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One of the OLL's aims is to put online the most significant works in
the history of economic thought, and there can be no doubting the
significance of Marx's influence on both economic theory in the late
19th century and on the creation of Marxist states in the 20th century.
From the time of the emergence of modern socialism in the 1840s
(especially in France and Germany), free market economists have
criticised socialist theory and it is thus useful to place that
criticism in its intellectual context, namely beside the main work of
one of its leading theorists, Karl Marx.
In 1848, when Europe was wracked by a series of revolutions in
which both liberals and socialists participated and which both lost out
to the forces of conservative monarchism or Bonapartism, John Stuart
Mill published his Principles of Political Economy. The chapter on
Property shows how important Mill thought it was to confront the
socialist challenge to classical liberal economic theory. In hindsight
it might appear that Mill was too accommodating to socialist criticism,
but I would argue that in fact he offered a reasonable framework for
comparing the two systems of thought, which the events of the late 20th
century have finally brought to a conclusion which was not possible in
his lifetime. Mill states in Book II Chapter I "Of Property" that a
fair comparison of the free market and socialism would compare both the
ideal of liberalism with that of socialism, as well as the practice of
liberalism versus the practice of socialism. In 1848 the ideals of both
were becoming better known (and there were some aspects of the ideal of
socialism which Mill found intriguing) but the practice of each was
still not conclusive. Mill correctly observed that in 1848 no European
society had yet created a society fully based upon private property and
free exchange and any future socialist experiment on a state-wide basis
was many decades in the future. After the experiments in Marxist
central planning with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Chinese
Communists in 1949, and numerous other Marxist states in the post-1945
period, there can be no doubt that the reservations Mill had about the
practicality of fully-functioning socialism were completely borne out
by historical events. What Mill could never have imagined, the
slaughter of tens of millions of people in an effort to make socialism
work, has ended for good any argument concerning the Marxist form of
socialism.
The OLL now offers online two important defences of the socialist
ideal, Karl Marx's three volume work on Capital and the collection of Essays on Fabian Socialism edited by George Bernard Shaw. These can be
read in the light of the criticism they provoked among defenders of
individual liberty and the free market: Eugen Richter's anti-Marxist
Pictures of the Socialistic Future, Thomas Mackay's 2 volume collection
of essays rebutting Fabian socialism, Ludwig von Mises post-1917
critique of Socialism. One should not forget that Frederic Bastiat was
active during the rise of socialism in France during the 1840s and that
many of his essays are aimed at rebutting the socialists of his day.
The same is true for Gustave de Molinari and the other authors of the
Dictionnaire d'economie politique (1852). Several key articles on
communism and socialism from the Dictionnaire are translated and
reprinted in Lalor's Cyclopedia.
For further reading on Marx's Capital see David L. Prychitko's
essay "The Nature and Significance of Marx's Capital: A Critique of
Political Economy".
For further readings on socialism see the following entries in the
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: Eastern Europe, Marxism, and
Socialism.
Also related:
Poor Law Commissioners' Report of 1834, edited by Nassau W. Senior, et al.
The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed by H. B. Acton
The Perfectibility of Man, by John Passmore
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