*Capital* and the Absurd “Sybel Debate”

After the publication of Marx’s *Capital*, Heinrich von Sybel (1817–1895), a professor of history at the University of Munich, delivered two public lectures on March 9 and 16, 1872, respectively, titled “The Doctrines of Contemporary Communism and Socialism” (Die Lehren des heutigen Socialismus und Communismus), aimed at entrepreneurs. In these lectures, he explicitly opposed the theory of surplus value put forward by Marx in *Capital* and openly defended the capitalists. His attacks on Marx were concentrated in the first lecture; the second lecture mainly criticized Lassalle, Bakunin, and others. Marx was already aware of these statements during his lifetime. Sybel’s lectures had a considerable influence at the time. In October 1877, the Russian journal *Otechestvennye Zapiski* published an article by the Russian populist Mikhailovsky titled “Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr. Yu. Zhukovsky” (see Mikhailovsky, “Karl Marx Before the Tribunal of Mr. Yu. Zhukovsky,” trans. Zhou Laishun, *Modern Philosophy*, 2022, no. 2). In this article, Mikhailovsky deliberately magnified the views of Sybel cited by Zhukovsky. In his “Letter to the Editorial Board of *Otechestvennye Zapiski*” in November of the same year, Marx only briefly responded to Mikhailovsky’s distortion on the question of the path of social development and did not directly counter the fallacies of Sybel that Mikhailovsky had amplified. Here, we focus on analyzing this absurd “Sybel debate.”

马克思的《资本论》出版之后，身为慕尼黑大学历史学教授的西贝尔（Ｈｅｉｎｒｉｃｈ ｖｏｎ Ｓｙｂｅｌ，１８１７—１８９５），分别于１８７２年３月９日和１６日，进行了两次面向企业家的题为“当今的共产主义和社会主义学说”（Ｄｉｅ Ｌｅｈｒｅｎ ｄｅｓ ｈｅｕｔｉｇｅｎ Ｓｏｃｉａｌｉｓｍｕｓ ｕｎｄ Ｃｏｍｍｕｎｉｓｍｕｓ）的公开演讲，明确反对马克思在《资本论》中提出的剩余价值理论，公开为资本家辩护。他对马克思的攻击主要集中在第一次演讲中，第二次演讲主要是批评拉萨尔、巴枯宁等人。马克思生前已经了解到他的这些说法。西贝尔的这一演讲在当时产生了较大影响。１８７７年１０月，俄国《祖国纪事》杂志上发表了俄国民粹主义者米海洛夫斯基的《卡尔·马克思在尤·茹柯夫斯基先生的法庭上》一文（参见米海洛夫斯基：《卡尔·马克思在尤·茹柯夫斯基先生的法庭上》，周来顺译，《现代哲学》２０２２年第２期）。在这篇文章中，米海诺夫斯基刻意放大了茹柯夫斯基所引述的西贝尔的这些观点。马克思在同年１１月《给〈祖国纪事〉杂志编辑部的信》中，只是简单回应了米海诺夫斯基在社会发展道路问题上的曲解，并没有直接回击米海诺夫斯基所渲染的西贝尔的这些谬论。这里，我们重点来分析这个荒谬的“西贝尔之辩”。

In this lecture titled “The Doctrines of Contemporary Communism and Socialism,” Sybel, as a historian, directly targeted Marx’s *Capital*. He said somewhat excitedly that the primitive accumulation of capital identified by Marx in *Capital* did not exist in Germany. Because, before 1816, the whole of Germany was a “weed-choked” wasteland, and German capitalists “how many found their wealth through exploitation? Who created anything from the development of Indian slaves? And how many businesses were inherited over centuries? How many were not acquired through the diligence and acumen of themselves and their children?” This is to say, German capitalists, unlike those in older capitalist countries such as Holland and England, neither inherited ancestral aristocratic estates, nor plundered colonies, nor engaged in economic exploitation; several generations of German entrepreneurs, through hard work and frugality, had created the wealth in their hands today.

在这个题为“当今的共产主义和社会主义学说”的演讲中，身为历史学家的西贝尔的矛头直指马克思的《资本论》，他有些激动地说到，马克思在《资本论》中所指认的资本的原始积累在德国并不存在。因为，在１８１６年之前，整个德国是“杂草丛生”的荒芜之地，德国资本家“有多少是通过剥削找到自己的财富？谁从印度奴隶的发展创造了什么？又有多少人的业务是历经数个世纪继承而来的？有多少不是自己和儿女们的勤奋和敏锐而得来的？”这也就是说，德国的资本家与荷兰、英国等老牌资本主义国家不同，他们既没有继承祖上的贵族遗产，也没有对殖民地进行掠夺，更没有经济上的剥削行为；几代德国企业家通过勤奋努力和勤俭持家，才创造了今天手中的财富。

It should be noted that the essence of the Sybel debate does not lie in opposing Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation of capital, but in his vehement denial of the economic exploitation revealed in Marx’s *Capital*, whereby capitalists appropriate the surplus value created by workers without compensation. In his view, through a lawful employment contract, the worker sells his labor power and the capitalist pays the worker wages—this is an aboveboard, mutually beneficial transaction. He believed that “pure economic science (reine Wissenschaft der Ökonomie) cannot speak otherwise, because it only looks at the economic values (ökonomische Werthe) formed by things (Ding),” just like physics describing sound waves, which is “indifferent” (gleichgültig). On this point, Sybel did not conceal the bourgeoisie’s heartlessness.

应该注意，西贝尔之辩的本质不在于反对马克思的资本原始积累说，而在于他极力否认马克思《资本论》所揭示的资本家无偿占有工人创造的剩余价值的经济剥削。在他看来，通过合法的雇佣合同，工人出卖自己的劳动力，资本家付给工人工资，这是一桩光明正大的互利生意。他认为，“纯粹的经济科学（ｒｅｉｎｅ Ｗｉｓｓｅｎｓｃｈａｆｔ ｄｅｒ ｋｏｎｏｍｉｅ）不能不这样说话，因为它只看物（Ｄｉｎｇ）形成的经济价值（ｋｏｎｏｍｉｓｃｈｅ Ｗｅｒｔｈｅ）”，这就像描述声波的物理学一样“冷漠”（ｇｌｅｉｃｈｇüｌｔｉｇ）。在这一点上，西贝尔毫不掩饰资产阶级的没心没肺。

First, in Sybel’s lecture, he began by citing Marx’s famous statement in Volume I of *Capital* concerning the subjective purposiveness in the labor process, namely, “what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” Then Sybel said: This “first principle” (ersten Grundsatz) proposed by Marx precisely tells us that the most important thing in the true “source of labor” (Arbeit Quelle) is nothing other than “the realization of a useful purpose” (nützlichen Zwecke setzt und für die Verwirklichung). Human activity becomes labor because it serves human purposes; it becomes economically useful labor because this purpose satisfies human needs. Therefore, only the one who gives labor its rationality, establishes a beneficial goal, provides the necessary funds to achieve that goal, and puts it into operation, gives labor its true value (Arbeit in Wahrheit ihren Werth). Let us apply this view to the work process in large-scale manufacture or the factory. Who here is the creator of the purpose (Schöpfer des Zweckes)? Who gives the processed materials the property of value (behandelten Stoffen die Eigenschaft von Werthen)? I believe that merely raising this question resolves it. In this case, it is only the factory owner (Fabrikherr), not the worker (see Zhou Laishun’s translation).

首先，在西贝尔的演讲中，他先是引述了马克思在《资本论》第一卷中指认劳动过程中有关主体目的性的著名表述，即“最蹩脚的建筑师从一开始就比最灵巧的蜜蜂高明的地方，是他在用蜂蜡建筑蜂房以前，已经在自己的头脑中把它建成了”。然后，西贝尔说道：马克思这里提出的“首要原则”（ｅｒｓｔｅｎ Ｇｒｕｎｄｓａｔｚ）恰恰告诉我们，作为真正的“劳动源泉”（Ａｒｂｅｉｔ Ｑｕｅｌｌｅ）中最重要的东西，莫过于“有用性的目的的实现”（ｎüｔｚｌｉｃｈｅｎ Ｚｗｅｃｋｅ ｓｅｔｚｔ ｕｎｄ ｆüｒ ｄｉｅ Ｖｅｒｗｉｒｋｌｉｃｈｕｎｇ）。人的活动之所以成为劳动，是因为服务于人的目的，之所以成为经济上的有用劳动，是因为这个目的满足人的需求。因此，只有那个赋予劳动以合理性，确立了有益的目标，为实现该目标提供所需资金并将其投入运营的人，才赋予劳动以真正的价值（Ａｒｂｅｉｔ ｉｎ Ｗａｈｒｈｅｉｔ ｉｈｒｅｎ Ｗｅｒｔｈ）。我们将此观点应用到大型工场手工业或工厂的工作过程中去。这里谁是目标的创造者（Ｓｃｈ ｐｆｅｒ ｄｅｓ Ｚｗｅｃｋｅｓ）？谁使被加工的东西具有价值属性（ｂｅｈａｎｄｅｌｔｅｎ Ｓｔｏｆｆｅｎ ｄｉｅ Ｅｉｇｅｎｓｃｈａｆｔ ｖｏｎ Ｗｅｒｔｈｅｎ）？我认为，只要提出这个问题就能解决它。在这种情况下只有工厂主（Ｆａｂｒｉｋｈｅｒｒ），而不是工人（参见周来顺译文）。

Sybel’s meaning is that the true driving force of the labor process is the subjective purposiveness identified by Marx. In agricultural civilization and handicraft labor, this purposiveness comes from the laborer. But once we enter “the work process in large-scale manufacture or the factory,” the purpose of production is no longer the subjective intention of the worker, but can only come from the capitalist. In Sybel’s view, only the capitalist “determines the type and scope of production, he creates the machines and their improvements (Maschinen und deren Verbesserung), selects manual laborers, or intellectual wage laborers (geistiger Art Lohnarbeiter), technicians and engineers, or business experts.” Therefore, only “the factory owner, the capitalist is the creator of the purpose, and at the same time the creator of all the values being produced. This has nothing to do with his wage workers. The worker is a tool in his hands, a living human tool (beseelte, menschliche Werkzeuge), but in the labor process of the factory—the worker is a working tool (Arbeitsgeräth) just like the machine.” The worker is not a person with subjective purposiveness, but only a “living human tool”; only the capitalist is the master who possesses the production goal and creates value. This precisely reflects the ugly face of the capitalist and the entire bourgeois ideology. In fact, the self-styled clever Sybel here confuses two entirely different purposes: the eidos of how labor itself produces, and the capitalist’s purpose (telos) of boundless greed for profit. For he is utterly incapable of distinguishing the labor process of shaping and ordering the use-value utility of things in the concretion of concrete labor from the process of valorization (profit) through the objective abstraction extracted in commodity exchange relations. The subjective purpose identified by Marx in the above statement, which distinguishes the labor process from the life activity of animals, is not the capitalist’s purpose of driving the capitalist production process to chase surplus value in economic concretion, but the subjective representation realized in concrete labor itself. This can never be stripped from the laborer, even on the most advanced automated production line; this subjective representation still belongs to the worker, not to the capitalist who does not participate in labor activity at all. The capitalist’s intentional economic greed cannot create any use-value utility of things or social value. This string of fallacies by Sybel naturally cannot prove the legitimacy of the capitalist’s appropriation of workers’ surplus value (profit).

西贝尔的意思是说，劳动过程的真正内驱力是马克思所指认的主体目的性，在农耕文明和手工艺劳作中，这种目的性来自劳动者，而一旦进入“大型工场手工业或工厂的工作过程”，此时的生产目的就不再是工人的主观意图，而只能是来自资本家。在西贝尔看来，只有资本家才“决定生产的类型和范围，他创造了机器及其改良（Ｍａｓｃｈｉｎｅｎ ｕｎｄ ｄｅｒｅｎ Ｖｅｒｂｅｓｓｅｒｕｎｇ），选择体力劳动者，或者智能雇佣劳动者（ｇｅｉｓｔｉｇｅｒ Ａｒｔ Ｌｏｈｎａｒｂｅｉｔｅｒ）的技术人员和工程师或商务专家”。所以，只有“工厂主、资本家是目标的创造者，同时还是所有正在产生的价值的创造者。这里与他的雇佣工人无关。工人是他手中的工具，有生命的人类的工具（ｂｅｓｅｅｌｔｅ， ｍｅｎｓｃｈｌｉｃｈｅ Ｗｅｒｋｚｅｕｇｅ），但是在工厂的劳动过程中——工人是和机器一样的劳作工具（Ａｒｂｅｉｔｓｇｅｒ？覿ｔｈ）”。工人不是有主体目的性的人，只是“有生命的人类的工具”，只有资本家才是有生产目标和创造了价值的主人。这正反映了资本家和整个资产阶级意识形态的丑恶嘴脸。其实，自以为聪明的西贝尔在此混淆了两种完全不同的目的，即劳动本身怎样生产的爱多斯（ｅｉｄｏｓ）和资本家对利润的无限贪欲目的（ｔｅｌｏｓ）。因为，他根本不能区分具体劳动物相化中塑形、构序物品使用价值用在性的劳动过程，与商品交换关系中客观抽象出来的价值（利润）增殖过程。马克思在上述表述中所标识的劳动过程与动物生命活动不同的主体目的，并非资本家驱动资本主义生产过程的追逐剩余价值的经济物相化目的，而是具体劳作本身践行出来的主观表象。这一点是根本不可能从劳动者那里剥离的，哪怕是在最先进的自动化生产的流水线上，这种主观表象仍然是属于工人的，而非根本不参加劳动活动的资本家所有。资本家有意图的经济贪欲，不可能创造任何物品用在性的使用价值和社会性的价值。西贝尔的这通谬论，当然无法证明资本家占有工人剩余价值（利润）的合法性。

Second, and more importantly, Siber raised the issue of the socialized forces that appear unrelated to the individual labor of workers in capitalist mechanized large-scale industry, and the so-called “mental labor.” Siber questioned Marx: Does the boiler stoker know the factory’s goals and tasks? Does the little boy picking impurities from cotton understand the general connections, goals, and means of production? Mental laborers, engineers or enterprise managers, naturally know the goals, but they cannot establish or change them; rather, they receive the goals from the factory owner’s conception and serve them as precisely as any other laborer. Their labor remuneration is included in the price of the commodity, just as the expenditure on scissors and needles is included in the price of the tailor’s dress. Yet no one would say that the scissors and needles create the dress and its value. Similarly, in large-scale industrial sectors, the creator of value and surplus value is not the manual labor of the workers using the machines, but the mental labor of the factory owner managing the factory. [1]1 The original German terms and the reference to “Zhou Laishun’s translation” indicate that the author is citing a Chinese translation of Siber’s text.

其次，更重要的方面，西贝尔提及了资本主义机器化大生产中看起来与工人个人劳动无关的社会化力量和所谓“脑力劳动”的问题。西贝尔向马克思质问道：烧锅炉的工人知道工厂的目标和任务吗？摘棉花杂质的小男孩了解生产的普遍联系、目标和生产资料（ｄｅｍ Ｚｕｓａｍｍｅｎｈ ｖｏｎ Ｚｗｅｃｋ ｕｎｄ Ｍｉｔｔｅｌ ｄｅｒ Ｐｒｏｄｕｃｔｉｏｎ）吗？脑力劳动者（ｇｅｉｓｔｉｇｅ Ｌｏｈｎａｒｂｅｉｔｅｒ），工程师或者企业经理当然知道目标，但是不能创立也不能改变目标，而是从工厂主观念那里获得目标，并且像任何劳动者一样准确地服务于目标。他们的劳动报酬包含在商品的价格中，正如对剪刀和针支出部分包含在裁缝缝制的礼服的价格中。然而没有人会说，针和剪刀创造了礼服及其价值。同样地，在大型工业部门中，价值和剩余价值（ｄｅｓ Ｗｅｒｔｈｅｓ ｕｎｄ ｄｅｓ Ｍｅｈｒｗｅｒｔｈｅｓ）的创造者不是使用机器的劳动者的手工劳动（Ａｒｂｅｉｔ ｄｅｓ Ｈａｎｄａｒｂｅｉｔｅｒｓ），而是管理工厂的工厂主的脑力劳动（Ｋｏｐｆａｒｂｅｉｔ ｄｅｓ Ｆａｂｒｉｋｈｅｒｒｎ）（参见周来顺译文）。

Siber believed that Marx was turning things upside down, because in his view, workers are tools that create no value, while the capitalist is the creator; yet Marx turns “the tool into the creator, and makes the true creator appear as a parasitic idler.” In the head of this self-styled clever Siber, he finely delineated three different levels of purpose: first, the purposelessness of all manual laborers involved in production, including the “little boy” picking cotton in the fields, brutalized by the capitalist, and the “boiler stoker,” who are directly treated as speaking tools and thus excluded from purposiveness; second, the “mental laborers, engineers or enterprise managers,” who know how to concretely design, invent technological ordering, and manage production in mechanized industry—they know the goals but cannot change or propose the purpose of production; third, the capitalist, who creates the goals of production, and it is only the capitalist’s mental labor that truly creates “value and surplus value.” This is sheer nonsense!

西贝尔认为，马克思在颠倒黑白，因为在他看来，工人是不创造价值的工具，资本家才是创造者，可马克思却在将“工具变成了创造者（Ｓｃｈ？觟ｐｆｅｒ），让真正的创造者表现为一个闲置的寄生虫（Ｓｃｈｍａｒｏｔｚｅｒ）”。在自作聪明的西贝尔的头脑里，他精细界划了三个不同的目标层面：一是参与生产的所有体力劳动者的无目的性，这包括被资本家摧残的田间摘棉花的“小男孩”与“烧锅炉的工人”，他们被直接当作会说话的工具，从而被排除在目的性之外；二是知道在机器化生产中如何去具体设计、发明科技构序和管理生产的“脑力劳动者，工程师或者企业经理”，他们知道目标，但不能改变和提出生产的目的；三是创造了生产目标的资本家，并且只有资本家的脑力劳动，才真正创造了“价值和剩余价值”。这真是一派胡言！

First, Siber confuses the issue of the historical transformation in the position of simple manual labor versus “workers using machines” in mechanized large-scale industry. He contradicts himself: in the “boiler stoker” and “little boy picking cotton” he disparages, the labor purpose he earlier denied (stoking coal and picking cotton) is precisely the workers’ own subjective representation, and he fails to grasp more deeply the connection between the decline of workers’ labor in mechanized production and the relationship between manual and mental labor. Second, Siber cannot understand that, in mechanized large-scale industry, the creative role of scientists’ and technicians’ scientific-technological labor in the new type of production process—involving the technological materialization—concerns the more important concrete goal-setting of how to produce. Third, Siber is utterly unable to see that the “factory owner” in the capitalist production process is not a truly independent social subject; he is merely a pseudo-subject, the reverse reification and personification of capital relations in the economic materialization activity. The so-called “goals and tasks” he perceives at the phenomenal level are merely manifestations of the objective impulse and operational mechanism of capital relations to extract surplus value; and when these “factory owners” restore their normal human needs and life desires, they cease to be economic animals personifying capital relations. Fourth, in the overall capitalist economic process, the purposeful “passion” of these individual factory owners is nothing but a pitiable marionette under the invisible-hand domination of the law of value’s operation. Fifth, the mental labor of managing the factory and coordinating production, which appears to be the capitalist’s, is in essence the capitalist’s appropriation of the social combinative force and scientific-technological productive forces under conditions of worker cooperation and division of labor—this is the main source of the relative surplus value that the capitalist appropriates without compensation from workers and scientific-technological personnel.

第一，西贝尔先是混淆了简单体力劳动与“使用机器的劳动者”在机器化大生产中历史地位变迁问题。让他自打嘴巴的是，在他贬斥的“锅炉工”和“摘棉花的小男孩”那里，他前面否定的劳作目的（填煤和摘棉花）恰恰是劳动者自己的主体表象，而他并没有更深入地体知到工人劳动在机器化生产中的地位下降与体脑劳动之间的关联问题。第二，西贝尔无法理解，在机器化大生产中，科技物相化中科学家和技术人员的科技劳动在新型的生产过程里的创造性作用，这关乎更重要的怎样生产的具体目标设置。第三，西贝尔根本无法洞悉在资本主义生产过程中的“工厂主”并不是真正独立的社会主体，他不过是经济物相化活动中资本关系的反向事物化和人格化的伪主体，他在物象层面所看到的所谓“目标和任务”，不过是资本关系获取剩余价值的客观冲动和运行机制的表现，而当这些“工厂主”恢复人的正常需求和生命欲求时，他就不再是作为资本关系人格化的经济动物。第四，在资本主义经济过程总体上，这些个体性的工厂主有目的的“激情”，不过是价值规律运行看不见的手无形支配下的可悲牵线木偶。第五，看起来是资本家的管理工厂和协调生产的脑力劳动，其本质恰恰是资本对工人协作与劳动分工条件下的社会结合力、科技生产力的占有，这是资本家无偿占有工人和科技工作者所创造的相对剩余价值的主要来源。

I believe that the lies in the “Siber Debate” can never obscure the objective laws of the capitalist mode of production revealed in Marx’s *Capital*. Although more than 150 years have passed since the official publication of *Capital*, practice has proven that the theory of surplus value founded by Marx remains a powerful ideological weapon for our scientific analysis of the essence of the contemporary capitalist mode of production today.

我以为，“西贝尔之辩”中的谎言绝不可能掩盖马克思《资本论》中揭示的资本主义生产方式的客观规律。虽然《资本论》正式出版已经过去了一百五十多年，但实践证明，马克思所创立的剩余价值理论仍然是我们今天科学分析当代资本主义生产方式本质的有力思想武器。

Web editor: Paul

网络编辑：保罗