Functional socialism

CAPITAL AG

no Ricardo, there would have been no Marx. Since, too, economic development proceeded apace, all unconscious of Marx, it is possible that, had there been no Marx, the Socialist movement would have equally responded, without him, to the needs, necessities and oppressions of the period. As a matter of fact, Marx’s analysis of Capitalism, profoundly stirring though it was, had already been, rationally or instinctively, grasped by the workingclass movement in Europe and especially in Great Britain. Indeed, the case for State Socialism had been stated by Dupont-White, and Rodbertus had published his theory concerning the development of governmental organs to meet the needs of higher social development. Nevertheless, Marx dominated the minds of vast masses of men, more by his intensity than by his theory. It is not his dialectic that stirs us; we are led captive by a prophet and a seer. We have it on Biblical authority that, on occasion, “the prophet preacheth lies” —a fact well known in racing circles; accordingly, it were prudent on our part to test the word of the prophet. On the theoretical side, Marx is known to us for his theory of surplus labour and surplus value and for the concentration or appropriation of capital. It is the fashion nowadays to brush aside these theories as long since discarded. For my part, I do not regard them as theories but as statements of economic conditions subsisting in the time of Marx. Without arguing the meaning of “‘value’’, surplus value, as Marx used the term, was a fact and not a theory.