I.

It is with pride and joy that our comrades look upon the successes achieved in a comparatively short time in the cause of Socialism. The numerous adherents, the large concourse we owe, I think, to the sense of degradation and misery which burns in the hearts of the people. But the splendid discipline, the never-failing tact and the harmonious working of the rank and file we must ascribe to the clear grasp and the systematic comprehension of our theory. Without that the socialist would be to-day what he was heretofore: tender-hearted, but muddle-headed.

The first English and French socialists whose thoughts flashed through the horizon of the end of the eighteenth century, were not slow in recognizing the exploiting and antagonistic character of our champions of “free property.” They saw the negative element, the taint of the deadly disease, within the heart of the factory system. They foretold with ingenious lucidity the decay of the middle-class, the slow, but inevitable divorce of the peasantry and the artisans from their means of production, the transformation of the small producers into wage-slaves, finally the rapid increase of misery and of the number of the proletarian class. But they failed to recognize that the elements of the positive remedy are to be found in the laws underlying economic developments, and that human history in its evolution does not only bring forth problems, but organically contains their solution. In their purely ideological conception of the world they believed it ought to be possible to invent some scheme for the building up of a true and just society. This error of judgment could not but lead to day-dreaming. Every one of these amiable dreamers looked for proselytes and went with them to America or Icaria. One built up a Harmony, the other a New Jerusalem. There were as many sects as ingenious minds to found them. They exhausted themselves in discussing Republic and Monarchy, dictatorial or constitutional government, limited or universal suffrage, and all the intermediate forms of government. They brandished all manner of flags, two- and three-colored, blue and red ones. However, for logical sequence, scientific consistency and harmonious action, one searched in vain.

Amidst this chaotic state of social and political speculation appeared Marx and Engels who, besides their warm devotion to the cause of the people and to socialism, possessed the necessary philosophic knowledge to clear social science of vague guessings and imaginings and to give it a body of positive doctrines. Philosophy revealed to them the basic principle that, in the last resort, the world is not governed by Ideas, but, on the contrary, the Ideas by the material world. They agreed that the proper forms of government and social institutions are not to be looked for in the inner recesses of the mind, but must be found through the investigation into I the material conditions of a given period. The materials for socialist investigations are supplied by the existing capitalist society with its political economy as the palpable body which consumes and produces concrete commodities.

In his Capital, Marx dissected that body and exposed clearly how our social misery is the necessary result of an economic system whose plentiful production by social labor stands in glaring contradiction to its mode of private usurpation. The small number of employers and their set receive as interest, rent, dividend, etc., the whole profit, while the workmen receive a wage, a kind of lubricant to keep the social machinery going. Marx was the first to recognize that, on the whole, human welfare does not depend on the enlightened statesman, but on the productivity of social labor. He recognized that the productive forces and the efficiency of society are by the nature of things impelled to expand, that this expansion led us from barbarism to civilization, that the progress of economic productivity must necessarily lead us out of the glaring contradictions of civilization to the socialist state, to communist liberty, equality and fraternity. He recognized – and this recognition is the bedrock of social science – that human salvation depends on material work and not on spiritualist moonshine. Henceforward we look for salvation not to religious, political and judicial enlightenment, but we see it organically growing out of the development of social economy. Science or education can not bring it; productive labor must do it, which, through science and education, can be made more productive.

To which does the primacy belong; to mechanical work, or to mental speculation? That’s the question. At the first sight it might appear to be a scholastic conundrum; yet, for the purpose of gaining a clear mental vision, it is of vital importance to solve it. The question is, indeed, an old one; who is right, the idealist or the materialist; but now the question has been so far cleared up that there can be no doubt as to the answer. We, of course, are materialists and thus acknowledge the material factors to have the primacy. Our opponents brand us, therefore, as enemies of culture. In reality we are only opponents of those dreamers who divorce scientific training from material work, making out of the former something supernatural which transcends all laws of mechanics. Science and education are in our eyes very valuable means, but means only, while the productivity of labor is the higher end. It is in the first instance the necessity for an ever increasing productivity of labor which forms the real impulse of scientific investigation and progress. In the second instance, of course, science reacts most beneficially on the method of labor.

Yet the question as to where the primacy belongs has a more comprehensive meaning. It involves the cardinal problem, is the world “created” by some monstrous, transcendental schemer, or is our scheming, though no doubt of considerable importance to us, quite a secondary attribute of the monstrous every-day world; we want to know which takes the precedence: thought or being, speculative theology or inductive science. Men are, and have a right to be, proud of their intellect, but it is puerile to give to a thing, which appears to them of primary importance, the primacy of the world. Idealists we call those who exaggerate, idolize the worth of human understanding, turning it into a religious or metaphysical hanky-panky. This school is on the decrease, its last survivals are those who have long ago given up all religious superstitions, but somehow stick to the “belief” that conceptions of freedom, justice, beauty, etc., are shaping human destiny. To be sure, there is a certain truth in that; but in the first instance it is the material world which forms the substance of our conceptions, which determines what is meant by freedom, justice, etc. It is, as we have said before, of vital importance that we should be clear about that, for on it depends the method of giving our conceptions the proper meaning. Indeed, the question as to which is primary, mind or matter, contains also the problem as to the right way to justice and truth.

Impelled by material necessity, Socialists look for the salvation of humanity. Philosophic thought based on facts has given us the guide. We find salvation not in idealistic shuffling, but in the material production. If the nature of things demands that we should get the maximum of result in the minimum of time, then we must work as bourgeois society does: with colossal machinery and for a large public. The small workshop and the small holding must go. The great capitals shall flourish. That’s the work of our liberals, and they have done it so well, that our Empire, our “free” institutions, our parliamentary talking shop, our party discussions about free trade and protection, our no-popery-struggles and other Bismarckian tricks are no more able to master it.

The productivity of labor has become so prodigious that all the legal and economic forms have become inadequate. The result is a series of crises with its usual symptoms: financial panics, bank failures, shutting up of factories, and unemployment in the ranks of the working class. Why? Because the productive forces have outgrown the miserable relation between capital and labor. Under such conditions the minority are able to live in luxury, while the majority are deprived of the necessaries of life. But the number of spendthrifts are too small and the stock is so embarrassingly great that capital cannot be profitably employed. Business is at a standstill, and there is no demand for goods. The only way out of this calamity is participation of the masses in the consumption; the wages must be increased and labor time reduced. But the well-fed capitalist, though in danger of suffocating in his own fat, is too narrow-minded to pay the producer of his wealth, the worker, well and to keep him in steady employment. Our Liberals refuse even a liberal lubricant for human labor-power.

However, circumstances are stronger than the selfish will of the bourgeois. The stock is gradually sold, business revives, the old cycle of fraudulent booming begins again and the wages go up. What a strange, paradoxical thing this bourgeois world is: the more plentiful the supply the greater the misery. One should think men live on bread. But no. Let the soil yield thrice as much, as long as you don’t work an overlong day, you will starve. Should the goblins of the fairy tale return and do all our work during the night, nine-tenths of the nation would have either to starve or to make a revolution. In the past the lack of capital made thrift a virtue. The increase of the wealth of the nation increased also the means of employment and thereby the sources of life of the people. For, as it was said before, the people have not in the first instance been living on bread, but on labor. But now with the increased capital the productivity has reached such a degree that there is not sufficient employment. Then the superfluity engenders misery. Not only Social-democracy, but the national economics demand a larger consumption, a wider market for its products. Even an increase of wages and a reduction of the labor time are no more than palliatives. As the productive forces in the past needed for their fuller development the abolition of serfdom and of restraint of trade, in short, demanded the liberal bourgeois policy, so do they demand to-day the abolition of the capitalist mode of wage-labor and its substitution by the Socialist organization of communistic labor.

The subjective creed breaks up into different denominations – and the various parsons are at loggerheads. Objective science is unanimous; engineers don’t quarrel about principles of mechanics. The theoretical unanimity of Social-democracy, which we mentioned before, proceeds from the fact that we don’t look for salvation in subjective schemes, but we see it growing as a sort of organic product out of the inevitable course of actual development. All we have to do is to facilitate its birth. The irresistible evolutionary process, which formed the planets, and hardened molten matter into crystals, and brought forth in succession plants, animals and men, is also tending irresistibly towards a rational application of labor and towards an uninterrupted development of the productive forces. It is imperative that production be rationally managed under all circumstances. In all periods of civilization, no matter how greatly they differed from one another, it was essential – and such is the logic of things – to achieve the maximum of results with the minimum of effort. This instinct produced by our physical constitution and need, is the universal, the primary cause and the foundation of all so- called higher, spiritual developments and progressive movements. The unfolding of the productive forces is the point of departure, the formative factor which builds up states, determines forms of governments, creates par ties, and clears up and perfects the notions of liberty and justice. The productive forces, having been impeded in their development by guild regulations, broke those medieval fetters, and created the capitalist system which, in its turn, is rapidly becoming a hindrance to the further development of production. Therefore it is necessary to allow the people to take their historically-due part in the consumption and to extend the demand for goods. The old system must go in order to bring morality, liberty, equality and fraternity to a more perfect state. Forward! is our watchword, whether we like it or not.

The hope of Social-Democracy is based on the organic necessity of progress. We do not depend on the good will of any man. Our principle is organic, our philosophy materialistic, but our materialism is richer in essence and more positive than any of its predecessors. It absorbed the Idea, the antagonism of matter, it mastered the domain of Reason, and overcame the antagonism between the mechanical and spiritual view of life. The spirit of negation is with us at the same time positive, our element is dialectical. “Once my work on Economics finished,” wrote Marx to me privately, “I shall write a Dialectics. The laws of Dialectics have been formulated .by Hegel, though in mystical form. What we have to do has to strip it of that form.” Being afraid it might be long before Marx could undertake such a work, and having since my youth independently thought a good deal on that subject, I shall try to throw some light on dialectical philosophy. It is in my opinion the central sun from whom light goes forth to illuminate not only Political Economy, but the whole course of human development, and it will finally, I expect, penetrate to the “final cause” of all science.

The comrades know that I am not an academician, but a simple tanner who learned Philosophy by himself. To its exposition I can but devote my hours of leisure. I shall therefore publish my articles at shorter or longer intervals, whereby it will be my endeavor rather to make each article readable for itself than to write a book with chapters depending upon each other. And not attaching much importance to the learned phraseology, it will be easier for me to avoid unessential matter and unnecessary flourishes which only tend to obscure the subject. On the other hand, I must ask the reader to bear in mind that the art of popular and easy exposition has its limits. To be sure, what one thinks out clearly, one can express clearly. But that truth is relative. With out some preliminary knowledge of a subject it is impossible to talk about it. The peasant is made fun of on the sea; he knows nothing of hawsers, square-rigs and sails, and the sailor cannot speak of his business to him. Neither could I enter into a philosophic discussion without taking some preliminaries as granted, else I could not help falling into platitudes which would neither serve my purpose nor satisfy my taste. Any reader who, in the course of my articles, might complain about obscure writing, would therefore do well to search first for light within himself.