Marx B owdlerized
What Marx Really Meant. By G. D. H. Cole. (Gollanez. 5s.)
ON the Continent, where Marxism still matters, there are Marxists and anti-Marxists. In England, where Marxism has never counted except among the intellectuals, there is a small, but busy, group of Marx-and-water-ists. Undiluted Marx will never go down in this country. But if the worst parts (e.g., the gospel of class-hatred) are left out, the rest— so runs the argument—can somehow be adapted to squeamish English taste. Of the disciples of Dr. Bowdler who have addressed themselves to this task, Mr. Cole is the chief ; and his present work, whose aim is " to restate in terms appropriate to our own problems whatever of it (i.e., Marxism) we believe to be still valid and important," may well become the text- book of the school. Mr. Cole's " restatement " takes three forms. Sometimes he bluntly rejects Marx, e.g., the dictum of the Communist Manifesto that " the history of all past society is the history of the class-struggle," or the famous doctrine that the progress of Capitalism necessarily involves the " increasing misery " of the proletariat. Sometimes he proceeds without apparent reference to Marx at all, e.g., in his discussion of socialist tactics in contemporary England, which is not very clear, but is certainly not Marxist. In one section, ".The Theory of Value," he ingeniously argues that Marx really meant something different from what most people suppose him to mean ; and since this section is the only part
of the book which attempts to justify the rather presumptuous title, it may fairly be treated as the most important.
The central argument of Marx's Capital is, put in a nutshell, that since all exchange-value is produced by labour and is
measured by the amount of labour-time required for its pro- duction, the profits of the capitalist, which Marx calls surplus value, belong by right to the worker. The only trouble about this straightforward proposition is that it presupposes accep- tance of the labour theory of value ; and that theory, though generally accepted by Marx's contemporaries, is now rejected by all competent economists. It is simply not true that the value at which commodities exchange is measured by the labour-time required for their production ; and if it is not true, the whole Marxist argument collapses. It is now that
Mr. Cole rushes to the rescue. Whatever Marx says, insists Mr. Cole, he is not really thinking of exchange-value at all.
Marx's " value " is an abstract which has nothing to do with prices. In this sense, there is nothing absurd in measuring " value " in terms of labour, and the Marxist case is perfectly tenable. Q.E.D. Now, Mr. Cole's gallant attempt is not altogether original. An interpretation scarcely distinguishable from his was pro- pounded in the 'nineties by a German economist named Sombart ; and though Marx began, clearly enough, by identifying " value " with price, there is no doubt that, as his work proceeded, he began to flounder heavily on this vital point. Why then did he not embrace, plainly and un- enigmatically, the solution which Sombart and Mr. Cole are so anxious to press on him ? Because Marx himself was acute enough to perceive what his two interpreters com- fortably ignore. If you divorce value altogether from prices, you may save the Marxist premiss, but you make hay of the Marxist conclusion. For if " value " has, as Mr. Cole declares, nothing to do with prices, then " surplus value " has nothing to do with profits. If the theory does not start from prices, it can never reach the proof that profits belong by right to labour and not to capital ; and the whole purpose of Marx's argument is frustrated. Marx would, I fear, not have thanked Mr. Cole for his rescue-party.
The rest of the book is not open to the same criticism ; and as it is written in a breezy style seldom found in works of this nature, the reader's interest is always kept in play. Mr. Cole possesses to the full that love of compromise which makes the Englishman so excellent a man of action and so poor a thinker ; and his favourite technique is, starting from a Marxist position, to work round gradually to its opposite.
Thus, " things and ideas interact, but never so as to upset the primacy of things "—a fair rough-and-ready summary of Marxist philosophy. But, adds Mr. Cole, " in order to become a force in history, the idea must be made flesh, and become a thing "—which not only contradicts the previous sentence (if " primacy " means anything) but is the exact opposite of the Marxist position. Similarly, Mr. Cole pro- pounds a " Realist Conception of History," which looks at first like Marx's Historical Materialism, but ends by flatly contradicting it. It is a curious and ingenious exercise of a kind always attractive to certain minds. Did not Nahum
Tate, when he wanted a cheerful play, re-write King Lear ? Even so does Mr. Cole, when he wants a nice reasonable eclectic philosophy, set out to mutilate Marx.
It would not matter if one did not suspect that there was a fundamental fallacy lurking all the time behind Mr. Cole's
suave revisionism. He wants to keep Samson's strength and yet shear his superfluous hair. He wants to preserve -the fighting power of Marxism and yet discard its dogmatism.
The fallacy peeps out just once—in the most innocent-looking sentence in the book : " A theory which is to serve as a guide to action can afford least of all to decline into a dogma," writes Mr. Cole. How reasonable 1 But is it true ? Of course it isn't, as anyone knows who stops to think. The Athanasian Creed, the Koran, the Bible, Liberty, Democracy, Marxism, Fascism—all these "theories" have become "guides to action," things for which men were prepared to live and die, precisely when they came to be believed in as rigid, immutable dogmas.
The strength of Marxism lies in its dogmatism. As recent events in Europe have shown, men will still sacrifice their lives for (and against) Marxism. But nobody will sacrifice even his shirt—be it red, black or brown—for the Marx-and-
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