mis sionnaires, etc., en un mot sociomagiques du marxisme, que je comparais avec le rève du salut du monde et l'eschatologie prophético-chrétienne.” (Beoby W. Gordin, Qu'est-ce que la Societe? l'En dehors, July and August, Paris-Orleans, 1935, p. 23.)

[4] “After the 1905 revolution Russia was ruled by 130,000 landowners. They ruled by the exertion of unlimited power over 150,000,000 by means of pouring unlimited scorn on them, by means of subjecting the vast majority to penal labor and semi-starvation. And yet they tell us that Russia will not be able to be governed by 240,000 members of the Bolsheviki Party.” (V. I. Lenin, Will the Bolsheviki Maintain Power? p. 198, Preparing for Revolt, London, 1929.) Lenin's thought is illuminating, it leads straight up to the idea that his aim was to constitute a new ruling class that should be able to take the place of the discarded landowners....

[5] ”We read in the manifesto at Everard : ' All landlords were thieves and murderers. It was now time for the English to free themselves from the landlords. Break in pieces quickly the bond of private property... and give their full consent to make the earth a common treasury, etc. ' Gardiner : vol. vi, 43” (Piterim Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, p. 76, footnote 24, Philadelphia and London, 1924.)

[6] “We quote from the words of Poehlman, who makes the following resume of all the ancient revolutions : ' In Greece (and Rome) in the course of a few centuries a struggle was waged, the motto of which was : equality, justice and fraternity. The attempt to establish in practice an economic and social equality was accompanied with unbridled outbursts of hatred and rancor, pillage, robbery, wild licentiousness. Also with righteous indigna tion, called for by extreme poverty and exploitation, we con stantly witness greed towards the wealth of their neighbors, whom they cast out only to set themselves, and only themselves, in their places. Consequently, it is not by chance during the last centuries of the Greek culture, that in nearly all classes when equality was the slogan, every individual strived to set himself above all others, and practiced the coarsest of tyrannies. The latter was a characteristic embodiment of the greed of the masses. Those who profited by the revolution were not apt to show that spirit of solidarity and justice to which social democracy aspired. No traces of equality or fraternity were to be found anywhere. As soon as the primary aim of the social revolution was achieved, that is, as soon, as a more or less considerable number of its agents had acquired money and landed property it would regularly become evident that not self-denying loyalty to a common idea, but personal interests had supplied the actuating motive [ Rather class-interests, or group-interests ]. And these interests required that each individual should retain what he had acquired during the general pillage. Now these people had reason to fear the saturnalia of revolutionary speeches, for a new revolution could only make them lose, not gain, and so they had no reason to go around masquerading as proletarian-revolutionists. Usually they suddenly acquired the most reactionary ideas, both in the realm of economics and politics. Beati possedentes. The new owners were little worried by the new growth of inequality and poverty. They would not listen to the idea of a new division of property now that they themselves were the owners. Consequently, fraternity lasted only till the opposing side was conquered and the process of spoliation had been accomplished. Poehlmann, History of Ancient Communism and Socialism p. 469-70, 494-8, 503-82” (Petirim Sorokin, The Sociology of Revolution, pp. 72-3, Philadelphia and London, 1924).

[7] “But even from the ranks of the army itself protests were not wanting. On March 1st there appeared a ' Letter to General Fair Fox and his Council of Officers '... being a protest... charging Cromwell with striving after the royal dignity, calling Parliament a mere reflector of the Council of War, and the latter the tool of Cromwell... inweighing in strong terms against the establishments of the ' Rule by the Sword '... On March 3rd they were brought before a court martial” (Edward Bernstein, Cromwell and Communism, tr. by H. J. Stenning, pp. 135-36, London 1930). “The nicknames 'gentlemen independents' and 'grandees' of the Army began to be used, in distinction to the 'honest noun substantive soldiers', as the peasants and the artisans in the army called themselves, while the 'grandees', on their side, reproached the soldiers and their leaders, the ' agitators ' with being destructive ' levellers '“. (Ibid. p. 66). On March 21st a new Levellers ' pamphlet appeared... It bears the arresting title... The Grandee Deceivers Unmasked Printed in a corner of freedome right opposite the Council of Warre, Anno Domini, 1649 ′... A still more scathing denunciation of Cromwell and his staff was read by Lilburne, on Sunday, March 25th, to an enormous crowd assembled in front of his house. and was entitled, The Second Part of England's New Chains Dis covered... No sooner had it appeared in print than it led to the arrest of Lilburne and his three consignatories, simultaneously with a public notice to the effect that all who were guilty of distributing this pamphlet which incited to mutiny... would be considered enemies of the Commonwealth, and treated as such” (Ibid., pp. 137-38).... The sequence was that matters remained as they were left on the day after the arrest of the four Levellers, when Cromwell in the Council of State, striking the table with his fist, addressing the chairman, Bradshaw, Milton's brother-in-law, exclaimed :”I tell you, sir, there is no way to deal with these men but to break them in pieces '.. (Ibid. p. 139).”... This was open mutiny, and if allowed to spread further, the worst might be expected. But Fairfax and Cromwell did not allow matters to go further They appeared on the spot with other officers, accompanied by a number of reliable soldiers... Fifteen were arrested as ringleaders, to be tried by court martial. Five of the fifteen were sentenced to death next morning, but of those four were, at Cromwell's request, pardoned, while one only, Robert Lockyer... was shot on April 27th. He was a brave and pious ' soldier, who, although but twenty-three years of age, had served from the very beginning of the struggle against the King and enjoyed great popularity with all his comrades... ' I pray you, let not this death of mine be a discouragement but rather an encouragement, for never man died more comfortably than I do ', were his last words. His funeral which took place on April 29th was made the occasion of a great political demonstration by the extreme elements among the population. Thousands of craftsmen and laborers, with their wives and daughters followed the coffin decked with rosemary... Outside the city they were joined by many more mourners” (Ibid. pp. 140-41). “… The 10th of May brought still worse news to London. In Salisbury almost the whole regiment... had declared in favor of the agreement ' of the Levellers, and had placed themselves under the command of the Ensign Thompson They fell upon the place about midnight, being conducted, it is reported, by Quartermaster Moore, whom they had gained over, and who had been entrusted by the Levellers with the posting of the sentries. The Levellers, suddenly roused from sleep, defended themselves as best they could, but, fighting without plan or leader, they were overwhelmed by superior numbers, Cromwell having two thousand men with him... The next day a court martial was held on the prisoners. Four of them.. were sentenced to death. Young Thompson and two corporals who were condemned died courageously. Of one of these we are told : ”Without the least acknowledgement of error or show of fear, he pulled his doublet, standing a pretty distance from the wall, and bade the soldiers do their duty; looking them in the face till they gave fire, not showing the least kind of terror or fearfulness of spirit '“ (Ibid. pp. 143-46). “Its Girondists were the Presbyterians; its Jacobins its Independents; its Hebertists and Babeuvists were the Levellers” (Ibid. p. 10). The same can be told about the Russian Revolution : The disarmament of the Anarchists, Left S. R. Maximalists, then the struggle and persecution of the Labor Opposition within the Communist Party, and all other sorts and kinds of Oppositions, Trotzky faction included. The German National Revolution has the same to tell. It corroborates the law of splitting up by its notorious 'purges' which are not unlike the Russian Communist 'cleansings'.

[8] "Democracy, as we have inherited it, was a system invented and established by the middle class in the age of its confident expansion , when it asked of the State only that it should desist from interference . " (Henry Noel Brailsford , p . 93 ; New York , 1934.) "This liberal middle class had inherited from Locke and the Encyclopaedists an atomistic view of the human mind and of human society . For it the individual was the absolute, and right was no longer the consequence of a duly ordered and happily functioning society: it was an inalienable perquisite of the abstract individual . " (Ib . p . 69.)

[9] La bourgeosie est un corps que l'histoire a use, a fletri.” (Michel Bakounine, Oeuvres, Vol. V. p. 14, Paris, 1911.)