The New York Chapter of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society has announced as one of its study topics the question, “Are the Teachings of Karl Marx Being Abandoned by Present-Day Socialists?" and it is to that question I desire to address myself here.

As a biographer of Marx, it has been my special task, during more than a dozen years, to try to understand the man. It has become my habit to view the developments of the socialist movement throughout the world from what I believe to be his point of view; to interpret his writings by what I know of his life; to bring all that I know of his life and his intimate conversation and correspondence with friends to my aid in studying his formally stated theories as they appear on the printed page. Whatever disadvantages such methods may have are more than outweighed, in my judgment, by the numerous and obvious advantages.

II

As to the question itself, I feel strongly that neither an unqualified negative nor an unqualified affirmative reply is possible. My belief is that the socialist movement of the present day is both breaking away from and drawing closer to the teachings of the great German revolutionist. Recent criticism has compelled all thoughtful and sincere socialists to admit some defects in Marxian theory, and to recognize the necessity of a readjustment of their theoretical position, and of their policies so far as they have rested upon the mistaken theoretical premises. But, for all that, the unmistakable tendency of present-day socialism is toward a closer adherence to the essential and fundamental teachings of Marx, not away from them. Paradoxical as this statement may seem, a careful and candid study of the life of Marx in connection with recent developments in the international socialist movement will reveal its truth.

"As for me, I am no 'Marxist,' I am glad to say," was a saying frequently upon the lips of Marx. With the words went that half-sneering expression with which his best portraits have made us familiar. If we can fathom the meaning of the cryptic and paradoxical utterance, it may assist us very materially in our

attempt to find a satisfactory answer to our question. Who, then, were the "Marxists" thus scornfully repudiated by Marx, and what were the reasons for the repudiation?

During his lifetime, as now, there were many disciples of Marx who regarded his theoretical work as being his greatest achievement, and his most important contribution to the cause of the proletariat. He was to them primarily a political economist. They spoke of his great work, Das Kapital, as the "Bible of the proletariat," and as a Bible they regarded it. With a passion which can only be adequately described as religious, tens of thousands of working-men laboriously read and studied that difficult work. It was to them an "impregnable rock of Holy Scripture." Those who could not comprehend the work as a whole satisfied themselves with a few memorized passages. Like all Bibles, it became a book of texts, much quoted but little read.

Naturally, those who regarded the book as a Bible made it the basis of a creed. Naturally, also, their creed became the basis of a sect. Doctrinal tests decided the fitness or unfitness of men and women to enter the socialist fellowship and to be reckoned with the elect. Just as religious sectarianism based upon creedal and doctrinal tests has barred many a rare and beautiful religious spirit from the church, while it placed the word "orthodox" as a stamp of approval upon many an unworthy and irreligious spirit, so this sectarian "Marxism" imposed its stamp of "orthodox" and "unorthodox" to determine the fitness or unfitness of men and women to be called socialists. Many who believed in the whole program of socialism, who saw the necessity of a working-class political party to bring about the realization of that program, and were willing to work with and through such a party for the immediate interests of the workingclass, and, ultimately, the collective ownership of the social productive forces, were denied the right to call themselves socialists, and a place in the socialist ranks, simply because they could not subscribe to all the economic and philosophical teachings of Marx.

In every country socialism has had to outgrow this dogma

tism and sectarianism before attaining political importance. In almost every country the movement had its inception in a theoretical propaganda. A few earnest souls devoted themselves to the task of studying the works of a Fourier or a Marx and getting others to study them. To fully understand the master's teachings naturally became the chief ambition of such disciples. To the average person, the zeal and devotion of such men and women is incomprehensible. I have known a working-man, of scant education, to walk a distance of ten miles every Sunday morning for years, no matter what the weather, to study with a fellow socialist the first volume of Das Kapital. After seven or eight hours of labored study, the patient student would undertake the homeward journey of ten miles supremely happy if he had mastered a single new passage.

Of course, his joy was due to something other than mere intellectual satisfaction and triumph. It rested upon a much nobler passion that that. Mastery of the difficult and abstract text was not an end in itself, but a means to an end of great grandeur. Only through a knowledge of Marx could the proletariat ever be saved. The psychology of this attitude is not difficult to understand. It is precisely that of theological sectarianism: Marx is the only true prophet, his book the one and only true gospel, and every question is to be decided by an appeal to its text.

It is almost unnecessary to say that Karl Marx was too great and wise a man not to recognize the folly of the attitude here indicated, and the positive perils to the movement which it involved. He certainly did not deny the importance of correct thinking, or underrate it. On the contrary, he was apt to expect and demand too much in the way of theoretical knowledge from those engaged in the social movement. But he knew that the great mass of the workers could never be expected to fully understand such philosophical doctrines as the materialistic conception of history, or theories of political economy such as surplus value. He was not foolish enough to believe that a great movement could be founded upon a correct understanding of such subtle and difficult theories. At most he believed that the

movement could be guided by such knowledge. In other words, while he expected and desired that the leaders of the movement should possess a thorough theoretical training, he did not expect anything of the kind from the rank and file.

When his overzealous and inpatient disciples sought to push the importance of theoretical training beyond this limit, and to insist upon making the acceptance and understanding of his theories a test of membership, Marx was impatient. It was in such moods that he expressed his gratitude that he was not a "Marxist."

There was another reason for the cryptic and paradoxical epigram. Like all great thinkers upon whose work a definite school of thought has been founded, Marx has suffered greatly at the hands of his own followers, through their wild exaggeration of his theories. The prayer of his heart might well have been: "Save me from my friends-I can take care of my enemies myself!"

The case of Ricardo, the great English economist, may be pertinently cited as a well-known example of the discredit which intellectual leaders incur as a result of the unwise zeal of their followers. Ricardo took for his theme the law of wages and concluded that wages, as a rule, tended to approximate the cost of maintaining a given standard of living at a given time and place. Ricardo surrounded this statement with numerous qualifications, setting forth a generalization of great importance. But Ricardo's followers, more "Ricardian" than Ricardo himself, ignored all the qualifications and stated the theory in a grotesquely exaggerated manner, which found its complete expression in Lassalle's inflexible “iron law of wages." A great and profoundly true generalization of the master became, in the hands of his disciples, a grotesque and dangerous error.

In like manner, Marx suffered from his more Marxian than Marx followers. For example: in one of the earliest of his socialist writings, the Communist Manifesto, he developed his famous class-struggle theory and emphasized the historic rôle of the proletariat. If the workers are ever to be emancipated, he declared, it must be through their own efforts. Here was a

great generalization of tremendous importance, the basis for a working-class movement. But some of his followers, disregardhis abundant warnings, made this generalization the basis of another, which, if generally accepted, would have robbed the working-class movement of the service of many of the finest intellects and devoted consciences ever enlisted in its support, including that of Marx himself. Their reasoning was very simple and naïve: Because the emancipation of the proletariat must be the work of the proletariat itself, it follows that no one who is not actually a proletarian can loyally desire to serve the movement for proletarian emancipation. Determined efforts were made by some "Marxists" to exclude Marx himself from the movement upon these grounds!

One other example of the exaggeration of his theories of which Marx was the victim must suffice, though the number of such illustrations might be indefinitely extended. The materialistic conception of history, a doctrine of the highest philosophical and sociological importance, is perhaps the greatest of the intellectual achievements of Marx. The gist of this theory is that the principal factor in social evolution is the economic one, the method of producing and distributing wealth. This has become nowadays a commonplace, but it was a revolutionary idea when Marx first proclaimed it.

Now, Marx never dreamed of asserting that the economic force acts as the sole determinant of social evolution. In order to focus the attention of the thinkers of his time upon his theory, and in meeting the attacks of opponents, he, quite naturally, at times overemphasized this one factor. Yet he did not fail to warn his disciples against falling into the error of regarding the economic factor as the only active influence in social evolution. His followers, many of them, disregarded these warnings and carried the tendency to exaggerate which Marx himself manifested to the most absurd length. In their hands the theory became one of simple economic fatalism and predestination. According to their caricature of the theory, no other factors have influenced the rate or direction of the evolution of society: race, religion, patriotism, ideals of all kinds have been meaningless.