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Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution
Part Two
Chapter VI: Economic Development and Socialism
The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian
movement has been the discovery of grounds of support for the
realisation of socialism in the economic condition of
capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was changed
from an “ideal” dreamt of by humanity for thousands of years to a thing
of historic necessity.
Bernstein denies the existence of the economic conditions for
socialism in the society of today. On this count his reasoning has
undergone an interesting evolution. At first, in the Neue Zeit,
he simply contested the rapidity of the process of concentration taking
place in industry. He based his position on a comparison of the
occupational statistics of Germany in 1882 and 1895. In order to use
these figures for his purpose, he was obliged to proceed in an entirely
summary and mechanical fashion. In the most favourable case, he could
not, even by demonstrating the persistence of middle–sized enterprises,
weaken in any the Marxian analysis because the latter does not suppose
as a condition for the realisation of socialism either a definite rate
of concentration of industry – that is, a definite delay of the realisation of socialism – or, as we have already shown, the absolute disappearance of small capitals, usually described as the disappearance of the petit bourgeoisie.
In the course of the latest development of his ideas Bernstein
furnishes us, in his book, a new assortment of proofs: the statistics of
shareholding societies. These statistics are used in order to
prove that the number of shareholders increases constantly and as a
result the capitalist class does not become smaller but grows bigger. It
is surprising that Bernstein has so little acquaintance with his
material. And it is astonishing how poorly he utilises the existing data
in his own behalf.
If he wanted to disprove the Marxian law of industrial development by
referring to the condition of shareholding societies, he should have
resorted to entirely different figures. Anybody who is acquainted with
the history of shareholding societies in Germany knows that their
average foundation capital has diminished almost constantly.
Thus while before 1871 their average foundation capital reached the
figure of 10.8 million marks, it was only 4.01 million marks in 1871,
3.8 million marks in 1873, less than a million from 1882 to 1887, 0.52
million in 1891 and only 0.62 million in 1892. After this date the
figures oscillated around 1 million marks, falling to 1.78 in 1895 and
to 1.19 in the course of the first half of 1897. (Van de Borght: Handwörterbuch der Staatsswissenschaften, 1.)
Those are surprising figures. Using them, Bernstein hoped to show the
existence of a counter–Marxian tendency for retransformation of large
enterprises into small ones. The obvious answer to his attempt is the
following. If you are to prove anything at all by means of your
statistics, you must first show that they refer to the same
branches of industry. You must not show that small enterprises really
replace large ones, that they do not. Instead, they appear only where
small enterprises or even artisan industry were the rule before. This,
however, you cannot show to be true. The statistical passage of immense
shareholding societies to middle–size and small enterprises can be
explained only by referring to the fact that the system of shareholding
societies continues to penetrate new branches of production. Before,
only a small number of large enterprises were organised as shareholding
societies. Gradually shareholding organisation has won middle–size and
even small enterprises. Today we can observe shareholding societies with
a capital of below 1,000 marks.
Now, what is the economic significance of the extension of the system
of shareholding societies? Economically, the spread of shareholding
societies stands for the growing socialisation of production under the
capitalist form – socialisation not only of large but also of
middle–size and small production. The extension of shareholding does
not, therefore, contradict Marxist theory but on the contrary, confirms
it emphatically.
What does the economic phenomenon of a shareholding society actually
amount to? It represents, on the one hand, the unification of a number
of small fortunes into a large capital of production. It stands, on the
other hand, for the separation of production from capitalist ownership.
That is, it denotes that a double victory being won over the capitalist
mode of production – but still on a capitalist base.
What is the meaning, therefore, of the statistics cited by Bernstein
according to which an ever–greater number of shareholders participate in
capitalist enterprises? These statistics go on to demonstrate precisely
the following: at present a capitalist enterprise does not correspond,
as before, to a single proprietor of capital but to a number of
capitalists. Consequently, the economic notion of “capitalist” no
longer signifies an isolated individual. The industrial capitalist of
today is a collective person composed of hundreds and even of thousands
of individuals. The category “capitalist” has itself become a social
category. It has become “socialised” – within the frame–work of
capitalist society.
In that case, how shall we explain Bernstein’s belief that the
phenomenon of share–holding societies stands for the dispersion and not
the concentration of capital? Why does he see the extension of
capitalist property where Marx saw its suppression?
That is a simple economic error. By “capitalist,” Bernstein does not
mean a category of production but the right to property. To him,
“capitalist” is not an economic unit but a fiscal unit. And “capital” is
for him not a factor of production but simply a certain quantity of
money. That is why in his English sewing thread trust he does not see
the fusion of 12,300 persons with money into a single capitalist unit
but 12,300 different capitalists. That is why the engineer Schulze whose
wife’s dowry brought him a large number of share from stockholder
Mueller is also a capitalist for Bernstein. That is why for Bernstein
the entire world seems to swarm with capitalists.
Here too, the theoretic base of his economic error is his
“popularisation” of socialism. For this is what he does. By transporting
the concept of capitalism from its productive relations to property
relations, and by speaking of simple individuals instead of speaking of
entrepreneurs, he moves the question of socialism from the domain of
production into the domain of relations of fortune – that is, from the
relation between Capital and Labour to the relation between poor and
rich.
In this manner we are merrily led from Marx and Engels to the author of the Evangel of the Poor Fisherman. There is this difference, however. Weitling,
with the sure instinct of the proletarian, saw in the opposition
between the poor and the rich, the class antagonisms in their primitive
form, and wanted to make of these antagonisms a lever of the movement
for socialism. Bernstein, on the other hand, locates the realisation of
socialism in the possibility of making the poor rich. That is, he
locates it in the attenuation of class antagonisms and therefore in the
petty bourgeoisie.
True, Bernstein does not limit himself to the statistics of incomes.
He furnishes statistics of economic enterprises, especially those of the
following countries: Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Austria and
the United States. But these statistics are not the comparative figures
of different periods in each country but of each period in
different countries. We are not therefore offered (with the exception of
Germany where he repeats the old contrast between 1895 and 1892), a
comparison of the statistics of enterprises of a given country at
different epochs but the absolute figures for different countries: England in 1891, France in 1894, United States in 1890, etc.
He reaches the following conclusion: “Though it is true that large
exploitation is already supreme in industry today, it nevertheless,
represents, including the enterprises dependent on large exploitation,
even in a country as developed in Prussia, only half of the population occupied in production.” This is also true about Germany, England, Belgium, etc.
What does he actually prove here? He proves not the existence of such or such a tendency of economic development but merely the absolute relation of forces of different forms of enterprise, or put in other words, the absolute relations of the various classes in our society.
Now if one wants to prove in this manner the impossibility of
realising socialism one’s reasoning must rest on the theory according to
which the result of social efforts is decided by the relation of the
numerical material forces of the elements in the struggle, that is, by
the factor of violence. In other words, Bernstein, who always thunders against Blanquism [See: Louis Blanqui],
himself falls into the grossest Blanquist error. There is this
difference, however. To the Blanquists, who represented a socialist and
revolutionary tendency, the possibility of the economic realisation of
socialism appeared quite natural. On this possibility they built the
chances of a violent revolution – even by a small minority. Bernstein,
on the contrary, infers from the numerical insufficiency of a socialist
majority, the impossibility of the economic realisation of socialism.
The Social–Democracy does not, however, expect to attain its aim
either as a result of the victorious violence of a minority or through
the numerical superiority of a majority. It sees socialism come as a
result of economic necessity – and the comprehension of that necessity –
leading to the suppression of capitalism by the working masses. And this necessity manifests itself above all in the anarchy of capitalism.
What is Bernstein’s position on the decisive question of anarchy in
capitalist economy? He denies only the great general crises. He does not
deny partial and national crises. In other words, he refuses to see a
great deal of the anarchy of capitalism; he sees only a little of it. He
is – to use Marx’s illustration – like the foolish virgin who had a
child “who was only very small.” But the misfortune is that in matters
like economic anarchy little and much are equally bad. If Bernstein
recognises the existence of a little of this anarchy, we may point out
to him that by the mechanism of the market economy this bit of anarchy
will be extended to unheard of proportions, to end in collapse. But if
Bernstein hopes to transform gradually his bit of anarchy into order and
harmony while maintaining the system of commodity production, he again
falls into one of the fundamental errors of bourgeois political economy
according to which the mode of exchange is independent of the mode of
production.
This is not the place for a lengthy demonstration of Bernstein’s
surprising confusion concerning the most elementary principles of
political economy. But there is one point – to which we are led by the
fundamental questions of capitalist anarchy – that must be clarified
immediately.
Bernstein declares that Marx’s law of surplus value is a simple
abstraction. In political economy a statement of this sort obviously
constitutes an insult. But if surplus value is only a simple
abstraction, if it is only a figment of the mind – then every normal
citizen who has done military duty and pays his taxes on time has the
same right as Karl Marx to fashion his individual absurdity, to make his
own law of value. “Marx has as much right to neglect the qualities of
commodities till they are no more than the incarnation of quantities of
simple human labour as have the economists of the Böhm–Jevons school to
make an abstraction of all the qualities of commodities outside of their
utility.”
That is, to Bernstein, Marx’s social labour and Menger’s abstract
utility are quite similar – pure abstractions. Bernstein forgets
completely that Marx’s abstraction is not an invention. It is a
discovery. It does not exist in Marx’s head but in market economy. It
has not an imaginary existence, but a real social existence, so real
that it can be cut, hammered, weighed and put in the form of the money.
The abstract human labour discovered by Marx is, in its developed form,
no other than money. That is precisely one of the greatest of
Marx’s discoveries, while to all bourgeois political economists, from
the first of the mercantilists to the last of the classicists, the
essence of money has remained a mystic enigma.
The Boehm–Jevons abstract utility is, in fact, a conceit of the mind.
Or stated more correctly, it is a representation of intellectual
emptiness, a private absurdity, for which neither capitalism nor any
other society can be made responsible, but only vulgar bourgeois economy
itself. Hugging their brain–child, Bernstein, Böhm and Jevons, and the
entire subjective fraternity, can remain twenty years or more before the
mystery of money, without arriving at a solution that is different from
the one reached by any cobbler, namely that money is also a “useful”
thing.
Bernstein has lost all comprehension of Marx’s law of value. Anybody
with a small understanding of Marxian economics can see that without the
law of value, Marx’s doctrine is incomprehensible. Or to speak more
concretely – for him who does not understand the nature of the commodity
and its exchange the entire economy of capitalism, with all its
concatenations, must of necessity remain an enigma.
What precisely was the key which enabled Marx to open the door to the
secrets of capitalist phenomena and solve, as if in play, problems that
were not even suspected by the greatest minds of classic bourgeois
economy? It was his conception of capitalist economy as an historic
phenomenon – not merely in the sense recognised in the best of cases by
the classic economists, that is, when it concerns the feudal past of
capitalism – but also in so far as it concerns the socialist future of
the world. The secret of Marx’s theory of value, of his analysis of the
problem of money, of his theory of capital, of the theory of the rate of
profit and consequently of the entire existing economic system is found
in the transitory character of capitalist economy, the inevitability of
its collapse leading – and this is only another aspect of the same
phenomenon – to socialism. It is only because Marx looked at capitalism
from the socialist’s viewpoint, that is from the historic viewpoint,
that he was enabled to decipher the hieroglyphics of capitalist economy.
And it is precisely because he took the socialist viewpoint as a point
of departure for his analysis of bourgeois society that he was in the
position to give a scientific base to the socialist movement.
This is the measure by which we evaluate Bernstein’s remarks. He
complains of the “dualism” found everywhere in Marx’s monumental Capital.
“The work wishes to be a scientific study and prove, at the same time, a
thesis that was completely elaborated a long time before the editing of
the book; it is based on a schema that already contains the result to
which he wants to lead. The return to the Communist Manifesto (that is the socialist goal! – R.L.), proves the existence of vestiges of utopianism in Marx’s doctrine.”
But what is Marx’s “dualism” if not the dualism of the socialist
future and the capitalist present? It is the dualism of Capitalism and
Labour, the dualism of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is the
scientific reflection of the dualism existing in bourgeois society, the
dualism of the class antagonism writhing inside the social order of
capitalism.
Bernstein’s recognition of this theoretic dualism in Marx as “a
survival of utopianism” is really his naïve avowal that he denies the
class antagonisms in capitalism. It is his confession that socialism has
become for him only a “survival of utopianism.” What is Bernstein’s
“monism” – Bernstein’s unity – but the eternal unity of the capitalist
regime, the unity of the former socialist who has renounced his aim and
has decided to find in bourgeois society, one and immutable, the goal of
human development?
Bernstein does not see in the economic structure of capitalism the
development that leads to socialism. But in order to conserve his
socialist program, at least in form, he is obliged to take refuge in an
idealist construction placed outside of all economic development. He is
obliged to transform socialism itself from a definite historical phase
of social development into an abstract “principle.”
That is why the “co–operative principle” – the meagre decantation of
socialism by which Bernstein wishes to garnish capitalist economy –
appears as a concession made not to the socialist future of society but
to Bernstein’s own socialist past.
Next: Chap.7: Co–operative, Unions, Democracy
Last updated on: 21 July 2010
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