William J. Blake: An American Looks at Karl Marx
With the death of Frederick Engels in 1895, Marxian economic theory enters into a different phase. We are not concerned here with the political and social sources of these theories, but a passing notice must be given so that certain diverging tendencies in economic theory can be fully apprehended.
Marx and Engels, as we shall see, faced many dissenting schools of socialist thought and found their teachings wholly rejected by non-socialist economists. But by the time of Engels's death his authority was papal; Marxism had become the officially accepted doctrine of all the socialist parties and factions, even of those which did not dot every i and cross every t.
Those who rejected his ideas were the British Fabians, the anarchists, and, beginning with the treatise of Bernstein, one of the leaders of the German party in 1899, the Revisionists.
But as we are treating of Marxian theory and not of non-Marxian theory, we must take up here those who accepted the Marxist basis unquestioningly. These leaders were Kautsky (1854-1938) in Germany (but principally as an expositor) and Lenin (1870-1924) in Russia, as a developer of extended Marxist theory. The split between Marxians has grown wider.
But the doctrine of Lenin, formulated mostly in scattered periodical writings (especially after 1900), became accepted by a large section of socialists in 1903, and dominated the arena of action and discussion both, after Lenin's startling victory in Russia in 1917.1
His is the only integrated system of post-Marxist thought based entirely on the corpus of Marxian economic theory. The other disciples of Marx, such as the brilliant martyr Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), sought rather to correct certain alleged shortcomings or, as in the case of Georges Sorel, really deviated altogether.
The purely orthodox critics like Kautsky added little to theory. New Marxian theoreticians in the direct line include, among many others, Hilferding, synthesizer and modernizer of the theory of finance capital, Cunow, of the economic theory of the state, Sternberg of an errant theory of imperialism, Grossmann of a divergent theory of accumulation and crisis, and the learned, clever but overformal Bukharin, whose economic analyses are eclectic and fluctuating. There are a host of others; in fact, they are more numerous than one could imagine, considering the fact that Marxist doctrine, unlike the academic, is not stipended and does not give rise to professional expositors and students.
But few of these thinkers really added anything to Marxian economic theory, unless that term be made all-inclusive. Such a celebrated storm-center as Trotsky (1879- ) is the author of scattered theories of imperialism, etc., but his economic theoretical doctrine is tenuous and limited. This has nothing to do with the scope of his politico-economic doctrine, though the comparative thinness of his economic analysis weakens its presuppositions.
It is best therefore to take up Lenin, first because he became the leader of the historically most active socialist element, certainly the most successful, and because all branches of Communists and Left Socialists nominally invoke his authority at the very least.2
Lenin was born in 1870 and entered the Russian socialist movement as a student. Marxist doctrine was widespread in Russia and, as German was the language of the learned classes (as French of the gentry), the most recondite Marxian studies were known to a large circle of students. Such commentators as Plekhanov (1856-1918) became the leading philosophical critics of Marxian theory.
In this setting Lenin, like his great prototype Marx, mingled theoretical learning with revolutionary activity, laying down the formula that no revolutionary action could exist unless guided by strict theory.
Like Marx, born in, or linked with, the lower nobility, he was academically educated. Steeped in German philosophy, but without the worship of the body of learning as a stuffed museum specimen, he lived in exile or in prison, but never ceased study. In Paris, for example, he worked under the famed bourgeois sociologist Durkheim. His doctrine, vivid with Marxian insight, really is nothing else than an extension of Marxist theory, as given, into the situation of capitalism in the twentieth century. His doctrines, based on finance-imperialism, imperialism itself, present-day capitalist concentration, the general crisis, the role of taxation and state debt, the financial superstructure and its new devices, the present position of labor, and above all, of industrial monopoly and agricultural capital, are the proper epilogue of Marx.3
1. Laski says Lenin's works are the most formidable textbooks of revolutionary practice ever known.
2. But not the eclectic and conservative. At Glasgow, I heard William Gillies, international secretary of the British Labor Party, deny his greatness and even question his ability! [Author.]
3. Practically all competent bourgeois critics, such as Pohle, Liefmann, Dichl, so regard him.