[12] _Wirthschaft und Recht nach der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung_, eine socialphilophische Untersuchung, DR RUDOLPH STAMMLER, Professor at the University of Halle, A.S., Leipzig, Veit U.C., 1896, pp. viii-668. _CHAPTER III._ CONCERNING THE INTERPRETATION AND CRITICISM OF SOME CONCEPTS OF MARXISM I OF THE SCIENTIFIC PROBLEM IN MARX'S 'DAS KAPITAL' _Das Kapital an abstract investigation: His society is not this or that society: Treats only of capitalist society: Assumption of equivalence between value and labour: Varying views about meaning of this law: Is a postulate or standard of comparison: Question as to value of this standard: Is not a moral ideal: Treats of economic society in so far as is a working society: Shows special way in which problem is solved in capitalist society; Marx's deductions from it._ Notwithstanding the many expositions, criticisms, summaries and even abbreviated extracts in little works of popular propaganda, which have been made of Karl Marx's work, it is far from easy, and demands no small effort of philosophical and abstract thought, to understand the exact _nature_ of the investigation which Marx carried out. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of the subject, it does not appear that the author himself always realised fully the peculiar character of his investigation, that is to say its theoretical distinctness from all other investigations which may be made with his economic material; and, throughout, he despised and neglected all such preliminary and exact explanations as might have made his task plain. Then, moreover, account must be taken of the strange composition of the book, a mixture of general theory, of bitter controversy and satire, and of historical illustrations or digressions, and so arranged that only Loria, (fortunate man!), can declare _Das Kapital_ to be the _finest and most symmetrical_ of existing books; it being, in reality, un-symmetrical, badly arranged and out of proportion, sinning against all the laws of good taste; resembling in some particulars Vico's _Scienza nuova_. Then too there is the Hegelian phraseology beloved by Marx, of which the tradition is now lost, and which, even within that tradition he adapted with a freedom that at times seems not to lack an element of mockery. Hence it is not surprising that _Das Kapital_ has been regarded, at one time or another, as an economic treatise, as a philosophy of history, as a collection of sociological laws, so-called, as a moral and political book of reference, and even, by some, as a bit of narrative history.