Concerning the Crisis of Marxism

I refer here to a book, which is neither brief, nor easy to read, written by Th. G. Masaryk, professor at the Bohemian university of Prague, and published quite recently. How voluminous it is may be seen at the foot of this page , where I give its title in full. I do not intend however, to write a mere review of this book. And if it should be said that the expression of a personal opinion on a book requires its review, I would reply that this one would have to assume the proportions and make-up of an article.

My name, and the title of my article, might lead one to infer that I was about to engage in party polemics. The reader may rest in peace. I shall not confound the pages of the Rivista italiana di sociologia with the columns of a political daily.

I will merely say in passing that the great uproar made curiously enough by the political press of Italy, whether daily or otherwise periodical, over the alleged death of Socialism on account of a socalled Crisis of Marxism appears to me as one more proof of that organic national vice which one might call the right to ignorance. Not one of those grave diggers of Socialism, who jumbled the most incompatible writers indiscriminately together in order to get a crowd around their crisis, thought of asking himself these simple and honest questions: May the critique raised in other countries in matters of Marxism have any direct bearing upon Italy? Had, or has, this theory any solid footing and established spread in our country? And finally, has the Italian Socialist Party sufficient strength, and enough adherents among the masses, and does it carry within itself such development, complex conditions and political aims as reveal the precise and clear marks of a stable and durable proletarian organisation, so that a thorough discussion of the theory will amount to a discussion of things rather than of words? And, to go more to the bottom of the matter, can any one tell whether the whole thorny path of economic development has already been traveled, which led to the establishment of the socalled capitalist system in other countries, and of which Marxism is the critical reflex?

Whoever would have asked these and similar questions, would have come to the honest conclusion that there cannot be any crisis of a thing.... which does not yet exist.

It may be, or rather it is certain, that none of these necrologists of Socialism knew that the phrase of a Crisis of Marxism was coined and set in circulation by professor Masaryk, whose lot it was (quite unknown to him, as happens frequently to strangers in matters concerning Italy) to bring to our country a new and unexpected contribution to the fortune of words. But this is a fact. The expression – Crisis of Marxism – was invented by Masaryk in numbers 177 to 179 of the Zeit of Vienna, in February 1898, and these articles of his were later on gathered in one pamphlet and published under the date of March 10. And mark well, the author of this discovery in literature did not have in mind to declare that Socialism was dying, but merely that it seemed to him he was observing a crisis within Marxism. In fact, he concluded as follows: "I would admonish the enemies of Socialism not to nurse any vain hopes for their own parties on account of this crisis of Marxism, which may rather strengthen Socialism considerably, if its leaders will frankly criticise its fundamentals and overcome their defects. Like every other social reform party, Socialism has its fountain of life in the manifest imperfections of the present social order, in its injustice, immorality, and above all in the material, moral, and intellectual misery of the great masses of all nations."

On those 24 pages, which were too few for the importance of the subject, the data concerning the crisis – so far as it related to the German social-democracy, and with a few references to French and English literature – were collected, enumerated, defined, in a rather hasty manner... But what avails it to speak of the little work of March 10, 1898, since these 24 pages have become 600 in the book of March 27, 1899, 600 mind you, which in turn is "too much enough," as a Neapolitan would say, both as concerns the substance of the subject treated and the patience of the average reader?

Professor Masaryk is a positivist. This term has in Italy an exceedingly wide and elastic meaning, but for him, as a professed philosopher, it means in so many words that he is standing on the line which leads from Comte to Spencer... or to Masaryk himself. I am not in a position to accord to him all the admiration which is, perhaps, due to him. For he has the habit of writing in Bohemian, which is rather inconvenient for me. Hitherto I had not read anything by him except his Concrete Logic in its German translation. Nor would I split hairs about the subtle meaning of his expressions, because this book has been translated by Mr. Kalandra into a rather bureaucratic German. The work as a whole, as the author himself states in his preface, must not be considered under the aspect of composition and style. It is an ultra-academic production, with the customary division into introduction and sections. There are five of the latter, followed by a recapitulation, and they are subdivided into chapters, with subheadings of A, B, C, and so on, down to a division of the subdivisions into 162 paragraphs, with various bibliographies in a loose and in a concentrated order, and with a truly wonderful index, which makes you think of a lot of things which you don't find in the book on turning to it, and with the inevitable table of contents. In short, it is a book of comprehensive and instructive lessons, poised in tone, with occasional touches of lightness, and it is edited after the model of an encyclopedia. However, not all lessons can be referred to the same date. While this book, originally written in the Bohemian language and announced in the small booklet of the preceding year which may take its place for those who don't care to read 600 pages, was being printed in the German language, the now famous book of Bernstein (quoted in a footnote on page 590 of Masaryk's book) appeared, and the author felt the need of accommodating his friends with it in another place.

The achievement of Masaryk is truly in a class by itself. He is not a socialist, he has an extensive knowledge of socialist literature, he is not a professional adversary of Socialism, he judges it from on high, in the name of Science. He was a member of the Reichsrath of Cisleithania, but is at the same time a nationalist and progressist, which, so far as I know, is never found as a combination in Young Czechs. At present, it seems to me, he is keeping himself aloof from politics. He publishes a review which is somewhat similar to our Nuova Antologia. He is a scientist by profession, that is, a great reader and accurate reporter of what he reads, to the point of the minute detail of the smallest particle. And this is the first and principal defect of his book. The book discusses an infinite number of things, but it never gets to the real point. It is as though the author's view were obstructed by printed matter and obscured by the shadows of the writers, through whom he wends his way with so much obsequiousness for all, like a, man whose eyes have lost all sense of perspective. Isn't it the principal duty of one, who undertakes to study the fundamentals of Marxism, to be in a position to answer the following question on the strength of a study of actual conditions: "Do you, or don't you, believe in the possibility of a transformation of the societies of the most advanced countries, which would do away with the causes and effects of class-struggles?" In view of this general problem the question of the mode of transition into that desired or foreseen future society is a matter of secondary importance. For that mode of transition is not subject to our judgment and assuredly does not depend on our definitions. So far as this general proposition is concerned, it is, I will not say a matter of indifference, but certainly of subordinate value, to know what part of the thought and opinions (many confound these two, unfortunately) of Marx and of his direct followers, and interpreters agree, or does not agree, with the present and future conditions of the proletarian movement. It is not necessary that a man should be a passionate partisan of historical materialism in order to understand that theories have a value as theories, that is, in so far as they throw light upon a certain order of facts, but that as mere theories they are not the cause of anything.

But Mr. Masaryk is also a doctrinaire, that is, a believer in the power of ideas, in other words, an academic thinker, for whom everything consists in a struggle for the general world conception. We need not be surprised, then, that he rejects with sovereign contempt the expression mass instinct. This critique, which derives from Science all its assumption of an impartial judgment of the practical struggles of life, and which ignores the guidance of thought by the natural course of history, is and remains essentially fallacious, because it keeps turning around Marxism, without ever touching its nerve, which is the general conception of the historical development from the point of view of the proletarian revolution.

In stopping to define Masaryk's particular achievement, I think I will pay him with Italian courtesy for his ignorance of my writings bearing upon his argument. If he had ever read them, he would, perhaps, see that one can even nowadays be an advocate of historical materialism, making allowance, of course, for the new historical and social experiences made in the meantime and with such a revision of concepts as follows naturally in the development of thought. And that one can be so without descending to a controversy dealing with minute points and coming to blows with the party press, and without proclaiming one's self as a discoverer or author of a crisis of Marxism. Theories which are in a process of development and progress do not lend themselves to erudite and philological treatment, such as may be accorded to past forms of thought, and to the things transmitted to us by tradition and called antique. But the intellectual temperaments of men differ so much from one another! Some – and these are few –present the public with the results of their own work and do not feel obliged to append to it an intimate history of their readings down to a portrait of the pen used by them. Others – and these are the majority – feel the pressing need of putting the whole fruit of their reading into print. They are fastidious guardians of their notes and will not let the least part of their labors get lost, be it for the present or the future. Professor Masaryk, who stretches the discussion of some momentary proposition over 600 pages, is one of these. The proposition is simply this: What can an outsider make of Marxism at present, seeing that it is being discussed within the party? Professor Masaryk, who has read so much, cannot help considering also Marxism according to the sacramental formulas of philosophy, religion, ethics, politics. and so on to infinity. And the curious part of it is that he, who has so much deference for the bureaucracy of the universities and for the pigeon holes of scientific fetishism, declares finally that Marxism is a syncretic system (incidentally all through his book, and explicitly on page 587)! It had seemed to me that this theory was just exactly the reverse of syncretic, and rather so pronouncedly unitarian that it tends not only to overcome the doctrinaire antagonism between science and philosophy, but also the more obvious one between theory and practice. But Mr. Masaryk is what he is. So let us follow him through his pigeon holes.

We gladly leaves to others the pastime of occupying themselves with Socialism as a tendency to legal reforms after the manner of A. Menger. He declares that he does not interfere directly in questions of economics (in which, as a matter of fact, he seems to be lame on both feet.) He confines himself to discussing above all the philosophy of Marx, which exists even though it has not been expounded in a special work written for that purpose. And he studies on 600 pages the crisis so far as it is strictly "scientific and philosophical." (Page 5.) Do not expect, therefore, that our author should give you a concrete examination of actual conditions in the economic world from first hand study, nor a practical and comprehensive manual of social legislation. Whether the proletarianisation of the masses continues or not, whether Marx's theory of value is exact or not, these and other related questions, while of the greatest importance, do not interest him as a philosopher. (Page 4.) The practical result of his studies is merely to advise the socialists to stick to the program of Engels in 1895, that is, to parliamentarian tactics. This is what they are actually doing all over the world, and, in my humble opinion, for the simple reason that they cannot do anything else without proving themselves either insane or senseless. However, Masaryk reinforces his advice with the admonition that the socialists should also drop the Marxian ideologies! Once more, then, it is not the natural course of the political changes of civilized Europe which has induced the socialists to change their tactics (the author could not tell us how long the present tactics will, or may, last), but it is the ideas which change and must change. Everything is merged in the struggle for the Weltanschauung (world conception) – see especially pages 586 to 592 – as is natural in a writer who holds so closely to the sacramental concepts of scientific classification (Page 4) and to the super-eminent position of philosophy.

The philistine, in his professorial subspecies, reveals himself here fully in his true nature. To be intimately familiar with socialist literature, and yet ignore the innermost soul and meaning of Socialism! If this meaning is once grasped, it is a matter of course that it changes scientific orientation completely, and changes also the position of science in the economy of our interests. But Masaryk never gets so far, because he would have to leave the confines of definitions in order to do that. For this reason his book, while full of conscientious information and free from professional contempt of Socialism, amounts in intent and effect to an enormous plea of Positivism against Marxism!

Two observations occur to me at this point. The foregoing statement will sound strange to many in Italy, where it is customary to designate anything and everything by the term Positivism. On the other hand, I have said frequently that that mode of conceiving of life and the world which is understood by the name of historical materialism, has not come to perfection in the writings of Marx and Engels and their immediate followers. And I declare now more pointedly that the development of this theory proceeds still slowly, and will perhaps proceed at the same gait for a good while.

But such books as Masaryk's serve no good purpose. It is indeed an accumulation of objections in the name of Positivism, but not in the name of an authentic and direct revision of the problems of historical science, not in the name of actual political questions. The socalled crisis is not made the object of publicist examination, nor of sociological study, but is rather a blank space, or a pause, in which the author proceeds to deposit, or recite, his philosophical protests.

One essay, which is neither useless nor devoid of interest, is devoted to the first formation of the thought of Marx (pages 17–89). But the result is rather scant. "Marx ultimately found in the continuous mutation of the social structure the historical reason of Communism, a something which imposes its sway of its own necessity. – According to Marx, philosophy is the natural copy of the world process. – Communism follows from history itself. –The materialism of Marx is a historical materialism.–" Such propositions as these, which reproduce at one stroke of the pen the fundamental thought of the author in question, should induce our critic, it seems to me, to examine the fundamentals of these conceptions, in order to overthrow them, if he can. And what does Mr. Masaryk do instead? A few lines further along he writes: "His philosophy, and that of Engels, bear the imprint of eclecticism." And thereupon he treats us under letter D of heading II to a Russian salad of controversial opinions of Bax, K. Schmidt, Stern, Bernstein, Plekanoff, Mehring, so far as they have discussed the question whether this philosophy, from a Marxist point of view, is, or is not, reconcilable with a return to Kant, Spinoza, or others. And he never remembers the poet who was present at the foundation of the university of Prague, in order to exclaim with him: Poor and nude goest thou, philosophy!

Somewhat disconnected is the treatment accorded by the author to historical materialism (pages 92-168). He speaks first of the different definitions and their clash, and comes finally to a critique founded on that old bore, the doctrine of factors, which he hides more or less under a rather doubtful and uncertain sociological and psychological phraseology. Lastly, the idea of an objectively unitarian conception of history is repugnant to our author, and it frequently happens that he confounds the explanation of historical mass effects primarily by way of changes in the economic foundation with the curt and crude explanation of some particular historical fact out of particular and concrete economic conditions. We need not wonder then when we see he considers Marx as a sort of deteriorated Comte, who becomes an unconscious follower of Schopenhauer and accepts the primacy of the will, which doctrine, however, contradicts the sacred trinity of intellect, feeling, and will. Likely enough poor Marx did not know that man had not only an intellect, but also a liver, which is so much more surprising as he was himself suffering from liver trouble! Perhaps this is a good reason why he did not see that surplus-value is an eminently ethical concept!

A university professor who treats his subject matter as he does his profession, may easily be tempted to subject a certain author to the test of all the various doctrines which he, as a critic, is in the habit of studying and handling. And then it happens through a strange illusion of the erudite, that the terms of comparison, which are in the subjective mind of the critic, become surreptitiously terms of actual derivation. This happened also to Masaryk. Here we find him, just when he is right in the midst of his attempted comparisons, contradicting himself by the sententious statement (page 166) : "In fact, Marx molded into a formula something which was in the air, as the saying is, and for this reason I have not attributed much weight to particular influences on his mental development." Therefore, I would say, start all over again and try the opposite way. In the author whom you criticise this opposite process took place, for he rose from a critique of economy and from the fact of the class struggle to a new conception of history and by the same way further to a new orientation on the general problems of cognition (and, mind you, not by a modification of the thing which is technically called historical research). But you do violence to the facts. You turn them upside down and you follow a course which is not the one chosen by the object of your critique. But of course, you, a professional philosopher, descend from the altitude of definitions to the particular thing called historical materialism. And with all due obsequiousness to red tape, you thus come to the theory of the class struggle as one comes to a corollary in logic.

In this case, likewise, a faithfulness to material exposition renders all the more conspicuous the incapacity for an intimate and vivid understanding. We meet here and there with a few useful remarks concerning the insufficient precision of such terms as bourgeoisie, proletariat, etc., and more valuable ones concerning the impossibility of reducing all of present society to those famous two classes, seeing that it is of a more complex and differentiated composition. In spite of all this he shows a singular inaptitude for grasping so simple an idea as the following: Seeing that social life is so intricate, the intentions of some individual may all be erroneous. This fact induces our author to say that Marxism reduces individual consciousness down to a pure illusion. It goes against his grain to believe that economic laws should be subject to a natural process of development. Well, then, let him prove that the succession of historical events can be changed by arbitrary acts. After claiming a spontaneousness (what is that?) of the forces which give an impulse to history, and proclaiming the aristocracy of the philosophical spirit, the author tells us that Marxian determinism is identical with fatalism, and then he confesses (page 234): "I explain the world and history theistically." Thank God!

Now we come at last to the main question, that is, the explanation of the capitalistic world (pages 235-313) and the critique of Communism and the development of civilization (pages 313–386). This is the essential point for socialists, and they cannot be combatted on any other ground. But the author descended from the heights, and so let it be. I cannot deny – to begin with his conclusions – that there is some justification in his remarks about our excessive primitiveness and simplicity, especially as concerns the attempt of Engels to outline in brief the main phases of the history of civilization. The origin of the state, or of class society, by means of dominion and authority, assuming the presence of private property and the monogamic family, has various modes of development in particular and concrete historical cases, and no facile explanation will hold good in the attempt to make too simple diagrams plausible. It may happen that socialists will ordinarily, in everyday argument, see the intricacies of history in too simple a light and reduce them too much in size. This leads them to smooth the intricacies of present society too much into the same likeness, in an arbitrary manner. It is also certain that it will not do to refer continually to the negation of the negation, for this is not an instrument of research, but only a comprehensive formula, valid, indeed, but post factum. It is furthermore certain that Communism, that is, a more or less remote approach of present society to a new form of production, will not be the mental fruit of subjective dialectics. For this reason I believe – to be courteous in the use of arms against my adversaries – that there is but one sole mode of seriously combatting Socialism, and that is to prove that the capitalist system, for the present at least, has enough adaptability to reduce, for an indefinite time, all proletarian movements at bottom to meteoric agitation, without ever resulting in an ascending process, which will finally eliminate class rule with wage slavery. This is the gist of the critical efforts of such schools as that of Brentano and his followers. But this does not seem to be the kind of bread that is suitable for the teeth of Mr. Masaryk, who reveals all his inaptitude for grasping the economic connection of his subject matter, especially in the chapter which he devotes to a criticism of surplus-value. (Pages 250–313.)

After wending his way through a mass of references concerning the vexatious question of the alleged fundamental difference between the first and third volumes of Capital, Masaryk repudiates the theory of surplus value as inexact, and then he affirms that Marx could not take his departure from the concept of utility, because his extreme objectivity prevented him from taking psychological considerations into account! Then he proceeds to give his own opinion as to the position which political economy should occupy among the sciences, assuming it to be dependent on the premises of general sociology. He rejects the idea that political economy is a historical science and re-affirms his belief in a pretended science of economics which, without being confounded with ethics, shall embrace the whole man, and not only man as a worker. He advances some sophistry on the impossibility of finding a measure of labor, so far as it, in its turn, is to serve as a measure of value, and considers surplus-value as a mental concept derived from the hypothesis of two classes engaged in a mutual struggle. By means of many subterfuges he writes an apology of the capitalist so far as he is enterprising, that is, a worker and manager. And while he fulminates against the parasitic class and against dishonest commerce, he demands ethics which shall teach to each his duty and place. He is kind enough to admit that Marx discovered the importance of small laborers, even though he is said to have fallen into such little errors as Masaryk notes, for instance, the reduction of complex labor to simple labor, and above all the belief in a class-struggle when there is really nothing but a struggle between individuals.

But if it is so easy to reduce historical materialism to powder, if class-struggles as a dynamic of history are but an erroneous generalization of ill-understood facts, if the expectations of facts, if the expectations of Communism are practically utopian, if the theories of Capital are so obviously false, and if all the fundaments of Marxism have now been destroyed, why does Masaryk take the pains to write another two hundred pages on rights, ethics, religion, and so forth, that is, on the systems which are called ideological? For my part, I should have been satisfied with the statements made, for instance, on pages 509-519, which fill a sort of blank intervening between the net work of paragraphs. There he tries to come to some final summing up, but through defects in his style there is too little concentration of thought and the summary lacks conciseness. This attempted summary gives a sort of a survey of the characteristics of Marxism and thereby brings the thesis of the author into a stronger relief.

Marx – this is the gist of this summary – marks the extreme limit of the reaction against subjectivism, so far as he regards nature as the primary and consciousness as the resulting thing. His is therefore an absolute positive objectivism. For him history is the antecedent and the individual the consequent. Hence his conception amounts to an absolute negation of individualism. The question of understanding is purely a practical one. Between the nature of man and human history there is a perfect accord. There is no other source of human consciousness outside of the one offered by history. Man consists entirely of what man makes. Hence the economic foundation of all the rest. Hence labor as a leading thread of history. Hence the conviction that the various social forms are but different forms of organization of labor. Hence the point of view of Socialism, no longer as a mere aspiration or expectation. Hence the conception of Communism, not as a simple diagram of economic relations, but as a new consciousness exceeding the limits of all present illusions and as an application of positive humanitarianism. But this extreme objectivism is now breaking up by a return to Kant, that is, to criticism. Marx's work was incomplete. He could not overcome Hegel, he found no adequate expression for his tendencies, he relapsed into the romanticism of Rousseau, he tried in vain to extricate himself from Ricardo and Smith, whom he attempted to criticise, and he remained the author of an incomplete system. He personifies, as it were, a philosophical tragedy. He pressed old ideas into the service of new ideals, he could not find any other incentive for revolutionary work but an impulse toward hedonism, and therefore he remained aristocratic and absolutistic in his revolutionary passion.

So far Masaryk's characteristic. I leave it to some one with a faculty of adequate expression to give color to this outline. It certainly is calculated to call our attention to the great tragedy of labor, which runs through all history. But all this leaves our author unmoved in his academic pedantry. He does not oppose one conception to another in his rapid survey of a new interpretation of human destinies, but merely objects to it in the name "of the mission of our time to find a new synthesis of the sciences" (page 513). Then he calls in once more Hume and Kant, and asks the question: What is truth? And then follows a discussion of the new neo-ethics, which must descend to give us a scientific critique of society. The new philosophy must solve the problem of religion, which Marx believed to have overcome, calling it a form of illusion. Pessimism is the dominant note of our time. Schopenhauer approached the truth somewhat by making of the will the root of the world. Marx was a pendant to him with his unilateral theory of labor. Marxism has the shortcoming of having remained negative. "Capital is but the economic transcript of Mephistopheles by Faust," (so he says on page 516, and if you don't believe me, go and see for yourselves!). And finally we learn – if I have understood him right – that the crisis consists essentially in a return to Kant and a leaning of the revolutionary spirit toward parliamentarianism. This, then, marks the beginning of the Masaryk epoch in the world's history.

Kant and the parliament, so let it be! But which Kant? Does he mean the Kant of the most private of private philistine lives in K�nigsberg? Or does he mean the revolutionary author of subversive writings, who seemed to Heine like one of the heroes of the Great Revolution? And which parliament of the ordinary and customary make-up is destined to transform history? Well, then, let us say Kant and the Convention. But the Convention followed after the revolution, that is, after the downfall of an entire social system, the ruin of a whole political order, the unchaining of all class passions...and that will do. Mr. Masaryk, as a professional academic sociologist, has the right to ignore that living, agitated, impulsive, passionate history, which pleases those other human beings who have a sympathetic feeling for human realities. He can, therefore, rest comfortably in the persuasion that the period of revolutions is gone by for ever, and that we have definitely entered the period of slow evolution, the idyll of quiet and resigned reason.

Still, let us turn to his pigeon holes.

The course on the theory of the state and of law (pages 387–426) combats principally the point of view, according to which this or that is a secondary or derived form as compared to society in general. The state exists from the very beginning of evolution, and it will always exist because reason and morality approve of it (page 405); and man, "by his natural disposition, does not only like to command, but also to be commanded and to obey willingly." Natural inequalities justify hierarchy (page 406). And that settles it! But if that is true, why take such pains to demonstrate that law is not to be derived from economic condition? Why waste time in combating the equalitarian theories of Engels? To what end does he appeal to the awesome authority of Bernstein (page 409), who is said to have restored the state to honor (imagine, in an article in the Neue Zeit!!), declaring that it is a thing which the socialists no longer wish to abolish, but only to reform? It is easy enough for him to find himself in accord with the everyday mind, which does not hesitate to admit, just like Mr. Masaryk, that there are just inequalities, and among them some unjust ones. I wish he would tell us his measure of what is just!

I pass over the chapter entitled Nationality and Internationality (pages 426-565), in which the author, aside from exhibiting his indignation over the Slavophobja of Marx, makes some useful observations concerning those obstacles to internationalism which arise naturally from peculiarities of the national mind, and I paused for a minute to consider the remarkable paradoxes which he pronounces in regard to religion (pages 455–481. Here he reveals himself as a true decadent. Catholicism and Protestantism are for him still the fundamental facts of life and have a preponderating infuence on the destinies of the world! We are all either the one or the other. Indeed, all modern philosophy is protestant, and there is no catholic philosophy unless it be by default (and what about your Comte?). Marx contains an element of Catholicism, not only because he adopted French Socialism, which is Catholic and repugnant to the Protestant mind, but because he was authoritative, an enemy of individuality, an internationalist, and a champion of absolute objectivism (page 476). Just as the French revolution was largely a religious movement, so all contemporaneous Socialism carries within itself a religious element. Here and there he approaches the idea that Catholicism and Protestantism supplement one another. And likely enough the author thinks that the religion of the future is being prepared by Socialism, seeing that "faith is the highest objectivism of normal man, and for this very fact social... But the objectivism of Marx is too bilious." (Page 480.)

If religion is perennial, if the state is immortal, if law is natural, it remains to be seen whether ethics (pages 482–500) must not be super-eternal. The author claims for moral consciousness the privilege of an indisputable and first-hand fact. I need not stop to declare that one need not be a historical materialist, nor even a simple materialist, in order to assign to such an infantile opinion a place among the fairy tales. And for this reason I thank the author for his quotation of magazine articles, in which a Bernstein, a Schmidt, and socialists like them, are said to have advanced ethical reasons against Marx's indifference to morality (page 497).

On pages 500–508 we find the shortcomings of Socialism in the matter of art.

All these reasons as well the statements of the author in section V concerning the practical politics of Socialism, which are treated under two heads, one of them entitled Revolution and Reform, the other Marxism and Parliamentarianism, make us acquainted with a doctrinaire handiwork of the finest verbalistic kind. That Socialism has developed during these last fifty years from a sect into a party is well enough known. That imperative and categorical Communism as conceived at one time has become Social-Democracy, is likewise known. That Socialist parties are at present engaged in a varied and differentiated practical work, is not only a historical fact, but also a making of history on their part. That in all these things mistakes are made and practical uncertainties encountered, is inevitable for human beings. But it is also true that, in order to understand these things, one must live among them and study them with the eye and intellect of the historical observer.

And what does Mr. Masaryk do? He sees nothing but divisions into categories. And so he comes to the idea of a transition from a systematical revolutionism to a negation of the possibility of any revolution, from romanticism to experience, from revolutionary aristocracy to democratic ethics, from a categorical imperative to empirical methods, from absolute objectivism to selfcritique, from Titanic conceptions to I don't know what, but we know only that "Faust-Marx becomes a voter" (page 562). You fortunate socialist voters, who complete the work of Goethe!

And then look at the specious method of the author. He assumes that the personality of Marx (whose biography he claims not to know for some reason, on page 517) is indefinitely prolonged, us it were, throughout all the actions and the expressions of the socialist parties and socialist press, and he places the words and deeds of all others to the account of the Marxism of Marx, as though they were his own alterations and revisions. But it seems that the Nemesis overtook him, because he wanted to be too much at one time, this Marx, namely a German philosopher and a Latin revolutionist, a Protestant and a Catholic – and the revenge of Protestantism overtook him (page 566), so that we have here the real device of the crisis, the plain meaning of the new Ninth Thermidor of Maximilian Carl Robespierre Marx.

It is not worth my while to follow the author in his ramblings through the whole socialist press and party documents in his attempt to rake together the proofs for the dissolution of Marxism by the work of the Marxists themselves, who are a sort of prolonged Marx. His thesis is that Socialism becomes constitutional. Everything is good enough to prove this thesis, even a call upon the testimony of Enrico Ferri, who is supposed to have said, I really don't know where, that a republic is in the private interest of the bourgeois parties. Therefore away with the republic! And this is the hope of the author: "That Socialism will lose the acute marks of atheism, materialism, and revolutionism, and develop ultimately into a true democracy, which shall acquire the proportions of a universal conception of life and the world, a politics sub specie aeternitatis," with an outlook upon eternity (page 858). So far as I am concerned, I must confess that I don't understand that.

I have read the 600 pages of Mr. Masaryk with unusual care and patience, considering that the nature of my occupations prevents me from perusing one and the same book all in one sitting. I had a great curiosity to see it as soon as it was announced. So much had been said and gossiped about a crisis of Marxism by such a large number of persons of mediocre and little culture, which, besides, was almost always incongruous, that I thought I might learn a good deal from the masterpiece of the author of the new phrase in social science. I have been thoroughly disillusioned by the things which I have mentioned above.

Mr. Masaryk assuredly has nothing in common with the various kinds of professional ignorance and audacious assertiveness, which have produced so many definitive criticisms of Socialism in so short a time in our happy country, where all sorts of moral and intellectual anarchism are in flower. The author with whom I have been occupied shares nothing with the socalled crisis of Marxism in Italy but the outward label, and this label has reached us without a doubt by way of the French press.

The honest and modest intention of Masaryk was simply to preach the funeral service over Marxism in the name of another philosophy. He collected the material for his critique in patiently and minutely elaborated notes. It is clear from his whole context, and from the equanimity of his tone throughout the work, in what name and for what purpose he wrote this critique. The social question is one fact, Socialism is another fact, Socialism and Marxism are one (the author repeats this several times, and it seems to me he makes a great mistake), but the social problem must be solved in a different way than the one expected by Marxian Socialism. Therefore let us retouch, revise, and overturn the Weltanshauung, on which Marxism is based, and since the Marxists themselves are just discussing this question, let us step between them in this crisis as an arbiter.

What Masaryk personally wants in practice, we shall probably find out better some other time. And I confess that I am not consumed by a desire to know it. But the perusal of his book has made me think of a whole century of the history of thought.

Positivism has from its beginning walked at the heels of Socialism. So far as the ideas are concerned, the two things were born about the same time in the vague mind of the genius Saint-Simon. They were in a way the reverse supplements of the principles of the Revolution. The antagonism between these two things developed in the varicolored following of Saint-Simon. And at a certain point Comte became the representative of the reaction (the aristocratic one, as Masaryk would say), which assigns to men their position and destination according to the fixed diagram of the system, in the name of classifying and omniscient science. To the extent that Socialism became the consciousness of the class-struggle within the orbit of capitalist production, and to the extent that sociology, often badly tried, rallied around historical materialism, Positivism, the infidel heir of the spirit of the revolution, retired into the supereminent pride of scientific classification, which deprecates the materialist conception of science itself, according to which it would be a changeable thing subject to the transformation of natural conditions, in other words, subject to labor. Masaryk is too modest a man to imitate the scientific infallibility of Comte, but he is enough professor to cling to the idea that the Weltanschauung is something above the social question of the humble laborers. Turn it whichever way you want to, there is always something of a priest in a professor. He creates the God whom he adores, whether it is a fetish or a sacred host.

And now we may say that we understand.

I might feel tempted to quote a few passages from my writings, which would show clearly the distinction between criticism and a crisis. But it seems to me that I have gone far enough.

Since politics cannot be anything else but a practical and working interpretation of a certain historical moment, Socialism is today confronted – generally speaking, and without taking into account local differences of the various countries – by the following difficult and intricate problem: It must beware of losing itself in vain attempts at a romantic reproduction of traditional revolutionism (or, as Masaryk would say, it must flee from ideology), and yet it must take care at the same time not to fall into an acquiescent and willing attitude which would cause its disappearance in the elastic mechanism of the bourgeois world by means of compromise. Some people nurse the desire, the expectation, the hope, of such an acquiescence of Socialism, and these apologists of the present order of society have attributed great weight to the open literary controversies within the party, and to the modest book of Bernstein which was raised at one stroke to the honor of a historical work. This fact characterizes and condemns this book as well as so many similar expressions. But all this has nothing to do with Masaryk. Masaryk, as a professor in the exercise of his profession, has expounded philology by means of type.

ANTONIO LABRIOLA. Rome, June 18, 1899.