Socialism: Positive and NegativeLa Monte, Robert Rives
Philosophy
Socialism: Positive and Negative
La Monte, Robert Rives
Socialism
[2] If this be true the question naturally arises: Why do the
socialists, instead of using economic methods to solve an economic
question, organize themselves into a political party? To answer this
question, we must first see what the State is and what relation it holds
to the economic conditions. Gabriel Deville defines the State thus: "The
State is the public power of coercion created and maintained in human
societies by their division into classes, a power which, being clothed
with force, makes laws and levies taxes." As long as the economically
dominant class retain full possession of this public power of coercion
they are able to use it as a weapon to defeat every attempt to alter the
economic structure of society. Hence every attempt to destroy economic
privilege and establish Industrial Democracy inevitably takes the form
of a political class struggle between the economically privileged class
and the economically exploited class.
II
THE LAW OF SURPLUS-VALUE
The second great idea that we associate with the name of Karl Marx is
the Law of Surplus-Value. Curiously enough this one technical theory is
the only discovery that bourgeois writers and economists give Marx
credit for. If you look up Marx in any ordinary encyclopedia or
reference book you will find they make his fame depend on this theory
alone, and to make matters worse they usually misstate and misrepresent
this theory, while they invariably fail to mention his two other equally
great, if not greater discoveries, the Materialistic Conception of
History and the Class Struggle. I think the reason they give special
prominence to this law of Surplus-Value is that, as it is a purely
technical theory in economics, it is easier to obscure it with a cloud
of sophistry and persuade their willing dupes that they have refuted it.
And then they raise the cry that the foundation of Marxian Socialism
has been destroyed and that the whole structure is about to tumble down
on the heads of its crazy defenders, the Socialists. It is much to be
regretted that many so-called Socialists are found foolish enough to
play into the hands of the Capitalists by joining in the silly cry that
some pigmy in political economy has overthrown the Marxian theory of
Value. I suppose these so-called Socialists are actuated by a mad desire
to be up to date, to keep up with the intellectual band-wagon.
Revolutions in the various sciences have been going on so rapidly, they
fancy that a theory that was formulated forty years ago must be a
back-number, and so they hasten to declare their allegiance to the last
new cloud of sophistry, purporting to be a theory of value, that has
been evolved by the feeble minds of the anarchists of Italy or the
capitalist economists of Austria. The Fabians of London are the most
striking example of these socialists whose heads have been turned in
this way by the rapid progress of science. But the followers of
Bernstein in Europe and this country are running into the same danger
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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