COMRADE, — I have followed up the Controversy, on the above subject with much interest, especially comrade Harpur’s letters, which show him to possess a subtle intellect, a fine temper, and a good deal of perseverance. His propositions may be summarised as follows: (1) Society is not composed of classes, but of individuals; (2) There is no class struggle, but a scramble of individuals; (3) Some people are born Socialists and others are not. To most of us, who, as Marxists, think in classes, his questionings may be irritating, but it is sometimes good to be compelled to re-examine truths which we think self-evident. Honest scepticism is the beginning of wisdom. Let us, then, briefly re-examine some of our first principles.
CLASSIFICATION
Through personal experience Harpur came upon a problem of no mean importance. He came upon the problem of classification. Now, classification of natural and social phenomena is a matter of mental abstraction. Things in nature and in society do not, as a rule, exhibit such salient, undeniable, rigidly differentiated characteristics as to render their classification as easy as, for instance, the division of the higher organisms into two sexes, or the human species into white, black, and yellow races. Such divisions can be recognised empirically, and need no further demonstration, though they need a great deal of explanation. On the whole, every classification of minerals, plants, and animals, of moral, political, and economic phenomena has its drawbacks. For the units of one class show in their manifold characteristics a good many differences from each other and a good many similarities with units of another class. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that we have to do, not with a constant, stable, fixed order of things, but with an evolutionary process where the units pass insensibly into one another. Still, a classification, a systematisation of things is absolutely necessary if we are to arrive at knowledge, at an ordered knowledge, that is, at science. The need thus arises for a classification of things. How do we classify them? By elimination of the minor, incidental characteristics and by gathering together the essential, primary characteristics they have in common. The division of phenomena into classes is thus an abstraction, a result of scientific thinking: we must first recognise which characteristics are incidental and which essential. In social economics we, as Marxists, divide society into two or three classes, that is, into capitalists, proletarians, and landed interests, though the units of one class may differ in some points from each other or may have points in common with units of another class. But for us the essential characteristics of economic class divisions are the bases of their life, that is, Capital, Labour, Land. All other class characteristics are but consequences flowing from the original sources.
CLASS STRUGGLE AND INDIVIDUAL SCRAMBLE
The classification is done for the purpose of bringing some order into the multitudinous things as they present themselves to our observation. But we want something more. We want to understand their rise, progress, and decay. We want to understand their evolution. And here we find the struggling and scrambling to constitute some of the primary factors of evolution. And as we, as Marxists, are not so much concerned with the statics of society as with its dynamics—that is, with the question, how does human society achieve its transition from one stage into another—we turn our attention to movements and struggles and try to find out their essentials. There are in society groups and class struggles and there are individual scrambles. It is with the evolution of society as with the revolution of the earth. The atoms of the earth have their own movements, which by no means correspond to the direction of the revolution of the earth round the sun. Looking only at the atoms of the earth, they appear to be involved in a disordered, aimless jumble, crossing in a confused, chaotic manner each other’s path.
Yet there is order when we look at the totality of the globe, and in astronomy we must look at the totality, else we should know nothing of our solar system. So it is with society. The atomic units, the individuals, may appear to be involved in a disordered, foolish scramble. Yet that scramble is but one of the consequences of the division of the bases of life. If there is a system of private property and there are numbers of people in possession of the means of production, while other numbers of people have nothing save their labour power, the individual scramble is inevitable.