The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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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

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