Author's Postscript to the French Edition.

Frascati (Rome), September 10, 1898.

While Sorel has not given any sign of recommencing up to the present time, it may be that he will still do so. However, I have good reasons to fear that he will take quite a different road than I expected, if he should recommence, since now he is talking of his Crisis of Scientific Socialism (See his article in Critica Sociale, May 1, 1898, pages 134-138), which he wrote with reference to the same publications of Merlino, which he had so severely criticised the year before, in Le Devenir Social (October, 1897, pages 854-858).

But whether he does or does not recommence the discussion of the general problems which I treated in the foregoing letters addressed to him, I feel compelled to state at this place, in order to avoid misunderstanding and save the reader from mistakes, that I shall not follow him in his immature and premature lucubrations on the theory of value (in the Journal des Economistes, Paris, May 15, 1897; Sozialistische Monatatshefte, Berlin, August, 1897, Giornale degli Economisti, Rome, July, 1898). Without entering into the merits of these lucubrations, a thing which cannot be done in passing, or as a pastime, I want to say that I don't care to share the indefinite company of Sorel merely for the pleasure of being quoted among the examples for a Crisis of Marxism (See Th. Masarky, Die Krise des Marxismus, Vienna, 1898, French translation in the Revue de Sociologie, July, 1898, where Sorel is quoted in support of this precious literary discovery). In my opinion there are many dramatis personae in this alleged crisis, who either have not learned their lines very well, or are afraid to learn them, or recite them wretchedly.

The same reservation I must also make in regard to Croce, and I make it with some insistence, so far as his memorial on The Interpretation and Critique of some Concepts of Marxism is concerned, which was published in Naples, in 1897, and reproduced in Le Devenir Sociale, volume IV, February and March, 1898.

Although this work is supposed to be a free review of my Socialism and Philosophy (as the author himself says on page 3), the fact it that aside from some useful observation on historical methods and a few sagacious remarks on political tactics it contains theoretical enunciations, which have nothing to do with my publications and opinions, but which are rather diametrically opposed to them. Should I now engage officially in an explicit polemic against the whole dissertation, which is worthy of perusal for so many other reasons? But why should I? What good would it do? I gladly let the free reviewer enjoy his liberty of opinion, so long as it does not pass in the eyes of the reader for a complement of my own, and at that as a complement endorsed by myself.

However, I cannot confine myself to the general reservation, which is sufficient in the case of Sorel. I must rather take up a few general points of criticism.

I pass without further notice over the subtle and scholastic distinctions, upon which Croce insists, such as that between pure and applied science, economic and moral man, egoism and utility, what we are and what we should be, and so forth, because a tolerance of traditional scholasticism is largely a part of my profession. This scholasticism may serve to give to youthful ingenuousness its first training, but it is never a full and concrete science. How is the astronomer ever going to prevent people from saying that the sun rises and sets? I might refer to another case similar in logic and about in line with this one, treated in chapters VI and VIII of my essay on Historical Materialism. There I have shown, step by step, that the elements which are indispensable as a material for experimental and direct cognition, turn at a certain point into aspects, or into parts of a complex mental combination, as the case may be. But, I ask for the sake of greater clearness, how can a man, whose mind is still engrossed in such a narrow logic of first experimental cognition, undertake to grapple with the problem of Marxism, which stands above such vulgar distinctions, or, to be polite toward our adversaries, professes to stand above them? Is not this a fight with too unequal weapons? I should like to invite Croce to try his art of critique on some other field, to read critically some treatise on Energitica, for instance the recent one of Helm, to let Helmholtz, R. Mayer, and such men, go to the devil, and restore honor and worship the common sense for which light always shines and heat is always warm.

But where does Croce get the idea – and that when dealing with Marx – that aside from the various economies succeeding one another in history, of which the economy of capitalist industry is a particular case (but, mark well, the only case which has so far produced its theory, represented by many schools and schools of schools), there exists a pure economy, which sheds light all of its own accord and explains all those cases, or let us say, all those forms of prosaic experience? An animal in itself, aside from the visible and palpable animals? And what is the content of this economy of superhistorical and supersocial man, who becomes more bothersome than all the supermen of literature and philosophy? Is it, perhaps, a naked doctrine of wants and appetites, based solely on the natural environment, but without any experience through labor, without tools, and without precise interrelations of common life and society? This conjecture might probably pass as an explanation of the psychology of prehistorical life. But no, this economy of man in himself is supposed to be perpetual and still existing. And here is where I get lost. For instance, he tells us on page 19: "I hold firmly to the economic construction of the hedonist principle, to marginal utility, to final utility, and finally to the economic explanation of profit on capital as arising from different degrees of utility of present and future. But this does not do away with the necessity of a sociological explanation of profits on capital. And this explanation, with others of the same nature, cannot be found in any other way than the one in which Marx sought it." My friend Croce is quite an insatiable fellow, and for this reason he might seem rather capricious to those who don't know him. He swallows at one month full a whole system of economics, a system which pretends to embrace all economic knowledge. This system, by the way, is well enough known in Italy, where it has prominent representatives, and even some who have continued and perfected it, such as Barone, who, it is claimed, elaborated the theory of distribution. In affirming his confession of faith, which cannot help being full of gladness, seeing that it is hedonistic, he makes a special bid for admiration by his statement that he accepts the economic explanation (it could not well be other than economic) of "profit on capital as arising from different degrees of utility of the present and future goods." And now he might as well say that Marx was ignorant and wasted his time, when he devoted so much effort in his researches into the origin, production, and distribution of surplus value, for which he looked in an entirely different direction from Croce. For this, in the last analysis, was Marx's essential and specific contribution to economics as a critic and innovator. The blessed formula of M-M', that is, of money returned with more money, was so to say the fixed idea in the mind of the explorer Marx, the pivot of his entire research. Now Croce, having made his confession of faith as a convinced hedonist, acts like a man who has eaten and drunk his fill and wants to eat and drink some more by turning to Marx in the quest after a sociological theory, which should supplement the other one, which Croce so firmly and decisively accepts. Of course, Marx cannot tell him anything else but this: "Chase your hedonistic mincemeat to the devil. Don't ask me any questions about such nonsense. I can offer you only the direct opposite." In fact, Croce is compelled to make up a Marx more or less different from the real one, so that he may have a Marx whose principles may seem reconcilable with those undebatable ones of hedonism. In speaking of the way, in which Marx "could succeed in discovering and defining the social origin of profit, or surplus-value," he writes the following sentence: "Surplus-value, in pure economy, is a meaningless term, as the term itself shows, since surplus value is extra-value and passes out of the field of economics. But it has a meaning, and is not absurd, as a concept of a distinction made in comparing one society with another, one fact with another, or two hypotheses with one another." And then he adds in a note: "I make amends for an error which I committed in one of my former essays, in which, while saying correctly that surplus-value is not a purely economic concept, I defined it further inexactly as a moral concept. And I should rather have said, as I say now, that surplus-value is a concept of a difference between economic sociology and applied economics, and not of pure economics. Morals has nothing to do with this, and it has no part in the entire analysis of Marx." I would advise Croce, when he writes his third memorial, to confess that he could make amends for his first error, for it was at least a generalization of an opinion commonly held by vulgar socialism, namely, that surplus-value is the thing, on account of which the exploited are protesting; but that he has no excuse for his second error, because he is no longer capable of deciphering his own thoughts. And this is true not merely because he continually confounds profit. interest, and surplus-value, but because he assumes in more than one place that there is such a thing as a laboring society as a form in itself. (perhaps in distinction from a society of saints in paradise? And he says: "Marx compared capitalist society with one of its own parts, isolated and elevated to an independent existence; in other words, he compared capitalist society with an economic society by itself (but only in so far as it is a laboring society)." And he continues: "The Marxian economy is one which studies the abstract laboring society."

If any one should feel the need of freeing himself from the accursed metaphysical bacillus, which is to blame for such arguments as these, I would recommend to him as a remedy the perusal, not of the polemics of economists, not even those of Germany, who wrote their criticisms of the works of Dietzel, since these may seem doubtful, but of the Logic of Wundt (Vol. II, Part II, pages 499-533). In this Logic, by the way, you will find, on other pages than those just cited, that surplus value is precisely used as an illustration of a typical case of a social law. Would you believe it! And Wundt is not particularly kind, either to the sociologists, or to the so-called social laws.

Finally, then, this so-called pure economies, as it is called in Italy, which is always the land of emphasis or exaggeration, or this method of research and systematization, which developed on the weak, unfamiliar, or forgotten foundations laid by Gossen, Walrass, and Jevons, and is now vulgarly known by the name of the Austrian school, is merely a variety of theoretical interpretation for the same empirical facts of modern economic life which have always been the object of study of so many other schools. It is distinguished from the classic school (which was not so anti-historical as some would have us believe, and as R. Sch�ler showed in his work, Die klassische National�konomie, Berlin, 1895) by a greater tendency to abstraction and generalization. It strives to make more evident the psychological stages which accompany the economic processes and relations. It uses and misuses mathematical expedients. It is not entirely superhistorical, although it often stages characters like Robinson Crusoe, whom it tries to hide afterwards under the cloak of subtle individualistic psychology. Indeed, it is so little superhistorical that it assumes from actual history two concepts and molds them into theoretical extremes, namely the liberty to work and the liberty of competition, which have been carried to their maximum as hypotheses. For this reason it is palpable, comprehensible, and debatable on the points which it seeks to make, because it can be confronted with the experiences, of which it is often a forced and one-sided interpretation. The general public in France has now an opportunity to read a clear and full explanation of the theory of value of this school in E. Petit's book Etude critique des diff�rentes Th?ories de la Valeur, Paris, 1897.

Returning to Croce, I do not know how to conceal my astonishment over his ridicule of Engels, who speaks of the science of economics as historical in one place, and as theoretical in another. For those who cling to words it will be enough to say, that historical, as applied in this case, is the opposite of the fixed and immutable idea of nature (such as the famous natural laws of vulgar economy), and theoretical is used as the opposite of the grossly descriptive and empirical method of knowledge. But that is not all. Every theory is but a more or less perfect presentation of the relative conditions of certain facts, which appear homogeneous, reconcilable, and connected in any field of knowledge. But all these various groups are elements of a process of development. Now, if some physiologist, after having explained the physical and mechanical theory of lung breathing, should close by saying that breathing is not dependent exclusively on lungs, and that lungs themselves are but one particular product in the general history of the growth of organisms, would you want to drag this physiologist as a defendant before the court of some other pure science, for instance, before the court of purest physiology, which studies the metaphysical entity Life instead of living beings?

In fact, Croce upbraids Marx in more than one place for not having established points of relationship between his method and the concepts of pure economy, in order to show "by a methodical exposition that the apparently most widely differing facts of the economic world are ultimately governed by the same law, or, what amounts to the same, that this law shows itself in different ways in passing through different organizations without any change on its own part, for otherwise the mode and criterion of the explanation itself would be missing." If Marx were in a position to reply to this, he would not know what to say. This is beyond Marx. Nor is it even a question any longer of such abstract generalizations of the hedonistic school as are commonly used in legitimate processes of abstraction and isolation by all sciences that seek to derive principles by starting out from an empirical basis. Here we find ourselves in the presence of an economic law which assumes the guise of an entity, as it were, and passes mysteriously through the various phases of history, in order that they may not have to part. That is the pure possible, which in reality turns out to be: the real impossible. D�hring is a back number, even if he is defended occasionally by Croce. Here it is a question of re-encountering difficulties in the preliminary conception of every scientific problem which exclude from comprehension not only Marx, but three quarters of the contemporaneous thought. The formal logic of blessed memory becomes the arbiter of knowledge. Let us remember, however, that Port-Royal "Logic" used to have an extended sale throughout France. You start out with a concept of the greatest extension and the smallest content, and by means of mechanically increased notations you arrive at a concept of the smallest extension and the greatest content. Then, if we come across a real process, such as the transition from invertebrates to vertebrates, or from primitive communism to private property of the land, or from undifferentiated root words to differentiated verbs and nouns in the Aryan and Semitic groups, we do not regard these facts as the outcome of a slow and real process of actual development, but we take recourse to a nice and preconceived concept and write by a facile method of notation first an a, then an a', then an a'', and an a''' then an a'''' and so forth, and everything will be lovely. I think this will do on this point.

As a result, we come across the following somewhat queer statements: The society studied by Marx in Capital "is an ideal and diagrammatic society, deduced from a few hypotheses, which might eventually not have been realized in the course of history" (page 2). Here Marx becomes a theoretical illustrator of a sort of utopia. Then we read on page 4 that "Marx assumed outside of the camp of pure economic theory a proposition which amounts to the famous equality of value and labor." Indeed, where did he get it? Did he find it, perhaps, as some say, by "pushing to its ultimate consequences a rather unfortunate concept of Ricardo?" This Ricardo ought to be expelled in short order from the history of science, because he did not hit upon a more fortunate term. At another place (page 20, footnote) Croce takes issue with Pantaleoni, because this writer "combats B�hm-Bawerk and asks him, where the borrower of capital gets the money to pay interest with." Pantaleoni says indeed on page 301 of his Principii di Economia Politica: "The generative cause of interest is found in the productivity of capital in its capacity as a supplementary factor in a lucrative technical process requiring a certain time, not in the virtue of time, which would leave things as it found them." Here, and throughout one whole chapter, Pantaleoni repeats in the manner peculiar to his school, and in his own style, that explanation of interest through the productivity of (money) capital, which came out victor as early as the 17th century in the controversies with the moralists and canonists and assumed its elementary economic form for the first time in Barbon and Massey. This is the only explanation which the economist can give, until the productivity of capital, which appears evident on the face of things is itself made an object of analysis. It is this which Marx has later carried out into the more general formula and genetic principle of surplus-value. In this same chapter, Pantaleoni engages in an able controversy against B�hm-Bawerk, who, to speak with Croce, "gives an (economic) explanation of profit on capital as arising from the different degrees of utility of the present and future goods."

Would you enact for your pastime the following ideological farce: Assume on one side the legitimate expectation of the creditor, and on the other the honest promise of the debtor? Place these two psychological attributes, which speak so well for the excellence of their minds, in due evidence. Then suppose that both creditor and debtor are as perfect economic men as they must be presumed to be after they have been born with the trademark of Gossen stamped upon their brains. Then add the notion of abstract time.

After thus constituting the Holy Trinity of expectation, promise, and time, attribute to it the power of converting itself into that surplus of value which must be contained, say, in the boots produced with the borrowed money. For the borrower, if he would pay off his debt with interest, must die of starvation, unless he can himself gain something by the transaction. But this is putting an iron collar upon science. In reality, time in economics as well as in nature is simply a measure of a process. Particularly in economics it is a measure of the processes of production and circulation (in other words, and in the last analysis, a measure of labor). And time is also a measure of interest only to the extent that it enters into economics in this way. A time which operates as a real cause as time in itself is a creature of mythology. (On the mythical survivals in the representation of time read Zeit und Weile in the Ideale Fragen of Lazarus, Berlin, 1878, pages 161–232). If we are to return to mythology, then let us place that most ancient Kronos, whom the common Grecian people confounded with chronos (time), on his throne in heaven high above Mount Olympus. And if expectations, promises, and hopes are by themselves real causes of economic facts, then let us give ourselves without reserve to magic.

Either through inadvertence, or by means of a bizarre literary form, it appears as though Croce were butting his head against magic when he writes on page 16: "And if in Marx's hypothesis the commodities appear as labor jelly or crystallized labor, why might not they appear in another hypothesis as a jelly of wants, as quantities of crystallized wants?" Holy gods! Marx was not exactly a model of what one might call classic diction, especially so far as the plasticity, transparency, and continuity of his illustrations are concerned. Marx was a scientist. But his illustrations, while often bizarre, are never whimsical or facetious, and they always say something profoundedly realistic. If you repeat this illustration of jelly, or paste, which, by the way, has nothing sacramental or obligatory about it, to the first shoemaker that you happen to meet, he will at once tell you that he understands it, and he may refer to his calloused hands, bent back, and perspiring brow and affirm that the boots which he produces contain a part of himself, his mechanical energy directed by his will according to a preconceived plan, which his brain activity carries out while he is engaged on his work. But so far none but wizards have believed, or pretended to believe, that we can transfer a part of ourselves to some commodity by mere wishes, regardless of whether this commodity is produced or not.

Psychology will not stand any trifling. I would not undertake to say in so many words, how much of it should enter into the assumptions of political economy. But I am at least certain that most of the psychological concepts which hedonists and others are chasing in economics have an air of beings there on purpose to blind the unwary, a certain air of being thought out, not actually discovered, a certain air of having been imported from vulgar terminology, not critically evolved. It is another case of repeating that the craftsman should look to his tools. And I know furthermore that the whole gamut of human psychology runs from wants to labor, as it does in the case of the particular feeling of thirst, which is a desire to drink, which a baby does not yet associate with the idea of water, let alone with the movements necessary to procure it, while a provident laborer with mature will and intellect, a will in which experience and imagination, imitation and invention combine, digs a well or opens up a spring. It was the shortcoming of vulgar psychology that it attempted to reduce this living formation to a dry skeleton, and yet the economists of our day still show a great preference for the same thing in their particular lucubrations. The pyschology of labor, which would be the crowning of determinism, remains yet to be written.

What good will this postcript do?, some readers may ask. Just this much: I am not the shield bearer of Marx, I am open to every critique, I am myself critical in everything I say, and therefore I do not forget the sentence that to understand means to overcome. But I am disposed to add that to overcome one must have understood.