V. I.

Lenin

Socialism Demolished Again [6]

Less than a decade separates us from the turbulent period
of 1905, and yet the change that has taken place in Russia in this short
time seems tremendous. Russia seems all at once to have changed from a
patriarchal into a modern capitalist country. Leo Tolstoy, the ideologist
of the old Russia, expressed this in a characteristic and rueful tirade
when he complained that the Russian people “have learnt with astonishing
rapidity to make revolutions and parliaments”. [7]

Naturally, Russia’s “sadden” transformation into a bourgeois country
in a matter of five or ten years in the twentieth century was possible only
because the entire second half of the preceding century had been a stage in
the transition from the feudal to the bourgeois system.

It is interesting to note how this change affected the attitude towards
Marxism of our official, university science of political economy. In the
good old days, only government professors of the extreme right engaged in
the business of “demolishing” Marx. Liberal-Narodnik professorial
scholarship as a whole treated Marx with respect, “recognised” the labour
theory of value, and thereby created the na\"ive illusion among “Left
Narodniks” that in Russia there was no soil for a bourgeoisie.

Today, there has “suddenly” sprung up in this country a host of
liberal and progressive “Marxophobes”, among them men like

Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky, [1] or Mr. Struve, etc. All of them have disclosed the true content
and significance of liberal-Narodnik “respect” for Marx. In word, their
respect has remained, but in deed, their long-standing inability to
understand materialist dialectics and the theory of the class struggle has
inevitably led them to renounce the theory of labour value.

Until 1905 the bourgeoisie saw no other enemy titan the feudalists and
the “bureaucrats”; that is why they tried to be sympathetic towards the
theory espoused by the European proletariat, and tried not to see the
“enemy on the left”. After 1905, a counter-revolutionary liberal
bourgeoisie a in Russia, and professorial, liberal scholarship; without the slightest loss of prestige in “society”, seriously proceeded to
demolish Marx.

We propose to acquaint the reader with the latest scholarly work of one
of these “serious” scholars.

I

Last year V. P. Ryabushinsky published Part I of Mr. Pyotr Struve’s
work The Economy and Prices (M. 1913). The celebrated “alliance
between science and industry”, which was first marked by
Mr. Ryabushinsky’s publication of Mr. Struve’s discourse on “Great
Russia”; has gained strength and attained full stature. From a simple
alliance between science and industry there has now emerged an alliance
between science, industry and the authorities, for Mr. Struve submitted his
research as a treatise for a scientific degree, which has been conferred on
him.

In his preface Mr. Struve assures us that he planned this work about
fifteen years ago. Consequently, we have every reason to expect a piece of
serious and solid research.

The author himself holds a very high opinion of his work, in which he
promises to “revise” (“critically”, of course) “certain traditional
problems and principles of political economy”. The revision also involves
the significance of price “as the fundamental concept of political
economy”.

“ This revision will lead to the posing of new methodological problems for our science in the spirit of consistent
empiricism, based on strictly evolved, precise concepts and clear
distinctions.”

This sentence, taken from the concluding lines of Mr. Struve’s
“work”, contains the leit-motif , as it were, of his treatise. The author’s programme is “consistent empiricism” (this is how
any fashionable philosopher starts in our day, no matter what sanctimonious
humbug his theory may lead up to) and the “strict evolution of precise
concepts and clear distinctions”, the familiar motive of the celebrated “criticism”, which
so often amounts to nothing more than verbal scholasticism....

Mr. Struve wants to see “consistent empiricism” particularly in that
part of his book, by far the larger, in which he gives “sketches and
materials on the historical phenomenology of price” (this takes up nearly
the whole of Section 2 of Part I). And by “strict evolution of precise
concepts and clear distinctions” he means his disquisition, in Section 1
and in the Introduction, on “some fundamental philosophical motives in the
development of economic thinking”, on “the economy and society”, etc.

We shall first deal with these fundamental theoretical reflections of
Mr. Struve’s.

II

“ The normative, ethical conception of worth ( tsennost ) [value
( stoimost ); Mr. Struve persistently uses the wrong term “worth”
instead of “value”, although the incorrectness of this was proved to him
long ago] that still prevails also among the canonists, is not so far
removed as it may seem from the conception of worth as the intrinsic
‘basis’ or ‘law’ of price. Indeed, we see that the ‘ bonitas intrinseca ’ ‘ valor ’, and ‘ pretium naturale ’ [2] of the canonists is transformed into the ‘ intrinsic value ’, or
‘ natural value ’, or ‘ natural price ’, i. e., the objective
=

worth [3] of the later economists” (XXV).

Here we see Mr. Struve’s main idea (or rather his main ideophobia) and
the typical methods of this author. To discredit the scientific law of
value, Mr. Struve tries hard to identify it with the “ethical” law of the
canonists. Mr. Struve, of course, cannot produce a shred of evidence to
support this. Considering that he writes “we see” in a footnote referring
to a passage (and an irrelevant one at that) in the work of a

Russian Kantian of 1810, one can imagine what difficulty our scholar had in
his search for proofs!

Mr. Struve cannot but know that in the Middle Ages all scientific laws,
not only the law of value, were understood in a religious and ethical
sense. Even the laws of natural science were interpreted by the canonists
in the same way. Therefore, the identification of the canonists’ law of
price with that of the representatives of classical political economy
simply cannot be taken seriously. This “idea” of Mr. Struve’s could
hardly be called an idea; it is simply ideophobia covered up with a purely
childish trick.

Mr. Struve continues:

“ The ‘law of worth’ becomes the ‘ idée fixe ’ of political economy, And in this sphere the ‘universalist’ (‘realistic’)
thought motive stands out most clearly in the works of an author who blends
it with the greatest sweep of general-philosophical conception of economic
science, namely, Marx . in his works this motive is combined with a
materialist world outlook that is all the more valuable for not being
elaborated in detail. He turned labour value, not only into a law, but also
into the ‘substance’ of price. We have shown more than once in our works
the way in which this mechanically naturalist and at the same time
‘realistic’ conception of worth vainly tries to embrace the world of
empirical phenomena of economic life and culminates in a colossal and
hopeless contradiction.”

This is a striking illustration of Mr. Struve’s “scientific” method!
This is his method of annihilating Marx! A couple of pseudo-scientific
terms, a hint at thought motives, and a reference to a short magazine
article in
Zhizn [8] in 1900—that is all he can boast of. That is not
much, Professor!

In his brief magazine articles Mr. Struve failed to prove that there
was any kind of contradiction, let alone a “colossal” one, between Vol. I
and Vol. III of Marx’s Capital , between the labour theory of value
and the formation of average price on the basis of the law of value.

The medieval “distinction” between nominalism and realism and the
contraposition of universalism and singularism, which Mr. Struve juggles
with, add nothing whatever to our understanding of Marx’s theory, to
criticism of it, or to the clarification of Mr. Struve’s own theory (or
what he

claims to be his own theory). It is juggling, scientific junk, but not
science. Of course, in the controversy between medieval nominalists and
realists there is some analogy with the controversy between materialists
and idealists, but analogies and historical continuity can be established
between very many other theories, not only into the Middle Ages, but also
into ancient times. To study seriously the links between the controversies
of at least the Middle Ages and the history of materialism, special
research would be required. Our author’s book, however, contains no trace
whatever of a serious study of the subject. He flits from subject to
subject, hints at a thousand questions without examining a single one, and
with a boldness that is amusing enunciates the most emphatic conclusions.

He himself is compelled to admit in the passage we have quoted that
Marx blended his philosophy and political economy into an integral
materialist world outlook, and that Marx’s general philosophical conception
is the broadest !

This is no trifling admission. A person who is compelled to make such
an admission and who talks about a critical revision of political-economy
and about its new methodological tasks, is in duty bound seriously to
examine all the components of Marx’s “integral” materialist
world outlook. But Mr. Struve does not even attempt to do that. He confines
himself to a few slighting remarks against “metaphysical
materialism”. Who does not know that, from the point of view of the
fashionable theories of agnosticism (Kantianism, positivism, Machism, and
so forth), both consistent materialism and consistent philosophical
idealism are “metaphysics”? In making remarks of this kind, Mr. Struve
merely hints at his own philosophical world outlook, which has
nothing integral about it. But the task of examining and studying Marx’s
integral materialist world outlook cannot be dismissed with
remarks of this kind. To attempt to do so is merely to issue oneself with a
testimonium paupertatis .

III

On the other hand, the attempt to identify Marxism with the scholastic
doctrine of original sin is such a gem in Mr. Struve’s scientific treatise
that we cannot refrain from examining it in greater detail. We ask our readers’ forgiveness in advance
for quoting long passages, but one must be accurate here in order to pin
down more firmly the methods used by modern liberal-professorial science.

“ It is quite clear to me,” writes Mr. Struve, “that many centuries
ago Marx’s theory of labour worth, in its logical structure, had its
extremely close analogy and prototype in the ‘realistically’ grounded
scholastic doctrine of original sin.... Just as according to Marx empirical
‘prices’ are governed by the law of worth, and owe their existence to the
substance of worth, so to speak, so, according to scholasticism, the
empirical actions of men are determined by original sin.

“ Here are some analogies.

“ Marx : ‘The matter will be most readily pictured by regarding
this whole mass of commodities, produced by one branch of industry, as one
commodity, and the sum of the prices of the many identical commodities as
one price. Then, whatever has been said of a single commodity applies
literally to the mass of commodities of an entire branch of production
available in the market. The requirement that the individual value of a
commodity should correspond to its social value is now realised, or further
determined, in that the mass contains social labour necessary for its
production, and that the value of this mass is equal to its market
value.’ [9] “ Thomas Aquinas : ‘We must say that all men who are born of
Adam may be regarded as one man, since they are identical in the nature
which they inherited from their progenitor, just as, for example, all men
who live in one county are regarded as one body, and the whole county as
one man’....”

Quite enough, is it not? Mr. Struve assures us that this is “not
playing at striking [!?] analogies or witticising”. Perhaps. But it is
undoubtedly playing at vulgar analogies, or rather, simply clowning. If
people who regard themselves as liberal and progressive scholars are
capable of tolerating such heroes of buffoonery in their midst; if these
heroes are granted scientific degrees,and are allowed to instruct the
young, then that only shows for the hundredth and thousandth time what the
“law” of the bourgeois era is: the more insolently and shamelessly you make mock of science in the effort to
demolish Marx; the greater is your merit.

Mr. Struve had to resort to clownish antics in order to cover up his
sheer inability to refute Marx. That the whole mass of commodities of a
given branch of industry is exchanged for the sum of commodities of another
branch, is an indisputable fact. That all “empiricists” determine average
price by taking the whole mass of commodities and dividing the aggregate
price by the number of individual commodities, is also a fact; Statistics,
for which Mr. Struve has such a liking (and which, as we shall see below,
he only “hints at” instead of trying to study), prove to us at every turn
that Marx’s method is constantly employed. But what do professional
“socialistophobes” care? The thing is to take a kick at Marx; all the
rest will take care of itself.

The nature of the philosophical authorities who give Mr. Struve their
benediction in his noble occupation can be seen, among other things, from
the following words uttered by our professor:

“ In this work [that of summing-up the ideas of the nineteenth century] impartial posterity should assign a prominent place to
the great French metaphysician Renouvier, to whom many of the critical and
positive ideas of our times can be traced” (43).

Renouvier was the head of the French school of “neo-critical
idealism”, “an obscurantist of the first water”, as he was called by the
empirio-critic (i. e., anti-materialist philosopher) Willy (see my remarks
on Renouvier in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism . Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy . Moscow, 1909,
p. 247). [4]

Renouvier wrote the word “law” with a capital L and simply converted it
into a basis for religion.

See by what methods Mr. Struve demolishes Marx’s “integral [as he
himself admits] materialist world out look”; he puts Marx on the same
footing as a medieval theologian on the sole grounds that Marx takes the
aggregate prices of commodities of a single branch of production, while the
medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, takes all men who descend from the
first man Adam, and uses this as a basis for his doctrine of original
sin. At the same time

Marx is demolished in the name of the “great” Renouvier who preached
philosophical idealism in the nineteenth century and used the concept of
“law” as a basis for religion!

O Mr. Struve! O disciple of the “great” Renouvier! O teacher charged
with the enlightenment of Russian youth!

IV

“ In the vast reconstruction,” writes Mr. Struve, “which the edifice of political economy, as based on the idea of natural
law, underwent after the onslaught of historism, both mystical and
materialist, that idea was an utter failure. Its basic inner contradiction
manifested itself. The latter revealed itself perhaps most glaringly in
that form of ‘natural’ political economy which became the theoretical
foundation of bourgeois economic liberalism.... Indeed, if natural law
reigns in economic life, there can be no facts in that life which are out
of harmony with natural law, or contradict it. And yet liberal ‘natural’
political economy constantly fought, in books and in life, against such
facts.... After the bankruptcy of bourgeois liberal political economy it
became almost indecent to speak of ‘natural law’. On the one band, it was
obviously unscientific to single out from an integral and, in principle,
uniform social economic process certain individual aspects, relations and
phenomena, as ‘natural’, and p lace them in a special category of
phenomena. On the other hand, the proclamation of ‘natural law’, which even
in economic liberalism rested on an unconscious ethical motive, was
ethically discredited because it was regarded as a method that justified or
perpetuated certain, social relations and forms that were only of temporary
significance, because it was regarded as a ‘bourgeois’ apologia” (56–57).

This is how the author disposes of the idea of natural law. And this
has been written by a man who is compelled to admit that “the materialist
Marx extended a hand to the materialist Petty across the whole of the
eighteenth century” (56), and that “Petty is the most striking and most
out standing exponent of the powerful current which at the time flowed from
natural to social science” (50).

It is common knowledge that a powerful current flowed from natural to
social science not only in Petty’s time, but in Marx’s time as well. And
this current remains just as powerful, if not more so, in the twentieth
century too. How can one raise the question of this “current” and speak
of the materialism of Petty and Marx in a work that claims to be
scientific, and is meant to study “the philosophical motives of economic thinking”, without saying anything whatever about the
philosophical premises and deductions of natural science?

But that is precisely Mr. Struve’s manner: to raise, or rather, touch
upon, a thousand and one questions, to “hold forth” on everything, to
present everything as being weighed and considered, but to give nothing
except a hash of quotations and running comments.

It is a downright falsehood to say that the idea of natural law is
bankrupt in political economy, and that it is “indecent to speak of
it”. On the contrary. It is the “current from natural to social science”
that has been reinforcing this idea and made it inevitable. It is
“materialist historism” that conclusively substantiated this idea, after
stripping it of its metaphysical (in the Marxist sense of this term, i. e.,
anti-dialectical) absurdities and defects. To say that the “natural law”
of the classics is “ethically discredited” as being a bourgeois apologia,
is sheer nonsense. It means distorting both. the classics and “materialist
historism” in the most flagrant manner. For the classics sought and
discovered a number of capitalism’s “natural laws”, but they failed to
understand its transitory character, failed to perceive the class struggle
within it. Both these faults were remedied by materialist historism and
“ethical derogation” has nothing to do with it.

By employing exaggeratedly “strong” language (“indecent” to speak
about “natural law”), Mr. Struve is trying in vain to conceal his
dread of science, a dread of scientific analysis of the
modern economy, so characteristic of the bourgeoisie. Lordly scepticism is
characteristic of them, as it is of all declining classes, but the idea of
a natural law governing the functioning and development of society is not
declining, but is steadily gaining ground.

V

We shall now examine the “strictly evolved, precise concepts and clear
distinctions” which Mr. Struve promised to provide for the “formulation
of new methodological problems” of political economy.

“ We define economy,” we read on page 5, “as the subjective teleological entity of rational economic activity or economic
management.”

This sounds “awfully learned”, but it is really a mere juggling with
words. Economy is defined as economic management! A statement of the
obvious.... The “subjective entity of economic management” may be found
in dreams and fantastic novels.

Afraid to say the production of material products (“meta-physical materialism”!), Mr. Struve gives us a gewgaw, not a
definition. By eliminating every element and symptom of social
relationships, Mr. Struve has “invented”, as if on purpose, an
“economy” that political economy has never studied, and can
never study.

Here are the “three main types of economic systems” that he then goes
onto enumerate:
1) the sum total of parallel economic units;
2) the system of interacting economies, and
3) “community-economy” as the “subjective teleological entity”. The
first type covers, if you please, economies that are not interlinked and do
not interact (an attempt to revive Robinson Crusoe!); the second refers to
slavery, serfdom, capitalism, and simple commodity production; the third
refers to communism, “which was practised in the Jesuit state in Paraguay
to the extent that it is at all practicable”. This masterly
classification, in which no trace of historical reality is discernible, is
supplemented by the distinction drawn between economic and social systems.

Economic categories, Mr. Struve tells us edifyingly, “express
the economic relation in which every subject engaged in economy stands to
the surrounding world”; inter-economic categories “express
phenomena that spring from the interaction of the autonomous economies”;
social categories “spring from the social inequality among
interacting people engaged in economy”.

Thus, the economic system of slavery, serfdom and capitalism may be
logically, economically and historically detached from social inequality!
This is what emerges from Mr. Struve’s clumsy efforts to introduce new
definitions and distinctions. “Arguing in the abstract, the sum total of
parallel economic units is compatible with relations of equality and
inequality. It may be a peasant democracy or a feudal society.”

This is how our author reasons. From the point of view of
theory—logic, economics and history—his reasoning is utterly absurd. By
stretching the concept of the “sum total of parallel economic units” to
cover almost everything, he reveals how meaningless that concept
is. Peasant democracy, feudalism, and proprietors living side by side (on
one floor, on one landing, in a St. Petersburg apartment house), are all
the “sum total of parallel economic units”! The author has already
forgotten that, in his system, this sum total is sup posed to characterise
one of the three main types of economic systems. Mr. Struve’s
“scientific” definitions and distinctions are mere gibberish.

This crude and trivial quibbling, however, this flouting of logic and
history has a “meaning” of its own. That “meaning” is bourgeois despair
and “don’t-care-a-damn attitude” (if one can thus translate the French
expression “ je m’en fiche ”). Despair of ever being able to give
a scientific analysis of the present, a denial of science, a tendency to
despise all generalisations, to hide from all the “laws” of historical
development, and make the trees screen the wood —such is the
class idea underlying the fashionable bourgeois scepticism, the dead and
deadening scholasticism, which we find in Mr. Struve’s book. “Social
inequality” should not be attributed to ,the economic system; it
is impossible to do that (because the bourgeoisie does not wish
it)—that is Mr. Struve’s “theory”; Let political economy indulge in
truisms, scholastics and the senseless pursuit of trivial facts (examples
of which will be found below), and let the question of “social
inequalities” recede into the safer sphere of sociological and legal
arguments. These unpleasant questions can more easily be “ducked” in that
sphere.

Economic reality glaringly reveals the class division of society as the
basis of the economic system of both capitalism and feudalism. From the
moment political economy made its appearance, science has concentrated its
attention on explaining this class division. Classical political
economy took a number of steps along this road, and Marx took a step
further. Today’s bourgeoisie is so scared by this step, so disturbed by the
“laws” of modern economic evolution, which are all the obvious and too
formidable, that the bourgeois and their ideologists are prepared to throw
all

the classics and all the laws overboard, so long as they can relegate all
these social inequalities, or whatever you call them ... to the archives of
jurisprudence.

VI

Mr. Struve would particularly like to relegate the concept
of value to the archives. “Worth,” he writes, “as something distinct
from price, independent of it and yet determining it, is a phantom”
(96). “The category of objective worth is merely, so to speak, the
metaphysical doubling of the category of price” (97).

To demolish socialism, Mr. Struve has chosen the most ... radical, the
easiest, and at the same time the most flimsy method, that of repudiating
science altogether. Here the lordly scepticism of the blasé
and frightened bourgeois reaches its nec plus ultra . Like the
advocate in Dostoyevsky’s novel who, in defending his client charged with
murder for the purpose of robbery, went to the length of saying that there
had been neither robbery nor murder, Mr. Struve “refutes” Marx’s theory
of value simply by asserting that value is a phantom.

“ At present it is no longer necessary to refute it [the theory of
objective value]; it need only be described in the way we have done here
and in our ‘Introduction’ to show that it does not and cannot exist in
scientific theory” (97).

Now how can one help calling this most “radical” method most flimsy?
For thousands of years mankind has been aware of the operation of an
objective law in the phenomenon of exchange, has been trying to understand
it and express it with the utmost precision, has been testing its
explanations by millions and billions of day-by-day observations of
economic life; and suddenly, a fashionable representative of a fashionable
occupation—that of collecting quotations (I almost said collecting
postage stamps)—comes along and “does away with all this”: “worth is a
phantom”.

Not for nothing has it been said that were the truths of mathematics to
affect the interests of men (or rather, the interests of classes in their
struggle), those truths would be heatedly challenged. No great brains are
needed to challenge the incontestible truths of economic science. Just a word inserted about value being a phantom, something independent of price —and the trick is done!

It does not matter that such an insertion is ridiculous. Price is a
manifestation of the law of value. Value is the law of price, i. e., the
generalised expression of the phenomenon of price. To speak of
“independence” here is a mockery of science, which in all fields of
knowledge reveals the operation of fundamental laws in a seeming chaos of
phenomena.

Take, for example, the law of the variation of species and of the
formation of higher species from lower ones. It would be very cheap to
designate as a phantom the generalisations of natural science, the already
discovered laws (accepted by all despite the host of seeming contraventions
and deviations shown in the medley of individual cases), and the search for
corrections and supplements to them. In the field of natural science,
anyone who said that the laws governing phenomena in the natural world were
phantoms Would be put into a lunatic asylum, or simply laughed out of
court. In the field of economic science, however, a man who struts about
... stark naked ... is readily appointed professor, for he is really quite
fitted to stultify the minds of the pampered sons of the bourgeoisie.

“ Price is a fact. We will put it this way: price is the
concept of the real exchange relations between wealth in the process of
exchange; it is a realised exchange relation.

“ Worth is a norm. We will put it this way: worth is the
concept of the ideal, or what ought to be the interrelation between wealth
in the process of exchange” (88).

How characteristic of Mr. Struve is this negligent, ostentatiously
off-hand remark: “We will put it this way”. Deliberately ponderous, and,
juggling with abstruse terms and new-fangled formulations, Mr. Struve
suddenly adopts the feuilleton tone .... Indeed, it would be
difficult to proclaim value a phantom without adopting a
feuilleton tone.

If price is a “realised exchange relation”, then it may be asked:
relation between what? Obviously, between the economic units engaged in the
process of exchange. If this “exchange relation” does not arise
accidentally, as an isolated case and for a brief period, but repeats
itself with invariable regularity, everywhere, and every day, then it is
obvious that this “exchange relation” links the sum total of economic units in a single economic system ; obviously, there is
a firmly established division of labour between these economic units.

Thus, all Mr. Struve’s wily reasoning about “inter-economic”
relations, which are alleged to be separable from social
relations, are already collapsing like a house of cards. Mr. Struve has driven the concept of commodity production out of the
door only to let it steal in through the window. Mr. Struve’s famous
“empiricism” consists in expelling from science generalisations that are
unpleasant to the bourgeoisie, but which nevertheless have to be recognised
unofficially, so to speak.

If price is an exchange relation, then one must inevitably understand
the difference between an individual exchange relation and a constant one,
between an accidental and mass relation, between a momentary relation and
one that embraces a long period of time. If that is the case—and it
certainly is—we must as inevitably work upward from the accidental and
the individual to the constant and wide spread: from price to
value. Mr. Struve’s attempts to proclaim value as something which “should
be”, to identify it with ethics, or with the doctrine of the canonists,
and so forth, collapse like a house of cards.

By saying that the recognition of value as a phantom is “empiricism”
and that the striving (which can be traced “from Aristotle” to
Marx—p. 91—and it should be added:
through the whole of classical political economy!)—the striving to
discover the law of the formation of and change in prices is
“metaphysics”, Mr. Struve repeats the method of the latest philosophical
reactionaries, who by “metaphysics” mean the materialism of natural
science in general, and by “empiricism” mean taking a step towards
religion. Expelling laws from science means, in fact, smuggling in the laws of religion . In vain does Mr. Struve imagine
that his “little stratagems” can deceive anybody with reference to this
simple and undoubted fact.

VII

As we have seen, Mr. Struve has evaded a pitched battle
with the Marxists and taken shelter behind scepticism in general. But he
has made up for this by the zeal with which he has scattered remarks against Marxism throughout his book, in the hope
of catching his readers after they have been stunned by the mass of random
and disjointed quotations flung at them.

For example, he quotes a brief passage from Saint-Simon, mentions a
series of books on Saint-Simon (this copying from German bibliographies is
systematically practised by our “scholar”, evidently as the surest road
... to a scientific degree), and quotes lengthy passages from Renouvier
about Saint-Simon.

What is the conclusion to be drawn from this?

It is the following:
“Paradoxical as it may seem, it is simply an incontrovertible. historical
fact that the higher form of socialism, so-called scientific socialism, is
the offspring of the liaison between revolutionary and reactionary
thought” (51–52).
For the path to scientific socialism can be traced through Saint-Simon, and
“Saint-Simon was a disciple of both eighteenth century Enlightenment, and
of the reactionaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries” (53).
“This should always be borne in mind: historical materialism is
essentially the product of the reaction against the spirit of the
eighteenth century. First, it is the reaction of the organic view against
rationalism; secondly, it is the reaction of economism against
politicism. Moreover, in his religious period, Saint-Simon represented the
reaction of emotion and religion against the ideas of law and human
justice” (54–55).
To seal this, Mr. Struve repeats: “Marxism is the formula of the French
theocratical school, and of the historical counter-revolutionary reaction
in general, translated into the language of positivism, atheism and
radicalism. Dismissing reason, Marx remained a revolutionary and a
socialist” (55)....

If Marx succeeded in assimilating arid further developing; on the one
hand, “the spirit of the eighteenth century” in its struggle against the
feudal and clerical powers of the Middle Ages, and on the other hand, the
economism, and historism (and also the dialectics) of the philosophers and
historians of the early nineteenth century, it only proves the depth and
power of Marxism, and only confirms the opinions of those who regard
Marxism as the last word in science. With a clarity that left no
room for misunderstanding

Marx always pointed out that the doctrines of the reactionaries—historians and philosophers—contained profound ideas
about the operation of definite laws and the class struggle in the march of
political events.

But Mr. Struve performs capers and declares that Marxism is the
offspring of reaction, although he immediately adds that Marxism can be
traced, not to Saint-Simon the clericalist , but to
Saint-Simon the historian and economist!

It appears that, by means of a catch-phrase, and without saying a single serious word about the contribution made by Saint-Simon to
social science after the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century
and before Marx, our author has leaped over the whole of
social science in general.

Inasmuch as this science was built up, first, by the classical
economists, who discovered the law of value and the fundamental division of
society into classes; inasmuch as important contributions to this
science were made, in con junction with the classical economists, by the
Enlightenment of the eighteenth century in its struggle against feudalism
and clericalism; inasmuch as this science was promoted by the
historians and philosophers of the early nineteenth century who,
notwithstanding their reactionary views, still further explained the class
struggle, developed the dialectical method and applied it, or began to
apply it, in social life—Marxism, which made tremendous advances along
precisely this path, marks the highest development of Europe’s
entire historical, economic and philosophical science. Such is the logical
deduction. But Mr. Struve’s deduction says: Marxism is therefore
not worth refuting, the laws of value, and so forth, are not even worth
discussing, and Marxism is the offspring of reaction!

Does Mr. Struve really think that he can deceive his readers and
disguise his obscurantism with such crude methods?

VIII

Obviously, Mr. Struve’s scientific treatise would not have been a
scientific treatise submitted for a scientific degree if it did not set out
to “prove” that socialism is impracticable.

Perhaps you think this is going too far? Is it possible, in a work
dealing with the question of price and economy as well as “certain
philosophical motives” of political economy, to “prove” that socialism
is impracticable Without even attempting to study the historical tendencies
of capitalism?

Oh, for Mr. Struve there is nothing easier! Listen:

“ In the final analysis, economic liberalism envisages complete
identity—on the basis of the operation of ‘natural law’—between the
rational and what ought to be, and the natural and necessary in the
socio-economic process, its complete rationalisation.... Socialism, in its
most perfect form of historical, or what is called scientific socialism,
while rejecting ‘natural law’, at the same time accepts this fundamental
idea of economic liberalism. It also assumes that harmony is possible
between a rational structure and the natural course of things, and that the
complete rationalisation of the socio-economic process is possible”
(p. 58).
Then come a few off-hand phrases about this “belief” (p. 59)
and the following ponderous scientific deduction (p. 60).
(Paragraph 7, Chapter 2, Section I of Part I of Mr. Struve’s “work”):

“ Comparing the socialist and liberal ideal with the world of reality,
scientifically empirical research must admit that the belief contained in
these ideals is groundless. In the formal sense, both these ideals are
equally impracticable, equally utopian.”

When reading things like this, one can scarcely believe the evidence of
one’s eyes. What a degree of senile decay and prostitution has been reached
by present-day professorial science! Mr. Struve knows perfectly fell that
scientific socialism is based on the fact of capitalism’s socialisation of
production. This fact is borne out by a host of phenomena to be observed
all over the world. And there is a wealth of “empirical” evidence
pointing to the degree and rapidity with which these phenomena are
developing.

But our scholar, who evades the question of the socialisation of
production and does not touch upon a single sphere of these innumerable facts in his “scientifically empirical research”,
declares, on the basis of a few meaningless phrases about liberalism and
rationalisation, that the question is scientifically solved!

It is not true to say that liberalism envisages complete
rationalisation. It is not true to say that Marxism repudiates
“natural law”. The entire phrase, “complete rationalisation”, is false
and meaningless; it is all a shoddy evasion, a stupid game in pursuit of a
single purpose: to evade an issue that has been clearly and precisely
formulated by scientific socialism; to stun young students with claptrap
about socialism being impracticable.

IX

The bulk of Mr. Struve’s treatise, much more than a half, is devoted to
“sketches and materials on the historical phenomenology of price”.

This is where our ardent advocate of “consistent empiricism”, who
declares value to be a phantom and has studied prices as facts,
can really show his mettle!

Price statistics in the last few years have made great advances. An
enormous amount of material has been collected in all countries. Quite a
few books have been published on the history of prices. If our strict
scholar does not even condescend to refute Marx’s theory of value, why
could he not at least analyse some of the fundamental problems of this
theory with the aid of the “empirical” material furnished by the history
and statistics of prices? Thousands of commodities and hundreds of
sections or periods of the history of their prices can be found, where the
influence of all extraneous factors can be eliminated—with the exception
of the labour “ factor ”—and where precise data is available on
the amount of labour consumed in the production of a given commodity. Why
could not our advocate of “consistent empiricism”, in a work of
“scientific research” on prices, even touch upon these data in
the section dealing with the “historical phenomenology of price”?

Why? Obviously because Mr; Struve was only too well aware of the
hopelessness of his case, of the impossibility of refuting the theory of
objective, labour value, and instinctively felt that he must steer clear of all scientific research.

The hundreds of pages of Mr. Struve’s treatise devoted to “sketches
and materials on the historical phenomenology of price” are an
exceptionally remarkable illustration of how present-day bourgeois scientists steer clear of science. What will you
not find in these pages! Comments on fixed and free prices; several
observations on the Polynesians; excerpts from the market regulations
issued by (ah, what erudition!) King Andrianampoinimerina, unifier of
Madagascar, in 178?–1810; several clauses of the Code of Hammurabi, King
of Babylon (about 2100 B. C.) concerning a surgeon’s fee for, performing an
operation; several passages, mostly in Latin and highly scholarly,
concerning the scheduling of the purchase price of women in ancient German
codes; the translation of seven passages referring to commercial law from
the works of the holy lawgivers of India, Mann and Yajna
Valmiki [5]

;

the protection of purchasers in Roman law, and so on and so forth, right up
to Hellenic examples of the police regulation of prices in Rome and the
Christianisation of Roman police law in the legislation of the Carolings.

We may expect that Mr. V. P. Ryabushinsky, who published Mr. Struve’s
treatise, will immortalise his own fame as a patron and the fame of
Mr. Struve as a serious scholar, by publishing another hundred or so of
volumes of sketches and materials on the historical methodology of prices
describing, let us say,the bazaars of all times and all nations, with
illustrations in the text and with comments by Mr. Struve wrenched from the
best German bibliographies. Consistent empiricism will triumph, while the
phantoms of various “laws” of political economy will vanish like smoke.

X

In the old pre-revolutionary Russia, scholars and scientists were
divided into two big camps: those who made up to the government, and those
who were independent; by the former were meant hired hacks and those who
wrote to order.

This crude division, which corresponded to patriarchal, semi-Asiatic
relations, is undoubtedly now obsolete and should be relegated to the archives. Russia is rapidly be coming
Europeanised. Our bourgeoisie is almost quite mature, and in some ways
overripe. Its scholars and scientists are “independent” of the
government; they are incapable of writing to order; they earnestly and
conscientiously study problems from a point of view and by methods which
they sincerely and conscientiously believe to coincide with the interests
of “captains” of our commerce and industry like
Mr. V. P. Ryabushinsky. To earn the reputation of a serious scientist or
scholar and to obtain official recognition of one’s works in our times,
when such advances have been made in everything, one must prove with the
aid of a couple of “Kantian-style” definitions that socialism is
impracticable; one must demolish Marxism by explaining to one’s readers and
listeners that it is not worth refuting, and by quoting a thousand names
and titles of books by European professors; one must throw by the board all
scientific laws in general, to make room for religious laws; one must pile
up a mountain of highly scientific lumber and rubbish with which to stuff
the heads of young students.

It does not matter if the result is far more crude than that coming
from the bourgeois scientists and scholars of Germany. The important thing
is that Russia, after all, has definitely taken the path of
Europeanisation.

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 144–47 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
Intrinsic utility; price, worth; and natural price.— Ed .

[3]
Incidentally, in admitting that the “later” (compared with the
medieval canonists) economists have in mind “precisely objective
“worth”, Mr. Struve immediately reveals the incorrectness, of his own
subjectivist insistence on the word “worth” as against “objective”
“ value ”. — Lenin

[4]
See present edition, Vol. 14, p. 211.— Ed .

[5]
Mr. S. F. Oldenburg, politely replying to Mr. Struve’s enquiry, writes
that “the law hooks on the questions that you [Mr. Struve] touch upon
evidently closely reflect actual life”. (Footnote 51b, §8,
Subsection II, Chapter 2, Section II, Part I of Mr  Struve’s work.) — Lenin

[6]
The article “Socialism Demolished Again” was published in the journal
Sovremenny Mir No. 3, in March 1914.

Sovremenny Mir ( Contemporary World )—a literary, scientific and political monthly published in St. Petersburg from October
1906 to 1918. Its chief contributors were Mensheviks, including
Plekhanov. Bolsheviks contributed to the journal during the bloc with the
Plekhanovites and at the beginning of 1914. During World War I (1914–18)
it became the organ of the social-chauvinists.

[7]
Leo Tolstoy speaks of this in his preface to N. Orlov’s picture album
“Russian Muzhiks”, 1909.

[8]
Zhizn ( Life )—a literary, scientific and political journal published in St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1901. Among its
contributors were “legal Marxists” (M. I. Tugan-Baranovsky and
P. B. Struve), and leading writers and critics (Gorky, Chekhov, Veresayev,
Skitalets, Bunin, and Solovyov [Andreyevich]). Karl Marx’s Wages, Price and Profit was published in this journal, as well as Lenin’s articles
“Capitalism in Agriculture (Kautsky’s Book and Mr. Bulgakov’s Article)”
and “Reply to Mr. P. Nezhdanov”. (See present edition, Vol. 4.)

[9]
See Karl Marx, Capital , Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, p. 179.