ATÂ/ÍL  MARX.

23

matter  which  his  book  contains  have  for  their  aim  to  prove
that  capital  is  necessarily  the  result  of  spoliation.  The  conclusion ­
  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