1940s >> 1948 >> no-523-march-1948

Much has been Written on “What Marx really meant.” This book sets out to tell us what Marx really, was.

There is, however, a startling paradox in the author’s presentation. According to Mr. Schwarzschild Marx is a defamer, intriguer and political.thug. A man of many passions but no parts, possessed by an unscrupulous lust for power.

It is with mild astonishment, therefore, that we learn from the preface that “The most important facts of our times all lead back to one man—Karl Marx.” This is followed by the shattering contention, “There is no doubt if Marx had never lived our whole life would have been different ”

One can only say even at the risk of debunking Marx further in the eyes of Mr. Schwarzschild that had Birth Control been fashionable enough at the time to have put Marx among “the missing” “our life” would have been much—very much, the same, a statement Marx would have sworn to by the hairs of his beard. The old “megalomaniac” even constructed a theory debunking for all time the notion that history is a fairy-tale of the “adventures” of great men and “heroes.”

The case for the prosecution rests on excerpts and quotes mostly of Marx’s and Engels’ views and personal assessment of their associates. The source is the complete Marx-Engels correspondence.

It adds very little in essentials to what is known on the matter. That Marx’s personal opinions were often excoriating and unjustified is ancient knowledge. That his personal opinions were often harsh but justified by subsequent events is neither ancient nor modern knowledge to Mr. Schwarzschild. Marx could even be conciliatory to views other than his own as his relations with the various sections of the First International amply testify.

Mr. Schwarzschild, indicting Marx before the bar of history as the arch-evil-maker of all time, cannot admit of any concession, or charity. He is out to get his man.

For the same reason the objective basis of Marx’s disputes with his contemporaries—disputes, over important and often decisive doctrinal differences—are no part of Mr. Schwarzschild’s evidence.

For that reason again we learn nothing of Marx’s real criticism of Bruno Bauer’s mystical belief in the creative power of ideas; of: his real dispute with Arnold Ruge over the nature and function of the State, or his withering analysis of the reactionary doctrines of Moses Hess’s “True Socialism”; of Proudhon’s petty bourgeois theories or Bakunin’s eclectic Anarchism.

Mr. Schwarzschild is merely concerned to use on the surface of this cauldron of simmering controversy the ladle of malice and scoop up the froth of personal remarks and chit-chat—used by all sides, incidentally—and present this froth as the essence of Marxism.

That all this is not even a part of Marxism is perhaps the most ironical commentary one can make on this book.

Marx, of course, did not affirm that morality was a bourgeois inhibition. He did deny, however, that there was some superior ethical judgment to which conflicting class-interests could be referred and successfully settled. For Marx the preaching of an abstract ethical ideal in a class dominated society was dangerous utopianism. It was against such “Utopians” that he directed his sharpest criticism.

Hegel is dealt with in a summary and largely flippant fashion. The author apparently knows nothing of the social and economic background which made Hegel such a force and compelled for a period all German philosophy and culture to stand within his shadow.

Marx is made out to be merely a slavish disciple of Hegel. It is, of course, a common-place among Marxist students that the differences between Marx and Hegel were in some aspects more emphatic than that which they had in common. The publisher’s blurb informs us that the author took a degree. We might assume that it was not in Philosophy.

Risking the fact that the author’s lack of knowledge of Marxism may tend to become monotonous in recounting, we are compelled to say Marx never held the view that man was a mere mechanical by-product of some mysterious ineluctable “economic process.” Consciousness—not the abstract consciousness of Hegel, but the historically class-conditioned consciousness of human beings—is central to Marx’s doctrines.

Marx did not say human instincts and emotions must of necessity have an economic origin. He would have utterly repudiated the statement.

Marx did not say (vide the author) History makes men; he said the opposite, Men make History. He even said “ History possesses no riches; it fights no fight.” He added, History is nothing more than the activity of man—real living man—in pursuit of his ends. That this human activity is conditioned by the objective productive relations in which man as social groups find themselves is an interpretation of history which can be empirically established. Even academic sociologists who are not “Marxists” accept this interpretation as the most fruitful one. But as the author infers, Dr. Marx fluked his degree all these academic gentlemen might have done the same.

Finally Marx did not say what Mr. Schwarzschild says, that economics was the exclusive factor in history. The author in his zealous search through the Marx-Engels correspondence could have read Engel’s letter to Bloch on the part ideological factors play in Marx’s theory. That, however, was not the sort of thing Mr. Schwarzschild was looking for.

Mr. Schwarzschild indulges in the fashionable practice of biographers by seeming to read Marx’s secret thoughts in imaginary soliloquies and conversations. The absurdities supposedly uttered by Marx in this manner are, of course, the exclusive copyright of Mr. Schwarzschild. His interpretation of Marx’s theory is not the Historical Materialism of Marx but the some what hysterical romanticism of Mr. Schwarzchild.

His criticism of Marx’s economic doctrines is even below the conventional stereotyped “refutations.” Unable to refute Marx’s analysis that the objective source of profit is unpaid labour he falls back on such contentions that a source of profit is buying houses and selling them at three times their value. He is utterly unable to grasp the fact that labour is required to produce houses and therefore the basis of profit must be the element of unpaid labour contained in producing them.

He does not pursue the fascinating possibilities of this economic discovery by showing in disproof of Marx that the great increases in the wealth of present society and the vast accumulation of capital can be explained perhaps on the hypothesis of buying houses and selling them at three times their price.

He also assures us that profits are made by trading, i.e. the act of buying and selling. Here he confuses the production of profit with its realization. If labour is to be considered a source of profit then Mr. Schwarzchild’s viewpoint is that it is the dead labour of constant capital—the costs of running machines and worked up material—to which we must look. Apparently it is only living labour—the application of human labour power itself—which is denied this profit-making function.

He even tells us that many of the causes of profit-making are immaterial ones. For such a statement he offers not the slightest evidence—not even “immaterial” evidence. ’

Present-day, monopolistic, control-ridden society is referred to as a liberal capitalist system based upon thee free-play of forces. This is not the statement of John Bright a century ago but the considered opinion of a journalist called Mr. Schwarzschild in this year of grace 1948.

The author says that no economist has accepted the economics of Marx. The reason being, of course, self-evident. We wonder if even the present apologists for capitalism would accept the economics of Mr. Schwarzschild.

Mr. Schwarzschild contends that Marx refused to give a blueprint of future socialist society because it would have revealed a Super Prussian State. That Socialism cannot be a sum of ready-made proscriptions but the historic product of the living concrete conditions developing in Capitalist Society is the one thing which marks off Scientific Socialism from the utopian brands. Such a remark revealingly shows that Mr. Schwarzschild’s knowledge of Scientific Socialism could be amply accommodated with a suitable margin on the back of a postage-stamp. Incidentally, when Marx showed that Socialism must inevitably mean the establishment of a classless society the author simply says that Marx was lying.

It is rather amusing to reflect that the capitalist press, each in their different ways, have largely demolished Mr. Schwarzschild’s contentions. It is equally amusing to note that in their contradictory assessment of Marxism they also contradict each other. Thus the journal Truth comments not unfavourably on the author’s contention that “Bismark was a champion of human liberty against the soul-destroying tyranny of Marx.” The liberal Manchester Guardian review agrees with Mr. Schwarzschild’s personal assessment of Marx but disagrees with the liberal Mr. Schwarzschild’s estimate of Bismark bv stating that like Marx “Bismark had the same repellent qualities even more intensely.” The Economist’s reviewer thought that the author’s tendency to exaggerate the triumphs of Liberalism contained some startling inaccuracies. He believed, however, that Marxist science is but a painful attempt to justify Marx’s dogmatic pronouncements before 1848. Mr. Crankshaw in the Observer holds, however, that “Marx’s philosophic contribution is badly under-rated by Mr. Schwarzschild” and says “here in the midst of the 20th century Dr. Marx and his dialectic very much is.” In spite of Mr. Crankshaw’s assertion that a man of lesser talent than Mr. Schwarzschild could have disposed of Marx’s theory of surplus-value Mr. George Malcolm in the most objective of the reviews in the Evening Standard regards Capital as one of the most potent books in the world. The ineffable Frank Owen in the Mail commenting on the Red Prussian asks “was Marx a great genius or monster fraud?” and never really answers it. Mr. Harold Nicholson in the Daily Telegraph “cannot believe that a man who earned the unflagging devotion of his wife and Engels could have been quite the monster Mr. Schwarzschild portrays.” Finally the Manchester Guardian’s summing up that the hook “is not the last word on one who is, after all, a great historic figure” expresses the more or less general viewpoint of most of those quoted.

All of which must be most disconcerting to an author who sets out to prove that Marx was a cross between an educated half-wit and an Al Capone.

Anybody with the barest knowledge of Marxism can read it with tolerant amusement. But the book is 16s. and that is a lot to pay for amusement, even these days. If it is merely relaxation the reader wants then “Itma” or “Dick Barton” is much more entertaining and wholesome.

E. W.