Landmarks of Scientific Socialism · Friedrich Engels
SOCIALISM
But while the production of commodities and the exchange of commodities compel the society resting upon them to take this roundabout course, they are impelled to a shortening of the process. They separate from the mass of commodities one sovereign commodity, in which the value of all other commodities can be universally expressed, a commodity which is the complete incarnation of social labor, and, against which, all other commodities may be set in direct comparison--gold. Gold already germinates in the idea of value, it is only developed value. But since the commodity value exists in gold also, itself being a commodity, a new factor arises in the society which produces and exchanges commodities, a factor with new social functions and operations. We can now examine this a little more closely.
The economy of the production of commodities is by no means the only science which has to reckon with relatively known factors. Even in physics, we do not know how many single gas molecules there are in a given volume of gas, pressure and temperature being given. But we know, as far as Boyle's law is correct, that a given volume of that gas has as many molecules as a similar volume of another selected gas at the same pressure and the same temperature. We can therefore compare the different volumes of different gases with respect to their molecular content, and, if we take one litre of gas at 0 deg. Fahrenheit as the unit we can refer the molecular content of each to this standard. In chemistry the absolute atomic weights of separate elements is unknown to us. But we know them relatively when we know their mutual conditions. And just as the production of commodities and their economy has a relative expression for the unknown quantities of labor existing in commodities, since it compares these commodities according to the relative amounts of labor which they contain, so chemistry makes a relative expression for the amounts of atomic weights unknown to it, since it compares the separate elements according to their atomic weights and expresses the weight of the one as multiples or factors of the other. And just as the production of commodities elevates gold to the position of an absolute commodity, to the universal equivalent for other commodities, the measure of values, so chemistry elevates hydrogen to the position of a chemical gold-commodity, since it fixes the atomic weight of hydrogen at 1 and reduces the atomic weights of all the other elements in terms of hydrogen and expresses them as multiples of its atomic weight.
The production of commodities is by no means the exclusive form of social production. In the ancient Indian communities and the family communities of the Southern Slavs products were not transformed into commodities. The members of the community were directly engaged in social production, the work was distributed as custom and circumstances required as were the products as they came into the realm of consumption. Direct social production and direct social consumption exclude all exchange of commodities and hence the transformation of products into commodities (at least within the confines of the society) and therewith their transformation into value. As soon as society comes into direct possession of the means of production and undertakes production as a society, the labor of each, however distinctive its special useful character may be, becomes direct social labor. The amount of social labor existing in a product does not then have to be established in a roundabout way, daily experience shows the average amount of human labor necessary. Society can easily determine how many hours of labor there are in a steam engine, how many in a hectolitre of wheat of last harvest, how many in a hundred square yards of cloth of a given quality. It cannot therefore happen that the quantities of labor embodied in commodities, which will then be absolutely and directly known, will be expressed in terms of a measure which is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate and absolute, in a third product, and not in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time. This would not happen any more than in chemistry. One would express the atomic weights indirectly by means of hydrogen if it were possible to express them absolutely in their adequate measure, that is in real weight, that is in billions or quadrillions of grammes. Under the foregoing conditions, then, society ascribes no value to products. The simple fact that a hundred yards of cloth have taken a thousand hours in their production need not be expressed in any distorted or foolish fashion, they would be worth a thousand labor hours. Society would then know how much labor each object of use required for its creation. It would have to direct the plan of production in accordance with the means of production to which labor-force also belongs. The advantageous effects of the different objects of use and their relations to each other and the creation of the necessary means of labor would be the sole determinants of the plan of production. People make things very easily without any interference on the part of the much discussed "value."
The value idea is the most universal and the most comprehensive expression of the economic conditions of the production of commodities. In the idea of value there is not only the germ of gold but also of those more highly developed forms of commodity production and exchange. Since value is the expression of the social labor incorporated in individual products, there lies the possibility of a difference between this and the individual labor embodied in the same product. This difference becomes very apparent to a private producer who abides by an old fashioned method of production while the social method of production has taken a step forward. It then appears that the sum of all the private manufacturers of a given commodity produce an amount in excess of the social needs. Then, since the value of a commodity is expressed only in terms of other commodities and can only be realised in exchange with them, the possibility arises that either exchange will cease or that the commodity will not realise its full value. Finally, the specific commodity labor-force finds its value like that of other wares in the social labor time necessary for its production. In the value form of the product there is already in embryo the entire capitalistic form of production, the antagonism between the capitalists and the wage-workers, the industrial reserve army, the crisis. The capitalistic system will be abolished by the restoration of true value (just as Catholicism will be abolished by the restoration of the true Pope), or by the restoration of a society in which the producer finally dominates his product, by the doing away of an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the slavery of the producer to his own product.
Religion will be forbidden. Now, religion is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of the external forces which dominate their every day existence, a reflection in which earthly forces take the form of the super-natural. In the beginning of history it is the forces of nature which first produce this reflection and in the course of development of different peoples give rise to manifold and various personification. This first process is capable of being traced, at least as far as the Indo-European peoples are concerned, by comparative mythology, to its source in the Indian Vedas and its advance can be shown among the Indians, Greeks, Persian, Romans, and Germans, and, as far as the material is available, also among the Celts, Lithuanians, and Slavs. But, besides the forces of nature, the social forces dominated men by their apparent necessity, for these forces were, in reality, just as strange and unaccountable to men as were the forces of nature. The imaginary forms in which, at first, only the secret forces of nature were reflected, became possessed of social attributes, became the representatives of historical forces. By a still further development the natural and social attributes of a number of gods were transformed to one all-powerful god, who is, on his part, only the reflection of man in the abstract.
So arose monotheism, which was historically the latest product of the Greek vulgar philosophy, and found its impersonation in the Hebrew exclusively national god, Jahve. In this convenient, handy and adaptible form religion can continue to exist as the direct, that is, the emotional form of the relations of man to the dominating outside, natural, and social forces, as long as man is under the power of these forces. But we have seen over and over again in modern bourgeois society that man is dominated by the conditions which he has himself created and that he is controlled by the same means of production which he himself has made. The fundamental facts which give rise to the reflection by religion therefore still persist and with them the reflection persists also. And just because bourgeois economy has a certain insight into the relations of the original causes of this phenomenon, it does not alter it a particle. Bourgeois economy can neither prevent crises, on the whole, nor can it stop the greed of the individual capitalists, their disgrace and bankruptcy, nor can it prevent the individual laborers from suffering deprivation of employment and poverty. Man proposes and God (to wit, the outside force of the capitalistic method of production) disposes.
Mere knowledge even though it be broader and deeper than bourgeois economics is of no avail to upset the social forces of the master of society. That is fundamentally a social act. Let us suppose that this act is accomplished and society in all its grades freed from the slavery to the means of production which it has made but which now dominate it as an outside force. Let us suppose that man no longer merely proposes but that he also disposes. Under such conditions the last vestiges of the external force which now dominates man are destroyed, that force which is now reflected in religion. Therewith, the religious reflection itself is destroyed owing to the simple fact that there is nothing more to reflect. But Herr Duehring cannot wait until religion dies a natural death. He treats it after a radical fashion. He out Bismarcks Bismarck, he makes severe "May laws" not only against Catholicism but against all religion. He sets his gendarmes of the future on religion and thereby gives it a longer lease of life by martyrdom. Wherever we look we find that Duehring's socialism has the Prussian brand. After Herr Duehring has blithely got rid of religion he says "Man can now, since he is dependent upon himself and nature alone, intelligently direct the social forces in every way which open to him the course of things and his own existence." Let us look for a little while at that course of things to which the self-reliant human can give direction.
The first in the course of things by which man becomes self-reliant is being born. Then during the time of his immaturity his education is in the hands of his mother. "This period may, as in the old Roman law, reach to the age of puberty, that is to about fourteen years of age." Only where the older boys do not respect the authority of the mother does the father's assistance play a part and the public method of education robs this of all harm. With puberty the boy comes under the natural care of his father, where this is exercised in a truly fatherly manner, in other cases society takes charge of his education. As Herr Duehring has already maintained the position that it is possible to convert the capitalistic methods of production into social methods without disturbing the mode of production itself, so he here seems to think that one can separate the modern bourgeois family from its entire economic foundations without any change in the whole form of the family. This form is so permanent in his estimation that he thinks of the old Roman jurisprudence, in an "improved" form, as the model of the family for ever, and he does not conceive of the family otherwise than as a permanent unit. The Utopists have the superiority over Herr Duehring here. In their estimation a really free mutual condition would arise in all the family relations as a result of the free association and the public ownership of the instruments of production together with the institution of a system of public education. And Marx has shown furthermore in his "Capital" how "the greater industry, which takes widows, young persons and children of both sexes from the home, and employs them in organized social productive processes, lays the foundation for a higher form of the family and better conditions for people of both sexes."
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.