The Origins of Socialism, by G. Lichtheim. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. £2.50. A Short History of Socialism, by G. Lichtheim. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. £1.50 (paperback).
Socialist theory has customarily been said to derive from French political thought, English economic science and German philosophy. As Marx was the first to bring these three trends together Socialist theory is sometimes called Marxism. Lichtheim follows this tradition and sees Socialism as one reaction to the coming of industrial capitalism, as a theory which accepted industrialisation but not private enterprise and the profit motive.
French utopian Socialism introduced the idea that society should be organised on a more rational basis to take account of industrialisation. Its most prominent representatives were the followers of Saint Simon and Fourier. The former were responsible for such phrases as “the exploitation of man by man", “the administration of things’’ and, in France, “socialism”. They, and the Fourierists, were pioneers of what is now called women’s liberation and Fourier was among the first to argue that the distinction between town and country could disappear and that work could be made pleasant.
The French Revolution also produced another political trend, the revolutionary communists, who declared that the bourgeoisie had to be overthrown in the same way as the aristocracy had been: by violent insurrection and a temporary emergency dictatorship. Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto of 1848 for the German section of this trend, the Communist League. But by 1865, says Lichtheim, Marx had outgrown this “communist" phase and come to be the theorist of “democratic socialism” relying on the development of the working class movement rather than on conspiratorial insurrections for the establishment of Socialism.
In 1848, Lichtheim points out, Marx who had not yet worked out the distinction between labour and labour-power was still really a “Ricardian socialist”. David Ricardo, one of the leading English economic thinkers of his day (he died in 1823), was by no means a Socialist but he had said that labour was the source of value. Some of his followers who were also committed to Robert Owen’s Utopian Socialism gave this labour theory of value an anti-capitalist and pro-worker content and can be said to have done some of the preliminary work which Marx was to develop in Capital.
Marx was brought up and educated in what is now Germany and at university, like many others, became immersed in German philosophy and particularly that of Hegel. His critical study of Hegel and his followers led him to develop the materialist conception of history as an alternative historical theory.
Lichtheim’s books, especially the Origins, cover this ground very well, though it is odd to read of people such as the Fabians in Britain and the Stalinists in Russia as “socialists” when they stood rather for state capitalism. But when it comes to discussing Socialism as a system of society Lichtheim’s means more or less what we do.
Anything that falls short of abolishing the wage relation has no claim to be described as socialism, though it may be a station on the way thereto.
The last part betrays Lichtheim’s basically gradualist approach to the establishment of Socialism. Indeed he suggests that Socialism is not an immediate prospect and probably will not be until the world is fully industrialised. Obviously we do not agree with this assessment but at least we can recognise that Lichtheim is on the same wavelength as us.
Both books are worth study as much for their discussion of the problems of Socialist and Marxist theory as for their account of its origins and history.
Adam Buick
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