ATÂ/ÍL MARX. 
23 
matter which his book contains have for their aim to prove 
that capital is necessarily the result of spoliation. The con 
clusion is, at bottom, the same as that summed up in the 
famous aphorism of Brissot and of Proudhon : “ Proj^erty is 
Robbery.” Still, whatever bitter words Marx may from time to 
time address to manufacturers and financiers, he does not mean 
to apply them to individuals ; it is the system that he attacks. 
As he says in his preface, “It is not a question of persons, 
except so far as they are the embodiment of economic 
categories. From my point of view, according to which the 
evolution of the economic system of society may be likened to 
the evolution of Nature, still less than from any other, can the 
individual be held responsible for social conditions, whose 
creature he must remain, however he may strive to free himself 
from them.” Marx evidently here gives utterance to those 
materialistic doctrines, so widely held to-day, which deny the 
freedom and responsibility of individuals and of societies. 
Every event, every individual action, is only the result of 
inevitable forces. The influence a writer can hope to exercise 
is, therefore, very small ; for “ even when a community has 
succeeded in discovering the course of the natural law that 
regulates its advance, it can neither avoid the phases of its 
natural development nor abolish them by decree, but it can 
somewhat abridge their periods and diminish the evils that 
come in their train.” Whatever reservations one may have to 
make as to this doctrine of fatalism, which is not even carried 
to its logical conclusion, it nevertheless gives a very just 
warning to revolutionary dreamers and enthusiasts who, like 
those of the eighteenth century, imagine that a few laws would 
suffice to suppress all the evils from which society suffers, and 
that a benevolent decree alone is needed to establish the 
Golden Age upon earth. 
We shall first of all state the ideas developed in this strange 
book. Das Kapital, without discussing them in detail. It is 
only when one has grasped the theory as a whole that one can 
understand the sophisms upon which it rests. Marx bases his 
system on principles formulated by economists of the highest 
authority, Adam Smith, Ricardo, De Tracy, Bastiat, and the