The main object of the present work is to provide support for the views the author developed in a letter to the German Social Democratic Party conference held at Stuttgart from 3 to 8 October 1898.

This letter reads:

‘The views I expressed in the series “Problems of Socialism” have recently been discussed in socialist papers and at socialist meetings; and the German Social Democratic Party conference has been asked to state its position with regard to them. In case this happens and the party conference complies with the request, I feel obliged to make the following statement.

‘The vote of a meeting, whatever its status, obviously cannot dissuade me from the views I have formed in the course of an investigation into social phenomena. I stated my views in Die Neue Zeit, and I see no reason to depart from them in any important particular.

‘It is, however, equally obvious that I cannot be indifferent to a vote of the party conference. It will therefore be understood that I am particularly anxious to defend myself against misrepresentations and erroneous conclusions drawn from my remarks. Since I am prevented from attending the conference myself, I hereby do this in the form of a written communication.

‘Certain parties have asserted that the practical implication of my essays would be that we abandon the taking of political power by the politically and economically organised proletariat.

Of the many early reactions, those to be presented below have been selected chiefly because they deal with Hutcheson's anti-egoist position. For reasons indicated in the preface, matters relating to his moral epistemology and ontology will be adverted to only in passing. Some of the information in the following survey may be new.

Orthodox theologians

The following statements by a historian of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland are very instructive:

Also, Hutcheson is said to have held ‘very incorrect views of the way of salvation’. Another writer made the same point as follows:

Eduard Bernstein's famous polemic, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus, was first published in 1899. It was reprinted several times in subsequent years and then, in 1921, Bernstein produced a revised and enlarged second edition. However, it was the first edition of 1899 that was at the centre of the controversy known as the Revisionist Debate, and that is the one that I have translated. There is already an English translation done by Edith C. Harvey and published in 1909 with the title Evolutionary Socialism. It reappeared in 1961 as a Schocken paperback, and two years later it was reprinted with an introduction by the late Sidney Hook.

Harvey's translation was not intended as a scholarly work and she did not feel it necessary to supply the usual apparatus. Nor, for that matter, did she translate the whole book. Chapter 2 was omitted, as were large sections of the remaining four chapters. Indeed, something between a quarter and a third of the book was left out. Furthermore, in the parts of the book which Harvey did translate, many inaccuracies and other defects crept in. Nevertheless, her translation has served as a good first draft, and if the present translation is an improvement, then it is largely because I have been able to build on her labours.

Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) is one of the great names in the history of British moral philosophy, yet his writings are not easily available. Of his writings on moral philosophy, the two pieces here presented have been even more inaccessible than the rest. The first, a preview of his Inquiry, here called Reflections on the Common Systems of Morality, was omitted from the 1971 facsimile edition of the collected works. The second, his inaugural lecture on man's natural sociality, here given the title On the Social Nature of Man, has remained comparatively inaccessible because it was published in Latin. It is presented here in an English translation for the first time.

When researching relevant material for this edition, other pieces by Hutcheson, published in his lifetime but not included in the facsimile edition of the collected works, came to my notice. One is a letter, published in a French translation, in which he protested against some unfavourable remarks by the reviewer in Bibliothèque Angloise 13 (1725). It is not included here, as an English version of it has recently been published in an article by David Raynor. For further detail, see p. 82 below. Another item is a letter on conic sections in Bibliothèque Raisonnée des Ouvrages des Savans de l'Europe 14 (1735), intended to draw favourable attention to a new work on the subject by his colleague Robert Simson, professor of mathematics. This letter does not fall within the scope of moral philosophy, so it is not included here.

In the Reflections, Hutcheson first makes observations on the effects of the current systems of morality, and then divides his discussion into two main parts: one dealing with moral motivation, the other with the precepts of morality. It will be convenient to follow this sequence.

The role of moral philosophy

It was a powerful attack on the writers on morality of his time that Hutcheson launched when he first appeared in print. Does this moral philosophy have a morally improving effect on those who study it? Does it enhance their sense of well-being? The answer to both questions, Hutcheson believed, must be negative. People who are unfamiliar with the systems of morality do not seem to be worse off, morally or psychologically.

Hutcheson obviously expected a great deal from the systems of morality. They ought to have an improving effect: a proper grasp of them should make a person psychologically more harmonious and morally more upright. If such beneficial effects were not discernible, one would suspect a defect in these systems. As we are told by his biographer William Leechman, he ‘regarded the culture of the heart as the end of all moral instruction’. The moralist has to engage more than the intellect of his audience.

Francis Hutcheson inspired David Hume, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and many other eminent moral philosophers. Their fame eventually overshadowed his, and he is now comparatively little known.

Hutcheson's grandfather had, like so many other Scottish Presbyterians, settled in Ulster, where he served as a minister. His son John Hutcheson (d. 1729), the father of Francis, followed him in the same calling. Francis Hutcheson was born in Armagh on 8 August 1694.

His studies began a local school, where he acquired a sound grasp of classical languages, and were continued in a ‘dissenting academy’, one of the schools at more advanced levels which had been set up primarily for the education of students who for religious reasons were unable or unwilling to attend the educational institutions of the Church of England; the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Trinity College in Dublin being foremost among these. At the age of sixteen Hutcheson moved to the University of Glasgow where, after a year of study, followed by a year's break, he undertook theological studies for for another four years. Having successfully concluded these studies he returned to Ireland, and was made a probationary minister. Not long after, he accepted an invitation to set up an academy in Dublin.

The new venture was a success: Hutcheson even had to find an assistant teacher to help out. During his time in Dublin he also became associated with the circle around Robert, Viscount Molesworth (1656–1725).

The rejection of the view that all our actions are ultimately self-interested was perhaps what mattered most to Hutcheson. His position can be better understood once we understand why it could be so significant. To this end, a view of the intellectual landscape in which he was situated will help. First to be considered are the religious and moral notions that were inculcated in most people early in life.

Man's natural corruption

When considering the way people are and the things they do – human characters and actions – some will seem to us indifferent: neither good nor bad. But as for the rest, we inevitably divide them. We approve of some, disapprove of some; some are admired, some despised.

There have been times and places when this apparently natural way of thinking has met powerful opposition. The division into good and bad is rejected. In its place comes a different doctrine, one which denies that any human character or action can be good. Human nature is essentially flawed. The basic contrast is no longer that between the good and the bad. The only distinction that can have any application in real life is that between two ways in which the bad appears. The bad may appear in disguise, masquerading as something good; or it may appear undisguised.

This view seems at first sight to be strongly supported by the facts.

The pitfalls of the Hegelian dialectical method

In their original form, the Marxist conception of history and the socialist theory which rests upon it were worked out between 1844 and 1847, years when Western and Central Europe were in a state of great revolutionary ferment. They could be described as the most radical product of this epoch.

In Germany, this period was the epoch of mounting bourgeois liberalism. Here, as in other countries, the ideological representation of the class opposing the establishment far exceeded the practical requirements of that class. The bourgeoisie – by which I mean the broad stratum of non-feudal classes standing outside the wage relation – fought against the still semi-feudal state absolutism; its philosophical representation began with absolute rule in order to end with state rule.

The philosophical current which, in this respect, found its most radical representative in Max Stirner is known as the radical left wing of Hegelian philosophy. As Friedrich Engels remarked – like Marx, he came under its influence for a certain time; they both associated with the ‘Free’ at Hippel's wine bar in Berlin – the proponents of this tendency rejected the Hegelian system, only to fall all the more under the spell of its dialectic until first the practical struggle against positive religion (then an important aspect of the political struggle) and second the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach drove them into an unreserved acceptance of materialism.

In the post-war period academic philosophers took an interest in Hume's moral philosophy primarily because of his critique of rationalism and his subjectivism, which could be interpreted as a proto-non-cognitivism. It is in this perspective that Hume is above all the author of one single paragraph, the one in which Hume first observes that all the common systems of morality use is-statements at the outset, and ought-statements at the end, and then asks how the latter can be conclusions from the former. This has served as an important source of inspiration for many philosophers in the present century, who have advocated is–ought and fact–value dualisms. These dualisms are to the effect that statements of the former kind cannot alone imply statements of the latter kind. For instance, factual statements alone cannot imply a value-statement. To this has often been adjoined the additional assumption that only statements of the first kind can be true or have some kind of objectivity, and that value-statements are in an important sense subjective. Hutcheson was read in the same spirit as Hume was read. For instance, Peach comments in the very instructive introduction to his edition of Illustrations that ‘it is in this controversy [with rationalism] that Hutcheson probably has the greatest interest for the present-day reader’. Furthermore, Hutcheson was seen, like Hume, as a precursor of modern emotivist theories of ethics, and according to Peach, ‘[Hutcheson] has a theory of the meaning of moral judgements that is thoroughly noncognitive’.

Remarks on the meaning of Marx's theory of value

As we have seen, surplus value is, according to Marx's theory, the pivot of a capitalist society's economy. But to understand surplus value we must first know what value is. Marx's account of the nature and course of development of capitalist society therefore begins with the analysis of value.

According to Marx, the value of commodities in modern society consists in the socially necessary labour expended upon them, measured by time. However, this measure of value necessitates a number of abstractions and reductions. To begin with, pure exchange value must be developed, that is, abstracted from the particular use value of individual commodities. Then, in forming the concept of general or abstract human labour, we must set aside the peculiarities of particular kinds of labour (reducing higher or complex labour to simple or abstract labour). Then, in order to get the socially necessary labour time as the measure of the value of labour, we must set aside differences in the diligence, ability, and equipment of individual workers; and further, when we come to convert value into market value or price, we must set aside the socially necessary labour time required for the particular commodities taken separately.

Kant against cant

I have, at various points in this book, already referred to the great influence tradition has on the evaluation of facts and ideas, even in Social Democracy. I say expressly ‘even in Social Democracy’, because the power of tradition is a very widespread phenomenon from which no party, no literary or artistic tendency, is free, and which has a profound influence even on most of the sciences. Moreover, it is unlikely that it will ever be completely rooted out. There is always a lapse of time before people recognise that tradition is so far distant from the actual facts that they are prepared to discard it. Until this happens, or until it can happen without damage to the case in hand, tradition is normally the most powerful means of uniting those not otherwise bound together by any strong and continuous interest or external pressure. Hence the intuitive preference which all men of action have for tradition, however revolutionary their objectives may be. ‘Never swop horses whilst crossing a stream.’ This saying of Lincoln's is rooted in the same thought as Lassalle's well-known condemnation of ‘the nagging spirit of liberalism’, the ‘disease of individual opining and wanting to know better’. While tradition is essentially preservative, criticism is almost always destructive. When, therefore, the time comes to take important action, even criticism fully justified by the facts can be wrong and therefore reprehensible.