Evolutionary Economics II Grossman

7/28/2019 Evolutionary Economics II Grossman

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The Evolutionist Revolt Against Classical Economics: II. In England--James Steuart, RichardJones, Karl MarxAuthor(s): Henryk GrossmanReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 51, No. 6 (Dec., 1943), pp. 506-522Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1824850 .

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THE EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT AGAINST CLASSICALECONOMICSII. IN ENGLAND JAMES STEUART, RICHARD

JONES, KARL MARX89HENRYK GROSSMAN

ANGSIDE the trend of thoughtinked with the French Revolu-tion, another important move-ment grew out of the industrial revolu-tion in England. Every year newtechnical processes were increasing theproductivity of industry. The equilibri-um of society was overthrown, to thedetriment of the country districts and tothe advantage of the towns, which wererapidly increasing both in number andin size. The workmen affected by therapid introduction of machinery were inrevolt against the novel conditions.90England was steadily moving away fromthe Continental type of agricultural na-tions, and this rapid process of differen-tiation demanded an explanation of itshistorical roots. "Why have not all civi-lized societies," wrote Lord Lauderdale,"derived equal benefit from them [i.e.,from new technical inventions]-andwhat are the circumstances that retardthe progress of industry in some coun-tries, and that guide its direction in all?"'9

The tremendous leap in production,on the other hand, particularly duringand after the Napoleonic Wars, resultedin a marked increase in trade and exten-sion of the world market. One of the con-sequences was the establishment of closeeconomic and cultural contact between

89 Part I of this article was published in the Octo-ber issue.9o ?lie Halevy, A History of the English People

("Pelican Books," I937), II, 79-80.9' James Lauderdale, An Inquiry into the Natureand Origin of Public Wealth (Edinburgh, i804), p.304.

western European capitalism and themore backward economies of southernand eastern Europe, South America,and, above all, Asia. A clear understand-ing by means of historical comparisonwas thus affordedof the different econom-ic systems still existing in different partsof the world and of the changeability ofspecific economic institutions, such asproperty. These new insights, togetherwith the influence of the French Revolu-tion previously discussed, 92 inevitablyled to a better understanding of the his-torical development of all social institu-tions and to the formulation of the in-ductive method in the field of historyand economics, which in the field of his-tory is associated with the name of Au-guste Comte.93

The chief representative of evolution-ary ideas in the field of economics in Eng-92 Cf. Part I, pp. 384, 387.93 We need not spend any more time on Comte,because he made no contribution to the particularproblem under discussion. In his remarks on themethod of historical comparison he assumes the va-lidity of the same law of evolution for all peoples,since he holds that they all go through the same suc-cessive stages. His "three-stage" theory, however,has nothing to do with the succession of constantlyhigher, objective economic systems but deals onlywith intellectual advances. Man's interpretation offacts advanced from the attribution of all phenome-na to supernatural agencies to the use of metaphysi-cal abstractions and finally to scientific laws of suc-cession and similitude. The "law" of the three stagesis thus no historical law at all. It offers no causal,genetic explanation of development but merely aschematic description of historical sequences (seeComte's Cours, Vol. IV, Lesson 48; Roger Maudit,Auguste Comte et la science 6conomique Paris, I928],p. 89; Salomea Krynska, Entwicklungund Fortschrittnach Condorcetund A. Come [Berne, i908], p. 78).

5o6


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 507land is the Reverend RichardJones; butthe way was prepared for Jones by thework of Sir James Steuart (I712-80),whose Inquiry into the Principlesof Po-litical Economy94eveals an evolutionaryapproach to economic problems. He ar-gues that the "speculative person" ortheoristmust use not only deductionbutalso the inductive method grounded onobservation. On the one hand, he mustconsider the universalfactors-he must"become a citizen of the world."95Inanalyzing individual branches of theeconomy-population, agriculture, rade,industry, interest, or money-he cannotremain satisfied with mere description,"the nature of his work being a deduc-tion of principles,not a collection of in-stitutions. "96On the other hand, Steuart warnsagainst too easy generalizations hat arenot properlybased on experience,againstthe habitof runningnto what the FrenchcallSyste?mes. heseareno more hana chainofcon-tingentconsequences, rawn roma fewfunda-mental maxims, adopted perhaps .... rash-ly . 7 If one considers he variety .... indifferent ountries,n the distribution f prop-erty .... of classes,[etc.] ... one may con-clude,that .... principles, owever,universal-ly true, may becomequite ineffectualn prac-tice.98Political economy must be adjusted tothese differences. That is why, in ap-proaching political economy, Steuartconducts "himself through the greatavenues of this extensive labyrinth"offacts "by this kind of historicalclue";99and he promises to treat the subject "inthat order which the revolutionsof thelast centuries have pointed out as themost natural."Io0

94London, I767.95 Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy,I, 3.96 Ibid., Preface, p. viii. 97Ibid., p. ix.98 Ibid. p. 3. 99 Ibid., p. i6. Ioo Ibid., p. I50.

In the second chapter of Book I, en-titled "Of the Spirit of a People," Steu-art offers a sketch of the historicalde-velopment of Europe "from the experi-ence of what has happened."I"IThe"greatalteration n the affairs of Europewithin these .... centuries,by thediscov-ery of Americaand the Indies,"namely,the rise of industryandlearningand theintroductionof trade,led to the "dissolu-tion of the feudal form of government"and the introductionof "civil and do-mestic liberty.I02 These, in turn, "pro-duced wealth and credit, these againdebts and taxes; and all togetherestab-lisheda perfectly newsystem of politicaleconomy.I03 All these factors"haveen-tirely altered the plan of governmenteverywhere.Fromfeudalandmilitary, tis become free and commercial."I04The social transformationhas led, inturn, to correspondingchanges in "themanners of Europe";105 and the two to-getherare changing he spiritof the peo-ple, slowly to be sure, but nonethelessunmistakably,whenwecompareany twosucceedinggenerations.106

The "sociologizing" f economiccate-gories and institutions was carriedthrough still more penetratingly andsystematicallyby the ReverendRichardJones (I79o-I855), a man who has notbeen properly appreciated except byMarx.'07Joneswas the firstEnglishman

10xIbid., p. i6. I04Ibid., p. I0."0Ibid., p. I50. os Ibid.,p. II.103Ibid. o06 Ibid.107 Marx's evaluation is restated by R. Hilferding,"Aus der Vorgeschichte der Marxschen Oekonomik:Richard Jones," Die neueZeit, XXX, Part I (I900),434-54; and by Erich Roll, A History of Eco-nomic Thought (London, I938), pp. 309-i6. Wehave already noted that Marx never claimed credit

for having first introduced the historical factor intopolitical economy. He pointed, besides Sismondi, totwo men: James Steuart (I 767) and, even more im-portant, Richard Jones (I83I), who, though ignorant


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508 HENRYK GROSSMANto criticize the classicaleconomistsfromthe standpoint of the historical school.He sharply attacked their attempts todeduceeconomic aws valid for all timesand all countries. He wrote:

We must get comprehensive views of facts,that we may arrive at principles which are tru-ly comprehensive .... [If] we determine toknow as much as we can of the world as it hasbeen, and of the world as it is, before we laydown general laws as to the economical habitsand fortunes of mankind or of classes of men:there are open to us two sources of knowledge,-history and statistics, the story of the past,and a detail of the present condition of the na-tions of the earth. [On the other hand,] if wetake a differentmethod, if we snatch at generalprinciples, and content ourselves with confinedobservations, two things will happen to us.First, what we call general principleswill oftenbe found to have no generality .... at everystep of our further progress, we shall be obligedto confess [that they] are frequently false; and,secondly... io8Jones wasespeciallysharp nhis criticismof the supposeduniversalityof Ricardo'slaws. He held that they havebut limitedhistoricalvalidity, specificallyonly whereRicardo'spresuppositionsagree with theactualconditions. They are valid neitherfor the past nor for the future,because nof the Hegelian dialectic, was thoroughly familiarwith the historical conditions of earlier epochs andwith the economic conditions of the backwardspheres of eastern Europe and Asia. Richard Jones,a friend of Malthus and his successor as a professorof economics at East India College, Haileybury, wasan expert on Asiatic conditions, particularly in In-dia, Persia, and Turkey. In his Essay on the Distri-bution of Wealth (London, i83i), Book I, "Rent,"Jones lists as source of his historical analysis in anappendix a copious literature about Asiatic andSouth American countries. Particularly amazing isthe knowledge of Asiatic economic conditions thatJones revealed in a work published twenty yearslater, Textbookof Lectures on the Political Economyof Nations (Hertford, i852).

lo8 Richard Jones, An IntroductoryLectureon Po-litical Economy [i833], cited from Literary RemainsConsisting of Lecturesand Tracts on Political Econo-my, ed. William Whewell (London, i859), pp. 569-70. The extracts given above have been rearrangedsomewhat.

different epochs the conditions changeand no longer coincide with Ricardo'spremises.Io9This approach is genuinely epoch-making when contrastedwith the "eter-nal" laws of the classicists. Just beforethe publicationof Jones's majorwork,II0his friend William Whewell hailed himas the founderof the inductivesystem ofpolitical economy, in contrast to Ricar-do, the masterof the deductivemethod,and expected that Jones's book wouldfaire 6poque. Actually, the workreceivedscant notice. Among the classicalecono-mists, only McCullochgave it some at-tention, and he dismissed it as "super-ficial" and unimportant. John StuartMill describesJones'sEssay on Distribu-tion as a "copious repertoryof valuablefacts on the landed tenures of differentcountries"; Jones's evolutionary ideasare not mentioned.IIIMuchmore recent-ly Bbhm-Bawerk, n his history of eco-nomic theory, the third Germaneditionof which appeared n I914, that is, afterthe publicationof Marx'sstudy of Jonesin his Theorien ueberden Mekrwert,couldnot say more than that Jones "addsnothing importantto ourknowledge.""2Marian Bowley disposes of him brieflyby saying that he "lookeduponsociologyas a branch of economics, thus revisingComte's treatment of economics as a

lo9 A theory of rent, for instance, based on theEnglish type of land system, which assumes individ-ual ownership and free competition, cannot be ap-plied to oriental societies, in which joint ownershipand absence of competition are the rule.lloEssay on the Distribution of Wealth and theSourcesof Taxation (London, i83I)."I'Principles of Political Economy (Ashley ed.,

I909), p. 252.II2 Bohm-Bawerk, Geschichteund Kritik der Kapi-talzinstheorien (Innsbruck, I9I4), I, I23; see also therecent monograph of Hans Weber, Richard Jones,ein frueher englischer Abtruenniger der klassischenSchule der Nationaloekonomie,ed. M. Saitzew (Zu-rich, I939); and Karl Marx, Theorien uiber denMehrwert,Vol. III. (3d ed.; Stuttgart, i919), citedbelow as Mehrzwerttheorien.


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EVOLUTIONISTREVOLT.II. IN ENGLAND 509branchof sociology,"and that he "criti-cized the classics for ignoring he relativ-ity of economic aws."II3Though Jones's influenceon his imme-diate contemporarieswas thus slight, heexercised a powerful indirect influencethroughMarx. He is oneof the few econ-omists of whom Marx speaks with deepacknowledgment,despite the fact thatJones, a friend of Malthus, wasvery con-servative in his political thinkingand re-jected Ricardo's doctrineof the opposi-tion of class interests in favor of a faithin class harmony.II4Marxrecognized helimited bourgeois character of Jones'shorizonbut called him the last represent-ative of the "true science of politicaleconomy"I"5nd made a specialanalysisof each of his major works;wefind n thisanalysis frequent references to Jones'ssuperiority over the classical econo-mists."6Jones was not a theorist in the classi-cal sense of developingcategoricalcon-cepts by sharp, ogical deductionfrom agiven set of presuppositions.He was ahistorian. But, unlike the discreditedschool of Roscher, who substituted fortheoretical laws an unthinking,chrono-

I3 Nassau Senior and Classical Economics (Lon-don, I937), p. 40. We have alreadycalledattentionto Erich Roll's discussion of Jones, which does bene-fit from Marx's analysis but does not discuss Jones'sposition with respect to our particular problem. Mr.Nai-Tuan Chao's thoroughgoing thesis, RichardJones: An Early English Institutionalist (New York:Columbia University, I930), deals only with Jones'ssystem of political economy: his theory of produc-tion and distribution, theory of rent, wages, andprofit (pp. 45 ff ). Jones's evolutionary theories, par-ticularly his theory of the succession of economicstages, are not mentioned.

I4 Jones, Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, p.328.II5 Marx, Mehrwerttheorien, II, 489 and 49I.ix6 E.g., "Jones represents a fundamental advanceover Ricardo" (p. 454); "Here is where Jones' supe-riority is strikingly brought out" (p. 453); "We seewhat a great leap it is from Ramsay to Jones" (p.490). Altogether, Marx devoted seventy pages tothe discussion of Jones (see ibid., pp. 450-520).

logical accumulationof unanalyzed de-scriptivematerial,Jonesconsidered t hisfunctionto test andcorrect he prevalenttheories against actual historical de-velopments and to formulate concreteexperience into new theoretical view-points and categories. With ThomasHodgskin,for example,he was one of theearliestopponentsof McCulloch'swage-fund theory, which held that there is aspecial fund of fixed magnitude for theemployment of workers.Unlike Hodg-skin, however, whose critique (i825) ofthis theorywas a beautifulexercise n log-ic, Joneswent to historyto showthat sucha wage fund never really existed in fact.Quitethe contrary,given a fixedamountof capital, there is continualfluctuationbetween its constant (for machinesandraw material) and its variable (forwages) elements."I7To this importanttheoretical conclusion Marx appendedthegloss: "This s animportantpoint" ii8and hedeveloped t still further n criticalopposition to the classical school ina chapter on "The So-called LaborFund.""19Jones went still further. Whereasthewage-fund theory held that there is arigid awof wages, that is, that wagescanrise only if the number of worker de-creases or if the amount of capital in-creasesI20 Jones showed by historicalevidence that it is possible-and at givenhistoricalmoments it actually occurs-that "greatfluctuations n the amountof

117 Jones, IntroductoryLectureon Political Econo-my (London, i833), p. 52: "The amount of capitaldevoted to the maintenance of labor may vary, in-dependently of any changes in the whole amount ofcapital." Here, and in nn.. I2i and I26, I cite fromthe rare first edition because the chapter involved isnot reprinted in the Literary Remains.II8 Melrwerttheorien, III, 476."I9 Capital ("Modern Library" ed.), I, 667: "Ithas been shown in the course of this inquiry that thecapital is not a fixed magnitude."120 McCulloch, Discourse on Political Economy(Edinburgh, i825), pp. 6i-62.


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5IO HENRYK GROSSMANemployment, and great consequentsuf-fering, may sometimes be observed tobecome more frequent as capital be-comes more plentiful.""' This happensin the "periodsof transitionsof the la-borers from dependenceon one fund todependenceon another,"I22 that is to say,in the period of the transition from aneconomy of independent peasants andhandicraftsmento a system in whichthose groupsbecomea propertylesspro-letariat. Such a "transfer"-the loss ofeconomicindependence hroughthe lossof ownershipof the meansof production-obviously cannot be accomplishedwithout serious disturbances."3 Marxcommented hat Joneshad herehit uponthe germ of the idea of "primaryaccu-mulation," that is, the antecedent ofcapital formation, and had thus begunthe necessary process of replacing the"absurd"andrationalisticnotionof capi-tal formation through "savings" by amore realistic and historically correctview."4Even more important nsightsinto the

121 Introductory Lecture on Political Economy(London, i833), p. 52.122 "Transfer of the laboring cultivators to thepay of capitalists .... transfer of non-agriculturalclasses to the employ of capitalists" (ibid., pp. 52-

53).I23 Ibid. The uprising of propertyless.peasants inNorfolk, in the middle of the sixteenth century,

when enclosures were made on a tremendous scale,is well known. This uprising was crushed, and "mul-titudes of dispossessed and impoverished villagersflocked to the towns" (H. de B. Gibbins, The Indus-trial History of England [London, i910], pp. 88-89).It is not hard to see why just in this period occursfor the first time in history the application of theword "proletarii" in the modem sense, to denotepropertyless day laborers, wage-workers, and"poore husbandmen" as a "fourth sort or classe" ofsociety (see Sir Thomas Smith, De republics An-glorum,a Discourse of the Common-wealth f England(first published I583; written about I565), ed. L.Alston, with a Preface by F. W. Maitland (Cam-bridge, igo6), Book I, chap. xxiv.

I24 "What Jones calls 'Transfer' is what I call'primary accumulation"' (Marx, Mehrwerttheorien,III, 477).

historical roots of the capitalist systemare to be found in Jones's discussionofvarious systems of production.He waswell awareof the fact that differentsys-tems have succeededone anotherin thepast; andhe soughtto work out theires-sential characteristics.The decisive fac-tor in differentiatingthese various sys-temsis thewayin whichhumanabors or-ganized. As this factor changes, thewholeeconomicsystem changes. That iswhy Jonesdoesnot follow a chronologicalarrangementn describing he successionof economiesbut beginswith the capital-ist system as a yardstick with which tomeasure and differentiate earlier sys-tems.Like Sismondi, he considered the"transfer," i.e., the separation of theonce independent producers (peasantsand craftsmen) rom theirmeans of pro-duction, to be the necessary historicalpreconditionor capitalism. Through he"transfer" process they became wage-workers dependent on the capitalist."The first capitalist employers," hewrote, "those who first advance thewages of labor from accumulatedstock,and seek .... profits .... have beenordinarilya class distinct from the la-borers hemselves.I"I25 This developmenthad so far been limited pretty much toEngland,I26and even there it was his-torically a late phenomenon.127 In thepreviouscenturiesthe handworkersweresupported not by the advances fromcapital but by land revenue, "the sur-plus produce"of the land.I28 This sur-plus produce "may be handed over toindividual landowners"or it "may bepaid to the State."I29 In the latter case

125 Jones, Textbook of Lectures on the PoliticalEconomy of Nations (Literary Remains, p. 441)226 Jones, IntroductoryLecture(London, i833), p.

52.I27 Textbook,P. 454.I28 Ibid., p. 440. 129 Ibid., p. 44o.


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EVOLUTIONISTREVOLT.II. IN ENGLAND 5"I"the wages of such workmenwere de-rived directly from the revenueof theirgreat customer,and not from an inter-mediate class of capitalists," and it "isin Asia that we observe this particularfund .... in full and continued ....predominance.I30 In Europe the num-ber of workerspaid out of land revenuesis still large,but no longerpredominant,and "in Englanditself, .... the body iscomparatively mall."I3IJones shows the superiority of thecapitalist system over precedingforms.In China and throughoutthe East, forexample,tailorsand other artisanswan-derall over the city, day in and day out,seekingworkin their customers'homes,and thuswastea great dealof time,whileunder capitalism the workers becamesedentaryand "can now labor continu-ously." Finally,on this basis, whereonecapitalist employs many workers, anorganizeddivisionof labor becomespos-sible.I32It is on the basis of such concretehis-torical materialthat Jonesdevelopedhisidea of the sequence f economieshroughwhich every nation mustpass, thoughatdifferent emposaccordingto their vary-ing conditions. After a given economybecomes dominant, t beginsto lose thatpositionwhile still remainingvery wide-spread,and it slowly becomesmoreandmore subordinateto a new form. WhenJones says that "England s much in ad-vance of other nations," he does notmean that English conditionsare betterbut merelythat, "inarrivingat ourpres-ent position, we have passed throughand gone beyond those at which we seeother nations.... The future of allotherpeoplewill, however,t some ime,belike ourpresent."This successiontheoryhas exceedingly broad implications, as

130 Ibid., pp. 442, 444- '3' Ibid., p. 443-132 Ibid., pp. 395, 396, 397, 455.

he himselfrecognized:"The prophecy sbold."I33Following Condorcet,he seesan easierroadaheadfor the youngerna-tions. They have "better hopes for thefuture" because, "if they assume oureconomicorganizationand power,[they]may escapemany of the evils that haveafflictedour progress,or fromwhichwesuffernow."I34Jonesgoes still further. Not only doeshe predictthat every nation must ulti-mately attain the highesteconomicformso far developed-capitalism-but hesees the possibility of still further de-velopment in the future to a socializedformof production n which the separa-tion of the wage-worker romthe meansof productionwill be ended. Capitalismis thusa historicalandtransitory,thoughnecessary, stage on the road to a moreadvancedeconomyof the future.

.... a state of thingsmay hereafterexist, andparts of the worldmay be approachingto it, un-der which the laborers and the owners of accu-mulated stock,may be identical; but in the prog-ress of nations, whichwe arenow observing, thishas never yet been the case .... [The presentsystem in which a body of employers pay theworkersby advances of capital] .... may notbe as desirablea state of things as that in whichlaborers and capitalist are identified; but wemust still accept it as constituting a stage in themarch of industry, which has hitherto markedthe progress of advancing nations.r35Having shown the way in which histori-cal economies ucceedoneanother,Jonesthen triedto differentiate hose elementsin the economy which are particularlyactive and decisive in the process oftransformationfrom the more passiveand secondaryones. He was not inter-ested in the traditional categories ofpolitical economy-profit, rent, wages,etc.-but in the changes in productionin so far as they influencethe growthof

'33 IntroductoryLecture, pp. 558-59. Italics aremine.'34 Textbook,p. 4I2. '3sIbid., P. 445.


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512 HENRYK GROSSMANproductive power and the character ofthe economy itself. His study of historyled him to the conclusion hat "changesin the economical structure of nations"teach us to understand he secrets of an-cient and of modern history;I6 on theother hand, that changes n the structureof the economy are closely linked withchanges in the institution of propertyand that the differingproperty relationscorrespond o different stages in the de-velopment of productive power.I37ForJones, therefore, heeconomical structure of nations [is made up of]the relations between the different classeswhich are established in the first instance bythe institution of property in the soil, and by thedistribution of its surplus produce; afterwardsmodified and changed (to a greateror lesser ex-tent) by the introduction of capitalists, asagents in .... feeding and employing the labor-ing population. An accurate knowledge of thatstructure can alone give us the key to the pastfortunes of the different people of the earth, bydisplaying their economical anatomy,and show-ing thus, the most deeply-seated sources of theirstrength, the elements of their institutions, andcauses of their habits and character. It is thuswe must learn the circumstances which dividethem into classes.138

In other words, the economic struc-ture, as thus defined, s the key to socialrelationships:I36 IntroductoryLecture,p. 56i.I37 Marx, Mehrwerttheorien, II, 452.138 IntroductoryLecture,p. 560. With the expres-sion "economical anatomy" Jones foreshadows thefamous phrase of Marx in the Preface to the Critiqueof Political Economy (i859) that legal relations andforms of state cannot be understood by themselvesand that they are rooted in material conditions oflife, that "the anatomy of the civic society is to besought in political economy." It was Sir WilliamPetty who first (1672) introduced the expression"political anatomy" to denote the knowledge of theeconomic structure of a country, its "Symmetry,Fabrick and Proportion," as the basis for under-standing the "Body Politick" (see "Political Anato-my of Ireland," in The EconomicWritings of Sir Wil-liam Petty, ed. Charles H. Hull [Cambridge, i899],I, I29).

There is a close connection between the eco-nomical and social organizationof nations.....Great political, social, moral, and intellectualchanges, accompany changes in the economi-cal organization of communities .... Thesechanges necessarily exercise a commanding in-fluence over the different political and socialelements to be found in the populations wherethey take place: that influence extends to theintellectual character, to the habits, manners,morals, and happiness of nations.'39As communities change their powers of pro-duction, they necessarily change their habitstoo. During their progress in advance, all thedifferent classes of the community find that theyare connected with other classes by new rela-tions, are assuming new positions, and are sur-rounded by new moral and social dangers, andnew conditions of social and political excel-lence.'40This superstructure, n turn, "reacts onthe productivecapacitiesof the body."I4IOnlyafterhe has shownthe historicalrelationshipof capitalismto earliersys-tems does Jones turn to the problemofmodernland rent. Here, too, he resortsto historicalstudy and shows how mod-ern ground rent developedout of earlierforms. Rent takes on a completelydif-ferent character within each economy.In one caseit is the dominant nstitution;in another it becomes subordinate tocapital, and the landowning class nolonger participates directly in produc-tion. Jones differentiatesfive historicaltypes of rent: (i) labor rent, i.e., slaveand serf rent; (2) intermediateform ofrent, whichis the transitionfromtype ito type 3; (3) rent in kind;(4) moneyrent of the precapitalist period; and,finally, (5) in the capitalistperiod,farm-er's rent (in the Ricardiansense). Thelatterdiffers romallothersandcan existonly in a society based on the capitalistmode of production,because rent, as asurplus above the average profit, re-quires as its precondition the develop-

139 Textbook,p. 405-6. Rearranged.140 Ibid.,pp. 4IO-II. '4I Ibid.,p. 406.


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 5I3ment of the industrial average-profitrate. In sum, every specific form of prop-erty has its corresponding form of laborand of rent.I42

Jones rejected Ricardo's theory of a"continuous diminution in the returns toagriculture and of its supposed effects onthe progress of accumulation."I43 By his-torical illustrations he showed that rentswere actually highest in countries whereagriculture was very productive, and hethus destroyed the historical basis ofRicardo's theory of rent. As the classicaltheory of profits and wages was closelyconnected with the theory of rent, thecollapse of the latter endangered theclassical theory as a whole.It is not hard to see why Jones earnedthe enmity of the classical school and, onthe other hand, the strong approbationof Marx. Jones, the latter wrote, is char-acterizedby that which all Englisheconomists inceSirJamesSteuarthave lacked,namely,a senseforthe historicaldifferencesn modes of produc-tion.. . '44What distinguishesJones from the othereconomists, xceptforSismondi,s that he em-phasized the social determination[Formge-stimmtheit]f capital as the essential actor.145Probably the highest praise Marx couldgive Jones was to contrast his presenta-tion of genetic developments with Ricar-do, who "developed nothing."I46It is worth noting here the emphasisplaced by John Stuart Mill on the in-

142 Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, pp. i85,i88.Marx (Mehrwerttkeorien,II, 452) points out thatin Jones's work On Rent (i83i) he starts with thedifferent forms of real property, whereas two yearslater in his Syllabus (i833) he analyzes the differentforms of labor that correspond to those types ofproperty.I43 Jones, Essay on the Distribution of Wealth,p. xiii.I44 Mehrwerttheorien,II, 450.I45Ibid., p. 484.I46 Ibid., pp. 451, 26, and passim.

tellectual backwardness of England-the country which in his judgment was"usually the last to enter the generalmovement of the European mind."I47Mill underscoredhe charge hat, where-as "the doctrine that .... the course ofhistory is subject to general laws ....has been familiar for generationsto thescientific thinkers of the Continent"[France], t was opposed n England wellinto the second half of the nineteenthcentury because it "conflictedwith thedoctrineof FreeWill."I48The fate of thenew science of geology is particularly re-vealing in this context. The foundationfor a rational evolutionarysystemof ge-ology was laid in Italy by Generelli (aCarmelitefriar) in I749; in France byDesmaret(I 7 77) and Lamarck i802); inEngland by Hutton (I785). Hutton,however, was accused of heresy; evolu-tionary ideas were condemned as in-compatible with the biblical account ofGenesis.It was in such an antievolutionaryat-mosphere that Jones, like Sismondibe-fore him, had the courage to attack thewhole structure of the classical econo-mists, not merely specificdoctrines,andto cast doubts upon the permanenceofthe capitalist system. Their critique ofthe existing economic order, their em-phasis upon its historical, transitorycharacterwas considereda heresy,whichcould not be forgiven. As theorists,bothmen were ignoredby the representativesof the dominant school and left in ob-livion for nearly a century.

It is apparent that by the time KarlMarx (i8i8-83) began his work, in thefortiesof the last century,the applicationof evolutionaryconceptsto economic n-stitutions and the formulationof the doc-

I47 A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive(8th ed.; New York, i900), p. 643.I48 Ibid.,p. 644.


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5I4 HENRYK GROSSMANtrine that economicsystems are histori-cal in characterhad been basically ac-complished.Marx himself pointed thatout repeatedly, houghit was left to himto complete and sharpen the analysis.He tookoverthe heritageof Saint-SimonandSismondi n France,of JamesSteuartand Richard Jones in England, and ofcertainelementsin Hegel'sphilosophyofhistory and, introducing certain newideas of his own, createdan integrated,originaltheory.We need not underlinethe point andwe assume it as well known that,for Marx, the Hegelian "development"meant something quite differentfromwhat the eighteenth-centuryEnlighten-ment, the Saint-Simonians,or even Sis-mondi,Jones,and positivists like AugustComteunderstoodby this term. To menorientedto the natural sciences of theirday, developmentmeant nothing morethan the generalizationof an empiricallyandinductivelyconstructed eriesof par-ticular observationsI49 whereas Marx,like Hegel, understoodthe relationshipbetweenthe particularand the universalquite differently, viewing the historical"object"as made up not of individualobservationsbut of the "culturalwhole"of social-collective unities.Is5 Using thegenetic methodof the dialectic,with itsconstant creation and synthesis of op-posites, Marxsought to graspthe evolu-tion of these collective unities in theirhistorical necessity. Every present mo-

I49 See Ernst Troeltsch, Die Dynamik der Ge-schichte nack der Geschichtsphilosophiedes Positi-vismus(Berlin, 919), p. 67. Fromthe antipositiv-ists' viewpoint the relationship between the par-ticular and the universal is presented in the excellentbook by Morris R. Cohen, Reason and Nature (NewYork, I93I), p. i6i.ISO "In the study of economic categories, as in thecase of every historical and social science, it must beborne in mind that .... the subject [is] the modernbourgeois society . . . ." (Karl Marx, A Contributionto the Critique,p. 302).

ment containsboth the past, which hasled to it logically and historically, andthe elements of further developmentinthe future.At the same time there is a funda-mental point at which Marx is joinedwithSismondiandJonesagainstHegel-one whichmust not be overlooked n as-cribingthe "historicizing"of economicsto Hegelian influence. For the former,the historicaldevelopment,occurring nthe externalworld n time, is a successionof objectiveeconomicstages of differenteconomicstructures,wherebythe higherstagedevelopsout of the lower. In otherwords,historyhas not a relativisticchar-acter,it doesnot dependon the accidentof the observer'spoint of view, ideals,orstandards. What Marx did was to re-move the study of historyfromthat sub-jective level to a higher one, where ob-jective, measurable stages of develop-ment are perceived. He fulfilled Saint-Simon's hope of making history a sci-ence.Hegel was flatly opposed to such adoctrine. The GermanwordEntwicklunghas two different meanings, translatedinto English (and French) by two dis-tinct words-"development" and "evo-lution." Hegel always used the term inthe first sense, meaning the unfoldingand dissectionof the variouscomponentelements (Gedankenbestimmungen)on-tained in the Begriff ("notionof the es-sentials of a thing"). Development ispossible only under the rule of theBegriffand hence akesplace n thesphereof logic. "The metamorphosis,"Hegelwrote,"onlyoccurs o the Begriffas such[i.e., to the notion of essential as in con-trast to the notion of phenomena],foronly its change s development."I'5Hegeltherefore attacked the concept of the

I5I Encyclopaedie der pkilosopkiscken Wissen-schaften (2d ed.; Leipzig, 1905), ? 249.


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 5I5natural philosophers (and thus also ofthe sociologists)that evolutionas an ob-jectiveprocess n historyis the "externalreal production"of a higherstage froma lowerone. He insisted,onthe contrary,that "the dialecticalBegriff,whichleadsthe way for the stages, is the inner oneitself.I52 That is why in the Philosophyof Historyhe saw the various stages inworldhistory, not as an objective proc-ess in the sphereof realHistory,but as aprocess within the sphere of logic.I53World history is to Hegel the progresswithin man'sconsciousness f the ideaoffreedom, and it is this developmentofconsciousnesswhichdeterminesthe fourprincipal evels achievedby the variouspeoples: the oriental world, the Greek,the Roman, and the Germanicworld.I54Marx,on the contrary,uses the termEntwicklungmostly in the secondsense,meaningnot the developmentwithinthesphere of logic but, like Sismondi andRichardJones, evolutionas an objectiveprocessin the sphereof realHistory.I55With sucha point of view, writesLas-son, "Hegelmustrejectthe theoryof [bio-logical] evolution. Long before Darwinhe had discardedall of Darwinismas anunclear confusionof the notionand ex-ternal existence."''6 Hegel himself said ofthe idea of evolution as an objective

I52Ibid. Italics are mine.I53 Hegel, Vorlesungenueber die Philosophie derGeschichte,ed. Edw. Gans (Berlin, i848), p. 70.I54 Ibid., pp. I29-35; and Kuno Fischer, HegelsLeben, Werkeund Lehre (Heidelberg, I90I), II, 748.I55 For that very reason Marx directs his criticismagainst Proudhon's notion of "evolution": Prou-dhon, he says, has accepted the "HegelianVieillerie"and is "incapable of following the real movement ofhistory. The 'evolutions' of which Proudhonspeaks are understood to be evolutions such as areaccomplished within the mystic womb of the Abso-

lute Idea" (Marx to Annenkov, i846; see PovertyofPhilosophy [New York, n.d.], p. I54).i56 G. Lasson, Preface to Hegel's Encyclopaedie,p. xviu.

process n the externalworld: "Suchneb-ulous .... conceptions, and especially.... the idea of the rise of more de-velopedanimalorganismsfrom the low-er, etc., must be avoided by thinkinganalysis."I57Marx, on the contrary, accepts theidea of the rise of moredevelopedstruc-tures fromthe lower,and for this reasonhe was one of the first to acknowledgethe importanceof Darwin'swork. In asimilar way, as Darwin uses nature'stechnology,i.e., the formationof the or-gans of plants and animals, as instru-ments to explainthe originand develop-ment of species, Marxwishes to use thehistory of human technology as an in-strumentwhich"enablesus todistinguishdifferent economical epocks,"I'58 as the"productiveorgansof man are the ma-terial basis of all social organization"'59and the "instruments of labour....supply a standardof the degreeof develop-ment which human labour has at-tained."I6In sum, Marx refuses to follow Hegelon the basic question of the concept ofdevelopmentbut worksrather from theconception of Sismondi and RichardJones. For Marx, evolutionis an objec-tive process of history, whereby eachhistorical period or social structure is

I57Encyclopaedie, ? 249; see also Charles Renou-vier, "L'Evolutionisme de Hegel," Les Principes dela nature Paris, 9I2), p. 27I.i58 Capital, I, 200. Long before the publication ofDarwin's work, in one of his earliest works-thecritique of Proudhon (i847)-Marx had already em-phasized the fundamental significance of humantechnology for the characteristics of a given society.I59 Ibid., p. 406.I60 Ibid., p. 200. Alongside this technological fac-tor, the social factor is equally significant for the dis-

tinction of economic epochs from one another, name-ly, "the special manner in which this union [betweenlaborers and means of production] is accomplished"(ibid., II, 44).


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5P6 HENRYK GROSSMANmarkedby specific objectiveendenciesjiflwhichcanbe discovered romthe natureof thetechnologicalnstrumentsandfromthe social organizationof laborin the useof those instruments.,62From the basic point of view, Marxsaw that the history of economicorgani-zationis a series of economies,eachmoreadvancedthanits predecessorbecauseofchanges in the method of production:"In broadoutline, we can designatetheAsiatic, the antiqueclassical,the feudal,and the modern bourgeois methods ofproduction as so many epochs in theprogress of the economic formation ofsociety.nI63Throughout Marx's writings thereare scattered, but nonetheless pro-found, characterizations f each of theseepochs.'64 His main efforts, however,

A6xAs early as i847 Marx wrote, against Prou-dhon: "The handmill gives you society with feudallord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capi-talist" (Povertyof Philosophy, p. 92).162 Elsewhere, in the section "On the CapitalisticCharacterof Manufacture," Marx differentiates thespecific tendencies of the manufacturing period fromthe trends under industrial capitalism and lays thebasis for the differencesin the fact that "in the man-ufacture, the revolution in the mode of productionbegins with the labor-power, in modem industry itbegins with the instruments of labor" (Capital, I,

405).I63 Critique,p. I3.i64 Thus he contrasted the unceasing technicalrevolutionizing of our economy with the static eco-

nomic structure of Asiatic societies, notably India,and saw the explanation in the fact that productionwas there organized in self-sufficing communities"based on possession in common of land, and on theblending of agriculture and handicraft and on an un-alterable division of labor" (Capital, I, 392-94). Inthis connection the form of taxes, namely, taxes inkind, played an important role (ibid., pp. I57, I58).In countries where central governments, by the useof artificial irrigation, made it possible to transformdeserts into fertile fields, "one single war of devasta-tion could depopulate a country for centuries, andstrip it of all its civilization" (see Marx's article,"On the British Rule in India," New York DailyTribune, June 25, i853, reprinted in Handbookof Marxism, ed. Emile Burns [New York, I9351,p. i83).

were not directed to the precapitalistformsbut to a systematicanalysisof thegenesis and developmentof the specifichistoricalphases of capitalisml6s nd tothe transitionfrom capitalismto social-ism.'66Marxviews "theevolution of theeconomic ormationof society as a proc-ess of natural history,"'67 and his aim"lies in the disclosingof the laws thatregulate the origin, existence, develop-ment, and death of a given social organ-ism and its replacementby anotherandhigher one,"I68 whereby society "canneither clearby bold leaps, nor removeby legalenactments,the obstaclesofferedby the successivephasesof its normalde-velopment. But it canshortenandlessenthe birth-pangs."'69Marx showed, for instance, that in-dustrial capitalismdidnot developoutofhandicraft or out of accumulated rentfrom landed property (as Max Weberand Sombart ater taught) but from themerchant. The latter, by progressivelysubordinating the production of thecraftsmanand transforminghim into aproletarian,broughtaboutthe transitionfrommercantileto industrialcapitalism.Startingwiththe decentralizedworkshopundercommandof the merchant-capital-ist (domesticsystem), productionmovedinto the variousphases of the periodofmanufacture (co-operative, heterogene-ous, and organicmanufactures),and fi-nally into modern large-scale industrybasedon themachine. Marxdidnot stopwith the delineationof the broadlines ofhistorical development, however. He

i65 For a good historical application of Marx'stheory of the earlier stages of capitalism see HenriPirenne, "The Stages in the Social History of Capi-talism,"AmericanHistoricalReview,XIX (I9W3-14),494-5I5.

,66 Marx, Criticism of theGothaProgramme(i875)(New York, I938).i67 Capital, , I 5.I68 Ibid., p. 24. i69 Ibid., pp. I4-I5.


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 5I7continued the application of the geneticmethod to the individual organs, insti-tutions, and functions of the capitalistmechanism.We cannot go into the details ofMarx's historical analysis. The impor-tant point to emphasize is that Marxnever remainedwithin the narrow rame-work of historicaldescriptionbut alwaysmadeuse of historicalinsights to deepenhis theoreticalunderstandingof the lawsof development. This closelink betweenhistory and theory s one of the factorsthat differentiates Marx from all hispredecessors. An examplewill serve to il-lustrate this point. A study of the de-mographyof antiquity, the Middle Ages,and the modern world led Marx to theinsight that there is no universallyvalidlaw of population, as Malthus hadtaught, but that the modern trendtoward the creationof a relatively sur-plus population"is a law of populationpeculiar to the capitalist mode of pro-duction; and in fact every special his-toric mode of production has its ownspecial laws of population, historicallyvalid within its limits alone."I70This type of historicalanalysisalsoledto important conclusions in economictheory. When Sombartraises the accu-sation that Marx "hardly ever defines.... his concepts .... such as capital,factory, plant, accumulation,"'I7heshows that he misses the true sense ofMarx'shistoricism and even of Marxistterminology:he uses the wordBegriff nthe sense of "definition";he word"con-cept" or "notion" (Begriff),however,isused by Marx n the specificallyHegeliansense, as notion of essence of a thing, ascontrastedwith the definitionas merelynotionof the phenomena.

I70 Ibid.,pp. 692-93.'7'W. Sombart, Das Lebenswerkvon K. Marx(Jena, I905), p. 52.

Marx rejects the view that knowledgeconsists in classifying and defining andthat the task of scienceis simply to dis-cover a rational criterionfor classifica-tion. This is the static approach of theclassicists,looking upon socialphenome-na as unchangeable structures. Marx,on the otherhand, is a spokesmanof thenew, dynamic approach.That is whysocial phenomena,in his judgment, areactually indefinable. They have no"fixed"or "eternal"elements or char-acterbut aresubjectto constantchange.A definition fixes the superficialattri-butes of a thing at any given momentorperiod, and thus transforms hese attri-butes into somethingpermanentanduri-changing.I72 o understandthings it isnecessary to grasp them genetically, intheir successive transformations, andthus to discover their essence, their"notion" (Begriff). It is only a pseudo-science that is satisfied with definitionsand the phenomenalaspects of things.I73Without devotingmorespace to a char-acterizationof Marx'sanalysis, we turnto an examinationof the fruits of his

172 Marx made his point of view quite clear in hispolemic against Cherbuliez: "First the notion ofprofit should have been developed,but nothing cameout except the definition and that corresponds mere-ly to its phenomenal aspects .... so that its exist-ence is stated but nothing is said about its essence"(Marx, Mehrwerttheorien, II, 437-38). Elsewhere,in speaking of the economists, Marx says that their"definitions flatten out into shallow tautologies";whereas the task of science is not the constructionof abstract definitions but "the reproduction of theconcrete ubject in the course of reasoning" (Critique,pp. 27i and 293). There are, therefore, no "eternal"economic categories; every category is only "thetheoretical expression of historical relations of pro-duction, corresponding to a particular stage ofdevelopment in material production" (Marx toSchweitzer, January, i865 [see Poverty of Philoso-phy, p. i67]).

'73 ".... Which .... confines itself to systema-tizing [the phenomenal in a pedantic way, and pro-claiming them for everlasting truth" (Marx, Capital,I, 93).


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5I8 HENRYK GROSSMANanalysis. By attributing to Marx thefirstapplicationof evolutionary hinkingto economics,criticshave obliterated heoriginal contribution that Marx reallydidmaketo ourunderstanding f historyandthespecificdifferencesbetweenMarxandhispredecessors.Theyhavereducedhis historicalconceptions o a level thatdoes not go beyond the horizon ofbourgeois iberalism,that is, beyond theidea of evolutionin the directionof con-stant progress "fromthe incompletetothe complete" to quote Hegel.

The fundamental characteristic ofMarx's historicism and the mark thatdistinguishes t fromhis predecessors renot the doctrine of the historical suc-cessionof economic ystemsbut a specialtheory which, in addition to evolution-ary changeswithin a given system, ex-plains the objective and subjective con-ditions necessaryfor the transitionromonesystem o another.Brieflystated, it isthat within the existing economya neweconomic ormarises andgrows,that thetwo enter into ever sharperconflictwitheach other,and that throughthe violentresolutionof the conflict the new econ-omy finallytakes over.Within this general theory there arethreespecialtheories: (i) a doctrineof a"universalsocial dynamic"of structuralchanges in society, valid for all "an-tagonistic"societies; 2) the theoryof theobjective evelopmentalendencies f capi-talism;and (3) the theory of the subjec-tive bearerof change,that is, the class-struggle theory. Obviously the second,unlike the two others, deals only withthe specialhistoricalphenomenonof thetransformationromcapitalism o social-ism. Like Condorcetand Saint-Simon,Marx teaches that the idea of evolutionmust be appliedto the future as well asto the past, for one must seek in the

perceptible structural changes of thepresent the lines of future developments.74We have already seen that Saint-Simonand his school knew that the in-dustrialsystem grewup within, and as abitter enemyof, the feudalsystem of thelaterMiddleAges. For the Saint-Simo-nians, however,this insightwas no morethan a singular historical observation.Marx developed this observation intowhat we might call a universal birthstory of a social system. Every neweconomic system, he taught, is borndirectlywithin the old and goesthrougha long process of maturation before itcan displaceits predecessorand becomedominant. "New higher relations ofproductionnever appearbefore the ma-terial conditionsof their existence havematured in the womb of the old soci-ety."I75The displacementof the old sys-tem by the new is not anarbitraryproc-ess, to be accomplishedat any chancemoment. It requires the existence andslow maturation of certain necessarysubjectiveand objective factors.I76For the first time in the history ofideas we encountera theory which com-

'74 As early as i843, Marx wrote to Arnold Rugethat we must not project "a construction of the fu-ture" or dogmatically anticipate the world, "butrather discover the new world out of the critique ofthe old" (LiterarischerNachlass von Marx [Stutt-gart, I902], I, 380). Twenty years later Marx wroteto Schweitzer that Proudhon and the Utopians werehunting for a "science" by which the social questionwas to be solved a priori "instead of deriving theirscience from a critical knowledge of the historicalmovement,a movement which itself produces ma-terial conditions of emancipation" (Poverty of Phi-losophy,p. i67).

I75 Critique, p. I2. Elsewhere Marx emphasized(May, i87I) that the working class can expect no"ready-made utopias .... They have no ideals torealize, but to set free elements of the new societywith which the old collapsing bourgeois society it-self is pregnant" (The Civil War in France [NewYork, I940], pp. 6i-62).I76 "They [the working class] know that in orderto work out their own emancipation .... they will


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 519binesthe evolutionaryand revolutionaryelementsin an originalmannerto form ameaningfulunit. Gradualchanges n theproductiveforces lead at some point inthe process to sudden changes in thesocial relationsof production,that is tosay, to political revolution. By under-lining the evolutionaryaspects, Marxismsharply distinguishes itself from thevoluntarism of the utopian Socialists aswell as from the pseudo-revolutionarismof putschists or partisans of the coupd'Vtat.At the same time, Marxismdoesnot give up the idea of revolution, butregards t as the necessary conclusionofthe evolutionary process and as the in-strumentfor achievingthe transition toa new economicstructure. This theoryrests primarilyon the fact that produc-tive forces, legal propertyrelations,andpolitical powerare subject to the law ofuneven development.Changes in the productiveforces re-lease a relatively rapidand dynamic ele-ment, out of which grows the assaultagainst the structureof the old societyas a whole. Legalpropertyrelations,onthe other hand, and political power,which rests upon them, constitute thepassive, conservative, static element,guarding the existing society againstchange. The latter element changesslowly, long after the changes in theproductive forces and as the result ofthose changes. The new economic orcesthus clash with the antiquated politicaland propertyrelations,which no longercorrespond o the new needs and fetterfurtherprogress. "Then comesthe peri-od of social revolution,"'77 in which theantiquated legal and political relationshave to pass through long struggles, through a seriesof historic processes, transforming completely cir-cumstances and men" (The Civil War in France,pp. 6i if.).

I77 Marx, Critique,p. I2.

are broken and replaced by new onesthat areappropriate o the new economicforces. Since the antiquated laws ex-press only the vested interests of theircreatorsand since these will never vol-untarily renounce their privileges, thedisappearance f the old laws entails thedisappearance of their creators, theformerruling classes.In his second special theory, dealingwith the objectivedevelopmentalrendswithincapitalism,"the naturallaws of itsmovement,"'78 Marx tries to show thatthere is a limit to the development ofcapitalism, that it must reach a peakafter which a decliningphase will set inand that at a certainpoint the furtherfunctioning of the system will becomeimpossible and its collapse inevitable.The system must be transformed notonly because the workingpeople rejectit but also because the ruling classescannot find any way out. During thiscritical period, despite progress in re-stricted sectors (technology,chemistry),the system as a whole loses its progres-sive character,and the symptomsof itsdisintegration grow more and morenumerous; the system becomes a fetteron further development and can pre-serveitself only by violenceand increas-ingly severe repression of the newlyemergingsocialforces. In the end, how-ever, it must be defeated in the conflictwith theseforcesandyield to them.Thusprogress s achievedonly at the price ofthemiseryandhumiliationof individualsand entirepeoples.

I78 Capital, I, I4. It must be stressed that Marxdoes not use the word "trend" or "tendencies" inthe usual sense of the term; by "trend" he means"tendencies working with iron necessity toward in-evitableresults" (ibid., p. I3). The other factors andcountertrends can weaken or slow up the dominanttrend but not prevent it from asserting itself. Else-where Marx speaks about "that higher form to whichpresent society is irresistiblytendingby its own eco-nomical agencies" (The Civil War in France, p. 6i).


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520 HENRYK GROSSMANNo predecessorof Marxhad a similartheory. It is true that the Saint-Simo-nians wanted to make history an exactscienceand conceivedthe future to be anecessaryproductof the past; but theynevergot beyondthe merepostulateandnever attempted to work out a theoryof the future tendencies of capitalism.Nor did Sismondi or Richard Jones.Their prediction that capitalism wouldbe replacedby a higherform of economydid not rest upon theoretical argumentsbut merely on historical analogy:sinceall previous economic systems weretransitory,they argued,we must assumethe same to be true of capitalism.Marx undertook to demonstrate thehistorical necessity of the decline andfinal disintegrationof capitalism. Whenthe process of accumulationreaches acertainpoint, he shows, there will be atransformationof quantity into quality.A conditionof oversaturationwith capi-

tal will arise,and no adequatenew pos-sibility for capital investment will beavailable. All further accumulation ofcapital will become impossible, andsociety will enter a permanentperiodofgrowingaccumulationof idle capital,onthe one hand, and of large-scale per-manent unemployment, on the other.Thus the process of disintegrationwillbegin. The property-owners'ear of los-ing theirprivilegesgivesthe spiritualandpolitical life of this perioda reactionarycharacter.In short, the whole structureof capitalismwill be shaken to its roots,and the basiswill havebeenlaidforgreatpolitical and economic transforma-tions.I79 t is true, of course, that Ba-zard and later Pecqueur,following Sis-mondi, foresaw the crises, the misery,and the uncertaintyof the workingclass.

I79 For a detailed study of this theoretical analysissee Henryk Grossman, Das Akkumulations undZusammenbruchsgesetzLeipzig, I929)

These insightsremainedmereparticularobservations with them, however, andnot, as with Marx,elements of a steadilyworsening disease of the system fromepoch to epoch that would lead to ulti-mate paralysis.The third element in Marx's generaltheory is that no economicsystem, nomatter how weakened, collapses by it-self in automatic fashion. It must be"overthrown."The theoretical analysisof the objective trends leading to aparalysis of the system serves to dis-cover the "weak links"and to fixthemintime as a sort of barometerindicatingwhenthesystembecomesripe orchange.Even whenthat point is reached,changewill come about only through activeoperationof the subjective factors. Thispart of the theoryMarxdeveloped n hisstudy of the class struggle. Marx hasfrequently been charged with a "fatal-istic" theory of the "historicalnecessity"of social developmentin some given di-rection. Sucha chargerests on a seriousmisunderstandingof the theory of theclass struggle. In all his writings Marxcharacteristicallymphasizes heunityoftheory andpractice. This so-called"his-torical.necessity" does not operateauto-matically but requires the active par-ticipation of the working class in thehistorical process. This participation,however, is itself not something arbi-trarybut followsfromthepressureof theobjectivefactors. The student of historyand the forward-looking racticalpoliti-cian must therefore consider this sub-jectivefactoras in fact anotherobjectivecondition of the historical process.180

i8o Of course, "class struggle" is not to be under-stood in the primitive sense that the workers mustblindly attack the entrepreneur class wherever thetwo come into contact. Both the content and theform of the class conflicts are themselves determinedby the attained level of historical development andby the concrete historical situation.


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EVOLUTIONIST REVOLT. II. IN ENGLAND 52IWhile, for instance, Saint-Simonandhis school do not give the working classany political role in the transformationof society, the main result of Marx'sdoctrine is the clarificationof the his-torical role of the proletariatas the car-rier of the transformativeprinciple andthe creator of the socialist society. ToMarx, activity is an integral part ofthinking, and truth cannot be dis-covered by a merely contemplativeatti-tude, but only by action. This is themeaningof Marx's first thesis on Feuer-

bach: "Until now philosophershave onlyinterpreted the world differently: thepoint is to change it." If philosophersfrom Montesquieu to Feuerbachtaughtthat man is a product of natural andsocial environment, Marx observes thatto an even greater extent man is in-fluenced by his action on his environ-ment. In changing the historical object,the subjectchangeshimself.'8'Thus theeducation of the working class to itshistorical mission must be achieved notby theories broughtfromoutside but bythe everyday practiceof the class strug-gle. This is not a doctrinebut a practicalprocess of existing conflictsof interests,in which doctrines are tested and ac-ceptedor discarded.Onlythroughthesestrugglesdoes the workingclass changeand re-educate itself and become con-scious of itself. Marx's attack on the"fatalistic economists"11I2s only an illus-trationof the fact that his dialecticalcon-ceptof historyhas a twofoldsignificance.In thishe followsHegel,forwhomhistoryhas both an objective and a subjectivemeaning, the history of human activityhistorica rerum gestarum) and human

I8I Capital, , i98.182 Poverty fPhilosophy, . i05.

activity itself (res gestas) I83 Thedialecti-cal concept of history is not merely aninstrumentwithwhichto explainhistorybut also an instrument with which tomake history. "Men make their ownhistory, but .... they do not make it.... under circumstances chosen bythemselves, but under circumstancesfound and transmittedfromthe past.",84It is in this double sense that theMarxist theory of the class struggle isto be understood. On the one hand, it isan expressionof the existing conflictofinterests between classes. At the sametime, it transcends the mere statementof an existingfactual condition, not as afatalistic expectationof evolution,but asa guideto the active participationof theworking class in the historical process.By this activity the objectivetendenciescan be realized and the forces of a re-actionary but powerful minority thatstand in the way of further developmentand progress overcome. In this lattersense the class strugglehas always beena decisivesubjectivefactor in history.185It isworthrepeating hatnoone beforeMarx understoodhistory in this way. Itis true that in the first thirdof the nine-teenth century the ideologists of thevictorious revolutionary French bour-geoisie-the historiansAugustinThierry,Mignet, and, above all, FrangoisGuizot-clearly recognized hat thepast centu-ries were dominatedbyclass nterestsandclass struggles. But they neverwent be-

183 Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte,p. 75; KunoFischer, op. cit., II, 739.I84 Marx, The EighteenthBrumaire of Louis Bona-parte, in Handbook of Marxism, p. ii6.I85 Sismondi, for instance, says that "the freedomof the Occident results from the rebellion of the non-owners" (against a small minority of landowners).

.... "Between the tenth and the twelfth centuries,people without land reconquered freedom for thefuture generations" (Histoire des r~publiques tali-ennes du moyen dge [Paris, i840], III, 499, I07).


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522 HENRYK GROSSMANyondthedescriptionof actualconditions,i.e., the struggles of the rising bour-geoisie against the landowning feudalclass. They recognized class strugglesonly in the past and failed to see theircontinuation in their own time, in theexisting relations between the workingclass and the bourgeoisie.In Marx theclass struggle s not merelya descriptionof actual facts but a part of an elabo-rated historical theory: he explains ge-netically thenecessaryemergence f classconflicts n varioushistoricalepochsandexplainstheirorigin,form,and intensityby the development of the productiveforcesin eachperiod andby the positionindividualsandclassesoccupy n thepro-ductive process. This endows the doc-trine of the classstrugglewith a concreteand profoundmeaning.'86On the other hand, Saint-Simonandhis school, as we have seen above, hadalso recognizedpast class strugglesonlyin a factualsenseanddidnot admit themfortheir own time. The Saint-Simoniansfeared to arouse the hopes of the prole-tariat; and, convinced that progressmust comethrough he elite of the upperclasses, they wanted above all to wintheseupperclassesover to theirviews.'87ThoughthewritingsofBazard,Enfantin,and later Pecqueurcontainreferences othe struggleof the workingclass againstthe dehumanizing ffects of capitalism,'88

186See G. Plekhanov, "The Beginnings of theDoctrine of the Class Struggle," Die neue Zeit, XXI(I903), 298, 304; and A. T. Tiumeniev, "Marxismand bourgeois historical science," in Marxism andThought(New York, I935), pp. 235-3I9.

187 G. Weill, L'Ecole saint-simonienne (Paris,i896), pp. 56, 293-94.I88 Constantin Pecqueur, Economie socialedes in-tdretsdu commerceet de l'industrie (2d ed.; Paris,i839), II, I25: "One fact is certain, general.... it

these remain solatedstatementsof fact.In principle, the Saint-Simoniansac-ceptedthe idea that progresswas a con-tinuous transition from antagonism topeacefulassociation. Thus Pecqueurre-gards class struggleas an evil, like everyother form of struggle, and compares tto war. He expects that in the futureallforms of strugglewill be less violent andthat peacefulmethods of productionanddistributionwill develop. Thereis a widegap between this view and the over-poweringgeneralizationof the Commu-nistManifesto:"Thehistoryof allhither-to existingsociety is the historyof classstruggles."Here,classstruggle s not re-gardedas an evil but as a dynamicforce,the lever of history. By fighting for itsrights against the ruling class, the ex-ploitedandoppressedclass createsa newhistorical situation. New rights arewrested from the ruling class, and thewhole of society is thereby raised to anew and higher level. In this con-ception,class struggledoes not end withthe abolition of feudalismby the bour-geoisie; it is also typical of the relationsbetweenthe bourgeoisieand the workingclass. According o Marx, the processofhistory on the roadof progress,far frombecoming increasingly peaceful, in-creases n violencewith the developmentof capitalism,and class conflictsbecomethe decisive instrument n the transitionfrom capitalismto collectivism.NEWYORKCITY

is the silent but very decisive struggle of the workersagainst their masters with a view to forcing the cap-tains of industry to raise their wages .. . ""How can one not see that to leave [the wage-earners]dependent on the insufficiency of a fluctuat-ing wage is to wish to find oneself surrounded intimes of crisis and general unemployment by a fam-ished multitude, to create riot and civil war, andperhaps to arm new Spartans ...." (p. io8).

Evolutionary Economics II Grossman

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