Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/33

 other proletariat than that of a Pomeranian feudal estate, a proletariat of day laborers, almost serfs, in fact, where the baton and the whip reign supreme, and where all the pretty girls of the village belong to the harem of their gracious seigneur, to be able to offer such impertinences to the workers. But our conservatives are our greatest revolutionists.

But if the workers were sufficiently simple to allow themselves to be persuaded that having labored for twelve full hours, they have in reality only labored four hours, they would at least be recompensed by being guaranteed that their proportion of the product of their own labor would never fall below a third. That is, in reality, to play the air of the society of the future on a child's trumpet. That is really not worth spending another word upon. Consequently all that Rodbertus offers that is new in his utopia of labor-notes is childish and far inferior to the labor of his numerous rivals, whether they have preceded or followed him.

For the epoch in which it appeared Rodbertus's "Zur Erkenntiss, &c.," was certainly an important book. To pursue the theory of Ricardo in this direction was a promising beginning. If for him and for Germany alone it was a novelty, his work might in its completion have attained the same height as that of the best among his English predecessors. But it was only a commencement of which the theory could only achieve a real result by ulterior, fundamental, critical work. This development was arrested because from the outset the development of the theory of Ricardo was carried in the other direction, in the direction of utopia. From then it lost the essential of all criticism—independence. Rodbertus worked then with a preconceived end; he became an economist with a settled tendency. Once seized by his