The Socialists of the end of the nineteenth century thought to enshrine international Socialism in the German chapel of Karl Marx and Engels. Jules Guesde had imported it into France a few years after the war, at a time when, with the feelings of humility of the vanquished, we were completing the invasion of 1870 by apologies for German military organization, German education, German literature, German beer and German sausages. In their “Communist Manifesto” of 1847 Marx and Engels had modestly decorated their Socialism with the epithet “true.” This document was the Gospel to which every Socialistic aspirant had to make a confession of faith.

The influence of Karl Marx, like that of all prophets, is due not so much to what he says, as to what he promises to say. If one permitted onself to make certain objections to the first volume of “Das Kapital,” which appeared in 1867, his faithful disciples would make a confession of faith to the second volume, which was not to appear until 1885, two years after his death. If one still ventured to contest some of Marx’ rough generalisations, they would refer you to the third volume, which did not appear until 1895. These two volumes were published under the care of Engels, who recognizes, particularly with regard to the third volume, that he had only a very rough outline to deal with. This question, therefore, arises: If Marx’ conception was as clear as he pretended, why this delay in the elaboration of its exposition? He was able to reduce all economic, historical and social science to one formula. Why, then, so many attempts to extract it? On reading these three bulky volumes we find not only a quantity of rubbish, but a number of compilations, principally culled from the English “Reports on Commercial Distress (1847–1848)” and the “Reports on Bank Acts (1857–1858).” It follows that the documents from which Karl Marx’ theories are to be gathered extend back over a period of fifty or sixty years.

In 1886, Herr Werner Sombart, a professor at the University of Breslau, delivered a course of lectures at Zurich, intended for the glorification of Karl Marx, but he commenced with this admission: “A perusal of the writings of Marx and Engels since the complete development of their ideas, that is from 1847 to 1883, presents the intellectual heritage which they have bequeathed to us, at first sight, as a disordered confusion of the most conflicting conceptions. It represents an extremely heavy pot‐​pourri of contradictory doctrines.” Nevertheless, as a conscientious disciple, he adds that “at the end of half a century after its conception, we are still in search of the true meaning of the profound significance of his doctrine.” In his restless desire for orthodoxy he puts forward the view that “Marx and Engels were not always consistent Marxists, either in theory or in practice.”

M. J. Bourdeau did not exaggerate when he observed that Marxism includes three doctrines, the “hermetic,” which its authors alone possessed, and of which Herr Kautsky, the great Marxist theologian, and editor of the “Neue Zeit,” is perhaps one of the few surviving depositaries, if we admit that Engels did not carry the secret with him to the grave; an “esoteric” doctrine upon which a small band of doctors and disciples are wont to comment; and finally an “exoteric” doctrine for the purposes of propaganda and of public meetings.

In point of fact, Marx was the propagator of at least three different Socialisms:–

1. The Socialism which is called scientific. The Social Revolution was the “natural necessity” of the struggle of the two classes, the increasingly numerous and increasingly wretched proletarians and the increasingly rich and decreasingly numerous capitalists.

2. Theatrical Socialism. The Revolution which is to call forth a volcanic explosion.

3. Opportunist Socialism, promoting limitation of the hours of labour, minimum wages, weekly day of rest, etc.

The majority of Socialists imitate Karl Marx and profess all three forms, despite the contradictions which they involve. Herr Werner Sombart desired “a psychological foundation for social development, to which Karl Marx has hardly paid attention.”

We are only familiar with this psychological foundation through the programmes, declarations and declamations of the Socialist leaders. With regard to France, their most marked characteristics are collected in my “Comedie Socialiste.” They proceed by means of antitheses, after the manner of Louis Blanc. Private property is accompanied by misery. Therefore it must be abolished. There are people who find it inconvenient to pay their rent. Therefore houses must be owned by the State. There are people who are in want of work. Therefore the State must possess itself of all the means of production and supply everybody with work! Here are some people who are richer than others. Therefore the State must possess itself of all wealth. This is the agenda at political and election meetings, garnished with a few pleasantries such as are calculated to flatter the low instincts of greed and covetousness. In surrendering themselves to the psychological exploitation of the pilgrims who are seeking the Socialist Mecca, expert Socialists are merely following the course adopted by Marx.

Herr Werner Sombart, after recognizing his obscurities and incoherences, concludes by passing the following eulogy upon him: “The work of Karl Marx has been to abolish cant in the political and social sphere.” It has certainly not abolished metaphor. In the “Communist Manifesto” he speaks of the “frozen wave of calculating egoism,” and twenty years later in “Das Kapital” he repeats in various forms the sentence “capital is dead labour that, vampire‐​like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks”–a metaphor which will only impress those who still believe in ghost stories.

Karl Marx talks of the “habitual charlatanism and pretended science” of Proudhon. Yet both adopt the same method, the same boldness of asseveration and the same subtlety as regards verbal distinctions. If Proudhon bases the whole of his “Contradictions Economiques” upon a sentence of Jean Baptiste Say’s, and Lassalle constructs the iron law of wages upon a sentence of Ricardo’s, Karl Marx bases the whole of his system upon Ricardo’s statement that profits rise or fall in exact proportion to the rate of wages. He also repeats with approval Richardo’s statement that if you lower the cost of maintenance by lowering the price of food and raiment, you will find that wages will end by falling, despite a considerable increase in the demand for labour.

“Scientific Socialism,” therefore, has no real existence from the historical, economic or psychological point of view. The facts which have unfolded themselves during the last sixty years have been in contradiction with the theories of the “Communist Manifesto.” The followers of Marx are obliged to recognize the obscurities, incoherences and contradictions of his work. Nevertheless they recapitulated his dogmas at the Erfurt Congress in 1891, and declined to renounce them, while at the Lubeck Congress in 1901 Bebel secured the condemnation of Bernstein by 203 votes to 31.

The Socialists have been forced to abandon their scientific pretensions, for science has but one object, the search after truth; and their professors, finding themselves between the necessity of admitting either their ignorance or their want of faith, sacrifice their morality to their desire to preserve their reputation for perspicacity. While admitting that the “iron law of wages” was still a subject of discussion at the Gotha Congress, they said that this was merely by way of a political concession to the followers of Lassalle. And yet Liebknecht said, at the Breslau Congress, that Marx’ work is capable of the most conflicting interpretations. These are indeed singular scientific conditions. M. Charles Andler asserts that “all Socialistic doctrine renounces the claim to be considered as a science. A man is only a Socialist by conviction or by sentiment. An ideal is incapable of demonstration.” M. Georges Sorel’s conclusion is that “Socialists are wrong in trying to form a scientific party.” He reminds them that the Church has been hampered by making its theological doctrines jointly and severally answerable for supernatural propositions. “Everyone,” he continues, “recognizes that a strict revision of the doctrine bequeathed by Marx and Engels is required.”

The German Socialists claim to be the sole observers of social evolution. On proceeding to verify their assertions, we find the following results:–

(1) Lassalle’s “iron law of wages” is a deduction from a proposition of Ricardo, which is belied by the facts.

(2) Karl Marx’ theory of surplus labour is derived from the same proposition of Ricardo; his theory of value is merely a plagiarism of a mutilated definition of Ricardo’s measure of value.

(3) The theory of a social dichotomy contained in the “Communist Manifesto” is a proposition devoid of all reality.

(4) All the fundamental conceptions of German Socialism are a priori “conceptions which are not in accordance with the facts.”

The founders and leaders of Socialist schools of thought have not sought after scientific truth for its own sake; they have all made truth subordinate to certain political conceptions.