July 27, 2025 • 17 mins
This captivating essay by Harold Laski, a renowned figure in the British socialist movement, offers an in-depth examination of Karl Marxs life and philosophy. Born in Manchester in 1893, Laski was an influential member of the Fabian Society and the Socialist League faction of the Labour Party. As a professor at the London School of Economics, he mentored numerous politicians, including leaders of post-war Asia and Africas independence movements, and Ralph Milliband, father of the current Labour Party leader, Ed Milliband. Laskis political views, which encompassed democratic socialism, revolutionary Marxism, and Zionism, were sophisticated and multifaceted. This compelling 1922 essay provides a critical and scholarly analysis of Marxs work and life. - Summary by Phil Benson (adapted from Wikipedia)
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part two of Karl Marx, an essay by Harold J. Laski.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Two. Karl
Marx was born at Treeve on May fifth, eighteen eighteen,
of Jewish parents who were descended on both sides from
Rabbinic ancestors. Neither his father, who was a lawyer, nor
(00:23):
his mother, seems to have had any special ability, and
Marx himself was the only one of several children who
attained intellectual distinction. When he was six years old, the
family was converted to Christianity, not it appears, from any
desire to avoid the stigma then attached to the Jewish faith,
but as a result of that romantic idealizing of Christianity,
(00:45):
of which Chateaubriand was the most famous representative. It is
not easy to measure exactly what influence this change had
upon Marx. If it later opened to him avenues that
would otherwise have been closed, he never availed himself of them.
To the end of his life. He remains something of
an anti Semite, but this does not seem traceable to
(01:05):
any emotion of apostasy. Marx's childhood was passed in the
normal atmosphere of a patriotic lawyer's life. His father was
a zealous Prussian to whom the defeat of Napoleon offered,
the opportunity of which his son did not take advantage
of a lyrical hymn to Prussian victory. He went to
(01:25):
the grammar school of his native town, where his ability
was immediately marked by his teachers. There too, he was
intimate with the Privy Counselor von Vestpharlan, whose house was
a kind of salon for the intellectual youth of treyev
At least, Marx learned there a love of literature, and
the dedication of his doctor's thesis his testimony to his
(01:46):
grateful regard for his future father in law. For even
before his departure in eighteen thirty five to Bond University,
he had become secretly engaged to Jennie von Vestpharlan, whose
beauty and strength of mind had awakened in him an
affection which did not diminish through life. Marx remained a
year in Bonn studying jurisprudence, but he seems to have
(02:10):
devoted himself to the more convivial side of the university,
and it was not until his removal to Berlin in
eighteen thirty six that he threw himself into intellectual work.
Berlin was then at the very height of its reputation,
and the influence of Hegel was still paramount in its instruction.
No sort of learning seems to have come amiss to Marx.
(02:32):
History and philosophy, geography and jurisprudence, literature and esthetic, All
of them aroused in him the typical enthusiasm of an
undergraduate in search of omniscience. Nor it is a grateful
thought did he fail to write poetry, And if his
verses are a fair index to his state of mind,
he was full of a restless insatiability for knowledge and
(02:54):
a zealous desire to solve the problems of the universe,
from which at least there must have been derived many
hours of happy work. He tried his hand at composing
philosophic systems. He attempted to compile an outline of jurisprudence.
He went hardly at all into society, and he was
not until the winter of eighteen thirty seven that his
experiments resolved themselves into a settled system. He surrendered the
(03:18):
neo idealism of Kant and took refuge in a complete
acceptance of Hegelian metaphysic. That this change represented for him
a very real mental crisis is evident from the passionate
if turgid letter to his father of November tenth, eighteen
thirty seven. There he summarizes the intense struggle through which
(03:38):
he had passed the desire to dive into the deeps
of the ocean, bringing up chased pearls into the sunlight.
He was ill and troubled. His poems and short stories
were burned. He sought escape from the seductions of hegel
in discussion at the Graduates Club, only to find himself
the more securely enmeshed Therein it is the tiber bigle
(04:00):
intellectual history of an ardent mind, conscious of great powers
and eager to secure a foothold from which to survey
the universe. Not unnaturally, he greatly disturbed his father. He
good Man was anxious above all to see carlat work
in a lawyer's office, or even better, in government service.
(04:22):
Why did he not do as other students, attend his lectures,
meet the right people, and embark upon his future career.
He did not understand this mental torment, save to see
that it involved physical ill health and a good deal
of miscellaneous reading totally unconnected with the law. But Marx's
ideals had already passed beyond so pedestrian an existence, and
(04:44):
his father seems to have reconciled himself to the new ambitions.
Marx determined upon a university post, and for that purpose
devoted himself to the study of philosophic jurisprudence with friends
like Bruno Bauer and Friedrich Coppen. Buried himself in study
and discussion. A thesis was written on the philosophical systems
(05:05):
of Democritus and Epicurus, and in eighteen forty one Marx
became a doctor of the University of Yena. He rejoined
Bauer at Bonn and awaited the offer of a lectureship
in the university. Had that offer come, the history of
European socialism might have been very different. But the Prussian
educational system did not look with affection upon eager young
(05:28):
men whose views did not square with orthodox teaching. The
post did not arrive, and it was shortly enough obvious
that it was not likely to arrive. An academic career
being thus impossible, Mark set to work to find a
living in journalism, and in eighteen forty two an opportunity
of an attractive kind presented itself. The first number of
(05:52):
the Rhinisha Zeitung was published on January first, eighteen forty two,
and Marx was a warm friend of the editor, who
had met him at the Graduates club in Berlin. Invited
to assist, he wrote philosophical articles which not only brought
him to the notice of a wider circle, among whom
were men like Feuerbach and Moses Hess, but also secured
(06:13):
for him the direction of the journal on the retirement
of its first editor in the next October. Thereby Marx
was compelled to deal and for the first time with
immediate political issues. He came into contact with French and
German socialism, then in their utopian stage. The agrarian problem
in the Rhine provinces and the discussion of the tariff
(06:36):
gave him the first stimulus to investigate economic questions. French
socialist ideas were already being discussed in the paper, but Marx,
as always determined upon a thorough grasp of the issue,
did not as yet pronounce upon their worth. An editor
who takes time to make up his mind is obviously lost,
and the directors of the paper decided to make a
(06:58):
change in its management. Marx, who had just married, seems
to have resigned without regret and to have buried himself
for the next two years in those economic studies from
which he emerged a socialists. Of the inner history of
those years we know practically nothing certain. Alone. It is
that as early as May eighteen forty three he detected
(07:20):
within society a breach which the old system cannot heal.
And it was not long before he showed in his
letters an intimate knowledge of Fourier, Pruden and Cabet. Already
he had done with utopias. The problem was to explain
the struggles and yearnings of the time. In the winter
of eighteen forty three, when he had settled with his
(07:42):
wife in Paris, he wrote the introduction to Hegel's Philosophy
of Law, which remains perhaps his profoundest piece of technical criticism.
Already he was thinking in terms of revolution and insisting
that the task of the proletariat was to free itself
from the existing social order. Poverty he viewed thus early
(08:02):
as the artificial product of a bourgeois society and the
denial of the right of private property had become for
him the fundamental avenue of release. But we catch glimpses
only of this time. All that can be said with
certainty is the fact that reflection had made him a socialist.
He had realized too the inadequacies of the abstract remoteness
(08:25):
of French socialism. He had seen that the political state was,
at any given time the reflection in structure of the
ideas of that epoch. He had realized that the main
need was to make plain to the mass of men
the implications of the state and the end to which
their half conscious struggle should lead them. His thought, indeed
(08:46):
was abstract enough, and still fettered within the narrow walls
of the Hegelian dialectic, but at least it was moving forward. Meanwhile,
the problem of how to live had still to be solved.
He had gone to Paris in October eighteen forty three
to become editor of the Franco German Year Books, but
that periodical lasted only for a single issue, and for
(09:08):
Marx his chief importance was the appearance therein of a
long and frankly bad article by Friedrich Engels on political economy.
The article led to correspondence between them, and in the
autumn of eighteen forty four Engels went to Paris to
visit Marks. That visit was the commencement of a friendship
which even death did not terminate. Friedrich Engels was the
(09:33):
son of a rich manufacturer in the Rhineland. His father
owned a cotton mill near Manchester, to which in eighteen
forty two Engels had been sent to study English business conditions.
He was already an eager critic of social conditions, and
how carefully he observed the life about him. His condition
of the working classes in England in eighteen forty four,
(09:55):
which he published in eighteen forty five, bears witness sympathizer
with the Chartist movement and a contributor to Owen's New
moral world. He was exactly in the frame of mind
to be receptive to Marx's ideas, and his personal qualities
admirably fitted him to be the complement of Marx. Thoroughly loyal,
(10:16):
without an atom of personal ambition, generous and self effacing,
practical and energetic. He brought to Marx all the necessary
characteristic of a fied psychates his unstinting literary assistance hardly
less than his constant financial aid with the materials which
determined Marx's future career. It is indeed almost impossible to
(10:39):
dissent angle the labours of the two. Clearly enough, it
was to Engles that Marx owed both his knowledge of
English blue books as a source of economic theory and
his introduction to the work of the English Socialist School.
Without Engles, too, it would have been difficult for Marx
to undertake the research to which the first volume of
The Capital bears with them, and the posthumous publication of
(11:02):
the two latter volumes was the tribute that Engles paid
to the memory of his master. That Marx would have
been an important figure without Engles is clear enough, but
the aid rendered by the latter made all the difference
between the comparative calm of London and the restless wanderings
of which hapless exiles like Bakunin were the miserable victims.
(11:24):
The sudden end of the Franco German yearbooks made Marx
turn to more solid production. The Holy Family eighteen forty
five is important not only because it contains the first
clear outline of the materialistic conception of history, but also
because its attack on Bruno Bauer is evidence that Marx
had already broken with the younger Galiens. He had come
(11:47):
to place all his faith in the significance of mass movements,
where Bauer believed that the ideas by which mankind is
moved cannot hope for more than superficial understanding from the mass,
and depend for their sol excess upon the efforts of
great men. Simultaneously, also he was answering Ruger's attacks upon
the German proletariat with an impassioned defense of socialism and revolution.
(12:12):
Vitling is held up as a proof of proletarian virtue
against the mediocrity of the political literature of the German bourgeoisie,
and in the polemic against Ruger, it has insisted that
the time for political revolution, the only revolution of which
the German bourgeoisie is capable, had passed. The capacity of
Germany is the capacity of its workers, and it is
(12:34):
to a social revolution that Marks directs attention. This Paris
period is important not only for the advent of Engels
mingling with the German workers. Then living in Paris, Marx
naturally met those who were already in sympathy with his
own views. From them to Pruden, was a natural step,
for Prudence was already the dominant socialist influence in France.
(12:58):
Prudon was inted in the Hegelian dialectic, and he and
Marx spent countless hours in discussing its application to social science.
But this fruitful intercourse was interrupted by his expulsion from
France January eighteen forty five, at the demand of the
Prussian government. Marx went from Paris to Brussels, where he
(13:20):
remained but for short intervals, until the outbreak of the
Revolution of eighteen forty eight. Engels gave him a selection
of his library, and Marx devoted himself to the composition
of his singularly able and unpleasant criticism of Prudence. This
was published in eighteen forty seven, and it may be
said to mark his transition to the full vigor of
(13:41):
his matured philosophy. Pruden's reputation as a social philosopher has
undergone an interesting reconstruction in our own day. As an economist,
he has hardly survived the analysis of Marx. A self
taught man originally a printer, he came into prominence by
the publication in eighteen forty of his prize essay what
(14:03):
is Property? In which, with much brilliance of style and
no small genius for paradox, he repeated in the economic
sphere the substance of those criticisms of social organization which
Rousseau had expressed in a prize essay not less famous.
But Pruden's aspirations were not limited by his knowledge. With
(14:24):
undoubted ability and with a real gift of social insight,
he yet lacked that rigorous training in the method of
intellectual inquiry, without which the production of a logical system
is rarely possible. Discovering the work of Hegel, he attempted
an interpretation of social life in terms of the dialectic.
It is broadly a mass of ill arranged jargon, with
(14:46):
some brilliant asides. But the work was written while in
contact with Marx and the Philosophida. Le Misaire is the
exposition of exactly that type of utopia mongering which aroused
marks his anger. Ended for its success mainly upon the
unconscious ease with which it determines the most complex economic problems,
(15:06):
and the reckless certitude of its own conclusions. It is, indeed,
at the same time a very attractive book. Prudon realized
not less keenly than Marx the evils of capitalism, and
he was not less anxious to point the way to
an economic order of which the motives were freedom and
justice in the duprincip Federertif and the Justice Don Revolution. Indeed,
(15:32):
he outlined a type of federalism of which the suggestiveness
is immense, and it would be legitimate to argue that
not the least significant source of the ancestry of guild
socialism could be traced to his writings. But the conflict
between Marx and Prudent was an inevitable one. At bottom,
the ideals of Prudon were those of a peasant socialism
(15:54):
in which the authority of a central state was reduced
to a minimum. He was reformist in outlook, despite the
vigor of his phrases, and his economic views were always
subordinate to certain ethical assumptions. Marx was the typical representative
of the new industrialism, and the source of change for
him was solely to be traced to developments in industrial technique.
(16:17):
Authoritarian and materialist in both outlook and temper, there was
no real contact between Prudon and himself. Marx, moreover, was
a trained scholar to whom the luxuriance of Prudon's speculations
was never an adequate substitute. For fact, he was able,
without difficulty to show that Prudence understood neither the theory
(16:37):
of value nor the process of production. At bottom, as
he insists, Prudent had done little more than urge first
that labor was the source of value, and next that
riches and poverty coexist. Prudent could see that the source
of economic justice lay somewhere within the system of production,
but he could not with any clarity explain its development.
(17:01):
Marx overwhelmed him with ridicule, abuse and sarcasm, and it
must be admitted that from the standpoint of an economist,
right is on his side and marks his answer. The
Poverty of Philosophy is noteworthy also for its firm grasp
of the economic processes of history, and for his insistence
upon the part that an oppressed class has always played
(17:22):
in the development of any system founded upon class antagonism.
But the main value of the book consists less in
any positive doctrine that it announces than in the atmosphere
by which it is permeated. It is definitely revolutionary, and
it is revolutionary because it is historical. Its lesson is
the argument that social evolution implies economic revolution. That was
(17:46):
a new note to strike in the history of European socialism.
End of Part two
Part two of Karl Marx, an essay by Harold J. Laski.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Two. Karl
Marx was born at Treeve on May fifth, eighteen eighteen,
of Jewish parents who were descended on both sides from
Rabbinic ancestors. Neither his father, who was a lawyer, nor
(00:23):
his mother, seems to have had any special ability, and
Marx himself was the only one of several children who
attained intellectual distinction. When he was six years old, the
family was converted to Christianity, not it appears, from any
desire to avoid the stigma then attached to the Jewish faith,
but as a result of that romantic idealizing of Christianity,
(00:45):
of which Chateaubriand was the most famous representative. It is
not easy to measure exactly what influence this change had
upon Marx. If it later opened to him avenues that
would otherwise have been closed, he never availed himself of them.
To the end of his life. He remains something of
an anti Semite, but this does not seem traceable to
(01:05):
any emotion of apostasy. Marx's childhood was passed in the
normal atmosphere of a patriotic lawyer's life. His father was
a zealous Prussian to whom the defeat of Napoleon offered,
the opportunity of which his son did not take advantage
of a lyrical hymn to Prussian victory. He went to
(01:25):
the grammar school of his native town, where his ability
was immediately marked by his teachers. There too, he was
intimate with the Privy Counselor von Vestpharlan, whose house was
a kind of salon for the intellectual youth of treyev
At least, Marx learned there a love of literature, and
the dedication of his doctor's thesis his testimony to his
(01:46):
grateful regard for his future father in law. For even
before his departure in eighteen thirty five to Bond University,
he had become secretly engaged to Jennie von Vestpharlan, whose
beauty and strength of mind had awakened in him an
affection which did not diminish through life. Marx remained a
year in Bonn studying jurisprudence, but he seems to have
(02:10):
devoted himself to the more convivial side of the university,
and it was not until his removal to Berlin in
eighteen thirty six that he threw himself into intellectual work.
Berlin was then at the very height of its reputation,
and the influence of Hegel was still paramount in its instruction.
No sort of learning seems to have come amiss to Marx.
(02:32):
History and philosophy, geography and jurisprudence, literature and esthetic, All
of them aroused in him the typical enthusiasm of an
undergraduate in search of omniscience. Nor it is a grateful
thought did he fail to write poetry, And if his
verses are a fair index to his state of mind,
he was full of a restless insatiability for knowledge and
(02:54):
a zealous desire to solve the problems of the universe,
from which at least there must have been derived many
hours of happy work. He tried his hand at composing
philosophic systems. He attempted to compile an outline of jurisprudence.
He went hardly at all into society, and he was
not until the winter of eighteen thirty seven that his
experiments resolved themselves into a settled system. He surrendered the
(03:18):
neo idealism of Kant and took refuge in a complete
acceptance of Hegelian metaphysic. That this change represented for him
a very real mental crisis is evident from the passionate
if turgid letter to his father of November tenth, eighteen
thirty seven. There he summarizes the intense struggle through which
(03:38):
he had passed the desire to dive into the deeps
of the ocean, bringing up chased pearls into the sunlight.
He was ill and troubled. His poems and short stories
were burned. He sought escape from the seductions of hegel
in discussion at the Graduates Club, only to find himself
the more securely enmeshed Therein it is the tiber bigle
(04:00):
intellectual history of an ardent mind, conscious of great powers
and eager to secure a foothold from which to survey
the universe. Not unnaturally, he greatly disturbed his father. He
good Man was anxious above all to see carlat work
in a lawyer's office, or even better, in government service.
(04:22):
Why did he not do as other students, attend his lectures,
meet the right people, and embark upon his future career.
He did not understand this mental torment, save to see
that it involved physical ill health and a good deal
of miscellaneous reading totally unconnected with the law. But Marx's
ideals had already passed beyond so pedestrian an existence, and
(04:44):
his father seems to have reconciled himself to the new ambitions.
Marx determined upon a university post, and for that purpose
devoted himself to the study of philosophic jurisprudence with friends
like Bruno Bauer and Friedrich Coppen. Buried himself in study
and discussion. A thesis was written on the philosophical systems
(05:05):
of Democritus and Epicurus, and in eighteen forty one Marx
became a doctor of the University of Yena. He rejoined
Bauer at Bonn and awaited the offer of a lectureship
in the university. Had that offer come, the history of
European socialism might have been very different. But the Prussian
educational system did not look with affection upon eager young
(05:28):
men whose views did not square with orthodox teaching. The
post did not arrive, and it was shortly enough obvious
that it was not likely to arrive. An academic career
being thus impossible, Mark set to work to find a
living in journalism, and in eighteen forty two an opportunity
of an attractive kind presented itself. The first number of
(05:52):
the Rhinisha Zeitung was published on January first, eighteen forty two,
and Marx was a warm friend of the editor, who
had met him at the Graduates club in Berlin. Invited
to assist, he wrote philosophical articles which not only brought
him to the notice of a wider circle, among whom
were men like Feuerbach and Moses Hess, but also secured
(06:13):
for him the direction of the journal on the retirement
of its first editor in the next October. Thereby Marx
was compelled to deal and for the first time with
immediate political issues. He came into contact with French and
German socialism, then in their utopian stage. The agrarian problem
in the Rhine provinces and the discussion of the tariff
(06:36):
gave him the first stimulus to investigate economic questions. French
socialist ideas were already being discussed in the paper, but Marx,
as always determined upon a thorough grasp of the issue,
did not as yet pronounce upon their worth. An editor
who takes time to make up his mind is obviously lost,
and the directors of the paper decided to make a
(06:58):
change in its management. Marx, who had just married, seems
to have resigned without regret and to have buried himself
for the next two years in those economic studies from
which he emerged a socialists. Of the inner history of
those years we know practically nothing certain. Alone. It is
that as early as May eighteen forty three he detected
(07:20):
within society a breach which the old system cannot heal.
And it was not long before he showed in his
letters an intimate knowledge of Fourier, Pruden and Cabet. Already
he had done with utopias. The problem was to explain
the struggles and yearnings of the time. In the winter
of eighteen forty three, when he had settled with his
(07:42):
wife in Paris, he wrote the introduction to Hegel's Philosophy
of Law, which remains perhaps his profoundest piece of technical criticism.
Already he was thinking in terms of revolution and insisting
that the task of the proletariat was to free itself
from the existing social order. Poverty he viewed thus early
(08:02):
as the artificial product of a bourgeois society and the
denial of the right of private property had become for
him the fundamental avenue of release. But we catch glimpses
only of this time. All that can be said with
certainty is the fact that reflection had made him a socialist.
He had realized too the inadequacies of the abstract remoteness
(08:25):
of French socialism. He had seen that the political state was,
at any given time the reflection in structure of the
ideas of that epoch. He had realized that the main
need was to make plain to the mass of men
the implications of the state and the end to which
their half conscious struggle should lead them. His thought, indeed
(08:46):
was abstract enough, and still fettered within the narrow walls
of the Hegelian dialectic, but at least it was moving forward. Meanwhile,
the problem of how to live had still to be solved.
He had gone to Paris in October eighteen forty three
to become editor of the Franco German Year Books, but
that periodical lasted only for a single issue, and for
(09:08):
Marx his chief importance was the appearance therein of a
long and frankly bad article by Friedrich Engels on political economy.
The article led to correspondence between them, and in the
autumn of eighteen forty four Engels went to Paris to
visit Marks. That visit was the commencement of a friendship
which even death did not terminate. Friedrich Engels was the
(09:33):
son of a rich manufacturer in the Rhineland. His father
owned a cotton mill near Manchester, to which in eighteen
forty two Engels had been sent to study English business conditions.
He was already an eager critic of social conditions, and
how carefully he observed the life about him. His condition
of the working classes in England in eighteen forty four,
(09:55):
which he published in eighteen forty five, bears witness sympathizer
with the Chartist movement and a contributor to Owen's New
moral world. He was exactly in the frame of mind
to be receptive to Marx's ideas, and his personal qualities
admirably fitted him to be the complement of Marx. Thoroughly loyal,
(10:16):
without an atom of personal ambition, generous and self effacing,
practical and energetic. He brought to Marx all the necessary
characteristic of a fied psychates his unstinting literary assistance hardly
less than his constant financial aid with the materials which
determined Marx's future career. It is indeed almost impossible to
(10:39):
dissent angle the labours of the two. Clearly enough, it
was to Engles that Marx owed both his knowledge of
English blue books as a source of economic theory and
his introduction to the work of the English Socialist School.
Without Engles, too, it would have been difficult for Marx
to undertake the research to which the first volume of
The Capital bears with them, and the posthumous publication of
(11:02):
the two latter volumes was the tribute that Engles paid
to the memory of his master. That Marx would have
been an important figure without Engles is clear enough, but
the aid rendered by the latter made all the difference
between the comparative calm of London and the restless wanderings
of which hapless exiles like Bakunin were the miserable victims.
(11:24):
The sudden end of the Franco German yearbooks made Marx
turn to more solid production. The Holy Family eighteen forty
five is important not only because it contains the first
clear outline of the materialistic conception of history, but also
because its attack on Bruno Bauer is evidence that Marx
had already broken with the younger Galiens. He had come
(11:47):
to place all his faith in the significance of mass movements,
where Bauer believed that the ideas by which mankind is
moved cannot hope for more than superficial understanding from the mass,
and depend for their sol excess upon the efforts of
great men. Simultaneously, also he was answering Ruger's attacks upon
the German proletariat with an impassioned defense of socialism and revolution.
(12:12):
Vitling is held up as a proof of proletarian virtue
against the mediocrity of the political literature of the German bourgeoisie,
and in the polemic against Ruger, it has insisted that
the time for political revolution, the only revolution of which
the German bourgeoisie is capable, had passed. The capacity of
Germany is the capacity of its workers, and it is
(12:34):
to a social revolution that Marks directs attention. This Paris
period is important not only for the advent of Engels
mingling with the German workers. Then living in Paris, Marx
naturally met those who were already in sympathy with his
own views. From them to Pruden, was a natural step,
for Prudence was already the dominant socialist influence in France.
(12:58):
Prudon was inted in the Hegelian dialectic, and he and
Marx spent countless hours in discussing its application to social science.
But this fruitful intercourse was interrupted by his expulsion from
France January eighteen forty five, at the demand of the
Prussian government. Marx went from Paris to Brussels, where he
(13:20):
remained but for short intervals, until the outbreak of the
Revolution of eighteen forty eight. Engels gave him a selection
of his library, and Marx devoted himself to the composition
of his singularly able and unpleasant criticism of Prudence. This
was published in eighteen forty seven, and it may be
said to mark his transition to the full vigor of
(13:41):
his matured philosophy. Pruden's reputation as a social philosopher has
undergone an interesting reconstruction in our own day. As an economist,
he has hardly survived the analysis of Marx. A self
taught man originally a printer, he came into prominence by
the publication in eighteen forty of his prize essay what
(14:03):
is Property? In which, with much brilliance of style and
no small genius for paradox, he repeated in the economic
sphere the substance of those criticisms of social organization which
Rousseau had expressed in a prize essay not less famous.
But Pruden's aspirations were not limited by his knowledge. With
(14:24):
undoubted ability and with a real gift of social insight,
he yet lacked that rigorous training in the method of
intellectual inquiry, without which the production of a logical system
is rarely possible. Discovering the work of Hegel, he attempted
an interpretation of social life in terms of the dialectic.
It is broadly a mass of ill arranged jargon, with
(14:46):
some brilliant asides. But the work was written while in
contact with Marx and the Philosophida. Le Misaire is the
exposition of exactly that type of utopia mongering which aroused
marks his anger. Ended for its success mainly upon the
unconscious ease with which it determines the most complex economic problems,
(15:06):
and the reckless certitude of its own conclusions. It is, indeed,
at the same time a very attractive book. Prudon realized
not less keenly than Marx the evils of capitalism, and
he was not less anxious to point the way to
an economic order of which the motives were freedom and
justice in the duprincip Federertif and the Justice Don Revolution. Indeed,
(15:32):
he outlined a type of federalism of which the suggestiveness
is immense, and it would be legitimate to argue that
not the least significant source of the ancestry of guild
socialism could be traced to his writings. But the conflict
between Marx and Prudent was an inevitable one. At bottom,
the ideals of Prudon were those of a peasant socialism
(15:54):
in which the authority of a central state was reduced
to a minimum. He was reformist in outlook, despite the
vigor of his phrases, and his economic views were always
subordinate to certain ethical assumptions. Marx was the typical representative
of the new industrialism, and the source of change for
him was solely to be traced to developments in industrial technique.
(16:17):
Authoritarian and materialist in both outlook and temper, there was
no real contact between Prudon and himself. Marx, moreover, was
a trained scholar to whom the luxuriance of Prudon's speculations
was never an adequate substitute. For fact, he was able,
without difficulty to show that Prudence understood neither the theory
(16:37):
of value nor the process of production. At bottom, as
he insists, Prudent had done little more than urge first
that labor was the source of value, and next that
riches and poverty coexist. Prudent could see that the source
of economic justice lay somewhere within the system of production,
but he could not with any clarity explain its development.
(17:01):
Marx overwhelmed him with ridicule, abuse and sarcasm, and it
must be admitted that from the standpoint of an economist,
right is on his side and marks his answer. The
Poverty of Philosophy is noteworthy also for its firm grasp
of the economic processes of history, and for his insistence
upon the part that an oppressed class has always played
(17:22):
in the development of any system founded upon class antagonism.
But the main value of the book consists less in
any positive doctrine that it announces than in the atmosphere
by which it is permeated. It is definitely revolutionary, and
it is revolutionary because it is historical. Its lesson is
the argument that social evolution implies economic revolution. That was
(17:46):
a new note to strike in the history of European socialism.
End of Part two
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