M. Beer - The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx

7/30/2019 M. Beer - The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx

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THELIFE & TEACHING

OFKARL MARXBY

M. BEERAuthor of ''A History of British Socialism'

Californialegional'acility

This is atranslation of a bookwritten by M. Beer to commem-

orate the centenary of Marx's birth.It is an adequate and reliable bio-

graphy, full of interesting personal detailsand a clear and comprehensive accountof Marx's economic and historical doctrines.A special feature of the book is the new

light thrown on Marx's attitude to the" Dictatorship of the Proletariat "and Bolshevist methods generally.No other work in Englishgives the sameinformation.

THE NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED.LONDON : 8 & 9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.G. 4.MANCHESTER : 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET.THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE, NET.


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JNlVfiRSITY OFCAt/IOftNIASAN CMEGO j

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THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY.UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA


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SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES(VOLUME TWO).

THE LIFE AND TEACHING OFKARL MARX


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THELIFE AND TEACHINGOFKARL MARXBY

M. BEERAuthor of "A History of British Socialism"

TRANSLATED BY T. C. PARTINGTONAND H. J. STENNING, AND REVISED

BY THE AUTHOR

NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,LONDON: 8/9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.G. 4MANCHESTER : 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET


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-CONTENTS.CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION :I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX

II. THE WORK OF HEGEL ,I. PARENTS AND FRIENDS :

I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP .... 1II. STUDENT 3

III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE 11II. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM :

I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS 15II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS ... 19

III. CONTROVERSIES WITH BAUER AND HUGE ... 21IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON 26

III. YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYINGFORTUNES :

I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES 39II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO 41

III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 48IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON... 51V. THE INTERNATIONAL 54

VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE 59VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE 60

IV. THE MARXIAN SYSTEM :I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 65

II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS 78III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT ANDTHE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP 84IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES ... 93

V. CONCLUSION 125


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INTRODUCTION.I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX.

KARL MARX belongs to the ranks of thosephilosophical and sociological thinkers whothrow potent thought-ferment into the world,and set in motion the masses of mankind. Theyawaken slumbering doubts and contradictions. Theyproclaim new modes of thought, new social forms.Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete,and the ruthless march of time may finally over-throw their intellectual edifice; meanwhile, however,they stimulate into activity the minds of countlessmen, inflame countless human hearts, imprintingon them characteristics which are transmitted tocoming generations. This is the grandest and finestwork to which any human being can be called.Because these thinkers have lived and worked, theircontemporaries and successors think more clearly, feelmore intensely, and are richer in knowledge and self-consciousness.The history of philosophy and of social science is

comprised in such systems and generalisations. Theyare the index to the annals of mankind. None ofthese systems is complete, none comprehends all humanmotives and capacities, none exhausts all the forcesand currents of human society. They all express onlyfragmentary truths, which, however, become effectiveand achieve success because they are shining lightsamidst the intellectual confusion of the generationwhich gives them birth, bringing it to a consciousness


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x LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXof the questions of the time, rendering its furtherdevelopment less difficult, and enabling its strongestspirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in criticalperiods.Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where be

remarks : " When the refutation of a philosophy isspoken of, this is usually meant in an abstractnegative (completely destructive) sense, so that theconfuted philosophy has no longer any validity what-ever, and is set aside and done with. If this be so,the study of the history of philosophy must beregarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeingthat this study teaches that every system of philosophywhich has arisen in the course of time has found itsrefutation. But if it is as good as granted that everyphilosophy has been refuted, yet at the same timeit must be also asserted that no philosophy has beenrefuted, nor ever can be refuted . . . for everyphilosophical system is to be considered as thepresentation of a particular moment or a particularstage in the evolutionary process of the idea. Thehistory of philosophy ... is not, in its totality,a gallery of the aberrations of the human intellect, butis rather to be compared to a pantheon of deities."

(" Hegel, Encyclopaedia," vol. 1, section 86,note 2.)What Hegel says here about philosophy is true also

of systems of social science, and styles and forms inart. The displacement of one system by anotherreflects the historical sequence of the various stagesof social evolution. The characteristic which iscommon to all these systems is their vitality.In spite of their defects and difficulties there surges

through them a living spirit from the influence of which


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INTRODUCTION xicontemporaries cannot escape. Opponents may putthemselves to endless trouble to contradict suchsystems, and show up their shortcomings and incon-sistencies, and yet, with all their pains, they do notsucceed in attaining their object ; their logical sappingand mining, their passionate attacks break against thevital spirit which the creative genius has breathed intohis work. The deep impression made on us by thisvitality is one of the main factors in the formation ofour judgments upon scientific and artistic achieve-ments. Mere formal perfection and beauty throughwhich the life of the times does not throb can nevercreate this impression.Walter Scott, who was often reproached with defects

and inconsistencies in the construction of his novels,once made answer with the following anecdote : AFrench sculptor, who had taken up his abode in Rome,was fond of taking to the Capitol his artisticallyinclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, toshow them the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius,on which occasions he was at pains to demonstrate thatthe horse was defectively modelled, and did not meetthe requirements of anatomy. After one of thesecriticisms a visitor urged him to prove his case in aconcrete form by constructing a horse on correctartistic principles. The critic set to work, and when,after the lapse of a year, his friends were againvisiting Rome, exhibited to them his horse. It wasanatomically perfect. Proudly he had it brought tothe Capitol, in order to compare both productions andso celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in hiscritical comparison, the French sculptor after a whilegave way to a burst of genuine artistic feeling, whichcaused him pathetically to exclaim, " Et pourtant


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xiv LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXproverbs as " There is nothing new under the sun "and " History repeats itself " are but the popularexpression of this view.Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or thescience of the laws of thinking (Greek logos reason,word). It taught how men should use their reason,how they should express themselves reasonably, howconcepts arise (in what manner, for example, thehuman understanding arrived at the concepts stone,tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.); further, howsuch concepts are combined into judgments (proposi-tions), and finally, how conclusions are drawn fromthese judgments. This logic exhibited the intellectualprocesses of the human mind. It was founded by theGreek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.), andremained essentially unaltered until the beginning ofthe nineteenth century, in the same way as our wholeconception of the universe remained unchanged. Thisscience of human intellectual processes was based onthree original laws of thought, which best characteriseit. Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisonerin the face, and identifies him, so that uncertainty andcontradiction may be avoided, so this logic began byestablishing the identity of the conceptions with whichit was to operate. Consequently, it established as thefirst law of thought the Principle of Identity, whichruns as follows : A=A, i.e., each thing, each being, islike itself ; it possesses an individuality of its own,peculiar to itself. To put it more clearly, this prin-ciple affirms that the earth is the earth, a state is astate, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.From this proceeds the second law of thought, thePrinciple of Contradiction. A cannot be A andnot A. Or following our example given above, the


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INTRODUCTION xvearth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a Statecannot be a State and an Anarchy ; Capital cannot beCapital and Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialismand Individualism. Therefore there must be no con-tradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself isnonsense; where, however, this occurs either inactuality or in thought, it is only an accidental excep-tion to the rule, as it were, or a passing and irregularphenomenon.From this law of thought follows directly the third,

viz., the Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thingis either A or non-A; there is no middle term. Or,according to our example, the earth is either a solidbody, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is nomiddle term. The State is either monarchical, or, ifit is not monarchical, it is no State. Capitalism iseither oppressive, or altogether not Capitalism. Social-ism is either revolutionary, or not Socialism at all ;there is no middle term. (Socialism is either reformist,or not Socialism at all; there is no middle term.)With these three intellectual laws of identity, ofcontradiction, and of the excluded middle, formallogic begins.

It is at once apparent that this logic operates withrigid, constant, unchanging, dogmatic conceptions,something like geometry, which deals with definitelybounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of theold world-philosophy.By the beginning of the nineteenth century a new

conception of the world had begun to make its way.The world, as we see it, or get to know it from books,was neither created, nor has it existed from timeimmemorial, but has developed in the course ofuncounted thousands of years, and is still in process


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INTRODUCTION xixexistence begin. It is obvious that we are not con-cerned here with logical contradictions, which usuallyarise from unclear thinking or from confusion in thepresentation of facts; Hegel, and after him Marx,dealt rather with real contradictions, with antithesesand conflicts, as they arise of themselves in the processof evolution of things and conditions.The thing or the being, against which the contra-diction operates, was called by Hegel the Positive, andthe contradiction, the antagonistic element, or theantithesis, he called the Negation. As may be seenfrom our example, this negation is not mere annihila-tion, not a resolution into nothing, but a clearing awayand a building up at the same time; a disappearanceand a coming into existence ; a movement to a higherstage. Hegel says in this connection : " It has beenhitherto one of the rooted prejudices of logic and acommonly accepted belief that the contradiction is notso essential or so inherent a characteristic (in thoughtand existence) as the identity. Yet in comparisonwith it the identity is, in truth, but the characteristicof what is simply and directly perceived, of lifelessexistence. The contradiction, however, is the sourceof all movement and life ; only in so far as it containsa contradiction can anything have movement, power,and effect."The part played by the contradiction, the antithesis,

or the negation very easily escapes a superficialobserver. He sees, indeed, that the world is filled witha variety of things, and that where anything is thereis also its opposite; e.g., existence non-existence,cold heat, light darkness, mildness harshness,pleasure pain, joy sorrow, riches poverty, Capital

Labour, life death, virtue vice, Idealism


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xx LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXMaterialism, Romanticism Classicism, etc., butsuperficial thought does not realise that it is facedwith a world of contradictions and antitheses ; it onlyknows that the world is full of varied and manifoldthings. " Only active reason," says Hegel, " reducedthe mere multiplicity and diversity of phenomena toantithesis. And only when pushed to this point dothe manifold phenomena become active and mutuallystimulating, producing the state of negation, whichis the very heart-beat of progress and life." Onlythrough their differentiation and unfolding as opposingforces and factors is further progress beyond theantithesis to a higher positive stage made possible." Where, however," continues Hegel, " the power todevelop the contradiction and bring it to a head islacking, the thing or the being is shattered on thecontradiction." (Hegel, " Science of Logic," Pt. 1,Sec. 2, pp. 66, 69, 70.)

This thought of Hegel's is of extraordinary import-ance for the understanding of Marxism. It is thesoul of the Marxian doctrine of the class-struggle, nay,of the whole Marxian system. One may say thatMarx is always on the look-out for contradictionswithin the social development, for wherever the con-tradiction (antithesis class struggle) shows itself,there begins, according to Marx-Hegel, the progressto a higher plane.*We have now become familiar with two expressionsof the dialectical method, the positive and the nega-tion. We have seen the first two stages of the processof growth in thought and in reality. The process isnot yet complete. It still requires a third stage.

In one of the later chapters the reader will find the series ofcontradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of capitalism.Sec. IV., " Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8, " EconomicContradictions."


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INTRODUCTION xxiThis third step Hegel called the Negation of theNegation. With the continued operation of thenegation, a new thing or being comes into existence.To revert to our examples : the complete coolingand condensation of the earth's crust : the rise of themiddle-class State : the victory of the Proletariat :these things represent the suspension or the settingaside of the Negation; the contradiction is thusresolved, and a new stage in the process of evolutionis reached. The expressions Positive (or affirmation),Negation, and Negation of the Negation, are alsoknown as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

In order to understand this more distinctly, and tovisualise it, let us consider an egg. It is somethingpositive, but it contains a germ, which, awakening tolife, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the contentsof the egg. This negation is, however, no meredestruction and annihilation; on the contrary, itresults in the germ developing into a living thing.The negation being complete, the chick breaks throughthe egg shell. This represents the negation of thenegation, whereby there has arisen somethingorganically higher than an egg.

This mode of procedure in human thinking and inthe operations of nature and history Hegel called thedialectical method, or the dialectical process. It isevident that the dialectic is at the same time a methodof investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines hisdialectic in the following words :" The only thing which is required for scientificprogress, an elementary principle for the understand-ing of which one should really strive, is the recognitionof the logical principle that the negative is just asmuch a positive, or that the contradictory does not


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INTRODUCTION xxiiiPhilosophy " (1847), written when he was formula-ting his materialist conception of history, as also inhis " Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel thathe investigates these laws." Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would havesaid Capital) are antitheses. As such they constitutea whole; both are manifestations of the world ofprivate property. The question to be considered isthe specific position which both occupy in the anti-thesis. To describe them as two sides of a whole isnot a sufficient explanation. Private property asprivate property, as riches, is compelled to preserveits own existence, and along with it that of its anti-thesis, the Proletariat. Private property satisfied initself is the positive side of the antithesis. TheProletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as Pro-letariat, to abolish itself, and along with it privateproperty, its conditioned antithesis, which makes itthe Proletariat. It is a negative side of the antithesis,the internal source of unrest, the disintegrated anddisintegrating Proletariat. . . . Within the anti-thesis, therefore, the owner of private property is theconservative, and the proletarian is the destructiveparty. From the former proceeds the action of main-taining the antithesis, from the latter the action ofdestroying it. From the point of view of its national,economic movement, private property is, of course,continually being driven towards its own dissolution,but only by an unconscious development which isindependent of it, and which exists against its will,and is limited by the nature of things; only, that is,by creating the Proletariat as proletariat, povertyconscious of its own physical and spiritual poverty,and demoralised humanity conscious of its own


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xxiv LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXdemoralisation and consequently striving against it." The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which privateproperty by the creation of the Proletariat suspendsover itself, just as it fulfils the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien riches andits own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs,it does not thereby become the absolute side of society,for it triumphs only by abolishing itself and itsopposite. In this way both the Proletariat and itsconditioned opposite, private property, are done awaywith."*The dialectical method is again described in a few

sentences on pages 420 421 of the third volume of" Capital " (German), where we read : " In so far asthe labour process operates merely between man andnature, its simple elements are common to every formof its social development. But any given historical,form of this process further develops its materialfoundations and its social forms. When it hasattained a certain degree of maturity the givenhistorical form is cast off and makes room for ahigher one. That the moment of such a crisishas arrived is shown as soon as there is adeepening and widening of the contradiction andantithesis between the conditions of distribution, andconsequently also the existing historical form of theconditions of production corresponding to them, onthe one hand, and the forces of production, productivecapacity, and the state of evolution of its agents, onthe other. There then arises a conflict between thematerial development of production and its cor-responding social form."

Marx, In "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring in the" Collected Works or Literary Reraaing of Marx and Engels," TO!. II.,p. 182.


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INTRODUCTION xxvBut the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in

the famous twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the firstvolume of " Capital"

(German), where the evolutionof capitalism from small middle-class ownershipthrough all phases up to the Socialist revolution iscomprehensively outlined in bold strokes : " Thecapitalist method of appropriation, which springs fromthe capitalist method of production, and thereforecapitalist private property, is the first negation ofindividual private property based on one's own labour.But capitalist production begets with the inevitable-ness of a natural process its own negation. It is thenegation of the negation." Here we have the threestages : the thesis private property; the antithesiscapitalism; the synthesis common ownership.Of critical social writers outside Germany it was

Proudhon, in particular, who, in his works " What isProperty? " and " Economic Contradictions, or thePhilosophy of Poverty " (1840, 1846), attempted touse the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave hischief book the title " Economic Contradictions "shows that Proudhon was largely preoccupied withHegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below thesurface ; he used the Hegelian formulae quitemechanically, and lacked the conception of animmanent process of development (the forward-impelling force within the social organism).

If we look at the dialectical method as here pre-sented, Hegel might be taken for a materialist thinker.Such a notion would be erroneous. For Hegel is anidealist : the origin and essence of the process ofgrowth is to be sought, according to him, not inmaterial forces, but in the logical idea, reason, theuniversal spirit, the absolute, or in its religious


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INTRODUCTION xxixditions have arisen that a great multitude can nolonger satisfy their needs in the way to which theyhave been accustomed." Or take his explanation ofthe founding of colonies by the Greeks." This projecting of colonies, particularly in theperiod after the Trojan War until Cyrus, is here apeculiar phenomenon, which may thus be explained :in the individual towns the people had the governingpower in their hands, in that they decided the affairsof State in the last resort. In consequence of the longpeace, population and development greatly increased,and quickly brought about the accumulation ofgreat riches, which is always accompanied by thephenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry,in our sense, did not exist at that time, and the landwas speedily monopolised. Nevertheless, a section ofthe poorer classes would not allow themselves to bedepressed to the poverty line, for each man felt himselfto be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, wascolonisation."Or even the following passage, which conceives the

philosophical system merely as the result and reflec-tion of the accomplished facts of existence, andtherefore rejects all painting of Utopias : *' Besides,philosophy comes always too late to say a word asto how the world ought to be. As an idea of theuniverse, it only arises in the period after reality hascompleted its formative process and attained its finalshape. What this conception teaches is necessarilydemonstrated by history, namely, that the idealappears over against the real only after the consum-mation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the sameworld, comprehended in the substance of reality, inthe form of an intellectual realm. A form of life hasbecome old when philosophy paints its grey on grey,


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INTRODUCTION xxxithe philosophical sphere, just as " Young Germany "(Heine, Boerne, etc.) did in the province of literature.Just at the time when Marx was still at the

university the Young Hegelians took up the fightagainst the conservative section of Hegel's disciples andthe Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The antagon-ism between the old and the new school made itselffelt both in religious philosophy and political litera-ture, but both tendencies were seldom combined inthe same persons. David Strauss subjected theGospels to a candid criticism ; Feuerbach investigatedthe nature of Christianity and of religion generally,and in this department inverted Hegel's Idealism toMaterialism ; Bruno Bauer trained his heavy historicaland philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmasconcerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, how-ever, they remained at the stage of the freedom ofthe individual : that is, they were merely moderateLiberals. Nevertheless, there were also less prominentYoung Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberalleft wing as regards their political opinions, such asArnold Ruge.None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used

the dialectical method to develop still further theteaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the youngest ofthe Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage insocial science. He was no longer known to Hegel, whomight otherwise have died with a more contented orperhaps even still more perturbed mind. HeinrichHeine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirtiesand forties, relates the following anecdote, which ifnot true yet excellently illustrates the extraordinarydifficulties of the Master's doctrines :As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered


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xxxii LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXround him, seeing the furrows deepen on the Master'scare-worn countenance, inquired the cause of hisgrief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him ofthe large number of admiring disciples and followershe would leave behind. Breathing with difficulty, hereplied : " None of my disciples has understood me ;only Michelet has understood me, and," he added witha sigh, " even he has misunderstood me."


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STUDENT 8After quitting the public school, Marx went

to the University of Bonn, in order to study juris-prudence, according to his father's wishes. After ayear of the merry life of a student, he removed in theautumn of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre ofculture and truth, as Hegel had called it in hisInaugural Lecture (1818). Before his departure forBerlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny VonWestphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, awoman distinguished alike for beauty, culture, andstrength of character.

II. STUDENT.In Berlin, Marx threw himself into the study of

Philosophy, Jurisprudence, History, Geography,Literature, the History of Art, etc. He had a Faust-like thirst for truth, and his appetite for work wasinsatiable; in these matters only superlatives can beused to describe Marx. In one of his poems datingfrom this period, he says of himself :

" Ne'er can I perform in calmnessWhat has seized my soul with might,But must strive and struggle onwardIn a ceaseless, restless flight.

All divine, enhancing gracesWould I make of life a part;Penetrate the realms of science,

Grasp the joys of Song and Art."


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6 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXattempted to evolve a philosophy of law in thesphere of jurisprudence. By way of introduction Ilaid down a few metaphysical principles, andcarried this unfortunate work as far as PublicRights, in all about 300 sheets." In this, however, more than in anything else,the conflict between what is and what ought to be,which is peculiar to Idealism, made itself disagree-ably prominent. In the first place there was whatI had so graciously christened the Metaphysics ofLaw, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions,standing aloof from all established jurisprudence andfrom every actual form of legal practice. Then theunscientific form of mathematical dogmatism inwhich there is so much beating about the bush, somuch diffuse argumentation without any fruitfuldevelopment or vital creation, hindered me from theoutset from arriving at the Truth. A triangle maybe constructed and reasoned about by the mathe-matician ; it is a mere spatial concept and does notof itself undergo any further evolution; it must bebrought in conjunction with something else, whenit requires other properties, and thus by placingthe same thing in various relationships we areenabled to deduce new relationships and new truths.Whereas in the concrete expression of the mentallife as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature,and in the whole of philosophy, the object of ourstudy must be considered in its development. . .The individual's reason must proceed with its self-contradiction until it discovers its own unity."In this we perceive the first trace of the Hegelian

dialectic in Marx. We see rigid geometrical forms


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8 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX" I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled

' Cleantes or on the Source and Inevitable Develop-ment of Philosophy.* In this, art and science, whichhad hitherto been kept asunder, were to some extentblended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even setabout the task of evolving a philosophical, dialec-tical exposition of the nature of the Deity as it ismanifested in a pure concept, in religion, in nature,and in history. My last thesis was the beginningof the Hegelian system ; and this work, in course ofwhich I had to make some acquaintance with science,Schelling and history, and which had occasioned mean infinite amount of hard thinking, delivers me likea faithless siren into the hands of the enemy. . . ." Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitless-ness and utter failure of my intellectual labours, andtorn with vexation at having to make into my idola view which I had hated, I fell ill, as I havealready told you in a previous letter. On myrecovery I burnt all my poems and material forprojected short stories in the vain belief that I couldgive all that up ; and, to be sure, so far I have notgiven cause to gainsay it." During my illness I had made acquaintance withHegel from beginning to end, as also with most ofhis disciples. Through frequent meetings withfriends in Stralau I got an introduction into aGraduates' Club, in which were a number of pro-fessors and Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlinfriends. In the discussions that took place manyconflicting views were put forward, and more andmore securely did I get involved in the meshes ofthe new philosophy which I had sought to escape;but everything articulate in me was put to silence,


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14 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXmaterial interests. The proceedings of the Dietof the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealingand parcelling out of landed property, and their actiontowards the farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastlydebates on Free Trade and Protection, gave the firststimulus to my investigation of economic questions.On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism andCommunism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at thattime made itself heard in the columns of the RheinischeZeitung. I declared myself against superficiality, con-fessing, however, at the same time that the studies Ihad made so far did not allow me to venture anyjudgment of my own on the significance of the Frenchtendencies. I readily took advantage of the illusioncherished by the directors of the Rheinische Zeitung,who believed they could reverse the death sentencepassed on that journal as a result of weak manage-ment, in order to withdraw from the public platforminto my study."And so the intellectual need which he felt of studyingeconomics and Socialism, as well as his thirst for free,unfettered activity, resulted in Marx's retirement fromhis post as editor, although he was about to enterupon married life and had to make provision for hisown household. But he was from the beginning deter-mined to subordinate his material existence to hisspiritual aspirations.


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THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS 17existence, for it is in itself the virtual dissolution ofthis order of things. When the proletariat desires thenegation of private property, it is merely elevating toa general principle of society what it already involun-tarily embodies in itself as the negative product ofsociety."Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removedwith his young wife in October, 1848, in order to takeup the editorship of the Franco-German Year Booksfounded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed toRuge from Kreu/naeh in September, 1843, Marxsummed up the program of this periodical as follows :" If the shaping of the future and its final reconstruc-tion is not our business, yet it is all the more evidentwhat we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, Imean the fearless criticism of all existing institutionsfearless in the sense that it does not flinch either fromits logical consequences or from the conflict with thepowers that be. I am therefore not with those whowould have us set up the standard of dogmatism ; farfrom it; we should rather try to give what help wecan to those who are involved in dogma, so that theymay realise the implications of their own principles.So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet,Dezamy, Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstrac-tion. . . . Moreover, we want to work upon ourcontemporaries, and particularly on our German con-temporaries. The question is : How is that to bedone? Two factors cannot be ignored. In the firstplace religion, in the second place politics, are the twothings which claim most attention in the Germany ofto-day. ... As far as everyday life is concerned,the political State, even where it has not been con-sciously perfected through Socialist demands, exactly


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18 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXfulfils, in all its modern forms, the demands of reason.Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason every-where as having been realised. But in so doing itlands itself everywhere in the contradiction betweenits ideal purpose and its real achievements. Out ofthis conflict, therefore, of the political State with itselfsocial truth is evolved."Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the

State as the embodiment of reason and morality didnot accord well with the constitution and the workingof the actual State. And Marx goes on to remarkthat in its history the political State is the expressionof the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society.It is not true, then, as the French and EnglishUtopians have thought, that the treatment of politicalquestions is beneath the dignity of Socialists. Ratheris it work of this kind which leads into party conflictand away from the abstract theory. " We do notthen proclaim to the world in doctrinaire fashion anynew principle : * This is the truth, bow down beforeit ! J We do not say : ' Refrain from strife, it isfoolishness !

' We only make clear to men for whatthey are really struggling, and to the consciousness ofthis they must come whether they will or not.*'That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein.The thinker propounds no fresh problems, bringsforward no abstract dogmas, but awakens an under-standing for the growth of the future out of the past,inspiring the political and social warriors with theconsciousness of their own action.


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24 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXshoes of the proletariat with the dwarfishness of theworn-out political shoes of the German middle classes,one can only prophesy an athletic stature for theGerman Cinderella. One must admit that the Germanproletariat is the philosopher of the European pro-letariat, just as the English proletariat is its politicaleconomist and the French proletariat its politician.One must admit that Germany is destined to playjust as classic a rdle in the social revolution as it isincompetent to play one in the political. For, as theimpotence of the German middle classes is the politicalimpotence of Germany, so the capacity of the Germanproletariat even leaving out of account Germanphilosophy is the social capacity of Germany."At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mixamong the German working classes resident in Paris,who clung to the various Socialist and Anarchistdoctrines which then held sway, and he sought toinfluence them according to his own ideas. WithHeine, too, who at that time was coquetting withCommunism, he carried on a sprightly and not unfrait-ful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contactwith Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to makefamiliar with Hegelian philosophy. Already in hisfirst work, "What is Property? " (1840) Proudhonhad played with Hegelian formulae, and Marxprobably believed that he could win him over toSocialism. Proudhon, who, like the German Weitling,sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activityas a social theorist with the above-mentioned work,which had a stimulating effect on Marx and on GermanSocialists in general, all the more so as Proudhonmanifested some acquaintance with classical Germanphilosophy. In this book (" What is Property ? "


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80 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXHad he really understood these economists and takenup his critical attitude towards them from the stand-point of justice, he would have stated the problemsomewhat as follows : The workers of any countryproduce yearly goods to the value, say, of 20 milliards.For their work, however, they receive as wages aquantity of goods of the value of only 10 or 12milliards. Is that just? " Only this way of statingthe question could possibly have revealed to him thenature of wages, of value, of profit, of capital andits contradictions. Proudhon sees the perpetration offraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and notin that of production, and he does not ask himselfhow, if labour produces goods to the value of only20 milliards, they can be exchanged at a value of '25milliards, and what is responsible for the increase offive milliards. The other contradictions which hebrings forward are not indeed new, but they areingeniously treated. For example : the essence ofexchange-value is labour, which creates wealth ; butthe more the wealth produced, the less becomes itsexchange-value. Or this : the division of labour is,according to Smith, one of the most effective meansof increasing wealth, but the further the division oflabour proceeds the lower sinks the workman, beingreduced to the level of an unintelligent automatonengaged in the performance of a fractional operation.The same thing holds good for machinery. So, too,competition stimulates effort, but brings much miseryin its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices,and strife between man and man. Further, taxationshould be proportional to riches, in reality it is pro-portional to poverty. Or again, private ownershipof land ought to increase productivity; in practice


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32 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXseverely does he denounce the institution of TradeUnionism and its methods of warfare, together withState politics, as indeed the working of class organisa-tion and of the State generally. The only way torealise social justice is to create a society of producerswho exchange their goods among one anotheraccording to their equivalents in labour and carry onwork in adequate relationship to the production ofwealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an orderwhere supply and demand balance one another.Marx's answer to the " Philosophy of Poverty "'

is indicated at once by the title " The Poverty ofPhilosophy." He deals first of all with the economicdetails of Proudhon's work, and proves with docu-mentary evidence that the theses and antitheses itcontains partly spring from a half-understood readingof English and French political economists, and inpart have been taken direct from the EnglishCommunists. Marx already displays in this sectionan extensive knowledge of economic literature. Thenhe confronts Proudhon's philosophical and socialtheories with his own deductions and gives manypositive results. Marx's main object was to inducethe Socialists to give up their Utopianism and thinkin terms of realism, and to regard social andeconomic categories in their historical setting :" Economic categories are only the theoreticalexpressions, ideal conceptions of the conditions ofproduction obtaining in society. . . . Proudhonhas grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth,linen, etc., under certain conditions of production.But what he has not grasped is that these socialconditions themselves are just as much humanproducts as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are


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CONTROVERSY PROUDHON 33intimately bound up with productive power. Withthe acquisition of new productive power men changetheir methods of production, and with the change inthe methods of production, in the manner of obtaininga livelihood, they change their social conditions. Thehand-mill gives rise to a society with feudal lords,the steam-mill to a society with industrial capitalists.But the same men who shape the social conditionsin conformity with the material means of production,shape also the principles, the ideas, the categoriesin conformity with their social conditions. Con-sequently these ideas, these categories, are just aslittle eternal as are the conditions to which they giveexpression. They are the transitory and changingproducts of history. We are living in the midst of acontinuous movement of growth in productive power,of destruction of existing social conditions, of forma-tion of ideas." (" Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart,1885, pp. 100-101.)Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marxascribes to industrialism a powerful revolutionaryeffect, and that he characterises the different formsof society by their different methods of labour. Or,as he says later in " Capital," " not what is produced,but how it is produced distinguishes the various formsof society." What he means to say, then, is thatideas and systems are limited by their time, that theyare conditioned by the prevailing means of production.To understand them one must study the times whichhave preceded them, as well as investigate the ideasand systems themselves, and find out whether newforms have not arisen which stand in contradictionor in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says :


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34 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX" Feudalism, too, had its proletariat the villeinagewhich contains all the germs of the middle class.

Feudal production, too, had two contradictoryelements which are likewise characterised as the' good ' and * bad ' sides of feudalism without regardto the fact that it is always the ' bad ' side whichtriumphs ultimately over the ' good ' side. It is thebad side which calls into being the movement whichmakes history, in that it brings the struggle to a head.If, at the time of the supremacy of feudalism, theeconomists, in their enthusiasm for knightly virtues,for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishinghome industries in the country, for the developmentof industry organised in corporations, companies andguilds, in a word, for everything which forms thefiner side of feudalism, had set themselves the problemof eliminating everything which could throw a shadowon this picture serfdom, privileges, anarchy wherewould it all have ended ? They would have destroyedevery element which called forth strife, they wouldhave nipped in the bud the development of the middleclass. They would have set themselves the absurdproblem of blotting out history.When the middle class had come to the top, neitherthe good nor the bad side of feudalism come intoquestion. The productive forces, which had beendeveloped under feudalism through its agency, fell toits control. All old economic forms, the legal relationsbetween private individuals, which corresponded tothem, the political order, which was the officialexpression of the old society, were shattered."Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who

regard the hardships and struggles of society


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THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO 41its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognisedall practical forms of power, even if he did not alwaysestimate them at their true value, saw in the Statean executive power which it was a question of over-turning and using as an extremely powerful instrumentin the social revolution. As a result of his excursionsinto politics and French and English Socialism, Marxgave up Hegel's overstrained idea of the State andaccepted the view current in Western Europeanthought of the time; but he interpreted the State inthe sense of the doctrine of the class struggle as theexecutive council of the ruling and possessing classes.The impressions, the ideas, the experiences andthe modes of thinking which took root in the mindof Marx during the evolution of the fundamentalprinciples of his sociological and historical systemdominated the whole of his life's work.Marxism is quite a natural growth of the

revolutionary soil of the first half of the nineteenthcentury. Marx completes the social revolutionarydoctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, theexecutor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeplyrooted in it; they have nothing specifically Jewishabout them. I know of no Jewish philosopher,sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewishcharacter as had Marx.

II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented

the society of German working men in order toinstruct them by lectures and by conversation. He


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44 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXseventeenth centuries its sphere of activity wasextended; it revolutionised the methods of industry,agriculture and communication; it broke through themediaeval economic and political bonds ; it overthrewfeudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing regions,absolute monarchy, and established modern industrywith its accelerated and concentrated production,middle-class franchise, the national State, and, at thesame time, international trade. It was the middleclass which first showed what human activity canaccomplish. " It has achieved greater miracles thanthe construction of Egyptian pyramids, Romanaqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried outgreater movements than the migration of peoples orthe crusades. . . . Although it is scarcely acentury since it came to be the dominating class, themiddle class has created more powerful and moregigantic forces of production than all past generationsput together." The subjugation of natural forces,machinery, the application of chemistry to industryand to agriculture, steamships, railways, electrictelegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, makingthe rivers navigable, the conjuring forth of wholepeoples out of the ground : that is the positive achieve-ment of the middle class. Now for the negative : itcreated the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,anarchical economic conditions, periodical crisespoverty and famine in consequence of over-productionand a glut of wealth, over-driving and recklessexploitation of the workers, whose labour is boughtin exchange for the minimum quantity of the neces-saries of life. These facts show that the forces ofproduction are more extensive and more powerful thanis demanded by the conditions under which they are


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THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 49" Paris, March 1, 1848.

*' BRAVE AND FAITHFUL MARX," The soil of the French Republic is a place ofrefuge for all friends of freedom. Tyranny hasbanished you; France, the free, opens to you hergates to you and to all who fight for the holycause, the fraternal cause of every people. In thissense shall every officer of the French Governmentunderstand his duty. Salut et Fraternite.FERDINAND FLOCON,Member of the Provisional Government."The stay in Paris was, however, of short duration.Marx and Engels gathered together the members of

the League of Communists and procured them themeans for returning to Germany to take part in theGerman revolution. They themselves travelled to theRhineland and succeeded in getting the establishmentof the newspaper planned in Cologne into their hands.On the first of June, 1848, the Neue RheinischeZeitung appeared for the first time. It goes withoutsaying that the editor was Karl Marx, and amonghis collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath, WilhelmWolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, Lassallesent contributions. It is but rarely given to a dailypaper to have such an editorial staff. In the thirdvolume of his " Collected Papers of Marx and Engels,"Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles whichappeared in this journal. They are still worth reading.Here are a few examples. After the fall of Viennahe wrote an article concluding with the followingwords : " With the victory of the ' Red Republic 'in Paris the armies from the inmost recesses of every


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DAYS IN LONDON 51the contributors and printers. Then he travelled toParis, where he witnessed not the triumph of the RedRepublic

but that of the counter-revolution. In July,1849, he was banished by the French Government tothe boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; hepreferred, however, to go over to London, where heremained to the end of his life.

IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON.Marx lived for more than a generation in London.

Half of this time was spent in a wearying strugglefor existence, which, however, did not prevent himfrom collecting and systematising a vast amount ofmaterial for his life-work, " Capital," nor from takinga decisive part in the Labour movement as soon asthe opportunity presented itself, as it did on thefounding of the International. The first decade wasparticularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851,by Marx's wife to Weydemeyer, in America, givesan affecting picture of their poverty during these firstyears of exile. (" Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II.,pp. 18-21.)The attempt to continue the Neue RheinischeZeitung under the title Neue Rheinische Revue hadonly the negative result of swallowing up Marx's lastresources. How poor Marx then was can be judgedfrom the fact that he had to send his last coat to thepawnshop in order that he might buy paper for hispamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial (towardsthe end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentabledifferences sprang up among the German exiles,


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THE INTERNATIONAL 55an interest in the fate of Poland and in other inter-national questions concerning liberty.At the International Exhibition held in London in

1862, the Labour leaders made the acquaintance of adeputation of French working men, with whom theyafterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and1864, in the course of this correspondence, the ideaof founding an international union of workers wasmooted ; and in the fourth week of September, 1864,this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegatesfrom Paris and London held a conference in Londonfrom the 25th to the 28th of September, and theevent was celebrated by a public gathering in St.Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marxreceived an invitation to this meeting in orderthat the German workers might be representedthere. This conference and meeting resulted in theformation of the International Working Men'sAssociation. Committees and sub-committees wereelected to draw up a declaration of principles andoutline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followersand a Frenchman submitted schemes which werehanded over to Marx to be elaborated by him. Heconsigned them to the waste-paper basket and wrotethe " Inaugural Address," giving a history of theEnglish workers since the year 1825, and deducingthe necessary conclusions. The declaration of prin-ciples is entirely the work of Marx, and it is byno means a subtly and diplomatically conceivedcomposition designed to please English and Frenchworking men ; it consists essentially of Marxian ideasexpressed in terms, however, which would appeal toEnglish working men of that time. " It was difficult,"writes Marx to Engels (" Correspondence," Vol.


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56 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXIII., p. 191) " so to arrange matters that our viewshould appear in a form which would prove accept-able to the working-class movement with its presentoutlook. ... It needs time before the re-animated movement will allow of the old boldnessof speech. One must go fortiter in re, suaviter inmodo (firmly maintaining essential principles with apleasant manner)."The Inaugural Address sums up the history of theEnglish working class from 1825 to 1864, and showsthat from its struggles, as indeed from modern socialhistory in general, the following lessons may belearnt by the proletariat : independent economic andpolitical action by the working class ; the turning toaccount of reforms forced out of the ruling classesby the proletariat; international co-operation ofworkers in the Socialist revolution and against secret,militarist diplomacy.Marx devoted a great deal of his time during theyears 1865 to ]871 to the International. Its progressawoke in him the greatest hopes. In 1867 he writesto Engels : " Things are moving. And in the nextrevolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems,we (i.e., you and I) have this powerful machineryin our hands." (" Correspondence of Marx andEngels," Vol. III., p. 406.)The International passed through three phases :from 1865 to 1867 the followers of Proudhon heldsway ; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the ascend-ant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated andultimately broken up by the Bakunists. Thefollowers of Proudhon, like those of Bakunin, wereagainst political action and in favour of the federativeeconomic form of social organisation, only the


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THE INTERNATIONAL 57Bakunists were also Communists, whereas thefollowers of Proudhon had an antipathy to Commun-ism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx onlyon the one point that he made~economics the basisof the working-class movement. Both groups, how-ever, accused him of being dictatorial, of attemptingto concentrate the whole power of the Internationalin his own hands. Besides insurmountable theoreticaldifferences, racial and national prejudices crept intothe International as disintegrating factors. TheRomance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marxas a pan-German, and conversely, some Marxiansconsidered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late as 1914,in the first months of the war, Professor JamesGuillaume, the last of the Bakunists, wrote apamphlet entitled " Karl Marx, Pangermaniste "(Paris).Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia;

d. 1876, in Berne) lived and studied in Germanyduring the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he took partin the revolution, was arrested, then handed over toRussia and banished to Siberia, whence he escapedin 1856, afterwards living in various countries ofWestern Europe. He was an indifferent theorist, andcontributed little to the enrichment of philosophicalAnarchism, but he distinguished himself by hisimmense revolutionary activity and his capacity forsacrifice. The influence which he exercised sprangfrom his character. He had been acquainted withthe Young Hegelians as well as with Marx, Engels,and Wilhelm Wolff since the beginning of the forties.Until the end of 1868 he acknowledged Marx as hisintellectual leader, as is evident from the followingletter which he addressed to Marx :


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THE PARIS COMMUNE 59VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE.

On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Armywas defeated near Sedan and compelled to capitulateon the following day- Among the prisoners wasLouis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empirefell on September 4, and France was proclaimed aRepublic. On September 6 Marx wrote to Engels :*' The French section of the International travelledfrom London to Paris in order to do foolish things inthe name of the International. They want to over-throw the Provisional Government and set up aCommune de Paris. 9 ' (" Correspondence," Vol. IV.,p. 330).Although the Provisional Government of the newly-

baked French Republic was in no wise made up offriends of the democracy, Marx and Engels expressedthemselves against any revolutionary action by theParis working class. In the second Address (ordeclaration) of the General Council of the Inter-national, written on September 9, and composed byMarx, the question is discussed as follows :" Thus the French working class finds itself

placed in extremely difficult circumstances. Anyattempt to overthrow the new Government, whenthe enemy is already knocking at the gates of Paris,would be a hopeless piece of folly. The Frenchworkers must do their duty as citizens; but theymust not let themselves be overcome by thenational reminiscences of 1792 Theyhave not to repeat the past but to build the future.Let them quietly and with determination make themost of the republican freedom granted to them,in order to carry out thoroughly the organisation


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60 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXof their own class. That will give give them new,Herculean strength for the rebirth of France andfor our common task the emancipation of theproletariat." (" Civil War in France," SecondAddress.)Marx then urged the French workers not to do

anything foolish, not to set up a revolutionaryCommune of Paris, but to make use of their repub-lican liberties to create proletarian organisations andto save and discipline their forces for future tasks.Circumstances, however, proved much stronger thanany words of wisdom. Goaded by the anti-democratic moves of the Government supporters,deeply humiliated by the defeats of the French army,burning with patriotism and whipped up into furyagainst the " capitulards," the Paris working mencast Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolutionon March 18, 1871, proclaiming the Paris Commune.Paris was to be the capital of a Socialist Republic.In seven weeks the Paris Revolution was overthrown

and " Vae victis ! " (Woe to the vanquished !)Marx afterwards wrote the pamphlet on " The CivilWar in France, 1871," which is one of the mostmature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirelyadrift from the revolutionaries the Bolsheviks of thattime but defended them with unsurpassable energy.It is the swan song of Marx and of the first Inter-national.

VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE.During the last twelve years of his life Marx had

to fight almost uninterruptedly against various bodily


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THE EVENING OF LIFE 61ailments, all of which had their origin in his chronicliver complaint and over-exertion. His work, forwhich he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an Americanfriend, " health, happiness and family," remainedunfinished. He devoted his enforced leisure tomaking a study of American agriculture and of ruralconditions in Russia, for which purpose he learntRussian; he likewise occupied himself with studies ofthe Stock Exchange, banking, geology, physiology,and higher mathematics. In 1875 he wrote his" Criticism of the Gotha Program " (" Neue Zeit,"9th year, Vol. I., No. 18) which contains somevery important data as to Marx's attitude to theState, to the revolutionary period of transition fromCapitalism to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist societyitself.He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering

his health. In 1877 and 1878 he was in some measurecapable of carrying on his work, and set aboutarranging his manuscripts and getting the secondvolume of " Capital " ready for the press; it soonappeared, however, that his capacity for work hadgone. The decline in body and mind could no longerbe checked ; even visits to French and Algerianwatering-places proved ineffective. It was just at thistime that Marx began to find recognition both inFrance and in England : Jules Guesde, Henry M.Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxiandoctrines, and Marxian and anti-Marxian partieswere formed. But the man to whom this recognitionhad come was already a ruin. Bronchial catarrh,inflammation of the lungs, spasmodic asthma,together with the loss of his wife on December 2,1881, and of his eldest daughter (Mme. Longuet) in


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THE EVENING OF LIFE 63" Just as Darwin discovered the law of the

evolution of organic nature, so Marx discovered theevolutionary law of human history the simple fact,hitherto hidden under ideological overgrowths, thatabove all things men must eat, drink, dress, andfind shelter before they can give themselves topolitics, science, art, religion, or anything else, andthat therefore the production of the materialnecessaries of life and the corresponding stage ofeconomic evolution of a people or a period providesthe foundation upon which the national institu-tions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideasof the people in question have been built, and uponwhich, therefore, their explanation must be based,a procedure the reverse of that which has hithertobeen adopted. Marx discovered also the special lawof motion for the modern capitalist mode of pro-duction and for the middle-class society which itbegets. With the discovery of surplus value lightwas at once thrown upon a subject, all the earlierinvestigations of which, whether by middle-classeconomists or by Socialist critics, had been gropingsin the dark. . . ."After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened

from Germany to pay a last tribute to his friend andmaster :

" The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was greatin his love and in his hate. His hate sprang fromhis love. He had a great heart, as he had a greatintellect. He has raised social democracy from asect, from a school, to a party, which now alreadyfights unconquered, and in the end will win thevictory."


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IV.

THE MARXIAN SYSTEM.I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.

AS a guide to his studies from 1843-4 onwards,Marx used the conception of history, ormethod of investigation, which in contra-distinction to the idealist conception of history ofHegel was named materialistic. As its nature isdialectic as it seeks to conceive in thought theevolving antagonisms of the social process it is, likeHegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a methodof investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marxwork out his method of investigation in a special andcomprehensive form ; the elements of it are scatteredthroughout his writings, particularly in the CommunistManifesto and in the " Poverty of Philosophy," andserve the purpose of polemics or demonstration. Onlyin the preface to his book, " On the Critique ofPolitical Economy " (1859) did he devote two pagesto a sketch of his conception of history, but inphraseology which is not always clear, sequential, orfree from objection. It was the intention of Marx towrite a work on Logic, where he would certainly haveformulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As,however, his fundamental ideas on this subject areavailable, we are able to extract the essentials of hisposition.A glance over human history suffices to teach usthat from age to age man has held to be true or falsevarious opinions on rights, customs, religion, the65 a


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CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 67means of life. And this is determined by the natureof the productive forces. These are of two kinds :inanimate and personal. The inanimate productiveforces are : soil, water, climate, raw materials, toolsand machines. The personal productive forces are :the labourers, the inventors, discoverers, engineers,and finally, the qualities of the race the inheritedcapacities of specific groups of men, which facilitatework.The foremost place among the productive forcesbelongs to the manual and mental labourers ; they arethe real creators of exchange-value in capitalistsociety. The next place of importance is taken bymodern technology, which is an eminently revolu-tionising force in society. (" Capital " (German),Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14, " Poverty ofPhilosophy " (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.)So much for the conception " Productive Forces,"which plays an important part with Marx. Wecome now to the other equally important notion,"Conditions of production." By this phrase Marxunderstands the legal and State forms, ordinances and

laws, as well as the grouping of social classes andsections : thus, the social conditions which regulateproperty and determine the reciprocal human relationsin which production is carried on. The conditions ofproduction are the work of men in society. Just asmen produce various material goods out of thematerials and forces made available to them byNature, so they create out of the reactions of theproductive forces upon the mind definite social,political, and legal institutions, as well as systems ofreligion, morals, and philosophy.


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CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 71The revolutionary changes in society depend on two

groups of phenomena, which, although casuallyconnected with each other, yet work differently. Oneof these groups of phenomena is technical, andconsists in changes in the productive forces. The othergroup, which is the effect of the first, is of a personalnature, and consists in struggles between the socialclasses. Let us consider the first group of causes.As the productive forces expand, through greaterskill on the part of the worker, through discoveriesof new raw material and markets, through theinvention of new labour processes, tools andmachines, and through the better organisation oftrade and exchange, so that the material basis or theeconomic foundation of society is altered, then theold conditions of production cease to promote theinterests of production. For the conditions of pro-duction : the former social classes, the former laws,State institutions, and intellectual systems wereadapted to a state of the productive forces which iseither in process of disappearing, or no longer exists.The social and intellectual superstructure no longercorresponds to the economic foundation. The pro-ductive forces and the conditions of production comeinto conflict with each other.

This conflict between the new reality and the oldform , this conflict between new causes and the obsoleteeffects of bygone causes, begins gradually to influencethe thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that theyare confronted with a new external world, and thata new era has been opened.

Social divisions acquire a new significance : classesand sections which were formerly despised gain insocial and economic power; classes which were


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CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 75word, man's consciousness, changes with everychange in the conditions of his material existence,in his social relations and in his social life ?*' What else does the history of ideas prove thanthat intellectual production changes in character inproportion as material production is changed. Theruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideasof its ruling class." When people speak of ideas that revolutionisesociety they do but express the fact that withinthe old society the elements of a new one have beencreated, and that the dissolution of the old ideaskeeps even pace with the dissolution of the oldconditions of existence." When the ancient world was in its last throesthe ancient religions were overcome by Christianity.When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenthcentury to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought itsdeath-battle with the then revolutionary bour-geoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedomof conscience merely gave expression to the swayof free competition within the domain of know-ledge."Now one step farther. When the conditions of

production, the social divisions into classes, and thelaws of property become fetters to the productiveforces, when the conflict of interests condense them-selves into class struggles, then comes a period ofsocial revolution.

" With the change of the economic foundationthe entire immense superstructure is more or lessrapidly transformed. In considering such trans-formations the distinction should always be made


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78 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXThe materialist conception of history has shown

itself to be a fruitful method of historical investiga-tion. Some aspects of this idea were uttered bothbefore and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution inthe positions of classes and the struggles whichfollowed hard on the English industrial revolution(1760 1825), and everywhere attended the transitionfrom an agrarian to an industrial State, were toopalpable to be overlooked. It was Marx who fusedthese ideas, with the aid of the Hegelian dialecticsmade of them a method of investigation, and pressedthem into the service of Socialism and historicalresearch.

II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES, AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS.

One of the most important contributions of Marx tothe understanding of historical processes is hisconception of social classes and of class struggles.Although, prior to Marx, there were historians andpoliticians who pointed out the part played by socialclasses in politics and in social convulsions, it wasMarx who first grasped this conception in its entirescope and significance, giving it precise form, andmaking it an essential part of political and socialthought. He refers to the subject in the CommunistManifesto in the following terms :

" The Socialist and Communist systems properlyso called, those of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, andothers, spring

into existence in the early undeveloped


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80 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXsociety, or that a capitalist personally supervises bisundertaking, or organises his business, so that hisprofits partly consist in wages of superintendence orsalary. The outstanding feature is that the chiefinterest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilstthat of the capitalist is directed on property. It goeswithout saying that the social classes are not com-pletely homogeneous. Like botanical and zoologicalclasses, they may be divided into kinds and species ;the working classes include well-paid hand and brainworkers, as well as sweated sections ; but all the sub-divisions of the social classes possess the commonoutstanding quality of the same source of livelihood,which is either personal labour or the possession ofcapital. One class disposes only of labour-power,while the other class owns the means of production.Between these two classes, says Marx, there aredeep-seated, unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead toa class struggle. The antagonisms are primarily ofan economic nature. The wage-earners, as the ownersof labour power, are constrained to sell this as dearas possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages,whereas the owners of capital endeavour to buy suchlabour-power as cheap as possible, i.e., to pay theleast possible wages. This antagonism is indeedfundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch theintellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, thisantagonism is only one as between buyer and seller,but in reality the distinction is very great, as theseller of labour-power will quickly starve if he doesnot market his commodity. The owner of the meansof production is therefore in a position to cause theseller of labour-power to starve, if the latter does notaccept the conditions which the capitalist imposes.


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CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLES 88the capitalist economic order. The class struggleacts as a lever of social revolution.The original antagonism of the worker and capitalistover wages and hours of labour becomes an impas-

sionate struggle of two classes over the question ofthe maintenance or transformation of the social andeconomic system one of which classes fights for theexisting order of private property and the other forthe coming Socialistic system. Great social classstruggles inevitably become political struggles. Theimmediate object of the struggle is the possession ofthe power of the State, with the aid of which thecapitalist class endeavours to maintain its position,whilst the working class aims at the conquest of thepower of the State in order to accomplish its largerobjects.The following chapter will show the direction takenby the Labour movement. Here we will but brieflyrefer to the profound influence of Marx's doctrine ofthe class struggle as exercised in political thought.Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles ofpolitical parties seemed to revolve around ideas andgreat personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship wereprevalent. Now, political thought, consciously orunconsciously, proceeds along class and economiclines. This is equally true of historical investigations.These new political and historical orientations arelargely the result of Marx's life-work.

Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrineof the class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionarytactics of the Socialist and Labour movement, to thesystem of Workers' Councils, and Proletarian Dicta-torship. If the emerging class and its struggleconstitutes the lever of social revolution and the


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86 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX" The first step in the revolution by the working

class is to raise the proletariat to the position ofruling class, to win the battle of democracy." The proletariat will use its political supremacyto wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bour-geoisie, to centralise all instruments of productionin the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariatorganised as the ruling class; and to increase thetotal of productive forces as rapidly as possible." Of course, in the beginning, this cannot beeffected except by means of despotic inroads on therights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeoisproduction ; by means of measures, therefore, whichappear economically insufficient and untenable, butwhich, in the course of the movement, outstripthemselves, necessitate further inroads upon the oldsocial order, and are unavoidable as a means ofentirely revolutionising the mode of production."But suppose that it is not the revolutionary working

class which first attains to power in the revolution,but the democracy of the lower middle class and thesocial reformists. In this case, Marx gives the follow-ing advice : " Separate from it, and fight it." In theaddress to the League of Communists in 1850 he said :" It may be taken for granted that in the bloodyconflicts that are coming, as in the case of previousones, the courage, resolution, and sacrifice of theworkers will be the chief factor in the attainment ofvictory. As hitherto, so in this struggle, the mass ofthe lower middle class will maintain an attitude ofdelay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as possible,in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to arrogateit to themselves and call on the workers to remain


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ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 87quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, andto exclude the proletariat from the fruits of victory.It is not in the power of the workers to hinder thelower middle classes from doing this, but it is withintheir power to render their success over the armedproletariat very difficult, to dictate to them suchconditions that from the beginning the rule of themiddle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and itslater substitution by the rule of the proletariatis considerably facilitated." The workers must, during the conflict and im-mediately afterwards, as much as ever possible, opposethe compromises of the middle class, and compel thedemocrats to execute their present terrorist threats.They must aim at preventing the subsiding of therevolutionary excitement immediately after thevictory. On the contrary, they must endeavour tomaintain it as long as possible." Far from opposing so-called excesses, and makingexamples of hated individuals or public buildingsto which hateful remembrances are attached, bysacrificing them to the popular rage, such examplesmust not only be tolerated, but their direction musteven be taken in hand. During the struggle and afterthe struggle, the workers must seize every opportunityto present their own demands side by side with thoseof the middle-class democrats. The workers mustdemand guarantees as soon as the middle-classdemocrats propose to take the government in hand.If necessary, these guarantees must be exacted, andthd new rulers must be compelled to make everypossible promise and concession, which is the surestway to compromise them. The workers must size upthe conditions in a cool and dispassionate fashion,


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88 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXand manifest open distrust of the new Government,in order to quench, as much as possible, the ardourfor the new order of things and the elation whichfollows every successful street fight. Against the newofficial Government, they must set up a revolutionaryworkers' government, either in the form of localcommittees, communal councils, or workers' clubs orworkers' committees, so that the democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses itssupport amongst the working classes, but from thecommencement finds itself supervised and threatenedby a jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire massof the working class. In a word : from the firstmoment of victory the workers must no longer leveltheir distrust against the defeated reactionary party,but direct it against their former allies, who wouldseek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.The workers must be armed and organised to enablethem to threaten energetic opposition to this party,whose treason to the workers will commence in thefirst hour of victory. The arming of the whole pro-letariat with rifles and ammunition must be carriedout at once, and steps taken to prevent the revivingof the old militia, which would be directed againstthe workers. But should this not be successful, theworkers must endeavour to organise themselves as anindependent guard, choosing their own chief andgeneral staff, with orders to support not the Statepower, but the councils formed by the workers. Whereworkers are employed in State service, they must armand organise in a special corps, with a chief chosenby themselves, or form a part of the ProletarianGuard. Under no pretext must they give up theirarms and equipment, and any attempt at disarma-


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ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 89ment must be forcibly resisted. Destruction of theinfluence of the middle-class democrats over theworkers, immediate independent and armed organisa-tion of the workers, and the imposition of the mostirksome and compromising conditions possible uponthe rule of the bourgeois democracy, which is for thetime unavoidable. . . . We have noted that theDemocrats come to power in the next phase of themovement, and how they will be obliged to imposemeasures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It willbe asked what contrary measures should be proposedby the workers. Naturally, in the beginning of themovement the workers cannot propose actual Com-munist measures, but they can (1) compel theDemocrats to attack the old social order from as manysides as possible, disturb its regular course, andcompromise themselves, and concentrate in the handsof the State as much as possible of the productiveforces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc.(2) When the Democrats propose measures which arenot revolutionary, but merely reformist, the workersmust press them to the point of turning such measuresinto direct attacks on private property; thus, forexample, if the small middle class propose to purchasethe railways and factories the workers must demandthat such railways and factories, being the propertyof the reactionaries, shall be simply confiscated bythe State, without compensation. If the Democratspropose a proportional tax, the workers must demanda progressive tax; if the Democrats themselvesdeclare for a moderate progressive tax, the workersmust insist on a tax so steeply graduated as to causethe collapse of large fortunes ; if the Democratsdemand the regulation of the State debt, the workers


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90 LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARXmust demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demandsof the workers must everywhere be directed againstthe concessions and measures of the Democrats.. . . Further, the Democrats will either workdirectly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if theycannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, willseek to paralyse it by granting the greatest possibleindependence to the municipalities and provinces.The workers must set themselves against this plan,not only to secure the one and indivisible GermanRepublic, but to concentrate as much power aspossible in the hands of the State. They need not bemisled by democratic platitudes about the freedom ofthe Communes, self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be

* the revolution in permanence.'"

This Address o

Documents

M. Beer - The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx