Episode 6

Our pamphlet is but the farthest outpost of an entire literature which in the twenties turned the Ricardian theory of value and surplus-value against capitalist production in the interest of the proletariat, fought the bourgeoisie with its own weapons. The entire communism of Owen, so far as it engages in polemics on economic questions, is based on Ricardo.

Apart from him, there are still numerous other writers, some of whom Marx quoted as early as 1847 against Proudhon ( Misere de la Philosophie , p. 49"), such as Edmonds, Thompson, Hodgskin, etc., etc., "and four more pages of etceteras." I select the following at random from among this multitude of writings: An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth, Most Conducive to Human Happiness , by William Thompson; a new edition, London, 1850. This work, written in 1822, first appeared in 1824. Here likewise the wealth appropriated by the non-producing classes is described everywhere as a deduction from the product of the labourer and rather strong words are used. The author says: "The constant effort of what has been called society, has been to deceive and induce, to terrify and compel, the productive labourer to work for the smallest possible portion of the produce of his own labour" (P. 28). "Why not give him the whole absolute produce of his labour?" (P. 32.) "This amount of compensation, exacted by capitalists from the productive labourers, under the name of rent or profits, is claimed for the use of land or other articles.... For all the physical materials on which, or by means of which, his productive powers can be made available, being in the hands of others with Interests opposed to his, and their consent being a necessary preliminary to any exertion on his part, is he not, and must he not always remain, at the mercy of these capitalists for whatever portion of the fruits of his own labour they may think proper to leave at his disposal in compensation for his toils?" (P· 125.) "... in proportion to the amount of products withheld , whether called profits, or taxes, or theft" (p. 126), etc.

I must admit that I do not.write these lines without a certain mortification.

I will not make so much of the fact that the anti-capitalist literature of England of the twenties and thirties is so totally unknown in Germany, in spite of Marx's direct references to it even in his Poverty of Philosophy , and his repeated quotations from it, as for instance the pamphlet of 1821, Ravenstone, Hodgskin, etc., in Volume I of Capital . But it is proof of the grave deterioration of official Political Economy that not only the Literatus vulgaris , who clings desperately to the coattails of Rodbertus and "really has not learned anything," hut also the officially and ceremoniously installed professor, who "boasts of his erudition," has forgotten his classical Political Economy to such an extent that he seriously charges Marx with having purloined things from Rodbertus which may be found even in Adam Smith and Ricardo.

But what is there new in Marx's utterances on surplus-value? How is it that Marx's theory of surplus-value struck home like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, and that in all civilised countries, while the theories of all his socialist predecessors, Rodbertus included, vanished without having produced any effect?

The history of chemistry offers an illustration which explains this.

We know that late in the past century the phlogistic theory still prevailed.

It assumed that combustion consisted essentially in this: that a certain hypothetical substance, an absolute combustible named phlogiston, separated from the burning body. This theory sufficed to explain most of the chemical phenomena then known, although it had to be considerably strained in some cases. But in 1774 Priestley produced a certain kind of air "which he found to be so pure, or so free from phlogiston, that common air seemed adulterated in comparison with it." He called it "dephlogisticated air." Shortly after him Scheele obtained the same kind of air in Sweden and demonstrated its existence in the atmosphere. He also found that this kind of air disappeared whenever some body was burned in it or in ordinary air and therefore he called it "fire-air." "From these facts he drew the conclusion that the combination arising from the union of phlogiston with one of the components of the atmosphere" (that is to say, from combustion) "was nothing but fire or heat which escaped through the glass." [2]

Priestley and Scheele had produced oxygen without knowing what they had laid their hands on. They "remained prisoners of the" phlogistic "categories as they came down to them." The element which was destined to upset all phlogistic views and to revolutionise chemistry remained barren in their hands. But Priestley had immediately communicated his discovery to Lavoisier in Paris, and Lavoisier, by means of this discovery, now analysed the entire phlogistic chemistry and came to the conclusion that this new kind of air was a new chemical element, and that combustion was not a case of the mysterious phlogiston departing from the burning body, but of this new element combining with that body. Thus he was the first to place all chemistry, which in its phlogistic form had stood on its head, squareIy on its feet.

And although he did not produce oxygen simultaneously and independently of the other two, as he claimed later on, he nevertheless is the real discoverer of oxygen vis-a-vis the others who had only produced it without knowing what they had produced.