Socialism as a Commodity

The series of articles by Dr. Oscar Blum (Born) reprinted here first appeared at the beginning of the war in Grünberg's “Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung”.1 It is a kind of investigation into the decline of social democracy that had never been published before and is still incredibly topical. The tragedy of the old labor movement is explained in terms of the laws of capitalist economics, thus providing striking proof of the inevitability of social democratic bankruptcy. A careful study of these articles will show every thinking worker that the paths of Moscow must lead to the abyss. For what the author could not have foreseen was soon to become a fact: The Soviet star was also a trademark for a special commodity quality of socialism. Stalinism is settling in ever more comfortably under the roof of legality, getting “red cheeks” and becoming an “old world girl”, becoming a commodity. The front of these commodity producers ranges from Bernstein to Korsch. The series of articles shows the current crisis in the KPD brilliantly as a parallel manifestation of social-democratic war policy and reminds the opposition KPD comrade who goes through these observations of the violent practices of the ECCI and its troop servants in the depiction of revisionism gone wild and snarling. But the author also shows the way in which socialism can escape the commodity cycle. The old parliamentary-union movement knows only the exchange-value of socialism. Under the banner of the anti-union and anti-parliamentary struggle, it will triumph as an use-value.

I.

The modern social order is based on the unrestricted rule of commodity production. Nothing is produced other than commodities. Not only material goods alone, but also ideal goods appear on the market in the form of commodities, and all products which are to be supplied for consumption must first pass through the complete cycle of commodity circulation. It seems that Marx and Engels were the first to become aware of this and to emphasize it with due acuteness. In my opinion, this happened for the first time in the Communist Manifesto, where it says: “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”... It has dissolved personal worth into exchange-value... The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.” — These words, written around 1848, have become a prophetic foresight of the entire later development of bourgeois intellectual life.

The second half of the 19th century and especially the beginning of the 20th — with the powerful upsurge of various artistic currents, with the frenzied hunt for new forms and expressions, with the desperate struggle between different ideological tendencies of the bourgeoisie, which was at the height of its development at that time — fulfilled Marx's prophecies quite completely. The inner core, the “secret”, as Ludwig Feuerbach would say, of this intellectual heyday was to be found precisely in the profanation of the so-called liberal professions and intellectual activity in general, and in their increasingly clear dependence on cash payments.

In many respects it would be an attractive task to examine the latest literary development of all European countries — with the possible exception of Russia — from the point of view of this ever-increasing prevalence of commodity production in the intellectual sphere as well, how competition, which now dominates modern production conditions, expresses itself in the intellectual sphere, and what effects it has there, to pursue this problem promises the theoretical development of many areas of contemporary life, which until now still seem to be shrouded in mystical mists, so to speak. Above all, the interesting and instructive dialectic of historical development should be taken into consideration, as a result of which the idea begins to rebel against its own development into a commodity, and occasionally strives to shake up this evolution, so to speak. And since it naturally does not succeed, it only reluctantly goes along with this evolution from now on.

This is a tendency that has been observed with particular clarity over the last 15-20 years: it has taken on the most diverse forms, but its essence has always remained the same. The bourgeois spirit realized that it had lost the freedom it had enjoyed in the age of the great revolutions, that it was being pushed more and more out onto the market as a companion of other commodities, and that it had to earn its living in the same way — i.e. subject to the same laws as the sale of boot polish or hair pomade. This realization, which is only too understandable, completely upset him. This self-denial of our modernized intellectual life was best and most purely expressed by the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. His work has not yet found due appreciation in socialist circles and, apart from a few aestheticizing conventions, which basically appreciate and understand in him the expression of their own restrained rage against happy art producers, Kraus is virtually unknown to the great democratic public. And yet he deserves widespread attention. Not only artistically — this would be more or less a matter of taste — but above all sociologically, for in him the development that the Communist Manifesto foresaw has reached its climax, insofar as the bourgeois wing of modern culture is concerned.

Kraus' struggle against today's art and artists, against the press, against that breed of adjectivist literary life that turns our lives into a copy of the most mendacious phraseology, is nothing other than the revolt of the bourgeois spirit against the roots of its own existence, against commodity production as the basis of art, against paid wage labor as the secret of all artistic activity. Kraus best expresses this revolution of the desacralized and commodified spirit against itself, and although his own activity, just as much as any other, is subject to the same laws of the market, and even his rebellion against these laws is nothing other than a peculiar effect of the competition that dominates the production of intellectual commodities, he has nevertheless found the most convincing tone to describe the misery of this art, which has become a banking business, and this banking business, which wants to dress itself up as art.

Others, such as Hermann Bahr, Frank Wedekind, Peter Altenberg, notice the symptoms of the evil from time to time, but the moment of reckoning, of negation, is not as clearly expressed in them as in Kraus. On the one hand, in their weaker hours, they regret the negation of the idea by the commodity, but on the other hand — and this mainly from Hermann Bahr — they feel themselves in this ideal world of commodities like fish in water and have proven themselves as capable businessmen so well that a hypocritical flavor cannot be denied to their lingering dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs.

But it is not only the bourgeoisie that has to come to terms with the stage of development of mental labor described above; its social antipode, the proletariat, is also not spared many surprises and contradictions. For to the extent that the entire intellectual activity of society begins to be dominated by the law of commodity production, the intellectual work of the working class, which always moves in the same social order as the bourgeoisie, is most decisively influenced by the changed conditions. There is no escape. The art of belonging to a certain form of society and not going along with its tendency in life has not yet been discovered. And where every idea, every thought in general is stamped as a commodity, is only allowed to venture out in this capacity, i.e. only as a commodity among its equals, socialism too will in the long or short run become a commodity and must be prepared to be drawn into the process of commodity circulation, which gives the whole organism of society its character. This gives rise to a number of problems to which we shall now turn our attention. Even if we do not succeed in exhausting them, which of course is not even our intention, we hope to gain some clues to appreciate their importance and at least prepare for their solution.

II.

Even in the outward destinies of modern socialism we notice some twists and turns that point to the dawning of new times. However, this external side of our problem is fairly easy to grasp and therefore does not require any special theoretical formulation. It is not difficult to see that the more the socialist movement swells, the more imperative it becomes to employ paid workers in order to accomplish its manifold agendas. A well-trained army of employees is thus created, for whom socialism is not only an education, but also a profession, who live from it and for whom it has become a line of business. With the growing importance of the party press, party offices and trade union organizations, the class of these workers, for whom socialism is a conviction, but at the same time a commodity, is also growing. Professionally, they are completely equal to all other classes of tradesmen and especially to those whose social use manifests itself in the form of intellectual wage labor.

It is obvious that within a society based on wage-labor, and in which no consumption can take place without the previous production of commodities, he who puts his whole personality at the service of the workers' cause in order to live must sell his labor-power as a commodity. And since this labor-power has the form of socialist conviction, as the labor-power of the weaver, for example, appears in that of linen cloth, socialist labor inevitably becomes wage-labor and its products — commodities. One single difference might perhaps be emphasized — from the subjective point of view of the producer — that it is immensely more attractive to sell one's labour-power in the form of socialist conviction than in any other form. In any case, socialism has no reason to go out of control as soon as it recognizes this commodity character of its present manifestation. It knows that this is a conditional and transitory form — in contrast to bourgeois cognition, which is so rebellious against the Babylonian urns of its commodity form because it sees no possibility of escaping it.

In this context, another side effect of socialism appearing as a commodity should be pointed out. It concerns those cases in which the intellectual labor force does not sell its socialist convictions directly in the party or on its behalf but brings them to the market freely and based only on the existence of a corresponding demand. These cases provide the best insight into the mysteries of intellectual creation, which is dependent not only on the inner lawfulness of the idea, but also on the economic necessity of the market.

We see that a whole class of intellectual producers has arisen, working under “socialism,” and this new commodity, whose market is growing larger and larger with the rising tide of the labor movement, is finally falling prey to the laws of free competition just like all other commodities. The phenomena that come to light in this process will be mentioned in more detail below, but here we will only point out the following.

The respect, or rather attention, that the socialist movement has gained from its opponents over time is not based on its growing power, as is often mistakenly assumed, but solely and exclusively on the growth of its commodity character. For the growing power of a movement that is directed against the conditions of existence of modern society can only trigger ever stronger outbursts of rage from its rulers. And this it does in abundance. But the mood of the bourgeoisie and its representatives, which culminates in the above-mentioned attention to the labor movement, proves nothing other than that the products of socialist brainwork have entered the realm of commodity circulation, Insofar as socialism appears as a commodity or, to put it vulgarly, insofar as it feeds its man, bourgeois society, whose general deity is the commodity standard of goods, cannot deny it a certain recognition. It abhors him as its enemy, but it cannot abhor his commodity-form without at the same time violating the respect due to the commodity as such. This and no other is the meaning of the so-called sense of justice of the opponents of socialism, which pretends to appreciate the importance of the healthy aspects of the socialist movement. These healthy aspects are precisely the employment opportunities that it opens up to its supporters. And every opportunity for gainful employment is sacred in and of itself to the bourgeois point of view.

But in its commodity form, socialist ideology has to pass many other tests. Above all, it too is confronted with the misunderstanding that prevails everywhere in the field of commodity production, the disproportion between production and consumption. This manifests itself in two ways: on the one hand, acutely, in the form of overproduction; on the other, chronically, as a constant clash of interests between producers and consumers.

The ”socialist overproduction” only appears at a very advanced stage of the movement's development. It means as much as that more socialism is produced than can be consumed. The free literary competition of which we spoke above begins to flood the commodity market with its products; at the same time the bourgeoisie also begins to take an interest in the new commodity and the field of labor it opens up. It tries to make use of them — a parallel phenomenon to the drive to appropriate foreign markets in economic fields as well. Thus the bourgeoisie begins to deal with socialist questions from its own, i.e. from a bourgeois point of view. In short, this overproduction, like any other, leads to crises. The well-known phenomena of revisionism, ministerialism and anarchism are to be regarded as such. Incidentally, we will confront them again below.

On the other hand, the constant clash of interests between consumers and producers in the field of socialist theory has the effect of creating a generalized opposition between theory and practice, or between proletarians and academics. In so far as this does not refer to the first, acute manifestation, this view is erroneous. It is not theory and practice that are in question here, but the fact, which dominates the whole of economic life, that the consumer as such believes himself to be in opposition to the producer.

During the discussion about the mass strike at the Cologne trade union congress in 1905, the speaker was moved to make the following argument: “Our literati sit down and write. The writers may do what they want, but they are not doing the labor movement any good...” And then again, another time: “When the masses instinctively say that we must fight, then the time has come when we can dare to fight. You can talk about it as much as you like, you can write as much as you like, it's no use, in the end nobody reads it.”

These words are the best illustration of what has just been said. At first glance, the somewhat humoristically tinged doggedness of our author against people who speak and write seems completely incomprehensible, as one is used to encountering such outbursts in completely different political circles. But from the point of view of modern commodity production, these rumblings lose their surprising character. The mystery is very easy to solve. The consumer regards the commodity offered to him as dependent on his needs and desires. The producer has to be guided by demand. The commodity can be bought and sold, and for his good money the customer expects the most obliging service possible. But in this specific case he is very badly received, the producer for his part endeavors to impose a certain kind of commodity on him, not to submit to demand, but on the contrary to make demand conform to his own wishes. He also tries to expand the demand by means of mass production, and since this alone cannot suffice in the long run, an unavoidable conflict arises, which we can observe in other forms in other areas of economic activity. Hinc illae irae.2 For this reason, a failure of socialist literature, such as the one quoted, meets with approval in the relevant consumer circles.

III.

This concludes the examination of the formal rarity of our problem. Also, we have already imperceptibly moved more into the area of its inner, substantive meaning, and to this we shall now finally turn. That wage labor must obey the laws of commodity production, even when it is a matter of labor directed towards the production of ideal socialist commodities, requires further proof. But the real difficulty only begins when we raise the question of how this transformation is reflected in the use-value of the commodity.

To the extent that the socialist world view is stamped as a commodity by social relations, it must also feel the effect of its exchange-value on its use-value or inner content. How does this process take place? What is its actual driving force?

In order to answer this question, we must first look at analogous conditions in other areas of the economy. If we observe the inner tendencies of any branch of production, we notice that it has an inherent striving to secure, above all, the possibility of sales. Every branch of production can only arise and develop if it is not exposed to the intervention of external forces that threaten to destroy its existence. As a commodity, as a branch of production, as an article of daily use, socialism also strives for stability. Those first stormy and turbulent times, those periods of constant upheaval, which interrupted the existence of socialist movements at the beginning and prevented them from settling down, are a thing of the past. What is now immediately required is calm and the possibility of undisturbed further development. Any activity that contradicts this need for peace is perplexed. The producer of goods who works for socialist needs sees himself directly threatened by any possibility of catastrophe, he cannot organize his production with the necessary security, and so it seems to him above all necessary to exclude or at least limit any business risk as far as possible. The relationship between the clandestine movement and the legal party is mainly governed by these circumstances. At the moment when socialism begins to long for secure production and sales opportunities, it sees itself forced to call upon legality as its ally, and under its protection it acquires those “red cheeks and bulging muscles” which are basically nothing more than testimony to its maturity for the movement of commodities.

The question of the relationship of socialism to parliamentarism has played a major role in the labor movement for many years. Without examining this question in its entire theoretical scope, we shall content ourselves with pointing out that its developments coincide perfectly with the development of the commodity character of socialist mental labor. For parliamentary activity, the adjustment of all socialist labor to the angular measure of parliamentarism, grants the socialist commodity that security of circulation without which it cannot exist as such, i.e., as a commodity. Parliamentarism is thus the pure, indeed the purest form of that development which has gradually taken place in socialism which has become a commodity.

During the Mass Strike debates in the German workers' party, many people asked with astonishment how it was that the revisionists were so enthusiastic about the political mass strike. It was thought to be the highest inconsistency. But nothing could be further from the truth! The revisionists remained completely true to themselves. For one must not forget that they would have willingly resorted to the weapon of the mass strike in only one case: In the event of a possible deprivation of their political rights and, above all, the right to vote. Nothing would have done more harm to the commodity character of socialism, and there is, as is well known, no evil which the commodity fears more than the danger of being driven out of the market. Since revisionism has always been merely a completely uncritical and unconscious copy of the new commodity phase of socialist theory, it would have been nothing surprising if it had also resorted to poison and daggers as soon as the majesty of its undisturbed continued production was threatened.3

In addition, revisionism was so convinced of the sole power of peaceful development that any means of defending itself seemed just good enough to it. For it was not the loss of political rights as such that was its main concern, but the fact that this loss would lead down slippery, i.e. “violent”, paths. This prospect frightened him so much that he declared himself ready for any kind of riot — just to have peace. A remarkable dialectic, which incidentally is inherent in the entire conditions of commodity production.

In this respect, it is extremely interesting to compare the beginnings of the socialist movement with its subsequent phases. The development is critical and can provide a fairly reliable indication of the way in which a new world view will come to fruition.

The first period of socialism is closely linked to the constant sacrifices, hardships and struggles of its forerunners and followers. There can be no question of merit: Socialism is still excluded from any market participation. It earns its disciples nothing. General contempt all around. Anger, disgust and hatred. Nothing is more repugnant to the well-to-do citizen than the sight of those good-for-nothings who idle around all day, do nothing proper, i.e. profitable, live in garrets and are the perfect embodiment of rebellious poverty. Here, two worlds face each other that must hate each other not only theoretically, rationally, but also practically, emotionally. The life stories of Saint Simon, Weitling and Karl Marx provide convincing examples of this initial irreconcilable enmity between the rich complacency that has finally forced itself the opportunity to be profitable, and a hungry poverty that is preparing to conquer the whole world and has nothing to lose but its chains.

The great secret of their insurmountable strength and their great impact lies in the restless creativity of a generation whose lives have ended in poverty and despair. “Half a century on my back and still a pauper”, Karl Marx once exclaimed, and there is more to these words than a superficial sentiment. There is an agonizing tragedy behind it, a life whose inner value is in screaming disproportion to its outer shell. Poverty has accomplished a work that later people have learned to grasp and, above all, to utilize. For “the old falls, time changes and new life blossoms from the ruins”. The fathers did not sow in vain; the sons were able to reap abundantly. The market was finally opened up. One sales area after another was acquired and fortified, so that the new generation had the opportunity to continue the business with disproportionate security. The sect became a party. From now on, the utility value of socialism was joined by a certain sales value and the old storm and pressure gradually gave way to a need for calm.

IV.

But the essence of commodity circulation is not only the need to protect the market from possible shocks, it is also the need to dominate it, to overcome the competition: Not only by better commodities and cheaper prices, but also by abolishing any monopoly position of its articles. This tendency is clearly expressed in the department stores, the principle of the department store: Not only to sell cheaply, but also to canonize everything. The competition must not be able to offer anything that you don't have in stock. No monopoly articles! The ideal maxim of the department store is to be able to cover all needs from the automobile horn to the Bismarck herring from one company. The same maxim also underlies the activities of those advocates of socialist theories who have become wage laborers. The easier it is for them too. The less numerous the sources of supply for them, the less danger there is of the buyer being intercepted by the competition, in short, the more they succeed in establishing a kind of department store for ideal commodities in the greatest quantity and for every taste.

The theoretical content of scientific socialism was thus affected in the strongest possible way, and in particular, every addiction to link it with all kinds of intellectual products, which was particularly rampant at the beginning of this century, provides a sure proof of the effects that the commodity character of socialism can exert on its integrity, provided one surrenders to it willingly and without resistance. Just as parliamentarism, under certain conditions, degenerates into cretinism, so also socialism, at the moment of its equalization on the world market of ideas, is seized by such a frenzy that the only possibility of escape is the rightful one. The only way to escape is to recognize in good time the changed conditions under which socialist brainwork must take place within capitalist society. Only this makes it possible to grasp the inner meaning of the above-mentioned attempts at coupling. What was the train of ideas — consciously or unconsciously — on which they were based?

Well, in terms of trade policy, as they say these days, the secret is very transparent. Consider the following: Marx is good. But there are many other good things besides. Should those who reflect on it be left to the competition? By no means! And so all the floodgates have been opened.

Kant and Nietzsche, Avenarius and James — all have been processed accordingly. This new breed of Marxists has everything in stock, so to speak, and cannot tolerate anything from the bourgeois suppliers that “we” could not have produced. Hence the addiction to go along with all the fashions of bourgeois intellectual life, to exploit them, to capitalize on them. This has often been regarded as a psychological phenomenon and people have wondered how it is possible that apparently clever and learned people want to solder all kinds of metals together completely indiscriminately. But the problem was posed incorrectly: It is not a psychological but an economic phenomenon that comes into consideration, and as such it faithfully expresses the commodity character of contemporary intellectual life. The bona fides of the revisionists in all honor! Certainly there are some among them who are firmly convinced that they have discovered new theoretical worlds. But that does not change the actual situation. There are also some poets and thinkers who believe themselves to be in the service of high art or pure truth, but who are nothing more than wage laborers for the bourgeoisie. This, however, sounds crudely “materialistic”, and delicate souls — especially those who like to deceive and be deceived — may find such assertions quite unmannerly. But their cries are also wage labor.

V.

This is the broad outline of the development of socialism in recent decades. It is necessary and can only be understood in terms of its necessity. Nothing is cheaper than to reject it, to deny its effects from the standpoint of absolute perfection. But such a positional denial would resemble the attitude of some moralists to modern development in general. It is enough to mention the names of William Morris and Thomas Carlyle to characterize this whole way of looking at things. It was an abstract, bloodless manner of simply denying reality without going into it further, without wanting to understand its driving forces. One refused to “accept” it — and no longer cared about it. It was the first, crude revolt of the spirit against the commodity, comparable to the first revolts of labor against capital, which manifested itself in the smashing of machines. That generation of prophetic know-it-all also noticed the devil but did not know how to get rid of him, and therefore said to all his temptations: Get thee hence. Satan! But in the realm of history, it is not to be denied, but to be refuted, not to lean against, but to be lifted up, as Hegel's profound and meaningful expression goes. Only that power can separate and distinguish the bad from the good which has recognized its essential unity with the good and understood that only through this inner relationship is it possible to put a stop to evil.

In the same way, some varieties of modern socialism have often been opposed without a deeper understanding of their raison d'etre. And people were therefore content with merely arguing principles. They fought against words where they had to attack the cause and blamed thinking where being was the real culprit.

But being has the antidote at hand for the evil deeds it performs, and so instead of a fruitless debate about the purely theoretical shortcomings of today's socialism, the question must be asked: what is the result of the development that has thrown it onto the market as a commodity?

The idea is a very strange commodity. One buys and sells it: one begins to do quite profitable business with it — until one suddenly realizes that one has a completely different thing in one's hands than before. For in the pursuit of exchange-value, the idea loses its use-value. It is the same dialectic of social conditions that induces the panic-stricken girls to procure the means necessary for the establishment of happiness through extramarital intercourse. The idea, too, becomes a commonplace girl on the market, loses its original freshness and forgets its purpose of existence.

If this is true of ideas that have become commodities, how much more so of socialism, which is a very peculiar idea among commodities. It denies the whole social order based on the circulation of commodities and wants to abolish the commodity character of goods. It is therefore easy to imagine the sacrifices it must make in order to come into its own on the market. At the height of its fame, he then becomes aware of its disproportionality and the very thing that originally won it the favor of his customers finally begins to fail it: its peculiar character, which clearly set it apart from the competitive ideas. And so its popularity turned into its opposite. Everyone who appreciated its unique character threatened to turn their backs on it: and at the very moment when it seemed to have finally conquered the market, it wanted to disappear. There is only one way out: to return to the old way of doing business that made him great and popular.

This realization will not be long in coming. We are already, it seems, in its final sign. And it really is high time, because even where ideas are a commodity, you must not go with the flow, otherwise things could collapse. But fortunately, viable ideas differ from stillborn ones in that their use-value must always triumph over their exchange-value. Socialism as a commodity saw itself compelled to go through the cycle of market laws. And the same laws will force it to hoist again the same flag that once conquered the world for it.

• 1“Archive for the History of Socialism and the Labour Movement”, founded by Carl Grünberg and published from 1911 to 1930. From 1923/24 it was also the journal of the IfS (Institute for Social Research) and was administratively managed by Friedrich Pollock and scientifically supervised by Max Horkheimer.
• 2Quote from Terence: “Hence those tears”, here like this: So this is the real reason. Ed. by KAZ
• 3 This is exclusively about revisionism. The reasons for which the Marxists propagated the mass strike were of a completely different nature, but are not relevant here. We have also deliberately omitted any evidence, quotations, etc. that might come into question. Not only would they unnecessarily extend this investigation: from the outset, this too was only intended as a purely and strictly schematic description of our problem. All detail is therefore omitted. It will be presented in a different context and on a larger scale.