II

Rome, April 24, 1897.

Now permit me to pass on to the consideration of certain prosaically small things, which, however, as small things often do in the great affairs of the world, carry considerable weight in our discussion.

To speak of the writings of Marx and Engels, since they are particularly under discussion, have they never been read in their entirety by any one outside of the circle of the nearest friends and disciples, and outside of the circle of the followers and direct interpreters, of these authors? Have these writings, as a whole, never been the objects of comment and illustration on the part of people outside of the camp formed around the traditions of the German Social-Democracy? I refer especially to those who have done the work of applying and explaining those writings, and particularly to the Neue Zeit, the magazine which has held the front rank among the publications of the party. In short, the question is whether these writings have gathered around themselves what modern thinkers call a literary environment in any other country but Germany, and whether even in this country such a development has not been but partial, and accomplished by means which were not always above criticism.

And how rare are many of these writings, and how hard are some of them to find! Are there many who, like myself, have had the patience to hunt for years for a copy of the Poverty of Philosophy, which was but very recently republished in Paris, or of that queer work, The Holy Family; or who would be willing to endure more hardships to secure a copy of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung than a student of philology or history would under ordinary conditions in reading and studying all the documents of ancient Egypt! I have the reputation of being a practiced hand at seeking and locating books, but I have never experienced more trouble than I did in the quest for that paper. The reading of all the writings of the founders of scientific socialism has so far been largely a privilege of the initiated!

Is it a wonder, then, that outside of Germany, for instance in France, and particularly there, many writers, especially among publicists, should have felt a temptation to draw the elements for the formation of a Marxism of their own makings from criticisms of our adversaries, from incidental quotations, from hasty snatches taken out of special articles, or from vague recollections? This took place all the more easily, since the rise of socialist parties in France and Italy gave voice more or less to representatives of alleged Marxism, although in my opinion it would be inexact to call them so. But this gave to literary men of all sorts the easy excuse of believing, or making others believe, that every speech of an agitator or politician, every declaration of principles, every newspaper article, and every official party action, was an authentic and orthodox revelation of the new doctrine in a new church. Was not the French Chamber of Deputies, about two years ago, on the point of discussing Marx's theory of value? And what are we to say of so many Italian professors who quoted and discussed for years books and works which notoriously had never reached our latitude? Soon after that George Adler wrote those two shallow and inconclusive books of his, in which he offered easy treasures of bibliography and copious quotations to all who were looking for comfortable instruction and a chance to plagiarise. One might truly say that Adler had read much and sinned much.

Historical materialism is in a certain sense all there is to Marxism. Before it surrounded itself with a literature written by competent thinkers, who could develop and continue it, Marxism passed among the peoples of neo-latin speech through innumerable mistakes, misinterpretations, grotesque alterations, queer travesties, and gratuitous inventions. No one has a right to place these things on the ledger of a history of Socialism. But they could not but cause much embarrassment to those who were eager to create a socialist culture, especially if they belonged to the ranks of professional students.

You are familiar with the fantastic story told by Croce in Le Devenir Social of that blond Marx who is supposed to have founded the International at Naples, in 1867. I could tell other similar stories. I could tell you of a student who came to my house, some years ago, to have at least one personal look at the famous Poverty of Philosophy. He was quite disappointed. "It is a serious book on political economy?" he said. "Not only serious," said I, "but also hard to read and in many points obscure." He could not understand it at all. "Did you expect,'' I continued, "a poem on the heroes of the attic, or a romance like that of the poor young man?"

The farfetched title of The Holy Family has given to some an excuse for some queer tales. It is the singular fate of that circle of Young-Hegelians, among whom was at least one man of mark, Bruno Bauer, that they should be known to posterity through the ridicule which two young writers heaped upon them. And to think that this book, which would appear dry, hard to understand, and harsh to most French readers, is really not very notable, except for the fact that it shows the way in which Marx and Engels, after they had thrown off the burden of Hegelian scholasticism, began to extricate themselves from the humanitarianism of Feuerbach! And while they were developing into what later became their own theory, they were still to a certain extent imbued with that true socialism which later on they themselves ridiculed in the Manifesto.

But apart from the ridiculous stories which have been circulated about these two, there is one which has developed in Italy, and there is nothing to laugh about. This is the case of Loria. It is so much the more sad, since just in these last years, in spite of the great difficulties surrounding it, a socialist party has been in process of formation in Italy, which in program and intent represents the tendencies of international socialism, so far as the conditions of our country will permit, and tries to accomplish its work. It is to be regretted that just at this period some people, either students or ex-students, should have taken it into their heads to proclaim Loria, now as the authentic author of the theories of scientific socialism, now as the discoverer of the economic interpretation of history, now as this, then as that, however contradictory it might be. Loria has thus been acclaimed, all in the same breath, but without his knowledge and consent, as a champion of Marx, as an enemy of Marx, as a substitute, a superior, and inferior of Marx. Well, this misunderstanding is now a thing of the past. And peace be to its memory. Since the Social Problems of Loria have been translated into French, many of your countrymen will wonder how it was possible that he could be mistaken, not so much for a socialist of some sort – for this might have been considered a sign or design of ingeniousness – but as a man who continued the work of Marx and improved on it. The very idea makes one's hair stand on end.

However, so far as France is concerned, you may rest easy about these anecdotes of model intuition. For it is not only true that sins are committed outside and inside of the walls of Troy, but it is also an axiom which every one will accept who does not belong to the insane category of misunderstood geniuses, that no one comes too late into the world to do his duty. And in the present case it is so much less too late, as we may truthfully say in the words of Engels, written to me a short time before his death: "We are as yet at the very beginning of things."

And because we are still in the first beginnings, it seems to me that the German socialist party should consider it its duty to get out a complete critical edition of the works of Marx and Engels, in order that students may be able to occupy themselves with these theories with a full understanding of their causes and get their knowledge of them with as little inconvenience as possible from the first sources. This edition should be supplied from case to case with prefaces containing statements of fact, with foot notes, references, and explanations. It would alone be a meritorious work to deprive secondhand book dealers of the privilege to make objects of indecent speculation of the rarest copies of old writings. I can tell a story or two about that. Works which have already appeared in the form of books or pamphlets should be supplemented by newspaper articles, manifestoes, circulars, programs, and all those letters which, although written to private people, have a political and scientific value because dealing with matters of public and general interest.

Such an enterprise can be undertaken only by the German speaking socialists. Not that Marx and Engels belong only to Germany, in the patriotic and chauvinist sense of the term, such as many mistake for nationality. The form of their brains, the course of their productions, the logical order of their mode of seeing things, their scientific spirit, and their philosophy, were the fruit and outcome of German culture. But the substance of their thought and teaching deals with social conditions, which up to the time of their mature years developed for the greater part outside of Germany. It is rooted especially in the conditions created by that great economic and political revolution which from the second half of the eighteenth century had its basis and development overwhelmingly in England and France. Both of them were in every respect international spirits. But nevertheless only the German socialists, from the Communist Club to the Erfurt program, and to the last articles of the prudent and experienced Kautsky, have that continuity and persistency of tradition, and that assistance of constant experience, which are necessary in order that a critical edition of these works may find in the things themselves and in the memories of men the data required for making it complete and true to life. And it is not a question of selection. The entire scientific and political activity, all the literary productions, of the two founders of critical socialism, even if they were written for the occasion of the hour, should be made accessible to the reader. It is not a matter of compiling a Corpus juris or a Testamentum juxta canonem receptum (a code of laws or a testament according to received canons). It is a matter of collecting an elaborate series of writings, in order that they may speak directly to all who may wish to read them. Only in this way can the students of other countries have all the sources at their disposal. Those who got their learning in some other way, through unreliable reproductions or vague recollections, gave rise to the strange phenomenon that until very recent times there was not a single work on Marxism outside of the German language written on the strength of documentary criticism. And often such works came from the pens of writers of other revolutionary parties, or other schools of socialism. A typical case of this kind is that of the anarchist writers, for whom, especially in France and Italy, the founder of Marxism seems generally not to have existed at all, unless it be as the man who whipped Proudhon and who opposed Bakunin, or as the head of that which is the greatest crime in their eyes, namely the typical representative of political socialism and therefore – what infamy! – of parliamentarian socialism.

All these writings have one common foundation. And this is historical materialism, taken as a threefold theory, namely as a philosophical method for the general understanding of life and the universe, as a critique of political economy reducible to certain laws only because it represents a certain historical phase, and as an interpretation of politics, above all of those political movements which are necessary and serviceable for the march of the working class toward socialism. These three aspects, which I enumerate abstractly, as is always the custom for purposes of analysis, form one single unity in the minds of the two authors. For this reason, their writings, with the exception of Engels' Anti-D�hring and the first volume of Capital, never appear to literary men of classic traditions to have been written according to the canons of the art of book writing. These writings are in reality monographs, and in most cases they are the outgrowth of special occasions. They are fragments of a science and politics in a process of continuous growth. Others, of course not mere chance comers, must and can continue this work. In order to understand them fully, these writings should be arranged biographically. And in such a biography we shall find, so to say, the traces and imprints, the marks and reflections, of the genesis of modern socialism. Those who are not able to follow up this genesis, will look in those fragments for something which is not in them, and ought not to be in them, for instance, answers to all the questions which historical and social science may ever present in their vast and variegated experience, or a summary solution of the practical problems of all time and place. To illustrate, in the discussion of the Eastern question, in which some socialists present the singular spectacle of a struggle between idiocy and heedlessness, we hear on all sides references to Marxism! The doctrinaires and theorisers of all sorts, who need intellectual idols, the makers of classic systems good for all eternity, the compilers of manuals and encyclopediae, will in vain look in Marxism for that which it has never offered to anybody. These people conceive of thought and knowledge as things which have a material existence, but they do not understand that thought and knowledge are activities in process of formation. They are metaphysicians in the sense in which Engels used this term, which, of course, is not the only possible meaning. In the present case I mean to say that these men are metaphysicians in the sense in which Engels applied this term to them by enlarging upon that characteristic which Hegel bestowed upon ontologists like Wolf and others like him.

But did Marx, although he is unexcelled as a publicist, ever pretend to pose as an accomplished writer of history, while he penned from 1848 to 1860 his essays on contemporaneous history and his memorable newspaper articles? And did he, perhaps, fail in this, because it was not his vocation, and because he had no aptitude for it? Or did Engels, when he wrote his Anti-D�hring, which is to this day, the most accomplished work of critical socialism and contains in a nutshell the whole philosophy required for the thinkers of socialism, dream of exhausting the possibilities of the knowable universe in his short and exquisite work, or of laying down forever the outlines of metaphysics, psychology, ethics, logic, and whatever may be the names of the other sections of the encyclopedia, which were chosen either for intrinsic reasons of objective division, or for reasons of expediency, comfort, vanity, by those who profess to be teachers? Or is Marx's Capital perhaps another one of those encyclopedias of all economic learning, with which especially the professors, above all in Germany, overstock the market?

This work, of three large volumes in four not very small books, may be likened to a colossal monograph as distinguished from so many encyclopedic compilations. Its main object is to demonstrate the origin and production of surplus-value (under the capitalist system) and then to show the manner in which the surplus-value is divided by the combination of production with the circulation of capital. The basis of the analyses is the theory of value, which is a perfection of an elaboration made by economic science for a century and a half. This theory does not represent an empirical fact drawn from vulgar induction, nor a simple category of logic, as some have chronicled it. It is rather the typical premise without which all the rest of the work is unthinkable. The matter of fact premises, namely pre-capitalist society and the social genesis of wage-labor, are the starting points of the historical explanation of the origin of present capitalism. The mechanism of circulation, with its secondary and minor side-laws, and finally the phenomena of distribution, viewed in their antithetical and relatively independent aspects, form the means by which we arrive at the concrete facts as they are given by the obvious movements of everyday life. The facts and processes are generally presented in their typical forms, the supposition being that all the regular conditions of capitalist production are in full force. Other modes of production are discussed only so far as they have already been outgrown and to show the way in which they were outgrown, or if they still survive, the extent to which they become obstacles of capitalist production is taken into consideration. Marx therefore quotes frequently illustrations from descriptive history, and then, after stating his actual premises, he gives a genetic explanation of the way in which these premises go through their typical development, once that the conditions of their interrelation are given. Thus the morphological structure of capitalist society is laid bare. Marx's work is therefore not dogmatic, but critical. And it is critical, not in the subjective meaning of the term, but because it draws its criticism from the antithetical and contradictory nature of the things themselves. Even when Marx comes to the descriptive portions of historical references, he never loses himself in vulgar conceptions, whose secret consists in avoiding an inquiry into the laws of development and in simply pasting upon a mere enumeration and description of events such labels as "historical process, development, or evolution". The guiding thread of the inquiry is the dialectic method. And this is the ticklish point which throws into the saddest of confusions all those readers of Capital who carry into its perusal the intellectual habits of the empiricists, metaphysicians, and authors of definitions of entities conceived for all eternity. The fastidious questions raised by many concerning the alleged contradictions between the first and the third volume of this work reveal themselves on closer scrutiny as results of a misapprehension of the dialectic method on the part of these critics. I refer here merely to the spirit in which the dispute has been waged, not to the particular points which have been raised. For it is a fact that the third volume is by no means a finished work and may be open to criticism even on the part of those who agree with its general principles. The contradictions noted by the critics are not contradictions between one book and another, are not due to a failure of the author to stick to his premises and promises, but are actual contradictions found in capitalist production itself. When expressed in the shape of formulae, these phenomena appear to the thinking mind as contradictions. An average rate of profit based on the total capital invested, regardless of its organic composition, that is to say, regardless of the proportion between its constant and variable part; prices formed on the market by means of averages which fluctuate widely around the value of commodities; simple interest on money owned as such and loaned to others for investment in business; ground-rent, that is to say, rent on something which was not produced by anybody's labor: these and other refutations of the so-called law of value are actual contradictions inherent in capitalist production. By the way, that term law confuses a good many. These antitheses, however irrational they may appear, actually exist, beginning with the fundamental irrationality that the labor of the wage worker should create a product greater than its cost (wages) for him who hires it. This vast system of economic contradictions (thanks be to Proudhon for this term) appears in its entirety as a sum of social injustices to all sentimental socialists, rational socialists, and all shades of declaiming radicals. The honest people among the reformers desire to eliminate these injustices by means of honest legal efforts. When we now compare, after a lapse of fifty years, the presentation of these antinomies, in their concrete details as shown in the third volume of Capital, with the general outlines given in The Poverty of Philosophy, we readily recognise the nature of the dialectic thread which holds these analyses together. The antinomies, which Proudhon wanted to solve abstractedly on the ground that the reasoning mind condemned them in the name of justice (and this mistake assigns him a certain place in history), are now seen to be contradictions in the social structure itself, so that the very nature of the process engenders contradictions. When we realise that irrationalities are born of the historical process itself, we are emancipated from the simplemindedness of abstract reason and understand that the negative power of revolution is relatively necessary in the cycle of the historical development.

Whatever may be said about this grave and very intricate question of historical interpretation, which I shall not venture to treat exhaustively as an incident to a letter, the fact remains that no one will succeed in separating the premises, the methodical process, the inferences and conclusions of this work, from the actual world in which they are developed and the living facts to which they refer. No one can ever reduce its teaching to a mere Bible, or to a recipe for the interpretation of the history of any time and place. There is no more insipid and ridiculous phrase than that which calls Marx's Capital the Bible of Socialism. The Bible, which is a collection of religious works and theological essays, was made in the course of centuries. And even if Capital were our Bible, the knowledge of Socialism alone would not make the socialists omniscient.

Marxism is not, and will not be, confined to the writings of Marx and Engels. The name stands even now as a symbol and compendium of a many-sided tendency and a complex theory. A great deal is still lacking before Marxism can become a full and complete theory of all phases of history which have so far been traced to their respective forms of economic production, a theory which shall regulate the pace of political development. In order to accomplish that, those who wish to devote themselves to a study of the past from the point of view of this new method of historical research must submit the original sources to a new and accurate test, and those who wish to apply it to the practical questions of present-day politics must find special modes of orientation. Since this theory is in its very essence critical, it cannot be continued, applied, and improved, unless it criticises itself. Seeing that it is a question of clarifying and deepening definite processes, no catechism will hold good, no diagrammatic generalisation will serve. I received a proof of this in the course of this year I proposed to lecture at the university on the economic conditions of Upper and Middle Italy at the end of the 13th, and the beginning of the 14th century, with the principal object of explaining the origin of the agricultural and city proletariat and thereby finding a practicable way of tracing the rise of certain communistic movements and revealing as a final conclusion the somewhat obscure vicissitudes of the heroic life of Fra Dolcino. It certainly was my intention to be and remain a Marxian. But I cannot avoid assuming the responsibility for the things which I said at my own risk, because the sources on which I based my studies were those which are handled by all other historians, of all the other schools and tendencies, and I could not ask Marx for advice, because he had nothing to offer concerning these particular facts.

It seems to me that I have given a satisfactory reply to the principal question which recurs not only in your preface, to which I have particular reference, but also in various articles written by you for Le Devenir Social. Of course, I shall have to take up still other questions. But your principal question turned on this point: What reasons are to blame for the fact that historical materialism has so far been spread so little and developed so poorly? Without prejudice to the things which I shall say in my following letters – you see that I hold out a nice threat of still more wearying talk – you should experience no great trouble in making your own reply to another question which you asked especially in certain book reviews, and which runs about as follows (at least this is the way in which I interpret it): How is it that so many have tried to complete this imperfect understanding and elaboration of Marxism, now by the help of Spencer, now with positivism in general, now with Darwin, now with any other gift of the gods, showing an evident inclination – what shall I say – to Italianize, Frenchify, Russianize this historical materialism? Why did they forget two things, namely that this theory carries with it the conditions and expressions of its own philosophy, and that it is essentially international in origin and substance?

However, I shall have to continue my letters also for this reason.