what is economics rosaluxemburg ocr

8/6/2019 What is Economics RosaLuxemburg Ocr

1/30

The abridged version of the first chapter included in this selec-tion om its several sections which constitute a side polem ic on thenature of the econo m y toda y as an international rather thanstrictly "national" entity.

^Economics is a peculiar science. Problems and controversiesarise as soon as we take the first step in this field of knowledge,as soon as the fundamental questionwhat is the subject matterof this science is posed. The ord ina ry w ork ing man, who hason ly a ve ry vagu e idea of what econom ics deals with, will at-tribute his haziness on this particular point to a shortcoming inhis genteral education. Yet, in a certain sense, he shares his per-plexity with many learned scholars and professors who writemultivolumed works dealing with the subject of economics andwho teach courses in economics to college students. It appearsincred ible, and yet it is true, that most pro fessors of econom icshave a v ery nebulous idea of the actual subject matter of theirerudition. ISince it is co m m on usage am ong these professors adorn ed w ithacademic titles and honors to operate with definitions, that is, totry to exhaust the essence of the most com plex phenom ena in afew neatly ar rang ed sentences, let us experiment for a mom entand attempt to learn fr om a representative of off ica l (bourgeois)econom ics what essential topics this science dea ls with. Let usconsult first of all the head of the German professorial world,the author of an immense number of frigh tfully huge textbooksdealing with economics, the founder of the so-called historicalschool of economics, W ilhelm Roscher. In his first big work,entitled The Principles of Politica l Economy , a Handbook andTextbook for Businessmen and Students, which was first pub-lished in 1854 but which has run through twenty-three editionssince then, we read as fo llows, in chapter 2, section 16: "By thescience of national, or po litical econom y, we understand the sci-ence which has to do with the laws of development of the econ-om y of a nation, or with its economic nationa l life (ph ilosophyof the history of polit ical econ om y, acco rding to vo n M angold t).L ike all the po litica l sciences, or sciences o f nationa l life, it isconnected, on the one hand, w ith the consideration of the indi-vidua l man, and on the other, it extends its investigation to thewhole of human kind" (p . 87 ).Do the "businessmen and students" now understand what eco-nomics is? Why, econom ics is the science hav in g to do with eco-nom ic life. What are horn-rimmed glasses? Glasses with rimsof horn, of course. What is a pack mule? Why, it is a mule witha pack! As a m atter of fact, this is a good way to exp lain them eanin g of m ore complex word s to infants. It is a pity, how-ever, that if you did not understand the m eaning of the words


2/30

in question in the first place that y ou w ill not be any wiser wheth-er the word s are arrange d this w a y o r that way ;

Let us consult another German scholar, the present instructorin economics at the Un iversity of Berlin, a ver itab le shiningligh t o f off icial science, fam ou s "throughout the length and thebreadth of the land" as the sa yin g goes Profes sor Schmoller.In an article on economics to be found in that la rg e compen-dium of German professors, The Ha nd Dictionary of PoliticalSciences, published by Professors Conrad and Lexis, Schmolleranswers us as follows:U " I wou ld sa y that it is the science which is to describe, define,and elucidate the causes of economic phenomena , and also tocomprehend them in their interrelations. This supposes, of course,that economics is defined correc tly in the first place. In the cen-ter o f this science we must p lace the typ ica l form s, repeatedam on g all of the modern cultured peoples, of the division andorga n iza tion of la bo r, of com merce, of the distribution of income,of socioeconomic institutions which, supported by certain kindso f p riva te and public law and dom inated by the same or simi-lar psychic forces, generate the same or similar arrangementso f forces, which, in their complete description, wou ld present thestatistics o f the present econom ic civilized w o r ld a sort of av-er age con dition of the latter. Con tinuing fro m there, the sciencehas attempted to ascertain the differences among the variousnational econom ies, one in com pa rison to the others, the va rio ustypes of organ izat ion here and elsewhere; it has asked in whatrelation and in what sequence the various forms appear and hasthus arrived at the conception of the causal development of thesedifferent forms, one fr om the other, and the histo rical sequenceof economic conditions. And as it has, from the very beginning,arrived at the affirm ation of ideals by m eans of m ora l and his-torica l va lu e judgments, so it has m aintained, to a certain ex-tent, this p ractica l function to the present. Besides theory, econom-ics has always propagated practical principles for everyday l iv-ing."

Whew! Let's take a deep breath. How was that again? Socio-economic institutionsprivate and public lawpsychic forces similar and same sa m e and similar statistics statics dy-namies average conditions causal development moral-histor-ical value judgments. . . . An ord in ar y m orta l ,read ing this pas-sage can't help won der ing wKy This head is spinning liEe*a~top.With blind faith in th e"p ro le o n 1H ^T 3 o^ here,and in stubborn pursuit of kn ow ledge , one m ight try to decipherthis jumb le two times, m ay be three times with an effort, but weare afraid it wo uld be in va in. It is but ho llow ph ra se olo gy andpompous prattle which we are be ing handed. An d this in itself


3/30

i is an infa llible sign. If you think sou nd ly and if u ha ve thor-ough ly mastered the subject under cons ideration, you. will express-yourself concisely and in telligibly. When you are not dealing withthe intellectual gymnastics of philosophy or the phantasmagoricghosts of religiou s mysticism, and you still express yourself inan obscure and ram bling man ner, y o u reveal that yo u 'ar e inthe dark y ou rs el f or that yo u h ave a m otive for avoiding clar-ity. We shall see later that the obscurantist and perplexing-ter-m in o lo gy of the bourgeo is profes sors is no accident, that it ex-presses not merely their ow n m uddleheadedness, but also theirtendentious and tenacious avers ion of a rea l analys is of the ques-ti'on which we are considering.That the precise definition of the nature of economics is a mat-

ter o f dispute m ay be demonstrated fr om a purely superficialaspectits age. The most contradictory views have been expres-sed abou t the age of this science. F o r exam ple , a well-knownhistorian and former professor of economics at the Universityof Paris, Ad olphe Blanqui bro ther of the fam ous socialist leaderand soldier of the Commune, Auguste Blanqui com mences thefirst chapter of his History of Economic Development with thefollowing synopsis: "Economics is older than one might think.The Greeks and Ro m ans alre ad y had one of their own." Onthe other hand, other writers d iscussing the his tory of economics,e.g., Eugen Duehring, formerly lecturer at the University of Ber-lin, consider it important to emphasize that econom ics is muchyounger than is commonly thoughtthat this science had arisenas late as the latter half of the eighteenth century ,)ln order topresent socialist opinions also, let us quote Lassalle's remark,m ad e in 1864, in the preface to h is classic polem ic againstSchultze-Delitzsch's Capital and Labor. "Econom ics is a sciencethe rudiments of which are in existence but which is yet to besolved definitively."fO n the other hand, K a rl M arx subtitled his economic main

work Capita lThe Critique, of Political Economy;~Qu> first vol-lume of which appeared , as if in fulfillment of Lassalle's' pro-

Inouncement, three years later, in 1867. By means of the subtitleftMarx puts his own work outside the pa le of conven tiona l eco-Ip om ics, re ga rd ing the latter as som ething concluded, finished ' something to be criticized conclusively.

Th is science, som e contend, is as old as the written historyo f m ankind. Others contend that it is bare ly a century and aha lf old . A third gr oup insists that it is still in its infancy. Stillothers assert that it has al read y out lived its usefulness and thatit is time to pass critical and final judgm en t on it in order tohasten its demise. W ou ld y o u not adm it that such a science i>a unique and complicated p r o f


4/30

It would be quite i Ivised to ask one o f the of fic ia l bour-geois representatives of uiis science: H o w do you e xp lain the cu-rious fact that econom ics and this is the prev ai lin g op inionthese da ys w as started on ly rather recently, a m ere 150 yearsago? Professor Duehring, fo r exam ple, will rep ly with a greatmany words, asserting that the Greeks and Rom ans ha d noscientific concepts at all about economic problems, nothing but"irresponsible, superficial, ve ry vu lga r" notions culled from every -day experience; that the Middle Ages were entirely "unsc ientificto the nth degree. This learned explanation obviously does nothelp us at all; on the contrary, it is quite misleading, especiallyin its manner of gen era lizing about the M iddle Ages.

An equally peculiar ex plan ation is offered by Professo r Schmol-ler. In his article quoted ab ove, he contributes the fo llo w in g gemto the general con fus ion^""F or centuries m an y separa te pr iva teand social e conom ic facts ha d been obse rved and described, afew economic truths had been recognized, and economic prob-lems had been discussed in systems of law and of ethics. Theseunrelated pertinent facts were to be united into a special sciencewhen the econom ic problem s attained a pre viou sly unheard-ofimportance in the management and administration of states; fromthe seventeenth until the nineteenth century, when numerous writ-ers occupied themselves with them, education about them becamenecessary to un iversity students, and at the sam e time the evo-lution of scientific thought in genera l led to the interrela ting o fthese collected econom ic sa yings and facts into an independentconnected system by using certain fundamental notions, such asmoney and barter, national politics on economic matters, laborand the division of laborthis was attempted by the importantwriters of the eighteenth century. Since that time the theory ofeconomics has existed as an independent science."

When we squeeze what little sense there is fr om this long-w indedpassage, we obtain the follow ing : There were va rio u s economicobservations which, at least fo r a wh ile, were ly in g around andabout, here and there, not doing much of anything. Then, allof a sudden, as soo n as the "ma nagem ent and adm inistrationof the state"he m eans the gov ernm en t nee ded them and when,M a consequence, it becam e necessary to teach econom ics at theuniversities, these econ om ic sa yings were collected and taught


5/30

ly con vinced that m onarchies wou ld ha ve to-en dure forever;aftgr all, w ithout monarchies, what wou ld he do for a livin g?The essence oT ffie'passageTthen,"is tHe foliomngT eTO noirSorc'lSieinto bein g because the gov ern m en t of the m odern state neededthis science. A sum mons issued by the powers-that-be is supposedto be the birth certificate of economics this w ay of th inking fitsa present-day professor perfectly.Th e scientific valet of the gov ern m en t w ho , at the request ofthat governm ent, w ill beat the drum s "scientifically" in fa vo r ofan y n av y, tari ff or tax prop osal, wh o in wa rtim e wil l becomethe ver itab le hyena of the battlefield, preach ing chauvinism, na-tional hatred and intellectual cannibalismsuch a being_readilyim ag ine s that the financial requirements of sovereignty,., the fis-ca l desires of the treasury, a nod fro m the powers-that-be, thatthese were enough to create a science ove rn igh t ou t of thin air!F o r those of us who are not in gov ernm enta l em ploy , such no-tions present a few difficulties. M or eo ve r, this exp lana tion on lyposes another, question: What happened in the seventeenth cen-tury that m ade the govern m ents of the m odern states g o i n gal on g with Professor S chmoller's contention feel the need forshaking down their beloved subjects according to scientific prin-ciples, all of a sudden; whereas for hundreds of years they haddone quite well, thank you, with the old-fashioned methods? Areno t things turned upside dow n here and is it not m ore likelythat the new needs of the sovereign treasuries were only a mod-est consequence of those gr ea t historic changes which were there a l cause of the birth o f the new science of econom ics, in themiddle of the eighteenth century?

In sum mation, we can on ly sa y that the learned professorswou ld not tell us wh at subject matter econom ics dea ls with, andthen, on top o f that, they w ou ld not revea l why and how thisscience originated. . .

Sometimes economics is sim ply defined as follows: it is the"science of the econom ic relations a m on g hum an beings." Th equestion of the d efinition o f econom ics does not become clar-ified by this cam ou flag e of the issue invo lve d but instead be-com es even m ore inv olv ed the fo llow in g question arises: is itnecessary, and if so w hy , to ha ve a special science about theeconom ic relations of "hum an beings," i.e., all human beings,at all times and under, all cond itions?

Let us pick an exam ple of hum an econom ic relations, a sim-ple and illustrative exam ple, if possible. Let us im ag ine ourselvesli v in g in that historic pe riod when w or ld econom y d id not existas yet, when com m odity exch ang e flourished on ly in the towns,

V


6/30

while on the co ryside natura l economy, i.e., production foron e's own use, predom inated, on the grea t landed estates as wellas on the sm all farms.

Let us consider, for example, conditions in the Scottish High-lands in the 1850s, as described by Du gald Stewart: "In someparts of the H ighland s of Scotland. . . . m an y a shepherd anda cottar too, with his wife and children appeared. . . . in shoeso f leather tanned by himself. . . . in clothes which had beentouched b y no hands but their own, since they were shorn fro mthe sheep and sow n in the fla x field. In the preparation of thesescarcely a single article had been pu rchased, except the awl,needle, thimble, and a few parts of the ironwork employed inthe weaving. The dyes, too, were chiefly extracted by the womenfrom trees, shrubs, and herbs" (Cit ed by K arl M arx , Capital,V o l. 1, p. 524, footnote 2, E ver ym an ed.) .Or let us take an exam ple fro m Russia where on ly a re lativelysh or t while ago, at the end of the 1870s, the cond ition of thepeasa ntry often w as as follows : "T he soil which he (the peasanto f the district Vy asm a in the prov ince of Sm olensk) cultivatessupplies him with food, clothing, almost everything which heneeds for subsistence: bread, potatoes, milk, meat, eggs, linen,cloth, sheepskins, and w oo l for w arm clothing. . . . H e uses mon-ey only when buying boots, a few toilet articles, like belts, caps,gl ov es , and also a few essential hou seho ld items: earthen andw oode n dishes, fire hoo ks, pots, and similar items" (P ro f. N ik o la iSiever, David Bicardo and Ka rl Marx, Moscow 1879, p. 480).

There are similar peasant households in Bosnia and Herze-g o v in a , in Serbia, and in Da lma tia even to this da y. If we wereto ask such a self-sufficient farm er fr om the H igh lan ds of Scot-land, or fr om Russia, fro m B osnia, or Serbia, the custom arypro fes so ria l questions about his "econom ic motives," abou t the"o rig in and distribution o f his wealth" and sim ilar problem s ofecon om ics, he w ou ld lift his eyes in amazement. Wh y and to-w ard s what end are we wo rkin g? (O r as the professors wou ldsa y: "What motivates you in you r eco no m y?") The peasant mostassuredly would reply as follows: Well, now, let's see. We got tolive, sinc e as the say ing goe s roas t squabs aren't f lyin g intoour mouths just yet. If we didn 't work, then we wou ld die ofhu nge r. We w ork so w e can m ake out, so we can eat sufficiently,clothe ourselves neatly, so we can keep a ro of ove r our heads.What do we produce, what "purpose?1 does our labor fulfi l l? Whata silly question! We produ ce what we need, what every farm fam-ily needs in order to stay alive. We plant wheat and rye, oatsand ba rley , potatoes; according to the circumstances in which wefind ourselves, we keep cows and sheep, chickens and geese. Inthe winter there is spinning to be don e that is w om an 's w ork ,


7/30

while the men m ake whatever the household needs with axe, saw,and ham m er. F o r all I care, you can call it "agriculture" or"han dicraft," in any case, we h ave to do a little of eve ryth ing,since w e need all k inds of things aroun d the house and for thefields.

How do we "organize" the work? Another si l ly question! Themen, na tura lly, d o those chores which c all for the strength ofmen; the wom en take care of the house, the cow s, and the chickencoop; the children help wherever they can. You don't mean thatI should send the w om an to cut the w ood and that I sh ould m ilkthe cow mysel f? (T h e g o o d man does not kn ow let us add onour partthat in many primitive tribes, Brazi l ian Indians, forinstance, it is precisely the wom en w ho collect w oo d , dig forro ot s and gath er fruits in the forest, while with the cattle-raisingtribes of A fric a and Asia it is the men w ho not on ly take careof the cattle, but also milk them. Even today, in Dalmatia, onecan sti l l see the woman carrying heavy loads on her back, whilethe robust m an rides alongside on a don key, pu ff ing a pipe.Th is "divis ion of lab or" appears just as natural to them as itseems natural to our peasant that he shou ld cut the w ood andthat his wife should milk the cows.) But let us go on: What con-stitutes my wealth? But every child in the village knows the an-swer to that! A peasant is rich when he has a full barn, a well-filled stable, a g o o d herd o f sheep, a big chicken co op ; he ispoor if he starts running out of f lour around Easter time andwhen his ro o f starts leak ing when it rains fo r a spelL Up onwha t factors does the "increase o f m y wealth" depend? What isthere to ask? If I had a larger piece of land, I would be richer,and if in the summer, God forbid, a big hailstorm comes down,then ev eryone in the vi lla ge w ill be poo r, in less than twenty-four hours.

We h ave permitted the farm er to answer the cus tom ary ques-tions of economics v e ry patiently, but we m ay b e sure that ifthe pro fesso r h ad com e to the farmh ouse in person , with note-b ook and foun tain pen to do his scientific research, that he w ou ldh av e been shown the gate ve ry brusqu ely be fore he ever reachedthe ha lfw ay m ark in his questioning. And as a matter of fact,all the relations in such a peasant e con om y are so open andtran sparent that their d issection by the scalpel o f econom ics ap-pears indeed idle play.

Of course, one m ight object and assert that the exam ple per-li aps is ill-chosen, that in a tin y self-sufficient fa rm household theutmost simp licity is indeed a result of the scanty resources ando f the sm all scale on which produ ction is car ried on . Well, thenlet us leav e the small farm household which m ana ges to keepthe wolf from its doorstep in some God-forsaken, out-of-the-way


8/30

localit y somewhere, let us raise our field o f vision until it hitsthe highest summ it of a m ighty empire, let us examine the house-h o ld of Ch arlem agne. Th is em peror succeeded in m ak ing theGerm an Em pire the mightiest in Europe dur ing the ea rly ninthcentury; he organized no less than fifty-three military expeditionsto extend and secure his realm, ru ling not on ly present-day Ger-many, but also France, Italy, Switzerland, Northern Spain, Hol-lan d, and B elgium ; this em peror was also ve ry much concernedwith economic conditions on his manors and ffirms.

With his own imperial hand, no less, he wrote a special decreecom prising seventy pa rag raph s in which he laid dow n the prin-ciples which were to be applied to the management of his farms:the famous Capitulare de Villis, i.e., law about the manors; for-tunately this document, a priceless treasury of historica l info rm a-tion, has been preserved to this day, am on g the moulder anddust of the archives. Th is docum ent deserves particular attention,f o r two reasons. First of all, most of the agricultural ho ldings ofCha rlem ag ne subsequently deve loped into mighty free cities: e.g.,Aix-la-Ch apelle, Co logne, Munich, Basel, Strasbourg, and m anyother Germ an and French cities used to be the agricultural prop-erty of Charlemagne, in times long since past. Secondly, the eco-nomic regulations of Charlemagne constituted a model for allthe larger ecclesiastical and secular estates of the early MiddleAge s; Ch arlem agne's m anors kept the traditions of old Rom ealive and transplanted the refined culture of the Rom an villa sinto the rough milieu of the youn g Teutonic nobility; his regu-lations about winem aking, gardening , fruit and vegetable raising,poultry breeding, and so forth, were a historic achievement oflasting significance.

Let us take a closer look at this document The great emperor,first of all, asks that he be served honestly, that his subjects onthe m an ors be well taken care of and protected fro m po verty ;that they not be burdened with work ove r and a bo ve their nor-m al capacities; that if they w ork at night, they be compensatedfo r i t The subjects, on their part, should apply themselves dili-gently to grap e-g row ing and should put the pressed grape juiceinto bottles, so that it not suffer deterioration. If they shirk theirduties, they are to be chastised "upon the back o r elsewhere." Th eemperor directs further that bees and geese should be kept; poul-try is to be well cared fo r and to be increased. Carefu l attentionis to be paid to increasing the stock of cattle and brood mares,and also to sheep raising.

We desire furthermore, writes the emperor, that our forests aremanaged intelligently, that they are not cut dow n, and that spar-row -hawks and falco ns should be kept therein. Fa t geese andchickens should alw ays be kept at our disposal; eggs which are


9/30

no t consum ed are to be sold at the markets. In each our man-ors a supply of good bed feathers, mattresses, blai^ ^ts, copperkitchenware, lead, iron, wood, chains, pothooks, hatchets, drillsshou ld alw ays be on hand, so that nothing has to be bo rrow edfrom other people.

Furthermore, the emperor insists that exact accounts of the yieldo f his m anors be kept, nam ely, ho w much of each item was p ro-duced, and he lists them: vegetables , butter, cheese, honey, oil,vinegar, beets, "and other trifles"as the text of the famous doc-ument goe s. Th e em peror orders further that in each of his do-m ains va rious artisans, skilled in ev ery craft, shou ld be presentin sufficient number, and again he lists the va ri ou s crafts, oneb y one. H e designates Christmas D ay as the date on which heis to receive annual accounts of all his riches and the smallestpeasan t does not count each head of cattle or each eg g on hisfarm with more care than the great emperor Charles. The sixty-second p ar ag ra ph of the document goes as follow s: "It is im-portant that we know what and how much of each we ownofev er y article." And once m ore he lists them: oxen , m ills, w oo d ,boats, vines, vegetables, wool, linen, hemp, fruits, bees, fishes,hides, wa x, and hon ey, new and aged wines, and other thingswh ich are delivered to him. An d for the consolation of his dearva ssals w ho are to supply him with all these things, he addsguileless ly: "We hope that all this shall not appea r too difficultfo r you ; since each of yo u is lord on his m anor, you , in turn,may exact these things from your subjects."

Further al on g in the law we encounter exact instructions as tothe type of container and the m od e of transportation of wines which apparently were an affair of state which was very dear tothe heart of the emperor. "Wine should be carried in casks withstout iron rims and never in skins. As fo r flour, it is to be trans-po rted in d ouble carts cove red with leather, so that rive rs m aybe forded without damage to the flour. I also want an exact ac-counting of the ho rns of my bucks and goa ts, likewise of theskins o f the wolv es killed in the course of the yea r. In the monthof M a y do not forg et to declare ruthless w ar on the yo ung w olves."Final ly , in the last par ag ra ph , Charles the Great, lists all theflow ers and trees and herbs which he wants to g ro w on his man-ors, such as; roses, lilies, rosemaries, cucumbers, onions, radishes,caraway seeds, etc. The famous legislative document concludeswith something like the enum eration o f the va rio us brands ofapples.

This, then, is the picture of the imperial household of the ninthcentury and even though we are dealing here with one of themightiest and wealthiest of the sove reigns of the Middle Ages,everyone will have to admit that his household economy as well


10/30

as his m anagem ent . -inciples are surpris ing ly reminiscent ofthose of the tiny f ar n^ ousehold which we considered prev ious ly.If we we re to ask our im per ial host the previous questions ofeconom ics, about the nature of his wealth, the object of produc-tion, the divis ion of lab or, etc., he wou ld extend his roy al handand point to the mountains of wheat, w ool and hemp, to thecasks of w ine, o il, and v inegar , to the stables filled with cows,oxen, and sheep. An d, in all pro ba bility , we should not be ableto think up any kind of mysterious prob lem s for the science ofeconomics to analyze and solve there, inasmuch as all relations,cause and effect, labor and its result are crystal-clear.

Perhaps som eone wishes to ca ll our attention to the fact thatw e chose the w ro ng exa m ple again . After all, is it not evidentfrom the document that we are not dealing with the public eco-no m ic life of the Germ an Em pire, but with the priv ate householdo f the em pero r? But if som eone were to counterpose these twoconcepts, he w ould commit a historical error as far as the M idd leA ge s are concerned. Certainly, the law applied to the econom yof the estates and manors of Emperor Charlemagne, but he op-erated these households as sovereign, not as a pr iva te citizen. Or,to be m ore specific, the em peror was lord on his ow n m an orialestates, but each great noble lord of the Middle Ages, especiallyat the time of Charlemagne , wa s a similar em peror on a sm allerscale because his free noble ownership of the land made himlaw m ak er, tax-collector, and judg e o ve r all the inhabitants of hism an ors . Th at the econom ic decrees of Charles were acts of g ov-ernment is p ro ve d by their form : they are a part o f the sixty-fivelaws or capitulare of Charles, written by the em pero r and pro-m ulga ted at the annual impe rial diet of his princes. A nd the reg-ulations about radishes and about iron-rimmed casks flow fromthe sam e despotic au thority and are written in the same style,as, fo r instance, his admon itions to the ecclesiastics in CapitulareEpiscoporum, the "law about the bishops," where Charles gra bsthe servants of the L o rd by the ears and lectures them sternlynot to swear, not to get drunk, not to visit places of ill repute,no t to keep mistresses, and not to sell the holy sacraments forto o dear a price. We m ight search h igh and low in the M iddleAges, we wou ld not be able to find anywhere an econom ic uniton the countryside for which Charlemagne's manors would notbe m odels and prototypes wh ether noble dom ains or simplepeasa nt farm s; whether we consider separate independently wo rk-ing peasant families or collectively laboring village communities.

What is most strikin g in both exam ples is that the needs o fhuman existence directly guide and determine the work, and thatthe results correspond exactly to the intentions and the needs,and that, regard less of the scale of production, economic relations


11/30

manifest an astonishing simplicity and transparency. The sma llfa rn ie r^ ir h is ^ p lb t of land as well as the great sovereign on hism an or s bo th of them know exactly what they wa nt to accom-plish in produ ction. An d what is more, neither has to be a geniusto know it. Both wa nt to satisfy the ord ina ry hum an require-ments of fo od , drink, clothes, and to obtain the va rio us com fortso f life. Th e on ly d ifference is that the peasant sleeps on a strawmat, wh ile the n oble lo rd sleeps in a soft feather bed; the peas-ant drinks beer and mead and also pla in water, wh ile the lo rddr ink s fine wines at his table. The difference is one of quantityand in the kinds of go od s produced. Th e basis of the econom y,ho weve r, and its m ain object remain directsatisfaction of human needs. .The labor which achieves this pur-pos e is in accord with its result as a fo re go ne conclusion. Andin the la b or process, too, there are differences: the peasant w orkswith his own hands in co m pa ny with the mem bers of his fam ily;he receives as m an y lab or products as his plot of land and hispo rtio n of the com m on lands are capable of producing, or, m oreexac tly inasm uch as we are speaking here of the m edieval serfas much as the labor services and the tithes exacted by the lordand by the church have left him. The em pero r and each noblelo rd does not labor in person, forc ing his subjects and his tenantsto do his work for him, instead.

But whether the peasant families work for themselves or forthe lord , under the supervision of the vi lla ge elder o r of the lo rd 'ssteward, the result of p roduction is m erely a certain quantity o fthe m eans of subsistence (in the large r meanin g of that term )those things which are needed, and about as much as is required.We m ay turn and twist this eco no m y as much as we might w antto, we shall find in it no riddles to b_ understood on lyby thou ghtful analysis, by a special science. IThe dumbest peasantof the M iddle Ages knew exactly on what his "wealth" (perhapswe should say "poverty") depended aside from the natural catas-trophies which, eve ry once in a wh ile, hit the lo rd 's as well asthe peasant's land . Thgj^easan tJknew ve ry well that his jj o y e rt yha d a ve ry simp le and direct causa tion:' first, the lim itless ex tor-tions of labor services and money fees exacted b y th e'lord; sec-ond , the thievery of the sam e lo rd s perpetrated at the expenseof the vil lage com m on lands, comm unal forests, and vil lag ewater rights. An d what the peasant knew he screamed to theheavens when he set the red cock on the housetops of the blood-suckers. Th e on ly matter to be determ ined by scientific inves-tigation in this type of econom y was the historic or ig in and thedevelopment of these kinds of relations the question of h ow ithappened that in a ll of Eu rope the form erly free peasant landshad been transformed into noble domains from which tributes


12/30

and rents were exactea v-iOw the form er ly free peasantry had beentransfo rmed into an oppressed class constrained to perform labo rservices, to be bound to the land, even, during the later stages.

Th ings look entirely different as soon as we turn our atten-tion to any phenom ena of present econom ic life. Let us take,for exa m ple, one of the most rem arkable and striking phenom ena:the com m ercia l crises.) E ve ry one of us has lived through a fewgreat comm ercial and industrial crises and we know from our ownexperience the process described by Friedrich Engels in a classicpassa ge : "Com merce becom es dull, the markets a re glutted, theproducts lie there as abundant as they are unsalable, hard cashbecomes invisible, credit vanishes, the factories are closed, thework ing masses lack the means of subsistence, because they ha veproduced too much of the means of subsistence, bankruptcy fol-lows up on bankruptcy, forced sale upon forced sale. Th e stag-nation lasts for years, productive forces and mass products arewasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated massesof com modities flow off m or e or less depreciated in valu e, untilproduction and exchange a re ag ain gra du ally set into motion.Little by little the pace quickens, falls into a trot, the industrialtrot changes info a ga llo p and this again increases into the head-long ga ll op of a complete industrial, com mercial, credit, andspecu lative steeplechase, in the end to land again after the mostbreakneck leaps in the ditch of the crisis" ( F . Engels, Anti-Dmhrinq, pp. 286 -7,Ke rr edit ion).f M of us know how the specter of a com mercial crisis terrifiesan y modern country eve n the w ay in which the app roach ofsuch a crisis is heralded is most sign ificant. Afte r a few yea rsof prosperity and of good business have elapsed, vague rumorsare to be detected in the new spapers now and then; the stockexchange receives the disquieting news of a few bankruptcies;then, the hints in the press become broa der ; the stock exchangebecomes increasingly apprehensive; the national ban k increases^ ~credit rates, this s ign ifies that credit is m ore difficu lt to get andlimited in am oun t; in the end, the news about bankrupt c ie sa n d Jla yo ffs pours dow n like drops of water in a cloudburst^Andonce the crisis is in full sw ing, then the argument starts aboutwho is to blame for it. The businessmen blame the abrupt creditrefusals by the banks, the speculative m an ia of the stock brokers;the stock brokers bla m e the industrialists; the industrialists b lam ethe shorta ge of m oney, etc. A n d when business fina lly picks upagain, then the stock exchange and the newspapers note the firstsigns of improvement with relief, until, at last, hope, peace, andsecurity stop over for a short stay, once more.

What is n otew orthv in all this is the fact that the crisis is loo kedup on anTrtrea ted -by.aiL^coz2ceroa by all of society, as some-.. ;..- . ' ..--!


13/30

thing bey ond the sphere of hum an volitio n and ,, -/on d hum ancontr ioC ' '1ar^^f ieavy" " ,blbw^8%ck' ' by l in invisible and greater^p ow er , 'a h ordeal sent down from'the heavens, similar to a fieavy^v f t 'ders torm, "an" eaiirUiquaS^ ' o r j T ' f ^ ^ ' l l i ^ T W | ^ g " C u t o m -' arily "employe's'"by"^the tiê"journal's in reporting a crisis is stud-ded with such expressions as: "the fo rm er ly serene sky of thebusiness wo rl d comm ences to b e ove rcast with dark clouds"; orwhen a sha rp increase in bank credit rates is reported it is in-ev itabl y served up under the title of "storm warn ings " and afterthe crisis we read of the pass ing thunderstorm and the serenebusiness horizon . Th is m ode of expression reveals more^thanthe mere bad taste ga ge ;if~is ab so lu te ly'fy p ica l of the attitude tow ards a "crisis as if .thelatter were the result of the workin gs o f a natural law. M odernsociety notes its approach w ith ho rr or ; it bows its head trem-b lin gly under the blows com ing dow n as thick as ha il; it waitsfo r the end of the ordeal, and then lifts its head once m ore atfirst timidly and skeptically; only much later is society almostreassured aga in. This is exac tly the same w a y in which peoplein the M idd le Ag es r egarded fam ines or plagues; the w ay thefarm er today endures a thunderstorm: the same consternationand helplessness in the face of a severe ordeaL_J

But famines and pestilences are natural phenomena first andforem ost, even though in the last analysis, they, too, are soc ialph en om en a a bad harvest, the spread of disease germs and sofor th . A thunderstorm is an event caused by the elements o f phys-ical nature, and no one, at least not with the present deve lop-ment of the natural sciences and of technology, is able to bringabou t or to preven t a thunderstorm. But what is a m odern crisis?It consists of the fact that too many commodities have been pro-duced. They find no purchasers, and therefore commerce andthen industry stop! The manufacture of commodities, their sale,trade , industry all these are relations of human society, fi t ism an, himself, who produces com modities, and it is man , himself,who buys them; exch ange takes place from one person to an-other, and w ^ w ill find in the factors which m ake upâ jn o ^ e rncrisis not a single circumstance which w ou ld jflûtau3e^fee--8phereo f l^ffn arw ictiv ity. "Tf is, therefore, hum an societj^wh ich period-ica lly creates~TKe crisisT jAnd yet, at the sam e timer we "iinow~th atthe crisis 'is ' a 're a rs cou rg e of m odern society, that it is awaitedwith hor ro r, endured in despa ir, that it is not desired nor wishedfo r by anyone. Except for a few stock exchan ge m anipulatorsw ho attempt to enrich themselves quickly at the expense of othersand who just as frequently as not are taken in themselves, thecrisis, at the very least, is a risk or an inconvenience for every-one.


14/30

y N o one wants a ->is and yet it happens. M an creates it withhis ow n han ds, even though he does not wan t it for anythingin the world. Here, in fact, we have before us a question of eco-nomic life which none of the participants can explain. The me-d iev al peasan t on his small plot produced, on the one hand,wha t his lord, and, on the other, what he himself, desired andneeded: wheat and cattle, means of subsistence for himself andhis fam ily. Th e great lor d of the M iddle Ages had those thingsproduced fo r himself which he wanted and needed: wheat andcattle, go o d wines and fine clothes, fo od and luxury items forhimself and his household. But contemporary societylTpro,(luceswh^t it neither wants nor needs: depressions. From time to tirpeii^roduce"means of subsistence which it ' "cannot consume; i l pe-riod ica lly suffers famines while imm ense warehouses are full ofun sa lab le products. Need s an d" ft^Hjj^tifl&fionT tK


15/30

his labor, he w h o is b o m into a w or ld already funy occupiedhas no claim to the smallest particle of food, and, as a matterof fact, does not b elo ng upon this wor ld. T here is no place setfo r him at nature's grea t banquet table. Natu re orders him todisappear, and she quick ly executes her com mand." Present of-fic ial society, with the "social-reformist" hyp oc risy so peculiar toit, fro w ns on such harsh candidness. Ac tua lly it, too, lets theunem ployed proletarian, "whose lab or it does not need," "disap-pear" fro m this w orld , in one w a y or another, sooner or later as dem onstrated by the statistics about the deteriora tion of publichea lth, the increase in infant m orta lity, the growth of crimesagainst property, during every crisis.

The an al og y of unemployment and f loods used by us pointsup the striking fact that we con fron t great natu ral catastropheswith less helplessness than our own, purely social, exclusivelyhuman affairs! The periodic floods which cause such immensedam age in eastern G erm any ev ery spring, in the last analysis,result from the complete neglect of the proper countermeasureswhich has been in evidence up to now. Te ch no log y, even in itspresent stage of developmen t, offers us adequate means withwh ich to protect agriculture f ro m devastation by the uncontrolledwaters. Of course, in o rder to harness this poten tial force, themeans offered by technology must be applied on a large scalea grea t reg ion al water control plan which w ou ld rebuild the en-tire da nger area, m o ve fields and pastures acc ordin gly, erectdam s and locks, and regulate rivers. Th is great re form is notbeing undertaken, partly because neither private capital nor thegov ern m en t care to supply the necessary funds, pa rtly becausethey wou ld encounter the obstacle of the most m ultifarious pri-vate property rights to the land in the extensive area under con-sideration. H ow ever, the means for the control of the fl o od dan gerand fo r the harnessing of the ra g in g wa ters do exist in presentsociety, even if it is unable to apply them.

The remedy for unemployment, on the other hand, has not asyet been found by con tem porary society. An d yet it is no elemen-tal law of nature, no p hysical forc e of nature, no supernaturalpo w er, but merely a product of exclusively hum an econom ic rela-tions. An d here, once m ore, we are faced by an economic riddle,b y an occurrence which no one pu rpos ely desires, which no onecon scious ly intends, but which nevertheless occurs period ica llywith the regularity of a natural ph en om en on ov er the heads ofmen, as it were.

We need not even hav e recourse to such striking occurrencesof present-day life, such as depressions or unemployment, Le.,calam ities and events out o f the or d in ar y at least, current publicopinion holds that these events form an exception to the normal


16/30

course of events. Let .d take instead the most com m on exa m plefr om every day life, which repeats itself a thousand times in eve rycountry, fluctuations of commodity prices. Every child knowsthat the prices of commodities are not something fixed and un-ch an ging , but, quite the con trary , they g o up or down , almostev er y da y, even eve ry hour. Let us pick up any newspaper, letus turn to the com m odity exchanges, and we shall read aboutthe price movements of the previous da y: wh eat we ak in them ornin g, around noon somewhat stronger, at closing time high-er, or lower. It is the same with copper, iron , sugar and grap eseed oil. An d sim ilarly, with the stocks of the va rio us indu strialfirms, with private or government bonds on the stock exchange.

Price fluctuations are an incessant, everyday, "normal" occur-rence of economic life today. But as a result of these same pricefluctuations the financial status o f the owners o f all these com-mod ities changes d aily and ho ur ly. If the price of cotton increasesthen the wealth of all the traders and manufacturers who hav ecotton stocks in storage rises, for the moment; if the prices fall,their wealth declines. If copper prices g o up, then the ho lders ofcopper mine stock become richer; if they go down, they becomepoore r. Thus, ibecause of simple price fluctuations, as a result ofa tick of the tape from the exchange, people can become million-aixes-or beggars within a few hours, and, of course, speculationwith' its frauds is based on this mechan ism. Th e m ed ieva l pro-prietor w ould become richer or poo rer b y a go o d or a po orcro p; or as a robber kn ight he might enrich himself if he madea g oo d catch while kidna pping tra vel l ing merchants; or a n dthat w as the tested and preferred method he increased his wealthwhen he squeezed his bondsmen harder, by adding to the laborservices and the m oney fees which he extorted from them.

T od a y, a person can become rich or po or without do ing any-thing, wltHout lifting a finger, without an occurrence of naturetakxn ^prac e, jwithout anyon e giv in g anyone anything, or phys-ica lly robbing anyth ing. Price fluctuations are like secret move-ments directed b y an invisible agency behind the back of society,clausing continuous shifts and fluctuations in the distribution o fsoc iaT wealth. This movem ent is observed as atmospheric pres-sure read on a barom eter, or temperature on a thermometer. Andye t com m od ity prices and their m ovements manifestly are hum anaffa irs and not black m agic. N o one but m an himself with hiso w n han ds produces these commodities and determines theirprices, except that, here again, something flows from his actionswh ich he does not intend nor desire; here again , need, object,and result o f the econom ic activity of man h ave come into jar-ring contradiction.

ow does this happen , and wh at are the black laws which.


17/30

behind man's back, lead to such strange results of the economicactivity of m an tod ay ? These problem s can be ana lyzed on ly byscientific investigation. It has become necessary to solve all these/friddles by strenuous research, deep thought, analysis, analogy !j to p ro be the hidden relations which g iv e rise to the fact that theresult of the econom ic activity of m an does n ot correspo nd tohis intentions, to his volitionin short, to his consciousness. Inthis m anner the prob lem faced b y scientific inves tigation becomesdef ir ied 'as " the la ck of hu m an consciousness iri"the econom fc' lifeo f society , and here we hav e readied the imm ediate , r e n ^ forthe birth of econom ics. \Darw in,""in"His"dfesPlption of his wo rld cruise, tells us the fol-lo w in g ab out the Indians inhabiting T ierr a del Fu ego ( o n thesouthern tip of South Am eric a): "T he y often suffer fr o m fam ine:I heard Mr. Lo w , a sealing master intimately acquainted withthe natives of this country, give a curious account of the state ofa pa rty of one hundred and fifty natives on the west coast, w howere very thin and in great distress. A succession of gales pre-vented the wom en fr om getting shellfish on the rocks, and theycould not go out in their canoes to catch seal. A small party ofthese men one morning set out, and the other Indians explainedto him, that they were going on a four days' journey for food:on their return, L ow went to meet them, and he found them ex-cessively tired, each m an c ar ry in g a grea t square piece of putridwha le's blubber w ith a hole in the m iddle, through which theyput their heads, like the G auchos do throu gh their pon chos orcloaks. As soon as the blubber was brought into a wigwam, ano ld m an cut off thin slices, and muttering ove r them bro iled themfo r a minute, and distributed them to the fam ished pa rty , wh odu rin g this time preserved a pro fou nd silence" [Darw in, The Voy-age of the Beagle, New York, 1909, p. 229].These are one of the most primitive peoples to be found any-wh ere on the face of this glob e. Th e lim its within which their v o -lition and their conscious plann ing m ay function in their econ om yare still extrem ely na rrow . M an is still tied ve ry closely to theapron strings of mother nature, being completely dependent onher favor. And yet within these narrow limits this small societyof 150 individua ls observes a p la n or ga n iz in g the entire socialorg an ism . Th e pro visio ns fo r the future we lfare at first take thewretched form of a supply of rotten blubber hidden someplace.But this wretched su pply is divided am on g all of the mem berso f the tribe, w hile certain ceremonies are observed; the la bo r ofobtaining food is joined in by everyone, also under planful lead-ership.Let us consider a Greek Oikos, a slave household economy ofantiquity, an econom y which actually did fo rm a "microcosm ,"


18/30

a sm all w or ld by itself. ere, we w ill be able to ob serve greatso cia l inequalities. P rimitive po ve rty has given w a y to a com fort-able surplus of the fruits of h um an labo r. Physical lab or has be-co m e the da m na tion of one, idleness the pr ivile ge of the other;the w ork er has become the personal prop erty of the nonworker.But even this m aster-and-slave relation yield s the strictest plan-fulness and org an izat ion of the econom y, of the lab or process,o f distribution. Th e despotic w ill o f the master is its base, thew h ip of the slav e d river its sanction.

In the feudal manor of the Middle Ages the despotic organiza-tion of econom ic life ve ry ea rly assumes the form s of a traditionaldetailed w or k code in which the planning and the division oflabor , the duties and the rights of each are clea rly and ri gid lydefined . On the threshold of this era in his tory stands the prettydocumen t which we hav e considered a bove, the Capitulare deVillis by Charlemagne, which still exudes cheerfulness and goodhu m or and revels volup tuou sly in the abundance of physical de-lights, the production of which is the sole purpose of econom iclife. At the end of the feudal period in history, we see that omi-nous code of labor services and money payments imposed bythe feudal lords in their greed for m o n e y a code which ga verise to the German Peasant Wars o f the fifteenth century andwh ich, two hundred y ears later, reduced the French peasan t tothat miserable beastlike being who would be aroused to fight forhis c ivil rights o nly b y the shrill tocsin of the Great French Rev-olution. But as lon g as the br oo m of the revolution had notswept away this feudal rubbish, then, in all of its wretchedness,the direct master-and-bondsman relation clearly and rig id ly de-termined the conditions of feudal ec on om y like fate preordained ,f T od a y, we know no masters,. no slaves, no feudal lords, nobondsmen . Liberty and equality b efore the law ha ve rem oved all

despo tic rela tions , at least in the older bo urgeo is states; in theco lon ies as is comm only know n slavery and bondage areintroduced, frequently enough fo r the first time, by these samestates. But where the bourgeo isie is at hom e, free com petitionrules as tHe sole law of economic relations and any plan, anyorganization has disappeared from the economy.kOf course, i fw e loo k into separate priva te enterprises, into am o d e r n fa ctoryo r a larg e com plex of factories and wo rkshop s, l ike Kru pp ora large-scale capitalist farm enterprise in North America, thenw e shall find the strictest org an iza tion , the most detailed div isiono f lab or , the most cunning planfulness based o n the latest scien-tific inform ation . H ere, everyth ing flows smoothly, as if arra ngedb y " mfigic,"-*mana'ged by one will, by one consciousness. But nosoon er do we le ave the fac tory o r the la rg e farm behind, whench ao s surrounds us. W hile the innumerable un its an d tod ay a


19/30

pr iva te enterprise, even the most gigan tic, is on ly ~ fragm ent ofthe great econom ic structure which embraces the entire g l o b e -while these units are d isciplined to the utmost, the entity of allthe so-called national economies, i.e., world economy, is com-ple tely unorgan ized . In the entity whicBr~einbraces "oceans andcontinents,' there is no plann ing , no consciousness, no regulation,on ly the blind clash of unknown, unrestrained forces p la ying acapricious ga m e with the econom ic destiny of man. Of course,eve n tod ay , an all-powerful ruler dominates all w or kin g m en,and women: capital. Buhthe form which this sovereignty of cap-ita l tak^es is not despotism but anarc hy ." "*

An d it is precisely this anarchy which is responsible fo r thefact that the economy of human society produces results whichar e mysterious and unpredictable to the peop le involv ed . Its an-archy is what makes the economic life of mankind somethingunknown, alien, uncontrollable the laws of which we must findin the same manner in which we ana lyze the phenom ena of ex-ternal naturethe same manner in which we have to attempt tocom prehend the laws go ve rn in g the life of the plant and an ima lkingdom, the geologic formations on the earth's surface, and them ovem ents of the hea ven ly bodies, ^a en tific ana lysis must dis-cover ex postjacto that purposefulness and those rules govern-in g hum an conscious planfulness did notim pose on it beforehand. '

It should be cleiar by now why the bourgeo is economists findit impossible to point out the essence of their science, to put thefinger on the gaping wound in the social organism, to denounceits innate infirm ity. T o re cogn ize and to acknowledge_jthat an-archy is the vital m ot ive force of the rule o f cap ital is to pro -nou nce .its death sentence in the same b re a jh ,^p r assert that itsd^.ys are numbered. It becomes clear w hy the offic ial scientificdefenders of capita l's ru le attempt to obscure the entire matterwith all kinds of semantic artifices, try to direct the investigationa w a y fr om the core of the subject, take up mexe ^x tetnAl appear-ances and .discuss "na tional e conom y" instead of the w or ld ecpn-o m yA At the v e r y first step o ve r the threshold of economic under-startSfng, even with the first basic prem ise of econom ics, bourgeo isand pro letaria n economics experience a pa rting of the ways . W iththe v er y first ques tion as abstract and as impractical as it m ightseem at first glance in connection with the socia l s truggles tak ingpla ce t o d a y a special bond is forged between economics as ascience and the modern proletariat as a revolutionary class.

V IIf we proceed fr om the insight ga ined above , then var iousquestions will be cleared up, which otherwise might have seemedpuzzling to us.


20/30

First of all, the pr v ;m of the age of economics is solved. Ascience which has for its subject the discovery of the laws of theanarch y of capitalist prod uction ob vious ly could not arise beforethat m od e of production itself, be fore the historic cond itions fo rthe class rule of the modern bourgeoisie were established, bycenturies of birth pangs, of political and economic changes.

Accord ing to Professo r Bucher, the rise of the present socialorder was a very simple matter of course, which had little to dowith preceding econom ic phenom ena: it was the product of theexalted decision and the sublime wisdom of absolutist monarchs."The final development of 'national economy,"' Bucher tells us and we already kn ow that fo r a bourgeo is professor the term"national economy" is a purposely misleading circumlocutionfo r capitalist prod uc tion "is in its essence the fruit of the po liticalcentralization that begins at the close o f the M iddle Ag es with therise of the territorial state organizations, and now finds its com-pletion in the creation of the unified national state. Economicun ification of forces goes hand in han d with the bo w ing of pri-v ate po litica l interests to the higher aims of the nation as a whole.In Germ any it is the m ore powerfu l territorial princes, as opp osedto the rura l nobles and the towns, who seek to realize the m odernna tiona l id ea . . ." (Bu cher, The Rise of Na tional Economy,p. 134).

But also in the rest of Europe in Spain, Po rtuga l, En gland,Fran ce, the Netherlands the princely pow er accomplished similarvalorous deeds. "In all these lands, though with varying degreeso f severity, appears the strugg le with the independent powers ofthe M iddle Ages the greater nob ility, the towns, the provinces,the religiou s and secular corporations. The imm ediate question,to be sure, was the annihilation of independent territorial circleswh ich block ed the w a y to political unification. But deep do wnbeneath the movement leading to the development of princely ab-solutism slumbers the universal idea that the greater tasks con-fron ting modern civilization demanded an organized union ofwho le peoples, a gr an d living com munity of interests; and thiscould arise on ly upon the basis of com m on econom ic action"(Loc. cit , ) .

Here we h ave the prettiest flowering of that intellectual flunkey-ism which we have noted previously of German professors. Ac-cording to Professor Schmoller, the science of economics cameinto being at the com m and of enlightened absolutism. Accordin gto Pro fessor Bucher the entire capitalist m od e of production itselfis but an achievement of the sovereign decision and the heaven-storm ing p lans of absolutist sovere igns. Indeed, we would do thegre at Spanish and French tyrants and also the Germ an pig m y-despots a great injustice by suspecting them of havin g been m ovedby some "world-historic idea" or "the greater tasks confronting


21/30

hum an civilization " dur ing their petty spats with insolent generalsat the close of the M idd le Ages, or du ring the costly crusadesaga inst the Dutch cities. R g j j l ^ ^ i a i & f f l ^ ^ are

T h e form ation o f bureaucratically centralized lar ge states wasan indispensable precond ition fo r the capitalist m ode of produc-tion, but their form ation w as a consequence of the new econom icrequirements, and one could turn Bucher's sentence around andsay more correctly: the achievement of political centralization "inits essence" was a product of the maturing "national economy"(i.e., capitalist production).

It is characteristic of the unconscious too l of historic progress s uch"~as absolu tism in the measure in which absolutism did takean . imd eniab le~pa xrm *"f l itshistor ic preparatory processîhat itlessness with wh ich, it. inhibited these sam e. tendencies- at ev er yconvenient opp^rt^îty. lîs happened, for instance, when them ed ieva l tyrants by-the-Grace-of-God considered the cities alliedwith them aga inst the feuda l nobility as mere objects of explo ita-tion which, at the ve ry first opportun ity, they wou ld betray tothe feudal barons once more. The same sort of thing happenedwhen, fr om the ve ry beginn ing, they saw in the new ly discoveredcontinent, w ith all its popu lace and culture, nothing else but asuitable subject for the most brutal, insidious, and cruel spolia-ti on to fill their "princely treasuries" with g o ld nuggets in theshortest possible time fo r the purpose o f "the greater tasks ofcivilization." The same took place when the tyrants by-the-Grace-of -G od put up a stiff-necked resistance to their "faith ful subjects"

. o ve r that piece of pap er called a bou rgeo is pa rliam enta ry consti-\ tution, which, after a ll, was just as necessary to the unhinderedI development of capital as were political unification and large

centralized states.A s a matter of fact, entirely d ifferent forces were at work : la rg e

transformations in the economic life of the European peoples tookplace at the close of the M iddle Ages, inaugura ting the new m od eof production.After the discove ry of Am erica and the circum navigation ofA fr ica , i.e., after the dis covery of the maritime route to Ind ia,ha d b rought an undreamed-of flow erin g and also a relocationof the trade routes, the breakup of feudalism and of the domina-tion of the towns by the gu ilds m ade rapid strides. The tremen-do us discoveries, conquests, p lund ering fo ra ys into the new lydiscove red countries, the sudden l ar ge influx of precious metalsfr om the new continent, the extensive spice trade with In dia , thevolu m inou s slave trade which supplied A frican Neg roe s to Am er-ican plan tations: all of these facto rs created new riches and new


22/30

desires in Western t jpe, in a very short period of time. Thesmall workshop of the guild artisan, with its thousand-and-onerestrictions, became a brake on the necessary increase of produc-tion and on its rap id prog ress. H ie big merchants overcam e thisobstacle by assembling the craftsmen in large manufactures be-y o n d the jurisdiction of the cities; under the supervision of themerchants, relieved of the restrictive regu lations of the guilds, themechanics produced quicker and better.

In England , the new mode of production w as introduced by arevo lution in agriculture. The flow ering o f the w oo l manufacturesin Flanders and the concomitant large demand for w oo l ga vethe English rura l nobility the impulse for transfo rm ing la rgearea s o f prev iously tilled land into sheep walks ; during this pro-cess the English peasantry was driven from its homes and fieldson the most extensive scale imaginable. The Reformation workedin a simila r m anner. After the confiscation o f church pro perty inlan d eith er giv en aw ay as presents o r dissipated by the courtnob ility and by speculators the peasants living on this landw ere also driven fro m it, to a la rg e extent. Thus, the manufac-turers and the capitalist farmers found an abundant supply ofimpove rished proletarians w ho stood outside any feudal or guildregulations. After an extended period of martyrdom, as vaga-bond s or as labo rers in the public workhouses, ha ving beencru elly persecuted by law and b y the police, these po o r wretchesfoun d refuge in the ha rbo r o f wa ge slavery toi ling for a newclass of exploiters. Soon thereafter, the great techn ological revo-lutions took place which permitted the increased utilization ofunskil led w ag e workers w ho w orke d alongside the high ly skilledartisans, if they did not replace them entirely.

On eve ry side, the budding and ripen ing of the new relationsencountered feudal encum brances and the m isery of wretched con-ditions. The natural economy, on which feudalism was basedand which flow ed f ro m its ve ry essence, and the pau perization ofthe great masses of the people, caused by the unchecked pressureo f serfdom , restricted the internal outlets o f manufactured com-modities. The guilds, in the meanwhile, hamstrung and fetteredthe most important condition o f production: lab or power. Thestate apparatus, split into an infinite num ber of po litical fr ag-ments, incapable of guaranteeing public safety, and the welter oftariff and com m ercial regulations curbed and molested the newcommerce and the new mode of production at every step.

It w as evident that, in one w a y or another, the rising bour-geois ie o f Western Europe, as the representative of free wor ldtrade and o f manu facturing, had to abolish these hindrances unless it wanted to renounce its world-h istoric mission com pletely.Before smashing feudalism to smithereens in the Great French


23/30

Revolution, the bourgeoisie settled accounts with feudalism in-tellectually, and the new science of economics thus orig ina tes ason e o f the most important ideolog ical weapons of the b ourgeoisieas it struggles with the m edie val state and fo r a m od em capi-talist class state. The developin g econ om ic ord er appeared firstunder the guise of new, rapidly-acquired riches which floodedsociety in Western Europe and which stemmed from sources muchm o re lucra tive and seem ingly inexhaustible and quite differentfr o m the patriarchal methods of feudal exploitation wh ich, more-over, had seen its best day. At first, the most propitious sourceo f the new affluence was, not the new mode of production itself,but its pacemaker: the great upswing in commerce. It is for thisreason that in the most important centers of world trade in theopulent Italian commercial republics and in Spain, the first ques-tions of economics are posed and the first attempts at their solu-tk j jâre made.y W h a t is wealth? What makes a state po or, wh at makes it r ich?tThis-was~tH'e~ new ~prbb Iem'after the old conceptsôTfeu'dal so-Iciety ha d lost their trad ition al va lid ity in the maelstrom" of newfrelationT'Wealth is goId~with which one can~ buy anything. It iscom m erce which creates wealth. Those states wiD becorife wealthywh ich are able to im port great quantities of go ld and which per-mit none of it to leave the country. World trade, colonial conquestsin the New W orld, manufactures which produce fo r expo rttheseare the undertakings which must be fostered; the import of for-eign products which lure go ld out o f the coun try must be pro-hibited. These were the first teachings of economics, which appearin Ita ly as ea rly as the end of the sixteenth century and! whichga in po pu lar ity in E ngla nd and in France in the seventeenth* cen-tury. Arii crude as this doctrine still was, it represenfedTlKe firstop^nbreakwith the ideas of the feudal natural economy and i tsf iqg ib io ia c r ^ a f e f i B S i ' o f l t r a i d j S T j p ' l m m f f i f i t yto''the l ikfr ig 'of ' tH O iSc ^n da nry ou ng bourgeoisie.Soon, rather than ' the merh&ht," it is the Com modity pro du cingcapitalist w ho steps to the fo re a s y et quite cautiously, underthe guise of the seedy servant waiting in the antechamber of thefeudal prince. Wealth is not gold, at all, the French enlightenersof the eighteenth century proclaim, gpld is...m^^'îi^medi'iun ofexc hange for comm odities. W hat an infantile delusion to perceivein {he shining metal the m ag ic wand fo r peoples and for states!Is the metal able to feed me when I .am hu ng ry ; can it protectme from the cold when I am freezings Did not the Persian kingDarius suffer the hellish torments oTthirst while holding goldentreasures in his arms, and would he not gladly have exchangedthem for a drink of water? fcfo, wealth is the bounty of nature


24/30

in fo od and in thosi .bstances with which everyon e, k in g and'beggar, gratifies his wants. Th e m ore luxu riously the popu lacesatisfies its needs, the richer will be the statebecause the moretaxes can then be pocketed by the state.

And w ho procures the wheat fo r the bread, the fibers with whichw e wea ve our clothes, the w ood and the ores w ith which we buildou r houses and our too ls? Ag ricultu re! Agriculture, not trade,constitutes the rea l source of riches! T he mass of the agricu ltura lpopulation, the peasantry, the people who create the wealth ofev er yo ne else must be rescued fr om feuded exp loita tion and ele-vate d to prosperity! (S o that I m ight find buyers for m y com-modities, the manufacturing capitalist would add softly underhis b reath .) The great landed lords, the feuda l barons, shouldbe the on ly ones to pay taxes and to support the state, sinceall the wealth produced by agriculture flow s through their hands!( S o that I, who ostensibly do not create any wealth, d o not h gyeto pa y taxes, the capitalist wou ld slyly murmur to himself! VfAgri-culture, la bor on the farm , needs on ly to be freed fr om all therestraints of feudalism in o rder that the fountain of riches m aygush in all its natural bounteousness for state and nation. Andthen will come the greatest happiness of all the people, the har-m on y of nature will ha ve been reestablished in the world.The approaching thunderclouds, heralding the storming of theBastille, were already clearly visible in these teachings of the en-lighteners. Soon , the capitalist bourgeo isie .fe lL itself. ,powerfulenough to take o ff its mask of submissiveness and to put itselfsqu arely in the foreg rou nd dem anding point-blank the remo


25/30

a care free existence; and a pro fit, which keeps the boss in g o o dhum or so that he w ill persevere in his business enterprise. In thisfashion, everyone is provid ed fo r without ha vin g to utilize thecrude methods of feudalism. "H i e wealth of nations," then, isfostered when the wealth of the capitalist entrepreneur is pro -motedthe boss who keeps everything in operation, who tapsthe golden source of wealth: wa ge labo r. There fore: aw ay withall the fetters and restrictions of the old good times and alsowith the recently instituted paternal protective measures of thestate. Free competition, a free ha nd fo r p rivate capital, the en-tire fiscal and state apparatus in the service of the capitalist em-p lo y e r a n d eve ryth ing w ill turn out fo r the best, in the best ofall possible worlds.

This, then, was the economic gospel of the bourgeois ie, divestedo f all its disguises and the science of econom ics had been strippeddo wn to where it showed its real ph ys iog nom y. Of course, thepractical re form prop osals and the suggestions which the bour-geois ie offered the feudal states failed as m iserably as all historicattempts to pou r new wine into old bottles hav e alw ay s failed.Th e ham m er of revolution achieved in twenty-four hours, whathalf a century of patchwork could not achieve. It was the con-quest of po litical po wer wh ich put the w ays and means of itsru le into the h ands of the bourgeoisie. But econom ics like all

.the ph ilosoph ical, lega l, and social theories of the A ge of En-I l ightenment, and first and forem ost am on g them, was a methodo f ga inin g consciousness, a source of bou rge ois class conscious-ness. As such it was a precon dition and a spur to re vo lutiona ryaction. Even in its remotest offshoots, the bo urgeois task of re-m od ellin g the wor ld was fed by the ideas of classical politicaleconomy. In England, during the storm and stress period of thestruggle fo r free trade, the bourgeois ie received its argumentsfrom the arsenal of Smith-Ricardo. And the reforms of the Stein-Hardenburg-Scharnhorst per iod ( in post-Napoleonic Germany) ,which were an attempt to put the feudal rubbish of Prussia intosom e k ind of via b le shape after the blow s it ha d received fr omN ap o le on at Jena, likewise took their ideas fr om the teachingso f the Eng lish classical economists the yo u n g Germ an econ-om ist Marwitz wro te in the year 1810 that next to Nap ole on ,A d a m Smith was the mightiest ruler in Europe.

If we understand at this po int w hy the science of econom icsorig ina ted on ly about a century and a ha lf ag o, then, fro m thevan ta ge point gained, we w ill also be able to construct its sub-sequent fate. V economics is a science dealing with the pju:ti}ilarlaw s of the capitalist m od e of production, then its reason fo r exis-tence and its function are b ou nd to the life span of the latter


26/30

w ij l have ceased tc exist. In other words, econom ics as a sciencew ill have accom plished its m ission as soon as the anarchisticeconom y of capital ism has m ade w ay for a planful, organizedeconomic order which will be systematically directed and man-aged by the entire working force of mankipd. The victory of them od ern w or king class and the realization of socialism w ill bethe end of economics as a science. We see here the special bondbetween economics and the class struggle of the modern prole-tariat.

If it is the task and the subject matter of economics to elucidatethe law s regu lating the rise, growth, and extension of the cap-italist mod e o f production, then it flow s ine xo ra bly that, to beconsistent, economics must also discover the laws of the declineof capitalism. Like p revious modes of production, capitalism isnot eternal, but a transitory historic phase, a rung in the never-endin g ladder o f soc ial progress. The teachings about the riseof capitalism must logically transform themselves into the teach-ings about the fa ll of cap italism; the science of the capitalist modeo f production becomes the scientific pro o f of soc ialism; the theo-retical instrument of the inception of bourgeois class rule becomesa we apon in the revolu tion ary class struggle w aged for the eman-cipation of the proletariat.This second po rtion of the general p rob lem of economics, ofcourse, was solved neither by the French nor by the English, normuch less b y the German wise men of the bo urgeois classes.Th e final conclusions o f the science an aly zin g the capitalist m odeof production were drawn b y a m an wh o, from the ve ry begin-ning, stood on the watchtower of the revolution ary p r o le ta r ia t-K a r l M ar x. Fo r the first time, socialism and the modern lab orm ovem ent were constructed on the indestructible rock of scientificinsight

As an ideal about a social order built on equality and frater-nity fo r all men, as an ideal about a communist commonwea lth,socialism was thousands of years old. Among the first apostleso f Christianity, am on g the va rio us religious sects of the MiddleAges, in the peasant wars, the socialist ideal had always flaredup as the most radical expression of the revolt against contem-pora neous society. But as an ideal which could be advocatedat all times, in an y historica l m ilieu, socialism was on ly thebeautiful vision of a few enthusiasts, a golden fantasy, alwaysout of reach, like the airy im ag e o f the rainbow in the skies.

At the close of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nine-teenth centuries, the socialist idea , freed fro m all relig iou s sec-tarian frenzy, as a reaction to the horrors and the devastationswhich ascendant capitalism perpetrated in society, app eared forthe first time with real force behind it. But, even at that time, so-


27/30

cialism b asically was on ly a dream , the invention a few bo ldminds. If we listen to the first va nguard fighter of the revolu -tionary u ph eava ls set into m otion by the proletariat, GracchusBabeuf, who attempted a coup de main during the Great FrenchRevolution for the purpose of introducing social equality forcibly,then we shall find that the sole argument on which he is ab leto base his communist asp iration s is the cr ying injustice of theexisting social order. In his impassioned articles, pamphlets, andalso in his defense plea before the tribunal which sentenced himto death, he never tired of pick ing the contem porary social orderto pieces. His gospe l o f socialism consists of an indictment ofsociety, the denunciation of the sufferings and the torments, thewretchedness and the debasement of the working masses, onwhose backs a handful of idlers grow wealthy and rule society.F o r Babeuf, it w as enough that the existing social order welldeserved to perish, i.e., it could have been ove rth row n a hun-dred years previou s to his time, if on ly a grou p of determinedmen had been foun d who wou ld seize the state pow er and wh owo uld introduce the reg ime of equ ality just as the Jacobinsseized political power in 1793 and introduced the republic.

In the 1820s and 1830s, socialist ideas were represented witha great deal mo re genius and brilliance by three great thinkers:Saint-Simon and Fou rier in France, Owen in England. Th eybased themselves on altogether different methods and yet, in es-sence, on the sam e line of reasonin g as Babeuf. Of course, notone of the above-mentioned men thought even remotely of anyrevo lu tionary seizure of pow er fo r the realization of socialism.On the cont rary, like the entire generation which followed theGreat Revolution, they were disappointed with social overthrowsand with politics, becoming express adherents of purely pacifistmeans and p ropa ga nda . But the postulation of the socialist ideawas the sam e in all of them; basica lly, it was on ly a scheme,the vision of an ingenious mind who prescribes its realizationto suffering hum anity, f or the purpose of rescuing it from thehell of the bourgeois social order.

Thus, in spite of all the power of their criticism and the magicof their futuristic ideals, these socialist ideas remained withoutany noticeable influence on the real movements and strugglesof the times. W ith a handfu l of friends, Babeuf perished in thecoun terrevolutionary tidal wa ve , w ithout lea vin g a trace, otherthan a short, shining inscription on the pages of revolu tionaryhistory. Saint-Simon and Fourier succeeded in establishing sectsof enthusiastic and talented followers whohaving sown richand fertile seeds of social ideas, criticism and experimentswenttheir separate w ay s, loo k in g for greener pastures. Of them all,Owen gained the greatest hold on the proletarian masses, but,after ha ving attracted an elite gr oup o f English workers in the


28/30

1830s and 1840s, his '"fluen ce also vanishes with ha rd ly a trace.A new gen era tion socialist leaders emerged in the 1840s:

Weitling in G erm any, Proudhon , Lou is Blanc, Blanqu i in France.The working class itself had begun to take up the struggle againstthe clutches of cap ital; the class struggle had been initiated bythe revolts of the silk weaver s of L yon s in France, by the Chartistmovem ent in En gland. H ow ev er , there existed no direct linkbetween the spontaneous movements of the exploited masses andthe various socialist theories. The proletarian masses in revoltdid not have a socialist go a l in view , nor did the socialist theo-reticians attempt to base their ideas on the political struggle ofthe w ork in g class. The ir socialism was to be instituted by certaincunningly devised artif ices, like Proudhon's People's Bank orLouis Blanc's productive associations. The only socialist wholoo ke d on the political struggle as an end tow ard s the realizationof the social revolu tion was Blanqu i; this m ade him the on lyreal representative of the prole tariat and of its revo lu tion ary classinterests at the time. But, ba sically , even his socia lism was on lya scheme attain ab le at w ill as the fruition of the iron deter-mination of a revolutionary minority and the outcome of a sud-den coup d'etat carried through by the same minority.

The year 1848 was to be the high point and also the criticalmoment for the older socialism of all varieties. Th e Parisian prole-tariat, influenced by the traditions of preceding revolutionarystruggles, agitated by the various socialist systems, passionatelyespoused some nebulous notions about a just social order. Assoon as the bourg eois k ing do m of Lou is Philippe had been over-thrown, the Parisian workers utilized the fav or ab le relationshipof forces to demand the realization of the "social republic" and anew "division of la bor " fro m the terrified bou rgeo isie. Th e pro-visional government was granted the fam ous three months periodof g race for com ply ing with these dem ands; and for three monthsthe work ers starved and w aited, wh ile the bourgeo isie and thepetty bo urgeo isie secretly arm ed themselves and prepared to crush jthe wo rkers. The period of grace ended with the m em orab le June

what is economics rosaluxemburg ocr

Documents