Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/728

 706 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL' replace(1 by some more fitting term, because the watchwor(1 of the future wouhl be ' Abolition of the State as a reactionary institu- tion, in everst form.' This is no innovation in Communistic (loctrine. Frederic Engels ha(1 alrea(ly implie(1 as much when he sai(1 that the State was an organization of class domdnon an(1 therefore must nee(Is be remove(1 in a Communistic Commonwealth, which knows no (listinction of class. Nay, we meet with the iaea at the very genesis of the Marxist (loctrine, in Karl Marx's first treatise on social politics, an essay on the prospects of social reform in the Paris 'lorwiirts/' of 1844. Nevertheless the point is clearly only a verbal (lispute. For the root-iaea of Socialist (loctrine is just this,to intro(luce a system of proauction in place of the present 'absence of system,' which shall be firmly regulate(1 an(1 constantly controllea an(l (lirecte(l. Hence an incalculably greater number of dispositions would be reposed in the hands of the future central authorities than at present. Now whether a social governing body holding powers so comprehensive is to be called 'State' or what not is essentially irrelevant. Only the Anarchists have theoretically a right to efface the word 'state' from their vocabulary--and in particular those of the Hess- Krapotkin persuasion, who would radically exterminate every kind of cerrtral authority. But besides this, Liebknecht's disquisitions on the future mark the obsolescence of the old catchwords of Lassallism, in so far as they yet figured in the party-programme, namely the iron law of wages and productive associations. That even these, the few traces yet remaining of the spirit of Lassalle, would in time die out completely, is shown to be only a natural sequence of the course of development pursued by German Socialism. Every milestone in that course reveals a bee-line making for Marxism, without a thought or glance given to any competing doctrine on the right hand or the left. Those formulae of Lassallism had, it is true, long dropped out of usage, and not unwisely; catch-words mighty at one time to conjure, breaking through the stolid indifference of the masses and electrifyg the proletariate, they resemble at this time of day burnt-out slag, from which all that made them serviceable and valuable has been removed. Success is now more than ever insured to the victorious doctrines of llarx through the organization adopted at the Halle congn'ess, which leaves yet wider scope than before to the influence of the leaders, me who steer altogether.by the Marxist clart.