subroza

Translated with introduction by Daniel Gaido.

The standard trope of intellectual history tells us that there were two schools of economic history in the early 20th century: primitivism and modernism. These two schools were said to engage in a foundational debate: “the Bücher-Meyer debate.” The problem with this story is that it is reductive and ignores the broader context of the question. Karl Kautsky’s 1912 review of Giuseppe Salvioli’s Capitalism in the Ancient World: Studies on the Economic History of Rome allows us to see one part of this story that has been completely effaced. Karl Kautsky, a principal figure in the German Socialist Party in the 20th century, wrote extensively on the question of ancient economic history. His review of Giuseppe Salvioli’s Capitalism in the Ancient World: Studies on the Economic History of Rome (1912) provides an analysis of the question of ancient economic history. 

Kautsky’s review begins with an explanation of how and why the study of any object requires an understanding of its origins. His method, however, is neither “logical positivism” nor “vulgar empiricism” ; it is founded in the dialectical materialism of the late 19th and early 20th century. Therefore, to understand the origins of an object of inquiry likewise entails a careful understanding of how the object appears in the present, in its most accessible, immediate, and concrete form. Like the study of the composition of the stars, where the investigation begins not in the sky but from earth and its materials, so too the history of economics should begin with a thorough understanding of the present before undertaking the reconstruction of prior forms of economic modes of production.  As Kautsky explains, 

Among modern sciences, economic history is one of those whose field of research has expanded most rapidly, especially because of the rapidly growing wealth of primary materials. In spite of that, the picture we have of the economy of antiquity is still very vague and quite controversial. The blame for that should be placed less upon the lack of information about the past than upon the deficient knowledge of the present. Only by researching the environment closest and most accessible to us can we acquire the knowledge and methods to enable us to find our way in fields lying beyond it. We couldn’t have the faintest idea about the chemical composition of the stars if we were to shrink from acquainting ourselves with the component elements of our terrestrial globe. Only through a thorough investigation of the earth can we reach the preconditions for researching the star world. It would be equally impossible to reconstruct the physical appearance of extinct species from the meagre amounts of bone remains discovered if we were to have misgivings, in order to research their anatomy and physiology, about studying with the greatest zeal the contemporary animal species.

That is also true of economic history. It is impossible to comprehend the economic relations of the past and understand all their connections clearly as long as people have scruples about understanding the present mode of movement and development. Those scruples characterize bourgeois economy in contradistinction from scientific socialism. They need not be conscious, intentional considerations. But no matter how unconscious they might be, their obstructive effects are no less powerful.  (p. 148-149)

For Kautsky, Marx’s modes of production provide the framework to understand how people have historically moved through appropriating nature for their reproduction to socially organizing themselves into economic forms of existence. Kautsky offers his own interpretation of the stages Marx outlines, beginning with primitive communism. In primitive communism, he says, “Work was carried out according to social customs, projects and agreements. The products belonged to society, and were likewise distributed according to social rules and agreements among its members; they remained within the society that produced them, and were consumed by it” (p. 150). As societies continued to produce for themselves, they ended up with surpluses, which they exchanged with external societies in a simultaneous process, “Simultaneously develops also the process of exchange: each group comes into closer and more frequent contact with other ones, living in other places, under different conditions, and producing different products. Thereby the conditions arise for the exchange of surpluses and the widening of the sphere of products consumed by each group” (p. 150). This leads to production solely for the purpose of exchange with other people, which leads to the development of private property as the consumption of products expands: “The free labourer generally possesses at that stage his own means of production and disposes of his produce, which he exchanges for someone else’s. Everybody produces an ever greater quantity of products that he doesn’t need himself, and consumes others that he doesn’t produce, but has to exchange for his own products” (p. 150). It must be said here that Kautsky is incorrect, if he thinks this is what Marx is saying. It is clear he is trying to be succinct in offering the most general outline of the modes of production, but in so doing he leaves out historical examples of great importance, de-emphasizing tribal relations, maternal kinship forms, and ignoring the role of domination and tribute even at this early stage. 

This also means that he leaves out slavery by the time he has introduced feudalism (which he does not mention by name). Instead, he jumps to the implications of private property in the long-term, defining how it creates the conditions for the rise of the proletariat – “i.e. slaves in a private undertaking” – and a wealthy opposing class: “Finally arises also the possibility for some individuals to appropriate and accumulate the means of production of many others in order to exploit them, either directly, by buying bound workers, or indirectly, by forcing free propertyless workers to hand over to them part of their production, for instance through shared tenancies” (p. 150). This form of primitive accumulation of capital was already present, he says, in Babylon and Egypt; Salvioli, for Kautsky, reveals the importance of the Roman army in this regard (I don’t understand the Romans here). But within these early processes of accumulation, the seeds of destruction have been sown: 

Each one of these accumulations always ended up, sooner or later, with the decline of the state in which they took place. The separation of the mass of the workers from their means of production finally led to the paralysis of economic and political life, to the downfall of the state that plundered its more barbarous neighbouring peoples, living under more primitive conditions. That was the end of every higher culture of antiquity about which some historical records have been preserved, in the basins of the Euphrates and the Nile as well as on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.  (p. 150-151)

Capitalism, according to Kautsky, began around the 15th century, mostly in Northern Europe. Early developments took place as well in Spain and Portugal, and it was the opening up of the world to trade through colonial domination that led to the full flourishing of the capitalist mode of production. England established a formidable role in the 17th century, offering “a new, higher mode of production, capitalism, which enormously strengthened the forces of state and society, and conquered the world in a swift triumphant procession” (p. ? ). These developments, however, also created the conditions necessary for the rise of an oppositional force- the urban proletariat. 

Kautsky leaves off his historical narrative here, turning to a critique of Bücher’s simplistic three-stage model of economic development: (1) the closed household economy, (2) the city economy [Kundenproduktion], and (3) political economy [Volkswirtschaft]. Kautsky argues that Bücher only explains parts of the whole in these stages – much of the historical record is effaced. For example, (1) ignores primitive communism, the dissolution of which forms the basis of the origin of the “household economy.” On (2), Kautsky says that the city economy is not possible without production of the countryside; in this interaction, he further argues that rural producers do not exchange directly with consumers in the city, but rather the farmer sells or exchanges cattle to the butcher, who then cuts meat for other consumers, and so forth. Thus, (1) and (2) already pass through a “series of economic factors” (p. ? ) that are set up by Bücher to be the defining characteristics of (3), which then no longer makes sense. Thus Bücher has failed to develop a better model than Marx’s modes of production. Kautsky states: “He [Bücher] is only interested in this question: how do the finished products reach the hands of the consumers? It is characteristic that the contemporary bourgeois theory of economic development, like the bourgeois theory of value, the marginal utility theory [Grenznutzentheorie], avoids dealing with the process of production and by ‘economy’ understands only the circulation of finished goods” (p. 153). Here, it is important to stress that Kautsky understands both the “marginal utility theory” of value and its primary focus on the “circulation of goods” as “ bourgeois theory.” Therefore, when the contemporary theory of economics history tells us that it began with the Bücher-Meyer debate, it is saying that it begins with “ bourgeois theory.” 

Bücher only mentions wage labor twice, and thus also shows how their conditions are of no concern to his study; this means that the study itself does not (and cannot) account for the historical peculiarity that modern wage labor poses in the present economy. Here are the two quotes from Bücher (with the pages numbers cited by Kautsky): 

1. “There appears mass production based on the division of labour in manufactures and factories, and with it the class of wage labourers” [161].
2. “Where outside labour [fremde Arbeit] is required, it consists during the first stage of permanent bound labourers (slaves, bondsmen), in the second stage of producers reduced to a state of long servitude, and in the third stage of workers entering into short contract relations” [167].

Kaustky responds: “Slaves and bondsmen have long and often enough worked in commodity production. But it is downright absurd to see in the shortness of the contract relation the economic peculiarity of wage labour in the capitalist mode of production” (p. 153); “The ‘outside labourers’ appear thus as occasionally necessary.” (p. 154). The problem, however, is that wage labor under capital is a defining feature, “At the ‘third stage’, ‘outside labour’ is the general form of labour [in capitalism], and its existence constitutes the precondition for the entire production process” (p. 154). He continues: “Far from making the characterization of the separate modes of production sharper and more precise, his categories blur the differences between them, leaving their distinguishing traits completely out of the picture. Not in spite of that, but precisely because of that, Bücher’s conception has come to prevail among bourgeois economists” (p. 154) In the face of the perishability of capitalism from the Marxist standpoint, Bücher offers an alternative, in which capitalism preserves something that is consistent from prior economic forms (and therefore can play the role of an immortal through them): 

Then came the very convenient discovery of Bücher. He recognized that capitalist economy was a purely transitory historical phenomenon. But what was its distinguishing trait according to Bücher? The fact that goods must, as a rule, pass through a series of economic agents before they reach the consumers’ hands. [. . .] How much more harmless the further development of contemporary ‘political economy’ appears when its distinguishing trait becomes the passage of goods through different ‘economic agents’, and wage labour represents just a subsidiary accompanying phenomenon! Thanks to this misinterpretation of the modern mode of production Bücher’s conception has become dominant in bourgeois economic history. (p. 154) 

Kautsky argues that this occurs even when Bücher’s conception is at odds with historical facts and discoveries. Part of the problem, he says, is that historians themselves are poor economists: “But not being trained in economics, the historians are not always sufficiently able to recognize the differences between the economic phenomena of antiquity and those of our time. They tend to make them too much alike. As a consequence they are bound to limit themselves to the discovery of isolated economic phenomena, a highly important and laudable task, whose further progress however clearly requires a theoretical reworking and elaboration of the numerous new materials” (p. 155) This is still very true today (See Morris, Schiedel, Saller et al. )

From here, Kautsky turns to Salvioli’s book, and its merits: “Salvioli belongs to that tiny but select circle of professors who resolutely admit being on the side of the proletariat, professors that constitute a glorious peculiarity of Italian university life [e.g. Arturo Labriola]. He is a member of the Socialist Party, contributes to the party press, gives lectures on its behalf, and in 1894 was a candidate for Camera, though without success” (p. 155). Kautsky notes where Salvioli deviates from orthodox Marxism: first, in terminology, using ‘capital’ where ‘money’ or ‘means of production’ might be used instead. Second, how Salvioli  understands historical materialism: “he [Salvioli] assumes that this materialism traces back every social fact to economic motives, whereas we attribute every social peculiarity to specific economic conditions” (p. 155) Without concrete examples, however, it is hard to understand Kautsky’s second criticism.

Beyond that, Salvioli relied on Marx to write the book, especially volume 3 of Capital. Kautsky notes his intention to have his son, also Karl, publish a translation in German through Dietz (of SPFD Dietz Verlag). Two supplemental texts are recommended by Kautsky: (1) Leo Bloch’s Social Struggles in Ancient Rome and (2) Ciccotti’s The Decline of Slavery in the Ancient World, though Kautsky disagrees with many arguments in that latter text. Salvioli’s contributions shine in his concern with how classical antiquity ends, with special attention to the role of Christianity in that process. The following two paragraphs, as Kautsky wraps up the preface, also strongly resonate with scholarship on ancient history today, and the role it should play in informing revolutionary visions: 

Someone might wonder whether it is appropriate to ask the workers to sacrifice a fraction of the little spare time they dispose of by occupying themselves with antiquity, instead of concentrating their entire interest in the present. To which should be replied that the present surely requires their entire interest, but that a full understanding of the present presupposes knowledge of the past. If, as we said at the beginning, spatially and temporally remote phenomena cannot be understood as long as we are not able to find our way in the present, one can also conversely say that a deep understanding of the phenomena nearest to us requires an acquaintance with distant events.

The only way to know things of phenomena is through their differences. What we call properties of a thing are in truth the characteristics that distinguish it from other things. Indeed a thing in itself can never be known: we can only know each thing or phenomenon by comparing it with other phenomena. So, in order to understand the capitalist mode of production we must also compare it with other modes of production  (p. 156).