Routledge Library Editions karl marx

Weitling and Proudhon

The discussions which now took place between Marx and the two brilliant proletarian theorists who had exercised such an important influence on his early development were incomparably more moving from a human point of view and incomparably more significant politically than his criticisms of the Post-Hegelian philosophers and of the “ True Socialists ”.

Weitling and Proudhon were both born in the ranks of the proletariat. Both were blessed with healthy and vigorous characters, both were generously talented and both were so favoured by outward circumstances that it would probably have been possible for them to be amongst those rare exceptions which flatter that Philistine axiom which declares that the ascent into the ranks of the possessing classes is open to anyone of real talent in the ranks of the working class. Both men scorned to take this path, and instead they remained voluntarily in poverty and devoted themselves to fighting for their class and for their fellow-sufferers.

They were both well-built men, strong and vigorous, and made to enjoy the good things of life, but instead they gladly suffered the severest privations in order to pursue their aims. “ A modest bed, often with three persons in the same room, a piece of board as a writing desk, and now and then a cup of black coffee ”.




That was the life Weitling was living at a time when his name was already a sound of fear in the ears of the great ones of the earth, and Proudhon was living similarly in a Paris attic, “ clothed in a knitted woollen jacket with his feet in clattering wooden clogs ”, at a time when he already enjoyed a European reputation.

Both French and German culture went to the making of both men. Weitling was the son of a French officer, and when he grew old enough he hurried to Paris to study French socialism at the source. Proudhon came from the old free county of Burgundy, which had been annexed to France under Louis XIV. His associates always declared that he had a German head—and occasionally a German thick head. But, one way or the other, when he awakened to intellectual activity Proudhon felt drawn to German philosophy, whose representatives Weitling regarded as nothing but hazy “ confusionists ”, whilst on the other hand Proudhon condemned with extreme severity the great utopians who had meant so much to Weitling.

The two men shared the same fame and the same fate. They were the first members of the modern proletariat to provide historical proof of the intellect and vigour of the proletariat, proof that it could free itself, and they were the first to break down the vicious circle in which the working-class movement and socialism revolved. To this extent therefore they opened up a new epoch, and their work and their activity were exemplary and exercised a fruitful influence on the development of scientific socialism. No one has praised the beginnings of Weitling and Proudhon more generously than Marx. That which the critical dissolution of Hegelian philosophy had given him as the result of speculative thought he now saw confirmed in real life chiefly by Weitling and Proudhon.

Despite all their discernment and far-sightedness, however, Weitling never developed beyond the German artisan or Proudhon beyond the French petty-bourgeois, and thus they parted from the man who completed magnificently what they had so brilliantly begun. It was the result neither of personal vanity nor obstinate dogmatism, though perhaps both played some role the more the two felt themselves being stranded by the flow of historical development. Their discussions with Marx show that they simply did not grasp what he was driving at. They were the victims of a limited class consciousness which was all the more effective because it influenced both of them unconsciously.

Weitling arrived in Brussels in the beginning of 1846. Mter his agitation in Switzerland had come to an end, partly owing to internal dissension and partly owing to the exercise of brute force by the authorities, he had left for London, where however he was




unable to get along with the members of the League of the Just. His efforts to save himself from a cruel fate by seeking refuge in prophetic arrogance made matters worse instead of better. Although the waves of Chartist agitation were rising high in England at the time he did not plunge into the English working- class movement, but turned his attention to drawing up a system of thought and speech with a view to founding a world language, and from that time on this became increasingly his favourite fad. He plunged recklessly into tasks for 'which his capacities and knowledge in no way fitted him and as a result he fell into an intellectual isolation which separated him more and more from the real source of his strength, the life of his class.

His journey to Brussels was certainly the best thing he could do, for if anyone could save him intellectually it was Marx. The latter received him hospitably, and this fact is vouched for not only by Engels but also by Weitling himself. However, any intellectual agreement between them proved impossible, and at a meeting of communists which took place in Brussels on the 30th of March 1846 the two came to grips violently. Weitling had irritated Marx extremely, as can be seen from a letter written by the former to Moses Hess. Negotiations were proceeding in connection with a new publishing house and Weitling insinuated that Marx and his friends were trying to cut him off from the “ financial sources ” in order to do well themselves with “ well-paid translations ”, but even after this Marx did what he could for Weitling. Writing to Marx on the basis of a report from Weitling, Moses Hess declared in a letter from Verviers on the 6th of May : “ It was to be expected from you that your hostility towards him would not go so far as to close your purse hermetically so long as there was still something in ^;t.” There was, in fact, desperately little in it.

A few days later Weitling forced matters to the point of an irreparable breach. The propaganda conducted by Kriege in America had not justified the hopes both Marx and Engels had placed in it. The Volkslribun, a weekly newspaper which Kriege issued in New York, carried on fantastic and gushingly sentimental propaganda in a fashion both childish and pompous. This propaganda had nothing to do with any communist principles, and it tended to demoralize the workers utterly. Even worse than this, however, was the fact that Kriege began to send out grotesque letters to rich Americans begging them for financial support for the paper. As he presented himself in America as the literary representative of German communism its real representatives had every reason to protest against the compromising association.

On the 16th of May Marx and Engels and their supporters




decided to make a detailed protest in a circular to be sent to Kriege’s paper for publication and to all their sympathizers. Weitling was the only one who refused to associate himself with the protest and he sought to justify his attitude with various empty pretexts : the Volkstribun was after all a communist organ and it was suited to American conditions ; the communists had enough powerful enemies in Europe without looking for trouble in America, particularly with their own comrades, etc. However, he was not satisfied with his refusal alone, but wrote a letter to Kriege warning him against those who had signed the protest as “ cunning intriguers ”. “ The League, which is rolling in

money, and consists of perhaps a dozen or a score ofindividuals, has nothing better to do than fight against me, the reactionary. I am to be polished off first, then the others and finally their friends, whilst in the end of course they will cut their own throats.

. . . And tremendous sums of money are now coming in for this sort of thing, whilst I cannot even find a publisher. Hess and I are quite alone on this side, but Hess is boycotted also.” After that Hess also abandoned the deluded man.

Kriege published the protest of the Brussels communists and it was also published by Weydemeyer in the Westfalisches Dampfboot. However, Kriege published Weitling’s letter, or at least its worst passages, as a sort of antidote, and persuaded the Social Reform Association, a German workers organization in America which had chosen Kriege’s weekly as its organ, to appoint Weitling as editor and to send him the money for the journey. Weitling accepted and disappeared from Europe.

In the same month, May, the breach between Marx and Proudhon came nearer. In order to make up for the lack of an organ of their own Marx and his friends issued printed or lithographed circulars, as in the Kriege affair, and at the same time sought to establish permanent correspondence connections between the various big towns in which there were communist groups. Such Corresponding Bureaux, as they were called, existed in Brussels and London, and one was to be set up in Paris, and Marx therefore wrote to Proudhon asking him to co-operate. On the 17th of May 1846 Proudhon sent a letter from Lyon agreeing, but pointingout that he would be able towrite neither often nor much. At the same time he utilized the occasion to deliver a moral lecture to Marx which revealed to the latter how wide was the gulf which had opened up between them.

Proudhon now professed “ an almost absolute anti-dog matism ” in economic matters and advised Marx not to fall into the error of his countryman Luther, who, after the overthrow of




Catholic theology, had immediately begun to found a Protestant theology to the accompaniment of a great wealth of anathema and excommunications. “ We should not give mankind new work by creating new confusion. Let us rather give the world an example of wise and far-seeing toleration. We should not play the role of apostles of a new religion even if that religion is the religion of logic and reason.” In other words, like the “ True Socialists ”, he wished to maintain that pleasant confusion whose abolition Marx considered the preliminary condition for any real communist propaganda.

Proudhon also abandoned the revolution in which he had believed so long : “ I prefer to burn property in a slow fire rather than give it new force in a St. Bartholomew’s Night of property owners.” He announced that he had given a detailed explanation of how this problem was to be solved in a work which was already half printed, and promised to submit it to the scourge of Marx’s criticism gladly in the expectation of his revenge. “ In passing I may remark that in my opinion the situation is : our proletarians in France have such a great thirst for knowledge that we should get a bad reception if we offered them nothing to drink but blood.” Proudhon then defended Karl Grun against whose misunderstood Hegelianism Marx had warned him. Owing to his ignorance of German Proudhon was dependent on Grun and Ewerbeck in his studies of Hegel and Feuerbach and Marx and Engels. He informed Marx that Grun intended to translate his, Proudhon’s, latest work into German, and asked whether Marx would assist in the distribution, adding that this would be honorable for everyone concerned.

The conclusion of Proudhon’s letter sounds almost like mockery, though it was probably not intended to, but in any case Marx can hardly have found it edifying to be described as bloodthirsty in the bombastic gibberish of Proudhon, and in consequence the doings of Grun gave rise to even stronger suspicion. This was one of the reasons why in August 1846 Engels decided to go to Paris for a while and take over the reporting there, for Paris was still the most important centre of communist propaganda. It was necessary to inform the Paris communists at first hand about the breach with Weitling, the Westphalian publishing fiasco and about those various other matters which had stirred up the dust, particularly as Ewerbeck was not altogether reliable, and Bernays still less so.

In the beginning the reports sent by Engels from Paris, some to the Brussels Corresponding Bureau and others to Marx personally, were quite hopeful, but gradually he came to the conclusion that Grun had thoroughly “ mucked up ” the whole situation.




The work mentioned by Proudhon in his letter appeared i n the autumn of the same year and turned out in fact to lead into the morass as his letter had already indicated. Marx then proceeded to wield the scourge of criticism thoroughly as Proudhon had invited, but all the revenge that the latter took, consisted in a certain amount of round abuse.

2. 
   Historical Materialism
   

Proudhon entitled his book The System of Economic Contradictions, with the sub-title “ The Philosophy of Poverty ’’,¹ and Marx therefore entitled his reply The Poverty of Philosophy and he wrote it in French in order to hit his opponent still more certainly. As a matter of fact, Marx did not succeed, for Proudhon’s influence on the French working class and on the proletariat of the neo- Latin countries in general rose rather than fell, and for many decades Marx had still to contend with Proudhonism.

However, neither the immediate value of his reply nor its historical significance was diminished thereby. It represented a milestone both in the life of its author and in the history of social science. In this book the decisive factors of historical materialism were scientifically developed for the first time. In his earlier writings these ideas flash up like isolated comets, and in later writings he collected them in epigrammatic form, but in his reply to Proudhon he developed them systematically with all the convincing clarity of a triumphant polemic. The greatest scientific service rendered by Marx was his development of historical materialism, and it did for the historical sciences what Darwin’s theories did for the natural sciences.

Engels had a share in this, and it was a larger share than his modesty was prepared to admit, but the classic formulation of the basic idea he ascribes, and probably with justice, exclusively to his friend. He describes how when he went to Brussels in the spring of 1845 Marx placed the basic idea of historical materialism before him in its finally developed form, namely that economic production in each historical period, and the social structure necessarily following from it, formed the basis for the political and intellectual history of the period, that in consequence the whole of history had been a history of class struggles, struggles between the exploited and the exploiters and between the ruled and the ruling classes at various stages of social development,

¹ Systeme des Contradictions Iconomiques ou Philosophic de la Misere, Paris, 1846.




and that these struggles had now reached a stage at which the exploited and oppressed class, the proletariat, could no longer free itselffrom the exploiting and oppressing class, the bourgeoisie, without at the same time freeing the whole of society from exploitation and oppression for ever.

This is the basic idea presented in the reply to Proudhon, the focal point from which a multitude of rays irradiate. The style of the reply is magnificently clear and incisive, in strong contrast to the discursiveness which sometimes tires the reader in the polemics against Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. This time the vessel is not being pushed and dragged along through a marsh, but speeds along over the open sea with a fresh breeze in its sails.

The book is in two parts. In the first part, to quote Lassalle, Marx shows himself as a Ricardo turned socialist, and in the second part as a Hegel turned economist. Ricardo had proved that the exchange of commodities in capitalist society took place upon the basis of the labour time contained in them. Proudhon demanded that this “ value ” of commodities should be “ constituted ” so that the product of one producer should exchange with the product of another containing the same amount oflabour time. Society was to be reformed by turning all its members into workers exchanging similar quantities of labour. English socialists had already drawn this “ egalitarian ” conclusion from Ricardo’s theory and had attempted to put it into practice, but their “ exchange banks ” had soon gone into liquidation.

Marx now pointed out that “ the revolutionary theory ” which Proudhon thought he had discovered to emancipate the proletariat was, in fact, nothing but the formula of modern working-class slavery. On the basis of his law of value Ricardo logically developed his law of wages : the value of the commodity labour- power is determined by the amount of time necessary to obtain the products which the worker needs in order to live himself and perpetuate his kind. It is a bourgeois i]]usion to imagine individual exchange without class contradictions, and to suppose in bourgeois society the possibility of a state of harmony and eternal justice permitting no one to enrich himself at the cost of others.

Marx describes the rea) development of things in the words : “ \Vith the beginning of civilization production begins to build itself up on the antithesis of occupation, social position and class, and finally on the antithesis of accumulated and direct labour. \Vithout antithesis there can be no progress : civilization has acknowledged this law down to the present day. Up to the present the productive forces have been developed on the basis of this dominance of class contradiction.” \Vith his theory of “ constituted value ” Proudhon thought to secure for the worker




the ever-increasing product of everyday labour resulting from the progress of social labour, but Marx pointed out that the development ofthe productive forces which permitted the English workers to produce twenty-seven times more in 1840 than in 1770 depended on historical conditions based on class contradictions : the accumulation of private capital, the modern division oflabour, anarchic competition and the wage system. For the production of surplus labour there must be a class which profited and a class which lost.

Proudhon put forward gold and silver as the first examples of his “ constituted value ”, declaring that they had become money from their sovereign consecration at the hands of sovereigns. Nothing of the sort, answered Marx. Money was not a thing in itself but a social relation and, like individual exchange, it reflected a certain definite mode of production. “ Indeed, an utter ignorance of history is necessary in order not to know that at all times sovereign rulers have had to submit to economic conditions and have never been able to dictate laws to them. Both political and civil legislation do no more than recognize and protocol the will of economic conditions. . . . Law is nothing but the recognition of fact.” The sovereign seal on money gave it its weight and not its value. Gold and silver fitted to “ constituted value ” about as comfortably as a blister. Precisely in their function as tokens of value they were of all commodities the only ones not determined by their costs of production, and could be replaced in circulation by paper money, as Ricardo had long since made clear.

Marx hinted at the final aim of communism by pointing out that “ the correct balance between supply and demand ” for which Proudhon was looking had been possible only in times when the means of production were limited, when exchange took place within very narrow boundaries, when demand governed supply and consumption governed production. With the development of large-scale industry this had become impossible because the latter was compelled by its tools alone to produce in steadily increasing quantities without waiting for demand, and must therefore experience with inevitable necessity and in constant succession the phases of prosperity and depression, crises and stagnation, new prosperity and so on. “ In present-day society, in industry which is based on individual exchange, productive anarchy which is the source ofso much evil is at the same time the cause ofall progress. Therefore the alternatives are : one must strive to obtain the correct proportions of former centuries with the means of production of our own day, in which case one is both reactionary and utopian, or one must strive for progress withuut anarchy, in which


case one must abandon individual exchange in order to maintain the productive forces.”

The second chapter ofMarx’s reply to Proudhon is even more important than the first. In the first chapter he deals with Ricardo without as yet having won through to complete scientific objectivity towards him, for instance, he still accepts Ricardo’s law of wages without reservation, but in the second chapter he deals with Hegel and then he is in his element. Proudhon had grossly misunderstood Hegel’s dialectical method. He held fast to those aspects which had already become reactionary, for instance, that the world of reality is derived from the world of ideas, whilst he rejected its revolutionary aspect : the autoactivity of the idea which formulates both thesis and antithesis in order to develop in the conflict that higher unity which maintains the real content ofhoth aspects by resolving its contradictory form. He differentiated a good and a bad side in each economic category and then sought for a synthesis, for a scientific formula which would embody the good side and destroy the bad. The good side he observed stressed by the bourgeois economists and the bad side condemned by the socialists. With hfs formulas and syntheses he thought to have raised himself above both the bourgeois economists and the socialists.

Marx answered this claim in the words : ‘ ‘ Monsieur Proudhon flatters himself that he has criticized both economics and communism, but in reality he has remained far below either of them : below the economist because as a philosopher with a magic formula in his pocket he imagines himself spared the necessity of going into economic details, and below the socialist because he has neither sufficient insight nor sufficient courage to raise himself, even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon. He aspires to be the synthesis and he is in fact nothing but a composite error. He desires to hover above both bourgeois and proletarian as a man of science, but in fact he is nothing but a petty-bourgeois thrown hither and thither between capital and labour, between economics and socialism.” However, one must not confuse the petty-bourgeois here with the Philistine, for Marx always regarded Proudhon as a capable man unfortunately unable to go beyond the limits of petty-bourgeois society.

It was not difficult for Marx to reveal the defectiveness of the methods adopted by Proudhon : if one split up the dialectical process into a good and a bad side and offered the one category as an antidote against the other, then all life fled from ,the idea ; it could no longer function, no longer formulate the thesis and the antithesis. As an authentic student of Hegel Marx was well aware that the bad side which Proudhon was so anxious




to abolish everywhere was just the side which made history by producing the struggle. Had one tried to maintain the better aspects of feudalism, the patriarchal life in the towns, the prosperity of rural domestic industry and the development of urban handicraft, whilst at the same time seeking to exterminate everything which cast a shadow over the picture, serfdom, privilege and anarchy, then everything which produced the struggle would have been wiped out and the bourgeoisie would have been strangled at birth. One would thereby have taken on the grotesque task of emasculating history.

The correct formulation of the problem was given by Marx in the following words : “If one wishes to estimate feudal

production correctly one must regard it as a mode of production based on contradiction. One must show how riches were produced within this contradiction, how the productive forces developed simultaneously with the struggle of the classes, and how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil, grew ceaselessly until the material conditions for its emancipation had ripened.” And he then showed the same historical process of development in connection with the bourgeoisie. The productive relations in which it moves have not a simple and uniform character, but a double one : misery is produced under the same conditions as riches ; as the bourgeoisie develops so the proletariat develops to the same degree, and, as a result, the struggle between the two classes. The economists are the theoreticians of the bourgeoisie whilst the communists and socialists are the theoreticians of the proletariat. The latter are utopians who draw up systems and seek for a healing science to meet the needs of the oppressed classes so long as the proletariat is not sufficiently developed to constitute itself as a class and so long as the productive forces of bourgeois society are not developed sufficiently to reveal the material conditions necessary for the emancipation of the proletariat and the building up of a new society. “ But to the extent to which history advances, and with it the struggle of the proletariat, it is no longer necessary for them to seek science in their heads. All they need do is give themselves an account of what is going on before their eyes and make themselves its instruments. So long as they are still seeking science in their heads and drawing up systems, so long as they are at the beginning of their struggle only, they see only misery in misery, and fail to realize the revolutionary side of misery which will overthrow the old society. From this moment on science becomes the conscious product of the historical movement; it has ceased to be doctrinaire and has become revolutionary. ”




Marx regards economic categories as nothing but the theoretical expression, the abstraction of social relations. “ Social relations are closely connected with the productive forces. With the attainment of new productive forces mankind alters its mode of production ; with the way in which it obtains its living mankind alters all its social relations. . . . But the same men who form their social relations in accordance with their material mode of production, form also their principles, their ideas and their categories in accordance with their social relations.” Marx compares the bourgeois economists who speak of “ the eternal and natural institutions ” of bourgeois society with those orthodox theologians who consider their own religion a revelation from God and all other religions as the inventions of man.

Marx revealed the defectiveness of Proudhon’s methods on the basis of a number of economic categories : the division of labour and machinery, competition and monopoly, landowner- ship and rent, strikes and workers’ organizations, on which he had tried his methods. The division of labour was not, as Proudhon assumed, an economic category, but an historical category, which had taken on various forms in various periods of history. According to bourgeois economics the factory is the condition for its existence, but the factory did not originate, as Proudhon assumed, as the result of friendly agreement amongst the workers and not even in the lap of the old Guilds. The merchant became the head of the modern workshop and not the old Guild master.

Competition and monopoly are thus not natural, but social categories. Competition is not industrial, tut commercial zeal. It is not concerned with the product, but with profit. It is not a necessity of the human soul, as Proudhon assumed, but the result of historical necessity originating in the eighteenth century, and it could disappear in the nineteenth century for historical reasons.

Proudhon’s idea that landed property had no historical origin, that it was based on psychological and moral considerations having only a very distant connection with the production of wealth, that ground-rent should bind man close!" to nature, was just as erroneous : “ In every period property developed differently and under quite different social relations. To explain bourgeois property therefore means nothing more than to explain all the social relations of bourgeois production. To explain property as an independent relation is nothing but an illusion of metaphysics or jurisprudence.” Ground-rent—the surplus of the price of agricultural produce above the cost of production, including the prevailing rate of profit on capital and




the interest on capital—originated under definite social relations and could have originated only under those definite social relations. It is landownership in its bourgeois form, feudal property subjected to the conditions of bourgeois production.

And finally Marx explains the historic significance of strikes and unions, both of which Proudhon rejected. Although both bourgeois economists and socialists may warn the workers, though perhaps for opposite reasons, against the use of such weapons, strikes and unions will develop .parallel with the development of large-scale industry. Divided in their interests by competition the workers have nevertheless a common interest in maintaining their wages. The idea of resistance, common to them all, united them in unions which contain all the elements of a coming struggle, just as the bourgeoisie began with sectional combinations against the feudal lords and then constituted itself as a class and, as a constituted class, transformed feudal society into bourgeois society.

The antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle which, brought to its highest expression, means a complete revolution. The social movement does not exclude the political movement because there is no political movement which is not at the same time a social movement. Only in a society without classes will social evolution cease to be political revolution, but until then the last word of social science on the eve of all general social transformations will always pe : “ Victory or death ! Bloody war or

nothing! This is the pitiless formulation of the question.” Marx used this quotation from George Sand to conclude his reply to Proudhon.

In this book Marx developed historical materialism from a series of its most important angles and at the same time he finally settled accounts with German philosophy. He went beyond Feuerbach by going back to Hegel. The official Hegelian school had certainly gone bankrupt. It had degenerated the dialectical methods of its master to a mere formula which it applied to everything and everybody, often with the greatest clumsiness. One could say of these Hegelians, and it was said of them, that they understood nothing and wrote about everything.

Their hour had struck when Feuerbach challenged the speculative conception ; the positive content of science once again outweighed its formal side. But the materialism of Feuerbach lacked an “ energizing principle ”. It remained pure natural science and excluded the historical process. This was not enough for Marx, and how right he was was seen later when the peripatetic preachers of this materialism, Buchner and Vogt, appeared on




the scene. Their narrow-minded Philistine methods of thought caused even Feuerbach to exclaim that though he might agree with such materialism from behind yet never would he from the front. Or to quote a comparison once used by Engels : “ The stiff-kneed cart-horse of bourgeois common sense naturally shies at the ditch which separates essence from appearance and cause from effect, but if one wants to hunt over the rough country of abstract thought one must not ride a cart-horse.”

However, the Hegelians were not Hegel. They might display their ignorance, but Hegel himself was amongst the best brains of all time. Far more than all other philosophers, his method of thought had an historic significance which permitted him a magnificent conception of history, although this conception was a purely ideological one which saw things, so to speak, in a concave mirror and conceived world history as no more than a practical example of the development of thought. Feuerbach had not succeeded in coping with this real content of the Hegelian philosophy and the orthodox Hegelians had abandoned it.

Marx took it up anew, but he reversed it in that he no longer proceeded from “ pure thought ”, but from the pitiless facts of reality, thus giving materialism the historical dialectical method and an “ energizing principle ” which sought not merely to explain society, but to transform it.

2.