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The counterposing of causality and finalism reappears here in the form of an opposition between factual and value judgements, between science and ideology."[62] Science 'observes'; it has no options to suggest for human action. Between the objective and impartial factual observations of science and the finalities of the will, there is a radical distinction. From the indicative premises of science one cannot draw conclusions which are determinant of, and binding for, action.

Hilferding wrote in the preface to Finance Capital :

It has been said that politics is a normative doctrine ultimately determined by value judgements; since such value judgements do not belong within the sphere of science, the discussion of politics falls outside the limits of scientific treatment. Clearly, it is not possible here to go into the epistemological debate about the relation between the science of norms and the science of laws, between teleology and causality. . . . Suffice it to say that for Marxism the object of political investigation can only be the discovery of causal connections. . . . According to the Marxist viewpoint, the task of a scientific politics is to discover the determination of the will of classes; hence a politics is scientific when it describes causal connections. As in the case of theory, Marxist politics is exempt from 'value judgements'.

And he concluded:

It is therefore incorrect, though widely diffused both intra and extra muros, simply to identify Marxism and socialism. Considered logically, as a scientific system alone, apart, that is, from the viewpoint of its historical affectivity, Marxism is only a theory of the laws of motion of society. . . . To recognize the validity of Marxism (which implies the recognition of the necessity of socialism) is by no means a task for value judgements, let alone a pointer to a practical line of conduct. It is one thing to recognize a necessity, but quite another to place oneself at the service of that necessity.[63]

The divorce between science and revolution, between knowledge and transformation of the world could not be more complete. In this divorce, moreover, lay the subordinate nature of the Marxism of the Second International, divided between positivist scientism and neo-Kantianism, and yet internally consistent within this opposition. Deterministic objectivisms could not include the ideological moment, the revolutionary political

 
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programme.[54] On the other hand, excluded from science, ideology was readmitted in a world of 'ethical freedom', alongside the world of 'natural necessity', thereby reproducing the Kantian dualism of Mussen and Sollen, 'is' and 'ought'.

It is true that in Hilferding, as in Max Adler and the Austro-Marxist school in general, this line of thought was developed with a subtlety of argument that one would seek in vain in the philosophical writings of Kautsky and Plekhanov. And yet the conviction that there can be a body of scientific knowledge acquired independently of any evaluation, clearly reveals the naïve positivism underlying this line of thought and its inability to recognize that the role of finalism in scientific research is, at least, in one aspect, the very role of deduction. Finalism, in Kant's definition, is the causality of a concept in relation to its object; it is the process whose a priori is an idea. Now the impossibility of eliminating this process from scientific enquiry is the impossibility for science to do away with ideal anticipation and hypothesis. Theory must be a priori, for without ideas there can be no observation; we only see what our pre-conceived ideas prepare us or predispose us to see. As Myrdal has observed: 'Theory . . . must always be a priori to the empirical observations of the facts', since, 'facts come to mean something only as ascertained and organized in the frame of a theory.'[65] 'We need to pose questions before responses can be obtained. And the questions are expressions of our own interest in the world; they are ultimately evaluations.'[66] This is equivalent to Kant's observation that 'when Galileo experimented with balls of a definite weight on the inclined plane, when Torricelli . . . [etc.] and Stahl . . . [etc.], they learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design; that it must not be content to follow, as it were, in the leading-strings of nature but must

 
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proceed in advance . . . and compel nature to reply to its questions'.[67] This implies that what at first appears to be simple observation, a statement of fact, is in effect deduction, the objectification of our ideas, i.e. a projection into the world of our evaluations and pre-conceptions.

On the other hand -- and here finalism in turn is reconverted into causality, deduction into induction -- the inevitable preconceptions of science are distinguished from the prejudgements of metaphysics (the hypotheses of the former from the hypostases of the latter) in that 'if theory is a priori it is on the other hand a first principle of science that the facts are sovereign'. This means that 'when observations of facts do not agree with a theory, i.e. when they do not make sense in the frame of the theory utilized in carrying out the research, the theory has to be discarded and replaced by a better one, which promises a better fit'. In other words, to be truthful, theory must acquire its source and origin in and from reality, it must be accompanied by 'basic empirical research' which must be 'prior to the construction of the abstract theory' and is 'needed for assuring it realism and relevance'.[68]

To summarize: value judgements are inevitably present in scientific research itself, but as judgements whose ultimate significance depends on the degree to which they stand up to historical-practical verification or experiment, and hence on their capacity to be converted ultimately into factual judgements. This is precisely the link between science and politics, between knowledge and transformation of the world, that Marx accomplished in the historical-moral field. ('Marx', it has been observed 'inextricably united in his work statements of fact and value judgements'.)[69] This in turn allows us to understand that what Bernstein and so many others saw as a defect or weakness of Capital -- the co-presence within it of science and ideology -- on the contrary represents its most profound originality and its strongest element.

 
T H E  L A B O U R  T H E O R Y  O F  V A L U E

The inadequacy and simplification of the concept of 'economy', which, as we have seen, is an element more or less common to all the tendencies of Marxism in the Second International, helps to explain the foundation, during the same period, of an interpretation of the labour theory of value from which even later Marxism has been unable to free itself. This

 
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interpretation consisted in the reduction of Marx's theory of value to that of Ricardo, or even to the theory of value which developed in the course of the 'dissolution of the Ricardian school'. Its hallmark is the inability to grasp, or even to suspect, that Marx's theory of value is identical to his theory of fetishism and that it is precisely by virtue of this element (in which the crucial importance of the relation with Hegel is intuitively evident) that Marx's theory differs in principle from the whole of classical political economy.

'Political economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its magnitude and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value .'[77]

The achievement and the limitation of classical political economy are indicated here with extraordinary clarity. First, the achievement: political economy, in spite of its incompleteness and its various inconsistencies, understood that the value of commodities is determined by the labour incorporated in them, or, in other words, that what appears as the 'value' of 'things' is in reality (here is 'the content hidden in the form') the 'human labour' necessary for their production. Second, the limitation: it never posed the problem of why that content assumes this particular form, why human labour takes on the form of value of things, or, in short, on the basis of what historical-social conditions the product of labour takes the form of a commodity. This problem could not be posed by political economy, since, Marx goes on to explain, the economists could not see that 'the value-form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract but is also the most universal form taken by the product in bourgeois production'. They wrongly held instead that the production of commodities, far from being a historical phenomenon, was a 'self-evident necessity imposed by nature'.[71] They believed, in other words, that there could be no production in society without this production being production of commodities, that in all societies the product of human labour must necessarily assume this form.[72]

The main consequence of this different approach is as follows. Classical political economy, taking the existence of the commodity as a 'natural'

 
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and hence non-problematical fact, restricted itself to investigating the proportions in which commodities exchange for one another, concentrating their analysis on exchange value rather than value in the strict sense: 'The analysis of the magnitude of value almost completely absorbs the attention of Smith and Ricardo,' Marx wrote.[73] For Marx, on the contrary, the essential problem, prior to that of exchange rates of commodities is to explain why the product of labour takes the form of the commodity, why 'human labour' appears as a 'value' of 'things'. Hence the decisive importance for him of his analysis of 'fetishism', 'alienation' or 'reification' (Verdinglichung ): the process whereby, while subjective human or social labour is represented in the form of a quality intrinsic in things, these things themselves, endowed with their own subjective, social qualities, appear 'personified' or 'animated', as if they were independent subjects.

Marx writes:

Where labour is in common, relations between men in their social production are not represented as 'value' of 'things'. Exchanges of products as commodities is a certain method of exchanging labour, and of the dependence of the labour of each upon the labour of the others, a certain mode of social labour or social production. In the first part of my work I have explained that it is characteristic of labour based on private exchange that the social character of the labour is 'represented' as a 'property' of the things; and inversely, that a social relation appears as a relation of one thing to another (of products, values in use, commodities).[74]

Marx explained the operation of this exchange of the subjective with the objective and vice versa -- in which the fetishism of commodities consists -- with his celebrated concept of 'abstract labour ' or 'average human labour '. Abstract labour is what is equal and common to all concrete human labouring activities (carpentry, weaving, spinning, etc.) when their activities are considered apart from the real objects (or use-values) to which they are applied and in terms of which they are diversified. If

 
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one abstracts from the material to which labour is applied, one also abstracts, according to Marx, from the determination of productive activity, that is from the concrete character that differentiates the various forms of useful labour. Once this abstraction is made, all that remains of all the various sorts of labour is the fact that they are all expenditures of human labour power. 'Tailoring and weaving, though qualitatively different productive activities, are each a productive expenditure of human brains, nerves and muscles, and in this sense are human labour.'[75] It is this equal or abstract human labour -- labour considered as the expenditure and objectification of undifferentiated human labour-power, independently of the concrete forms of activity in which it is realized -- that produces value. Value is 'a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure'. As products of abstract labour, all the products of concrete forms of labour lose their perceptible or real qualities and now represent only the fact that 'human labour-power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them; . . . as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are -- Values.'[76]

The point to be emphasized here is that not only Marx's critics, but indeed his own disciples and followers -- and not only those of the Second International but also more recent ones, to this very day -- have all shown themselves incapable of understanding or realizing fully the significance of this concept. 'Abstract labour' seems at least to be a perfectly straightforward and clear notion. And yet neither Kautsky in his Economic Doctrines of K. Marx [77] nor Hilferding in his important reply to Böhm-Bawerk,[78] nor Luxemburg in her ample Introduction to Political Economy,[79] nor Lenin and tutti quanti, have ever really confronted this 'key' to the entire theory of value. Sweezy, who has gone further than most, writes: 'Abstract labour is abstract only in the quite straightforward sense that all special characteristics which differentiate one kind of labour from another are ignored. Abstract labour, in short, is, as Marx's usage quite clearly attests, equivalent to "labour in general"; it is what is common to all productive human activity.'[80]

 
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The meaning of this argument is clear. 'Abstract labour' is an abstraction, in the sense that it is a mental generalization of the multiplicity of useful, concrete kinds of labour: it is the general, common element of all these kinds of labour. This generalization, moreover, as Sweezy goes on to point out, corresponds to capitalist reality, in that in this kind of society labour is shifted or diverted according to the direction of capital investments; hence a determinate portion of human labour is, in accordance with variations of demand, at one time supplied in one form, at another time in another form. This proves the secondary importance in this regime of the various specific kinds of labour, as against labour in general or in and for itself. In spite of Sweezy's plea that 'the reduction of all labour to a common denominator . . . is not an arbitrary abstraction, dictated in some way by the whim of the investigator' but 'rather, as Luk�cs correctly observes, an abstraction "which belongs to the essence of Capitalism",'[81] despite this, in the absence of what seems to me the decisive point, 'abstract labour' remains, in the last analysis, essentially a mental generalization.

The defect of this interpretation of 'abstract labour' lies not only in the fact that -- if abstract labour is a mental generalization -- it is not clear why what this labour is supposed to produce is something real -- value ; but also in the fact that this opens the door to the transformation of value itself into an abstract generality or idea as well. For, in the sense that here only useful and concrete kinds of labour are regarded as real, whereas 'abstract' labour is seen as a merely mental fact, so too only the products of useful kinds of labour or use-values are real, whereas value, the merely general element common to them, is abstract.

The interpretation that Bernstein adopted was precisely this one. 'Value' is ein Gedankenbild, a mere thought-construct: it is in Marx's work a formal principle which serves to bring system and order to the complexity of the analysis, but itself has no real existence. 'Insofar as we take into consideration the individual commodity', Bernstein comments, 'value loses any concrete content and becomes a mere mental construction'. Hence it is clear that 'the moment that labour-value is only valid as a mental formula (gedankliche Formel ) or scientific hypothesis, surplus value also becomes a pure formula, a formula based on a hypothesis'.[82]

This interpretation had, of course, already been advanced before Bernstein by Werner Sombart and Conrad Schmidt, in time for Engels to confront it in his Supplement to Volume III of Capital.[83] Value, according

 
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to Sombart, is 'not an empirical, but a mental, a logical fact' while for Schmidt the law of value within the capitalist mode of production is a 'pure, although theoretically necessary fiction'.

It is striking that even at this point, decisive for the genesis of 'revisionism', Engels's response is both uncertain and substantially erroneous. Even if he makes some reservations towards Sombart and Schmidt, he ends up by accepting their essential thesis (that is, the unreal nature of the law of value when commodities are produced under capitalist conditions ), and hence falls back to the position of Smith (already criticized in its time by Marx)[84] which had relegated the action of the law of value to precapitalist historical conditions.

In other words, 'abstract labour' and 'value' -- the point on which everything hangs -- are understood simply as mental generalizations introduced by the scientist, in this case by Marx; ignoring the fact that, if this were effectively so, in introducing these generalizations Marx would have been committing a 'clumsy error' and the whole of Böhm-Bawerk's critique would indeed be correct. The central argument of Böhm-Bawerk's critique -- already present in Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzinstheorien (pp. 435ff.) and restated in 1896 in Zum Abschluss des Marxchen Systems (a text which may have influenced Bernstein) -- was that if 'value' is the generalization of 'use-values', it is then use-value 'in general' and not, as Marx had argued, a qualitatively distinct entity. Marx's error, according to Böhm-Bawerk, was the error of those who 'confuse abstraction from the circumstance in general (von einem Umstande überhaupt ), and abstraction from the specific forms in which this circumstance manifests itself';[85] the error of those who believe that to abstract from the differences between one use-value and another is to abstract from use-values in general ; for the real value is use-value, the true theory of value a theory of value-utility. According to Böhm-Bawerk, this 'wrong idea' he attributes to Marx means that instead of seeing in 'exchange value' a relation or a mere quantitative proportion between use-values, and hence, like any

 
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relation, an unreal value outside the entities related together, Marx invoked the existence behind exchange-value of an objective being 'value', without seeing that this 'entity' was only a 'scholastic-theological' product, a hypostasis arising from his defective logic.[86]

The response that has traditionally been given to these objections by Marxists is well known. It consists, at most, in an appeal to the original conception of Ricardo who had, as can be seen from his last incomplete memoir, already before Marx distinguished between Absolute Value and Exchangeable Value. However, apart from Marx's remarks on the tendency of Ricardo's analysis to dwell more on 'exchange-value' than on 'value' itself, this response is further weakened by the fact that, confronted by the non-coincidence of 'values' and 'costs of production', this interpretation has continuously been forced to fall back on to Sombart-Schmidt positions or even Bernstein positions. For once it is accepted that value is not identified with the concrete exchange-values or competitive prices at which the capitalistically produced commodities are in fact sold, this interpretation retreats to a position of attributing to 'value' the significance, essentially, of an abstraction. Dobb's case is typical After stating that 'value [is] only an abstract approximation to concrete exchange-values', that this 'has generally been held to be fatal to the theory, and was the onus of Böhm-Bawerk's criticism of Marx', he limits himself to concluding that 'all abstractions remain only approximations to reality . . . it is no criticism of a theory of value merely to say that this is so.[87]

 
T H E  T H E O R Y  O F  V A L U E  A N D  F E T I S H I S M

The decisive point which, I believe, remains misunderstood in all these interpretations is, as already indicated, the concept of 'abstract labour'; i.e. (a) how this abstraction of labour is produced, and (b) what it really means.

The first part of the question is relatively straightforward. According to Marx, the products of labour take the form of commodities when they are produced for exchange. And they are produced for exchange when they are products of autonomous, private labours carried out independently of one another. Like Robinson Crusoe, the producer of com-

 
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modities decides by himself how much and what to produce. But unlike Robinson Crusoe he lives in society and hence within a social division of labour in which his labour depends on that of others and vice versa. It follows that while Crusoe carried out all his indispensable labour by himself and relied only on his own labour for the satisfaction of his needs, the producer of commodities carries out only one determinate form of labour, the products of which are destined for others, just as the products of the other producers' different forms of labour go to him.

If this social division of labour were a conscious and planned distribution to all its members on the part of society of the various necessary types of labour and quantities to be produced, the products of individual labour would not take the form of commodities. For example, in a patriarchal peasant family there is a distribution of the work which the members themselves must carry out, but the products of this labour do not become commodities, nor do the members of the family nucleus buy or sell their products to each other.[88] On the other hand, in conditions of commodity production, the work of individual producers is not labour carried out at the command or on behalf of society: rather it is private, autonomous labour, carried out by each producer independently of the next. Hence, lacking any conscious assignment or distribution on the part of society, individual labour is not immediately an articulation of social labour; it acquires its character as a part or aliquot of aggregate labour only through the mediation of exchange relations or the market.

Now Marx's essential thesis is that in order to exchange their products, men must equalize them, i.e. abstract from the physical-natural or use value aspect in which one product differs from another (corn from iron, iron from glass, etc.). In abstracting from the object or concrete material of their labour they also abstract ipso facto from that which serves to differentiate their labours. 'Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all . . . human labour in the abstract.'[89]

Hence in abstracting from the natural, sensory objectivity of their products, men also and simultaneously abstract from what differentiates their various subjective activities. 'The Labour . . . that forms the substance of value is homogeneous labour-power, expenditure of one uniform labour-power. The total labour-power of society which is embodied in

 
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the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour-power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society and takes effect as such.'[90]

By now it should be clear that the process whereby 'abstract labour' is obtained, far from being a mere mental abstraction of the investigator's is one which takes place daily in the reality of exchange itself. ('When we bring the products of our labour into relation with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever by an exchange we equate as values our different products, by that very act we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it.')[91]

It remains to deal with the second aspect of the problem, the real significance of this abstraction. The crucial point here is again quite simple. Unlike those interpreters who think it is obvious and non-problematical that in commodity production each individual labour-power is considered as a 'human labour-power identical to all others' or as 'average social labour power', and hence have never asked themselves what this equalization of labour signifies -- unlike them, I believe that this is precisely where the significance of 'abstract labour' and the entire theory of value is to be found. For while the working capacities or labour-power of the various producers are in fact different and unequal, just as are the individuals to whom they belong and who 'would not be different individuals if they were not unequal ',[92] in the reality of the world of commodities, on the other hand, individual labour powers are equalized precisely because they are treated as abstract or separate from the real empirical individuals to whom they belong. In other words, precisely insofar as they are regarded as a 'force' or entity 'in itself', i.e. separated from the individuals whose powers they are. 'Abstract labour', in short, is alienated labour, labour separated or estranged with respect to man himself.

'The labour-time expressed in exchange value is the labour-time of an individual', Marx wrote, 'but of an individual in no way differing from the next individual and from all other individuals insofar as they perform equal labour. . . . It is the labour time of an individual, his labour-time,

 
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but only as labour-time common to all; consequently it is quite immaterial whose individual labour-time it is.'[93] Hence labour is considered here precisely as a process in itself, independent of the man who carries it out. We are not concerned with the particular man who performs the labour, nor with the particular labour he accomplishes, but with the labour power thus expended, leaving aside which particular individual it belongs to and to what particular labour it has been applied. In short, we are concerned here with human energy as such, labour power and nothing more, outside and independently of the man who expended it, as if the real subject indeed were not the man but labour-power itself, nothing being left to the man but to serve as a mere function or vehicle for the manifestations of the latter.[94] Labour-power, in other words, which is a

 
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property, a determinant or an attribute of man, becomes an independent subject, by representing itself as the 'value' of 'things'. The human individuals, on the other hand, who are the real subjects become determinations of their determination, i.e. articulations or appendages of their common, reified labour-power, 'Labour, thus measured by time, does not seem, indeed, to be the labour of different persons, but on the contrary the different working individuals seem to be mere organs of this labour .'[95] In short: 'men are effaced by their labour . . . the pendulum of the clock has become as accurate a measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives.' Hence 'we should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is at the most time's carcass.'[96]

An analogy may be of help here. Hegel separated human thought from man, turning it into an 'independent subject' called 'the Idea'; for him it was no longer the thinking individual who thinks but the Idea or Logos which thinks itself through man. In this case, as Feuerbach pointed out, 'abstraction means placing man's essence outside himself, the essence of thought outside the act of thinking'. Hence 'speculative philosophy has theoretically fixed the separation of the essential qualities of man from man himself and thus ends by turning abstract qualities into divinities as if they were self-sufficient essences'.[97] The effect of the world of commodities on real men has been similar. It has factually separated or abstracted from man his 'subjectivity', i.e. his 'physical and mental ener-

 
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gies', his 'capacity' for work, and has transformed it into a separate essence. It has fixed human energy as such in the 'crystal' or 'congelation' of labour which is value, turning it into a distinct entity, an entity which is not only independent of man, but also dominates him.

As Marx writes:

There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes in their eyes the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent things endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.[98]

To conclude, 'abstract labour' is not only that which is 'common' to all human productive activities, it is not only a mental generalization; rather, it is in itself a real activity, if of a kind opposed to all concrete, useful kinds of labour. More precisely, unlike all the others, it is an activity which does not represent an appropriation of the objective, natural world so much as an expropriation of human subjectivity, a separation of labour 'capacity' or 'power' conceived as the totality of physical and intellectual attitudes, from man himself. This in turn implies that in a society in which individual activities have a private character, and in which therefore the interests of individuals are divided and counterposed, or, as we say, in competition with one another, the moment of social unity can only be realized in the form of an abstract equalization, ignoring the individuals themselves; hence, in this case, as a reification of labour-power -- a labour-power which is said to be equal or social, not because it genuinely belongs to everyone and hence mediates between the individuals, but because it belongs to nobody and is obtained by ignoring the real inequalities between the individuals. This is precisely what Marx is expressing when he writes that abstract labour is 'labour in which the individual characteristics of the workers are obliterated'; or that, when buyer and seller exchange their products and hence equalize their labour in the act af exchange, both 'enter into it only insofar as their individual labour is negated, that is to say, turned into money as non-individual labour';[99] or, finally where he defines capital as an 'independent social force ' which,

 
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because it has acquired its own autonomous existence, has become 'the power of a portion of society ' over the rest -- a power, therefore, maintaining and multiplying itself 'by means of its exchange for direct, living labour power '.[100]

I cannot stop here to show how this conception of the theory of value constitutes the element of deepest continuity between the works of the young Marx and those of his maturity. Even in The German Ideology, Marx underlines the fact that, under modern conditions, the productive forces 'appear as a world for themselves, quite independent of and divorced from the individuals, alongside the individuals'. As a result, on the one hand 'we have a totality of productive forces, which have, as it were, taken on a material (objective) form and are for the individuals no longer the forces of the individuals, but of private property and hence of the individuals only insofar as they are owners of private property themselves'. On the other hand, 'standing over against these productive forces we have the majority of the individuals from whom these forces have been wrested away and who, robbed thus of all real life-content, have become abstract individuals'.

Nor can we deal here with the fact that our own interpretation of the theory of value which assimilates 'value' to Hegel's hypostasization processes, also links together the equalization which is the precondition of abstract labour' and the purely political equality realized in the modern representative state. (The collective interest, according to Marx in The German Ideology, 'takes an independent form as the State , divorced from the real interests of the individual and community', insofar as 'just because individuals seek only their particular interest which for them does not coincide with their communal interest -- in fact the general is the illusory form of communal life -- the latter will be imposed on them as an interest "alien" to them and "independent" of them, as in its turn a particular, peculiar "general" interest.' Hence 'the social power' transformed into the power of the state 'appears to these individuals . . . not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant.')[101] We can, however, deal with one other point here: this confluence of the theory of value and the theory of fetishism or alienation in Marx represents not only his main difference of principle with the classical political economists, for whom the theory of alienation is absolutely inconceivable, it also constitutes the

 
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viewpoint from which he explained the birth and destiny of political economy as a science. Firstly, its birth : the precondition for the emergence of economic reflection lay for Marx in the process whereby social relations became obscured and objectified in the eyes of men as a consequence of the generalization, with the emergence of modern bourgeois society, of the production of commodities and the fetishism inherent in it. ('The ancient social organisms of production are far more simple and transparent than the bourgeois organism'; even though commodity production occurs within them, it emerges as a secondary or marginal branch among kinds of production based on a natural economy -- based, that is, on the immediate consumption of products rather than their sale on the market.) Secondly, its later destiny : the task of political economy as a science consisted for Marx essentially -- if we can accept a neologism -- in the de-fetishization of the world of commodities, in the progressive comprehension that what represents itself as the 'value' of 'things' is in reality not a property of these things themselves, but reified human labour. This theme, according to Marx, runs through the entire history of economic theory from mercantilism to Smith: the gradual rediscovery, beneath the mask of fetishized objectivity, of the alienated human subject. In the 'Introduction' of 1857, he wrote: 'The Monetary system, for example, still regards wealth quite objectively as a thing existing independently in the shape of money. Compared with this standpoint, it was a substantial advance when the Manufacturing Mercantile System transferred the source of wealth from the object to the subjective activity -- mercantile or industrial labour -- but it still considered that only this circumscribed activity itself produced money.' He continues: 'In contrast to this system, the Physiocrats assume that a specific form of labour -- agriculture creates wealth, and they see the object no longer in the guise of money, but as a product in general, as the universal result of labour. In accordance with the still circumscribed activity, the product remains a naturally developed product, an agricultural product, a product of the land par excellence .' Finally, a tremendous step forwards was achieved by Smith in rejecting 'all restrictions with regard to the activity that produces wealth -- for him it was labour as such, neither manufacturing, nor commercial, nor agricultural labour, but all types of labour.'[102]

We have already seen how, despite its real merits, classical political economy as well as Vulgärökonomie, remained in the end a prisoner of

 
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fetishism,[103] because of its inability to pose the problem of why the product of labour takes the form of the commodity and hence why human labour is presented as the 'value' of 'things'. This gives us the chance to raise a crucial point, which today has been entirely forgotten. Marx considered that with the end of commodity production, the political economy born with it would also come to an end. It is in this sense that his work is a critique of political economy itself, rather than the work of an economist in the strict sense.[104] Hence the subtitle of Capital, the title of the Contribution to the Critique of 1859, not to mention the vast brouillon of 1858 which goes by the name of Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie.

'Value' is the product of human labour. 'Surplus value', which is produced by human wage labour, is subdivided into profit and rent (besides, of course, the restitution of the wage). To political economy, which fails to coordinate or reduce these categories to a unity, rent appears as the product of land as such, as some rudis indigestaque moles ; profit appears as a product of the notorious 'productivity of capital', that is of machines and raw materials as such; the wage appears as the product of labour. Physical, natural categories (land, means of production) and economic-social categories (profit, rent, etc.) -- i.e. magnitudes which cannot be compared with one another -- are fetishistically confused and muddled together, as Marx points out in his famous chapter on 'The Trinity Formula'.[105] In Marx's own critique of political economy, on the

 
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other hand, the whole picture is decisively altered. The mysterious trinity of Capital, Land and Labour is swept away. Since 'value' is now considered as the objectification of human labour-power, the critical scientific or anti-fetishistic discourse of Capital comes to coincide with the self-consciousness of the working class (a further proof of the unity of science and ideology). For just as wage labour, by recognizing the essence of 'value' and 'capital', sees that essence as an objectification of 'itself' (and hence reaches self-consciousness through this knowledge), the working class, by becoming conscious of itself, achieves -- for profit and rent are forms derived from surplus value -- the knowledge of the origin and basis of other classes and hence of society as a whole.[106]

This point serves to indicate the profound difference between Marx and his Marxist but (more or less consciously) Ricardian interpreters. They failed to grasp the organic unity between the theory of value and the theory of fetishism and therefore could not avoid confusing two totally distinct things. On the one hand, in dividing its total labour force between different employments, society must take account of the labour-time involved in each of these employments.[107] On the other hand, we have the specific way in which this law operates under capitalism where, in the absence of a conscious or planned division of social labour, the labour time required by the various productive activities is presented as an intrinsic quality in the products themselves, as the 'value' of a 'thing'. This confusion between the law of labour-time (which applies to all societies) and its fetishized realization in the world of capital and of commodities, or between the principles of planning and the law of value (to bring the confusion up to date), is the root of modern revisionism, as is all too evident

 
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in the present economic debates in the Soviet Union. In Italy, it is the basis for the recent theoretical positions, which I cannot accept, of two theorists, Galvano della Volpe and Giulio Pietranera, to whom in other respects I am much indebted. First, in the case of della Volpe: to Sweezy's wholly correct statement that 'value and planning are as opposed to each other, and for the same reasons, as capitalism and socialism', della Volpe objects that 'between value and planning there is only a difference of degree, that is of development : there is nothing negatively "opposed" or "contrary" in the two terms'.[108] As for Pietranera, he follows Oscar Lange in referring to the 'market' and 'profit' in socialist society, not as survivals of bourgeois institutions that are inevitable in what is par excellence a transitional society but as 'rational criteria and indices of economic efficiency, and hence something positive, to be maintained in a planned socialist economy' -- in other words as institutions socialist by their very nature.[109] This brings to mind a further, more recent error of Della Volpe. The latter presents (in the most recent edition of Rousseau e Marx ) the state under socialism -- the state, mark you, i.e. the hypostasis of the 'general interest', which (as Marx says) has become independent and 'alien' from the generality of interests that compose it -- not as a survival, but as a state which is wholly new, socialist in its inner structure. (Compare Lenin's conception of the state in State and Revolution : the presence in socialism of 'bourgeois right in regard to the distribution of consumption goods inevitably presupposes the existence of the bourgeois state, for right is nothing without an apparatus capable of enforcing the observance of the standards of right'. It follows that 'there remains for a time not only bourgeois right but even the bourgeois state without the bourgeoisie!')[110]

 
E Q U I V A L E N C E  A N D  S U R P L U S  V A L U E

If we now turn to Bernstein, we can see that the first and most important consequence of his interpretation of 'value' as a mere 'mental construction' is that -- since he is quite incapable of explaining value, and a fortiori surplus value as a result of capitalist production -- he is obliged to transfer its point of origin from the sphere of production to the sphere of circulation and exchange, as though surplus value originated, in other

 
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words, in a violation of commutative justice, i.e. in a violation of the law of exchange on the basis of equivalents. He thus reinstated the old mercantilist conception of 'profit upon alienation', i.e. of the origin of profit in the difference between selling and buying prices (indeed, this is why 'consumer cooperatives' assume such importance in Bernstein's thought).

This viewpoint, which restores the schema of 'utopian socialism', and in this case Proudhon's account of exploitation as theft and hence of the contradiction between exploitation and legality, constitutes the essential core of 'revisionism'. For Marx modern social inequality or capitalist exploitation occurs simultaneously with the fullest development of juridical-political equality ; here, on the contrary, juridical-political equality -- and hence the modern representative State -- becomes the instrument for the progressive elimination and dissolution of real inequalities, which seem arbitrarily produced rather than an organic consequence of the system as such.

The importance of this connection between equality and inequality in Marx's thought deserves emphasis here; besides its repercussions in political philosophy, which we shall examine, it also contained one of Marx's most important scientific achievements, his solution of the so-called 'paradox' of the law of value.

The law of value, according to Smith, is the law of the exchange of equivalents. It presupposes, besides the equal value of the commodities exchanged, the equality, as Marx pointed out, of the contracting parties in the act of exchange. In exchange the owners of commodities 'mutually recognize in each other the rights of private proprietors' establishing 'a juridical relation which thus expresses itself in a contract, whether such contract be part of a developed legal system or not'.[111] Now the 'paradox' is that the production of commodities (production for exchange) becomes dominant for the first time only under purely capitalist conditions; yet just when the law of value should find its fullest application it seems to be contradicted by the existence of surplus value and exploitation, in other words, the emergence of an unequal exchange.

Smith, of course, reacted to this 'paradox' by turning away from a labour theory of value contained, to a theory of value based on command of labour, thus relegating the validity of the law of value to precapitalist conditions. Ricardo, while he showed the difference between equal exchange of commodities for commodities, and the inequality characterizing the exchange of commodities for labour-power (specifically capitalist

 
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exchange), failed to explain 'how this exception could be in accordance with the law of value'.[112] Marx's theory explains the phenomenon of expropriation or of modern inequality precisely through the generalization of property rights or purely juridical equality.

Capitalism for Marx is the generalization of exchange; under capitalism all important social relations become exchange relations, starting with the productive relations themselves, which presuppose the buying and selling of labour-power. With this generalization of exchange a sphere of juridical equality is created, extended for the first time to all. The modern labourer is a holder of rights, a free person, and therefore is capable of entering into a contract, just as much as the employer of labour. 'Wage labour on a national scale, and hence also the capitalist mode of production, is not possible unless the labourer is personally free. It is based on the personal freedom of the labourer'.[113] Both the seller and buyer of labour-power are juridically equal persons because they are private-proprietors, owners of commodities.

However, according to Marx, what makes this relation of equality formal and conceals the real inequality is the fact that the property at the disposal of the worker (his own labouring capacity ) is only property in appearance. In reality, it is the opposite, a state of need, so that 'if his capacity for labour remains unsold, the labourer derives no benefit from it, but rather he will feel it to be a cruel, nature-imposed necessity that this capacity has cost for its production a definite amount of the means of subsistence and that it will continue to do so for its reproduction'.[114]

In short, 'in the concept of the free labourer, it is already implicit', Marx writes, 'that he is a pauper, or virtually a pauper. According to his economic conditions he is pure living working capacity ', which, since it is endowed with living requirements yet deprived of the means to satisfy them, is in itself not a good or form of property, but 'indigence from all points of view'.[115]

Hence the generalization of exchange -- the typical phenomenon of modern capitalism -- not only for the first time extends to all the sphere of juridical equality, making even the modern labourer into a free person ; it achieves this liberation in a dual way, since the extension of contractual relations to production through the buying and selling of labour power means on the one hand that the labourer is free in the sense that he is 'a

 
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free owner of his own working capacity and of his own person' and on the other that he is free in the sense of expropriated from the means of production, i.e. 'deprived of everything necessary for the realization of his labour-power'.[116]

Now the application of equal rights or property rights to two persons, of whom only one is really a property owner, explains why this formal equality of rights is in reality the law of the stronger. This is Marx's point when he writes that 'the bourgeois economists have merely in view that production proceeds more smoothly with modern police than, e.g. under club law. They forget, however . . . that the law of the stronger, only in a different form, still survives even in their "constitutional State".'[117]

In conclusion: the law of value which is indeed a law of exchange of equivalents, as soon as it is realized and becomes dominant, reveals its true nature as the law of surplus value and capitalist appropriation.

The exchange of equivalents, the original operation with which we started, has now become turned round in such a way that there is only an apparent exchange. This is owing to the fact, first, that the capital which is exchanged for labour power is itself but a portion of the product of others' labour appropriated without an equivalent ; and secondly, that this capital must not only be replaced by its producer but replaced together with an added surplus. . . . At first the rights of property seemed to us to be based on a man's own labour. At least, some such assumption was necessary since only commodity owners with equal rights confronted each other, and the sole means by which a man could become possessed of the commodities of others was by alienating his own commodities; and these could be replaced by labour alone. Now, however, property turns out to be the right on the part of the capitalist to appropriate the unpaid labour of others or its product and to be the impossibility on the part of the labourer of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labour has become the necessary consequence of a law that apparently originated in their identity.[118]

Hence Marx's opposition to 'utopian socialism' or 'revisionism' ante litteram, which, he claimed, 'especially in its French version' (Proudhon) saw socialism 'as the realization of the ideas of bourgeois society enunciated by the French Revolution'; as though the full realization of the 'rights of man', the principles of 1789 -- or, as we would now say, the republican Constitution -- could dissolve the modern social inequalities which these

 
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legal and constitutional principles have claimed were the precondition for their own appearance, and which they have reinforced ever since. These socialists

affirm that exchange, exchange-value, etc. originally (in time) or in their concept (in their adequate form) are a system of liberty and equality for all, but have since been adulterated by money, capital, etc. . . . The answer to them is that exchange-value, or more precisely the monetary system, is in fact the system of equality and liberty, and that what seems to them to distort the subsequent development of the system is distortions immanent to that system itself, precisely the realization of the equality and freedom which reveal themselves as inequality and despotism. . . . To want exchange-value not to develop into capital, or the labour, which produces exchange-value, not to become wage labour, is as pious as it is stupid. What distinguishes these gentlemen from the bourgeois apologists is, firstly, their awareness of the contradictions contained in the system; but secondly, the utopianism which prevents them from discerning the necessary distinction between the real and ideal forms of bourgeois society, and hence makes them want to undertake the vain task of trying to re-realize the ideal expression itself, while in fact this is only a reflected image of existing reality.[119]

Legal reforms cannot, therefore, grasp or transform the fundamental mechanisms of the system. This is so because, as Rosa Luxemburg acutely pointed out in the polemic against Bernstein, what distinguishes bourgeois society from preceding class societies, ancient or feudal, is the fact that class domination does not rest on 'inherited' or unequal rights as previously, but on real economic relations mediated by equality of rights.

No law obliges the proletariat to submit itself to the yoke of capitalism. Poverty, the lack of means of production, obliges the proletariat to submit itself to capital. . . . And no law in the world can give to the proletariat the means of production while it remains in the framework of bourgeois society, for no laws, but economic development, has torn the means of production from the producers. . . . Neither is the exploitation inside the system of wage labour based on laws. The level of wages is not fixed by legislation but by economic factors. The phenomenon of capitalist exploitation does not rest on a legal disposition. . . . In short, the fundamental relation of domination of the capitalist class cannot be transformed by means of legislative reforms, on the basis of capitalist society because these relations have not been introduced by bourgeois laws, nor have they received the form of such laws.

In our legislative system, as Rosa Luxemburg points out, not one legal formulation of the present class domination can be found. 'How then

 
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can one overcome wage slavery gradually, by legal means, when this has never been expressed in legislation?' That, she continues, is

why people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society, they stand for surface modifications of the old society. If we follow the political conceptions of revisionism, we arrive at the same conclusion that is reached when we follow the economic theories. They aim not towards the realization of socialism, but the reform of capitalism, not the suppression of the system of wage labour but the 'diminution' of exploitation, that is the suppression of the abuses of capitalism instead of the suppression of capitalism itself.[120]

 
' S O C I A L  C A P I T A L '

The insistence with which I have underlined the limits of the theoretical comprehension of Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International should not allow us to forget, however, that these limits, and the regression in relation to Marx typical of so much of late nineteenth-century Marxism, only acquired their decisive importance in the context and under the impact of a new and complex historical situation, in which a series of phenomena -- occasionally anticipated by Marx, but only now macroscopically developed -- fundamentally transformed the traditional features of capitalist society.

The period of the transition of capitalism to the monopoly phase marked a colossal leap forward in the process of socialization of production, introducing the great modern 'masses' into production and social life, where formerly they were dispersed in occupations surviving from previous modes of production. This 'socialization ' process, accelerated by the formation of 'joint-stock companies', meant not only an enormous growth in the scale of production and enterprise which could not have been achieved with individual capitals; it also meant the birth of the modern so-called 'social enterprise', insofar as it gave rise to the complex phenomenon of the dissolution of private capitalist industry on the basis of the capitalist system itself.

The capital, which in itself rests on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labour-power, is

The main consequences of this phenomenon (beginning with the 'separation of ownership and control') were already grasped in their essential features by Marx himself, even though they were still in their initial phase when Capital was written. The development of social capital, he wrote, implies the

transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist. Even when the dividends which they receive include the interest and the profit of enterprise, i.e. the total profit . . . this total profit is henceforth received only in the form of interest, i.e. as mere compensation for owning capital that now is entirely divorced from the function in the actual process of production, just as . . . the manager is divorced from ownership of capital.[122]

This in turn had two effects, which Marx did not fail to point out. Firstly, big capital exerted an action of 'peaceful expropriation' towards small capitals, whether already formed or in the process of formation, through the credit system and in particular through the joint-stock company. This created a situation in which the great majority of shareholders were deprived of control over their property in favour of a small minority of owners who came to wield a power that went far beyond the limits of their own actual property. Secondly, the progressive depersonalization of property, brought about by the development of the great modern 'limited liability' company, implied the emergence as a subject of the object of property itself, i.e. the complete emancipation of property from man himself, with the result that the firm seemed to acquire an independent life of its own as though it were nobody's property, transforming itself into an entity in itself with similar characteristics to those of the State.

This spread of joint-stock companies, of course, as Marx pointed out, encouraged speculation and adventurers, 'a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of

 
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corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation'. And yet this process was the chief support for Bernstein's thesis of a progressive 'democratization of capitalism'. In his view, modern industrial concentration is not accompanied, as Marx claimed, by a similar concentration of property ; rather it leads, through joint-stock companies, to a diffusion of property, a multiplication of the number of capitalists, a growth in the number of those who share in the benefits of the modern 'social enterprise'. Since the number of capitalists increases rather than diminishes, Marx's discussion of concentration and accumulation of wealth at one pole of society is contradicted and invalidated.

This theme has, of course, been taken up again relatively recently, thanks to two American neo-liberals, Berle and Means.[123] Their thesis is that the large firms represent only a technical-industrial concentration, which does not imply a concentration of property, but rather its diffusion and decentralization. Hence joint-stock companies or corporations signify the 'end of capitalism', provided that (a) control of these 'quasi-public' enterprises is entrusted to disinterested technicians (Berle and Means look forward to the appearance of an 'impartial technocracy'); and (b) that share ownership is progressively extended to all layers of society.

However, this is not the place to do more than note this development. To return to Bernstein, the scientific ingenuity behind his thesis of the multiplication of capitalists is revealed by two criticisms levelled at him by Rosa Luxemburg. Firstly, 'by "capitalist" Bernstein does not mean a category of production but the right to property. To him, "capitalist" is not an economic but a fiscal unit. And "capital" for him is not a factor of production but simply a certain quantity of money.' Hence, she concludes, 'he moves the question of socialism from the domain of production into the domain of relations of fortune . . . between rich and poor'. Secondly, Bernstein's thesis of the progressive dissolution of big capital into myriads of small capitals, and more generally his propensity to emphasize counter- tendencies to concentration, besides being based on utopian fantasy is essentially reactionary. If true, it would lead to 'an arrested development of the capitalist system of production', its regression or involution to a pre-natal phase.[124]

The same could be said for Bernstein's arguments about the persistence and increase in the number of small and medium enterprises. The

 
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'almost unshakeable phalanx' of medium-sized firms is a sign for him that the development of big industry does not resolve itself into giant concentrations as Marx had prophesied. Schumpeter's judgement is conclusive enough on this point: 'Bernstein was an admirable man but he was no profound thinker and especially no theorist. In some points, especially as regards . . . the concentration of economic power, his argument was distinctly shallow.'[125] Rosa Luxemburg's comment, however, is also pertinent: 'To see the progressive disappearance of the middle-sized firms as a necessary result of the development of large industry is to misunderstand sadly the nature of this process.' In relation to big industry the small firms 'initiate new methods of production in well-established branches of industry; they are also instrumental in the creation of new branches of production not yet exploited by big capital. . . . The struggle of the middle-sized enterprise against big capital cannot be conceived as a regularly proceeding battle in which the troops of the weaker side continue to melt away directly and quantitatively. It should be regarded as a periodic mowing down of the small enterprises, which rapidly grow up again, only to be mowed down once more by big industry.' This process does not necessarily mean 'an absolute diminution in the number of middle-sized enterprises . . . [but rather], first a progressive increase in the minimum amount of capital necessary for the functioning of enterprises in the older branches of production; second, the constant diminution of the interval of time during which the small capitalists conserve the opportunity to exploit the new branches of production'.[126]

Besides, Bernstein's 'ingenuous' marshalling of statistical material to support his argument, both as regards the diffusion of small and medium firms and variations in the flow of income, is exhaustively documented in Kautsky's reply to Bernstein. (Little reference has been made here to this book, though -- especially in the central chapters -- it is one of Kautsky's best works, along with the Agrarfrage.) As for Bernstein's argument in support of the 'new middle classes' thesis, the best answer is to be found in Kautsky's book and in Hilferding's Finance Capital. Here we can only touch on the problem, important though it is in the period of imperialism, developing as a result of the abnormal growth of the distribution sector provoked by monopoly, besides the mushrooming of the bureaucratic military apparatus characteristic of the modern State.

 
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Here it only remains to turn to a consideration of the so-called theory of the 'absolute immiseration' or long-term impoverishment of the masses, which, since Bernstein, has been often attributed to Marx by a variety of commentators: notably, until a few years ago, by the most primitive exponents of 'dialectical materialism' in the Soviet Union.

Not only is such a theory absent in Marx, but it would have been impossible for him to have produced it, as is proved simply by one thing (among others): that Marx introduces an explicitly historical-moral component into the determination of the 'price of labour' (thus distinguishing himself from Ricardo). In determining the 'sum of means of subsistence' necessary for the maintenance of a worker 'in his normal state as a labouring individual', it is not enough, Marx argues, to consider only 'natural wants such as food, clothing, fuel and housing, 'which "vary according to the climatic and other physical conditions of his country".' It is also necessary to consider that the 'number and extent of so-called necessary wants, as also the modes of satisfying them, are themselves the product of historical development and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilization of a country, more particularly on the conditions under which, and consequently on the habits and degree of comfort in which, the class of free labourers has been formed'.[127] This historically relative character of the determination of the 'price of labour' is explicitly stated: 'In contradistinction . . . to the case of other commodities, there enters into the determination of the value of labour-power a historical and moral element.' If we reflect on this we can understand that for Marx, above all others, it is impossible in principle to speak of a long-term immiseration of the workers, a worsening in absolute terms of their living standards in the centuries of capitalist development.

It is true that in the Manifesto and many other writings, Marx refers to a pauperization of the working class, its growing dependence for its subsistence on the will of others, that is of the capitalists; he writes of the 'immiseration', 'degeneration' and 'enslavement' of the workers and refers to the growing precariousness and insecurity of their labour: 'To the extent that capital is accumulated, the situation of the worker whatever his retribution, high or low, can only worsen' (my italics). But this conviction, to which Marx remained faithful all his life, can only mean one thing: capitalist development, contrary to illusions of 'betterment' nourished by reformists, is not destined to transform everyone into capitalists and property owners; nor will it abolish, by gradual reforms,

 
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the basic social inequality between capital and labour but quite to the contrary tends constantly to reproduce it, and to reproduce it in an aggravated form. This is a theory, in other words, of relative immiseration or an increase in the imbalance or inequality of the workers' conditions in relation to the conditions of the class that owns the means of production.[128]

As Marx wrote in 1849:

A noticeable increase in wages presupposes a rapid growth of productive capital . . . [which] brings about an equally rapid growth of wealth, luxury, social wants, social enjoyments. Thus, although the enjoyments of the worker have risen, the social satisfaction that they give has fallen in comparison with the increased enjoyments of the capitalist, which are inaccessible to the worker in comparison with the state of development of society in general. Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects that serve for their satisfaction, because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.[129]

Hence not only does Marx's theory not exclude increases in real wages, but this increase, whatever Bernstein and Joan Robinson may think, proves absolutely nothing which contradicts Marx's thought. Indeed, the theory of increasing exploitation holds good even in the case where wages have risen. And not only because the increase of the workers' enjoyment does not exclude that the 'social satisfaction' he obtains from it diminishes proportionately, but because we measure our needs and enjoyments not only by 'the material means for their satisfaction', but according to a social scale or social 'relation'. 'Just as little as better clothing, food and treatment and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of a slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage-worker."[130] This is, in fact, the decisive point in the entire Marxist theory of exploitation -- a point on which our own reading of the theory of value as a theory of alienation can help to throw light. It is the dependence which ties the workers to the will of the capitalist class, and not their absolute poverty, that represents 'the differentia specifca of capitalist production'.[131] In other words, capitalist appropriation is not exclusively or primarily an appropriation of things, but rather an appropriation of subjectivity, of working energy itself, of the physical and intellectual powers of man.

 
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C A P I T A L I S M  A N D  T H E  C O N S T I T U T I O N

When Bernstein's book is considered as a whole, it can be seen that the point to which his argument constantly returns and from which all his theses stem is, on the one hand, the 'contradiction' between political equality and social inequality; and, on the other, the capacity of the parliamentary government or modern representative state progressively to iron out the tensions and conflicts arising from class differences, to the point where their very source is removed.

The appeal to the inalienable 'rights of man' proclaimed by the French Revolution; the emphasis on natural law underlying Bernstein's 'ethical' socialism; his exaltation of 'liberalism', which he sees as the soul of modern democracy, to the extent of reducing the latter to the 'political form' of liberalism (die Demokratie ist nur die politische Form des Liberalismus ) -- all this does not require comment, given the eloquent clarity with which it is expressed. If time and space allowed, it would be obligatory to compare it with that remarkable document of ethico-political reflection, Marx's early text on The Jewish Question.

But to bring back our argument to the initial point, I shall rather emphasize that the development of this interclassist conception of the state in German Social Democracy was a gradual one, almost a slow historical accretion, interlinked with the practical political vicissitudes of the party. In 1890, with the fall of Bismarck, the anti-socialist law came to an end. The introduction of this law, which forced on German Social Democracy a quasi-illegal existence for twelve years, was not unconnected with difficulties consequent on the economic depression discussed above. According to Mehring, 'with the anti-socialist law, big industry, under the impact of the crash, made common cause with the reactionary classes. It obtained its industrial tariffs, while the bankrupt Junkers were artificially kept alive by agrarian tariffs and subsidies. These tariffs freed military absolutism from parliamentary control, still inconvenient in spite of the feebleness of the bourgeois parties in the Reichstag .'[132]

From this difficult period, however, which it had confronted with courage and determination, German Social Democracy emerged enormously strengthened. When the anti-socialist laws were passed, the party had 437,000 votes and the trade unions had 50,000 members; by the

 
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time they came to an end, the party could boast 1,427,000 votes and the unions 200,000 members. 'In twelve years of struggle the Party had not only become larger and more powerful, but was also considerably enriched in its innermost essence. It had not only resisted and hit back, but also worked, learned; it had given proof not only of its strength but also of its spirit.'[133]

This quantitative growth and the return to legality, even in the limited terms allowed by German conditions, created a series of qualitatively new problems. Having reached the point of its fullest development, the party now had to confront the difficult and complex transition from a phase of simple propaganda to one of concrete political choices and constant co-ordinated and practical action. So long as the party was proscribed, it had no choice but to use parliament as a propaganda tribune for socialism. But now that Bismarck had been dismissed and there was a prospect of rapid and steady electoral growth, with a general climate which seemed favourable to social reforms, should this purely negative attitude be abandoned? Should the parliamentary delegates of the party become spokesmen for the demands of the trade-union movement, favour the adoption of those measures that seemed feasible and in some way insert themselves positively in the Reichstag debates, passing from non-cooperation to a constructive policy?[134]

This turn posed serious tactical and strategic problems. Was it right to seek collaboration or alliance with other political forces or was this not to run the risk that the party, still young and moreover swollen with recent recruits, would thereby lose its independence and identity ? Then there was the question of the Reich, founded in 1870: should it be regarded as an enemy to fight, or accepted as a fact within which it was possible to work to obtain in the meanwhile the bourgeois-democratic reforms from which the German state was still so far removed?

At the Erfurt Congress (October 1891) the prevailing attitude seemed largely inspired by confidence and optimism. The party suffered, it is true, a minor rupture on the left, but this only underlined the firm determination of the majority to struggle forward in legality. The period which was now opening would see the party and the trade-union movement grow with gradual but irresistible force. In a reasonable period of time, the Social Democrats would conquer the majority of seats in the

 
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Reichstag -- a majority that no government soldiery could ever disperse. At that point, backed by the maturity and consciousness attained by the masses, the party would undertake the socialist transformation of society, using parliament itself to this end. The fact that the party did not yet have this decisive influence in the Reichstag should not induce it to condemn the system outright. 'Parliament', said old Wilhelm Liebknecht at the Congress, 'is nothing more than representative of the people. If we have not yet achieved results in parliament, this is not because of a defect in the system but simply because we have not yet got the necessary backing in the country and among the people.'[135] 'The other road' which some urged, the 'shorter' or 'violent' road, was merely that of anarchy.

The passage from Engels cited at the beginning of this essay essentially reflects this strategic perspective. The right to vote is considered as a weapon which can, in a short space of time, carry the proletariat to power; the Paris Commune is regarded as a blood-letting not to be repeated. It must be made clear that this strategic vision is by no means yet 'revisionism'. But if it is not 'revisionism' it is nonetheless its unconscious preamble and preparation.

German Social Democracy chose the 'parliamentary road' at Erfurt, not because it had already abandoned the class conception of the State, but because its 'fatalistic' and 'providential' faith in the automatic progress of economic evolution gave it the certainty that its eventual rise to power would come about 'in a spontaneous, constant, and irresistible way, quite tranquilly, like a natural process'. On the other hand, the naturalistic objectivism which is the counterpart to this concept of 'economic evolution' had its counterpart in the dissolution of the Marxist theory of the State.

Let us examine this question more closely. The theory of the State in the Marxism of the Second International was the theory in Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State

 
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types of class domination. As a result, it is impossible to relate this process of objective 'abstraction' or 'sublimation' to specifically capitalist economic-social conditions, and hence to explain it as an organic product of this particular type of society; it is seen instead as a conscious 'disguise' or fraud by the ruling classes, in much the same way as Voltaire imagined that religion owed its origin to the cunning of priests.

Two consequences flow from this inability really to relate the modern State to its specific economic foundation. Firstly, a voluntarist conception which sees the State, or at least the form it assumes, as an intentional product of the ruling class, an invention ad hoc. Secondly, insofar as the form of the State is seen as indifferent to the type of social relations over which it presides, a conception which tends both to frantic subjectivism and to interclassism (following a route which has recently been traversed again). In the first case, the rise to power of a particular political personnel, rather than a modification of the roots on which the power structure rests, is seen as decisive and essential for socialism (hence regimes of the Rakosi type). In the second case, since power is understood as an identical instrument that can serve different, opposed interests according to the context, it is automatically voided of any class content (as in recent theories of the so-called 'State of the whole people').

As Lenin pointed out in The State and Revolution : 'Marx . . . taught that the proletariat cannot simply conquer State power in the sense that the old apparatus passes into new hands (our italics), but must smash, break this apparatus and replace it by a new one',[136] i.e. by a State which begins slowly to 'wither away', making room for ever more extensive forms of direct democracy. This is a debatable position, of course, but one which has deep roots in Marx's thought. It seems to me, however, that it is a position already coming into crisis in Engels's 'political testament'. For here, just as 'legality' seems to revolt against the social and political forces which originally gave rise to it, the old State apparatus seems destined to welcome its inheritors to its breast, provided they know how 'to keep this [electoral] growth going, until it of itself gets beyond the control of the governmental system'.

 
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It is impossible to show here how this conception -- which, remarkably enough, is susceptible to two opposed interpretations: one sectarian and primitive, which considers political equality a mere 'trap'; and one 'revisionist', which sees the modern representative State as expressing the 'general interest' -- has exhaustively nourished the two opposed traditions of the workers' movement. To show how much more realistic and complex Marx's analysis is, I shall restrict myself to one of his most successful and compressed formulations, discussing The Class Struggles in France :

The comprehensive contradiction of this constitution, however, consists in the following: the classes whose social slavery the constitution is to perpetuate, proletariat, peasantry, petty bourgeoisie, it puts in possession of political power through universal suffrage. And from the class whose old social power it sanctions, the bourgeoisie, it withdraws the political guarantees of this power. It forces the political rule of the bourgeoisie into democratic conditions, which at every moment help the hostile classes to victory and jeopardize the very foundations of bourgeois society. From the ones it demands that they should not go forward from political to social emancipation; from the others that they should not go back from social to political restoration.[137]

Unless I am mistaken, the first writer to 'rediscover' these lines and make them the central point of his own study of the relationship between liberal and socialist democracy was Otto Bauer, who, in a famous and in many respects important book published in 1936, Zwischen zwei Weltkriegen?,[138] gave an interpretation of them very similar to Bernstein's theses -- an interpretation later taken over lock, stock and barrel by John Strachey in his book Contemporary Capitalism.[139]

According to this interpretation, Marx's test confirms the central thesis of at least one tendency in present-day Social Democracy: the idea that in the great 'Western Democracies' the 'basic tendencies in the political and economic fields', as Strachey puts it, 'move in diametrically opposed directions'. While 'the diffusion of universal suffrage and its use has become ever more effective, the growing strength of trades unionism' over the last half-century 'has diffused political power', placing it more and more in the hands of the working classes. In the very same period, by contrast, 'economic power has come to be concentrated in the hands of the largest oligopolies'.

It follows from this interpretation that in the 'great Western democ-

 
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racies', the situation is basically characterized by a 'contrast' between politics and economy, between the constitution or Rechtsstaat or parliamentary government (the political form more or less common to all these countries) and their economy which remains capitalist. There is no question, in other words, of seeking to establish a new democracy or new type of democracy; the existing one is the only one possible. The problem is rather to transfer democracy from the political plane, where it is already alive, to the economic plane (without, on the other hand, 'subverting' the system), In other words, to use the most common formula, to give 'content' to the existing 'liberties' which are only 'formal' (as if they had no content already).

Turning to the passage from Marx, this interpretation seems to me to miss all its complexity. Marx certainly recognizes that through universal suffrage the modern constitution places the working classes in a certain sense 'in possession of political power'. But he also points out that it perpetuates their 'social slavery '. He recognizes that it withdraws from the bourgeoisie the 'political guarantees' of its power, but also states that it sanctions its 'old social power'. In short, for Social Democracy the contradiction is only between constitution and capitalism; for Marx it is within society, traversing the constitution as well. On the one hand, through universal suffrage, the constitution brings everybody into political life, thus recognizing for the first time the existence of a common or public interest, a 'general will' or sovereignty of the people. On the other hand, it can only turn this common interest into a formal one, real interests remaining 'particularistic' and opposed to one another by the class divisions of society. ('The constitutional State', Marx wrote, 'is a State in which the "State interest" as a real interest of the people exists only formally. The State interest formally has reality as an interest of the people but it can only express this reality in formal terms.') Hence in the modern State 'general affairs and occupying oneself with them are a monopoly, while by contrast monopolies are the real general affairs.'

To conclude: the constitution of the bourgeois democratic republic is the résumé, the compendium of the contradictions between the classes in capitalist society. But since from one class 'it demands that they should not go forward from political to social emancipation', and 'from the others that they should not go back from social to political restoration', the republic is, for Marx, by no means the resolution or supersession of the basic antagonisms. On the contrary, it provides the best terrain for them to unfold and reach maturity.