The Meaning of Marxism PDF

 G. D. H. COLE: SELECTED WORKS THE MEANING OF MARXISM Page Intentionally Left Blank THE MEANING OF MARXISM G. D. H. COLE Volume 9  First published in 1948 This edition first published in 2011...

 G. D. H. COLE: SELECTED WORKS THE MEANING OF MARXISM Page Intentionally Left Blank THE MEANING OF MARXISM G. D. H. COLE Volume 9  First published in 1948 This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1948 H A Cole All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 13: 978-0-415-56651-3 (Set) eISBN 13: 978-0-203-83931-7 (Set) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-59841-5 (Volume 9) eISBN 13: 978-0-203-83953-9 (Volume 9) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. TilE MEANING OF MARXISM by G. D. H. COLE CoJ!yright, I!}4B, by G. D. H. Col.  CONTENTS ( :IIAP. PAGE I. THE FOUNDATIONS OF MA1uasM I I II. THE MATEIUALlST CoNCEPTION oF HisTORY 51 III. THE GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CAPITALJSM: 83 IV. EcoNoMic CLAssEs I07 v. THE NEW MmDLE CLASSES AND THE RisE OF FASCISM I30 VI. THE PROLETARIAT I51l VII. MARxisM: AND THE STATE I81 VIII. THE THEORY OF VALUE 210 IX. Tm: THEORY OF VALUE (contimud). 242 X. THE DIALECTic-CONCLUSION 269 A NoTE ON Boo:acs. 291 INDEX 295 Page Intentionally Left Blank  PREFACE THIS BOOK IS LARGELY based on What Marx Really Meant, which I published in 1 934· That work contained a good deal that was topical, especially in relation to the then recent conquest of power in Germany by the Nazis. So much has occurred since that, instead of merely revising the original text, I have thought better to use it as the basis for what is largely a new book. I have also altered the title, not only in order to mark this change, but also because what was said by reviewers and others at the time of the original publication convinced me that my title was liable to be misunderstood. What I was attempting then-and am attempting now-was not a summary of Marx's doctrines or merely an essay in interpretation of Marx's thought, but rather a revaluation of Marx's essential ideas and methods in relation to contemporary social structures and developments. Especially I was trying to consider the bearing of Marx's theories on the structure of social classes, which have altered greatly since he formulated his account of them. I think the new title better expresses what I had, and have, in mind. I should like to thank Dr. D. B. Halpern for a very useful discussion of Marx's ideas, but I have of course no wish to saddle him with any of my conclusions. G. D. H. C. OXFORD. May, rg-tfJ. Page Intentionally Left Blank  ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGJ! Chapter I. The Foundations qf Marxism. II Marx and the Marxists. The Dialectical Method. The Conception of History. Idealism and "Materialism." Mind, Matter, and Statistical Probability. The Powers of Production. The Making of History. Is History a "Straight-line" Process? The Coming of Socialism. The Belief in Progress. Social Conflicts. The Class Struggle. Social Action. Class and Class- consciousness. Class and Group. How Classes Arise. The Historical Process. The Interaction of Civilisations. More Marxist than Marx. Chapter II. The Materialist Conception qf History Three Quotations: (a) From Engels's Introduction to The Communist Manifesto; (b) From Marx's Preface to The Critiqut of Political Economy; (c) From The Communist Manifesto. Men and Things and Men and Men. The Economic Foundations. The "Superstructure!' Economics and Politics. Social Values. Thought and Action. Religion and History. Capitalism and Nationalism. How Men Make their History. Determinism and Freedom. Class-struggles in History. The Social Outlook of Primitive Peoples. Economics and Theology. Class as an Economic Category. Ideas and Social Evolution. Is the Economic Factor Determinant? (,'ftapter III. The Growth and Decline qf Capitalism Capitalist Beginnings. Capitalism and the Workers. The Exploitation of Labour. Capitalist Competition. The Contra- dictions of Capitalism. Economic Nationalism. High-wage Policy and its Limits. Capitalism and Political Democracy. Recent History of Capitalism. The Decline of Capitalism. The Socialist Remedy. The Conditions for Socialisation. The Accumulation of Capital. Capitalist and Socialist Accumu- lation. The Drive towards Socialism. l :lwpter IV. &onomic Classes 107 The Communist Manifesto. The Theory of Class-Struggle. The Bou1geoisie. The Petite BoU7geoisie. The Proletariat. The Theory of Increasing Misery. The Role of the Proletariat. What is "Increasing Misery"? Capitalist Crises. The Russian Revolu- tion. The Capitalist Class. Imperialism. Financial Capitalism and the Shareholders. The Divorce between Ownership and Control. The Small Masters. The Growth of the Middle Classes. Were Marx's Prophecies Correct? 9 Chapter V. The New Middle Classes and the Rise of Fascism 130 Economic Gradations. The Old Middle Classes and the New. The Salariat. Socialism and the Middle Classes. The Farmers. Middle-class Power, Economic and Political. Middle-class Policies. The Rise of Fascism. Working-class Disunity. The Real Nature of Fascism. Fascism and Capitalism. Petit BoUTgeois Attitudes. Technocracy. Fascism and the Middle Classes. Fascism is not a Class Movement. The Effects of Fascism. Could Fascism Succeed? Chapter VI. The Proletariat. r 52 What is the Proletariat? Differentiation within the Proletariat. The "mack-coated Proletariat." The Change in Manual Labour. The Proletariat in a Declining Capitalism. The Prospects of Revolution. Parliamentarism and Revolution. The Mind of the Proletariat. The Prospects ofTrade Unionism. Trade Unionism and Politics. The Co-operative Movement. Communism and Socialism hi Advanced Countries. Chapter VII. Marx. ism and the State I 8I The State as a Class Institution. What Marx's View of the State Involves. Proletarian Dictatorship. Marxism and Social Democracy. Social Democracy and Capitalism. The Essentials of Socialist Policy. The British Labour Government of 1945· Must Revolution Come First? Capturin$' the State Machine. Socialism and the Parliamentary Tradit10n. The Question of Revolution. Parliamentary Systems. Where Constitutional Gradualism is Impracticable. Chapter VIII. The Theory of Value 210 Marx's Theory is not a Theory of Prices. Price and Value. The Labour Theory of Value. Objective Value. The Capitalist Standard of Value. The Source of Value. The Amount of Labour. Value and Expenditure. Surplus Value. The Distribu- tion of Surplus Value. The Source of Profit. The Subsistence Theory of Wages. The Productivity of Labour. Constant and Variable Capital. Surplus Value and Profit. The Falling Rate of Profit. Capitalist Contradictions. Chapter IX. The Theory of Value (continued) 242 Scarcity and Demand. Effective Demand. The Critique of Capitalist Economics. An Alternative Standard of Value. Socialism and the Price System. The Problem of Socialist Accountancy. A Social Standard of Value. The Exploitation of Labour. The Sources of Value. The Social Distnbution of Incomes. The Institutional Basis of Capitalism. Chapm X. The Dialectic-Conclusion 269 Dialectical Materialism. Marx and Hegel. The Powers of Production. The Basis of the Marxian Dialectic. Marxism and the Class-Struggle. Intermediate Classes. Ma:rxism and Fascism. The Claimants to Power. The Outlook for Socialism. Contraries and Contradictories. Conclusion. JO  CHAPTER I THE FOUNDATIONS OF MARXISM THIS BOOK OF MINE requires at the outset a few words of explanation; for otherwise there is a danger that some readers may search in it for what they will certainly fail to find. It is not meant primarily, or to any considerable extent, either as an exposition or as a criticism of Marx's doctrines, here para- ! 1hrasing, condensing and expounding the words of the master, or there seeking to set him right where I believe him to have been wrong. There exist plenty of expositions and abridgments of Marx by followers ofhis doctrine; and criticisms and refutations of him are as the sands of the sea-shore. There are even competent judicious essays upon his work, with which I have no desire to set up this book in rivalry. My object is something different. It is to disentangle in his teaching, from what is dead or no longer appropriate, what remains alive and capable of that process of growth and adapta- tion which is the prerogative of living things. I am conscious that my own thought has been deeply influenced by Marx- the more so perhaps because I came to him after I had first received, and then repelled, the influence of the Hegelian doc- trine. I am no Marxist, if to be one involves, as many of his followers seem to suppose, unquestioning acceptance of his opinions, or any sort of belief in the literal inspiration of the Marxian scriptures. Indeed, in a good many respects my mind recoils from Marxism, as a system, both because I have a deeply- rooted mistrust of systems, one and all, and especially of systems which attribute everything of importance to a single cause, and also because Marx's system appears to me to rest, as so many systems do, on a failure to analyse with sufficient clarity the master-cause on which everything is thereafter made to depend. Over and above this, Marx's system hits right up against my conviction that it is a profound error to attribute to "classes," of things or of men, any reality distinct from that of the indivi- duals which compose them, or to regard the classes, as distinct from the individuals, as active forces shaping the course of history. In saying this, I do not of course mean to deny the possibility of statistical generalisations about the probable II  behaviour of the majority of individuals who belong to a particu- lar class or group, in face of situations which broadly affect them in the same ways. I do, however, deny that such generalisa- tions can establish more than probabilities, or that, in most cases, the classes or groups about which they can be made can be more than approximately delimited or defined. However deeply individuals may be influenced by their social environ- ment, they remain individuals; and it remains true that all action, as well as all consciousness, is an attribute of the indivi- dual. Group or class action is the action of a number of individuals doing the same or interrelated acts: it is never the action of the group as such, even if the acts of the individuals are deeply influenced by their relation to the group, or are taken as repre- sentative acts on behalf of the group-as when an official acts on behalf of the members of a society or association. Marx, as against this, often wrote as if classes could act, and were even in some sense more real as active agents than the individuals composing them. In this important respect he never shook himself free of the Hegelianism in which he was brought up. In "turning it upside down," as he said he had done, he did not get rid of the metaphysical element: he only substituted a new form of metaphysics, masquerading as science. This had the disastrous result ofmaking him think ofindividuals-ofcapitalists and workers alike-as abstractions, and of the capitalist class and the proletariat as realities. The individual worker came to be regarded as merely a "detail-labourer," an atom forming an element in the mass of social labour, and significant only in the mass; and, hardly less, the individual capitalist was thought of as no more than an element in the total force of Capitalism, which appropriated "surplus value" by exploiting the proletariat and then shared out this "surplus value," as rent, interest and profit, among the detail-capitalists. Here again, I do not of course deny that capitalists, through joint stock concerns and mono- polies, and workers, through Trade Unions and Co-operative Societies, do act as impersonal forces, or that it is legitimate to speak of the actions of these collective entities, provided that care is taken not to forget that they can act only through the actions of individual men and women. What I do deny is that the "actions" of groups or classes can be determined apart from the actions of the individuals who make them up. Nevertheless, despite this sharp dissent from certain of Marx's fundamental notions, I remain "Marx-influenced" to a high degree, because I have found in certain of his doctrines, and above all in certain of his methods of social analysis, clearer 12 light than anywhere else by which to seek an understanding both of certain key factors in the development of human societies and of fundamental economic and political problems of to-day. In this sense alone, 1 claim, has anyone a sound intellectual title to call himself Marxist in 1948. For it is the rankest injustice to Marx to suppose that he would have written exactly as he wrote in 1848, or in 1859, or in 1867, or even in x88g, if he had been alive and writing to-day. No sense was stronger in Marx than the sense of change; and how much has changed almost out of recognition since Marx died two-thirds of a century ago! Only fanatics learn The Communist Manifesto and the key passages of Das Kapital by heart, and conceive themselves thereby to have unlocked the secrets of the capitalist world as it now exists. Only disciples who utterly misunderstood both the meaning and the method of their master can think that an analysis of the economic development of the first half of the nineteenth century, primarily in a single country, will serve in lieu of fresh thinking about the world-bestriding capitalism of a century later. No thinker thinks beyond his time, in the sense that his thought can be adequate for any generation later than his own. He may lay lasting foundations, good for later generations to build upon; but woe betide those who seek to save themselves the pain of mental building by inhabiting dead men's minds. If Marx is to be of any service to us, we must neither parrot his phrases nor repeat his doctrines by rote, nor on the other hand denounce him for his failure to provide valid answers to questions which neither were being asked nor could have been asked in his day, but must let him help us to do afresh for our generation what he sought to do for his own. For this task we are likely, I believe, to find his methods more directly helpful than his doctrines. For if we begin with Marx's doctrines, and set out to discover where and how far they are still applicable to the world of to-day, we shall be in danger of producing either an apologia or a criticism, without throwing any real light upon our own problems. We shall run the risk of assuming that precisely the questions Marx asked are the questions that need asking now, and that the answers will be merely modifica- tions, or perhaps negations, of the answers which he found. But in fact the questions that it is important for us to ask may be different questions, and the answers may have to be stated in radically different terms. Yet, of course, the world we have to study has grown directly out of the world Marx studied. Our world, greatly though it has changed and much more closely interrelated though its tg  elements have become, is continuous with his; and to some extent he was able to foresee aright how the one would develop out of the other. We shall doubtless find after all that many of his questions are our questions too, and derive from them answers of the same order as his own. But we must not, at our peril, assume in advance that this is so of any particular question. We must look closely at our own world, not only for the answers to our questions, but equally for the questions themselves. That is why, if Marx helps us at all, his method is likely to help us more than his conclusions. For a method of study and analysis is ·likely to remain valid for longer than any set of conclusions arrived at by its use. This is not to say that method can remain static in a changing world; but it is reasonable to suppose that the general forms of thought will change more slowly than their particular content. Of course, it is possible that Marx's method will not help us. There are, I know, some Marxists who hold his method to have been an unfortunate philosophical aberration, in despite of which he hit on a number of important truths. But these are either the parrots of Marxism, who learn diligently without reflection, or its mere hangers-on, in search of comfortable crumbs of congenial doctrine. Marx's method is integral, not only to his conclusions, but to the entire basis of historical study on which his conclusions rest. His method will fail to help us only if his whole analysis was from beginning to end upon the wrong lines. It may have been so; and those who hold a priori that it was so will be indisposed to attempt its use for an analysis of the world to-day. I have not found it unhelpful, when I have tried to use it; and all I ask of the readers of this book is that they should follow me in the experiment of seeking to discover how far Marx's method can be applied with success to a reading of the signs of our times. The Dialectical Method Having said this, I feel I shall be expected to proceed at once to explain what this wonderful Marxian method is, in order that my readers may be in a position to follow the analysis of the world of to-day with full knowledge of the method by which it is being made. This, however, is not what I propose to do; for the Marxian method is best understood not by reading a theoretical exposition of it, but in the first instance by seeing it at work. Later in this book, I shall attempt to state what I believe its essential qualities to be; but at this stage I shall say but a few words about it. 14  In the first place, all living things are subject to constant change, which arises partly from their environment and partly fi·om within themselves. This is true of societies no less than of individuals; for societies are constantly changing collections of individual men and women. In order to understand any human society, we must study it not as something static, but as a continually changing thing, subject to an unceasing process of development, growth and decay. It is intelligible only in relation to its entire past history, as well as to its present condition, which is indeed only a cross-section of its history. Even if our aim is to understand the present, we have to think of the present as a constantly moving point; for even while we are making our analysis to-morrow is becoming to-day. It follows that, even if our aim were only to understand, and not also to use our understanding as a basis for action, the method of static analysis could not, in the field of the social studies, yield us satisfactory results. For if a thing is in fact in constant motion, it is fatally misleading to analyse it on the assumption that it is standing still. And human society does not merely move: in our day it moves fast-faster than ever before. It has change-rapid change-as an essential part of its nature. A thing which has change as the very essence of its nature will not stand still for the student's convenience: it can be grasped only in and through its changes, ~nd by an under- standing of its processes of change. To ignore this fact has been, right up to our own day, the fundamental mistake of orthodox economics, which has set out first to analyse capitalist society on the assumption that it can be treated as standing still, and has then tried to introduce the dynamic factors at a later stage, as modifications of this static analysis. Such a method is radically wrong; for if the vital factor of change is left out of the original analysis, it cannot be successfully reintroduced. Man cannot breathe the breath oflife into a dead body, or achieve concrete- ness by starting out from what is admittedly an abstraction. The falsification inherent in static analysis of living and changing things becomes still more evident as soon as we ask ourselves what the purpose of the analysis is. For in our study of social affairs we are assuredly seeking not only to understand, but also to make our understanding a basis for action. Being men and members of a society of men, we cannot escape the necessity of acting, or dissociate our desire to understand society from our desire to act aright as members of it. We can, of course, seek to make our analysis as objective as possible, in order to avoid falsifying facts to suit our personal wishes and ideals; 15 and it is of vital importance that we should do this to the fullest extent of which we are capable. But, however objective we try to be, we cannot possibly even wish to stop our understanding from influencing our action, or exclude considerations of practice from our attempts to understand. All sqcial studies, however objective they may need to be, have a practical aspect; and, if it is disastrous to allow our wishes to distort our observation of the facts, it is no less so to forget, or deny, that understanding of the facts is bound to influence action, and thereby to modify the facts themselves. For actions are facts, and men's under- standing is a fact, which becomes a social fact as soon as it is diffused by speech or writing, or even as soon as it affects the actions of him who understands. A sound method of social analysis must therefore be dynamic, in the sense that it must set out from things as they are, in continual change and growth, and not from dead abstractions from which the quality of change and the power to change have been carefully removed. It is above all at this point that Marx's method diverges at the very outset from that of the "orthodox" economists. For they, from the time ofRicardo1 up to the present, have one and all, with varying degrees of consciousness, begun by constructing an abstract and static economic world as a field for their analysis, and have alloweq change to intrude into this world of theirs only when they have completed its equipment with a full set of static institutions, and studied down to the last detail the hypothetical "behaviour" of these institu- tions in the absence of all changes which could operate as disturbing factors. This is the celebrated "equilibrium analysis," carried to its barren perfection above all by Pareto and by the economists of the Austrian school and their imitators, but used less consciously as a method by all their predecessors of the classical schools after Adam Smith. For example, in this abstract world of the economists, there is no room for the influence of technical changes which affect the productivity of industry, the balance of machine and human power, the structure of the productive system, the character of the labour process, the supply of and demand for the various kinds of commodities-in fact, every aspect and element of economic life. Not, of course, that the economists are unmindful of these changes. They are not; but they treat them as disturbing factors which cause conditions in the real world to diverge from the pattern of the abstract world which they have devised. They fall in love with this creature of their minds, until they 1 Not from that of Adam Smith, who had a strong historical sense. 16 come readily to believe that man's chief task in society should be to make conditions in the real world resemble as closely as possible this abstract world, in which things always work them- selves out with the precision of mathematical equations, and nothing unexpected can ever happen. But, for this to be achieved, all possibility of progress would have to be emptied out of the world; for progress is essentially and inevitably a disturbing force, upsetting current adjustments and existing relationships, and changing the very nature of things as well as their relative positions. Our first precept, then, is to begin with the real concrete world of things as they are, and not with a simplified abstract world of our imagination. But we must think of things as they are, not as standing still, so as to be reproducible by timeless portraiture, but as changing and growing while we regard them, and as carrying about in all their ceaseless movements and interactions the whole living history of their growth. It is often said that the origin of a thing can never explain it; and that is true enough. Its origin is but one fragment of its history, even as its present activity is another fragment. To study things historically is to set out to interpret them, not by their origins, but by the whole active force of which their entire history is the expression. But that is not all. If we are setting out to understand a thing, we must look directly at the thing itself, and not primarily at men's ideas about it. This is not because ideas are unimportant, or uninfluential in shaping the world's history, as some Marxists seem to suppose, but because in the last resort ideas are about things, and not things about ideas. The thing is prior to the ideas men form of it, though the ideas, once formed, can exert a profound influence in changing the shape of things, and in bringing new combinations of things into existence. Throughout human history, things and ideas ceaselessly interact, but never so as to upset the primacy of things. For, in order to become a force in history, the idea, which is derived from things, must be made flesh, and become a thing. 'I he Conception qf History This, and neither more nor less than this, is the basis of the Materialist Conception of History"-a name so misunderstood and so overlaid with wrong associations as to make clear explanation of it a terribly difficult task, not only because the conception itself is unclear at certain vital points, but also because the name is apt to conjure up a wrong picture which I7 it is a labour of Sisyphus to remove. For most people think instinctively of 'materialism' as asserting the supremacy of matter over mind, or even as denying the existence of mind save as a derivative quality of matter, whereas no such doctrine is involved in, or even reconciliable with, the "Materialist Conception of History."l What this conception does assert is that mind, as a formative force in history, works by embodying itself in things, changing their shape and potency, and combining them into relations and systems whose changing phases are the basis of the history of mankind. Marx is never weary of asserting the primacy of things over ideas about them, or of denying the Hegelian~Platonic notion of the primacy of'ideas'; but he is no less emphatic in denouncing the "crude materialism" which dismisses mind out of the universe. Marx's ·'materialism' is to be contrasted not with philosophies which affirm the reality of mind, but with the kinds of Idealism that deny the reality of matter. In the sense in which most people to-day use the word, Marx was not a 'materialist' at all. He was a realist opponent of Idealism. What are the "material" things that Marx conceived to be the active determinants of social change? Marx calls them the 'powers of production' and rests his entire account of historical development upon their influence. These 'powers of production' are not, though they include, mere natural objects, offered to man for his use apart from any activity of his own. They also include, more and more as civilisation advances, things which men have made by changing the form of natural objects, directing the labour of their hands with the informing power of the human mind. Moreover, even natural objects make their contribution to human history largely, though not exclusively, through men's knowledge of their use. The sea is barrier, and not highway, till men learn to make vessels that will carry them upon it. Coal becomes a productive power only when men have dis- covered that it will burn, and have learnt the art of mining. Storms and earthquakes may destroy, and climate may cause vegetation to grow or perish, or may influence men's bodies and minds without positive collaboration of men's minds with nature. But the advance of civilisation consists above all else of the growth of men's knowledge of the ways to make natural 1 "The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circum- stances and of changed upbringing forgets that circurn.~tances are in fact changed by men and that the educator himself has to be educated." Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, III. 18  objects serve their ends, and to fashion out of them things that exist and work not by nature, but by art bending nature to man's will. The external things, then, that Marx calls "material" and regards as the agents of social evolution come as man's knowledge increases to be more and more products of the human mind using and transforming what is given by nature. The 'gifts of nature' become products of human intelligence, as when barren wastes are converted by irrigation into fertile land. Not nature, as in Buckle's conception, but man's power over nature lies at the root of history. Indeed, for Marx, man himself, mind and all, is a "thing" and, in his economic capacity, one of the 'powers of production,' and the most important of them all. Why call such a conception "materialist," when it in fact embodies the fullest recognition of the conscious determining power of mind? It is, I think, impossible to acquit Marx of having opened the door to serious misunderstanding by failing to make clear this dual character of the 'powers of production.' It is, indeed, implied throughout in the account Marx gives of them, as well as in his repeated insistence that "men make their own history"; but it is nowhere clearly stated; and the labelling of the powers of production as 'materialistic' is calculated, as we have seen, to foster misunderstanding of their real character. Indeed, Marx was probably unconscious, when he formulated his doctrine, that the distinction between the mental and environmental elements in the powers of production was of key importance. These elements were so intermingled in both land and capital goods-which in their historical forms are alike products of mind acting upon the gifts of external nature-that it may have seemed to him that to distinguish them would involve needless abstraction. It would, moreover, have blurred the contrast between his version of the dialectical process and Hegel's, which he wished to make as sharp as he could. The consequence, how- ever, was that he appeared to many ofhis readers to be building his theory of history on a monistic foundation of determination by man's physical environment, whereas he was in fact building it on a dualistic foundation of the interaction between the mind of man and the physical world upon which man's mind has to work. Engels tended to worsen the confusion by insisting that the mind of man is part of the physical world, because it can operate on things only through the body. This method of state- ment does indeed save consistency, by explicitly including mind itself within the range of 'material' things; but it does so only at the cost of concealing the essential dualism of man's relation 19 to things and, if pressed to an extreme, of annihilating mind and returning to the crude materialism which Marx so strongly denounced. Idealism and "Materialism" Marx called his conception of history "materialist," because he was determined to mark it off sharply from the metaphysical Idealism of Hegel and his followers. Where he wrote "materi- alist," it would be more natural in our day to write "realist"; for it is Realism, and not Materialism, that we are accustomed to contrast with Idealism as a philosophical point of view. In this book, I shall write "realist" in place of "materialist," wherever "realist" will convey better to the modern reader the meaning of Marx's doctrine. For I can see no point at all in that form of servility which clings obstinately to a name, even when it has been proved again and again to be a source of needless confusion and misunderstanding. This irreverence will doubtless annoy the theological parrots who screech about the Marxian temples. Let them squawk. Our business is neither to vilify nor to adulate, but to understand. According to the Idealists, ideas and not things are the ultimate substance of being. The world we seem to know, the world of fact and event, is but a shadowing of a more real world of pure idea. The thing is nothing, save· as a pale and unsubstantial reflection of the idea. Mind not merely shapes matter to its will, but makes it out of nothing save itself. Real things, or rather the appearances that masquerade as real things, owe such half- reality as is conceded to them solely to being emanations of mind or spirit. Consciousness, which is the attribute of mind, is therefore regarded as prior to existence in space and time, which is the attribute of things. There are no things: there are only thoughts thinking them. But now even these thoughts begin to dissolve. For how shall thought subsist without a thinker? How shall many thoughts exist save in the substance of a unifying mind? But the minds of mere men will not serve; for they dwell in bodies which, being things, are but the unsubstantial wrack of thought. The Idealist proceeds at last to the One Universal Mind, wherein all thought has its source and ultimate substance, so that no thought is finally real, except it exist in the Universal Mind. Thus Idealism, which begins by upholding the claims of mind against matter, ends by annihilating minds equally with material things, leaving in substantial existence only the Universal One who bears the same suspiciously close resemblance to the 20  Absolute Nothing as a perfectly :empty circle bears to the figure o. Absolute Idealism is conceived most naturally in static terms; lor how can the Absolute, which includes all, change? Change must be out of one form into another; but can the Absolute ever discard, or add to itself, even a single characteristic? It was left for Hegel to re-think Idealism in dynamic terms, so as to make of the Absolute, not a One existing from all time, but an immanent reality gradually 'achieving actual existence by the evolutionary process of its own thought, discarding ceaselessly the dross of partially conceived and incomplete truths, so as to draw nearer in actual as well as in immanent reality to the ultimate Oneness of the completely coherent and rational self-realisation of the Idea. If, at this point, the reader exclaims, "What a sentence!" I must answer that I can find no words less nonsensically grandiloquent wherewith to express without mis- representing Hegel's curious conception of the dialectical March of Mind. This process of developing actuality was expressed in the Hegelian dialectic, on which Marx built a "materialist"- say rather a "realist"--dialectic of his own. For Hegel, human history was merely a phase in the dialectical self-realisation of the "Idea." Things were not, save in and for the developing Idea. Minds were not, save as stuff to be burned up to nothing more than the infinitesimal speck of reality dis- tilled out of them in the fierce heat of the crucible of universal history. In that fierce heat only the rational could live; and therefore only the rational was deemed to possess reality. But as every- thing of which we have direct experience falls short of rationality, all our experience had to be deemed an experience of unreality. All Idealism before Hegel resolved itself into this flat denial of the reality of things experienced. It was Hegel's achievement, by invoking the conception of degrees of reality, and by re-stating Idealism in evolutionary terms, to attempt, on Idealistic assump- tions, to put back a shadowy element of reality into our every- day experience. But, in the Hegelian universe of becoming, the stigma upon common experience remained; for things possessed such imperfect reality as they had only as partial embodiments of the developing Idea. To this Idealist conception Marx opposed an uncompromising H ealism. Seizing upon Hegers evolutionary conception of being, he applied it, under Feuerbach's influence, directly to the substance of the world of actual experience. The things we see and feel and experience directly with our minds and senses are 21  real, but they are not static. They are constantly changing, becoming, waxing and waning, passing into something other than themselves, even as Hegel said; but their mutations are their own, and not reflections of anything external to themselves. According to Marx, the Hegelian dialectic is the right method of apprehending reality; but, as Feuerbach had already shown, it needs to be applied directly to the world of things, and used directly as a clue to the interpretation of ordinary human experience. In Hegel's universe, the evolution of the Idea is accomplished dialectically by a ceaseless succession of ideological conflicts. Every idea that embodies a partial truth meets in the world its opposite and "contradiction," 1 which is also the embodiment of a partial truth. Between the two there follows a conflict, out of which at length a new and higher idea, embodying new but still partial truth, emerges-to generate in its turn a new opposite and a new conflict. This struggle of ideas is fought out again and again in the dialectical form of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; and each synthesis becomes, in the moment of its victory, a thesis in terms ofwhich a fresh struggle is to be fought. This process must go on until finally the goal is reached in that complete and insuperable synthesis which embodies in itself the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In Hegel's philosophy, these battling ideas can hardly be said to be in men's minds: rather are men's minds conceived of as being in the ideas, and as partaking of reality only by virtue of being so. The individual mind has, for Hegel, only the most shadowy reality, as a speck of 'mind-stuff' on its way towards absorption in the Universal Mind or Idea. Marx took over, and applied directly to the world of human affairs, all the Hegelian paraphernalia of conflict-of theses, antitheses and syntheses succeeding one another in a ceaseless ascent of mankind towards more developed forms of social and economic organisation. But what he saw evolving in this way was not the Idea, but life itself-the multifarious social life men embody in the patterns of the successive epochs of human civilisation. There was no need to go outside the world of men and things for the clue to the evolutionary process. For men and things are themselves the subject-matter of evolution. The life, however, which Marx saw as developing in this dialectical fashion is social life. It is the life, not of individuals, but of societies. For Marx, as for Hegel, the individual is not the "real thing," but an abstraction. He says in the sixth of his 1 For the Hegelian meaning of "contradiction" see page 288. 22  Theses on Feuerbach that "the human essence is no abstraction jnherent in each single individual: in its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations." He speaks of Feuerbach as compelled, by his failure to understand this, "to presuppose an abstract, isolated, human individual"; and he goes on to say that the older materialism was unable, from the same cause, to advance beyond "the outlook of single individuals in civil society"- meaning, by "civil society," what Hegel meant by it when he contrasted it, as the realm ofindividual relations, with the State as the concrete human reality. If Marx had intended by this no more than that the individual is subject to social influences and that the very notion of an isolated individual apart from such influences is an abstraction, he would have been correct. But he meant a great deal more: for him the class, and the State as a representative of class power, were endowed with the same sort of higher reality as Hegel attributed to his metaphysically con- ceived State, and the individual, social influences and aU, was regarded as less real, and more abstract, than the class to which he belonged. Mind, Matter, and Statistical Probability In the conflict between Marx and Hegel, the issue is not whether the dominant power is mind or matter; for the Hegelian conception subordinates both alike to the supposed Idea, and makes men into abstractions in order the more to exalt the Absolute. Marx's so-called Materialism, which was in fact Realism, upheld actual mind, in its form as "social mind," equally with actual matter against the Absolute which was greedy to engulf them both. Marx did not pose the question of mind versus matter at all, because he conceived it to be wholly without meaning for the world of men. He was deeply influenced by the fact that, in the world of men and external things, mind and matter are so inter-penetrated and at one that he held it to be futile to ask which counts for more. Mind cannot exist save in the material substance of the brain, or receive impres- sions save through the material avenues of the sense-organs; and the material objects external to man amid which he lives and works, from the soil itself to the steam-engine and the electrical generator, owe their form and nature and productive power so largely to man's activity as to be essentially products of mind, constantly evolving and changing under the influence of man's inventive power. It might have been supposed that this assertion of the essential unity of mind and matter would have led Marx to insist on the 23 final reality of the individual; for it is only in individuals that mind and matter are conjoined. Neither State nor group nor class has a body, any more than it has a mind. The collectivity, to use Herbert Spencer's phrase, "has no common sensorium." But Marx did not draw this seemingly obvious conclusion, to which he was blinded by his sense of the overwhelming import- ance of social factors in the making of human character. Because the isolated individual is an abstraction, Marx rushed to the conclusion that Hegel was right in regarding the individual himself as an abstraction, and in attributing concrete reality to the whole to which he was attached. He attributed reality and potency in shaping the world not to individuals, but to classes. He did not realise that in taking up this attitude he was departing from his affirmation that bodies and minds could exist only in union, and that mind apart from body could have no real existence. He made the class an active reality, though it had no body wherewith to act, except the discrete bodies of its individual constituents. In what sense, if any, can it be legitimate to speak of 'classes' as real things, despite their want of bodies or minds distinct from those of their members? Any statistician will be able to answer this question, after a fashion. If enough members of a class tend to act uniformly in any given situation to render unim- portant, because uninfluential, the actions of the exceptional individuals, it is legitimate to speak loosely of the class as "acting" in such and such a way. If we find how, in this sens~, classes have in fact repeatedly responded, we may be able to predict, with some degree of probability, how they will respond in similar situations in the future. Such predictions are, however, only statements of statistical probability, and they tell us nothing about the probable behaviour of any particular member of the class. Marx assumes that classes, in this statistical sense, act in accordance with their conceptions of class-interest (and also, I think, that their conceptions of class-interest tend to coincide with real class-interests). Thus, his theory of class-action says nothing about the motives that move any particular individual to act: it is a complete misunderstanding to represent Marx as saying that everyone always acts either in the interest of his class, or in his own private interest. What he does hold is that, on any occasion when great numbers are involved, most of the individuals will act in accordance with class-interests as far as such interests arise; so that there exists a statistical probability that the power of a class will be thrown predominantly on the side of its interest. Marx, of course, did not state his position in 24  this way. He did not distinguish between statistical probability and certainty: he regarded the correlation between class-action and class-interest as certain for practical purposes of historical interpretation and prediction. But what he regarded as certain was not how the individual, but how the class, would act. Does the fact that it is possible to make highly probable statistical predictions about how a class will act justify treating the class as a "real thing"? That is mainly a question of termin- ology: if for "real thing" is substituted "real force," there cannot be much doubt about the answer. What is not justifiable is to conclude that any "reality" attributed to the class derogates in any respect from the "reality" of the individuals included in the class. Hegel did take this view; and Marx was enough under Hegel's influence at least to come near to taking it, and often to use language which appeared to imply it. How far he did consciously take it I am not sure. What is certain is that his belief that class-action was predictable in terms of interest, combined with his belief that class-action was the moving force in history, led him to relegate the individual to a quite subordinate role. This is the foundation of much of the ruthless- ness and lack of humanism that has characterised the application of the Marxian doctrine. Marx and Engels would probably have said that it was essential to the "scientific" spirit, and would have rested their claim to be "scientific Socialists" at least partly on this ground. But is the best scientist he who ignores "varia- tions"; and, if there is an analogy between Biology and Social Science, is it found in a practice of ignoring variations and relying exclusively on a study of statistical probabilities? The statistical method has been very fruitful in many fields of science, including Social Science; but, however fruitful it can be in sludying and in predicting class-behaviour, does it cover the whole field? Does it, for example, even begin to explain that "variation" in the 'powers of production' which, on Marx's own showing, sets the whole process of social evolution to work, and creates the classes whose behaviour is regarded as the means of bringing human institutions into a right relation with the developing 'powers of production'? The human mind does not act only as an ingredient in the "class-mind," or in class-behaviour. It acts in many other ways as well, including the fundamentally important way of acquiring new knowledge. True though the assertion of the essential unity of mind and body may be, it does not make the distinction between mind and external nature unimportant. When Marx first formulated his theory, the most pressing need may have been to confute 25  the Hegelians; but the attribution of concrete reality to classes was illogical, and the consequence of setting up "Materialism" against "Idealism" was to let loose endless misunderstandings upon an age less ridden by Hegelian Idealism than that of Marx's youth. The Powers of Production When we speak, in Marxian terms, of the 'powers of produc- tion' as the fundamental forces responsible for social evolution, the phrase has no meaning unless it applies not only to the natural forces which are at men's disposal, but also to the artificial forces which men have made by their use, and not only to all these forces, natural and artificial, taken together,. but also to men's knowledge of how to apply them-that is, to the human mind. Suppose a horde of savages left, by the flight or massacre of every civilised inhabitant, in undisputed possession of all the resources of an advanced country, but with no knowledgeable human being at hand to teach them the use of their new possessions. What would be the 'powers of production' in such a case? The great engines and power-stations, the complicated machines in the factories, the equipment of transport and communication-all these would cease to be 'powers of produc- tion' determining the course of social development and would become mere "matter,'' useless except where the savage minCi could devise, within its range of comprehension, some use for them-probably, in our eyes, mostly some peculiar or even ludicrous use. I remember reading somewhere of a motor car, captured by tribesmen who were ignorant of its use, and con- verted into a man-drawn ceremonial car for the chief. A thing becomes a 'power of production' only by virtue of a special relation to the mind of man; and this relation is not something given, but something achieved in the development of human knowledge. The Marxian Conception of History, in any inter- pretation of it that makes sense, is so far from representing men as merely the sport of things that it stresses more than any other theory the creative function of men in making the world after the pattern of their own knowledge. The outcome of the so- called 'Materialist Conception' is not to dethrone the mind of man, but on the contrary to assert that men make their own history against those who hold that God or the Absolute makes it for them, or that the whole course of human events is no more than a stream of undirected chance. 26  The Making of History Men make their own history; but according to Marx they make it primarily in the economic sphere. The great history- makers are those human societies which, by invention or experi- ment, or by enlarging the boundaries of human knowledge, alter the character of the powers of production, and therewith the ways in which men get their living and organise themselves for economic ends, or those which, by destroying civilisations and sweeping away the works and knowledge accumulated by generations of toil and experiment, drive men back to painful new beginnings of economic and cultural activity. This is not to say that in Marx's view the dominant role in history belongs to great scientists and inventors on the one hand, and to great captains of destruction upon the other; for in his view the great advances in the arts of production are social products and often the great invention arises as the cumulative result of the work of many innovators-and the most destructive warfare in history has often arisen not from one man's ambition or military genius, but from the migrations of entire peoples, or the clash of rival groups within a common civilisation. Emphatically, the "great man" theory of history is not what Marx believed in; but to deny its validity is not to deny that great men do count, for both good and ill. There is no warrant for the view that the Russian Revolution would have followed the same course without Lenin, or the French Revolution without Napoleon, or that Europe would have been just the same to-day if Hitler had never existed, or that someone else would have been bound to hit on just the same inventions as Watt and Siemens and Marconi at just the same time even if these particular individuals had never been born. It is fully consistent with Marxism to hold that great men do count; but the Marxist asserts that they count because their greatness fits in with the opportunities of their time. Nor will any Marxist agree that they count exclusively; for no Marxist will accept it as in the least true that in their absence the world would stand still, or that they are the only, or the principal, formative force in world history. According to Marx, what forms world history above all else is the continual interaction between what is given to men as their social inheritance, natural or acquired, and the minds of men in each generation. Indeed, Marxists, though they do not rule out the influence of 'great men,' tend to regard such men as more the products than the creators of their age. Superior products, no doubt--or at all events products more influential than others for good or 27  ill-but essentially products, in the sense that their 'greatness' lies in giving exceptionally powerful expression to forces which would be operative even in their absence, because they arise out of the developing relations between man and his economic environment. Marx in his account of historical evolu· tion makes little of 'great men' and much of the developing 'powers of production'; but the fact that inventions and discov- eries are largely social products does not get away from the fact that one element in the growth of these powers is the contribution of the 'great men' who either devise new forms of mastery over external nature or obstruct their development by annihilating knowledge or imposing fetters upon its expansion and diffusion in and between human societies. In considering how men's social heritage acts upon them, and how men act upon it, in any particular epoch, it is irrelevant how much of this heritage is natural and how much the product of the activity of earlier generations of men. For our own generation, the steam-engine and the electrical generator-and also, alas, the atomic bomb-are just as much parts of the objective situation which confronts mankind as the climate, ·or the minerals that are found near the earth's surface. It is, of course, true that there will soon be no steam-engines unless men go on making new ones, whereas there will be a climate'-. (but not necessarily quite the same climate) even if men suspend all activity in relation to it. But that is not the point, which is rather that, within any given civilisation, each generation finds itself presented with a certain objective situation, including both natural and man-made elements, and that it is upon this situa- tion that each generation of men has to build, within the limits imposed by it, and with the materials which it affords. This view of history does not, as many people appear to suppose, imply any sort of fatalism. It does not involve saying that, given a certain objective situation irrespective of the behaviour of the human beings who have to handle it, there is only one possible outcome, so that the next phase of human history is utterly predestined however human beings may behave. It does involve insisting that, as history is a chain of connected development, the next phase of any civilisation must be of such a nature that it can be developed out of its predecessor, and that men's power of influencing the course of history is limited to a choice between alternatives which are practicable in face of the objective situa- tion. It follows that, when the historian looks back on past phases of development within any given civilisation, he will be likely to find in the objective situations of the past sufficient 28 reasons for history having followed the course which it has actually followed, rather than any other. But this will be because his view of the objective situations of the past will include the actions in them of the human beings who shaped their growth. 'J'his is only the familiar dilemma of free will and determinism in one of its sociological aspects. Every event that has happened must have had sufficient cause and must therefore have been determined; but it does not follow that events which have not yet happened are pre-determined apart from the influence of those who have still to act in relation to them. For the causes are not complete until the human beings whose action makes history have done their part. The free wills of men form part of the chain of causality; and those wills are limited only by the limitations of their own knowledge and capacity and by the conditions within which they have to act. Is History a Straight-line Process? The foregoing paragraph has repeatedly been qualified by saying "within a given civilisation." When the field of study is extended to cover all human history, including the impact of one civilisation upon another, much more complex issues have to be faced. The attempt, made in The Communist Manifesto, to explain all history as a single, continuous chain of economic development involves gross over-simplification, if not falsification, of the facts. To what extent Marx really believed in this simplified version of his theory we shall have to consider later on. Mean- while, let us bear in mind that the Manifesto was a propagandist pamphlet, and not a theoretical treatise, and that we cannot necessarily take its sweeping generalisations quite au pied de la lettre. Engels, in editing it, had to except 'Primitive Communism' in a footnote; and its practical morals would be unaffected even if its account of the march of history were to be regarded as applicable, in the form given to it in the Manifesto, only, say, to the Western World, seen as in broadly continuous development from the dawn of civilisation in the Near and Middle East up to its present phase. Marxism is determinist, in the sense of rejecting the causeless as a formative force in history; but it is not fatalist. No one who reads Marx's political writings, or his elaborate plannings of Socialist strategy, can reasonably suppose that he considered the victory of Socialism to be predestined as to both time and place, and the behaviour of men in the objective situations which faced them to be limited to an inevitable reaction to economic 29 circumstances. He clearly held that it made a quite vitally significant difference to the prospects of Socialism how Socialists behaved, and that their behaviour was capable of being influenced by instruction and exhortation and example. The Coming qf Socialism It is, however, sometimes suggested, with more plausibility, that Marx did believe the coming of Socialism to be inevitable, and held that men could, by their conduct, only advance or delay its coming, or cause it to come in a more or less satisfactory form. It is quite possible that Marx did hold this view; but, whether or no, it does not follow as an inexorable deduction from his conception of history. If he held it, his case presumably would be that the objective conditions facing the modern world were of such a nature as to make some form of Socialism the only possible next main stage in the development of Western civilisation. On this view, nothing except Socialism would be compatible with the limiting conditions of objective possibility, and men's power of influencing history would be restricted to making Socialism well or ill, and in this or that of its variant possible forms. Such a judgment, whether correct or not, does not form a necessary part of the Marxian Theory of History, in the sense that anyone who holds the Marxian theory is bound to assent to it. It is a deduction from that theory when it has been brought into contact with the available facts of a particular historical situation, and its validity depends not on the sound- ness of the theory alone, but also on the observer's skill in selecting from and interpreting this particular set of facts. If something other than Socialism should succeed to Capitalism as the next historical form of social organisation, that would not at all prove the Marxian Conception of History to be wrong. It would at most only show that Marx had made a mistake in interpreting a particular set of facts in the light of his theory. It is no doubt possible to hold, as an integral element in a theory of history, that historical epochs do succeed one another in a predestined order, so that there can never be more than one possible successor to any given system. But what conceivably valid ground can there be for such a view? If it is held at all, it must be held simply a priori; for it is by its nature incapable of verification or even of plausible demonstration in the light of the facts. It is, in effect, a piece of mysticism, wholly out of keeping with the realistic temper of the theory we have been discussing. Hegel could plausibly have held such a view, because 30 for him all history was the logical unfolding of the Idea, and freedom consisted solely in furthering this cosmic process. But nothing can square it with a realistic approach to the facts; for to the realist there can be no logical reason why a given objective situation, considered apart from those who are to handle it, should not have more than one possible outcome. It is of course fully possible for a realist to consider that Socialism is both by far the best and by far the most probable successor to Capitalism as a form of social organisation, or even to reach, on the basis of his study of the facts, the conclusion that there is no positive alternative. But by this he can mean only that he can see or imagine no positive alternative, and that in his judgment there is none. He cannot rationally mean that in the very nature of things there can be no alternative, or even that there can be none of a positive kind. It follows that, in judging that there is no positive alternative, he may be mis- taken. Moreover, even if his judgment is objectively right, the possibility of a negative alternative remains. It may be a case of Socialism or-chaos. The only alternative to the building up of some sort of Socialist system may be the sheer dissolution of the civilisation that has reached this critical stage. And, in such a situation, the behaviour of men in facing it may make just the vital difference between the collapse of a civilisation and its advance to a new phase of development. Men's choice is confined to the objectively practicable; but how vital that choice may be when the alternatives are delicately poised! Beyond doubt, Marx took it as "scientifically" certain that Socialism would be the next phase in the history of Western civilisation. Always he wrote as if he regarded the coming of Socialism as inevitable, and only the time and manner of its coming as open to doubt. But this judgment of his rested on two assumptions which are fundamentally quite distinct from his assertion of the primacy of economic forces-of the 'powers of production'-in shaping the course of history. The first of these assumptions was that all human history is to be regarded as a continuous process of development from lower to higher forms, analogous to that which biologists were discovering in his day in the field of organic nature. Engels later declared that Marx had done for the study of social evolution what Darwin had done for Biology, and had thus provided a foundation for "Scientific" Socialism, which rendered the earlier, 'Utopian' forms of Socialism obsolete. The analogy was, however, false. Darwin by no means divided the course of biological evolution 31 into a series of great epochs, each marked by the emergence of a new and higher single dominant species. It was Herbert Spencer, rather than Darwin, who attempted to present bio- logical development as a teleological process of unified advance from lower to higher forms-from the simpler to the more differentiated types of organic life. There was in Darwin's theory nothing at all corresponding to Marx's (or to Comte's) epochs-much less to Marx's conception of social evolution as the instrument of change from one epoch to another. The Belief in Progress The plain truth is that Marx worked out his conception of historical development under the spell not of Darwin but of Hegel, who in turn had worked under the spell of earlier theorists inspired by the notions of human perfectibility and continuous underlying progress of the human spirit. Marx, in discarding the Idealistic philosophy of these thinkers, did not discard the framework of their thought, which was a belief in the inevitable "march of man." For his predecessors this belief had been founded on the idea of divine government of the universe and of human affairs, and God's benevolence towards man was the ultimate guarantee of progress. 1 Marx of course rejected this notion of divine governance; but he somehow, like many other nineteenth century atheists, kept the belief in progress which had rested on it. He continued to think that history must work out well even though there was admittedly no deus ex machina to ensure this result. Marx was able to hold to this position, because he substituted for divine providence a conception of the inevitable march of nature, as expressed in the development of the "material" powers of production. This, however, even if it could be held to guarantee development, could by no means logically be treated as guaranteeing that the development would make for men's happiness or well-being. The force of nature had to be regarded as 'Yholly neutral in relation to men's ends and desires save to the extent to which men were themselves operating as a part of nature. To the extent to which they were, nature could be said not to be neutral in relation to their desires; but there could be no assurance that this unneutral element in nature would always be strong enough to prevail against the neutral elements, so as to ensure continuous human progress from epoch to epoch. Marx, however, always assumed that this human element in 1 This was the basis, for example, of Kant's Philosophy of History. nature would be able to co-operate with the rest of nature in such a way as to shape nature as a whole to its developing ends. Social Conflicts Marx's second assumption, derived directly from Hegel, was that the method of historical development was essentially 'dialectical,' in Hegel's sense of the word. That is to say, it was by way of conflict. In Marx's inverted Hegelianism, this conflict could not be between ideas: it had to be between 'real' forces. These forces Marx saw in economic classes, each historical epoch embodying the supremacy of a particular class. Granted this, he felt he could point to the proletariat as the only class capable of succeeding the bourgeoisie in power; and, regarding the proletariat as essentially a single, indivisible class, in process of being more and more completely unified by subjection to a common exploitation, he felt he could regard the victory of the proletariat as leading directly to Socialism, because its emanci- pation would leave no subject class to be exploited. These are issues to which I shall return later; for the present we need only observe that Marx's rightness or wrongness on this point does not in any way affect the validity of his fundamental theory about the preponderant influence of the powers of production. Marx, then, regarded Socialism as the inevitable next stage in social evolution, because he regarded each stage as involving the supremacy of a particular class, up to the stage at which the very notion of class would be done away with by the institution of a 'classless society.' Under Capitalism there remained, he insisted, only one exploited class capable of taking upon itself the historical function of organising the fuller use of the develop- ing powers of production. The victory of this class over Capitalism would therefore clear the way directly for the institution of a classless economic order, of which Socialism would be the institutional expression. This view rests upon at least three distinct foundations: first, that the proletariat is the only class capable of taking over fi-om the capitalist class the ruling power in society; secondly, that society is destined to pass through successive phases of class- domination into classlessness, and cannot simply break down and revert to a more primitive phase; and thirdly, that Socialism is the only form which can be taken by the institutions of a proletarian revolution. These views may all be correct; but they are not self-evident, and they cannot be deduced directly from the primary affirmation of Marxism that what determines the course of human history is the development of the powers of BMM 33  production. They are derived rather from the secondary doctrine of Marxism, that the way in which human institutions are adjusted to fit the requirements of the developing powers of production is the way of class-struggles. It would be quite possible to agree with Marx's primary affirmation, but not with this secondary affirmation about the mechanics of social evolu- tion. It would also be possible to hold that the proletariat is not in fact so completely unitary a class as to exclude the possi- bility of continued class-exploitation even after a section of it had won political and economic power; and finally it could be held that some economic system other than Socialism might prove to be consistent with the further development of the powers of production. Of course, any Marxist will deny that these are real possi- bilities. This denial, however, rests on an unproven assumption that the technical evolution of the powers of production is necessarily such as to require for their effective use the increasing 'socialisation' of control by placing authority in the hands of wider and wider classes, and finally of the whole society. But is there any finally valid reason why the powers of production should not develop in such a way as to call for their control by a narrower, and not by a wider, ruling class? If Marx thought there was, may not the reason have been, not anything 'scientific' in the basis of his thought, but rather an acceptance of the widespread contemporary belief in the inevitability of human progress? We are more disposed than were his generation to ask ourselves whether this belief has any scientific basis, and also whether, in its absence, there would be any reason for taking the inevitability of Socialism for granted. I am not attempting to answer any of these questions at this point. I am only raising them in order to affirm that there can be ample scope within a "Realist" Conception of History for the constructive influence of the minds of men. Indeed, the practical value of such a conception as a guide to method lies largely in the warning which it gives men against banging their heads uselessly against brick walls. It directs men's minds away from the Utopian, the unrealisable save in fancy, towards the real possibilities of the objective situations in which they are placed, and teaches them, by thinking and acting realistically, to control the course of history far more than they could if they were content with Utopias of the mind. For it is no less indispen- sable for the social than for the mechanical engineer to accept the qualities and limitations of the forces and materials with which he has to work. 34  J he Class-struggle The Marxian theory of the method of social evolution, however, involves, as we have seen, not only the primary assertion of the overriding influence of the powers of production, but also the secondary assertion that social evolution works itself out by means of the struggle of classes. In the Hegelian dialectic, development takes place always and essentially by means of conflict. In the realm of ideas, antithesis joins battle with thesis, till out of their conflict a new synthesis is born; and this struggle is mirrored in the phenomenal history of men and things. lviarx, in turning the Hegelian conception upside down, took over from it the central importance assigned in it to the notion of conflict, and equally with Hegel made conflict the necessary dynamic of social change. But of what nature was the inverted conflict to be? It is easy to master the notion of a conflict of ideas leading to the discovery of a new idea based on both the contestants and incorporating the valid elements in each of them; but in Marx's inverted Hegelian world, what are the contestants? If Marxism were truly "materialism," as most people understand that term, they could be only material things apart from the minds of men. Social evolution would have to take the form of the non-human powers of production fighting one another-a process which it would be exceedingly difficult to express plausibly or lucidly in dialectical form-or indeed in any form at all. But in Marx's view the combatants in social conflict are not mere things but men, or rather groups of men ordered in economic classes in accordance with their differing relations to the non-human powers of production and one to another. This is the theory of the class-struggle, as repeated in changing forms through human history till its end is reached with the l.inal abolition of classes and the institution of a classless Society. There will be much to say about this theory in later chapters, when we come to discuss the class structures and loyalties of the world of to-day. Here we are concerned with the theory only as an element in the Marxian method. In reading Marx's writings, above all Das Kapital, one is continually reminded of his tendency to regard the class as somehow more deeply 'real' than the individuals who make it up-certainly as a more important influence on historical evolution. Despite his insistence on the priority of things over ideas, he gives the class priority over the individuals who make it up, and treats the class as a thing, and not as an idea. Especi- ally does he tend to speak in this way of the modem world; 35  for he conceives that, under the capitalist system of large-scale machine production, the individual workman has lost the status and character of an individual producer, and has become merely a "detail-labourer" whose work has meaning only in relation to the work of numerous other labourers working at the same or at related processes within a complex productive unit of which they are part. Even the individual capitalist has largely lost his independence, and has become a contributor to a chain of related processes linking one commodity to another from the first raw material to the final output of consumers' or of capital goods. This rapidly developing interrelation of the entire economic system is called by Marx the process of economic "socialisation," to which Socialism is the appropriate institutional counterpart. Capital is becoming "socialised," and is above all "socialising" the workers who are employed in conjunction with it as elements in a growingly social productive process; and this indispensable "socialisation" of the productive powers of society is laying the necessary foundations for the socialisation of the ownership of the means of production, of the control of the political machine, and of the economic classes which it will merge into the social solidarity of the coming classless society. It is of vital importance to state this conception of the 'reality' of classes aright. Marx sometimes seems to be playing danger- ously-all the more so because but half-consciously-with the Hegelian conception of degrees of reality, as if the reality and historical influence of classes somehow condemned their indivi- dual members to a subordinate order of real existence. I But it is quite unnecessary for the validity of Marx's primary assertion of the predominant influence of the powers of production to entertain any such metaphysical view. Groups can be real forces, and can exert a real influence on their members, without derogating at all from the reality of the individuals of whom they are made up; and a man may be a "detail-labourer" in a factory, with no isolable individual product of his own, without losing his individuality as a person, however much he may act and think as a member of a group. Social Action At this point we are confronted once more with the same question as we met with in the discussion of men's freedom to 1 Marx himself says that in the fint volume of Capital, in treating of the theog of value, he "here and there coquetted" with the modes of expression pecubar to Hegel, and that he "avowed himself the pupil of that mi!jthty thinker.'" In fact, Hegel's influence on Marx's mode of thought remamed strong to the end. 36  make their own history within a system of economic necessity. Vor here again the status and implications of membership of a hrroup or class set limits within which the individual is com- pelled to work in order to get what he wants. All action is in the last resort action by individuals, but the individual who occupies a defined place within an established social system can act effectively 'either to uphold or to change it only if he acts appropriately in relation to the objective conditions. This means, in social matters, acting in association with others who are similarly placed, or whose circumstances, even if they differ, are so related to his own as to afford a basis for co-operative action. It is of course always possible for an individual to dissociate himself from those who are similarly placed with himself, and to act in opposition to his own group or class. But, even in this case, he will be able to act effectively in socialmtJtters1 only if he transfers his allegiance to some other group or class, within which he can find like-minded collaborators. In any society of men, collaboration is the prerequisite of effective social activity. There has never been a human society in which each individual acted by himself, without group loyalty or collaboration. Such a society can be imagined by mad philo- sophers or by laissez:,-faire economists; but it is quite out of the question that any real society of men should ever bear a signifi- cant resemblance to it. This collaboration among men is by no means based exclusively either on a rational calculation of self-interest, or on a merely passive acceptance of the implications of a common status. It is neither Benthamite nor sheerly determined apart from men's wills and desires. Based largely on community of needs, experi- ences and purposes, it is informed by a spirit of loyalty and fellovvship. It affects men in their altruistic as well as their egoistic impulses; and the strength with which it is felt differs greatly from man to man, quite apart from differences in their economic and social experience. For this reason a class cannot be defined, when it is regarded as an active agent of social change, simply in terms of its common economic experience. Jt becomes fully a class, in this positive sense, only to the extent to which it is permeated by a spirit of loyalty. 1 I.e. on the plane of those activities which, according to Marx, form the "superstructure" reared on the foundations supplied by the "powers of production." It may be quite possible for an indiVIdual to act on his own in devising some new invention or discovery that may have prodigious social ellects. 37  Class and Class-consciousness It is sometimes suggested that a class becomes a class, in this positive sense, only to the extent to which its members become "class-conscious." But this is not wholly so, if class-consciousness is held to imply a clear formulation of the notion of class- solidarity in the members' minds. Class loyalty can be very strong, at any rate in its negative reactions, without the notion of class-solidarity being clearly present in the minds of most of the members. But class-consciousness, through which loyalty becomes a reasoned conception of solidarity without losing its emotional content, is a powerful agent in strengthening the ties of the class-group. The sense of loyalty becomes the stronger for being made the basis of a rational idea; and classes become powerful instruments of social Change when the instinctive class-loyalty of the majority passes under the leadership of a rationally class-conscious minority. Marxian Socialism, which could have no wide appeal if there were no foundation of class- loyalty for it to build upon, has been a means of equipping large sections of the working classes in the industrial countries with this ·reasoning class-conscious leadership. For, if Marxism is essentially rationalistic in its methods and doctrines, it has its roots deep down in the simple sense of a common fellowship among the oppressed. That class-loyalty need not imply class-consciousness in the individual is seen far more clearly among the upper than in the lower strata of human societies. Those whom the existing social and economic arrangements suit best are often least conscious of acting together on a basis of class. They feel themselves to be acting in defence, not of a single class, but of the whole society, as it is actually constituted; and they :r:epudiate angrily, and often quite sincerely, the suggestion that their attitude is influenced by considerations of class. Yet such people have usually a very high degree of class-loyalty and of solidarity one with another, as we can see by their eagerness to sustain common and exclusive cultural and social standards of their own, by their intermarriages one with another, and by their care in preserving from invasion their own educational institutions and their monopoly of certain professions and callings, as well as, in "open" societies, by their skill in assimilating such outsiders as do penetrate from above or from below inside the circle of their class. To classes in this position, class-consciousness of a reasoned and explicit kind is unnecessary; indeed, it is a positive danger. They are the stronger if they, and even their leaders, can believe that they are acting, not in any narrow spirit of class-egoism, but as the 38 protagonists of the community as a whole. The British upper class in the eighteenth century, and the British middle class in the generation following the Reform Act of 1832, alike possessed this spirit almost to perfection; and despite the confidence- disturbing experiences of the 1930's, which a great many of them are doing their level best to forget, the main body of the American middle classes has it to-day. On the other hand, for a class which has still to win power, in order to become a controlling agent of social change, a con- siderable degree of positive class-consciousness is indispensable. For a far higher degree of deliberately organised co-operation is needed for changing the form of society than for preserving the status quo under conditions which make for its continuance. A governing class comes to need class-consciousness only when the onslaught upon it is already being pressed hard, and when it has been forced into a posture of defence. In such circum- stances the most hopeful line of defence is prompt and vigorous counter-attack; and class-loyalty without class-consciousness is incapable of taking the offensive. Class-consciousness, however, is essentially a matter of degree. Any class contains some members who possess it in a high degree, some who possess it not at all, and some who are at every inter- mediate stage between the extremes. The objective conditions are the· most important determinants of the strength and diffusion of class-consciousness. But they are not the only determinants; for the turning of class-loyalty into class-conscious- ness is largely a matter of propaganda and organisation. Trade Unions spring up everywhere as capitalist production develops; but both the numbers of their adherents and the degree to which they are animated by a class-conscious attitude depend greatly on the character of their leadership. It takes a highly organised class-conscious minority to imbue the collective organisations based on common interests and loyalties with any high degree of class-consciousness. Class atld Group We begin to see now what is meant by Marx's insistence on the "reality" and efficacy of economic classes. They are 'real' in and through their capacity for organised collective action. The creation of Trade Unions, of Co-operative Societies, of rudimentary political organisations formed largely on a class I Jasis, is the first step towards the collective self-expression of the working class. But it is only the first step; for such bodies are 39  formed first sporadically, among groups here and there, under the impulsion of immediate needs and experiences. They are not class-organisations, but group-organisations formed on such a basis as to have the potentiality of cohering at a second stage into larger units and associations, under the influence partly of developments in the objective situation-the growth of larger- scale Capitalism, for example-and partly of constructive leader- ship using the opportunities which the developing situation presents. But, though they have this potentiality, there is no certainty of it being realised; for the objective situation by itself will not suffice to create a consciously organised class. That is the work ofmen-ofleaders; and, though the d~veloping situation is a powerful agency in calling latent leadership into active life, the successful conscious organisation of a class is no more inevitable than the advent of a Lenin or a Napoleon or a Hitler. Indeed, even when class-organisation has been brought to a high pitch of mechanical efficiency, under the inspiration of leaders possessing a reasoned class-conscious point of view, success is not assured. For, if the leadership subsequently fails, the imposing mass-organisation may rot away inwardly, pre- serving only the semblance of the class-solidarity and the class- consciousness which gave it its original driving-force. Nothing in human history is ever inevitable until it has happened, not because things happen without a cause, but because no chain of causation is ever complete until it has actually produced its effect. Leadership, then, is essential to make a class an effective agent of social development. But if classes need constructive leadership, leaders are nothing unless they are able to place themselves at the head of forces upon which the objective situa- tion confers the opportunity of real power. Marx's point is not merely that effective action in the sphere of world history is always collective action, involving the collaboration of a group, but also that these groups must be of a particular kind. A man may collect a group of followers round him on the basis of an idea, or groups may arise on a foundation of neighbourhood, race, nationality, or religion; but in Marx's view no group plays a dominant role in world history unless it appears as the repre- sentative of a class. This does not mean that Marx regards the part played by other groups as unimportant or ineffective, but only that he deems it secondary, and holds that no group that is not also a class is ever the main agent of transition from one stage of social evolution to another. A group which is not also the embodiment of a class may be able to make history within 40 the framework of a given social system, and to exert a powerful secondary influence on the character of the change from one system to another; but in Marx's view no such group can itself effect a major change of system. Why does Marx hold this? Because each social system-that is, each stage in social development-corresponds in his view to a particular arrangement of the powers of production, and therefore involves a particular set of class-relationships. There is, in his view, a particular relation between the powers of produc- tion and the class-system. He holds that a group which is not the embodiment of a class does not stand for any particular way of arranging the powers of production. It does not stand for a particular social system based on a particular stage in the development of man's power over nature, and expressing itself in a set of economic class-relationships calculated to secure the most effective use of this power. It cannot therefore stand as the representative of an existing social system, or as the protago- nist in the struggle to replace it by a new one. For as soon as it came to be either of these things, it would have become the representative of a particular economic class. Be it clearly understood that Marx does not suggest that the groups which stand as the representatives of classes must always be consciously aiming chiefly at economic ends, or must express their aspirations always in economic terms. On the contrary, he affirms that class-struggles are often fought out in terms which have apparently little or nothing to do with economic questions or with class-relationships. A group may become the representa- tive of a class even if it begins and develops without any conscious reference to class issues. Men, Marx says, have often fought out essentially economic struggles in religious or ideological terms, making the will of God or the dictates of universal justice in the image of their own class-needs, or taking over and turning to a class-purpose an institution or a doctrine which had no class- implications in the minds of its original makers. Everyone is familiar in these days with Max Weber's view that there has been an intimate connection between the growth of Protestantism and Puritanism and the rise of the capitalist system, not because Protestants and Puritans were conscious hypocrites, eager to throw a veil of religion over their economic rapacity, but because "the Protestant ethic" provided a basis for "free" and "rational" business activity. Others have reversed this judgment, and have argued that the developing class of traders and indus- trial entrepreneurs seized avidly on an ethic which fitted in admir- ably with the economic practices appropriate to the objective 41 situation with which they had to deal. Similarly, in eighteenth- century England, Wesleyanism exactly suited the needs of the new class of abstinent capitalists because it not merely strength- ened them for money-making by encouraging their abstinence, but also gave them the satisfYing sense that they could make money to the glory of God. This glorification of money-making, on the ground that money made and saved is the outward and visible sign that a man has wrought hard in this world of tribulation, runs as a strange thread of self-deception through one early Wesleyan apologia after another. Groups and associations are not classes, but they can and do become in varying degrees the representatives of class aspirations and points ofview. To this power, Marx argues, they owe their ultimate efficacy as agents of social transformation. But this is not to say that any group can become an agent of social trans- formation by coming to represent a class. For not all classes at all times are either the protagonists in the defence of an existing social order, or the leaders of a crusade against it. There are classes to which, at least at a particular stage of social evolution, a role of dominance is necessarily denied-for example, the class of landlords in a situation already dominated by large-scale industrial Capitalism. A class, in Marx's system, plays the leading role in defence or attack only if its class point of view coincides with the requirements of the existing arrangement of the conditions of production or with those of an alternative arrangement calculated to advance the development of produc- tion to a higher stage. The class thus occupies an intermediate position between the active groups which lead and represent it and the economic foundations on which it rests. How Classes Arise How, then, does a class come into existence? Marx holds that it arises out of the requirements of the objective situation of the powers of production. At any stage, men possess certain natural and acquired resources of things and of knowledge of the use of things, and these together form their equipment for caiT}'ing on the work of production. But this work can be carried on only if there arises in fact, or by conscious adoption, a social arrangement for its conduct. There must be laws or conventions or customs regulating the right of use, or ownership, of the instruments of production; and there must be operative relation- ships between men as producers, whether these relationships arise out of force or by consent. Someone must dig, fetch and carry, organise and give orders; there must be some way of 42  dividing the products of associative labour; and finally there must be some way of enforcing conformity with the rules and conventions of the established system, whatever it may be, and some way of assigning to each man his place and function. In other words, every arrangement of the powers of production necessarily implies a social system-an ordering of the relation- ships between men and things and between men and men, on a basis consistent with the development of the available productive resources. But this in its turn has involved, at every stage of human history up to the present, a set of class-relationships; for the arrangement of men into groups with different economic functions and claims has been at every staget an arrangement of them into economic classes. Observe that I say "has been," and not "must be"; for it is not suggested that the division of society into economic classes is inevitable for all time. What is suggested is that the class- systems of the past and present, however much evil they may seem to embody when they are judged by ideal standards, have been, at the time of their origin, instruments for organising the advance of men's power over nature, and the enlargement of the opportunities for welfare. They have not been necessarily the best instruments possible at the time of their advent to power-to believe that would be to relapse into fatalism-but they have been the means of improving, economically, on what went before. Or rather, they have been so, subject to one qualification of outstanding importance, the omission of which has vitiated much Marxist ·thinking. This qualification is that the entire process with which we have been dealing seems to be envisaged as relating to the internal development of a given civilisation, and not to the impact of one civilisation upon another. For it must surely be admitted that, where a whole civilisation is overthrown, as happened at the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as a world system, the course of development follows the lines made possible by the economic power and knowledge and assimilative capacity of the conquerors, and not of the defeated civilisation-so that in such a case a higher stage of economic evolution and knowledge may be displaced by a lower. No doubt, where this happens, some part at least of the civilisation of the conquered will usually be assimilated in time I Except perhaps at the most primitive; for ~]s at any rate believed in a "Primitive Communism" as the classless starting point of human history, and therefore, in a footnote to TM Communist Manifesto, exempted this first stage from the operation of the general formula. 43 by the conquerors, and so preserved and caught up into a fresh advance. Moreover, what is from one point of view a regression may be from another the basis for an advance. The fall of the Western Roman Empire opened the "Dark Ages"; but it also got rid of slavery as the basis of the productive system, and replaced it by serfdom, which is undoubtedly a higher economic form. Nevertheless, as soon as we begin to think in terms, not of a "straight line" evolut