[158] _Letter on the Gotha Programme_, by Karl Marx, published in the collection of the posthumous writings of Marx and Engels, edited by Mehring, 1902. See a translation of the letter by Dr. Harriet E. Lothrop, _International Socialist Review_, May, 1908.
[159] I note that my friend, Mr. J. R. Macdonald, M.P., "Whip" of the Labour Party in the British House of Commons, so misrepresents Marx in his admirable little book, _Socialism_, page 54.
[161] The italics are mine. The passage occurs on page 186, Vol. I, of _Capital_, Kerr edition. In the last of the series of lectures printed in his book, Mr. Mallock attempts a reply to the criticism of an American Socialist, Mr. Morris Hillquit who quoted this passage from Marx to show that Mr. Mallock was in error in saying that Marx regarded manual labor as the sole source of wealth. He evades the real point, namely, that Marx clearly included mental as well as physical labor in his use of the term, and with an ingenuity equaled only by the disingenuousness of the argument, seeks refuge in the fact that it does not cover the special "directive ability" which is a special function, "a productive force distinct from labor." The trick will not do. The fact is that Marx clearly and precisely covers that point in another place. The reader is referred to Chapter XIII of Part IV, Vol. I, of _Capital_, pages 363-368, Kerr edition, for a brilliant and honest treatment of the whole subject of the place of the "directing few" in modern industry. We shall treat the matter briefly later on.
[162] Italics mine.--J. S. The passage occurs in Lecture III, page 36.
The _geist_ of social and political evolution is economic, according to the Socialist philosophy. This view of the importance of man's economic relations involves some very radical changes in the methods and terminology of political economy. The philosophical view of social and political evolution as a world-process, through revolutions formed in the matrices of economic conditions, at once limits and expands the scope of political economy. It destroys on the one hand the idea of the eternality of economic laws and limits them to particular epochs. On the other hand, it enhances the importance of the science of political economy as a study of the motive force of social evolution. With Marx and his followers, political economy is more than an analysis of the production and distribution of wealth; it is a study of the principal determinant factor in the social and political progress of society, consciously recognized as such.