Marx—from the abolition of labour to the abolition of the abolition of labour

Hirrory o/European Idea Vol. 17. No. 4. pp. 485-502, 1993 0191-6599/93 $6.00 + 0.00 Printed m Great Britain 0 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd

MARX-FROM THE ABOLITION OF LABOUR TO THE ABOLITION OF THE ABOLITION OF LABOUR

AVNER COHEN*

The question of what Marx really meant by the abolition (uuflebung) of labour has given rise to much controversy. In order to discuss it one has first to point to its origins.

Apparently, there is some ambiguity in Marx’s concept of labour, otherwise how could Shlomo Avineri (The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, 1968) claim that both in his early and later writings Marx defined labour as the positive content of human life’,’ while Herbert Marcuse (Reason and Revolution, London, 1963) argues that Marx ‘. . . used the term “labour” to mean that free and universal development is denied the individual who labours and it is clear that the.. . liberation of the individual is the negation of labour.’

It seems that there is a considerable discrepancy between the two notable scholars. In order to follow its development we had better turn to the text of the

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: ‘all human activity hitherto has been labour’ says Marx, adding that ‘it is the exoteric revelation of man’s essential powers’.3 According to that statement Avineri’s interpretation of Marx’s view of labour as the content of human life appears to be quite right. However, his claim that Marx thinks this content to be positive is wrong. The same sentence which tells us that ‘all human activity hitherto has been labour’ ends in characterising labour as an ‘activity estranged from itself .4 Here it seems Marcuse’s argumentation (of Marx’s negative opinion of labour) finds its foundation. Marx uses the term labour-explains Marcuse-to mean nothing else but ‘. . . the activity which creates surplus-value in commodity production or which produces capital’.5 But why must this activity be such an antithesis to freedom? Marcuse does not directly answer this question. Nevertheless one can conclude that he thinks that Marx meant that production in the framework of capitalism ‘determines the entire pattern of human life and does satisfy neither the individuals potentialities nor their needs’.6

Reading Marcuse, it is not quite clear whether Marx is of the opinion that labour is the negation of freedom because of the capitalistic division of its products or because of its own division, i.e. the division of labour. In any case, Marx made himself very clear at this point. Division of labour, he says, requires specialisation, that is, limitation of the great creative potential which is the essence of man as species-being (Gattungswesen). ‘For as soon as division of labour comes into being each man has particular exclusive sphere of activity which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape, he is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd or a critical critic and must remain so’.’

*Department of History, University of Haifa, Oranim, Tivon 36901, Israel.

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Actually Marx opposes not only the division of labour, he is criticising labour itself, I.. the estrangement is manifested not only in the result but in the act of production, within the producing activity itself . . labour is external to the

worker, i.e. it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not development freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. His labour is therefore not voluntary but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of need, it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it’.* Thus, Marx characterises labour as an activity that only in its end does it realise its end. Labour then is nothing but a means, in itself not desired but imposed on man who must employ it (in order) to achieve what he really wants: his livelihood.

Obviously, Marx does not conceive labour as ‘the positive content of human life’, rather it is its alienation, hence it would be abolished. Apparently that does not seem to be possible. Marx himself should have realised it too, but did he? And if he did, then what could he truly mean by calling for the abolition of labour. Here the controversy begins.

In the first volume of Capital, Marx wrote that labour is ‘a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and nature, and therefore no life’.9 This view is repeated, and even honed, in the third volume of Capital: ‘Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his wants, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formation and under all modes of production’.‘”

Why did Marx bother to develop arguments on a subject which there appeared to be no debate? It would seem the answer is found in his early writings. In a polemic against M. Stirner in The German Ideology Marx attacked the notion of freedom of labour. ‘Freedom of labour is free competition . . Labour is free in all

civilised countries; it is not a matter of freeing labour but of abolishing it’.” In the first part of the same text Marx even took pains to make clear that ‘the subjection of the separate individuals to the division of labour, can only be removed by the abolition of private property and labour itself .I2 This is because, as had already been explained in the Economic andPhilosophicalManuscripts of 1844, ‘Labour is only an expression of human activity within the alienation, of the manifestation of life as the alienation of life’.‘-’ Therefore, ‘the proletarians if they are to assert themselves as individuals, have to abolish the hitherto prevailing conditions of existence (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to then), namely, labor’.14 Thus, the mature Marx positing the necessity of labour, debates the younger Marx, who sought to abolish it.

The question of Marx and the abolition of labour has come under renewed scrutiny in the last decade, playing a significant role in the debate provoked by the Althusserian interpretation of Marx. A Rattansi (Marx and the Division of

Labour, New Jersey, 1982), a follower of the Althusserian school, seeks to use the transformation in Marx’s views on the abolition of labour to prove the existence of a breach between the young and mature philosopher. That breach is no less than the replacement of Utopian Humanism by a sober realism, part of a general development of Marxian thought from an ideology to a science.15 In contrast, Isidor Wallimann (Estrangement, Marx’s Conception of Human Nature and the

Marx and the Abolition of Labour 487

Division of Labor, Connecticut, 1981) who, for present purposes, represents the humanistic school of Marxist interpretation (Marcuse, Avineri, Istvan Meszaros), seeks to highlight the permanent aspects of Marx’s philosophy.16 This is in order to prove the continuity of the normative perspective which characterised the early writings and was also present in the economic critique of later years. Accordingly, Wallimann argues that Marx never denounced the abolition of labour because he never introduced such a notion in the first place. In his opinion, the young Marx has indeed striven to abolish the coercive nature of the division of labour. However, this does not at all contradict Marx’s later conception which focussed on an expansion of leisure. In fact, the two were varied formulations of the same idea.

Before analysing these two rival interpretations, we prefer to present a third

perspective. The previous quotations seem to prove that Marx indeed changed his opinion

over the question of the abolition of labour. On that basis, the Althusserian interpretation would appear to be correct. However, this does not mean that the particular signification assigned by the Althusserians to Marx’s change of mind has to be accepted. In fact, one should dismiss the argument that Marx thus abandoned humanistic sentimentalism in favour of scientific realism. But by so doing, we are confronted with new issues which both the Althusserians and their criticis are free to ignore.

The older Marx exchanged the abolition of labour for the shortened working

day.

Beyond it begins the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.”

Does this testify to a change in Marx’s view of labour? Is labour no longer perceived as alienation? ‘In fact the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and by external expediency ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production’.‘*

The Marxian ideal, thus, remains as it was: free self-development. ‘That

development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom’.i9

True, realisation of this ideal in Marx’s late thought is no longer complete; it is partial. In this sense there is justice in the Althusserian insistence on characterising Marx’s philosophy according to the stage of its development. Still, there is no justification for the characterisation they employ: Marx never abandoned the emancipation of man and at no point is it possible to depict his materialism as purged of humanism.

Even if Marx’s maturation did not provoke a redefinition of the ideal it did mark a transition to a different and apparently more realistic cognition, one which forced him to distinguish in new ways between the possible and the impossible. In this context it should be noted that the differences between Wallimann and Rattansi divert us from the not insignificant points of agreement between them. Both reject Marx’s youthful notion of abolishing the division of

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labour as a naive Utopia. And both viewed socialism as the realistic possibility of shortening the working day. Rattansi expresses this opinion openly. Wallimann disguises it by pretending that the early Marxian view was nothing but an alternative formulation of the later one. 20 And, indeed the call for abolishing the division of labour (and, it would follow, of labour as such) does seem to be without foundation. Apparently this is even young Marx’s own view. Otherwise why should he declare in the opening pages of the German ideology that ‘Life involves before everything else eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself .21

It appears that labour is an exigency from which all forms of human activity, organisation, and thought are derived. But if existence compels humanity to labour, what is the point of seeking its abolition? Resolution of this dilemma requires differentiating between labour and its purpose, which exists outside of it. The purpose of labour-reproduction of the labourer, meaning production of items essential for subsistence-never disappears. However, labour is not the only way to guarantee subsistence. What characterises labour is its status as an activity whose goal is not contained within it. Marx, on the other hand, was able to describe a society which answered its own subsistence needs through activity which contained its own goal.

‘Whereas in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another thing tomorrow to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic’.??

The young Marx’s appeal for the abolition of labour is, thus, no call for idleness but a preference for that activity which forgoes efficiency and expertise in favour of curiosity and creativity. The whole idea is reminiscent of the

Fourierian Utopia striving to establish a society in which labour becomes amusement, This analogy intensifies the contradiction between Marx’s early philosophising and his later thought with which he attacked Fourierism as an impossibility: ‘Labour cannot become play as Fourier would like’.2’ In Marx’s later conception man is sentenced to labour. Existence will never allow him respite because, ‘With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his want.’ The conclusion: ‘Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production’.24 Therefore, the older Marx focussed on the possibility of increasing the amount of free time within the framework of socialist society.

Why do Wallimann and Rattansi deem Marx’s position on shortening the working day to be more realistic than Marx’s early demand for the abolition of the division of labour? Marx’s statement abolishing the abolition of labour is made necessary by his assumption concerning the correlation between the development of production and the expansion of human needs. However, careful scrutiny of these passages provokes questions about the whole theses. (A) Why should we accept the equation of spontaneous activity with a decline in productivity? Is it not possible to satisfy needs, even as they grow, in ways which are not necessarily


purposive (ways which Marx himself knew how to describe in The German Ideology)? (B) If it was only possible to satisfy increasing needs through purpose activity, what could guarantee that the mutuality between the increased efficiency of labour and the growing appetite for goods would make a shorter working day possible? If the confidence in the existence of such a connection proves to be un- founded, as is implied in the first volume of Capital, then, why are the benefits of socialism, according to Marx’s later conception, denied by none other than Marx

himseh? It would seem that the difference between these two Marxian conceptions

of socialism (abolishing labour or only shortening the working day), is

qualitative rather than quantitative. This is because freedom, defined by the mature Marx as less time spent at labour, is only made possible by the improved efficiency of labour (what Marx called the producers’ rational regulation of their interchange with nature).*’ This means that expansion of the realm of freedom is dependent on increased necessity in the sphere of necessity: enhanced efficiency of labour denotes greater specialisation and clearly less freedom for the worker at his labour. Accordingly, not only will necessity not disappear; within its realm it will grow.

Thus, the later Marx sentenced humanity to an ever-intensifying inner dichtomy. Is such a divided existence even possible? Would the coercive nature of labour not dictate the quality of subsequent free time? Marx must have been aware of this problem, otherwise why would he have made such an effort to prove that in a socialist society the regulation of labour by and for the associated producers would not only allow a reduction of the working day but also change its character? It is as if the change in the purpose of labour was supposed to make it less purposive. 26 But if Marx admitted that labour remained ‘a realm of

necessity’, then his desperate attempt is doomed to fail. Indeed, if the productive activity is still not an end but a means, then it must be characterised as labour and it remains as an antithesis to freedom. Hence free time is still not a freedom but moral and physical rest, necessary for the reproduction of the labourer as such.

It seems then that Marx’s refutations of his earlier notion of the abolition of labour are not sustainable. What’s more, the later version of socialism-based on the limited freedom achieved by shortening the working day-while seeming to be more modest, is, as has been shown, rife with internal contradictions. Nevertheless, its apparent lack of pretension is enough to bridge the chasm between two such adamant opponents as Wallimann and Rattansi, and bring them to a consensus that this is the ‘true Marxian position’.

But their agreement misses the point. It precludes any discussion on the question of why Marx abandoned the notion of the abolition of labour. Wallimann, busy arguing against the Althusserian claim of a rupture between the young and mature Marx, would contend that Marx never even contemplated any approach to the division of labour apart from the shortened working day. Rattansi, as a faithful Althusserian, would certainly not overlook the emerging discrepancy in Marx’s perception of the problem. However, being an Althusserian, he has a ready-made ‘explanation’: since Marx’s early conceptions of the division of labour (and of anything else, for that matter) are not yet fully Marxian, they would obviously have to make way for the ‘scientific insights’ of the mature Marx. Since we are allowing ourselves to be skeptical about both the theoretical

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immaturity of the abolition of labour and the theoretical maturity of abolishing the abolition of labour, we cannot categorise this transformation in Marx’s thinking as necessarily an advance. We must reject the Althusserian under- standing of that transformation and view the whole concept of a ‘rupture’ as a misleading fiction which not only fails to solve the issue of Marx’s changed view, but even obscures it.

Explanation is to be found by reconnecting Marx’s philosophy to his political activity. Indeed, by reading Marxian theory in its political context, in light ofthe changing circumstances of the period, one satisfies Marx’s own demand that his philosophy be understood not as just another interpretation of reality, but as an attempt to change it.

* * *

In the debates within working class movements in the 1840s Marx expressed doubts about both the strategy of the immediate seizure of power (Blanquism) and that of abstention from the struggle for power (True Socialism). He pointed to a third way, connecting socialist emancipation to the concrete struggle which occurs within the ruling class. In contrast to the two opposing view, Marx believed that the workers’ movement could not remain aloof to the conflict within the political-economic elite, that which divided the productive sector of the bourgeoisie from the aristocracy and later on from the non-productive portions of the bourgeoisie itself (these portions ‘whose interest become antagonistic to the progress of industry’). 27 According to Marx, socialist society would develop out of the rise of the liberal bourgeoisie, which supplied the economic and technological foundations and optimal conditions for organising and educating the working class for its struggle. ‘The workers know very well that it is not just politically that the bourgeoisie will have to make broader concessions to them than the absolute monarchy, but that in serving the interests of its trade and industry it will create, willy-nilly, the conditions for the uniting of the working class and the uniting of the workers is the first requirement for their victory.. . it only has to compare the political position of the proletariat in England, France and America with that in Germany to see that the rule of the bourgeoisie does not only place quite new weapons in the hands of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, but that it also secures for it a quite different status, the status of a recognised part’.2x Later I intend to show that this approach of Marx to the revolutionary process was not only theoretical but also and mainly practical, that is to say this was the guiding principle of his political activity during the 1840s.

Following the revolutions of 1848-1849 Marx views changed radically. Generally speaking scholars do not ignore this change, however, they differ widely about its significance. Shlomo Avineri (The SocialandPoliticaI thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, 1948) claims that ‘Prior to 1848 Marx felt that capitalist society was quickly reaching its maturity’, but the debacle of 1848 convinced him that capitalism was still far removed from such maturity,2y while Alan Gilbert (Marx’s Politics, New Jersey, 198 1) argues that ‘the bourgeoisie had provided the ostensible leadership for the failing democratic and nationalist movements that Marx and Engels supported so vehemently in 1848. Given this experience they


concluded that popular insurrection might still catapult the bourgeoisie into power but the bourgeoisie would immediately seek terms of compromise with the old regime in order to bridle the emerging proletarian movement. Thus the failure of Marx’s strategy led to a revised estimate of the bourgeoisie politics and

a new strategic solution’.30 Gilbert who emphasises Marx’s revolutionary tendency (and whose views are

supported by John Elster, John M. Maguire, Hal Draper and Fernando Claudin)3’ contends that following the 1848-1849 events Marx did not only delay the revolution (as suggested by Avineri) but essentially changed his concept of the revolutionary process. According to Gilbert, since the beginning of the 1850s Marx had to adopt a new strategy, therefore he no longer called the communists to participate in revolutions led by the bourgeoisie but to ‘galvanise a movement of workers and peasants and propel the democratic revolution to victory despite or even against the bourgeoisie’.32

Obviously, Avineri who underlines (the same as George Lichtheim, Richard M. Hunt, Otto Maenchen-Helfen and Boris Nicolaivsky) Marx’s evolutionary tendency cannot approve Gilbert’s interpretation.33 However, while none of them (as I hope to show later) is completely wrong, they all seem to miss the point, i.e. the change of Marx’s approach to the conflicts within the bourgeoisie.

In order to examine the significance of this change, one has to read the Class Struggles in France. Already at the beginning of this essay (which was first published in February 1850), Marx clarifies that ‘it was not the French bourgeoisie that ruled under Louis Philippe, but one faction ofit: bankers, stock exchanged kings, railway kings.. . the so-called finance aristocracy.. .‘, there was also the industrial bourgeoisie but it only ‘formed part of the official opposition, and represented only a minority of the Chambers’.34 What are the reasons for the productive branch of the French bourgeoisie being excluded from political power? Marx explains that enrichment of the financial aristocracy involved impoverishment of all other classes including the industrial bourgeoisie, ‘Owing to the financial straits the July monarchy was dependent from the beginning on the big bourgeoisie and its dependence on the big bourgeoisie was the inexhaustible source of increasing financial straits.. In general the instability of the state credit and the possession of state secrets gave the bankers and their associates in the Chambers and on the throne the possibility of evoking extraordinary fluctuations in the quotations of government securities, the result of which was always bound to be the ruin of mass of smaller capitalists and the fabulously rapid enrichment of the big gamblers.. . The July monarchy was nothing but a joint stock company for the exploitation of France’s national wealth.. . Trade industry, agriculture, shipping, the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie were bound to be endangered and prejudiced under this system. . . ‘.j5 Indeed, the ones ‘directly concerned in the overthrow of the finance aristocracy’, were ‘the reigning princes of the manufacturing interests’.36

Thus, according to Marx, the February Revolution was not levelled against the bourgeoisie as a whole but against the finance aristocracy alone. Furthermore, the revolution was not led by the Paris proletariat but by the industrial bourgeoisie. However, notes Marx, under the circumstances and since ‘the development of the industrial proletariat is, in general conditioned by the development of the industrial bourgeoisie . . . Nothing is more understandable

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than that the Paris proletariat sought to assert its own interest side by side with the interests of this bourgeoisie’.37

Marx explains that before the fall of the old regime, the proletariat could not reveal its conflict with the bourgeoisie. Confronted with the new situation, the industrial bourgeoisie gradually losing its progressive character, its rivalry with the financial elite seems to be forgotten and the two factions are now cooperating in the framework of the same party, the party of the Order.

Marx does not consider this turn of the industrialists to be astonishing, on the contrary, ‘In February they had misunderstood their position; February sharpened their wits. And who is more directly threatened by the workers than the employer, the industrial capitalist‘? The manufacturer, therefore, of necessity became in France the most fanatical member of the party of Order. The reduction of his profit by finance, what is that compared with the abolition of profit by the proletariat?‘jx

The alliance between the various factions of the bourgeoisie meant the gradual elimination of the achievements of the Paris proletariat at the beginning of the revolution. Thus, The Class Struggles in France is nothing but the story of the proletariat’s maturation, the end of illusions about solidarity between classes, i.e. revealing of the true nature of the so-called progressive bourgeoisie. Therefore, long before the coup d’itat of Louis Bonaparte, Marx could claim that the proletariat’s hope for even the slightest improvement in its condition ‘remains a utopia within the bourgeois republic’.‘”

Since Marx’s explanation for the defeat of 1848-1849 revolutions in Europe is the same as that of The Class Struggles in France, the conclusion of the latter has rightfully to be applied not only to France but to England, Germany, etc. Indeed, in the early 1850s Marx’s political perspective began to change. Since he was convinced that the revolutions were defeated everywhere by the accord reached between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy (a compromise born of the fears of the former and the concessions necessary if it wanted the proletariat’s help in advancing its interest), he doubted his previous assumptions. He could no longer believe that the workers’ movement’s cooperation with the radical bourgeoisie might be a means for achieving real progress. Therefore, on the eve of the downfall of the 1848-1849 revolutions he already stated that ‘every social reform remains a utopia until the proletarian revolution and the feudalistic counter revolution measure swords in a world war’.4”

Losing his faith in the bourgeoisie as a political force, Marx could no longer base his revolutionary strategy on bourgeois liberalism. However, if Marx wished to avoid regression into Blanquism, on the one hand, and ‘true socialism’, on the other, he would have to discover a new path to communism, neither conspiratorial nor utopian, but also no longer founded on the axiom that social progress is immanent to the development of the radical bourgeoisie.

In spite of his disappointment with the bourgeoisie’s role in the 1848 revolution, Marx still preferred capitalism to feudalism (this being the reason for his break with Lassale and his enthusiastic support for the North in the American Civil War). As made clear in his critique of the deflationary trend of the English monetary policy, he continued to consider any advance toward the proletarian revolution conditional on the continued development of production, even in the framework of capitalism. 4’ Yet how could processes which are dependent on the ,


accumulation of capital and economic modernisation be expected to usher in the desired socialist changes separately from liberal reforms designed to facilitate working class organisation education and political expression? Surely this represents the transition from the evolutionary path to a revolutionary act as dependent on creating something out of nothing. But then no essential difference exists between Marxian strategy and, on the one hand, Blanquism, and on the other, Utopianism. Marx was certainly not to be dragged so far. How then would the development of the bourgeoisie lead to the victory of the proletariat? Marx’s post-1848 response is found in the last edition of ‘Newe Rhinische Zeitung Politisch-okonomische Revue’, in a survey of the creation of the Bonapartist status-quo:

The status quo continued.. . until the economic relation themselves have again reached the point of development where a new explosion blows into the air.. . such a revolution is only possible in the period when both these factors, the modern production forces and the bourgeois forms of production come in collision with each other.. . a new revolution is possible only in consequence of a new crisis. It is however just as certain as this crisis.@

From the early 1850s Marx increasingly turned to this thesis of revolution- emerging from a chain of crises in which capitalist production becomes ever more trapped as it approached its climax. Marx supported the development of the economy of private property only because the development intensifies its own internal contradictions, until it reaches the point of collapse. It would appear that this paradoxical hypothesis served as the foundation for the change of Marx’s

strategy. As already referred this change meant a policy of non-intervention of the

workers’ movement in the conflicts within the bourgeoisie. The proletariat has merely to prepare itself for the revolution and the revolution has to wait until the breaking of the ultimate crisis.

That position of non-involvement enables the appearance of opposing interpretations such as that of Avineri, Lichtheim, Nicolaivesky and Hunt, on the one hand, and that of Gilbert, Elster and Maguire, on the other. The former group, in accordance with their emphasis on Marx’s evolutionary trend, could rightfully state that this apparent passivity (of Marx’s new strategy) shows that the failure of 1848-1849 revolutions led him (Marx) to the conclusion that since the socialist revolution depended on a higher stage of industrialisation, the downfall of capitalism is not as close as he had#previously thought. But the latter group, in accordance with their underlining of Marx’s revolutionary trend, could also be correct when contending that the adaptation of policy of non- intervention (in the internal conflict within the ruling class) means a break of the workers’ movement with the bourgeoisie.

It seems to me that both schools tend to reduce the significance of the change. None of them esteems the change as a turning point, and it remains as it was merely a more explicit presentation of the true nature of Marx’s philosophy. Therefore, Avineri and his associates must overlook Marx’s disappointment, following the defeat of 1848-1849 revolutions, of the radical bourgeoisie and its promise for progressive reforms within the framework of capitalism, while

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Gilbert and his associates have to ignore Marx’s early support of cooperation with the industrial bourgeoisie in its struggle for such reforms. Somehow both schools fail to take into account the role of the distinction between the various factions of the bourgeoisie, therefore they do not attach the appropriate importance to Marx’s retreat from the political meaning he had previously ascribed to this distinction.

Before examining further the change of Marx’s views on revolution, we must address several possible objections to it.

(a) Did not Marx write about revolution as deriving from economic crisis

prior to 1848. fb) Did not Marx continue, after 1848, to explore paths of revolution which

were not based on economic catastrophe?

In other words, did Marx reduce the pre-1848 struggle to nothing more than a matter of reforms and their ameliorating measures? And did he, after 1848, abandon reforms and focus exclusively on economic crisis?

The claim that Marx addressed economic questions-specifically the problem of impoverishment-prior to 1848 is true; nevertheless, the role of economic crisis as’the key to revolution emerged in his thought only after 1848. Marx first elucidated the problematic nature of industrial development under private capital in the Economic and Ph~~o~o~hica~ manuscripts of 1844 and later in the speech ‘On Free Trade’ and the essay, ‘Wage Labour and Capital’.43 It was also clear that the conflict built into the economic process can only be resolved through abolition of private property and organisation of production on a social basis. Even sot the place of this conception in the formation of Marx’s strategy before 1848 was marginal. Only later did it become central.

The most significant document concerning this question is the Communist Manifesto (which was written at the end of 1847). Marx claims there that the commercial crises ‘put on its trial each time more threateningly the existence of the entire bourgeois society’. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises, he asks; ‘On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets and by thorough exploitation of the old ones, That is to say by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented’.““

It seems then that the outcome of these economic crises would necessarily lead to the collapse of capitalism. One has to settle this view with the fact that when discussing in the same Manifesto, actual strategy, Marx calls the communists to support the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reforms in America.4s None of these movements intended to revolutionise the capitalistic system, both aimed to improve the working class condition by means of reforms within this system. Furthermore, in case the proletariat would be raised to the position of ruling class, Marx does not recommend the immediate abolition of all private property. On the contrary, some of the measures proposed such as those concerning the ‘centralisation of credit in the hands of the state’ are very favourable for the future development of industrial capitalism. 46 If in the manifesto this was only implicitly said, in the Demand of the Communist Party in Germany (drafted shortly after the outbreak of the 1848 revolution), it was explicitly proclaimed. The tenth clause of this document calls for the creation of ‘A State bank whose paper issues are legal tender, (and which) shall replace all private banks’. This. it


is explained, will make possible the gradual substitution of gold and silver specie by paper notes, cheapening the means of exchange and bringing an end to the rule of the large financial magnates over the credit system in favour of the productive forces as a whole. ‘Finally’ adds Marx, ‘this measure is necessary in order to bind the interest of the conservative bourgeoisie (i.e. the industrial capitalises-A.C.) to the cause of the revolution’.47

These positions of Marx’s were not altered during the revolution. In an article in ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ (4.10.1848) he expressed his support for the proposal of the French parliamentarian Turk to establish official mortgage banks which would alleviate the credite woes of the small and middle peasantry and help free it from dependence on magnates. Marx thought that Turk’s plan was essential for organising agriculture according to modern industrial needs, which require commercialisation and mobilisation of the land and an end of enslavement to the interest rate. Thus, he was sure that the attacks against this plan led by the representatives of the owners of the Bank of France were nothing but an attempt to prevent the replacement of regulation of credit by financial monopoly with ‘regulation of credit by the society represented by the state’.

Even though Marx did not suggest that Turk’s proposal might bring about the fall of capitalism, he considered this plan to be ‘in the general interest of

society’.48 That is to say, progressive reform could be achieved not only after capitalism but also in the framework of capitalism. Marx’s article in the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ is nothing but an appeal for communists and anybody else,

to support such reforms. Does this mean that Marx’s pre 1848 references to crises have merely a

rhetorical function? This might be best dealt with in the scope of a different essay. However, the supposition of the breaking down of the bourgeois economy was evidently not the base of Marx’s revolutionary strategy at that time.

In the 1840s Marx anticipated a bourgeois revolution of progressive character, informed by technological advancement on the one hand and, political liberalism on the other. Thus, as mentioned he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Chartist struggle in England and determined opponent of the militant traits in the German workers’ movement.49 The same view led him to attack ‘true socialism’s’ condemnation of the liberal bourgeoisie as hypocritical because of its agenda of only partial reform. So Marx’s call to communists to join democratic parties was also derived from these assumptions.5’ This ‘revisionism’ was also expressed in the IO-point program of the Manifesto, and the Demands of the Communist Party in Germany. 52 The same principle guided Marx during the 1848 revolution to encourage and practice cooperation with non-communist organisations. Therefore he ordered the dismantling of the ‘Communist League’, and pursued journalistic activities addressed not only to the working class but to a wider public ready to defend their civil liberties. 53 This behaviour clarifies his proclamation made in January 1849 about the workers’ preference for bourgeois rule instead of a return to medieval barbarism. 54 In short, even if there were references to economic crisis in the 1840s they have no practical significance; Marx’s politics in that period rested not on crisis, but on progress.

The second claim is that Marx supported various improvements in working class conditions even after 1848-thus, he did not change his strategy and certainly not its foundations. Over the 1850s on a number of occasions, Marx

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spoke in favour of the chartist movement and a shortened working day. Does this contradict his declarations, cited above, that in the wake of the failure of 1848 there was no hope for improving the situation of the working class in the presen! regime? And how is Marx’s support for the IO-hr working day (for women and children only) explained in light of Engel’s adamant opposition, expressed in two articles from the first half of the 185Os, against using this issue to mobilise workers against the industrialists?“5 Apparently, those facts produce the impression that Marx’s radicalism in 1850 was only a reflection of the general shock and disorientation which took hold of the workers’ movements after the revolutionary tide had run its course. Only with time, after tempers had cooled, would Marx be able to return to his earlier principles. Though Marx did not publicly renounce the extremist fervour of the early 185Os, his views did moderate, and he once again practiced a strategy of slow and steady advance.

But such an interpretive exercise designed to return Marx to his old course is doomed to failure. Even when he supported campaigns and strikes whose purpose was an improvement in working conditions, he made it clear that he did not act because of the chances for material success. He believed, the main achievement of the workers was not what they thought their goal to be, but what seemed to them to be only a means-the struggle itself. The association and organisation of the working class emerging through the struggle, were seeds for its future ability to wage the real battle-the revolution. Proof of this, for Marx, was found in the fact that the industrialists themselves knew that the real question was not over wages, but ruling power.s6 Marx, for his part, realised that, unlike his pre-1848 estimations, the Charter was not within reach.“l He wrote in March and April, 1853 that no Charter would spring from the good will of the English bourgeoisie. If it would come about at all, it would be in opposition to the bourgeoisie’s wishes, as a concession to the workers it mobilised in its own struggle against the aristocracy.5” Not long after, in July of the same year, when the electoral reforms proposed by the factory owners were defeated in Parliament, Marx understood that hopes of gaining a Charter through gradual and partial reform had been dashed forever. 59 He now began a direct attack on the industrial bourgeoisie and its conservatism vis-h-v& the reforms. He returned to a thesis first elaborated in November 1852, according to which the real function of the Chartists would only be realised after economic crisis, when the working class would wake up after six years of apathy and be redirected onto the path of political struggle. 6” Consequently, even in November 1857, when crisis forced the factory owners into compromise with several Chartist leaders over the electoral reform, Marx rejected their agreement and demanded an end to such contacts. He endorsed, instead, the exploitation of current circumstances for what he termed a ‘real agitation’.”

This isolationism is also expressed in Marx’s relations with G.J. Harney and E. Jones, the leaders of the left wing of the English workers movement. As early as the beginning of the 1850s Marx condemned Harney’s activities in the cooperative movement. Likewise, Jones’s opposition to that movement, as well as to the trade unions, earned him Marx’s praise. According to P. Kadogen (‘Harney and Engels’, International Review of Social History, 1965) these positions of Jones’s made him ‘the forefather of left sectarianism’. However, when, in the late 185Os, Jones too rejected Marx’s strategy and began to


cooperate with trade unions and the radical middle class leaders Marx declared in a letter to Veydemeyer, ‘As to Jones, my relationship with him has ended’.62

Those reservations of any intervention of the workers’ movement in the internal struggles within the ruling class do not mean that Marx abandoned the distinction he had previously made between the industrial and financial branches of the bourgeoisie. Indeed the structural and the functional differences between the various capitalist factions are fully analysed in the third volume of Capital. However, the distinction between these factions is merely economic, and it no longer has any political significance. ” Since the logic of this approach was already discussed (particularly in the analysis of The Class Struggles in France) there is no need to discuss it further.

Marx’s lack of faith in bourgeois liberalism, which was the basis of his opposition to the reformist strategy, did not as we know lead him to conspiratorial tactics. He preferred, instead, to base the advance towards socialist deteminism of crises. This view allowed him to re-anchor the revolutionary struggle in an objective historical process, returning it to its realistic character which seemed to have been lost in the aftermath of 1848. In addition, by postulating the revolution on crisis, Marx delayed the proletarian uprising which he considered the workers’ movement not yet ready for.

This analysis of Marxian policy of that period also suggests a variation of strategies: one for Germany and most ofthe continent, another for England and, most likely, France. Where the bourgeois had not yet risen to power, the workers’ movement had to ally itself with them against the aristocracy, not in anticipation of winning civil rights, political freedoms, and the rest of the reform programmes promised by the middle class, but in the assumption that until the capitalist economy reaches its full potential, the conditions for revolution will not yet have ripened. Those conditions were the strengthening of the working class and the commencement of acute crises. However, when discussing the more developed countries where constraints on private property had been removed (even if the productive bourgeoisie had not acquired complete political dominance), Marx pointedly rejected cooperation with the middle classes since it replaced the struggle for full human emancipation-which was only possible in these countries-with partial reforms. According to this view, even trade union struggles are considered only as a means for consolidating and organising the working class, which is to wait and prepare for an ineluctable general uprising born of the collapse of the capitalist economy.

In order to estimate the change of Marx’s view (as followed the 1848-1849 revolutions), one has to compare his statement on the future development of the relation between financial and industrial capital during the 1840s and the 1850/186Os. Concerning this issue in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx says ‘Everything which Proudhon conceives as a movement of labour against capital is only the movement of labour in the determination of capital, of industrial capital, against capital not consumed as capital, i.e. not consumed industrially. And this movement is proceeding along its triumphant road-the road to the victory of industrial capital’.64

But Marx’s statements in the third volume of Capital, regarding the same issue, are completely different. ‘The credit system which has its focus in the so-called national banks and the big money lenders and userers surrounding them,

498 Avner Cohen

constitutes enormous centralisation, and gives to this class of parasites the fabulous power, not only to periodically despoil industrial capitalists but also to interfere in actual production in a most dangerous manner-and this gang know nothing about production and has nothing to do with it’.65 Thus Marx concludes that ‘In a system of production, where the entire continuity of the reproduction process rests upon credit, a crisis must obviously occur’.hh In other words ‘Credit accelerates the violent eruptions of this contradiction-crisis and thereby the elements of disintegration of the old mode of production’.h7

The centrality of crises for Marx in this period is articulated not only in his published predictions of imminent economic catasgrophe, always a signal for revolution, but also in his correspondence with Engels.6x In November 1857, the two even announced to each other that the crisis had improved their health, Engels declaring: ‘In 1848 we said: Now our time is coming and in a certain sense it came, but now it is coming altogether, now it will be a fight for life’.h’ Unlike his published writings, the letters are free of manipulative aims, evidently that makes their contents so much important. His personal notebooks (from 1850-1851) enjoy a similar, and even perhaps greater, credibility. The editorial board of ‘M.E.G.A.‘, in summarising the first six notebooks (September 1850 to February 1851) addressed the mutuality of money. credit and crises,and has thus determined that Marx’s recognition of this interrelation was spurred by the practical need of class struggle. ‘” In an article from 1983, W. Jahn and D. Noske take a similar perspective of the notebooks. They think the notebooks intend to answer only one question: under what conditions will the revolution gain momentum? In other words, they trace the detailed manner in which a crisis forms.” L. Wassina has published similar conclusions, namely, that Marx’s focus in this period on a crisis arose because of its synonymity with revolution.” Marx himself apparently agreed with such an assessment. In a letter to Lassal in 21 December, 1857, he announced that the outbreak of an economic crisis had inspired him to complete his studies and prepare a supplement specifically addressing the current situation.”

Thus, attempts to challenge the centrality of crisis in the Marxian strategy after 1848 are doomed to failure. Furthermore, these last quoted passages suggest that Marx’s renewed interest in economic subjects was connected to the change in his views of the interrelation between crisis and revolution in the 1850s. However, conditioning the revolutionary process on economic crisis necessitates basic alterations in Marxian philosophy, ones which also affect the question of the

abolition of labour. Marx’s insistence on realism, and his decisive rejection of utopianism, led him

by the early 1840s to disqualify the ideal as a repudiation of the real. He sought, instead, to anchor the ideal in those possibilities suggested by reality. Accordingly, socialism is supposed to emerge from the contradictions of capitalism. It is a solution to a problem born under the capitalist regime, but unrealisable in its framework. In this sense, the contradiction which appears in capitalism dictates the shape of socialism.‘”

In Marx’s early thinking the social revolution was supposed to achieve full emancipation. This presupposed that the obstacles to self-fulfillment were the essence of the inherent contradiction in capitalism. That is to say capitalism was supposed to be eliminated because of its involvement with alienation. Alienation,


as it has already shown, first asserts itself in labour, if ‘the product of labour is alienation, the production itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation’.75

Obviously the elimination of such an alienation means the abolition of labour. However, that could not be achieved by political acts only. The political acts might be helpful in establishing the appropriate means for that abolition. But since the abolition of labour requires not only a change of the means but of the ends as well, the political acts could not be the abolition itself. The abolition of labour means nothing less than the placing of the activity as the purpose of the activity, that is transferring its purpose from the object to the subject and not the subject as an individual apart of his social relations but the subject as the relation between individuals. Therefore the socialist revolution ifintending to accomplish what Marx called ‘human emancipation’, has to be a cultural revolution which involves a radical change of the consciousness, of the self-consciousness and of values.76 This view matched the pre-1848 Marxian conception of the social transformation of the labourers in liberal bourgeois society from a class in itself to a class for itself-a class able to use democratic opportunities for organising, educating and gaining a critical perspective of the conditions of its own life and of its alienation; in other words, of its labour. Under such conditions not only is rejection of capitalism interpreted as the abolition of labour, but such an ambition is actually deemed possible.

After the failure of 1848, however, the socialist revolution could no longer be the complement to the partial emancipation achieved by capitalism, for that emancipation was exposed as illusory. Thus, revolution will not be a function of progress, but of the irrationality imminent to capitalist economy. It follows, then, that its role will be reduced to enhancing the rationality of the economy; that is, increasing the efficiency of labour, but by no means abolishing it.

I have already made clear that, in my opinion, Marx’s changed view of the abolition of labour was no indication of a retreat from humanism. Rather, it was an appropriation of humanism to what he thought to be the emerging circumstances of life in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the new reality the task of socialism is reduced. It is no longer to abolish labour, but to minimise it: ‘Only by supressing the capitalist mode of production, could the length of the working day be reduced to the necessary labor-time’.” However, Marx’s declaration about the universal necessity for labour not only limits freedom quantitatively (the time away from labour): it changes it qualitatively as well. Purposiveness sneaks back into human activity by way of the production process, and it can dictate social relations not only during the time of labour, but also after the working day is over. The claim that revolutionary ideals not found in the production system could determine the shape of production, is as has been noted, in complete contradiction to basic Marxian assumptions that anchor values in the production process. In such conditions communism can no longer be identified with the free creation of its own social relations. Nor can the promised emancipation be complete.

But these conclusions should come as no surprise. On the contrary, the success of Marx’s efforts to preserve the content of revolution-even after he had so radically redefined its causes and the means used to achieve it-is what should provoke wonderment. Such success does not seem possible.

500 Avner Cohen

Marx was conscious of the problems in his abolition of the abolition of labour. Otherwise, there would have been no point in emphasising the newer and freer

nature of Iabour after the revolution. ‘* Yet after i 848 he could no longer avoid , this trap without becoming caught up in an even more fierce contradiction- founding the ideal on what, according to him, was no longer to be found in reality.

Avner Cohen

NOTES

I. S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), p. 232. 2. H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (London, 1963), p. 293. 3. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin, 19%1968), Vol. 1, pp. 542-543

[trans.: Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels Collected Work.s(London, 1965), C. W., Vol. 3, p. 3031.

4. Ibid. 5. H. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 293. 6. Ibid. 7. Werke, Vol. 3, p. 33 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 5, p. 47). 8. Werke, Vol. 1, p. 514 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 3, p. 274). 9. K. Marx, DasKapital, Vol. 1, Werke, Chap. 23, p. 57 [trans.: Capital(Moscow, 1965),

Vol. 1, pp. 42-43 1. 10. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, p. 828 [trans.: Capital(Moscow, 1970),

Vol, 3, p. 8203. 1 1. K. Marx and F, Engels, ‘Die deutsche Ideologien’, Werke, Vol. 3,~. 186(trans.: C. W.,

Vol. 5, p. 205). 12. Ibid., p. 54 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 5, p. 77). 13. K. Marx, ‘okonomische-philosophische Manuskripte’, Werke. Vol. 1, p. 557

(trans.: C. W., Vol. 3, p. 317). 14. K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Die duetsche Ideologie’, Werke, Vol. 3, p. 77 (trans.: C. W.,

Vol. 5, p. 80). 15. A. Rattansi, ~Urxandt~eDjv~~jo~ ofLabor(New Jersey, 1982), pp. 74,180. E.K. Hunt,

‘Was Marx a Utopian Socialist’, Science and Society, 48 (1984), pp. 94-97. 16. Ibid., pp. 96-79. Wallimann, 1.. Esfrangement, Marx’s Conception of Human Nature

and the Division ofLabor (Connecticut, 1987), pp. 6, 113. H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (London, 1968). Sh. Avineri, TkeSociaiandPoiiticalTkougkt ofKarfMam (Cambridge, 1968). I. Meszaros, Marx’.s Theory qf Alienation (New York, 1972).

17. K. Marx, Das Kapitd, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, p. 828 [trans.: Capita~(Moscow, 1970), Vol. 3, p. 8201.

18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. A. Rattansi, op. cit., pp. 22, 180. I. Walliman, pp. 100-106, 110-114. 21. K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Die deutsche Ideologie’, Werke, Vol. 3, p. 27 (trans.: C. W.,

Vol. 5, pp. 41-49). 22. Ibid., p. 33 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 5, p. 47). 23. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik des Politischen dkonomie (Berlin, 1953) p. 599

[trans.: Grundrisse Foundations qf Political Econom)) (London, 198 I), p. 7 121. 24. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, p. 828 [trans.: Capital (Moscow,


1970), Vol. 3, p. 8201. 25. Ibid. 26. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik des Politischen okonomie (Berlin, 1953), p. 599

(Grundrisse Foundations of Political Economy, p. 712). Werke, Vol. 2613, p. 253. Theories of Surplus Value (London, 1972), Vol. 3, p. 257.

27. K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei’, Werke, Vol. 4, pp. 470-47 1.

28. K. Marx, ‘Die moralisierende Kritik und die Kritisierende Moral’, Ibid., p. 352 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 6, pp. 332-333). ‘Der Kommunismus des “Rheinischen Beobachters” ‘, D.B.Z., 12 September, 1847, ibid., p. 193 (trans.: C. W.,Vol.6,p. 222).

29. S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, p. 253. 30. A. Gilbert, Marx’s Politics (New Jersey, 1981), p. 158. 31. J. Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge, 1986), p. 441. J. Maguire, Marx’s

Theory of Politics (Cambridge, 1978), p. 131. H. Draper, Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution (New York, 1977), Vol. 1, pp, 308-310. F. Claudin, The Communist Movement (New York, 1975), p. 626.

32. A. Gilbert, cit., p. 158. op. 33. George Lichtheim, Marxism, an Historical and Critical Study (New York, 1965),

pp. 126-129. R. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels (Pittsburgh, 1974) Vol. 1, 4, 13, 206-210, 234-235, 243-248. B. Nicolaivesky and 0. Helfen pp. Maenchen, Karl Marx, Man and Fighter (London, 1936), pp. 181-182.

34. Werke, Vol. 7, 12 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, p. 48). p. 35. Werke, Vol. 7, 13-14 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, 49-50). pp. pp. 36. Werke, Vol. 7, 78 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, p. 116). p. 37. Werke, Vol. 7, 19-21 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, 55-57). p. pp. 38. Werke, Vol. 7, 79 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, p. 116-117). p. 39. Werke, Vol. 7, 33 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, 69). p. p. 40. Werke, Vol. 7, 397-398 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 9, 198). pp. p. 41. K. Marx, ‘Reflection’, Marx/EngeIs Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt, 1970). (M.E.G.A.),

Vol. l/10, 503-510. Werke,Vol. 13,~~. 82-83,86-87, Vol. 15, 338,346, Vol. pp. pp.

19, pp. 17-18, 23; C.W., Vol. 19, pp. 7, 10, Vol. 12, pp. 296-300, 222, Vol. 11, pp. 334-335, Vol. 13, p. 665.

42. Werke, Vol. 7, 98, 107, 440 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 10, 509, 525. pp. pp. 43. Werke, Vol. 1, 483-509. Ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 451-542. Ibid., Vol. 6, 423. pp. p. 44. Werke, Vol. 4, 467-468 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 6, 489-90). pp. pp. 45. Werke, Vol. 4, 492 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 6, 518). p. p. 46. Werke, Vol. 4, 481 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 6, 505). p. p. 47. Werke, Vol. 5, 4 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 7, 4). p. p. 48. Werke, Vol. 6, 423427 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 7, 468-471). pp. pp. 49. Der Bund der Kommunisten. Dokumente und Materialien (Berlin, 1970), (D.B.D.K.),

Vol. 1, 240, 244, 294, 303-305, 307-308. Werke, Vol. 4, 24-25. pp. pp. 50. K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Die deutsch Ideologie’, ibid., Vol. 3, pp. 456-457,

466-467,496470. ‘Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei’, ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 485-488. K. Marx, ‘Der Kommunismus des Rheinischen Beobachters’, D.B.Z., 12 September, 1847, ibid., Vol. 4, p. 191. F. Engels, ‘The Constitutional Question in Germany’, C. W., Vol. 6, 77. p.

51. D.B.D.K., Vol. 1, 352-353, 626. Werke, Vol. 4, 21-22. pp. pp. 52. Werke, Vol. 4, 481-482, Vol. 5, pp. 3-5. pp. 53. W. Blumenberg, ‘Zur Geschichte des Bundes der Kommunisten, Die Aussagen des

Peter Berhardt Roser’, InternationalReview of Social History (Z.R.S.H.), Vol. 9, p. 89. Werke, Vol. 5, pp. 23, 245, 276-277, 406.

54. Zbid., Vol. 6, 195. p.

502 Avner Cohen

55. F. Engels, ‘The Ten Hours Question’, The Democratic Review, March 1850. C. W., Vol. 10, pp. 271-276. F. Engels, ‘Die englische Zehnstundenbill’, Neue Rheinische Zeitung Politisch okonomische Revue (N.R.Z.P.O.R.), Viertes Heft, April 1850,

Werke, Vol. 7, pp. 233-343. 56. K. Marx, ‘War, Strikes, Death’, N.Y.D.T. 15 November, 1853. C. W., Vol. 12,

pp. 436-437. K. Marx, ‘Persian Expedition, Wigan Colliers’, N.Y.D.T. 18 November

1853. Ibid., 447-448. pp. 57. J.G. Harney and F. Engels, 30 March, 1846, D.B.D.K., Vol 1, 292. K. Marx and p.

F. Engels, ‘Grussadresse der deutschen demokratischen Kommunisten zu Brussel an Hernn Feargus O’Connor’, Werke, Vol. 4, pp. 24-25.

58. K. Marx, ‘Parliamentary Debates-the Clergy against Socialism-Starvation’, N. Y.D.T. 15 March, 1853, C. W., Vol. 11, p. 526. K. Marx, ‘Soap for the People-the Coalition Budget the People’s Paper’, 30 April, 1843, C. W., Vol. 12, 81. p.

59. K. Marx, ‘English Prosperity’, New York Daily Tribune (N. Y.D.T.), 1 July, 1853, C. W., Vol. 12, 136-137. pp.

60. K. Marx, ‘Attempts to Form a New Opposition Party’, N.Y.D.T. 25 November, 1852, C. w., Vol. 11, p. 376. K. Marx, ‘Persian Expedition, Wigan Colliers’, N. Y.D.T. 18 November, 1853, ibid, pp. 447-448. K. Marx, ‘The English Middle Class’, N. Y.D.T. 1 August, 1854, C. W., Vol. 13, pp. 663-665. K. Marx, ‘Die britische Konstitution’,

N.O.Z. 6 March, 1855, Werke, Vol. 11, p. 97. 61. K. Marx and F. Engels, 24 November, 1857, Werke, Vol 29, 218. p. 62. P. Kadogen, J.G. Harney and F. Engels, Z.R.S.H. Vol. 10 (1965), p. 79. K. Marx to J.

Wedemeyer, 18 March, 1852, Werke, Vol. 28, pp. 503-504. F. Engels to K. Marx, 18 March, 1852, Werke, Vol. 28, p. 40. K. Marx to F. Engels, 24 November, 1857, Werke,

Vol. 29, 218. K. Marx to J. Wedemeyer, 1 February, 1859, Werke, Vol. 29, 571. p. p. 63. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, 350-579. Capital, Vol. 3, pp.

pp. 338-564. 64. Werke, Vol. 1, 556-557 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 3, 317). pp. p. 65. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, 560-561 (trans.: Capital, Vol. 3, pp.

pp. 544-545). 66. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, p. 507 (trans.: Capital, Vol. 3,

p. 490). 67. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 3, Werke, Vol. 25, p. 457 (trans.: Capital, Vol. 3,

p. 441). 68. C. W., Vol. 11, 361, 376. C. W., Vol. 12, 99, 213,300, 306, 327,436,540,557. pp. pp.

C. W., Vol. 13, 571, 573. C. W., Vol. 14, 661. Werke, Vol. 11, 96-97. pp. pp. pp. 69. K. Marx to F. Engels, 26 September, 1856, Werke, Vol. 29, 76. K. Marx to F. p.

Engels, 13 November, 1857, ibid., p. 207. F. Engels to K. Marx, 15 November, 1857, ibid., pp. 208, 211, 212. F. Engels to K. Marx, 7 October, 1858, ibid., p. 358.

70. M.E.G.A., 4/7, 659, 666. pp. 71. W. Jahn and D. Noske, ‘Zu einigen Aspekten der Entwickelung der Marxchen

Forschungsmethods’, Marx-Engels Jahrbuch (M.E.J.B.), Chap. 6 (1983), p. 129. 72. L. Wassina, ‘Die Ausarbeitung der Geldtheorie’, M.E.J.B., Chap. 6 (1983) p. 150. 73. Werke, Vol. 29, 548. p. 74. Zbid., Vol. 1, 345, 383-384, 385. pp. 75. Ibid., Vol. 1, 514 (trans.: C. W., Vol. 3, 274). p. p. 76. Ibid., 536-538, ibid., Vol. 3, 33, 70. pp. pp. 77. K. Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. 1, ibid., Vol. 23, pp. 551-552. [trans.: Capital

(Moscow, 1970), Vol. 1, pp. 495-4961. 78. K. Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie (Berlin, 1953), p. 599.

K. Marx, ‘Theorien Uber den Mehwert’, Werke, Vol. 2613, p. 253.

Documents

Marx—from the abolition of labour to the abolition of the abolition of labour