The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-04-15
BY v. j. JEROME.

A perpIexing moment came recently
upon the Socialist Party OF America.
In the almanac OF the working class,
March 18th was red-lettered: The if
tieth anniversary OF the death Of Karl
Marx.
For quite some time past this party
of respectable socialism had grown
somewhat embarrassed at the memory
of its one-time kinship to an avowed
revolutionary, leader of common
workers, an exile, and, to boot, for
eigner. Now there have been men,
Kautsky, BRAND, MuSsolini,, MacDo-
maid, who, it is true, once INDUCED in
sins OF youth, but who learned to
sober with the years. But this man
Marx remained throughout stickler
for things revolutionary. To cap it
all, he had come to have quite a hold
on the workers everywhere. One
simply couldn't openly disown him.
OF course, there are ways other than
flying in the face of things. The
name Marxism, for instance, need not
be given up. Take for example a
year like 1928, a golden year, with
not crisis in sight. Why can't the
Party convention just omit, by over
sight you might say, the class strug-
gle clause from its platform? OF
course, there is always the danger
of some bolshevik busybody playing
the thing up in the Daily Worker,
but then-nothing venture, nothing
have. Sometimes-indeed, this is
not at all a bad plan--one might
even speak in praise Of the Conmu-
mist Manifesto and boost it as a
great revolutionary program--for
1913! But now, in l933-oceens
away ..
Manifesto as an Appendix.
In 1888, the American Socialist
Party, through the agency of the
League for Industrial Democracy,
sees fit to mark the anniversary of
the death of Marx by re-issuing the
Communist Manifesto as an appen-
dix to an essay ON Karl Marx by the
bourgeois sociologist, Harold ]. Laski
quite an excellent way Of making
amends for the unfortunate revolu-
tionary tone of the Manifesto!
One can, Of course, not hold it
against the Professor for being en-
gagged by Socialist Party that has
forgotten its Marxis1n to be its
"spetz" i'll an emergency situation in
the theory Of Socialism. For this
reason it is not within the scope of
the present article to enter into
polen1ic against the open anti-Marx-
ism with which the essay is charged.
1t will suffice to characterize the
essay in brief.
Through the forum afforded him
by the Socialist Party. Professor
Laski tells the reader that Marks
teachings are in reality not contribu-
tons but mere adaptations, cuttings
one might say, of the teachings OF
others--and this, not only in relation
to economics but in regard to the
teachings on the class struggle and
socialism as well as to the materialist
conception of history 1t was not
Marx who developed the rlaterialist
conception Of history; Marx is pro-
vided by Laski with predecessors, one
of whom is--Janes Madison, Pres
ident Of the U. S. A.! Further, we
are told, Marks theory Of value is
not deserving of discussion since ut
has not stood the test of criticism; it
is out Of harmony with the facts, it
is far from self-consistent" AS for
the body of Marks teachings, the
elements Of Marxism are not depen-
dent upon one another, which means
that one may be Socialist without
necessarily being materialist; one
may call himself Marxist without
necessarily believing in the class
struggle; one may both be and not be
anything, all things and nothing.
Moreover, Marxism is not scientific,
it has no objectivity; 1t merely plays
upon the sufferings of the oppressed
as spiritual compensation. AS for
Marx, himself, his struggles against
Proudhon, Bakounin and others con-
vince Professor Laski that Marx was
terribly Nsas-sidSd, He was "incapa-