From Essays in Socialism New & Old (1907), pp.132-135.
The influence, whether directly conscious or otherwise, of class-prejudice and class-interests in determining, in whole or in part, current opinion among our dominant intellectual lights forms a noteworthy commentary on the economic interpretation of history, first formulated by Marx. According to the popular tradition of the fitness of things, the man of science, the philosopher, even the political economist, must necessarily occupy a higher region than that in which the atmosphere of material considerations and low class-interest prevails. An examination, however, of the latest developments of modern thought, especially in the departments in Economics, Anthropology, and the early history of Institutions, does not exactly tend to inspire our confidence in the “objectivity,” as the Germans would say, of the point of view of certain prominent university professors and writers on the above subjects.
Let us turn our attention for a moment to that central question in political economy, the theory of what constitutes the basis of value in an economical sense. Well up to the middle of the nineteenth century the doctrine laid down by the so-called classical economists on this point, the doctrine of Adam Smith, Ricardo, etc. was accepted by writers on Political Economy with hardly a dissentient voice, and indeed almost as a matter of course. The theory in question formulated the, to the unsophisticated mind, obvious fact, that the basis of Exchange-Value consists in the quantum of labour embodied in commodities. This is as much as to say that commodities, in the last resort, must always exchange with each other on the basis of the relative quanta, of labour they severally embody. This doctrine was never intended to imply that special circumstances might not modify the operation of the principle laid down, in any given case. By the old economists it was never intended to mean more than that the tendency of all operations of exchange was necessarily to gravitate towards the exchange of equal quantities of labour as embodied in objects of social utility.
Now seeing that, given the existing psychological constitution of the human animal, it is unthinkable that (other things equal) a given quantum of labour should exchange for more or less than an equal quantum of labour of the same or of a different kind, one would scarcely have thought that any one would have ventured to call in question the principle as such. But thereby hangs a tale. The sting of this very simple, and obvious doctrine in Political Economy lay in the ethical implication it was supposed to contain. Time was when this ethical implication seemed to suit the book of the middle-classes very well. As against the feudal landholder whose wealth was inherited and was moreover, founded directly on the soil itself, and hence not so obviously due to labour, it was very convenient, namely for the rising capitalist to point to labour as the basis of the wealth of the community, and as the central pivot on which all exchange in an open market must ultimately turn. But in the fulness of time arose one Marx, who, taking his stand on the fundamental principles (the doctrine of value among them) laid down by the recognised economists, was prepared to show that the capitalist system itself was not, any more than the system of feudal landlordism, built upon ultimate facts of human nature, justice, morality, etc., and that the means of production that were upon the land, were no more the result of the capitalists’ labour than the land itself was of the landlords. The originally economic doctrine pure and simple, that labour is the basis of value, henceforth acquired a new ethical colouring, which was by no means so agreeable to the latterday capitalist as the former had been to his predecessor. The ethical-economical conclusion that labour being the source and basis of value, all wealth of right belongs to labour, this was a very inconvenient doctrine for the upholders of a system of society based on the exploitation of labour by capital. It was necessary, therefore, in the interests of social order and political stability, to seek to undermine the simple and harmless economic doctrine itself, now that it seemed to lead to such untoward consequences. Accordingly, an English Economist, William Stanley Jevons, was found to try and prove that labour was not the substance of value at all, but that value in exchange was a superficial accident or label, as it were, affixed to the commodity by the fluctuation of supply and demand – or, as it is termed, by the “Final Utility” of the commodity in question. This theory has been taken up and worked for all its worth by the so-called “Austrian School of Political Economists,” of whom, Böhm-Bawerk is perhaps the most eminent. The “final futility of final utility” has been well exposed by Hyndman his little book, The Economics of Socialism. That any one could possibly imagine that to the long run and in an open market exchange-value could mean anything else than the amounts of labour severally embodied in the world of commodities, would indeed be incredible did we not know otherwise of the effect of class-prejudice in blinding men’s minds to the obvious.
But it is not only in political economy that modern culture is twisted to subserve class-interests, and to pander to class-prejudice. One of the great achievements of the mid-nineteenth century and the decades immediately succeeding was the discovery by students of the early history of institutions, notably by Conrad von Maurer in Germany, by Sir Henry Maine in England, and by Emile de Laveleye in Belgium, that early human society is based on Communism, a crude and limited Communism it may be, but a Communism in which the land, at that stage practically the sole source of wealth, was in some way possessed in common by a kinship group; it was worked in common, and its produce enjoyed in common; that in this early tribal society, represented to-day by existing savage and barbaric peoples, the tie of blood, real or imaginary, is the strongest of all bonds, so much so, that the individual has no locus standi, no recognised existence even, apart from his clan or tribe. Now the scholars who discovered these principles had no arrière-pensée in the matter. They followed whither their researches led them without, a thought of consequences; but here again the upholders of the established order of society in the declining years of the nineteenth century began to get nervous lest the above theory, which had been hitherto universally accepted, might prove of dangerous tendency. They saw the above accepted doctrine being used by Socialist thinkers as the corner stone a new theory of historic evolution. Hence what happened may be imagined. Writers appeared who made it their business to attempt to undermine the old positions. Monsieur Fustel de Coulanges in France undertook to upset the huge bulwark of facts, going to prove the existence of primitive communism as a universal stage in the development of human society. What he did succeed in proving, was that the earlier writers in sifting the immense mass of material their disposal had made some mistakes; also that certain documents and customs quoted by them as referring to primitive communistic institutions were possibly susceptible of a different interpretation. Other writers have followed in the same strain. But the great body of evidence on the subject of primitive communism collected by the scholars of the previous generation remains in any case intact. It has nevertheless become the fashion with the students of the present generation at our universities to pretend to view primitive communism at best as a theory that has been very seriously “blown upon” indeed. This, notwithstanding that the facts on which the conclusion that group-communism was the economic basis of early society remain the same to-day as they were thirty years ago, and the majority of them, at least, do not admit of any other interpretation than that given them by the scholars of the last generation.
Once more researches of anthropologists of a generation back, at the head of whom was the late Lewis H. Morgan, arrived at the conclusion that with primitive man promiscuity was the earliest form of the sexual relation; that this, however, soon became modified into group-marriage with its to us complicated rules excluding sexual relations within the gens, the totem-kindred, etc. Morgan inferred that group-marriage was a salient stage in the evolution of the marriage-relation from his studies of the classificatory system of relation-ship he discovered among the Indian tribes of North America, and among other barbaric races. The principle of group-marriage, by which, it should be explained, all the males of one group are husbands to all the females of another group, and vice versa has been quite recently shown by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen to be still in actual operation among the Arunta-tribes of the interior of Australia. Now, as we may imagine, the discovery that polygamy and monogamy, the only two forms of marriage officially recognised during the period of civilisation, were themselves preceded by, and arose from, earlier forms of a very different character was not agreeable to the devotee of existing marriage law and custom. The respectable bourgeois would have felt more comfortable if it could have been shown that monogamy was the earliest and only normal form of the marriage relation.. And there were not wanting men of learned e to endeavour to satisfy the respectable bourgeois. In 1889, Dr. Westermark’s book, The History of Human Marriage, appeared, in which he undertook to prove something like the above position. What he did prove amounted to establishing the fact that in the majority of barbaric and savage races existing at the present time some form of individual marriage, or at least of pairing co-habitation, has superseded the institution of group-marriage, a fact which Morgan himself had never disputed. To Westermarck have associated themselves other recent anthropologists. In one of the latest books on the subject, by Mr. Ernest Crawley, entitled, The Mystic Rose, the anti-promiscuity, anti-group-marriage theory of Westermarck is adopted. The shifts to which Mr. Crawley is put in his attempt to explain away the evidence afforded by custom for the once prevalence of the institution of group-marriage, are instructive, if not always edifying. Mr. Crawley, like others of his school, is very anxious to paint primitive man in the character of a smug British bourgeois. In his efforts to do this, he sometimes endeavours to prove too much. For instance, on p.484 of his book, we come across the statement that “one is struck by the high morality of primitive man.” Now, far be it from me to asperse the moral character in general of our primitive ancestors. But if Mr. Crawley means sexual morality in the current bourgeois sense, then I submit: that the statement not only goes in the teeth of all available evidence, but is flatly contradicted by many of the customs dealt with by Mr. Crawley himself, in the course of his book (e.g., “exchange of wives,” “sexual hospitality,” “sacred prostitution,” etc.). But it is not only in sexual matters that Mr. Crawley would be sponsor for the integrity of primitive man’s bourgeois moral character. On p.233, speaking of the varied and elaborate practices – exchange of garments, eating together, mutual feastings, etc. – instituted as pledges of social union and harmony, Mr. Crawley urges that they tend to prove the individualism of early man and the weakness of the tie of clan, tribe or kin. “Why,” asks he, “these anxious methods of welding together the body politic, if the ‘tie of blood’ was instinctively so strong?” The answer is clear. All these ceremonies refer, originally at least, to persons outside the given group. They are emphatically inter-tribal, inter-clannish ceremonies, symbolising the bridging-over of the social division in question, either as a whole, or by the adoption by one group of an individual member of another group. They only confirm the strength and importance of the of blood or kin with early man and certainly (pace Mr. Crawley) do not throw any doubt upon it. [1] So much for Mr. Crawley’s attempt to show that our primitive ancestors were good individualists.
Following on the lines of Mr. Crawley, we find the well-known. writer, Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Social Origins equally anxious to maintain the reputation of primitive man for bourgeois respectability. This gentleman, if we mistake not, has before given proofs of his zeal for the established order, spiritual as well as temporal. We believe we are not wrong in stating that some years ago, in an address to the students of one of the Scotch universities, he warned his hearers against applying the results attained by comparative mythology to the dogmas and myths of their own religion!!
We have given here only a few instances of the influence of capitalist class-consciousness upon scientific thought and research, in view of the approaching struggle for proletarian emancipation with all that that connotes. In this way is science coloured by the class-interests of its time We may refer those who are interested in seeing how this works out in other departments, to the supplementary volumes, or the so-called “tenth edition,” of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, recently issued by the Times. Among other productions to be found there we would commend to students of philosophy the article Metaphysic,’ by Mr. Thomas Case of Oxford, for a crude vindication of the crudest form of the old orthodox dualism in philosophy and psychology.
We do not accuse all these writers of consciously pandering to views associated with the interests, real or supposed, of the dominant. classes, for there is such a thing as unconscious or subconscious, personal, as well as class-interest, and this works in mysterious ways its wonders, to perform. But it would seem clear that, whether consciously or unconsciously, workers in the fair fields of science are not altogether to be trusted in the present day as to the pure “objectivity” of their conclusions. They have a tendency to turn the edge of the latter when that edge is in danger of penetrating the epidermis of cherished bourgeois interests and prejudices. For are not the dominant classes the material patrons and monopolists of learning, and therefore have they not a claim to “call the tune” of the conclusions learning shall put forth?
1. We may observe that the very complexity of the rules to which Mr. Crawley refers is presumptive evidence of their early origin, just as human speech in its earlier phases shows a complexity of structure which is simplified in later developments.
Last updated on 15.1.2006