Curiously enough, Tugan-Baranowsky on the one hand and Oppenheimer and Simkhowitch on the other, all claim one and the same passage in Engels as authority in support of their respective positions; which adds no little to the bewilderment of the simple-minded reader. The treatment which this particular passage from Engels has received, and the uses to which it has been put, is very characteristic of up-to-date Marx-criticism, particularly of the Revisionist brand: Detached passages, sentences and phrases, from Marx and Engels are bandied about without the slightest attention being paid to the particular context or connection in which they were used, thus often making them yield an entirely different meaning from that intended by the author. The result is that everybody proves by Marx and Engels themselves whatever opinions he pleases to ascribe to them, a most fruitful field is provided for the adherents of the theory of evolution in Marxism, and a plentiful harvest is assured to the gatherer of Marxian contradictions.
V. G. Simkhowitch, who has to his credit one of the wordiest essays on Marxism, published in one of the most learned German magazines, says: "Marx's socialist demands and his theory of value are genetically related, but systematically considered there is no connection whatever between them. In saying this I merely repeat something which is self-evident to every philosophically educated person who has grasped the Marxian philosophy (Weltanschauung). Anybody who cares can find specific statements to that effect in Marx and Engels. So says Engels about the relation of Marx's socialism to his theory of value: Marx therefore never based his communistic demands thereon, but on the inevitable break-down of the capitalistic mode of production which we daily see approaching its end. And in the literature of Marxism this has always been insisted on."
At the risk of being accounted philosophically uneducated we shall have to disagree with our philosophic Marx-critic, along with others, for reasons which will presently appear.
