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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The life and teaching of Karl Marx
+
+Author: M. Beer
+
+Release Date: September 2, 2011 [EBook #37290]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  _SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES_
+
+  (_VOLUME TWO_).
+
+  THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF
+        KARL MARX
+
+
+
+
+FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1921
+
+
+[_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  LIFE AND TEACHING
+
+  OF
+
+  KARL MARX
+
+
+  BY
+  M. BEER
+  _Author of "A History of British Socialism"_
+
+
+  TRANSLATED BY T.C. PARTINGTON
+  AND H.J. STENNING, AND REVISED
+  BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+  NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,
+  LONDON: 8/9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.C. 4
+  MANCHESTER: 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+      INTRODUCTION:
+
+         I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX                          ix.
+
+        II. THE WORK OF HEGEL                               xiii.
+
+
+    I. PARENTS AND FRIENDS:
+
+         I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP                               1
+
+        II. STUDENT                                             3
+
+       III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE                          11
+
+
+   II. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM:
+
+         I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS                       15
+
+        II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS                   19
+
+       III. CONTROVERSY WITH BAUER AND RUGE                    21
+
+        IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON                          26
+
+
+  III. YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES:
+
+         I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES            39
+
+        II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO                            41
+
+       III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848                             48
+
+        IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON               51
+
+         V. THE INTERNATIONAL                                  54
+
+        VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE                                  59
+
+       VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE                                60
+
+
+   IV. THE MARXIAN SYSTEM:
+
+         I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY              65
+
+        II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS   78
+
+       III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE
+            PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP                           84
+
+        IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES                 93
+
+
+    V. CONCLUSION                                             125
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX.
+
+Karl Marx belongs to the ranks of those philosophical and sociological
+thinkers who throw potent thought-ferment into the world, and set in
+motion the masses of mankind. They awaken slumbering doubts and
+contradictions. They proclaim new modes of thought, new social forms.
+Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete, and the ruthless
+march of time may finally overthrow their intellectual edifice;
+meanwhile, however, they stimulate into activity the minds of
+countless men, inflame countless human hearts, imprinting on them
+characteristics which are transmitted to coming generations. This is
+the grandest and finest work to which any human being can be called.
+Because these thinkers have lived and worked, their contemporaries and
+successors think more clearly, feel more intensely, and are richer in
+knowledge and self-consciousness.
+
+The history of philosophy and of social science is comprised in such
+systems and generalisations. They are the index to the annals of
+mankind. None of these systems is complete, none comprehends all human
+motives and capacities, none exhausts all the forces and currents of
+human society. They all express only fragmentary truths, which,
+however, become effective and achieve success because they are shining
+lights amidst the intellectual confusion of the generation which gives
+them birth, bringing it to a consciousness of the questions of the
+time, rendering its further development less difficult, and enabling
+its strongest spirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in
+critical periods.
+
+Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where he remarks: "When the
+refutation of a philosophy is spoken of, this is usually meant in an
+abstract negative (completely destructive) sense, so that the confuted
+philosophy has no longer any validity whatever, and is set aside and
+done with. If this be so, the study of the history of philosophy must
+be regarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeing that this
+study teaches that every system of philosophy which has arisen in the
+course of time has found its refutation. But if it is as good as
+granted that every philosophy has been refuted, yet at the same time
+it must be also asserted that no philosophy has been refuted, nor ever
+can be refuted ... for every philosophical system is to be considered
+as the presentation of a particular moment or a particular stage in
+the evolutionary process of the idea. The history of philosophy ... is
+not, in its totality, a gallery of the aberrations of the human
+intellect, but is rather to be compared to a pantheon of deities."
+
+           --("Hegel, Encyclopędia," vol. 1, section 86, note 2.)
+
+What Hegel says here about philosophy is true also of systems of
+social science, and styles and forms in art. The displacement of one
+system by another reflects the historical sequence of the various
+stages of social evolution. The characteristic which is common 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 contemporaries cannot
+escape. Opponents may put themselves to endless trouble to contradict
+such systems, and show up their shortcomings and inconsistencies, and
+yet, with all their pains, they do not succeed in attaining their
+object; their logical sapping and mining, their passionate attacks
+break against the vital spirit which the creative genius has breathed
+into his work. The deep impression made on us by this vitality is one
+of the main factors in the formation of our judgments upon scientific
+and artistic achievements. Mere formal perfection and beauty through
+which the life of the times does not throb can never create 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: A French sculptor, who had taken up his
+abode in Rome, was fond of taking to the Capitol his artistically
+inclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, to show them the
+equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which occasions he was at
+pains to demonstrate that the horse was defectively modelled, and did
+not meet the requirements of anatomy. After one of these criticisms a
+visitor urged him to prove his case in a concrete form by constructing
+a horse on correct artistic principles. The critic set to work, and
+when, after the lapse of a year, his friends were again visiting Rome,
+exhibited to them his horse. It was anatomically perfect. Proudly he
+had it brought to the Capitol, in order to compare both productions
+and so celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in his critical
+comparison, the French sculptor after a while gave way to a burst of
+genuine artistic feeling, which caused him pathetically to exclaim,
+"_Et pourtant cette bźte-lą est vivante, et la mienne est morte!_"
+(And yet that animal is alive, while mine is dead.)
+
+Quite a number of Marxian critics find themselves in the same position
+as the hypercritical French sculptor. Their formal and logically
+complete economic doctrines and systems of historical philosophy,
+provided with pedantically correct details and definitions, remain
+dead and ineffective. They do not put us into contact with the
+relations of the time, whereas Marx has bequeathed both to the
+educated and the uneducated, to his readers and to non-readers, a
+multitude of ideas and expressions relating to social science, which
+have become current throughout the whole world.
+
+In Petrograd and in Tokio, in Berlin and in London, in Paris and in
+Pittsburg, people speak of capital and of the capitalist system, of
+means of production and of the class struggle; of Reform and
+Revolution; of the Proletariat and of Socialism. The extent of Marx's
+influence is shown by the economic explanation of the world-war, which
+is even accepted by the most decided opponents of the materialist
+conception of history. A generation after Marx's death, the
+sovereignty of Capital shrinks visibly, works' committees and shops'
+stewards interfere with the productive processes, Socialists and
+Labour men fill the Parliaments, working men and their representatives
+rise to or take by storm the highest position of political power in
+States and Empires. Many of their triumphs would scarcely have
+received Marx's approval. His theory, white-hot with indomitable
+passion, demanded that the new tables of the Law should be given to
+men amidst thunder and lightning. But still the essential thing is
+that the proletariat is loosening its bonds, even if it does not
+burst them noisily asunder. We find ourselves in the first stages of
+the evolution of Socialist society. Through whatever forms this
+evolutionary process may pass in its logical development, this much is
+certain, that only by active thought on the part of Socialists and by
+the loyal co-operation of the workers can it be brought to its
+perfection.
+
+We are already using Hegelian expressions, and must therefore pause
+here to note briefly Hegel's contribution to the subject. Without a
+knowledge of this, no one can be in a position to appreciate the
+important factors in the life and influence of Marx, or even to
+understand his first intellectual achievements during his student
+years.
+
+
+II. THE WORK OF HEGEL.
+
+Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, learned and
+unlearned, philosophers and philistines, had some such general notions
+as the following. The world has either been created, or it has existed
+from eternity. It is either governed by a personal, supernatural god
+or universal spirit, or it is kept going by nature, like some delicate
+machine. It exists in accordance with eternal laws, and is perfect,
+ordained to fulfil some design, and constant. The things and beings
+which are found in it are divided into kinds, species and classes. All
+is fixed, constant and eternal. Things and beings are contiguous in
+space, and succeed one another in time, as they have done ever since
+time was. It is the same with the incidents and events of the world
+and of mankind. Such common proverbs as "There is nothing new under
+the sun" and "History repeats itself" are but the popular expression
+of this view.
+
+Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or the science of the laws
+of thinking (Greek logos--reason, word). It taught how men should use
+their reason, how they should express themselves reasonably, how
+concepts arise (in what manner, for example, the human understanding
+arrived at the concepts stone, tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.);
+further, how such concepts are combined into judgments (propositions),
+and finally, how conclusions are drawn from these judgments. This
+logic exhibited the intellectual processes of the human mind. It was
+founded by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.), and
+remained essentially unaltered until the beginning of the nineteenth
+century, in the same way as our whole conception of the universe
+remained unchanged. This science of human intellectual processes was
+based on three original laws of thought, which best characterise it.
+Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisoner in the face, and
+identifies him, so that uncertainty and contradiction may be avoided,
+so this logic began by establishing the identity of the conceptions
+with which it was to operate. Consequently, it established as the
+first law of thought the Principle of Identity, which runs as follows:
+A = A, i.e., each thing, each being, is like itself; it possesses an
+individuality of its own, peculiar to itself. To put it more clearly,
+this principle affirms that the earth is the earth, a state is a
+state, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.
+
+From this proceeds the second law of thought, the Principle of
+Contradiction. A cannot be A and not--A. Or following our example
+given above, the earth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a
+State cannot be a State and an Anarchy; Capital cannot be Capital and
+Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialism and Individualism. Therefore
+there must be no contradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself
+is nonsense; where, however, this occurs either in actuality or in
+thought, it is only an accidental exception to the rule, as it were,
+or a passing and irregular phenomenon.
+
+From this law of thought follows directly the third, viz., the
+Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thing is either A or non-A; there
+is no middle term. Or, according to our example, the earth is either a
+solid body, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is no middle
+term. The State is either monarchical, or, if it is not monarchical,
+it is no State. Capitalism is either oppressive, or altogether not
+Capitalism. Socialism 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, of contradiction, and
+of the excluded middle, formal logic begins.
+
+It is at once apparent that this logic operates with rigid, constant,
+unchanging, dogmatic conceptions, something like geometry, which deals
+with definitely bounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of the
+old 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 time
+immemorial, but has developed in the course of uncounted thousands of
+years, and is still in process of development. It has traversed a
+whole series of changes, transformations, and catastrophes. The earth
+was a gaseous mass, then a ball of fire; the species and classes of
+things and beings which exist on the earth have partly arisen by
+gradual transition from one sort into another, and partly made their
+appearance as a result of sudden changes. And in human history it is
+the same as in nature; the form and significance of the family, of the
+State, of production, of religion, of law, etc., are subjected to a
+process of development. All things are in flux, in a state of
+becoming, of arising and disappearing. There is nothing rigid,
+constant, unchanging in the Cosmos.
+
+In view of the new conception, the old formal logic could no longer
+satisfy the intellect; it could not adequately deal with things in a
+state of evolution. In ever-increasing measure it became impossible
+for the thinker to work with hard and fast conceptions. From the
+beginning of the nineteenth century a new logic was sought, and it was
+G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who made a comprehensive and thoroughly
+painstaking endeavour to formulate a new logic in accordance with the
+universal process of evolution. This task appeared to him to be the
+more urgent, as his whole philosophy aimed at bringing thought and
+being, reason and the universe, into the closest connection and
+agreement, dealing with them as inseparable from each other, regarding
+them as identical, and representing the universe as the gradual
+embodiment of Reason. "What is reasonable is real; what is real is
+reasonable." The task of philosophy is to comprehend what is. Every
+individual is the child of his time. Even philosophy is its time
+grasped in thought. No individual can overleap his time. (Pref. to
+Phil, of Law.) It is evident that, in his way, Hegel was no abstract
+thinker, divorced from actuality, and speculating at large. Rather he
+set himself to give material content to the abstract and purely ideal,
+to make it concrete, in fact. The idea without reality, or reality
+without the idea, seemed to him unthinkable. Accordingly his logic
+could not deal merely with the laws of thought, but must at the same
+time take account of the laws of cosmic evolution. Merely to play with
+the forms of thought, and to fence with ideas, as the old logicians,
+especially in the Middle Ages, were wont to do, seemed to him a
+useless, abstract, unreal operation. He, therefore, created a science
+of thinking, which formulated not only the laws of thought, but also
+the laws of evolution, albeit, unfortunately, in a language which
+offered immense difficulties to his readers.
+
+The essence of his logic is the dialectic.
+
+By dialectic the old Greeks understood the art of discourse and
+rejoinder, the refutation of an opponent by the destruction of his
+assertions and proofs, the bringing into relief of the contradictions
+and antitheses. When examined closely, this art of discussion, in
+spite of its contradictory and apparently negative (destructive)
+intellectual work, is seen to be very useful, because, out of the
+clash of opposing opinions, it brings forth the truth and stimulates
+to deeper thought. Hegel seized hold of this expression, and named his
+logical method after it. This is the dialectical method, or the manner
+of conceiving the things and beings of the universe as in the process
+of becoming, through the struggle of contradictory elements and their
+resolution. With its aid, he brings to judgment the three original
+laws of thought which have already been alluded to. The principle of
+identity is an abstract, incomplete truth, for it separates a thing
+from the variety of other things, and its relations to them. Everybody
+will see this to be true. Let us take the proposition: the earth is
+the earth. Whoever hears the first three words of this proposition
+naturally expects that what is predicated of the earth should tell him
+something which distinguishes the earth from other things. Instead of
+this, he is offered an empty, hard and fast identity, the dead husk of
+an idea. If the principle of identity is at best only an incomplete
+truth, the principles of contradiction and of the excluded middle are
+complete untruths. Far from making a thought nonsense, contradiction
+is the very thing which unfolds and develops the thought, and hence,
+too, the object which it expresses. It is precisely opposition, or
+antithesis, which sets things in motion, which is the mainspring of
+evolution, which calls forth and develops the latent forces and powers
+of being. Had the earth as a fiery, gaseous mass remained in that
+state, without the contradiction, that is, the cooling and
+condensation, taking place, then no life would have appeared on it.
+Had the State remained autocratic, and the contradictory principle,
+middle-class freedom, been absent, then the life of the State would
+have become rigid, and the bloom of culture rendered impossible. Had
+Capitalism remained without its proletarian contradiction, then it
+would have reverted to an industrial feudalism. It is the
+contradiction, or the antithesis, which brings into being the whole
+kingdom of the potentialities and gifts of nature and of humanity.
+Only when the contradictory begins to reveal itself does evolution to
+a higher plane of thought and existence begin. It is obvious that we
+are not concerned here with logical contradictions, which usually
+arise from unclear thinking or from confusion in the presentation of
+facts; Hegel, and after him Marx, dealt rather with real
+contradictions, with antitheses and conflicts, as they arise of
+themselves in the process of evolution of things and conditions.
+
+The thing or the being, against which the contradiction operates, was
+called by Hegel the Positive, and the contradiction, the antagonistic
+element, or the antithesis, he called the Negation. As may be seen
+from our example, this negation is not mere annihilation, not a
+resolution into nothing, but a clearing away and a building up at the
+same time; a disappearance and a coming into existence; a movement to
+a higher stage. Hegel says in this connection: "It has been hitherto
+one of the rooted prejudices of logic and a commonly accepted belief
+that the contradiction is not so essential or so inherent a
+characteristic (in thought and existence) as the identity. Yet in
+comparison with it the identity is, in truth, but the characteristic
+of what is simply and directly perceived, of lifeless existence. The
+contradiction, however, is the source of all movement and life; only
+in so far as it contains a contradiction can anything have movement,
+power, and effect."
+
+The part played by the contradiction, the antithesis, or the negation
+very easily escapes a superficial observer. He sees, indeed, that the
+world is filled with a variety of things, and that where anything is
+there is 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--Materialism, Romanticism--Classicism, etc.,
+but superficial thought does not realise that it is faced with a world
+of contradictions and antitheses; it only knows that the world is full
+of varied and manifold things. "Only active reason," says Hegel,
+"reduced the mere multiplicity and diversity of phenomena to
+antithesis. And only when pushed to this point do the manifold
+phenomena become active and mutually stimulating, producing the state
+of negation, which is the very heart-beat of progress and life." Only
+through their differentiation and unfolding as opposing forces and
+factors is further progress beyond the antithesis to a higher positive
+stage made possible. "Where, however," continues Hegel, "the power to
+develop the contradiction and bring it to a head is lacking, the thing
+or the being is shattered on the contradiction."--(Hegel, "Science of
+Logic," Pt. 1, Sec. 2, pp. 66, 69, 70.)
+
+This thought of Hegel's is of extraordinary importance for the
+understanding of Marxism. It is the soul of the Marxian doctrine of
+the class-struggle, nay, of the whole Marxian system. One may say that
+Marx is always on the look-out for contradictions within the social
+development, for wherever the contradiction (antithesis--class
+struggle) shows itself, there begins, according to Marx-Hegel, the
+progress to a higher plane.[1]
+
+We have now become familiar with two expressions of the dialectical
+method, the positive and the negation. We have seen the first two
+stages of the process of growth in thought and in reality. The process
+is not yet complete. It still requires a third stage. This third step
+Hegel called the Negation of the Negation. With the continued
+operation of the negation, a new thing or being comes into existence.
+
+To revert to our examples: the complete cooling and condensation of
+the earth's crust: the rise of the middle-class State: the victory of
+the Proletariat: these things represent the suspension or the setting
+aside of the Negation; the contradiction is thus resolved, and a new
+stage in the process of evolution is reached. The expressions Positive
+(or affirmation), Negation, and Negation of the Negation, are also
+known as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
+
+In order to understand this more distinctly, and to visualise it, let
+us consider an egg. It is something positive, but it contains a germ,
+which, awakening to life, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the
+contents of the egg. This negation is, however, no mere destruction
+and annihilation; on the contrary, it results in the germ developing
+into a living thing. The negation being complete, the chick breaks
+through the egg shell. This represents the negation of the negation,
+whereby there has arisen something organically higher than an egg.
+
+This mode of procedure in human thinking and in the operations of
+nature and history Hegel called the dialectical method, or the
+dialectical process. It is evident that the dialectic is at the same
+time a method of investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines his
+dialectic in the following words:
+
+"The only thing which is required for scientific progress, an
+elementary principle for the understanding of which one should really
+strive, is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative
+is just as much a positive, or that the contradictory does not
+resolve into nothing, into an abstract nothingness, but actually only
+into the negation of a special content.... In so far as the resultant,
+the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new
+conception, but a higher and richer conception than the preceding one;
+for it has been enriched by the negation or antithesis of this; it
+therefore contains it and more than contains it, being indeed the
+synthetic unity of itself and its contrary. In this way the system of
+concepts has to be formed--and is to be perfected by a continual and
+purely intellectual process which is independent of outside
+influences."--(Hegel, "Science of Logic" (German), Bk. I.,
+Introduction.)
+
+The dialectical process completes itself not only by gradual
+transitions, but also by leaps. Hegel remarks:
+
+"It has been said that there are no sudden leaps in nature, and it is
+a common notion that things have their origin through gradual increase
+or decrease. But there is also such a thing as sudden transformation
+from quantity into quality. For example, water does not become
+gradually hard on cooling, becoming first pulpy and ultimately
+attaining the rigidity of ice, but turns hard at once. If the
+temperature be lowered to a certain degree, the water is suddenly
+changed into ice, i.e., the quantity--the number of degrees of
+temperature--is transformed into quality--a change in the nature of
+the thing."--("Logic" (German), Pt. 1, Sec. 1, p. 464, Ed. 1841.)
+
+Marx handled this method with unsurpassed mastery; with its aid he
+formulated the laws of the evolution of Socialism. In his earliest
+works, "The Holy Family" (1844) and the "Poverty of Philosophy"
+(1847), written when he was formulating his materialist conception of
+history, as also in his "Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel
+that he investigates these laws.
+
+"Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would have said Capital) are
+antitheses. As such they constitute a whole; both are manifestations
+of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the
+specific position which both occupy in the antithesis. To describe
+them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private
+property as private property, as riches, is compelled to preserve its
+own existence, and along with it that of its antithesis, the
+Proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side
+of the antithesis. The Proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as
+Proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property,
+its conditioned antithesis, which makes it the Proletariat. It is a
+negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of unrest, the
+disintegrated and disintegrating Proletariat.... Within the
+antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is the
+conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From the
+former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the
+latter the action of destroying 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 is independent 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, poverty conscious of
+its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralised humanity
+conscious of its own demoralisation and consequently striving against
+it.
+
+"The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the
+creation of the Proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils
+the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien
+riches and its own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs, it does
+not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only
+by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the
+Proletariat and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done
+away with."[2]
+
+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 as the labour process operates merely between man and nature,
+its simple elements are common to every form of its social
+development. But any given historical form of this process further
+develops its material foundations and its social forms. When it has
+attained a certain degree of maturity the given historical form is
+cast off and makes room for a higher one. That the moment of such a
+crisis has arrived is shown as soon as there is a deepening and
+widening of the contradiction and antithesis between the conditions of
+distribution, and consequently also the existing historical form of
+the conditions of production corresponding to them, on the one hand,
+and the forces of production, productive capacity, and the state of
+evolution of its agents, on the other. There then arises a conflict
+between the material development of production and its corresponding
+social form."
+
+But the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in the famous
+twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the first volume of "Capital"
+(German), where the evolution of capitalism from small middle-class
+ownership through all phases up to the Socialist revolution is
+comprehensively outlined in bold strokes: "The capitalist method of
+appropriation, which springs from the capitalist method of production,
+and therefore capitalist private property, is the first negation of
+individual private property based on one's own labour. But capitalist
+production begets with the inevitableness of a natural process its own
+negation. It is the negation of the negation." Here we have the three
+stages: the thesis--private property; the antithesis--capitalism; the
+synthesis--common ownership.
+
+Of critical social writers outside Germany it was Proudhon, in
+particular, who, in his works "What is Property?" and "Economic
+Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty" (1840, 1846), attempted
+to use the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave his chief book
+the title "Economic Contradictions" shows that Proudhon was largely
+preoccupied with Hegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below the
+surface; he used the Hegelian formulę quite mechanically, and lacked
+the conception of an immanent process of development (the
+forward-impelling force within the social organism).
+
+If we look at the dialectical method as here presented, Hegel might be
+taken for a materialist thinker. Such a notion would be erroneous. For
+Hegel is an idealist: the origin and essence of the process of growth
+is to be sought, according to him, not in material forces, but in the
+logical idea, reason, the universal spirit, the absolute, or--in its
+religious expression--God. Before He created the world He is to be
+regarded as an Idea, containing within itself all forms of being,
+which it develops dialectically. The idea creates for itself a
+material embodiment; it first expresses itself in the objects of
+inorganic nature; then in plants, organisms wherein life awakens; then
+in animals, in which the Idea attains to the twilight of reason;
+finally, in men, where reason rises into mind and achieves
+self-consciousness and freedom. As self-conscious mind it expresses
+itself in the history of peoples, in religion, art and philosophy, in
+human institutions, in the family and in law, until it realises itself
+in the State as its latest and highest object.
+
+According to Hegel, then, the universal Idea develops into Godhead in
+proportion as the material world rises from the inorganic to the
+organic, and, finally, to man. In the mental part of man, the Idea
+arrives at self-consciousness and freedom and becomes God. In his
+cosmology, Hegel is a direct descendant of the German mystics,
+Sebastion Franck and Jacob Boehme. He was in a much higher degree
+German than any of the German philosophers since Leibnitz.
+
+The strangest thing, however, is that Germanism, Protestantism, and
+the Prussian State appeared to Hegel as the highest expression of the
+universal mind. Particularly the Prussian State as it existed before
+March, 1848, with its repudiation of all middle-class reforms and
+liberalism (of any kind), and its basis of strong governmental force.
+
+There is little purpose in trying to acquire a logical conception of
+Hegelian cosmology. It is not only idealist, but, as we said,
+mystical; it is as inconceivable to human reason as the biblical; it
+is irrational, and lies beyond the sphere of reason. Making the
+universe arise out of pure reason, out of the logical idea, developing
+through the dialectical process with a consciousness of freedom, it
+yet concludes in unreason and an obstinate determinism. In Liberalism
+Hegel saw only a simple negation, a purely destructive factor, which
+disintegrates the State and resolves it into individuals, thus
+depriving it of all cohesion and organising strength. He blamed
+Parliamentarism for demanding "that everything should take place
+through their (the individuals) expressed power and consent. The will
+of the many overturns the Ministry, and what was the Opposition now
+takes control, but, so far as it is the Government, the latter finds
+the many against it. Thus agitation and unrest continue. This
+collision, this knot, this problem, is what confronts history, a
+problem which it must resolve at some future time." One would have
+thought that it was precisely Parliamentarism, with its unrest and
+agitation, its antitheses and antagonisms, which would have had a
+special attraction for Hegel, but nevertheless he turned aside from
+it. How is this to be explained?
+
+Hegel's relation to the Prussian State is to be accounted for by his
+strong patriotic sentiments. His disposition inclined him strongly to
+nationalism in politics. In his early manhood he witnessed the
+complete dissolution of the German Empire, and deeply bewailed the
+wretchedness of German conditions. He wrote: "Germany is no longer a
+State; even the wars which Germany waged have not ended in a
+particularly honourable manner for her. Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine
+have been torn away. The Peace of Westphalia has often been alluded to
+as Germany's Palladium, although by it the complete dismemberment of
+Germany has only been established more thoroughly than before. The
+Germans have been grateful to Richelieu, who destroyed their power."
+On the other hand, the achievements of Prussia in the Seven Years'
+War, and in the War of Liberation against the French, awoke in him the
+hope that it was this State which could save Germany. To this thought
+he gave eloquent and enthusiastic expression in his address at the
+opening of his Berlin lectures in October, 1818, and also in his
+lecture on Frederick the Great. Hegel therefore rejected everything
+which seemed to him to spell a weakening of the Prussia State power.
+The dialectician was overcome by national feelings.
+
+However, Hegel's place in the history of thought rests, not on his
+explanations of the creation of the world, nor on his German
+nationalist politics, but upon the dialectical method. In exploring,
+by means of this method, the wide expanse of human knowledge, he
+scattered an astonishing abundance of materialistic and strictly
+scientific observations and suggestions, and inspired his pupils and
+readers with a living conception of history, of the development of
+mankind to self-consciousness and freedom, thus rendering them capable
+of pushing their studies further, and emancipating themselves from all
+mysticism. As an example of the materialist tendency of his
+philosophy, the following references will serve. His "Philosophy of
+History" contains a whole chapter upon the geographical foundations of
+universal history. In this chapter he expresses himself--quite
+contrary to his deification of the State--as follows: "A real State
+and a real central government only arise when the distinction of
+classes is already given, when Riches and Poverty have become very
+great, and such conditions have arisen that a great multitude can no
+longer satisfy their needs in the way to which they have been
+accustomed." Or take his explanation of the founding of colonies by
+the Greeks.
+
+"This projecting of colonies, particularly in the period after the
+Trojan War until Cyrus, is here a peculiar phenomenon, which may thus
+be explained: in the individual towns the people had the governing
+power in their hands, in that they decided the affairs of State in the
+last resort. In consequence of the long peace, population and
+development greatly increased, and quickly brought about the
+accumulation of great riches, which is always accompanied by the
+phenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry, in our sense, did
+not exist at that time, and the land was speedily monopolised.
+Nevertheless, a section of the poorer classes would not allow
+themselves to be depressed to the poverty line, for each man felt
+himself to be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, was
+colonisation."
+
+Or even the following passage, which conceives the philosophical
+system merely as the result and reflection of the accomplished facts
+of existence, and therefore rejects all painting of Utopias: "Besides,
+philosophy comes always too late to say a word as to how the world
+ought to be. As an idea of the universe, it only arises in the period
+after reality has completed its formative process and attained its
+final shape. What this conception teaches is necessarily demonstrated
+by history, namely, that the ideal appears over against the real only
+after the consummation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the
+same world, comprehended in the substance of reality, in the form of
+an intellectual realm. A form of life has become old when philosophy
+paints its grey on grey, and with grey on grey it cannot be
+rejuvenated but only recognised. The owl of Minerva begins its flight
+only with the falling twilight."--Preface to the "Philosophy of Law."
+
+No materialist could have said this better: the owl--the symbol of
+wisdom--only begins her flight in the evening, after the busy
+activities of the world are over. Thus we have first the universe, and
+then thought; first existence, and then consciousness.
+
+Hegel himself was therefore an example of his own teaching that
+contradictory elements are to be found side by side. His mind
+contained both idealism and realism, but he did not bring them by a
+process of reasoning to the point of acute contradiction in order to
+reach a higher plane of thought. And as he regarded it as the task of
+philosophy to recognise the principle of things, and to follow it out
+systematically and logically throughout the whole vast domain of
+reality, and as further, owing to his mystical bent, he asserted the
+idea to be the ultimate reality, he remained a consistent Idealist.
+
+The Conservatism of Hegel, who was the philosophical representative of
+the Prussian State, was, however, sadly incompatible with the
+awakening consciousness of the German middle class, which, in spite of
+its economic weakness, aspired to a freer State constitution, and
+greater liberty of action. These aspirations were already somewhat
+more strongly developed in the larger towns and industrial centres of
+Prussia and the other German States. The Young Hegelians[3] championed
+this middle-class awakening in the 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 fight against the conservative section of
+Hegel's disciples and the Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The
+antagonism between the old and the new school made itself felt both in
+religious philosophy and political literature, but both tendencies
+were seldom combined in the same persons. David Strauss subjected the
+Gospels to a candid criticism; Feuerbach investigated the nature of
+Christianity and of religion generally, and in this department
+inverted Hegel's Idealism to Materialism; Bruno Bauer trained his
+heavy historical and philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmas
+concerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, however, they
+remained at the stage of the freedom of the individual: that is, they
+were merely moderate Liberals. Nevertheless, there were also less
+prominent Young Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberal left
+wing as regards their political opinions, such as Arnold Ruge.
+
+None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used the dialectical method
+to develop still further the teaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the
+youngest of the Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage in
+social science. He was no longer known to Hegel, who might otherwise
+have died with a more contented or perhaps even still more perturbed
+mind. Heinrich Heine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirties
+and forties, relates the following anecdote, which if not true yet
+excellently illustrates the extraordinary difficulties of the Master's
+doctrines:--
+
+As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered round him, seeing
+the furrows deepen on the Master's care-worn countenance, inquired the
+cause of his grief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him of the
+large number of admiring disciples and followers he would leave
+behind. Breathing with difficulty, he replied: "None of my disciples
+has understood me; only Michelet has understood me, and," he added
+with a sigh, "even he has misunderstood me."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] In one of the later chapters the reader will find the series of
+contradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of capitalism. Sec.
+IV., "Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8, "Economic
+Contradictions."
+
+[2] Marx, in "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring in the
+"Collected Works or Literary Remains of Marx and Engels," vol. II., p.
+132.
+
+[3] After the death of Hegel differences of opinion arose among his
+disciples, chiefly with respect to his doctrines of the Deity,
+immortality and the personality of Christ. One section, the so-called
+"Right Wing," inclined to orthodoxy on these questions. In opposition
+to them stood the "Young Hegelians," the progressive "Left Wing." To
+this section belonged Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and
+Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus."
+
+
+
+
+The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+PARENTS AND FRIENDS.
+
+
+I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+Karl Heinrich Marx first saw the light of day in Treves on May 5,
+1818. His father, an enlightened, fine feeling, and philanthropic Jew,
+was a Jurist who had slowly risen from the humble circumstances of a
+German Rabbi family and acquired a respectable practice, but who never
+learnt the art of making money. His mother was a Dutchwoman, and came
+of a Rabbi family called Pressburg, which, as the name indicates, had
+emigrated from Pressburg, in Hungary, to Holland, in the seventeenth
+century. She spoke German very imperfectly. Marx has handed on to us
+one of her sayings, "If Karl made a lot of Capital, instead of writing
+a lot about Capital, it would have been much better." The Marxes had
+several children, of whom Karl alone showed special mental gifts.
+
+In the year 1824 the family embraced Christianity. The baptism of Jews
+was at that time no longer a rarity. The enlightenment of the last
+half of the eighteenth century had undermined the dogmatic beliefs of
+many cultured Jews, and the succeeding period of German Christian
+Romanticism brought a strengthening and idealising of Christianity and
+of national feeling, from which, for practical just as much as for
+spiritual reasons, the Jews who had renounced their own religion could
+not escape. They were completely assimilated, felt and thought like
+the rest of their Christian and German fellow-citizens. Marx's father
+felt himself to be a good Prussian, and once recommended his son to
+compose an ode, in the grand style, on Napoleon's downfall and
+Prussia's victory. Karl did not, in truth, follow his father's advice,
+but from that time of Christian enthusiasm and German patriotic
+sentiment until his life's end, there remained with him an anti-Jewish
+prejudice; the Jew was generally to him either a usurer or a cadger.
+
+Karl was sent to the grammar school in his native town, leaving with a
+highly creditable record. The school was, however, not the only place
+where he developed his mind. During his school years he used to
+frequent the house of the Government Privy Councillor, L. von
+Westphalen, a highly cultured Prussian official, whose favourite poets
+were Homer and Shakespeare, and who followed attentively the
+intellectual tendencies of his time. Although he had already reached
+advanced age, he liked to converse with the precocious youth, and to
+influence his mental growth. Marx honoured him as a fatherly friend
+"who welcomes every progressive movement with the enthusiasm and sober
+judgment of a lover of truth, and who is a living proof that Idealism
+is no imagination, but the truth."--(Dedication of Marx's doctor
+thesis.)
+
+After quitting the public school, Marx went to the University of Bonn,
+in order to study jurisprudence, according to his father's wishes.
+After a year of the merry life of a student, he removed in the autumn
+of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre of culture and truth, as
+Hegel had called it in his Inaugural Lecture (1818). Before his
+departure for Berlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny Von
+Westphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, a woman distinguished
+alike for beauty, culture, and strength 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
+was insatiable; in these matters only superlatives can be used to
+describe, Marx. In one of his poems dating, from this period, he says
+of himself:
+
+    "Ne'er can I perform in calmness
+      What has seized my soul with might,
+    But must strive and struggle onward
+      In a ceaseless, restless flight.
+
+    All divine, enhancing graces
+      Would I make of life a part;
+    Penetrate the realms of science,
+      Grasp the joys of Song and Art."
+
+Giving up all social intercourse, he worked night and day, making
+abstracts of what he read, translating from Greek and Latin, working
+at philosophical systems, setting down a considerable number of his
+own thoughts, and drafting outlines of philosophy or jurisprudence, as
+well as writing three volumes of poems. The year 1837 marks one of the
+critical periods of Marx's intellectual development; it was a time of
+vacillation and ferment and of internal struggle, at the end of which
+he found refuge in the Hegelian dialectics. In so doing he turned his
+back on the abstract idealism of Kant and Fichte, and made the first
+step towards reality; and indeed at that time Marx firmly believed
+that Hegel actually stood for reality. In a somewhat lengthy letter
+dated November 10, 1837, a truly human document, Marx gives his father
+an account of his intense activity during that remarkable period,
+comprising his first two terms at the University of Berlin, when he
+was still so very young:
+
+    "DEAR FATHER,
+
+    "There are times which are landmarks in our lives; and they not
+    only mark off a phase that has passed, but, at the same time,
+    point out clearly our new direction. At such turning points we
+    feel impelled to make a critical survey of the past and the
+    present, so as to attain to a clear knowledge of our actual
+    position. Nay, mankind itself, as all history shows, loves to
+    indulge in this retrospection and contemplation, and thereby
+    often appears to be going backward or standing still, when after
+    all it has only thrown itself back in its armchair, the better
+    to apprehend itself, to grasp its own doings, and to penetrate
+    into the workings of the spirit.
+
+    "The individual, however, becomes lyrical at such times; for
+    every metamorphosis is in part an elegy on the past and in part
+    the prologue of a great new poem that is striving for permanent
+    expression in a chaos of resplendent but fleeting colours. Be
+    that as it may, we would fain set up a monument to our past
+    experiences that they may regain in memory the significance
+    which they have lost in the active affairs of life: and what
+    more fitting way can we find of doing that than by bringing them
+    and laying them before the hearts of our parents!
+
+    "And so now, when I take stock of the year which I have just
+    spent here, and in so doing answer your very welcome letter from
+    Ems, let me consider my position, in the same way as I look on
+    life altogether, as the embodiment of a spiritual force that
+    seeks expression in every direction: in science, in art, and in
+    one's own personality.... On my arrival in Berlin I broke off
+    all my former connections, paid visits rarely and unwillingly,
+    and sought to bury myself in science and art.... In accordance
+    with my ideas at the time, poetry must of necessity be my first
+    concern, or at least the most agreeable of my pursuits, and the
+    one for which I most cared; but, as might be expected from my
+    disposition and the whole trend of my development, it was purely
+    idealistic. Next I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I
+    felt a strong impulse to grapple with philosophy. Both studies,
+    however, were so interwoven that on the one hand I worked
+    through the Jurist's Heineccius and Thibaut and the Sources
+    docilely and quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the
+    first two books of the Pandects of Justinian, while on the other
+    hand I attempted to evolve a philosophy of law in the sphere of
+    jurisprudence. By way of introduction I laid down a few
+    metaphysical principles, and carried this unfortunate work as
+    far as Public Rights, 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 disagreeably prominent. In the first place
+    there was what I had so graciously christened the Metaphysics of
+    Law, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions, standing
+    aloof from all established jurisprudence and from every actual
+    form of legal practice. Then the unscientific form of
+    mathematical dogmatism in which there is so much beating about
+    the bush, so much diffuse argumentation without any fruitful
+    development or vital creation, hindered me from the outset from
+    arriving at the Truth. A triangle may be constructed and
+    reasoned about by the mathematician; it is a mere spatial
+    concept and does not of itself undergo any further evolution; it
+    must be brought in conjunction with something else, when it
+    requires other properties, and thus by placing the same thing in
+    various relationships we are enabled to deduce new relationships
+    and new truths. Whereas in the concrete expression of the mental
+    life as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature, and in the
+    whole of philosophy, the object of our study 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 contrasted with the continually
+evolving organism, with social forms and human institutions. Marx had
+put up a stout resistance against the influence of the Hegelian
+philosophy; nay, he had even hated it and had made mighty efforts to
+cling faithfully to his idealism, but in the end he, too, must fall
+under the spell of the idea of evolution, in the form which it then
+assumed in Hegelian speculation in Germany.
+
+Marx then goes on to speak of his legal studies as well as of his
+poems, and thus continues:
+
+    "As a result of these various activities I passed many sleepless
+    nights during my first term, engaged in many battles, and had to
+    endure much mental and physical excitement; and at the end of it
+    all I found myself not very much better off, having in the
+    meanwhile neglected nature, art and society, and spurned
+    pleasure: such, indeed, was the comment which my body seemed to
+    make. My doctor advised me to try the country, and so, having
+    for the first time passed through the whole length of the city,
+    I found myself before the gate on the Stralau Road.... From the
+    idealism which I had cherished so long I fell to seeking the
+    ideal in reality itself. Whereas before the gods had dwelt above
+    the earth, they had now become its very centre.
+
+    "I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the strange, rugged
+    melody of which had not pleased me. Once again I wished to dive
+    into the depths of the sea, this time with the resolute
+    intention of finding a spiritual nature just as essential,
+    concrete, and perfect as the physical, and instead of indulging
+    in intellectual gymnastics, bringing up pure pearls into the
+    sunlight.
+
+    "I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled 'Cleantes or on
+    the Source and Inevitable Development of Philosophy.' In this,
+    art and science, which had hitherto been kept asunder, were to
+    some extent blended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even set
+    about the task of evolving a philosophical, dialectical
+    exposition of the nature of the Deity as it is manifested in a
+    pure concept, in religion, in nature, and in history. My last
+    thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system; and this work,
+    in course of which I had to make some acquaintance with science,
+    Schelling and history, and which had occasioned me an infinite
+    amount of hard thinking, delivers me like a faithless siren into
+    the hands of the enemy....
+
+    "Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitlessness and utter
+    failure of my intellectual labours, and torn with vexation at
+    having to make into my idol a view which I had hated, I fell
+    ill, as I have already told you in a previous letter. On my
+    recovery I burnt all my poems and material for projected short
+    stories in the vain belief that I could give all that up; and,
+    to be sure, so far I have not given cause to gainsay it.
+
+    "During my illness I had made acquaintance with Hegel from
+    beginning to end, as also with most of his disciples. Through
+    frequent meetings with friends in Stralau I got an introduction
+    into a Graduates' Club, in which were a number of professors and
+    Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlin friends. In the
+    discussions that took place many conflicting views were put
+    forward, and more and more securely did I get involved in the
+    meshes of the new philosophy which I had sought to escape; but
+    everything articulate in me was put to silence, a veritable
+    ironical rage fell upon me, as well it might after so much
+    negation."--("Neue Zeit," 16th year, Vol. I., No. 1.)
+
+His father was anything but pleased with this letter. He reproached
+Karl with the aimless and discursive way in which he worked. He had
+expected that these Berlin studies would lead to something more than
+breeding monstrosities and destroying them again. He believed that
+Karl would, before everything else, have considered his future career,
+that he would have devoted all his attention to the lectures in his
+course, that he would have cultivated the acquaintance of people in
+authority, that he would have been economical, and that he would have
+avoided all philosophical extravagances. He refers him to the example
+of his fellow students who attend their lectures regularly and have an
+eye to their future:
+
+    "Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they
+    now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure,
+    whereas my clever and gifted son Karl passes wretched sleepless
+    nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing
+    all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to
+    abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again
+    to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he
+    already had, without having gained anything from other people.
+    At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused,
+    whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and
+    attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than
+    those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health
+    in order to snatch at the ghost of erudition, which they could
+    probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in
+    the society of competent men--with social enjoyment into the
+    bargain!"
+
+In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate
+from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after
+having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain
+to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not
+easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to
+new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a
+distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would
+never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:
+
+    Therefore let us, all things daring,
+      Never from our task recede;
+    Never sink in sullen silence,
+      Paralysed in will and deed.
+
+    Let us not in base subjection
+      Brood away our fearful life,
+    When with deed and aspiration
+      We might enter in the strife.
+
+His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He
+worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions,
+and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club
+stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno
+Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich Köppen, a master in a
+grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated
+him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and
+looked forward to obtaining a lectureship in some university or
+other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings
+of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's
+subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838,
+at the age of fifty-six.
+
+Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked
+all the more assiduously at the perfecting of his philosophical
+knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order--at
+the instigation of Bruno Bauer--to get himself admitted as quickly as
+possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer
+himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having
+served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the
+year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of
+Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of
+Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his
+friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as
+lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities
+were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even
+possible for Bauer to obtain a professorship; still less could Marx,
+who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on
+an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was
+free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented
+itself.
+
+
+III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE.
+
+Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical
+training and with an irrestrainable impulse to enter into the
+struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he
+understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in
+politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be
+used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become
+ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of
+criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being,
+or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified
+conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune
+is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the
+weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away
+existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for
+life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the
+clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.
+For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the
+best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in
+polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war--ruthless war--against
+the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.
+
+After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field
+of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that
+of journalism. His material circumstances compelled him, moreover, to
+consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this
+time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the
+foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way
+for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon
+procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for
+editors and contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first
+number of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ was published at Cologne. The
+editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friendship with
+Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin;
+and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted
+the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold
+Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary
+undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and
+others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of
+the _Rheinische Zeitung_, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement
+of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In
+his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and
+political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor
+would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed
+the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In
+October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held
+in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were
+discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning
+landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the
+editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely
+philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censorship made the way hard for
+a paper conducted with such critical acumen, and did not allow the
+editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of
+Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial
+life:
+
+"As editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, in 1842 and 1843 I came up,
+for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in
+the controversy over so-called material interests. The proceedings of
+the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and
+parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the
+farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and
+Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic
+questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and
+Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself
+heard in the columns of the _Rheinische Zeitung_. I declared myself
+against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the
+studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of
+my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took
+advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the
+_Rheinische Zeitung_, who believed they could reverse the death
+sentence passed on that journal as a result of weak management, in
+order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."
+
+And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and
+Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity,
+resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was
+about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own
+household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his
+material existence to his spiritual aspirations.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.
+
+
+I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS.
+
+Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the
+most important critical period in the intellectual development of
+Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy
+he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.
+Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two
+years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines
+associated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by
+what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be
+said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of
+French Socialist literature just as assiduously as he did the study of
+Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and
+printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few passages which
+bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May,
+1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of
+possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more
+swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present
+society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not
+the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."
+
+That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical
+criticism. In the following few months, however, he made surprisingly
+rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of
+history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and
+which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless
+years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from
+Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance
+with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not
+in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and
+social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of
+the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as
+to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of
+his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and
+asks which is the class that could bring about the liberation of
+Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German
+revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a
+class in chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but
+which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The
+product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is
+the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the
+beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting
+from natural circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the
+masses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the
+multitude arising from the acute break-up of society--especially of
+the middle class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the
+proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,
+it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in
+itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the
+proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely
+elevating to a general principle of society what it already
+involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."
+
+Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife
+in October, 1843, in order to take up the editorship of the
+Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed
+to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program
+of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its
+final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more
+evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the
+fearless criticism of all existing institutions--fearless in the sense
+that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from
+the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those
+who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we
+should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved
+in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own
+principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy,
+Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want
+to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German
+contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors
+cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place
+politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany
+of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political
+State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through
+Socialist demands, exactly fulfils, in all its modern forms, the
+demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason
+everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself
+everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real
+achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State
+with itself social truth is evolved."
+
+Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the
+embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the
+constitution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to
+remark that in its history the political State is the expression of
+the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not
+true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the
+treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.
+Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and
+away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world
+in doctrinaire fashion any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down
+before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'
+We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to
+the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."
+
+That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker
+propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but
+awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past,
+inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of
+their own action.
+
+
+II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS.
+
+Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring,
+1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the
+criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of
+Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a
+comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political
+Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died
+in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September,
+1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning
+of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a
+close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.
+
+Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought,
+but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he
+enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have
+attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand,
+Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man,
+eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not
+endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual
+crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual
+association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained
+little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete
+saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all
+eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844
+Engels was a Utopian--until Marx explained to him the meaning of
+political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the
+statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels'
+"Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for
+a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise
+above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon.
+Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed
+more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as
+matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The
+System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when
+Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical
+side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels.
+Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic
+system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of
+society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the
+Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had,
+independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the
+Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found
+salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should
+carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels,
+on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom
+he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to
+be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help,
+Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and
+uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in
+exile.
+
+
+III. CONTROVERSIES WITH BAUER AND RUGE.
+
+After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx,
+recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French
+systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and
+continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable
+steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation
+or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him
+that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of
+Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage,
+from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a
+survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of
+1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is
+a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer,
+and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel.
+The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of
+social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling
+into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy
+reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of
+philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and
+sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French
+materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but
+pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French
+Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic
+conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social
+revolutionary interpretation to the class struggle between Capital and
+Labour. In the Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The
+Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of
+history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the
+beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes
+science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really
+think that he can understand any period without having studied, for
+example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of
+production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought
+from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world,
+so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see
+the birthplace of history in coarse, material production upon earth
+but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."--("Posthumous
+Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)
+
+Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but
+would not concede that the masses had any power whatever, wrote: "All
+the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed
+to failure and could not have lasting success, because the masses had
+taken an interest in them and inspired them--or they must come to a
+lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature
+that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it
+must reckon on the approval of the masses."
+
+Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had
+been always determined by mass interests, and only in so far as they
+represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these
+movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but
+they could not achieve any results. The idea always fell into
+disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other
+hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first
+appearance on the world-stage, every mass interest working itself out
+in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual
+limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of
+humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of
+the middle classes, in whose interest it manifested itself in great
+movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring masses, for
+whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has
+shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they
+corresponded to class interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas
+gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the
+liberation of mankind in general."--("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp.
+181-3.)
+
+In August, 1844, Marx published under the title "Marginal Notes" in
+the Paris _Vorwärts_ a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a
+defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German
+proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the
+capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's
+clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpass those
+of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution.
+Where would the middle classes, their scholars and philosophers
+included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace
+and Concord' bearing on the question of emancipation? If one compares
+the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with
+this unconstrained and brilliant literary début of the German workers,
+if one compares these gigantic baby shoes of the proletariat with the
+dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle
+classes, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German
+Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the
+philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English
+proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its
+politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as
+classic a rōle in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play
+one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle
+classes is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the
+German proletariat--even leaving out of account German philosophy--is
+the social capacity of Germany."
+
+At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German
+working classes resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist
+and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to
+influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at
+that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and
+not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact
+with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian
+philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840)
+Proudhon had played with Hegelian formulę, and Marx probably believed
+that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the
+German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity
+as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a
+stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all
+the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with classical
+German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" German edition,
+1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this
+according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the
+first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link
+in social evolution, the _thesis_; property is the antagonistic
+principle, the _antithesis_; if only we can get the third factor, the
+_synthesis_, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only
+through the cancelling of the thesis by the antithesis; one must
+therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard
+what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then
+seen the real kind of human social life."
+
+That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for
+what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination;
+still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have
+manipulated German philosophical formulę, and would justify the most
+sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in
+"debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with
+Proudhon.--(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition,
+Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)
+
+In the midst of this activity, however, Marx and other German
+contributors to the Paris _Vorwärts_ were expelled from France in
+January, 1845, at the instigation of the Prussian Government. Marx
+packed up his traps and left for Brussels, where he lived, with short
+interruptions, until the outbreak of the European Revolution in
+February, 1848. During his sojourn in Brussels his time was occupied
+mainly with economic studies, for which Engels placed his library of
+works on political economy at his disposal. Marx embodied the result
+of these studies in the criticism directed against Proudhon in his
+"Misčre de la Philosophie" (Poverty of Philosophy), published in 1847.
+
+
+IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON.
+
+Marx's "Misčre de la Philosophie" indicates the culmination of the
+fist phase of his creative work. In this critical review he makes his
+position clear with respect not only to Proudhon but to Utopian
+Socialism in general. It marks also the turning point in the studies
+of Marx: English political economy occupied henceforth the place which
+German philosophy had held. The anti-Proudhon controversy is therefore
+worthy of a fuller treatment.
+
+Pierre Joseph Proudhon (b. 1809 in Besanēon, d. 1865 in Paris) was one
+of the most gifted and most distinguished of social philosophers which
+the modern proletariat has produced. He was originally a compositor,
+like his similarly minded English contemporary, John Francis Bray, the
+author of "Labour's Wrongs," published in 1839, but he had a much
+greater inclination for study and a more fruitful literary talent. He
+managed to acquire, self-taught, a knowledge of the classical
+languages, of mathematics and of science, read assiduously but
+indiscriminately works on economics, philosophy, and history, and
+applied himself to social criticism. It is rare for a working man in
+the West of Europe to feel impelled to make an acquaintance with Kant,
+Hegel, and Feuerbach as Proudhon did through French translations and
+through intercourse with German scholars in Paris. He possessed the
+noble ambition of blending French sprightliness with German
+thoroughness. But self-instruction failed to give him that
+intellectual training which is more valuable than knowledge, and which
+alone gives the power to order and to utilise the information
+acquired, as well as to submit one's own work to self-criticism. The
+value of a systematic education does not consist in the main in the
+acquisition of knowledge but in the training of our intellectual
+faculties as instruments of inquiry and apprehension, of methodical
+thinking and of sound judgment, to enable us to find our bearings more
+easily in the chaos of phenomena, experiences, and ideas. A
+self-taught man may no doubt attain to this degree of culture, but
+only if his first attempts at independent creative work are submitted
+to a strict but kindly criticism, which makes him discipline his
+thoughts. This was not the case with Proudhon; he lacked mental
+self-discipline. His first work, "What is Property?" (1840) brought
+him immediate recognition and strengthened him in his high opinion of
+his knowledge and his powers, even to the point of making him
+conceited. When, for example, the French historian, Michelet,
+disapproved of his dictum, "Property is robbery," Proudhon replied,
+"Not twice in a thousand years does one come across a pronouncement
+like that."--("Economic Contradictions," Leipzig, 1847. Vol. II., p.
+301.) And yet the idea is as old as Communism itself. Besides all
+this, the vivacity and exuberance of language for which Proudhon was
+noted easily blinded him to the shortcomings of his intellectual
+culture. Thus it often happened that he rediscovered ideas of his
+predecessors and published them to the world with naļve pride. Through
+page after page of argument he holds the reader in expectation of the
+explanation, which he is about to give, of the nature of value, which
+he rightly characterises as the "corner-stone of political economy."
+At last he will disclose the secret: "It is time to make ourselves
+acquainted with this power. This power ... is _labour_." His main
+work, "The System of Economic Contradictions," swarms with
+philosophical formulę and expressions like thesis, antithesis,
+antinomies, synthesis, dialectics, induction, syllogisms, etc., as
+also with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew etymologies; it often wanders into
+irrelevant theological and philosophical digressions and side issues,
+not so much with the intention of parading the author's knowledge as
+from his lack of intellectual discipline and insufficient command of
+his material. The work in question was to combine German philosophy
+with French and English political economy, and its author believed
+that it would secure for him before everything else the admiration of
+the German Socialists, especially of Marx. He drew the latter's
+attention to it by letter, and awaited his "rigorous criticism." The
+criticism came in "Misčre de la Philosophie" (Brussels, 1847), but it
+could no longer fulfil its purpose, as the fundamental difference
+between the two men had already widened to a gulf that could not be
+bridged. Marx had almost completed his materialistic, logical, and
+revolutionary Socialism, Proudhon had laid the foundations of his
+peaceful Anarchism with its federative economic basis. With his
+searching analysis, his systematised knowledge, and his great
+indignation at the presumptuous attacks on every Socialist school and
+leader, Marx sat in judgment upon Proudhon, exposing him as a
+dilettante in philosophy and economics, and at the same time
+sketching in outline his own conception of history and economics.
+
+Marx's verdict is damning, yet one cannot but acknowledge that
+Proudhon, in spite of his obvious insufficiency, had endeavoured,
+honestly and zealously, to extricate himself from Capitalism as well
+as from Utopianism, and to outline a scheme for an economic order, in
+which men, such as he had found them, might lead a free, industrious,
+and righteous life. The task which Proudhon had set himself was the
+same as that which engaged the attention of Marx, the criticism of
+political economy and of the sentimental Utopian Socialism. That is
+the key-note of Proudhon's system, and it is sounded in almost every
+chapter. He lacked, however, the requisite knowledge and the
+historical sense which alone could have made him equal to his task.
+The whole of his criticism consists virtually in the complaint that
+riches and poverty accumulate side by side, and that the economic
+categories--use value, exchange value, division of labour,
+competition, monopoly, machinery, property, ground rent, credit, tax,
+etc.--manifest contradictions. Proudhon's special problem was the
+following: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the
+value, let us say, of 20 milliards. But if the workers, as consumers,
+wish to buy back these goods they have to pay 25 milliards. The
+workers are thus cheated out of a fifth. That is a terrible
+contradiction."--("What is Property?" Chap. IV.; "Economic
+Contradictions," Vol. I., pp. 292-93.) This statement of the problem
+shows that Proudhon had no inkling of the essential features of the
+question of value, in spite of the fact that he cites Adam Smith,
+David Ricardo, etc., whom he must therefore have read. Had he really
+understood these economists and taken up his critical attitude towards
+them from the standpoint of justice, he would have stated the problem
+somewhat as follows: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods
+to the value, say, of 20 milliards. For their work, however, they
+receive as wages a quantity of goods of the value of only 10 or 12
+milliards. Is that just?" Only this way of stating the question could
+possibly have revealed to him the nature of wages, of value, of
+profit, of capital and its contradictions. Proudhon sees the
+perpetration of fraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and not in
+that of production, and he does not ask himself how, if labour
+produces goods to the value of only 20 milliards, they can be
+exchanged at a value of 25 milliards, and what is responsible for the
+increase of five milliards. The other contradictions which he brings
+forward are not indeed new, but they are ingeniously treated. For
+example: the essence of exchange-value is labour, which creates
+wealth; but the more the wealth produced, the less becomes its
+exchange-value. Or this: the division of labour is, according to
+Smith, one of the most effective means of increasing wealth, but the
+further the division of labour proceeds the lower sinks the workman,
+being reduced to the level of an unintelligent automaton engaged in
+the performance of a fractional operation. The same thing holds good
+for machinery. So, too, competition stimulates effort, but brings much
+misery in its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices, and
+strife between man and man. Further, taxation should be proportional
+to riches, in reality it is proportional to poverty. Or again, private
+ownership of land ought to increase productivity; in practice it
+deprives the farmer of the land. In this way he runs to earth the
+contradictions in political economy, and so we find everywhere the
+words thesis and anti-thesis or antinomies (contradictions between two
+well-established propositions). And out of this contradiction springs
+poverty. The solution or the synthesis is the creation of an economic
+order which shall preserve the good elements in this category and
+eliminate the bad ones, and so satisfy the demands of justice. And
+that is what Socialism cannot do. "For the economic order is based
+upon calculations of an inexorable justice and not upon those angelic
+sentiments of brotherhood, sacrifice, and love which so many
+well-meaning Socialists of the present time are endeavouring to awake
+in the people. It is useless for them to preach, after the example of
+Jesus Christ, the necessity for sacrifice, and to set an example of it
+in their own lives: selfishness is stronger than they and can only be
+restrained by rigid justice and immutable economic law. Humanitarian
+enthusiasm may cause upheavals which are conducive to the progress of
+civilisation, but such emotional crises, like the fluctuations in
+value, simply result in the establishing of law and order on a more
+rigid and more restricted basis. Nature or the Deity planted mistrust
+in our hearts, having no faith in the love of man for his fellow men;
+and though I say it to the shame of the human conscience (for our
+hypocrisy must be confronted with it sooner or later), every
+disclosure which science has made to us concerning the designs of
+providence with respect to the progress of society points to a deeply
+rooted hatred of mankind on God's part."--("System of Economic
+Contradictions or the Philosophy of Poverty," Vol. I., p. 107.) Just
+as severely does he denounce the institution of Trade Unionism and
+its methods of warfare, together with State politics, as indeed the
+working of class organisation and of the State generally. The only way
+to realise social justice is to create a society of producers who
+exchange their goods among one another according to their equivalents
+in labour and carry on work in adequate relationship to the production
+of wealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an order where supply
+and demand balance one another.
+
+Marx's answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" is indicated at once by
+the title "The Poverty of Philosophy." He deals first of all with the
+economic details of Proudhon's work, and proves with documentary
+evidence that the theses and antitheses it contains partly spring from
+a half-understood reading of English and French political economists,
+and in part have been taken direct from the English Communists. Marx
+already displays in this section an extensive knowledge of economic
+literature. Then he confronts Proudhon's philosophical and social
+theories with his own deductions and gives many positive results.
+Marx's main object was to induce the Socialists to give up their
+Utopianism and think in terms of realism, and to regard social and
+economic _categories_ in their historical setting:
+
+"Economic _categories_ are only the theoretical expressions, ideal
+conceptions of the conditions of production obtaining in society....
+Proudhon has grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth, linen,
+etc., under certain conditions of production. But what he has not
+grasped is that these social conditions themselves are just as much
+human products as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are intimately
+bound up with productive power. With the acquisition of new productive
+power men change their methods of production, and with the change in
+the methods of production, in the manner of obtaining a livelihood,
+they change their social conditions. The hand-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 conditions in
+conformity with the material means of production, shape also the
+principles, the ideas, the _categories_ in conformity with their
+social conditions. Consequently these ideas, these _categories_, are
+just as little eternal as are the conditions to which they give
+expression. They are the transitory and changing products of history.
+We are living in the midst of a continuous movement of growth in
+productive power, of destruction of existing social conditions, of
+formation of ideas."--("Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart, 1885, pp.
+100-101.)
+
+Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marx ascribes to
+industrialism a powerful revolutionary effect, and that he
+characterises the different forms of 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 forms of
+society." What he means to say, then, is that ideas and systems are
+limited by their time, that they are conditioned by the prevailing
+means of production. To understand them one must study the times which
+have preceded them, as well as investigate the ideas and systems
+themselves, and find out whether new forms have not arisen which stand
+in contradiction or in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says:
+
+"Feudalism, too, had its proletariat--the villeinage--which contains
+all the germs of the middle class. Feudal production, too, had two
+contradictory elements which are likewise characterised as the 'good'
+and 'bad' sides of feudalism without regard to the fact that it is
+always the 'bad' side which triumphs ultimately over the 'good' side.
+It is the bad side which calls into being the movement which makes
+history, in that it brings the struggle to a head. If, at the time of
+the supremacy of feudalism, the economists, in their enthusiasm for
+knightly virtues, for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,
+for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishing home
+industries in the country, for the development of industry organised
+in corporations, companies and guilds, in a word, for everything which
+forms the finer side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
+eliminating everything which could throw a shadow on this
+picture--serfdom, privileges, anarchy--where would it all have ended?
+They would have destroyed every element which called forth strife,
+they would have nipped in the bud the development of the middle class.
+They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out
+history.
+
+"When the middle class had come to the top, neither the good nor the
+bad side of feudalism come into question. The productive forces, which
+had been developed under feudalism through its agency, fell to its
+control. All old economic forms, the legal relations between private
+individuals, which corresponded to them, the political order, which
+was the official expression of the old society, were shattered."
+
+"Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who regard the hardships
+and struggles of society as an absolute evil and plan the
+construction of a society comprised solely of good elements, have not
+grasped the meaning of the history of mankind. They think abstractly.
+They misjudge both the past and the present.
+
+"Hence to form a correct judgment of production under feudalism one
+must consider it a method of production based upon contradiction. One
+must show how wealth was produced within this contradiction, how
+productive power developed contemporaneously with the antagonism of
+classes, how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil,
+constantly increased until the material conditions for its liberation
+were fully ripe.
+
+"Does that not show clearly enough that the means of production, the
+conditions under which productive power is developed, are anything but
+eternal laws, that they rather correspond to a definite stage in the
+evolution of mankind and of its productive power, and that a variation
+in the productive power of mankind necessarily brings about a
+variation in its conditions of production?
+
+"The middle class begins with a proletariat, which in its turn is
+itself a remnant of the feudal proletariat. In the course of its
+historical development the middle class necessarily develops its
+contradictory character, which on its first appearance is more or less
+veiled, existing only in a latent form. In proportion as the middle
+class develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
+modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian
+class and the middle class, a struggle which, before being felt,
+observed, estimated, understood, acknowledged, and finally openly
+proclaimed on both sides, issues in the meanwhile only in partial and
+transitory conflicts and acts of destruction."
+
+In a special chapter Marx shows the necessity and the historical
+significance of the Trade Unions, which in spite of all the
+apprehensions and warnings of Utopians and Economists the workers have
+gone on establishing and perfecting, in order to be able to withstand
+the domination of capital. That means the gathering together of the
+divided interests and activities of the workers in a vast class
+movement, standing in opposition to the middle class; which, however,
+does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the
+classes themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as class
+is brought against class:
+
+"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of
+production, among which the middle class moves, have not a simple,
+uniform character but one which involves conflicting elements; that the
+same conditions which produce wealth produce also poverty; that the same
+conditions which tend to the development of productive power develop
+also the power of repression; that these conditions only create
+bourgeois wealth, i.e., the wealth of the middle class, at the cost of
+the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this
+class and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."--("Poverty of
+Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)
+
+This antithetical character of capitalist society has for its effect
+that the political economists, who are the philosophers of the
+existing order, lose their bearings, while the Socialists, who are the
+philosophers of the proletariat, look round for means to relieve the
+distress. They condemn class struggles,[4] build Utopias and plan
+schemes of salvation, whereas the only real solution, because it is
+the only one which arises from the actual conditions, must be to
+further the organisation of the oppressed class and make it conscious
+of the objects of its struggles. For out of these struggles the new
+society will arise, and that, of course, can only happen when
+productive power has reached a high stage of development. Or as Marx
+himself proceeds:
+
+"An oppressed class is a vital condition of any society founded upon
+class antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed class necessarily
+includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the
+oppressed class may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in
+which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing
+social institutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the
+instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the
+revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary
+elements as a class presupposes the existence in perfected form of all
+the productive forces that could in any way be developed in the bosom
+of the old society. Does this mean that after the collapse of the old
+order of society there will be a new class domination culminating in a
+new political power? The condition of the emancipation of the working
+class is the abolition of all classes, as the condition of the
+emancipation of the third estate, of the middle class, was the
+abolition of all the three estates. The working class will, in the
+course of its evolution, replace the old middle-class society by an
+association excluding classes and their antagonism, and there will no
+longer be any real political power,[5] because it is just this
+political power which is the official expression of class antagonism
+within the community.
+
+"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a
+struggle of class against class, a struggle which, when brought to its
+highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be
+surprised that a society founded upon class antagonism should, at its
+final dissolution, issue in brutal conflict and collision of man
+against man? Let it not be said that the social movement excludes the
+political. There never was a political movement which was not at the
+same time a social movement.
+
+"Only in an order of things where there are no classes and no class
+antagonism will social evolution cease to be political revolution.
+Until then the last word of social science on the eve of every general
+reconstruction of society must ever be: 'Fight or die; bloody war or
+annihilation. Thus are we confronted with the inexorable
+question.'--(George Sand)."
+
+With this battle-cry "The Poverty of Philosophy" comes to a close. It
+is the prologue to the "Communist Manifesto," which in itself is but a
+popular version of the positive doctrines developed in the controversy
+against Proudhon.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] The Socialists of those times were the Owenites and the
+Fourierists, who condemned all class struggles, Trade Unionist
+strikes, and Labour politics.
+
+[5] Marx means the State.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES.
+
+
+I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES.
+
+Marx was a revolutionary not only in the sense that he was the
+representative of a new conception of society and the founder of a
+theory of a new economic order, but also in the popular sense of
+advocating the use of force, in which connection he looked to the
+first years of the French Revolution as a model. He had a keen ear for
+the revolutionary rumblings in the depths of the populace. The years
+during which the elements of his new conception of society were
+accumulating in his mind and shaping themselves into a system were
+involved in a revolutionary atmosphere. In 1842 England witnessed the
+first strike on a large scale, which threatened to extend into a
+general strike and bore a political revolutionary character. In 1843
+and 1844 the idea of the impending revolution was widely spread in
+England. Insurrections broke out among the Silesian weavers in 1844.
+In 1845 and 1846 Socialism spread rapidly on all sides in Germany, and
+Socialist periodicals appeared in the industrial centres. France
+swarmed with Socialist systems, Socialist novels and newspaper
+articles. The spectre of Communism was abroad in Europe. The
+convention of the United Assembly by Frederick William IV. at the
+beginning of February, 1847, was looked upon as the harbinger of the
+German Revolution. The connection between these phenomena could not
+escape acute intellects. Hand in hand with the extension of industry
+and the rapid construction of railways and telegraphs came
+alternations of economic prosperity and crisis, poverty grew, and the
+workers fought with ever-increasing bitterness against the iron law of
+wages and against the scanty pay, which hardly allowed the proletariat
+to eke out a bare subsistence. The cry in England was: "More
+factories, more poverty," but at the same time: "The greater the
+political rights of the masses, the surer becomes emancipation."
+Whoever lived in England and France during these years and had
+dealings with Socialism could not help feeling that political and
+social revolutions were on the march.
+
+Already in his first letter to Ruge, written from Holland in March,
+1843, Marx deals with the coming revolution, and foresees, to the
+astonishment of Ruge, who refused to believe it, that the Government
+of Frederick William IV. was drifting towards a revolution. At that
+time Marx had hardly begun his studies in Socialism; and the further
+he advanced in these studies, elaborating his social dialectics and
+evolving the ideas of the class struggle, the more inevitably was he
+driven to the conclusion that the proletarian revolution, the seizure
+of political power by the proletariat, was the indispensable
+preliminary to the triumph of Communism.
+
+Utopian Socialism stood outside the State and attempted to set up a
+Socialist Commonwealth apart from the State and behind the back of the
+State. Utopianism, with its moral and religious motives and medięval
+Communist traditions, was pervaded with that spirit of contempt for
+the State which was characteristic of the Catholic Church during the
+period of its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognised all practical
+forms of power, even if he did not always estimate them at their true
+value, saw in the State an executive power which it was a question of
+overturning and using as an extremely powerful instrument in the
+social revolution. As a result of his excursions into politics and
+French and English Socialism, Marx gave up Hegel's overstrained idea
+of the State and accepted the view current in Western European thought
+of the time; but he interpreted the State in the sense of the doctrine
+of the class struggle as the executive council of the ruling and
+possessing classes.
+
+The impressions, the ideas, the experiences and the modes of thinking
+which took root in the mind of Marx during the evolution of the
+fundamental principles of his sociological and historical system
+dominated the whole of his life's work.
+
+Marxism is quite a natural growth of the revolutionary soil of the
+first half of the nineteenth century. Marx completes the social
+revolutionary doctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, the
+executor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeply rooted in it;
+they have nothing specifically Jewish about them. I know of no Jewish
+philosopher, sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewish
+character as had Marx.
+
+
+II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
+
+As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented the society of German
+working men in order to instruct them by lectures and by conversation.
+He was loyally seconded by Engels, who had more time and more money
+to devote to this task, and who worked for the new doctrine in Paris,
+Cologne, Elberfeld and other towns. Since 1836 the German working men
+living abroad had been organised in the League of the Just, which from
+1840 had its head-quarters in London. The individual groups were kept
+in touch with one another by means of Communist correspondence
+committees. The Paris and Brussels groups drew the attention of the
+London Committee to Marx, and in January, 1847, Joseph Moll, one of
+its members, was commissioned to go to Brussels and obtain information
+about Marx.--("Mehring's Introduction to the Reprint of the Cologne
+Communist Proceedings," published by _Vorwärts_, Berlin, 1914, pp.
+10-11.) The result was the transformation of the League of the Just
+into the League of Communists, which held its first Congress in London
+in the summer of 1847, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) being among
+those present as delegates. At the second Congress, held in London
+towards the end of November and beginning of December, 1847, Marx also
+appeared, and together with Engels was commissioned to prepare a new
+program. The new program is the Communist Manifesto. Engels had come
+from Paris, Marx from Brussels. Before leaving Paris, Engels wrote a
+letter to Marx, dated November 24, in which he speaks as follows on
+the subject of the Manifesto:
+
+    "Just think over the confession of faith a little. I believe it
+    will be best if we leave out the form of catechism and entitle
+    the thing 'The Communist Manifesto.' And then, as more or less
+    of it will consist in historical narrative, the present form is
+    quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the manuscript which I
+    have written; it is a plain narrative, but is badly put
+    together, and has been done in a frightful hurry. I begin, 'What
+    is Communism?' and then straight away with the proletariat--the
+    history of its origin, difference from earlier workers,
+    development of the antagonism of the proletariat and the middle
+    class, crises, conclusions, with all kinds of secondary
+    considerations thrown in, and lastly party politics of the
+    Communists, as much as is good for the public to
+    know."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. I., p. 84.)
+
+Engels' draft of the Communist Manifesto has been edited by Eduard
+Bernstein.--("Grundsätze des Kommunismus," published by _Vorwärts_,
+1914.) A comparison of this draft with the actual "Communist
+Manifesto" makes evident the full extent of Marx's intellectual
+superiority to Engels. The Communist Manifesto contains four main
+groups of ideas: (1) The history of the evolution of the middle class,
+its character, its positive and negative achievement--modern
+capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical
+conceptions and conclusions--the doctrine of the class struggle and
+the rōle of the proletariat. (3) Practical application--revolutionary
+action by the Communists. (4) Criticism of other Socialist schools.
+The last section has long ago lost all practical interest, so that we
+need only deal with the first three sections.
+
+(1) The middle class developed in the bosom of feudal society, in the
+medięval industrial towns. With the geographical discoveries of the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its sphere of activity was
+extended; it revolutionised the methods of industry, agriculture and
+communication; it broke through the medięval economic and political
+bonds; it overthrew feudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing
+regions, absolute monarchy, and established modern industry with its
+accelerated and concentrated production, middle-class franchise, the
+national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the
+middle class which first showed what human activity can accomplish.
+"It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian
+pyramids, Roman aqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried out
+greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades....
+Although it is scarcely a century since it came to be the dominating
+class, the middle class has created more powerful and more gigantic
+forces of production than all past generations put together." The
+subjugation of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry
+to industry and to agriculture, steamships, railways, electric
+telegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, making the rivers
+navigable, the conjuring forth of whole peoples out of the ground:
+that is the positive achievement of the middle class. Now for the
+negative: it created the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,
+anarchical economic conditions, periodical crises--poverty and famine
+in consequence of over-production and a glut of wealth, over-driving
+and reckless exploitation of the workers, whose labour is bought in
+exchange for the minimum quantity of the necessaries of life. These
+facts show that the forces of production are more extensive and more
+powerful than is demanded by the conditions under which they are
+operative: the economic system can produce and deliver more goods than
+society can use under the existing laws concerning property, i.e., the
+distribution and the effective demand fall short of the manufacture
+and the supply. The material forces of production press upon the
+limits imposed upon them by the laws of private property. This
+happens, too, because the working class must reduce its consumption of
+goods to a minimum in consequence of the existing laws of property,
+which give to capital the right of distribution. All these conditions
+taken together, the positive as well as the negative ones, make
+possible and give rise to the struggles of the workers against the
+middle class--and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These
+struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to
+the awakening of class consciousness, and, as a result, to the
+formation of the political labour party.
+
+(2) The movements within middle-class society, as well as in feudal
+and ancient society, where freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
+baron and serf, guild-master and journeyman, capitalist and working
+man stood and stand in constant antagonism to one another, prove that
+the whole history of mankind since the rise of private ownership is
+the history of class struggles, and that in these class struggles,
+carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of
+society and of ownership, new economic systems arise or else end with
+the common destruction of the two classes. The antagonistic classes
+are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of ownership
+and ideals of culture. The craftsman and tradesman of the towns, the
+burgher, fought against the feudal lord and knight for individual
+property, for freedom of industry and trade, for freedom to dispose of
+personal property and for the national State. With the triumphal
+progress of the middle class private property fell into fewer and
+fewer hands. The proletarians are without property, they have no share
+in the wealth of their country; on the other hand, the production of
+capital becomes more and more a matter of common co-operation, and
+capital becomes a joint product. The proletariat can, accordingly, no
+longer fight for individual ownership but for the socially conducted
+utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and
+of the goods produced. The middle class has therefore created in the
+proletariat a social class which must have as its object to do away
+with the middle class system of ownership and to set up the
+proletarian system of common ownership.
+
+(3) In this struggle of the working classes the Communists are
+therefore the pioneers of the movement. They are at once the
+philosophers and the self-sacrificing champions of the proletariat
+awakened into class consciousness. "The Communists are not a special
+party in contradistinction to the other Labour parties. They have no
+interests apart from the interests of the whole proletariat. They set
+up no special principles according to which they wish to mould the
+proletarian movement." The Communists lay stress on the common
+interests of the whole proletariat and of the collective movement.
+Their aim is the organisation of the proletariat into a class, the
+overthrow of middle-class domination, and the conquest of political
+power by the proletariat. They support everywhere "any revolutionary
+movement against the existing social and political conditions. In all
+these movements they emphasise the question of property, in whatever
+state of evolution it may appear, as the foundation of the movement.
+And finally the Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement
+of democratic parties[6] of all nationalities. The Communists disdain
+to conceal their views and intentions. They declare openly that their
+ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining
+order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communist
+revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains.
+They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite!"
+
+From the standpoint of social philosophy, the Manifesto, a document
+reflecting its time, is almost perfect. Strong emotion and
+extraordinary intellectual power are united in it. Years of study of
+one of the boldest and most fertile minds are here welded together in
+the glowing heat of one of the most active of intellectual workshops.
+But the work is not free from logical flaws. In the passages we have
+quoted the part played in history by the middle class is extolled by
+Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares
+that "the middle class is the unwitting and inert instrument of
+industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the
+second section, where the middle class is accused of indolence. "It
+has been objected that, if private property were done away with, all
+activity would cease and a general laziness set in. According to that,
+middle-class society would have been ruined by idleness long ago; for
+those of its members who work gain nothing, and those who gain do not
+work." That is as much as to say that the middle class is lazy and
+does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle class has
+achieved more marvellous works than Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages,
+and that, in its reign of power of scarcely a hundred years, it has
+created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all
+past generations put together. How can a class which does not work
+produce more marvellous works than the whole ancient and medięval
+world?
+
+Marx frees himself later from this inconsistency by ascribing surplus
+value solely to the operation of the variable part of capital
+(wage-labour)--a doctrine which he develops with iron logic in his
+principal work, "Capital."
+
+
+III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848.
+
+The ink had hardly dried on the Communist Manifesto when the February
+Revolution broke out. The crowing of the Gallic cock soon awoke an
+echo in the various German States, whilst in Brussels the democrats
+were attacked and ill-treated by the mob. One of the victims of this
+attack was Karl Marx, who was, moreover, banished shortly afterwards
+by the Belgian Government. This action, however, did not cause him any
+embarrassment, as he was ready in any case to proceed to Paris,
+whither the Provisional Government of the French Republic had already
+invited him in the following terms:
+
+                                           "Paris, March 1, 1848.
+
+    "BRAVE AND FAITHFUL MARX,
+
+    "The soil of the French Republic is a place of refuge for all
+    friends of freedom. Tyranny has banished you; France, the free,
+    opens to you her gates--to you and to all who fight for the holy
+    cause, the fraternal cause of every people. In this sense shall
+    every officer of the French Government understand his duty.
+    _Salut et Fraternité._
+
+                                           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 the means for returning to Germany to take part in the German
+revolution. They themselves travelled to the Rhineland and succeeded
+in getting the establishment of the newspaper planned in Cologne into
+their hands. On the first of June, 1848, the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_
+appeared for the first time. It goes without saying that the editor
+was Karl Marx, and among his collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath,
+Wilhelm Wolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, Lassalle sent
+contributions. It is but rarely given to a daily paper to have such an
+editorial staff. In the third volume of his "Collected Papers of Marx
+and Engels," Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles which
+appeared in this journal. They are still worth reading. Here are a few
+examples. After the fall of Vienna he wrote an article concluding with
+the following words: "With the victory of the 'Red Republic' in Paris
+the armies from the inmost recesses of every land will be vomited
+forth upon the boundaries and over them, and the real strength of the
+combatants will clearly appear. Then we shall remember June and
+October, and we too shall cry, 'Woe to the vanquished!' The fruitless
+butcheries which have occurred since those June and October days ...
+will convince the peoples that there is only one means of shortening,
+simplifying, and concentrating the torturing death agonies of
+society--only one means--revolutionary terrorism."--(_Neue Rheinische
+Zeitung_, November 6, 1848.)
+
+Or take, for example, this passage from the last article of the paper,
+when on May 18, 1849, it succumbed to the "craft and cunning of the
+dirty West Kalmucks" (i.e., the Prussians).
+
+"In taking leave of our readers we remind them of the words in our
+first January number: 'Revolutionary upheaval of the French working
+class, general war--that is the index for the year 1849. And already
+in the east a revolutionary army comprised of warriors of all
+nationalities stands confronting the old Europe represented by and in
+league with the Russian army, already from Paris looms the Red
+Republic.'"
+
+In reading these extracts one has only to substitute Russia for France
+and Moscow for Paris and we get at one of the sources of Lenin's and
+Trotsky's revolutionary policy. The articles written by Marx in 1848
+and 1849 have supplied the Bolsheviks their tactics.
+
+The censorship, Press lawsuits, and the decline of the revolution
+severed the life threads of the paper after scarcely a year of its
+existence. Marx sacrificed everything he had in money and
+valuables--in all, 7,000 thalers--in order to satisfy creditors and to
+pay the contributors and printers. Then he travelled to Paris, where
+he witnessed not the triumph of the Red Republic but that of the
+counter-revolution. In July, 1849, he was banished by the French
+Government to the boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; he
+preferred, however, to go over to London, where he remained 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 struggle for existence, which, however, did not
+prevent him from collecting and systematising a vast amount of
+material for his life-work, "Capital," nor from taking a decisive part
+in the Labour movement as soon as the opportunity presented itself, as
+it did on the founding of the International. The first decade was
+particularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851, by Marx's wife
+to Weydemeyer, in America, gives an affecting picture of their poverty
+during these first years of exile.--("Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II.,
+pp. 18-21.)
+
+The attempt to continue the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ under the title
+_Neue Rheinische Revue_ had only the negative result of swallowing up
+Marx's last resources. How poor Marx then was can be judged from the
+fact that he had to send his last coat to the pawnshop in order that
+he might buy paper for his pamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial
+(towards the end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentable differences
+sprang up among the German exiles, who, deceived in their
+revolutionary illusions, overwhelmed one another with recriminations;
+an echo of these conflicts is heard in the pamphlet "Herr Vogt"
+(1860). Marx's only regular source of income in the years 1851-60 was
+his earnings as correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which paid
+him at the rate of a sovereign per article, and this hardly covered
+his rent and the cost of newspapers and postage. Yet his articles were
+veritable essays, the fruit of researches which cost him a good deal
+of time. And in the midst of this penury the idea of writing a
+Socialistic criticism of political economy burnt within him. One might
+almost say that since 1845 this idea had allowed him no peace.
+Freiligrath's lines are, as it were, stamped upon him:
+
+    In the clouds his goal he planted;
+      In the dust had he to live,
+    Bare existence daily granted.
+    Cramped, hemmed in on every side,
+      Pinched by poverty and urged
+    By want, he, of all denied,
+      By necessity was scourged.
+
+Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family
+inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over £800, and Engels' more
+plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about
+£350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume
+of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.
+
+To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's
+reminiscences--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)--of
+his intercourse with the Marx family. In particular he depicts the
+personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and
+among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial
+companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with
+mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a
+prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never
+asserted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion
+in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and
+notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great
+hardships and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the
+side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which
+linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright
+disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every
+one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich
+Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished
+the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife.
+Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his
+wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his manuscripts to
+her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were
+born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the
+girls grew up--Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became
+the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor,
+who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.
+
+The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and
+seemed to promise an abundant harvest in his later life. But his
+health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work.
+The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847
+and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these
+years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his
+activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the
+Commune).
+
+
+V. THE INTERNATIONAL.
+
+The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into
+the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and
+nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class
+movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign,
+have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and
+expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and
+especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and
+adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to
+obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part
+in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which
+in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist
+questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change
+seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The
+London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform
+movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was
+an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested an interest in the
+fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning
+liberty.
+
+At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour
+leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men,
+with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and
+1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an
+international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of
+September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates
+from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the
+28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering
+in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an
+invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be
+represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the
+formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees
+and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles
+and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a
+Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be
+elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and
+wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers
+since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The
+declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by
+no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to
+please English and French working men; it consists essentially of
+Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to
+English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to
+Engels--("Correspondence," Vol. III., p. 191)--"so to arrange matters
+that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to
+the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time
+before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of
+speech. One must go _fortiter in re, suaviter in modo_ (firmly
+maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."
+
+The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class
+from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from
+modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt
+by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the
+working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the
+ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of
+workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist
+diplomacy.
+
+Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to
+the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In
+1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next
+revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and
+I) have this powerful machinery _in our hands_."--("Correspondence of
+Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)
+
+The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the
+followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the
+ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately
+broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of
+Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative
+economic form of social organisation, only the Bakunists were also
+Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to
+Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one
+point--that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement.
+Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting
+to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands.
+Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national
+prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The
+Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and
+conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late
+as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume,
+the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx,
+Pangermaniste" (Paris).
+
+Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne)
+lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he
+took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia
+and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living
+in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent
+theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical
+Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary
+activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he
+exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the
+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 his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following
+letter which he addressed to Marx:
+
+                                      "123, Montbrillant, Geneva,
+                                          "December 22, 1868.
+
+    "Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns
+    me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than
+    ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how
+    truly right you are when you advance along the high road of
+    economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set
+    those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national
+    or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same
+    thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since
+    my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne
+    Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu,
+    than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the
+    'International,' of which you are one of the most illustrious
+    founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple--and
+    I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my attitude
+    and my feelings toward you."--("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I.,
+    p. 6.)
+
+Nevertheless, this discipleship did not hinder Bakunin from secretly
+forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of
+the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of
+school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but
+it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected.
+The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social
+revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the
+working-class movement.
+
+
+VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE.
+
+On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Army was defeated near
+Sedan and compelled to capitulate on the following day. Among the
+prisoners was Louis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empire fell on
+September 4, and France was proclaimed a Republic. On September 6 Marx
+wrote to Engels: "The French section of the International travelled
+from London to Paris in order to do foolish things in the name of the
+International. They want to overthrow the Provisional Government and
+set up a _Commune de Paris_."--("Correspondence," Vol. IV., p. 330).
+
+Although the Provisional Government of the newly-baked French Republic
+was in no wise made up of friends of the democracy, Marx and Engels
+expressed themselves _against_ any revolutionary action by the Paris
+working class. In the second Address (or declaration) of the General
+Council of the International, written on September 9, and composed by
+Marx, the question is discussed as follows:
+
+    "Thus the French working class finds itself placed in extremely
+    difficult circumstances. Any attempt to overthrow the new
+    Government, when the enemy is already knocking at the gates of
+    Paris, would be a hopeless piece of folly. The French workers
+    must do their duty as citizens; but they must not let themselves
+    be overcome by the national reminiscences of 1792.... They have
+    not to repeat the past but to build the future. Let them quietly
+    and with determination make the most of the republican freedom
+    granted to them, in order to carry out thoroughly the
+    organisation of their own class. That will give them new,
+    Herculean strength for the rebirth of France and for our common
+    task--the emancipation of the proletariat."--("Civil War in
+    France," Second Address.)
+
+Marx then urged the French workers not to do anything foolish, not to
+set up a revolutionary Commune of Paris, but to make use of their
+republican liberties to create proletarian organisations and to save
+and discipline their forces for future tasks. Circumstances, however,
+proved much stronger than any 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 fury against the "capitulards," the Paris working men cast
+Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolution on 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 Civil War in France, 1871," which is one of
+the most mature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirely
+adrift from the revolutionaries--the Bolsheviks of that time--but
+defended them with unsurpassable energy. It is the swan song of Marx
+and of the first International.
+
+
+VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE.
+
+During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost
+uninterruptedly against various bodily ailments, all of which had
+their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His
+work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend,
+"health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his
+enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of
+rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he
+likewise occupied himself with studies of the 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 some very important data as to Marx's attitude to
+the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism
+to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself.
+
+He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877
+and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and
+set about arranging his manuscripts and getting the second volume of
+"Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his
+capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no
+longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places
+proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find
+recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M.
+Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and
+Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this
+recognition had 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 January, 1883, gave the finishing stroke to his enfeebled
+body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an
+account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge,
+dated March 15, 1883:
+
+    "Yesterday, at half-past two in the afternoon, the best time for
+    visiting him, I went down to see him; everybody was in tears; it
+    looked as if the end had come. I made inquiries, trying to get
+    at the truth of the matter and to offer consolation. There had
+    been a slight hęmorrhage, but a sudden collapse had supervened.
+    Our good old Lena, who had tended him better than any mother
+    does her child, went up, came down. He was half asleep, she
+    said; I could go up. As we went in, he lay there, sleeping,
+    never to wake again. Pulse and breathing had ceased. In those
+    two minutes he had gone painlessly and peacefully to sleep....
+    Mankind is less by a head, and indeed by the most important head
+    it had to-day. The working-class movement will pursue its
+    course, but its central point, to which French, Russians,
+    Americans, and Germans turned of their own accord in decisive
+    moments, always to receive that clear, unambiguous counsel which
+    genius and perfect mastery alone can give--is gone."
+
+On Saturday, March 17, he was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London.
+Among those who spoke at the graveside were Friedrich Engels and
+Wilhelm Liebknecht. The former gave a brief account of his
+revolutionary struggles, in which he said:
+
+    "Just as Darwin discovered the law of the evolution of organic
+    nature, so Marx discovered the evolutionary law of human
+    history--the simple fact, hitherto hidden under ideological
+    overgrowths, that above all things men must eat, drink, dress,
+    and find shelter before they can give themselves to politics,
+    science, art, religion, or anything else, and that therefore the
+    production of the material necessaries of life and the
+    corresponding stage of economic evolution of a people or a
+    period provides the foundation upon which the national
+    institutions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideas of
+    the people in question have been built, and upon which,
+    therefore, their explanation must be based, a procedure the
+    reverse of that which has hitherto been adopted. Marx discovered
+    also the special law of motion for the modern capitalist mode of
+    production and for the middle-class society which it begets.
+    With the discovery of surplus value light was at once thrown
+    upon a subject, all the earlier investigations of which, whether
+    by middle-class economists or by Socialist critics, had been
+    gropings in the dark...."
+
+After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened from Germany to pay a
+last tribute to his friend and master:
+
+    "The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was great in his love and in
+    his hate. His hate sprang from his love. He had a great heart,
+    as he had a great intellect. He has raised social democracy from
+    a sect, from a school, to a party, which now already fights
+    unconquered, and in the end will win the victory."
+
+Engels, who outlived him by twelve years, edited the two last volumes
+of "Capital," while Karl Kautsky, the disciple and successor of Engels
+and the real disseminator of Marxian doctrines, edited the three
+volumes of Marx's historical studies on surplus value. The latter work
+is not far short of being a great history of political economy.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] By democratic parties were then understood working-class political
+movements, such as Chartism, etc.
+
+
+
+
+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, or method of investigation, which--in
+contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel--was
+named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic--as it seeks to
+conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process--it
+is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of
+investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method
+of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of
+it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the
+Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the
+purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book,
+"On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages
+to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is
+not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the
+intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly
+have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his
+fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to
+extract the essentials of his position.
+
+A glance over human history suffices to teach us that from age to age
+man has held to be true or false various opinions on rights, customs,
+religion, the State, philosophy, land-holding, trade, industry, etc.,
+that he has had various economic arrangements, and forms of the State
+and of society, and that he has gone through an endless series of
+struggles and wars and migrations. How has this complicated variety of
+human thought and action come about? Marx raises that question, which,
+so far as he is concerned, does not aim in the first place at the
+discovery of the origin of thought, of rights, of religion, of
+society, of trade, etc.; these he takes to be historically given. He
+is rather concerned to find out the causes, the impulses, or the
+springs which produce the changes and revolutions of the essentials
+and forms of the mental and social phenomena, or which create the
+tendencies thereto. In a sentence: What interested Marx here was not
+the _origin_, but the development and change of things--he is
+searching for the dynamic law of history.
+
+Marx answered: The prime motive power of human society, which is
+responsible for the changes of human consciousness and thought, or
+which causes the various social institutions and conflicts to arise,
+does not originate, in the first place, from thought, from the Idea,
+from the world-reason or the world-spirit, but from the material
+conditions of life. The basis of human history is therefore material.
+The material conditions of life--that is, the manner in which men as
+social beings, with the aid of environing nature, and of their own
+in-dwelling physical and intellectual qualities, shape their material
+life, provide for their sustenance, and produce, distribute and
+exchange the necessary goods for the satisfaction of their needs.
+
+Of all categories of material conditions of existence, the most
+important is production of the necessary means of life. And this is
+determined by the nature of the productive forces. These are of two
+kinds: inanimate and personal. The inanimate productive forces are:
+soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools and machines. The personal
+productive forces are: the labourers, the inventors, discoverers,
+engineers, and finally, the qualities of the race--the inherited
+capacities of specific groups of men, which facilitate work.
+
+The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual
+and mental labourers; they are the real creators of exchange-value in
+capitalist society. The next place of importance is taken by modern
+technology, which is an eminently revolutionising force in
+society.--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14,
+"Poverty of Philosophy" (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.))
+
+So much for the conception "Productive Forces," which plays an
+important part with Marx. We come now to the other equally important
+notion, "Conditions of production." By this phrase Marx understands
+the legal and State forms, ordinances and laws, as well as the
+grouping of social classes and sections: thus, the social conditions
+which regulate property and determine the reciprocal human relations
+in which production is carried on. The conditions of production are
+the work of men in society. Just as men produce various material goods
+out of the materials and forces made available to them by Nature, so
+they create out of the reactions of the productive forces upon the
+mind definite social, political, and legal institutions, as well as
+systems of religion, morals, and philosophy.
+
+"Men make their own history, but do not so spontaneously in conditions
+chosen by them, but on the contrary, in conditions which they have
+found ready to hand transmitted and given."--(Marx, "The Eighteenth
+Brumaire," I.)
+
+That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs,
+men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their
+philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or
+the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and
+philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner
+that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it
+strength, and promotes its development.
+
+The foundation is material, and the superstructure is the psychical
+reflex and effect.
+
+In broad outlines this conception may be illustrated somewhat as
+follows:
+
+Primitive human groups lived under Communism and were organised
+according to blood relationship. Their deities have the
+characteristics of their natural environment, and reflect the physical
+effects of this environment upon the primitive mental life of the
+"savage"; their religion, their morality, and their laws promote the
+communal life and the tribal discipline. Feudal society is based on
+the possession of land by the nobles and on the industrial labour of
+the corporations of the towns. The inherited religious ideas are soon
+transformed in accordance with the dominant interests of these
+historical periods (primitive Christianity became a State religion);
+all religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas antagonistic to these
+interests were fought and persecuted. The middle-class society, which
+is based on personal property, is endeavouring to sweep away all
+vestiges of communal and corporation rights, to set free the
+individual, to mobilise labour and property, to abolish Feudalism and
+the old Church and monasterial institutions, and to put in their place
+the individual relation between man and God, or the personal
+conscience (the Reformation), introducing individual rights as well;
+it struggles against the independent sovereignty of the feudal
+domains, and labours for a united national territory, which will
+afford greater scope to trade and commerce; it supports Absolutism, so
+long as the latter is in conflict with the feudal lords; and when,
+afterwards, Absolutism is a hindrance to the development of
+middle-class society, this also is fought and a constitutional
+monarchy or a republic demanded. And all this takes place not because
+certain human intelligences, by reason of more intense thought, or
+enlightenment, or the call of a supernatural power, are primarily at
+work, but as a consequence of the influence of the material basis, of
+the economic foundation of society, upon the mind, which translates
+and transforms these external realities into religious, juridical, and
+philosophic conceptions:
+
+"It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence,
+but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their
+consciousness."--(Marx, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
+
+Man, even the most heroic, is not the sovereign maker and law-giver of
+social life, but its executive; he only follows out the tendencies and
+currents set up by the material foundation of society. Nevertheless, a
+great deal depends upon the executive officials. If they possess
+comprehensive knowledge, energetic natures, and outstanding
+capacities, they are able, within the boundaries drawn for them, to
+accomplish great things, and to accelerate the development.
+
+"Up to the present the philosophers have but interpreted the world; it
+is, however, necessary to change it."--(Marx, "Theses to Feuerbach.")
+
+We have referred in various places to interests. We are not to
+understand by this personal, but general social or class interests.
+Marx is not of the opinion that everybody acts in accordance with his
+personal welfare. This is not Marxian doctrine, but that of the
+middle-class moral philosophers, like Helvetius (1715-1771) and Jeremy
+Bentham (1748-1832), who regarded pleasure and pain of the individual
+as the measure and motive of his actions and conduct. Marx is rather
+of the opinion that men often, in the most important events of their
+lives, act contrary to their personal interests, as in their feelings
+and thoughts they identify themselves with that which they hold to be
+the interests of the community or of their class. According to Marx,
+individual interest generally plays a slight part in history. He is
+preoccupied with the collective interest of social production. Only
+the latter does he hold to be determining in the formation of the
+intellectual superstructure.
+
+Up till now we have only spoken of various forms of production and
+society, and their corresponding mental systems. But we do not yet
+know why and how one form of production and society becomes obsolete
+and gives place to another, that is, how and why revolutionary changes
+are brought about. Or in other words: we have hitherto considered the
+statics of society; we will now look at its dynamics.
+
+The revolutionary changes in society depend on two groups of
+phenomena, which, although casually connected with each other, yet
+work differently. One of these groups of phenomena is technical, and
+consists in changes in the productive forces. The other group, which
+is the effect of the first, is of a personal nature, and consists in
+struggles between the social classes. Let us consider the first group
+of causes.
+
+As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of
+the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets,
+through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and
+through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the
+material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then
+the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of
+production. For the conditions of production: the former social
+classes, the former laws, State institutions, and intellectual systems
+were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in
+process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and
+intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic
+foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production
+come into conflict with each other.
+
+This conflict between the new realty and the old form, this conflict
+between new causes and the obsolete effects of bygone causes, begins
+gradually to influence the thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that
+they are confronted with a new external world, and that a new era has
+been opened.
+
+Social divisions acquire a new significance: classes and sections
+which were formerly despised gain in social and economic power;
+classes which were formerly honoured decline. While this
+transformation of the social foundation is proceeding, the old
+religious, legal, philosophical, and political systems cling to their
+inherited positions, and insist on remaining, although they are
+obsolete and can no longer satisfy mental needs. For human thought is
+conservative: it follows external events slowly, just as our eye
+perceives the sun at a point which the sun has in reality already
+passed, as the rays require several minutes of time in order to strike
+our optic nerves. We may recall Hegel's fine metaphor: "The Owl of
+Minerva begins its flight only when twilight gathers." However late,
+it does begin. Great thinkers gradually arise, who explain the new
+situation, and create new ideas and trains of thought which correspond
+to the new situation. The human consciousness gives birth to anxious
+doubts and questionings, and then new truths; leading to differences
+of opinion, disputes, strifes, schisms, class struggles, and
+revolutions.
+
+In the next chapter we will consider more closely the class struggle
+between Labour and Capital. Meanwhile, we will look at the class
+struggle generally.
+
+In primitive societies, where private property is yet unknown, or
+still undeveloped, there are no class distinctions, no class
+domination, and no class antagonisms. The chief, the medicine man, and
+the judge regulate or supervise the observance of the customary
+usages, religious ceremonies, and social arrangements. But as soon as
+the old order is dissolved, and private property develops, in
+consequence of trade with other peoples or through wars, there arise
+classes of those who possess and those who do not. The possessing
+class carries on the Government, makes laws, and creates
+institutions, which chiefly serve the end of protecting the interests
+of the possessing and ruling classes. The intellectual structure of
+the class society likewise corresponds to the interests of those who
+possess and rule. So long as these interests promote the common good
+in some measure, so long as the old forms of production and the old
+conditions of production are largely in harmony with each other, a
+certain truce prevails between the classes. But should there set in
+the above-mentioned opposition between the productive forces and the
+conditions of production, the latter will cease to satisfy the
+oppressed classes, and class conflicts will arise, which will either
+result in legal compromises (reforms) or will end in the overthrow of
+the society concerned, or will lead to a new set of conditions.
+Ancient history (Hebrew, Greek, Roman) is full of these social
+struggles; all the great reform laws of these peoples were attempts to
+establish social peace, but the rich and the poor, the Patricians and
+the Plebeians, the Slaves and Freemen, continued their struggles until
+the downfall of the old world, which has bequeathed to us great
+intellectual treasures as the fruit of these struggles. In the Middle
+Ages social struggles between the feudal lords and the traders,
+between nobles and peasants, were kindled. In more recent times the
+middle classes fought Autocracy and Squirearchy, and at length the
+proletariat was pitted against the bourgeoisie--class struggles which
+led to rebellions and revolutions, and powerfully influenced the
+intellectual life.
+
+From these historical antagonisms and struggles arose the intellectual
+and political antagonisms, personified by the leaders of the social
+groups and classes, of which world-history relates: opposing
+religious and philosophical systems: Brahma and Buddha, Baal and
+Jahveh, National God and Universal God, Heathendom and Christendom,
+Catholicism and Protestantism, Materialism and Idealism, Realism and
+Nominalism. However abstract or metaphysical, however remote from
+actual life and material production they may appear to be,
+nevertheless, in the last resort they are to be traced back through
+many intermediate stages to changes in the economic foundation of the
+society in question, to the contradiction between this foundation and
+the conditions of production, as well as to the great struggles
+between conflicting interests which spring therefrom. The ethical,
+political, and politico-economic systems which strive with each other
+for mastery, as well as national and world wars, are separated from
+the real basis of society by a progressively smaller number of
+intermediate stages: the questions of idealist or utilitarian ethics,
+monarchy or republic, oligarchy or democracy, protection or free
+trade, State regulation or free scope for the economic forces,
+Socialism or private enterprise, etc., however lofty and humanitarian
+may be the arguments and ideal motives which their champions may
+adduce, are connected with the material foundation and the conditions
+of production which have come into conflict with it.
+
+Marx and Engels have set forth this conception in the Communist
+Manifesto, in popular form, as follows:
+
+    "Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
+    views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness,
+    changes with every change in the conditions of his material
+    existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
+
+    "What else does the history of ideas prove than that
+    intellectual production changes in character in proportion as
+    material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age
+    have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
+
+    "When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do
+    but express the fact that within the old society the elements of
+    a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old
+    ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions
+    of existence.
+
+    "When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient
+    religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
+    succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal
+    society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary
+    bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
+    conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
+    competition within the domain of knowledge."
+
+Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social
+divisions into classes, and the laws of property become fetters to the
+productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves
+into class struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.
+
+    "With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense
+    superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
+    considering such transformations the distinction should always
+    be made between the material transformation of the economic
+    conditions of production which can be determined with the
+    precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
+    religious, ęsthetic, or philosophic--in short, ideological forms
+    in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
+    Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
+    thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period
+    of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
+    this consciousness must rather be explained from the
+    contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
+    between the social forces of production and the conditions of
+    production."--(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
+
+The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had
+become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and
+strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production
+which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to
+disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks
+into oblivion. The men who assist the progress of the new society
+accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to
+solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development.
+Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the
+theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the
+contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.
+
+Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human
+society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and
+perfection of the productive forces.
+
+"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the
+ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production,
+as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of
+society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last
+antagonistic form of the social process of production--antagonistic
+not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from
+conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same
+time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society
+create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.
+This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of
+the prehistoric stage of human society."
+
+Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The
+capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is
+written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and
+exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive
+forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may
+enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of
+history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up
+wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled
+on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and
+was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had
+emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years
+to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed
+under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully
+stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the
+ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.
+
+The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a
+fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea
+were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in
+the positions of classes and the struggles which followed hard on the
+English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the
+transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable
+to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of
+the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and
+pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.
+
+
+II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES, AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS.
+
+One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding
+of historical processes is his conception of social classes and of
+class struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and
+politicians who pointed out the part played by social classes in
+politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this
+conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise
+form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought.
+He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following
+terms:
+
+    "The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those
+    of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence
+    in the early undeveloped period of the struggle between
+    proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see,
+    indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
+    decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the
+    proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle
+    of a class without any historical initiative or any independent
+    political movement."
+
+The classification of the various groups of society, or the division
+of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
+result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
+animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
+of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
+put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
+be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
+It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
+they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
+scientifically established features which determine the social
+classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
+to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
+were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
+which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
+characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
+working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
+ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
+form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
+savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
+society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
+or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
+of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
+chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
+the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
+the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
+zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
+working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
+sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
+possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
+livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
+capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
+class owns the means of production.
+
+Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated,
+unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The
+antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as
+the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as
+possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the
+owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as
+possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is
+indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the
+intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is
+only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction
+is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he
+does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is
+therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve,
+if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist
+imposes. Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can
+oppress the owner of labour-power.
+
+This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the
+prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its
+incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers
+recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state,
+but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the
+subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that
+the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means
+of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers
+only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a
+Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops
+out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade
+Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from
+the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and
+strives to change the basis of society from private property to common
+property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither
+freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their
+emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class
+struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.
+The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does
+not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has
+the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents
+itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and
+benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the
+beginnings of the Socialist movement, when the workers saw in
+Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate
+into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian,
+when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made
+Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these
+personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to
+philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that
+reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism
+should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences
+abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the
+further development of industry, the progress of machine technique,
+the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and
+exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength,
+organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is
+the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in
+particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by
+paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society
+to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.
+
+At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the
+reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that
+the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of
+Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in
+harmony with the course of social development.
+
+In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded
+upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class,
+of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with the
+capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of
+social revolution.
+
+The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and
+hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over
+the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and
+economic system--one of which classes fights for the existing order of
+private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system.
+Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles.
+The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of
+the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to
+maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest
+of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
+
+The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour
+movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of
+Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political
+thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of
+political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great
+personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now,
+political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class
+and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations.
+These new political and historical orientations are largely the result
+of Marx's life-work.
+
+Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the
+class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the
+Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and
+Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle
+constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the
+dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is
+justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the
+capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the
+transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from
+the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible,
+or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The
+Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic
+reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that
+in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy.
+This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
+
+
+III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP.
+
+The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union
+movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed
+towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will
+function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted
+task, as its foundation--the Trade Union movement--becomes established
+and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The
+Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the
+present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the
+proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation
+process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most
+effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of
+political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry
+out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To
+this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition
+period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat.--(Marx, Letter to the German Social
+Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
+
+Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852,
+to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
+
+    "As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the
+    existence of classes in modern society or their strife against
+    one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the
+    evolution of the class struggles, and political economists
+    showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a
+    new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the
+    existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material
+    production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the
+    Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is
+    but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the
+    creation of a society of free and equal."--("Neue Zeit," Vol.
+    XXV., second part, p. 164.)
+
+With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his
+doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in
+1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship
+in the Communist Manifesto:
+
+    "The first step in the revolution by the working class is to
+    raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
+    the battle of democracy.
+
+    "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
+    degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
+    instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of
+    the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
+    the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
+
+    "Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
+    means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
+    conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
+    therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
+    but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves,
+    necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
+    unavoidable as a means of entirely 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 the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the
+following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to
+the League of Communists in 1850 he said:
+
+    "It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
+    are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
+    resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
+    factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
+    struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
+    attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
+    possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
+    arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
+    quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
+    the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
+    power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
+    doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
+    over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
+    such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
+    middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
+    substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
+    facilitated.
+
+    "The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
+    afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
+    the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
+    present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
+    subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
+    victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
+    long as possible.
+
+    "Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
+    hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
+    remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
+    rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
+    direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
+    after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
+    present their own demands side by side with those of the
+    middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
+    soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
+    government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
+    exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
+    possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
+    compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
+    cool and dispassionate fashion, and manifest open distrust of
+    the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
+    ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
+    every successful street fight. Against the new official
+    Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
+    government, either in the form of local committees, communal
+    councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
+    democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
+    its support amongst the working classes, but from the
+    commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
+    jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working
+    class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers
+    must no longer level their distrust against the defeated
+    reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies,
+    who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.
+    The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to
+    threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to
+    the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The
+    arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must
+    be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving
+    of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers.
+    But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to
+    organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own
+    chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State
+    power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are
+    employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a
+    special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part
+    of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up
+    their arms and equipment, and any attempt at disarmament must
+    be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the
+    middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent
+    and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the
+    most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule
+    of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time
+    unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power
+    in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged
+    to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will
+    be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the
+    workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers
+    cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1)
+    compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many
+    sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise
+    themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as
+    possible of the productive forces, means of transport,
+    factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose
+    measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the
+    workers must press them to the point of turning such measures
+    into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if
+    the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and
+    factories the workers must demand that such railways and
+    factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be
+    simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the
+    Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a
+    progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a
+    moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
+    steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
+    the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
+    workers must demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the
+    workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and
+    measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either
+    work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they
+    cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to
+    paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to
+    the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set
+    themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and
+    indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as
+    possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by
+    democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes,
+    self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the
+    revolution in permanence.'"
+
+This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the
+Bolsheviks and Spartacists.
+
+The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate
+emancipation from their political victory.
+
+    "In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that
+    higher form of life which present-day society inevitably
+    opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole
+    series of historical processes, in the course of which men and
+    circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to
+    realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new
+    society, which have already developed in the womb of the
+    collapsing bourgeois society."--(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
+
+The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will
+be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with
+productive work, in order to transform the members of society into
+producers. So long as the transition period lasts the Communist
+maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his
+needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every
+respect--economic, social, and intellectual--still tainted with the
+marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic
+structure of society, and the cultural development which it
+determines."--(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given
+according to his deeds.
+
+"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives
+to society, after deductions for government, education, and other
+social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour.
+For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of
+individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual
+producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes;
+his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he
+has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social
+funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social
+provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of
+labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society
+in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers
+will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will
+consist in the application of the same measure: labour."
+
+Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and
+degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place
+during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic
+society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical
+labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first
+need of life, when the all-round development of the individual and
+the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of
+co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow
+middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist
+principle of equality be put into operation.
+
+Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the
+emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all
+other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not
+mistake the economic, political, and historical rōle of the nation:
+this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the
+national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young
+enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an
+obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably
+under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered
+from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised
+mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic
+dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and
+political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through
+international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should
+act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse
+of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program
+with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and
+Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples,
+whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of
+the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes
+and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the
+bourgeoisie.
+
+
+IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES.
+
+
+1. _Capital._
+
+As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a
+believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood
+by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and
+its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result
+that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society.
+Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his
+studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists,
+especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of
+England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian
+theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and
+materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and
+origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the
+standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society.
+Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first
+volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other
+two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by
+Engels after Marx's death.
+
+The first volume deals with the origin and tendencies of large
+industrial capital, with the immediate and simple process of commodity
+production, so far as it concerns the relations between employer and
+worker, the exploitation of the proletariat, wages and labour time,
+and the influence of modern technique on the condition of the worker.
+We see in the first volume the effect of the factory system in
+creating capital. Its chief figure is the producing, suffering,
+rebellious working class. In the second volume, the employer appears
+on the market, sells his commodities, and sets the wheels of
+production again in motion, so that commodities will continue to be
+produced. In the third volume, the realisation process of the
+undertakings of the capitalist class, or the movement of capital as a
+whole is exhibited: cost of production, cost price, total gains and
+their division into profit, interest and ground rent. The first volume
+presents the greatest difficulties. The tremendous efforts of the
+author to produce a masterpiece unnecessarily refined and sublimated
+and overloaded with learning the doctrines of value and surplus value
+until they attained the level of a philosophy, an example of Hegelian
+logic. He played with his subject like an intellectual athlete. That
+Marx could handle complicated economic questions in a clear, vigorous
+manner is shown by the third volume, which is written just as it came
+out of the author's head, and without the apparatus of learning
+subsequently erected, without the crutches of notes and
+polemico-philosophical excursions.
+
+To understand "Capital" it is necessary to bear in mind that (1) Marx
+regarded the scientifically discovered principles as the real inner
+being of things, practice he regarded as the superficial appearance of
+things, capable of being apprehended empirically; for example, Value
+is the theoretical expression, Price the empirical; Surplus Value is
+the theoretical, and Profit the empirical expression; the appearances
+apprehended by experience (Price and Profit) deviate indeed from
+theory, but without the theory they cannot be understood; (2) he
+looked at the capitalist economic system as being essentially free
+from external hindrances and disturbances, free from invasions both
+by the State and the proletariat: the Labour struggles of factory
+protection laws of which Marx speaks in "Capital" serve rather to
+perfect the productive forces than to restrict the exploiting
+proclivities of sovereign capital.
+
+
+2. _Value._
+
+The life and motion of capitalistic society appears as an infinite net
+of exchange operations, formed out of numerous entwined meshes.
+
+Through the medium of money, men continually exchange the most varied
+commodities and services. A ceaseless buying and selling, an
+uninterrupted series of exchanges of things, and labour power--this
+constitutes the essential part of human relations in capitalistic
+society. An economic map of these relations, graphically displayed,
+would not be less confusing than an astronomical map which exhibited
+the manifold and intersected orbits of the heavenly bodies. And yet
+there must be some rule or law which operates in this seeming medley
+of movements; for men do not work or exchange their goods by hazard,
+like savages who give their entire lumps of gold or rough diamonds for
+a necklace of glass pearls. The English and French economists in the
+seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, amongst whom Petty
+(1623-87), Quesnay (1694-1759), Adam Smith (1723-96), and Ricardo
+(1772-1823) were the most original, sought for the laws which
+regulated exchange operations, and their theories were designated by
+Marx as classical bourgeois economy. Following up their
+investigations, Marx declared: Every commodity, that is, every thing
+or good produced under Capitalism and brought to the market possesses
+a use value and an exchange value.
+
+The use value is the utility of the commodity to satisfy a physical or
+mental need of its user: a commodity without use value is not
+exchangeable or saleable. As use values, commodities are materially
+different from each other; nobody will exchange a ton of wheat for a
+ton of wheat of the same kind, but he will for clothes.
+
+In what measure will commodities exchange with one another? The
+measure is the exchange value, and this consists in the trouble and
+quantity of labour which the production of a commodity costs. Equal
+quantities of labour are exchanged with each other on the market. As
+exchange values, as the embodiment of human labour, commodities are
+essentially equal to each other, only quantitatively are they
+different, as different categories of commodities embody different
+quantities of labour. It is obvious that the quantities of labour will
+not be calculated according to the working methods of the individual
+producers, but according to the prevailing social working methods.
+
+If, for example, hand-weaver A requires twenty hours for the
+production of a piece of cloth, which in a modern factory will be
+produced in five hours, the cloth of the hand-weaver does not
+therefore possess four-fold exchange value. If hand-weaver A demands
+of consumer B an equivalent of twenty working hours, B answers that a
+similar piece of cloth can be produced in five hours, and therefore it
+only represents an exchange value of five working hours. Thus,
+according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity consists in the
+quantity of socially necessary labour power which its reproduction
+would require.
+
+This quantity of labour is no constant factor. New inventions,
+improvements in labour processes, increase in the productivity of
+labour, etc., cause a diminution in the quantity of labour necessary
+for the reproduction of a commodity; its exchange value, or expressed
+in terms of money, its price, will therefore sink, provided that other
+things (demand, medium of exchange) remain equal.
+
+Consequently, labour is the source of exchange value, and the latter
+is the principle which regulates exchange operations. Exchange value
+even measures the extent of the commodity wealth of society. Wealth
+may increase in volume, but decrease in value, in so far as a less
+quantity of socially necessary labour becomes necessary for its
+reproduction.
+
+The more progressive a country is industrially and the higher the
+level of its civilisation, the greater is its wealth, and the smaller
+is the quantity of labour which must be expended on the creation of
+wealth. In the practical Labour politics of our times, this is
+expressed in higher wages and shorter working hours.
+
+It was said above that use value is a basic condition for the exchange
+of the individual commodity. This does not exhaust the rōle of use
+value. The quantity of use value of which society has need determines
+the quantity of the exchange values to be created. If more commodities
+are required than society requires, the superfluous commodities have
+no exchange value, in spite of the labour that is expended on
+them.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 1, pp. 175-176.)
+
+The complete realisation of exchange values or the social labour that
+is performed depends, as is seen, on the adaptation of supply to
+demand, and is a matter of organisation, of social direction.
+
+We have noticed that the Marxian theory of value is related to that of
+the classical economists, but they are by no means the same thing.
+Apart from some improvements and definitions which Marx made, they are
+distinguished by the following conceptions: In the classical theory of
+value, the capitalist who directs production and provides with his
+capital the tools and raw materials of labour, markets the finished
+commodity, and keeps going the processes of reproduction, appears as
+the only creator of value: the wage worker is only one of his means of
+production. In the Marxian theory of value, on the other hand, the
+wage worker who transforms the raw materials into commodities, or
+removes the raw materials to the place of production, appears as the
+sole creator of value. Value is only created by the worker in
+production, and in distribution connected therewith.
+
+
+3. _Wages and Labour._
+
+The worker appears to receive wages for his work. In reality he
+receives wages as the equivalent for the labour power expended by him,
+quite in accordance with the law of value, inasmuch as he receives by
+way of exchange as much means of sustenance as is usual and customary
+to replace the labour power he has expended, just as the working horse
+receives as much oats and hay as are necessary to maintain it capable
+of work.
+
+The capitalist and the worker exchange certain quantities of
+commodities in proportions determined by economic laws (means of
+subsistence against a quantity of the commodity, labour power, of
+equal value, commodity for commodity, exchange value for exchange
+value).
+
+As, therefore, the wages of labour signify a certain quantity of the
+means of subsistence, so they increase even if their money form
+remains unaltered with a fall in the price of the means of life, for
+the worker is then in the position, with his unaltered wage, to buy a
+greater quantity of the means of life. In the reverse case, if the
+prices of the means of life rise, the wages of labour fall, even if
+their money form remains the same as previously. This law of wages,
+formulated by Ricardo, was accepted by Marx, but he did not content
+himself with this acceptance. Ricardo regarded the capitalist world as
+the only possible and reasonable one, at least at the time when he
+wrote his "Principles," while Marx from the year 1843 adopted a
+critical attitude towards it, and sought to negate it. Consequently,
+he investigated further, and expressed himself somewhat as follows:
+
+The capitalist theoricians believed that the wages question was
+disposed of when it was settled by the law of value. We know, however,
+that every commodity possesses not only an exchange value, but also a
+use value, and is bought for the sake of the latter. The use value of
+the commodity labour power is distinguished in a very remarkable way
+from the use value of all other commodities.
+
+The use or the employment of labour power creates exchange value, and
+can create much more exchange value than itself possesses.
+
+The employer can make use of labour power so long that it not only
+creates its own exchange value (the value of the means of
+subsistence), but double this. To create the value of wages, the
+worker needs five or six hours daily, but he is obliged to produce for
+the capitalist during ten or twelve hours. If the worker were
+independent he would only produce during one half of the working day
+in order to receive his means of subsistence. This period of producing
+Marx called "necessary labour." As he is dependent on the capitalist,
+the worker must not only perform "necessary labour" but also surplus
+labour: the worker can generally only find employment under the
+conditions that, besides the time needed for himself, he also works a
+definite number of hours for the capitalist without payment. Or, as
+Marx says: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the
+labourer alive during the 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him
+from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and
+the value which labour creates in the labour process are two entirely
+different magnitudes. And this difference in the two values was what
+the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power. The
+circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power
+costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same
+labour power can work during a whole day; that consequently the value
+which its use during one day creates is double what he pays for that
+use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
+buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."
+
+"No injury to the seller," which is quite correct from the standpoint
+of Ricardo, but not from that of Marx. He often calls surplus value
+"unpaid labour," and says, for example, "the capitalist appropriates
+one half of every day's labour without payment." In other words, he
+takes away something without return. This is a very distinct ethical
+judgment.
+
+On the other hand, it is very important that in our consideration of
+the wages question we have come up against the Marxian doctrine of
+surplus value. For this doctrine is the cornerstone of the whole
+economic system of Marx.
+
+
+4. _Surplus Value._
+
+We have already noted that Marx followed the classical economics in
+his treatment of the theory of value, but improved the definition of
+it, and brought it to bear on wages. In doing this he laid stress on
+the conflict between Capital and Labour.
+
+The beginning of this dialectical process, so far as England was
+concerned, was the work of the anti-capitalistic critics, who uttered
+their protest about 1820, or three years after the appearance of
+Ricardo's work. They declared, according to Ricardo, labour is the
+source and the measure of value. And yet according to his opinion
+labour is nothing and capital everything.
+
+This should be reversed: labour must be all, and capital nothing. This
+literature was contemporaneous with the emergence of the English
+revolutionary Labour movement, from which Chartism arose at a later
+date. Piercy Ravenstone (1821) called capital a metaphysical (airy,
+impalpable) entity. Hodgskin (1827) called it a fetish, whereas they
+described labour as the economic reality. The expressions
+surplus-product and surplus-value were already known to this
+anti-capitalist school, with which Marx also connected himself when he
+set to work to elaborate his criticism of political economy.[7] But
+this literature supplied him with much less material for the
+construction of the theory of surplus value than the formulation of
+the theory of value of the classical economy. Besides, while the
+English anti-capitalist critics, like Ravenstone, Gray, Hodgskin, and
+J.F. Bray merely condemned surplus value as immoral and as the source
+of all social wrongs, Marx used the theory of surplus value as the key
+to unlock the mechanism of the capitalist system and to reveal its
+workings, its tendencies, and its final destiny. This appears to be
+the real difference between the English anti-capitalist critics and
+Marx. In this matter he was obliged to perform most of the work
+himself. The question he put was no longer "What is the substance of
+wealth and how is it measured?" but "How is its growth and continual
+accretions to be explained?" Capital is that portion of wealth which
+is employed for the purpose of gain, of increase. Whence comes this
+gain, this increase? The answer is as follows:
+
+All capital that is embarked on a productive undertaking consists of
+two parts: one part is expended on the technical means of
+production--on buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials, the
+other on wages. The first part Marx calls Constant Capital (c), the
+other part Variable Capital (v). The first is called constant, because
+it only adds to the commodities just as much value as it loses in the
+course of the productive process; it creates no fresh value: Marx also
+calls it the passive portion. The outlay on wages is called variable
+capital because it undergoes an alteration in the process of
+production: it creates new additional value: Marx also called variable
+capital the active portion, for it creates surplus value (s).
+
+This composition of capital of constant and variable parts Marx calls
+its organic composition. He calls it average or normal composition
+when the capital of a business is 80 per cent. constant and 20 per
+cent. variable. If the constant part is higher, and the variable part
+lower, he calls it capital of a high composition.
+
+Capital of under 80 per cent. constant portion and over 20 per cent.
+variable portion he calls capital of a lower composition. And rightly,
+because the higher the ladder of capitalist production is, the more
+costly and extensive are the machinery and factory buildings and the
+greater is the outlay on raw materials, whereas primitive businesses
+employ less machinery, cheaper workshops, but a relatively greater
+number of workers. The relation between (c) and (v) reveals at the
+same time the stage to which production has developed.
+
+Thus, according to Marx, it is solely the variable capital which
+creates surplus value, or, as it is commonly expressed, profit. We
+have seen above, in the explanation of the nature of wages, why
+variable capital creates more value than it is paid for by the
+capitalist; the worker does indeed receive the exchange value of his
+labour power, but the use value of the labour power functions, we have
+assumed, twice as many hours as are necessary for its reproduction.
+This surplus labour is embodied in surplus value. While the worker
+receives, let us say, a daily wage of three shillings, for the
+reproduction of which five hours of work suffice, his labour power
+will be used for ten hours. These five hours of surplus labour appear
+in the exchange value of the commodity, so that the value of the
+commodity is composed of the transferred portion of the constant
+capital, the outlay on wages, and the added surplus value. Immediately
+before the production process only constant and variable capital
+existed, or, in brief (c) and (v); after the completion of the
+production process, the commodity embodies constant and variable
+capital and also surplus value, or (c) and (v) and (s). This is the
+actual value of the commodity, (c) or, shortly expressed, c + v + s.
+
+The relation between wages and surplus value, or between paid and
+unpaid labour, or, shortly, s/v, Marx calls the rate of surplus value:
+it expresses the degree of the exploitation of labour.
+
+If wages amount to three shillings, which can be produced in five
+working hours, and if the worker works in the factory ten hours for
+these wages, so that he creates exchange value to the amount of six
+shillings, then the rate of surplus value is 100 per cent. The whole
+of the surplus value which arises in this manner in the process of
+production is called the mass of the surplus value, or shortly, m.s.,
+that is to say, the individual rate of surplus value multiplied by the
+total number of workers engaged in an undertaking, or the total amount
+of wages.
+
+
+5. _Profit._
+
+The mass of surplus value appears to the capitalist in the shape of
+profit. Surplus value is a Marxian scientific term which exactly
+expresses the principle of profit. Profit is a commercial expression
+which describes surplus value as it appears in practical life as a
+subject of experience, i.e., empirically.
+
+The distinction between the Marxian theoretical and the commercial
+empirical conception is, however, not so simple: it arises from the
+different conceptions of the influence of capital and labour in the
+economic process. Let us explain it more distinctly.
+
+As is known, Marx divided the capital embarked in industrial
+enterprise into two parts: into constant (technical means of
+production) and variable (living labour power, wages). He assumed that
+only the living labour power (wage labour) creates surplus value,
+whilst the constant capital only adds its own value to the new
+products.
+
+The capitalist divides his capital outlay otherwise: into fixed
+(buildings and machines) and circulating (raw materials and wages)
+capital. The fixed capital is only used up slowly and only passes
+entirely into production during a series of years--let us say 15
+years: thus of a fixed capital of £75,000, £5,000 would each year be
+consumed in the production of commodities, and written off in the
+balance sheet. On the other hand, the circulating capital (raw
+materials and wages) are wholly consumed in every period of
+production, and must be renewed at the beginning of a new period of
+production.
+
+Suppose an industrial undertaking about to be started requires a
+capital expenditure of £105,000: £75,000 fixed capital (for buildings
+and machinery), £20,000 for raw materials, £10,000 for wages. For
+convenience sake, we will suppose that the period of production lasts
+a year, and that the rate of surplus value amounts to 100 per cent.,
+that is, the labour power receives a payment of £10,000, and produces
+a value of £20,000. At the end of the year, the capitalist reckons an
+expenditure of £5,000 on account of fixed capital, and £30,000 of
+circulating capital: the commodities produced cost, therefore, a net
+outlay of £35,000. This is the cost price, without adding profit.
+According to Marx, cost price signifies (c) and (v), therefore without
+(s), (surplus value).
+
+But the capitalist knows that the manufactured commodities represent a
+greater value than the cost price. According to Marx, the surplus
+value amounts to £10,000 (as the variable capital of £10,000 creates
+surplus value at the rate of 100 per cent.); but the capitalist adds
+to the cost price a profit which includes the gains of the enterprise
+and interest on the capital outlay. If the capitalist were alone in
+the market, his profit might suck up the whole of the surplus value of
+£10,000; but he has to reckon with competition and the state of the
+market. The cost price, plus profit, is the production price as
+established by the capitalist. But according to Marx, that is, in pure
+theory, the production price is equal to the cost price, plus surplus
+value. There is thus a quantitative distinction--a difference in the
+amount of money--between the theoretical and practical production
+price, as well as a qualitative distinction between the notions of the
+capitalist and Marx respecting the source of profit. The capitalist
+believes that profit is the result of the portion of capital which he
+has put into the process of production, combined with his own
+commercial ability. On the other hand, Marx asserts that the
+capitalist can only extract a profit because the wage workers (the
+living labour power) create a surplus value in the process of
+production for which they receive no payment.
+
+We assumed that the surplus value amounted to 100 per cent. measured
+with variable capital, and that £10,000 expended on wages produced
+£20,000. The annual balance sheet, however, would show the percentage
+of profit to the total outlay. Consequently, we must spread the
+£10,000 surplus value over the £35,000 which have been expended. The
+surplus value of an undertaking spread over the total capital (c)
+Marx calls the rate of profit, or shortly, s/c = 10000/35000 = 28.58
+per cent.
+
+As a rule, the capitalist cannot sell under cost price without
+becoming bankrupt, but he can quite easily sell under the production
+price, and mostly does so. In the example already given, his rate of
+profit amounts to over 28 per cent. According to the degree of
+competition, or by reason of other circumstances which we will examine
+in the next chapter, he can content himself with a rate of profit of
+10, 15, or 20 per cent., which will serve him partly as an income and
+partly be expended in the development of his enterprise. The 28 per
+cent. profit generally forms a circle within which he fixes his
+manufactured price. Under favourable circumstances he can add the
+whole 28 per cent, to the price; under less favourable, only 20, 15,
+or 10 per cent. Accordingly, several portions of surplus value remain
+in the commodities which are not yet realised. What happens to them?
+The remaining portions of profit or of surplus value fall to the large
+or small traders who are interposed between producer and consumer, or
+go in the form of interest to the banking institutions, in the event
+of the capitalist operating with borrowed money. As the profit is only
+realised in the process of circulation (in commerce and exchange) and
+there divided amongst the various economic classes and sections, most
+people believe that profit arises in commercial transactions. They do
+not know that the price of a commodity can only be increased in trade
+because its manufactured price was fixed below its price of production
+or its value, that is, because the commodities contain surplus value
+which is only gradually realised in the process of circulation.
+
+The social significance of this doctrine is far-reaching. If it is
+correct, then all the social sections which are not engaged as manual
+and brain workers in the process of production, or in the transport of
+raw material, lead a parasitical life and consume the surplus value
+which is squeezed by the capitalist class out of the proletariat and
+appropriated without payment.
+
+Quite otherwise are capitalist ideas. According to them, profit is the
+result both of the spirit of the enterprise and the ability of the
+capitalist, added to that portion of the capital which is put into the
+process of production: the machines and buildings and raw materials
+which are used up, and the labour power, all of which are bought at
+their proper exchange value. It is only fit and proper that the trader
+and moneylender should receive a portion of the profit so created, for
+they assist in realising the exchange value by bringing the
+commodities to the consumer, and thus rendering possible the process
+of production.
+
+Surplus value or profit? Labour or Capital? Behind this question lurks
+the great class struggle of the modern social order. No wonder the
+Marxian doctrine of value and surplus value was the occasion for an
+extensive controversy, in which the famous problem of the average rate
+of profit played a great part.
+
+
+6. _The Average Rate of Profit._
+
+According to Marx's doctrine of value and surplus value only variable
+capital creates fresh value and surplus value. An industrial
+undertaking of a lower organic composition, which thus employs much
+variable capital and little constant capital, must consequently
+create a greater surplus value or more profit than an industrial
+undertaking of higher composition which may employ the same total
+capital, but composed of greater constant and smaller variable
+portions than the former. Let us take two industrial capitals of
+£35,000 each. One expends £15,000 on the constant elements (machinery,
+raw materials) and £20,000 on the variable element (wages of labour).
+The other shows £20,000 constant part and £15,000 variable part. With
+an equal rate of surplus value--100 per cent.--the first capital would
+produce £20,000 surplus value (profit) and the other only £15,000
+profit. Experience shows, however, that equal amounts of capital--in
+spite of temporary differences in profits--tend to produce equal
+profits. From this, it would appear that it is actually the capital
+expended and not the labour employed which determines the magnitude of
+the surplus value (profit), that the concrete results of the
+capitalist process of production do not confirm the Marxian theory of
+value, that the facts directly contradict the theory. It was Marx
+himself who drew attention to this problem. After he had constructed
+his theory of surplus value in the form of a scientific law, he
+continued: "This law clearly contradicts all experience based on
+appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the
+percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant
+capital and little variable capital, does not, on account of this,
+pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets
+in motion much variable and little constant capital."
+
+How, then, can the equal rate of profit in the case of capitals of
+different organic composition be harmonised with the theory of surplus
+value?
+
+Marx concedes that equal capital sums whose organic parts are
+unequally employed give an equal rate of profit, although the volumes
+of surplus value created are different. Two capital sums of £50,000
+each, one of which, for example, represents £40,000 constant and
+£10,000 variable capital, and with a rate of surplus value of 100 per
+cent. gives £10,000 surplus value, while the other is composed of
+£10,000 constant and £40,000 variable capital, and with an equal rate
+of surplus value gives an amount of £40,000 surplus value, will
+nevertheless yield an equal rate of profit, although theoretically
+they would be unequal if the rate of surplus value directly determined
+the rate of profit. In the first case, the rate of profit would amount
+to 20 per cent. and in the second to 80 per cent. In reality both
+undertakings yield an equal rate of profit.
+
+How is this explained, according to Marx? By means of competition, the
+different rates of profit are levelled to a general rate of profit,
+which is the average of all the various rates of profit. Thus the
+capitalists do not realise the surplus value as it is created in any
+particular factory, but in the form of average rate of profit as it is
+produced by the operations of the total capital of society. The
+average rate of profit may be lower or higher than the individual rate
+of profit, for the "various capitalists," as Marx explains, "so far as
+profits are concerned, are so many stockholders in a stock company in
+which the shares of profits are uniformly divided for every 100 shares
+of capital, so that profits differ in the case of the individual
+capitalists only according to the amount of capital invested by each
+of them in the social enterprise, according to his investment in
+social production as a whole, according to his shares."
+
+While thus the individual rates of profit do not proportionately
+coincide with the rates of surplus value, i.e., while the degree of
+exploitation of the worker in the individual factory, and the volume
+of surplus value thus individually created, do not directly determine
+the individual rate of profit, it is the total mass of social surplus
+value which is the source of the average rate of profit. If the mass
+of the surplus value be large, the average rate of profit will also be
+great. Marx says: "It is here just the same as with average rate of
+interest which a usurer makes who lends out various portions of his
+capital at different rates of interest. The level of his average rate
+depends entirely on how much of his capital he has lent at each of the
+different rates of interest." The higher the various individual rates
+of interest, the higher will be the average rate of interest at which
+his capital has been put out.
+
+The individual price of production signifies, therefore, cost price
+plus the average rate of profit, and not plus surplus value: it does
+not necessarily correspond with the total amount of the constant and
+variable portions of capital employed in an individual enterprise,
+plus the mass of the surplus value: the prices and magnitudes of value
+of commodities are not manifestly equal, as Marx has often pointed
+out. Of course, the total profits of the capitalist class coincide
+with the total surplus value extracted from the working class,
+provided, of course, that the supply of commodities corresponds with
+the social needs.
+
+Thus the law of surplus value, in spite of all deviations and
+refractions, holds good in the last resort. "In theory," observes
+Marx, "it is assumed that the laws of the capitalist mode of
+production develop freely. In reality, there is always only an
+approximation."
+
+And the more capitalist production develops, the greater will be the
+degree of approximation in particular cases, for the progress of
+Capitalism signifies a continuous increase of constant capital, a more
+mechanical character being given to industrial processes, and a
+reduction of variable capital to the necessary minimum, so that the
+differences in the organic composition of capitalist undertakings
+become less, thus bringing the average rate of profit and the rate of
+surplus value nearer to each other.
+
+This indirect and difficult method of realising profits involves the
+fact that the capitalist does not distinctly observe the exploitation
+of wage labour practised by him, but he believes that the profit is
+owing to his own commercial ability.
+
+This difficult section of the outlines of the economic doctrines of
+Marx can be most fitly concluded by quoting the comprehensive
+observations of Marx himself upon this subject, which he gives at the
+end of his book.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 2, pp. 355-6.)
+
+"In a capitalist society, this surplus value or this surplus product
+(leaving aside accidental fluctuations in its distribution and
+considering only the regulating law of these fluctuations) is divided
+among the capitalists as a dividend in proportion to the percentage of
+the total social capital held by each. In this shape the surplus value
+appears as the average profit, which in its turn is separated into
+profits of enterprise and interest, and which in this way may fall
+into the hands of different kinds of capitalists. Just as the active
+capitalist squeezes surplus labour, and with it surplus value in the
+form of profit out of the worker, so the landlord in his turn squeezes
+a portion of this surplus value from the capitalist in the shape of
+rent. Hence when speaking of profit as that portion of surplus value
+which falls to the share of capital, we mean average profit....
+Profits of capital (profits of enterprise plus interest) and ground
+rent are merely particular constituents of surplus value.... If added
+together, these parts form the sum of the social surplus value. A
+large part of profits is immediately transformed into capital." In
+this way, capital grows, or, as Marx says, accumulates.
+
+
+7. _Surplus Value as Social Driving Force._
+
+It has been said already that capital is that portion of wealth which
+is devoted to the object of increasing wealth, of gain, the extraction
+of profit or surplus value. This object dominates the capitalist
+class; the desire for surplus value is the leading impulse and
+principle motive of their activity. Goaded by this desire and
+exclusively occupied with their special interests, this class
+unconsciously and unintentionally develops the entire capitalist
+system and leads it to ever higher and more comprehensive stages.
+
+Surplus value is thus the driving force of the history of modern
+capitalist society. This principle is rigidly followed out by Marx in
+his theoretical system, which aims at showing the rise and growth of
+Capitalism.
+
+The capitalist is no scientific investigator: he is not clear himself
+whether profit is created by a portion of the capital, or is the
+result of personal productive forces, but he knows one thing--without
+living labour power, without the wage worker, his whole capital
+remains dead and does not increase; all the fixed capital and raw
+materials are of no use to him so long as they are not set in motion
+by living labour power and transformed into commodities. His efforts
+are, therefore, primarily directed to making proper use of the living
+labour power. Historically considered, little constant and relatively
+much variable capital was employed in the primitive stage of the large
+scale industry: there was as yet little machinery, and the chief thing
+was the living labour power. The workers were not yet factory
+proletarians in the modern sense, but artisans who had lost their
+independent existence.
+
+The capitalist harnessed them and utilised their labour power and
+special ability. Consequently, he strives to lengthen the working day,
+in order that as many commodities and as much profit as possible may
+be produced.
+
+If previously the wage worker had laboured ten hours, of which five
+were devoted to the production of the value of his wages and five to
+surplus value, he is now obliged to work for twelve hours, which
+increases the period for surplus labour to seven hours. The surplus
+value which is extracted through the lengthening of the working day is
+called by Marx "absolute surplus value."
+
+Meanwhile, the capitalist learns by experience that if the workers are
+so organised as to co-operate with one another, the productivity of
+labour increases. From this arises the mode of labour which Marx calls
+Co-operation, or a reorganisation of the workplace, which raises the
+entire production of commodities to a higher level. The co-operation
+of the workers in the process of production soon leads to the
+discovery that, if the worker does not himself create the whole
+product, but only a part thereof, he loses less time and becomes
+quicker and more skilful in his work and produces more than
+previously. This discovery leads to the "division of labour," which
+indeed reduces the worker to the position of an automaton, or a living
+machine, but considerably augments commodity wealth. Division of
+labour again demands finer tools; mechanical problems arise to be
+solved by mechanicians and engineers. This favours the progress of
+mechanics. The growing commodity wealth, and the pressure to realise
+it profitably, renders necessary more extensive markets; the need for
+extension comes up against transport difficulties; transport problems
+arise, to be solved by road and canal engineers. The increasing
+variety of the labour process and the categories of commodities which
+are produced results in new metallurgical, physical, and chemical
+problems. Natural science flourishes.
+
+Meanwhile, things are not so peaceful in the places of manufacture.
+The lengthening of labour the closer strain on their nerves and
+muscles, as well as the arrangement of the work, cause the workers to
+combine and struggle for improved conditions of labour. This struggle,
+together with the progress of natural science, of technology, and the
+expansion of markets, result in the discovery of machine technology,
+of steam and electricity, the foundation of large-scale industry.
+
+The capitalist is impelled, on the one hand, to make himself as
+independent as possible of living labour-power; on the other hand, to
+increase the volume of his profits. The means thereto are offered him
+by the new technical discoveries. Those workers who still possessed
+some pride in handicraft, or as expropriated small peasants were not
+able to submit to factory discipline, and showed themselves
+rebellious, were partly replaced by the labour of women and children,
+and partly curbed and made pliable. The labour time is repeatedly
+lengthened, and the exploitation of the labour of women and children
+assumes terrible proportions. The wage worker, who entered into the
+manufacturing premises of the employer full of the pride of his
+calling and often with his own tools, became then a small cog in a
+gigantic, relentless piece of working machinery.
+
+In this extensive and hitherto unprecedented social transformation the
+old forms of handicraft disappear: whole sections of society, which
+are the representatives of the disappearing forms of handicraft, sink
+into poverty, and augment the class of proletarians. The progress of
+the industrial revolution extends also to agriculture: the greed for
+surplus value (ground rent) leads to enclosure of common lands by the
+great landlords, the independent yeomanry is decimated, the small
+proprietor and small tenant are made proletarians. A transmutation of
+social classes takes place; the urban population grows rapidly, the
+country districts are depopulated: out of the revolutionary process
+the outlines of two classes become more and more distinct: Capitalist
+and Proletarian.
+
+Both the factory proletariat and the other social sections which adopt
+a hostile attitude towards Capitalism react against the
+health-destroying exploitation, and struggle for a normal working day.
+
+The working time is curtailed and bounds are set to the efforts of the
+capitalist to lengthen the working day and obtain surplus value, but
+soon the progress of machine technique compels the worker to labour
+more intensely in the shorter working time: the accelerated movement
+of the machine determines the pace and necessitates a sharper
+straining of the nerves. Henceforth, the worker must compress into a
+working hour as much effort as was previously expended in an hour and
+a half. The surplus value which is extracted in this way Marx calls
+"relative surplus value." The struggle of the workers to secure a
+shorter working day is a powerful incentive to the manufacturers to
+perfect their machinery, in order to increase the amount of relative
+surplus value. The intensification of work or the creation of relative
+surplus value is one of the most immediate effects and one of the most
+striking features of advanced Capitalism. The understanding of this
+new phase is a preliminary condition to the comprehension of the
+Marxian system. In this matter, Marx goes considerably beyond the
+anti-capitalist theoreticians who followed upon Ricardo.
+
+What happens when the capitalist observes that the extraction of
+absolute surplus value comes up against an insurmountable obstacle? He
+sets himself to fit up his enterprise with the newest and most costly
+machinery, in order to supplant living labour-power and to work more
+intensively the living labour-power which he employs.
+
+As, however, less living labour-power brings forth less exchange value
+and less surplus value, he is obliged to multiply production, in order
+to cover the fall in surplus value by a larger mass of commodities: if
+the single commodity brings him less profit, he produces it in such
+large quantities that the profit thereon is the same, or even greater,
+than formerly. The more complicated machinery, the greater quantities
+of raw materials consumed, and the relatively smaller amount of
+labour-power signify obviously an alteration in the organic
+composition of capital: the constant portion (machinery, raw
+materials) preponderates more and more over the variable portion. If,
+previously, the composition was 50 per cent. constant and 50 per cent.
+variable, it becomes now something like 80 per cent.: 20 per cent. At
+the same time, the initial capital is also increased greatly, as
+machines and large quantities of raw and auxiliary materials demand
+such increase of capital. If, for example, the initial capital
+previously amounted to £100,000, divided into £50,000 constant and
+£50,000 variable capital, it would now amount to £500,000, comprising
+£400,000 constant and £100,000 variable. This organic composition
+signifies: that relatively smaller masses of labour set in motion
+large masses of technical means of production; labour is more
+productive because more intense; the sum total of commodities is
+increased; the profit on single articles is smaller, but the total
+profit is greater; the reconversion of profits into capital proceeds
+rapidly.
+
+The scale of production is more and more extended, and the amount of
+initial outlay becomes ever greater, because only large capitals are
+capable of creating relative surplus value in sufficient sums to
+assure a profit on the enterprise and payment of interest, and thus
+assist the accumulation of capital.
+
+The more extended scale of production is not possible to the less
+powerful capitalist undertakings. They partly disappear and partly
+combine in joint stock companies. The first alternative gives rise to
+the concentration of the means of production in fewer hands, and the
+second to the centralisation of the means of production. This is the
+effect of the new organic composition of capital on the capitalist
+class.
+
+The effect on the working class is not less profound. As long as the
+hand-worker still played an important part in the works premises, as
+long as the variable part was superior or equal to the constant part
+in the organic composition of capital, as was the case prior to and at
+the beginning of large-scale industry, the accumulation of capital
+meant an increased demand for wage-labour. The position was changed as
+Capitalism developed, in the manner just described. Although the mass
+of capital grows, there is a relative decrease in the demand for
+workers. For this growth of capital refers chiefly to the constant
+part (machinery and raw materials), while there is a relative
+shrinkage in the variable part; that means the worker is obliged to
+consume a much greater quantity of raw material than formerly.
+
+And whereas the prices of commodities fall during the phase of the
+high organic composition of capital, the period of necessary labour
+(the hours needed for the reproduction of wages) becomes shorter,
+while the period of surplus labour becomes longer. The great
+industrial development therefore signifies for the worker: intensive
+exploitation and relative over-population, a reserve army of
+labour-power, which is absorbed by industry in times of prosperous
+trade, and is speedily demobilised when the slump comes. In times of
+good business the reserve army serves to check the wage demands of the
+workers regularly employed, and in times of bad trade it serves to
+depress wages. The outcome for the workers is as follows:
+
+"Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social
+productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the
+individual labourer; all means for the development of production
+transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation
+of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a
+man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy
+every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into a hated toil;
+they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the
+labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it
+as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he
+works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more
+hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into
+working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the
+Juggernaut of Capital. But all methods for the production of surplus
+value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every
+extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of
+those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital
+accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must
+grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the
+same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
+brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side
+of the class that produces its own product in the form of
+capital."--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., pp. 660-1.)
+
+The result of the capitalist social order is the unfolding of the
+productive forces, the efflorescence of science, the expansion of
+material civilisation, the dividing of society into antagonistic
+classes, the conferring of economic power on the few, and the
+enslavement and degradation of the many.
+
+
+8. _Economic Contradictions. Decay of Society and its Reconstruction._
+
+As the ripening of the capitalist social order to its highest point
+proceeds, its innate contradictions develop, and announce distinctly
+the fact that Capitalism has outlived its usefulness, while new life,
+a higher form of society, is emerging from its womb. The most
+important contradictions are:
+
+The driving force of the capitalist is to obtain the largest measure
+of surplus value or profit. The latest stage of Capitalism is,
+however, marked by the fact of the high organic composition of
+capital, which means that living labour-power, the source of surplus
+value, has relatively decreased. The decrease of variable capital
+signifies manifestly a lower rate of profit. Capitalism in normal
+times exhibits a tendency towards a lowering of the rate of profit.
+Therefore it gives rise to a phenomenon which contradicts the aim of
+the endeavours of the capitalists. The capitalist strives to
+accumulate capital, but as variable capital and the rate of profit
+relatively decrease, a tendency towards the depreciation of capital is
+revealed. The capitalist endeavours to counteract this tendency, and
+to achieve his object by extending the scale of production, so that
+the mass of commodities will compensate him for what he loses on them
+singly. But while he furthers this object by resorting to a higher
+organic composition of capital, he squeezes out the middleman, reduces
+the numbers of workers in employment, and creates a relative
+over-population, a reserve of those who are only employed
+intermittently; there is a substantial shrinkage in the demand for
+commodities, as the impoverished masses of the people have obviously
+less purchasing power. The capitalist extends production, and at the
+same time contracts the market. The upshot is over-production,
+under-consumption--crisis: wasting of capital, restriction of
+production, paralysis of the productive forces. And if Marx lived
+to-day he would add: the developed economy of large-scale capitalism,
+that is, the high organic composition of industrial capital, requires
+enormous quantities of raw materials, which, in part, are only to be
+had from tropical and sub-tropical countries, and also from eastern
+Asia; the struggle for these sources of raw materials, and for access
+to them, leads to wars in which capital sums of unprecedented amount
+are destroyed. Since 1894 these wars over raw materials and trade
+routes have broken out every few years. Economic crises and
+imperialist wars; immeasurable destruction of capital and productive
+forces. This is a consequence which stands in sharp contradiction to
+the historical task of the economic order of Capitalism, and to the
+immediate aims of the individual capitalists.
+
+Further, the capitalist tries from the beginning to create docile and
+unresisting masses of workers, and yet unites and combines them by the
+creation of large centres of production; the factories become centres
+for the organisation of the workers, and for the welding of the
+individual wills of the proletarians into a class will; they abolish
+the scattered and antagonistic interests of single sections of the
+workers, and consolidate them into a unified class interest. Finally,
+the whole economic process, which began by resting on individualist
+principles, has assumed a common character; thousands upon thousands
+of hand and brain workers engage in production in economic
+undertakings upon a single and uniform plan, with the aid of
+productive implements which can only be used in common.
+
+The significance and tendency of these contradictions are sketched by
+Marx in the great finale, which properly belongs to the concluding
+chapter of the third volume:
+
+"As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
+the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are
+turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon
+as the capitalist means of production stands on its own feet, then the
+further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land
+and other means of production into socially exploited, and therefore
+common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of
+private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be
+expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the
+capitalist employing many labourers. This expropriation is
+accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist
+production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist
+always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this
+expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop on an
+ever-extending scale the co-operative form of the labour process, the
+conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
+of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
+instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all
+means of production by their use as the means of production of
+combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the
+net of the world market, and with this, the international character of
+the capitalist regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number
+of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of
+this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
+slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the
+revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
+disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
+capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
+on the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
+with it, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and
+socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become
+incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is
+burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
+expropriators are expropriated."--("Capital," Vol. I. English edition,
+chap. 84.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Compare M. Beer, "History of British Socialism," Vol, I., pp.
+245-270.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+An appreciation of Marx can only be arrived at by adopting the Marxian
+method. We must judge him in the same way as any other towering figure
+in the realm of thought or of action. Marx was a child of his time,
+and his system is a logical conception of certain economic and social
+phenomena of his age, owing something to the pioneer work and thinking
+of some of his predecessors.
+
+Two important events dominated his thinking: the French Revolution and
+the English Industrial Revolution. Even apart from the statement of
+Arnold Ruge that in 1843-44 Marx had collected a vast amount of
+material for a history of the French National Convention, we know from
+the work he did between 1844 and 1852 how profound was the influence
+of the French Revolution on his intellectual life. Still deeper,
+however, were the traces left upon his mind by the studies he made on
+the economic transformation of England during the period 1700-1825.
+Both events are obvious, catastrophic expressions of class movements
+and class conflicts, in which the middle class, as the representative
+of a higher economic order, gains the victory over autocratic forms of
+feudal authority and oligarchic systems of organisation through State
+regulation, in which, however, at the same time, a new class--the
+working class--raises its head and begins to make a stand against the
+victor.
+
+Marx was led to interpret these events in this way and to make them
+the basis of his conception of history chiefly through the influence
+of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist school following
+upon Ricardo. To the end of his life he clung to the opinion that
+dialectic, as Hegel had formulated it, was indeed mystical but, when
+materialistically conceived, contains the laws of the movement of
+society. "The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands
+in no wise hinders him from presenting in a comprehensive and
+intelligible manner its general processes."--(Preface to second German
+edition of "Capital," 1873.)
+
+The splitting up of the concept into contradictories, and the
+attainment of a higher positive through the negation of these
+contradictories, that was what, to Marx's mind, constituted the
+essence and the deepest meaning of the French Revolution and of the
+English Industrial Revolution. Society, the positive, split up into
+feudal and bourgeois, into two sharply divided contradictories, the
+bourgeoisie appearing as the negation, to be supplanted by the
+proletariat and so to make room for a Communist society, the higher
+synthesis.
+
+What he got from Hegel in a mystical form found an economic expression
+in Ricardo and the anti-capitalist school. Ricardo's writings, which
+belong to the second decade of the nineteenth century and which
+formulate, in the guise of a system of economics, the antagonisms and
+the conflicts between industry and landed nobility, presented
+themselves as a practical demonstration of the validity of dialectic.
+The fundamental idea of Ricardo's system may be expressed as follows:
+
+Capital is the motive force of society and the creator of
+civilisation, but the fruits of its activity are enjoyed not by
+capital but by the landed nobility. That is the thesis; now for the
+proof. The value of all commodities which can be made in any quantity
+desired consists in the quantity of labour which is expended for the
+purpose of producing them. The value is expressed in the costs of
+production, the most important components of which are wages and
+profit. Wages and profit stand in opposition to one another: if wages
+rise, profit falls, and conversely. Wages consist in a definite
+quantity of the necessaries of life, sufficient to keep the worker
+effective. Wages must obviously rise whenever the cost of living
+rises. The facts show that this is actually the case. The following
+reasons make this clear. In consequence of the civilising effects of
+capital, there is an increase in the opportunities for work and in
+population, resulting in an increased demand for the necessaries of
+life. Agriculture must be extended, but agricultural land is limited
+and of varying quality. The extension of agriculture brings into use
+the inferior kinds of land, which demand a greater amount of labour
+for their cultivation. And as the amount of labour determines the
+value of the commodity, the cost of living increases, and there is a
+rapid rise in ground rents. The workers demand higher wages, whereby
+the profits of the employers are diminished. But there is still
+another circumstance to be taken into consideration. Whereas the
+prices of agricultural products rise, those of industrial products
+fall, since, in consequence of the invention of machinery and of the
+superior division of labour, smaller quantities of labour are required
+to produce manufactured goods. The result of the entire working of
+capital for the civilised community is accordingly the reduction of
+profits, the depreciation of capital, and the increase of wages. This
+latter, however, is of no advantage to the workers, for food prices
+rise higher and higher; on the contrary, the whole advantage falls to
+the landed nobility, who do nothing for the furtherance of
+civilisation, but who, through ground rents and protective tariffs,
+receive everything.
+
+We have, then, in Ricardo a system of economic contradictions between
+profit, wages, and rent, or between bourgeoisie, proletariat, and
+nobility, in which the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat
+is still undeveloped.
+
+The year of the publication of Ricardo's "Principles" (1817) is the
+year which witnessed the rise of English Socialism. In that year,
+Robert Owen, in a public meeting in the City of London, declared
+himself a Socialist. Three years later appeared the first criticisms
+of Ricardo's political economy. In these it was argued that, according
+to Ricardo, labour is the source of value, yet he considers capital as
+the creative factor of society and the working class as a mere
+appendage of capital. It must be the reverse; for the workers create
+values together with the surplus products which are appropriated by
+capital. In 1817, Robert Owen openly declares himself a Socialist;
+four years later appears the anonymous letter to Lord John Russell;
+Percy Ravenstone publishes his "Criticism of Capitalism," John Gray
+his Lecture, and Hodgskin his pamphlet on the unproductive nature of
+capital, in which he establishes the existence of a raging class
+struggle.
+
+The deep impression which these writings made on Marx is clearly seen
+in the second and third volumes of his "Theories on Surplus Value."
+And he links on to them. He completed what Ricardo hinted at and what
+the anti-capitalist school deduced from Ricardo. How Marx continued
+and elaborated these deductions we haw already seen in Chapter 3,
+"Outlines of Marx's Economics," and Chapter 7, "Surplus Value as the
+Motive Force of Society," where capital is shown to be the mass of
+surplus value of which the workers have been deprived.
+
+The deductions made by the English anti-capitalist school from Ricardo
+signified, politically, the first awakenings of the English workers to
+class-consciousness, to the struggle against capital. Just as
+Ricardo's theory of value and rent was the battle-cry of capital
+against the aristocracy--a battle-cry which created the free trade
+movement and shattered the economic power of the landed nobility, so
+the theory of value and surplus value was to become the battle-cry of
+the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the declaration of
+independence, so to speak, of the working class. The English
+proletariat lacked a philosopher who could work out the idea to its
+logical conclusion, until Marx applied himself to the problem and
+solved it, so far indeed as philosophical problems can be solved, by a
+science which places itself at the disposal of a class movement.
+
+For it is impossible to set aside the view that Marx's theory of value
+and surplus value has rather the significance of a political and
+social slogan than of an economic truth. It is for Marx the basis of
+the class struggle of the workers against the middle class, just as
+Ricardo's theory of rent was the basis of the class struggle of the
+bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, or as the doctrines of the social
+contract and of the natural rights of man formed the basis of the
+struggle of the middle classes against autocracy and divine right.
+Such militant philosophies need not in themselves be true, only they
+must accord with the sentiments of the struggling mass. It is with
+such philosophical fictions that human history works. Marx's theory of
+value explains neither the vast and unparalleled accumulation of
+wealth nor the movement of prices during the last sixty years. Wealth,
+measured in values, has, in the last few decades, increased by many
+times the increase in living labour-power. In this connection the old
+formula can be reversed: wealth increases in geometrical, living
+labour-power in arithmetical progression. The greatest difficulty in
+Marx is that the inventors and discoverers, the chemists and
+physicists, the pioneers and organisers of industry and agriculture,
+are not regarded by him as creators of surplus values. Thinkers, who
+by chemical researches and discoveries double the productive capacity
+of the soil and conjure forth values in millions from the waste
+products of industry: physicists who place new sources of power and
+new means of production at the disposal of mankind and multiply the
+productivity of labour; organisers who co-ordinate the forces of
+production and introduce new methods of working--all this creative and
+directive work, demanding, as it often does, an infinite amount of
+intensive intellectual effort, is not considered to increase the total
+sum of exchange values of the nation.
+
+However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's
+theory is, generally speaking, correct; distribution is carried out
+under the capitalist economic system not according to the amount of
+productive work done, but in proportion to the outlay of capital and
+the skill in commercial manoeuvring which obtains in the sphere of
+circulation.
+
+Unique as an investigator of the laws of the proletarian movement,
+eminent and even a great pioneer as a sociologist, Marx is, in respect
+of economic theory, predominantly an agitator. His system, more than
+any other system of Socialism or of political economy, is the
+revolutionary expression of proletarian thought and feeling. His
+doctrines of value, surplus value, the economic determination of
+history, the evolution from Capitalism to Socialism, the political and
+economic class struggle, will for long have the force of truth for the
+masses and will continue to move them.
+
+Marx's heart must have been filled with joy and gladness when, out of
+the elements of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist
+school, out of his studies of the French Revolution, of the English
+Industrial Revolution, and of French and English Socialism there arose
+a unified system whose destiny it was to lead mankind out of the
+earth-bound history of the past into the new world wherein a spiritual
+civilisation should fully blossom forth. Man is to quit the realm of
+necessity and to enter into that of freedom, where he shall cease to
+be a tool for the profit of others and shall rise to have a purpose of
+his own, freely associating himself with his fellow men to work in the
+service of all.
+
+"The realm of freedom, indeed, only begins there where work
+conditioned by necessity and external utility ceases. According to the
+nature of the thing, therefore, it lies beyond the sphere of actual
+material production. Just as the savage must struggle with nature for
+the satisfaction of his needs, for self-preservation and
+self-reproduction, so too must the civilised man, whatever be the form
+of society or the methods of production obtaining. Side by side with
+his own evolution develops this constitutional necessity, because his
+needs increase; but, at the same time, the forces of production which
+satisfy these needs likewise increase. Freedom in this sphere can only
+consist in this--that men in their social relationship, the associated
+producers, should regulate this material exchange with Nature in a
+rational manner and bring it under their united control, instead of
+being governed by it as by some blind power; it should be carried on
+with the minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most
+adapted to and most worthy of human nature. Yet it remains all the
+same a realm of necessity. It is beyond this where that development of
+human power, which may be called independent purpose, begins, the true
+realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon the basis of
+that realm of necessity."--("Capital," Vol. III., 2, p. 355.)
+
+
+The National Labour Press, Ltd., Manchester and London. 31258
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 37: FN4: Fouvierists replaced with Fourierists       |
+    | Page 42: Wilhelm Wolf replaced with Wilhelm Wolff         |
+    | Page 60: "That will give give them new" replaced with     |
+    |          "That will give them new"                        |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The life and teaching of Karl Marx
+
+Author: M. Beer
+
+Release Date: September 2, 2011 [EBook #37290]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/cover.jpg" width="50%" alt="Book Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="block2">
+<p><i>SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES</i></p>
+<p style="margin-left: 4em;">(<i>VOLUME TWO</i>).</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen" style="font-size: 130%;">THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF<br />
+KARL MARX</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>First Published in 1921</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>[<i>All rights reserved.</i>]</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen" style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold;">THE</p>
+
+<h1>LIFE AND TEACHING</h1>
+
+<p class="cen" style="font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold;">OF</p>
+
+<h1>KARL MARX</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<p class="cen" style="font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold;">BY</p>
+
+<h2>M. BEER</h2>
+
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;"><i>Author of "A History of British Socialism"</i></p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3><span class="sc">Translated by T.C. PARTINGTON<br />
+and H.J. STENNING, and Revised<br />
+by the Author</span></h3>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,<br />
+LONDON: 8/9, <span class="sc">Johnson's Court, E.C. 4</span><br />
+MANCHESTER: 30, <span class="sc">Blackfriars Street</span></h4>
+
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc" style="font-size: 80%;" colspan="2">Chapter</td>
+  <td class="tdl">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdrsc" style="font-size: 80%;">Page</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr" width="5%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="5%">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc" width="70%">The Significance of Marx</td>
+  <td class="tdr" width="20%"><a href="#Page_ix">ix.</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Work of Hegel</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_xiii">xiii.</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#I">Parents and Friends:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Marx's Apprenticeship</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Student</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Beginnings of Public Life</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#II">The Formative Period of Marxism:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Franco-German Year Books</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Friendship with Friedrich Engels</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Controversy with Bauer and Ruge</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_21">21</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Controversy with Proudhon</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#III">Years of Agitation and Varying Fortunes:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Revolutionary Spirit of the Forties</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Communist Manifesto</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Revolution of 1848</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Days of Cloud and Sunshine in London</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The International</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Paris Commune</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Evening of Life</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#IV">The Marxian System:</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Materialist Conception of History</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Classes, Class Struggles and Class-Consciousness</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">The Role of the Labour Movement and the Proletarian Dictatorship</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc">Outlines of the Economic Doctrines</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc2" colspan="2"><a href="#CONCLUSION">Conclusion</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">125</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTION.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">I. The Significance of Marx.</h4>
+
+<p>Karl Marx belongs to the ranks of those philosophical and sociological
+thinkers who throw potent thought-ferment into the world, and set in
+motion the masses of mankind. They awaken slumbering doubts and
+contradictions. They proclaim new modes of thought, new social forms.
+Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete, and the ruthless
+march of time may finally overthrow their intellectual edifice;
+meanwhile, however, they stimulate into activity the minds of
+countless men, inflame countless human hearts, imprinting on them
+characteristics which are transmitted to coming generations. This is
+the grandest and finest work to which any human being can be called.
+Because these thinkers have lived and worked, their contemporaries and
+successors think more clearly, feel more intensely, and are richer in
+knowledge and self-consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>The history of philosophy and of social science is comprised in such
+systems and generalisations. They are the index to the annals of
+mankind. None of these systems is complete, none comprehends all human
+motives and capacities, none exhausts all the forces and currents of
+human society. They all express only fragmentary truths, which,
+however, become effective and achieve success because they are shining
+lights amidst the intellectual confusion of the generation which gives
+them birth, bringing it to a consciousness <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span>of the questions of the
+time, rendering its further development less difficult, and enabling
+its strongest spirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in
+critical periods.</p>
+
+<p>Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where he remarks: "When the
+refutation of a philosophy is spoken of, this is usually meant in an
+abstract negative (completely destructive) sense, so that the confuted
+philosophy has no longer any validity whatever, and is set aside and
+done with. If this be so, the study of the history of philosophy must
+be regarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeing that this
+study teaches that every system of philosophy which has arisen in the
+course of time has found its refutation. But if it is as good as
+granted that every philosophy has been refuted, yet at the same time
+it must be also asserted that no philosophy has been refuted, nor ever
+can be refuted ... for every philosophical system is to be considered
+as the presentation of a particular moment or a particular stage in
+the evolutionary process of the idea. The history of philosophy ... is
+not, in its totality, a gallery of the aberrations of the human
+intellect, but is rather to be compared to a pantheon of deities."</p>
+
+<p class="right">&mdash;("Hegel, Encyclop&aelig;dia," vol. 1, section 86, note 2.)</p>
+
+<p>What Hegel says here about philosophy is true also of systems of
+social science, and styles and forms in art. The displacement of one
+system by another reflects the historical sequence of the various
+stages of social evolution. The characteristic which is common to all
+these systems is their vitality.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of their defects and difficulties there surges through them a
+living spirit from the influence of which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span>contemporaries cannot
+escape. Opponents may put themselves to endless trouble to contradict
+such systems, and show up their shortcomings and inconsistencies, and
+yet, with all their pains, they do not succeed in attaining their
+object; their logical sapping and mining, their passionate attacks
+break against the vital spirit which the creative genius has breathed
+into his work. The deep impression made on us by this vitality is one
+of the main factors in the formation of our judgments upon scientific
+and artistic achievements. Mere formal perfection and beauty through
+which the life of the times does not throb can never create this
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>Walter Scott, who was often reproached with defects and
+inconsistencies in the construction of his novels, once made answer
+with the following anecdote: A French sculptor, who had taken up his
+abode in Rome, was fond of taking to the Capitol his artistically
+inclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, to show them the
+equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which occasions he was at
+pains to demonstrate that the horse was defectively modelled, and did
+not meet the requirements of anatomy. After one of these criticisms a
+visitor urged him to prove his case in a concrete form by constructing
+a horse on correct artistic principles. The critic set to work, and
+when, after the lapse of a year, his friends were again visiting Rome,
+exhibited to them his horse. It was anatomically perfect. Proudly he
+had it brought to the Capitol, in order to compare both productions
+and so celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in his critical
+comparison, the French sculptor after a while gave way to a burst of
+genuine artistic feeling, which caused him pathetically to exclaim,
+"<i>Et pourtant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span>cette b&ecirc;te-l&agrave; est vivante, et la mienne est morte!</i>"
+(And yet that animal is alive, while mine is dead.)</p>
+
+<p>Quite a number of Marxian critics find themselves in the same position
+as the hypercritical French sculptor. Their formal and logically
+complete economic doctrines and systems of historical philosophy,
+provided with pedantically correct details and definitions, remain
+dead and ineffective. They do not put us into contact with the
+relations of the time, whereas Marx has bequeathed both to the
+educated and the uneducated, to his readers and to non-readers, a
+multitude of ideas and expressions relating to social science, which
+have become current throughout the whole world.</p>
+
+<p>In Petrograd and in Tokio, in Berlin and in London, in Paris and in
+Pittsburg, people speak of capital and of the capitalist system, of
+means of production and of the class struggle; of Reform and
+Revolution; of the Proletariat and of Socialism. The extent of Marx's
+influence is shown by the economic explanation of the world-war, which
+is even accepted by the most decided opponents of the materialist
+conception of history. A generation after Marx's death, the
+sovereignty of Capital shrinks visibly, works' committees and shops'
+stewards interfere with the productive processes, Socialists and
+Labour men fill the Parliaments, working men and their representatives
+rise to or take by storm the highest position of political power in
+States and Empires. Many of their triumphs would scarcely have
+received Marx's approval. His theory, white-hot with indomitable
+passion, demanded that the new tables of the Law should be given to
+men amidst thunder and lightning. But still the essential thing is
+that the proletariat is loosening its bonds, even <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span>if it does not
+burst them noisily asunder. We find ourselves in the first stages of
+the evolution of Socialist society. Through whatever forms this
+evolutionary process may pass in its logical development, this much is
+certain, that only by active thought on the part of Socialists and by
+the loyal co-operation of the workers can it be brought to its
+perfection.</p>
+
+<p>We are already using Hegelian expressions, and must therefore pause
+here to note briefly Hegel's contribution to the subject. Without a
+knowledge of this, no one can be in a position to appreciate the
+important factors in the life and influence of Marx, or even to
+understand his first intellectual achievements during his student
+years.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">II. The Work of Hegel.</h4>
+
+<p>Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, learned and
+unlearned, philosophers and philistines, had some such general notions
+as the following. The world has either been created, or it has existed
+from eternity. It is either governed by a personal, supernatural god
+or universal spirit, or it is kept going by nature, like some delicate
+machine. It exists in accordance with eternal laws, and is perfect,
+ordained to fulfil some design, and constant. The things and beings
+which are found in it are divided into kinds, species and classes. All
+is fixed, constant and eternal. Things and beings are contiguous in
+space, and succeed one another in time, as they have done ever since
+time was. It is the same with the incidents and events of the world
+and of mankind. Such common <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span>proverbs as "There is nothing new under
+the sun" and "History repeats itself" are but the popular expression
+of this view.</p>
+
+<p>Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or the science of the laws
+of thinking (Greek logos&mdash;reason, word). It taught how men should use
+their reason, how they should express themselves reasonably, how
+concepts arise (in what manner, for example, the human understanding
+arrived at the concepts stone, tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.);
+further, how such concepts are combined into judgments (propositions),
+and finally, how conclusions are drawn from these judgments. This
+logic exhibited the intellectual processes of the human mind. It was
+founded by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322
+<span class="fakesc">B.C.</span>), and remained essentially unaltered until the beginning
+of the nineteenth century, in the same way as our whole conception of
+the universe remained unchanged. This science of human intellectual
+processes was based on three original laws of thought, which best
+characterise it. Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisoner in
+the face, and identifies him, so that uncertainty and contradiction
+may be avoided, so this logic began by establishing the identity of
+the conceptions with which it was to operate. Consequently, it
+established as the first law of thought the Principle of Identity,
+which runs as follows: A = A, i.e., each thing, each being, is like
+itself; it possesses an individuality of its own, peculiar to itself.
+To put it more clearly, this principle affirms that the earth is the
+earth, a state is a state, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.</p>
+
+<p>From this proceeds the second law of thought, the Principle of
+Contradiction. A cannot be A and not&mdash;A. Or following our example
+given above, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span>earth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a
+State cannot be a State and an Anarchy; Capital cannot be Capital and
+Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialism and Individualism. Therefore
+there must be no contradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself
+is nonsense; where, however, this occurs either in actuality or in
+thought, it is only an accidental exception to the rule, as it were,
+or a passing and irregular phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>From this law of thought follows directly the third, viz., the
+Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thing is either A or non-A; there
+is no middle term. Or, according to our example, the earth is either a
+solid body, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is no middle
+term. The State is either monarchical, or, if it is not monarchical,
+it is no State. Capitalism is either oppressive, or altogether not
+Capitalism. Socialism 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.)</p>
+
+<p>With these three intellectual laws of identity, of contradiction, and
+of the excluded middle, formal logic begins.</p>
+
+<p>It is at once apparent that this logic operates with rigid, constant,
+unchanging, dogmatic conceptions, something like geometry, which deals
+with definitely bounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of the
+old world-philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>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 time
+immemorial, but has developed in the course of uncounted thousands of
+years, and is still in process <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span>of development. It has traversed a
+whole series of changes, transformations, and catastrophes. The earth
+was a gaseous mass, then a ball of fire; the species and classes of
+things and beings which exist on the earth have partly arisen by
+gradual transition from one sort into another, and partly made their
+appearance as a result of sudden changes. And in human history it is
+the same as in nature; the form and significance of the family, of the
+State, of production, of religion, of law, etc., are subjected to a
+process of development. All things are in flux, in a state of
+becoming, of arising and disappearing. There is nothing rigid,
+constant, unchanging in the Cosmos.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the new conception, the old formal logic could no longer
+satisfy the intellect; it could not adequately deal with things in a
+state of evolution. In ever-increasing measure it became impossible
+for the thinker to work with hard and fast conceptions. From the
+beginning of the nineteenth century a new logic was sought, and it was
+G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who made a comprehensive and thoroughly
+painstaking endeavour to formulate a new logic in accordance with the
+universal process of evolution. This task appeared to him to be the
+more urgent, as his whole philosophy aimed at bringing thought and
+being, reason and the universe, into the closest connection and
+agreement, dealing with them as inseparable from each other, regarding
+them as identical, and representing the universe as the gradual
+embodiment of Reason. "What is reasonable is real; what is real is
+reasonable." The task of philosophy is to comprehend what is. Every
+individual is the child of his time. Even philosophy is its time
+grasped in thought. No individual can overleap his time. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>(Pref. to
+Phil, of Law.) It is evident that, in his way, Hegel was no abstract
+thinker, divorced from actuality, and speculating at large. Rather he
+set himself to give material content to the abstract and purely ideal,
+to make it concrete, in fact. The idea without reality, or reality
+without the idea, seemed to him unthinkable. Accordingly his logic
+could not deal merely with the laws of thought, but must at the same
+time take account of the laws of cosmic evolution. Merely to play with
+the forms of thought, and to fence with ideas, as the old logicians,
+especially in the Middle Ages, were wont to do, seemed to him a
+useless, abstract, unreal operation. He, therefore, created a science
+of thinking, which formulated not only the laws of thought, but also
+the laws of evolution, albeit, unfortunately, in a language which
+offered immense difficulties to his readers.</p>
+
+<p>The essence of his logic is the dialectic.</p>
+
+<p>By dialectic the old Greeks understood the art of discourse and
+rejoinder, the refutation of an opponent by the destruction of his
+assertions and proofs, the bringing into relief of the contradictions
+and antitheses. When examined closely, this art of discussion, in
+spite of its contradictory and apparently negative (destructive)
+intellectual work, is seen to be very useful, because, out of the
+clash of opposing opinions, it brings forth the truth and stimulates
+to deeper thought. Hegel seized hold of this expression, and named his
+logical method after it. This is the dialectical method, or the manner
+of conceiving the things and beings of the universe as in the process
+of becoming, through the struggle of contradictory elements and their
+resolution. With its aid, he brings to judgment the three original
+laws of thought which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span>have already been alluded to. The principle of
+identity is an abstract, incomplete truth, for it separates a thing
+from the variety of other things, and its relations to them. Everybody
+will see this to be true. Let us take the proposition: the earth is
+the earth. Whoever hears the first three words of this proposition
+naturally expects that what is predicated of the earth should tell him
+something which distinguishes the earth from other things. Instead of
+this, he is offered an empty, hard and fast identity, the dead husk of
+an idea. If the principle of identity is at best only an incomplete
+truth, the principles of contradiction and of the excluded middle are
+complete untruths. Far from making a thought nonsense, contradiction
+is the very thing which unfolds and develops the thought, and hence,
+too, the object which it expresses. It is precisely opposition, or
+antithesis, which sets things in motion, which is the mainspring of
+evolution, which calls forth and develops the latent forces and powers
+of being. Had the earth as a fiery, gaseous mass remained in that
+state, without the contradiction, that is, the cooling and
+condensation, taking place, then no life would have appeared on it.
+Had the State remained autocratic, and the contradictory principle,
+middle-class freedom, been absent, then the life of the State would
+have become rigid, and the bloom of culture rendered impossible. Had
+Capitalism remained without its proletarian contradiction, then it
+would have reverted to an industrial feudalism. It is the
+contradiction, or the antithesis, which brings into being the whole
+kingdom of the potentialities and gifts of nature and of humanity.
+Only when the contradictory begins to reveal itself does evolution to
+a higher plane of thought and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>existence begin. It is obvious that we
+are not concerned here with logical contradictions, which usually
+arise from unclear thinking or from confusion in the presentation of
+facts; Hegel, and after him Marx, dealt rather with real
+contradictions, with antitheses and conflicts, as they arise of
+themselves in the process of evolution of things and conditions.</p>
+
+<p>The thing or the being, against which the contradiction operates, was
+called by Hegel the Positive, and the contradiction, the antagonistic
+element, or the antithesis, he called the Negation. As may be seen
+from our example, this negation is not mere annihilation, not a
+resolution into nothing, but a clearing away and a building up at the
+same time; a disappearance and a coming into existence; a movement to
+a higher stage. Hegel says in this connection: "It has been hitherto
+one of the rooted prejudices of logic and a commonly accepted belief
+that the contradiction is not so essential or so inherent a
+characteristic (in thought and existence) as the identity. Yet in
+comparison with it the identity is, in truth, but the characteristic
+of what is simply and directly perceived, of lifeless existence. The
+contradiction, however, is the source of all movement and life; only
+in so far as it contains a contradiction can anything have movement,
+power, and effect."</p>
+
+<p>The part played by the contradiction, the antithesis, or the negation
+very easily escapes a superficial observer. He sees, indeed, that the
+world is filled with a variety of things, and that where anything is
+there is also its opposite; e.g., existence&mdash;non-existence,
+cold&mdash;heat, light&mdash;darkness, mildness&mdash;harshness, pleasure&mdash;pain,
+joy&mdash;sorrow, riches&mdash;poverty, Capital&mdash;Labour, life&mdash;death,
+virtue&mdash;vice, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span>Idealism&mdash;Materialism, Romanticism&mdash;Classicism, etc.,
+but superficial thought does not realise that it is faced with a world
+of contradictions and antitheses; it only knows that the world is full
+of varied and manifold things. "Only active reason," says Hegel,
+"reduced the mere multiplicity and diversity of phenomena to
+antithesis. And only when pushed to this point do the manifold
+phenomena become active and mutually stimulating, producing the state
+of negation, which is the very heart-beat of progress and life." Only
+through their differentiation and unfolding as opposing forces and
+factors is further progress beyond the antithesis to a higher positive
+stage made possible. "Where, however," continues Hegel, "the power to
+develop the contradiction and bring it to a head is lacking, the thing
+or the being is shattered on the contradiction."&mdash;(Hegel, "Science of
+Logic," Pt. 1, Sec. 2, pp. 66, 69, 70.)</p>
+
+<p>This thought of Hegel's is of extraordinary importance for the
+understanding of Marxism. It is the soul of the Marxian doctrine of
+the class-struggle, nay, of the whole Marxian system. One may say that
+Marx is always on the look-out for contradictions within the social
+development, for wherever the contradiction (antithesis&mdash;class
+struggle) shows itself, there begins, according to Marx-Hegel, the
+progress to a higher plane.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have now become familiar with two expressions of the dialectical
+method, the positive and the negation. We have seen the first two
+stages of the process of growth in thought and in reality. The process
+is not yet complete. It still requires a third stage. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</a></span>This third step
+Hegel called the Negation of the Negation. With the continued
+operation of the negation, a new thing or being comes into existence.</p>
+
+<p>To revert to our examples: the complete cooling and condensation of
+the earth's crust: the rise of the middle-class State: the victory of
+the Proletariat: these things represent the suspension or the setting
+aside of the Negation; the contradiction is thus resolved, and a new
+stage in the process of evolution is reached. The expressions Positive
+(or affirmation), Negation, and Negation of the Negation, are also
+known as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.</p>
+
+<p>In order to understand this more distinctly, and to visualise it, let
+us consider an egg. It is something positive, but it contains a germ,
+which, awakening to life, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the
+contents of the egg. This negation is, however, no mere destruction
+and annihilation; on the contrary, it results in the germ developing
+into a living thing. The negation being complete, the chick breaks
+through the egg shell. This represents the negation of the negation,
+whereby there has arisen something organically higher than an egg.</p>
+
+<p>This mode of procedure in human thinking and in the operations of
+nature and history Hegel called the dialectical method, or the
+dialectical process. It is evident that the dialectic is at the same
+time a method of investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines his
+dialectic in the following words:</p>
+
+<p>"The only thing which is required for scientific progress, an
+elementary principle for the understanding of which one should really
+strive, is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative
+is just as much a positive, or that the contradictory does not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</a></span>resolve into nothing, into an abstract nothingness, but actually only
+into the negation of a special content.... In so far as the resultant,
+the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new
+conception, but a higher and richer conception than the preceding one;
+for it has been enriched by the negation or antithesis of this; it
+therefore contains it and more than contains it, being indeed the
+synthetic unity of itself and its contrary. In this way the system of
+concepts has to be formed&mdash;and is to be perfected by a continual and
+purely intellectual process which is independent of outside
+influences."&mdash;(Hegel, "Science of Logic" (German), Bk. I.,
+Introduction.)</p>
+
+<p>The dialectical process completes itself not only by gradual
+transitions, but also by leaps. Hegel remarks:</p>
+
+<p>"It has been said that there are no sudden leaps in nature, and it is
+a common notion that things have their origin through gradual increase
+or decrease. But there is also such a thing as sudden transformation
+from quantity into quality. For example, water does not become
+gradually hard on cooling, becoming first pulpy and ultimately
+attaining the rigidity of ice, but turns hard at once. If the
+temperature be lowered to a certain degree, the water is suddenly
+changed into ice, i.e., the quantity&mdash;the number of degrees of
+temperature&mdash;is transformed into quality&mdash;a change in the nature of
+the thing."&mdash;("Logic" (German), Pt. 1, Sec. 1, p. 464, Ed. 1841.)</p>
+
+<p>Marx handled this method with unsurpassed mastery; with its aid he
+formulated the laws of the evolution of Socialism. In his earliest
+works, "The Holy Family" (1844) and the "Poverty of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</a></span>Philosophy"
+(1847), written when he was formulating his materialist conception of
+history, as also in his "Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel
+that he investigates these laws.</p>
+
+<p>"Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would have said Capital) are
+antitheses. As such they constitute a whole; both are manifestations
+of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the
+specific position which both occupy in the antithesis. To describe
+them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private
+property as private property, as riches, is compelled to preserve its
+own existence, and along with it that of its antithesis, the
+Proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side
+of the antithesis. The Proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as
+Proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property,
+its conditioned antithesis, which makes it the Proletariat. It is a
+negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of unrest, the
+disintegrated and disintegrating Proletariat.... Within the
+antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is the
+conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From the
+former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the
+latter the action of destroying 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 is independent 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, poverty conscious of
+its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralised humanity
+conscious of its own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</a></span>demoralisation and consequently striving against
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the
+creation of the Proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils
+the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien
+riches and its own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs, it does
+not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only
+by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the
+Proletariat and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done
+away with."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>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 as the labour process operates merely between man and nature,
+its simple elements are common to every form of its social
+development. But any given historical form of this process further
+develops its material foundations and its social forms. When it has
+attained a certain degree of maturity the given historical form is
+cast off and makes room for a higher one. That the moment of such a
+crisis has arrived is shown as soon as there is a deepening and
+widening of the contradiction and antithesis between the conditions of
+distribution, and consequently also the existing historical form of
+the conditions of production corresponding to them, on the one hand,
+and the forces of production, productive capacity, and the state of
+evolution of its agents, on the other. There then arises a conflict
+between the material development of production and its corresponding
+social form."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</a></span>But the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in the famous
+twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the first volume of "Capital"
+(German), where the evolution of capitalism from small middle-class
+ownership through all phases up to the Socialist revolution is
+comprehensively outlined in bold strokes: "The capitalist method of
+appropriation, which springs from the capitalist method of production,
+and therefore capitalist private property, is the first negation of
+individual private property based on one's own labour. But capitalist
+production begets with the inevitableness of a natural process its own
+negation. It is the negation of the negation." Here we have the three
+stages: the thesis&mdash;private property; the antithesis&mdash;capitalism; the
+synthesis&mdash;common ownership.</p>
+
+<p>Of critical social writers outside Germany it was Proudhon, in
+particular, who, in his works "What is Property?" and "Economic
+Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty" (1840, 1846), attempted
+to use the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave his chief book
+the title "Economic Contradictions" shows that Proudhon was largely
+preoccupied with Hegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below the
+surface; he used the Hegelian formul&aelig; quite mechanically, and lacked
+the conception of an immanent process of development (the
+forward-impelling force within the social organism).</p>
+
+<p>If we look at the dialectical method as here presented, Hegel might be
+taken for a materialist thinker. Such a notion would be erroneous. For
+Hegel is an idealist: the origin and essence of the process of growth
+is to be sought, according to him, not in material forces, but in the
+logical idea, reason, the universal spirit, the absolute, or&mdash;in its
+religious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</a></span>expression&mdash;God. Before He created the world He is to be
+regarded as an Idea, containing within itself all forms of being,
+which it develops dialectically. The idea creates for itself a
+material embodiment; it first expresses itself in the objects of
+inorganic nature; then in plants, organisms wherein life awakens; then
+in animals, in which the Idea attains to the twilight of reason;
+finally, in men, where reason rises into mind and achieves
+self-consciousness and freedom. As self-conscious mind it expresses
+itself in the history of peoples, in religion, art and philosophy, in
+human institutions, in the family and in law, until it realises itself
+in the State as its latest and highest object.</p>
+
+<p>According to Hegel, then, the universal Idea develops into Godhead in
+proportion as the material world rises from the inorganic to the
+organic, and, finally, to man. In the mental part of man, the Idea
+arrives at self-consciousness and freedom and becomes God. In his
+cosmology, Hegel is a direct descendant of the German mystics,
+Sebastion Franck and Jacob Boehme. He was in a much higher degree
+German than any of the German philosophers since Leibnitz.</p>
+
+<p>The strangest thing, however, is that Germanism, Protestantism, and
+the Prussian State appeared to Hegel as the highest expression of the
+universal mind. Particularly the Prussian State as it existed before
+March, 1848, with its repudiation of all middle-class reforms and
+liberalism (of any kind), and its basis of strong governmental force.</p>
+
+<p>There is little purpose in trying to acquire a logical conception of
+Hegelian cosmology. It is not only idealist, but, as we said,
+mystical; it is as inconceivable to human reason as the biblical; it
+is irrational, and lies beyond the sphere of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</a></span>reason. Making the
+universe arise out of pure reason, out of the logical idea, developing
+through the dialectical process with a consciousness of freedom, it
+yet concludes in unreason and an obstinate determinism. In Liberalism
+Hegel saw only a simple negation, a purely destructive factor, which
+disintegrates the State and resolves it into individuals, thus
+depriving it of all cohesion and organising strength. He blamed
+Parliamentarism for demanding "that everything should take place
+through their (the individuals) expressed power and consent. The will
+of the many overturns the Ministry, and what was the Opposition now
+takes control, but, so far as it is the Government, the latter finds
+the many against it. Thus agitation and unrest continue. This
+collision, this knot, this problem, is what confronts history, a
+problem which it must resolve at some future time." One would have
+thought that it was precisely Parliamentarism, with its unrest and
+agitation, its antitheses and antagonisms, which would have had a
+special attraction for Hegel, but nevertheless he turned aside from
+it. How is this to be explained?</p>
+
+<p>Hegel's relation to the Prussian State is to be accounted for by his
+strong patriotic sentiments. His disposition inclined him strongly to
+nationalism in politics. In his early manhood he witnessed the
+complete dissolution of the German Empire, and deeply bewailed the
+wretchedness of German conditions. He wrote: "Germany is no longer a
+State; even the wars which Germany waged have not ended in a
+particularly honourable manner for her. Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine
+have been torn away. The Peace of Westphalia has often been alluded to
+as Germany's Palladium, although by it the complete <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</a></span>dismemberment of
+Germany has only been established more thoroughly than before. The
+Germans have been grateful to Richelieu, who destroyed their power."
+On the other hand, the achievements of Prussia in the Seven Years'
+War, and in the War of Liberation against the French, awoke in him the
+hope that it was this State which could save Germany. To this thought
+he gave eloquent and enthusiastic expression in his address at the
+opening of his Berlin lectures in October, 1818, and also in his
+lecture on Frederick the Great. Hegel therefore rejected everything
+which seemed to him to spell a weakening of the Prussia State power.
+The dialectician was overcome by national feelings.</p>
+
+<p>However, Hegel's place in the history of thought rests, not on his
+explanations of the creation of the world, nor on his German
+nationalist politics, but upon the dialectical method. In exploring,
+by means of this method, the wide expanse of human knowledge, he
+scattered an astonishing abundance of materialistic and strictly
+scientific observations and suggestions, and inspired his pupils and
+readers with a living conception of history, of the development of
+mankind to self-consciousness and freedom, thus rendering them capable
+of pushing their studies further, and emancipating themselves from all
+mysticism. As an example of the materialist tendency of his
+philosophy, the following references will serve. His "Philosophy of
+History" contains a whole chapter upon the geographical foundations of
+universal history. In this chapter he expresses himself&mdash;quite
+contrary to his deification of the State&mdash;as follows: "A real State
+and a real central government only arise when the distinction of
+classes is already given, when Riches and Poverty have become very
+great, and such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</a></span>conditions have arisen that a great multitude can no
+longer satisfy their needs in the way to which they have been
+accustomed." Or take his explanation of the founding of colonies by
+the Greeks.</p>
+
+<p>"This projecting of colonies, particularly in the period after the
+Trojan War until Cyrus, is here a peculiar phenomenon, which may thus
+be explained: in the individual towns the people had the governing
+power in their hands, in that they decided the affairs of State in the
+last resort. In consequence of the long peace, population and
+development greatly increased, and quickly brought about the
+accumulation of great riches, which is always accompanied by the
+phenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry, in our sense, did
+not exist at that time, and the land was speedily monopolised.
+Nevertheless, a section of the poorer classes would not allow
+themselves to be depressed to the poverty line, for each man felt
+himself to be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, was
+colonisation."</p>
+
+<p>Or even the following passage, which conceives the philosophical
+system merely as the result and reflection of the accomplished facts
+of existence, and therefore rejects all painting of Utopias: "Besides,
+philosophy comes always too late to say a word as to how the world
+ought to be. As an idea of the universe, it only arises in the period
+after reality has completed its formative process and attained its
+final shape. What this conception teaches is necessarily demonstrated
+by history, namely, that the ideal appears over against the real only
+after the consummation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the
+same world, comprehended in the substance of reality, in the form of
+an intellectual realm. A form of life has become old when philosophy
+paints its grey on grey, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</a></span>and with grey on grey it cannot be
+rejuvenated but only recognised. The owl of Minerva begins its flight
+only with the falling twilight."&mdash;Preface to the "Philosophy of Law."</p>
+
+<p>No materialist could have said this better: the owl&mdash;the symbol of
+wisdom&mdash;only begins her flight in the evening, after the busy
+activities of the world are over. Thus we have first the universe, and
+then thought; first existence, and then consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>Hegel himself was therefore an example of his own teaching that
+contradictory elements are to be found side by side. His mind
+contained both idealism and realism, but he did not bring them by a
+process of reasoning to the point of acute contradiction in order to
+reach a higher plane of thought. And as he regarded it as the task of
+philosophy to recognise the principle of things, and to follow it out
+systematically and logically throughout the whole vast domain of
+reality, and as further, owing to his mystical bent, he asserted the
+idea to be the ultimate reality, he remained a consistent Idealist.</p>
+
+<p>The Conservatism of Hegel, who was the philosophical representative of
+the Prussian State, was, however, sadly incompatible with the
+awakening consciousness of the German middle class, which, in spite of
+its economic weakness, aspired to a freer State constitution, and
+greater liberty of action. These aspirations were already somewhat
+more strongly developed in the larger towns and industrial centres of
+Prussia and the other German States. The Young Hegelians<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> championed
+this middle-class awakening in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[xxxi]</a></span>the philosophical sphere, just as
+"Young Germany" (Heine, Boerne, etc.) did in the province of
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>Just at the time when Marx was still at the university the Young
+Hegelians took up the fight against the conservative section of
+Hegel's disciples and the Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The
+antagonism between the old and the new school made itself felt both in
+religious philosophy and political literature, but both tendencies
+were seldom combined in the same persons. David Strauss subjected the
+Gospels to a candid criticism; Feuerbach investigated the nature of
+Christianity and of religion generally, and in this department
+inverted Hegel's Idealism to Materialism; Bruno Bauer trained his
+heavy historical and philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmas
+concerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, however, they
+remained at the stage of the freedom of the individual: that is, they
+were merely moderate Liberals. Nevertheless, there were also less
+prominent Young Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberal left
+wing as regards their political opinions, such as Arnold Ruge.</p>
+
+<p>None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used the dialectical method
+to develop still further the teaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the
+youngest of the Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage in
+social science. He was no longer known to Hegel, who might otherwise
+have died with a more contented or perhaps even still more perturbed
+mind. Heinrich Heine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirties
+and forties, relates the following anecdote, which if not true yet
+excellently illustrates the extraordinary difficulties of the Master's
+doctrines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[xxxii]</a></span>round him, seeing
+the furrows deepen on the Master's care-worn countenance, inquired the
+cause of his grief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him of the
+large number of admiring disciples and followers he would leave
+behind. Breathing with difficulty, he replied: "None of my disciples
+has understood me; only Michelet has understood me, and," he added
+with a sigh, "even he has misunderstood me."</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr class="fnhr" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> In one of the later chapters the reader will find the
+series of contradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of
+capitalism. Sec. IV., "Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8,
+"Economic Contradictions."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Marx, in "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring
+in the "Collected Works or Literary Remains of Marx and Engels," vol.
+II., p. 132.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> After the death of Hegel differences of opinion arose
+among his disciples, chiefly with respect to his doctrines of the
+Deity, immortality and the personality of Christ. One section, the
+so-called "Right Wing," inclined to orthodoxy on these questions. In
+opposition to them stood the "Young Hegelians," the progressive "Left
+Wing." To this section belonged Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach,
+and Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus."</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="I" id="I"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h1>The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>I.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>PARENTS AND FRIENDS.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">I. Marx's Apprenticeship.</h4>
+
+<p>Karl Heinrich Marx first saw the light of day in Treves on May 5,
+1818. His father, an enlightened, fine feeling, and philanthropic Jew,
+was a Jurist who had slowly risen from the humble circumstances of a
+German Rabbi family and acquired a respectable practice, but who never
+learnt the art of making money. His mother was a Dutchwoman, and came
+of a Rabbi family called Pressburg, which, as the name indicates, had
+emigrated from Pressburg, in Hungary, to Holland, in the seventeenth
+century. She spoke German very imperfectly. Marx has handed on to us
+one of her sayings, "If Karl made a lot of Capital, instead of writing
+a lot about Capital, it would have been much better." The Marxes had
+several children, of whom Karl alone showed special mental gifts.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1824 the family embraced Christianity. The baptism of Jews
+was at that time no longer a rarity. The enlightenment of the last
+half of the eighteenth century had undermined the dogmatic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>beliefs of
+many cultured Jews, and the succeeding period of German Christian
+Romanticism brought a strengthening and idealising of Christianity and
+of national feeling, from which, for practical just as much as for
+spiritual reasons, the Jews who had renounced their own religion could
+not escape. They were completely assimilated, felt and thought like
+the rest of their Christian and German fellow-citizens. Marx's father
+felt himself to be a good Prussian, and once recommended his son to
+compose an ode, in the grand style, on Napoleon's downfall and
+Prussia's victory. Karl did not, in truth, follow his father's advice,
+but from that time of Christian enthusiasm and German patriotic
+sentiment until his life's end, there remained with him an anti-Jewish
+prejudice; the Jew was generally to him either a usurer or a cadger.</p>
+
+<p>Karl was sent to the grammar school in his native town, leaving with a
+highly creditable record. The school was, however, not the only place
+where he developed his mind. During his school years he used to
+frequent the house of the Government Privy Councillor, L. von
+Westphalen, a highly cultured Prussian official, whose favourite poets
+were Homer and Shakespeare, and who followed attentively the
+intellectual tendencies of his time. Although he had already reached
+advanced age, he liked to converse with the precocious youth, and to
+influence his mental growth. Marx honoured him as a fatherly friend
+"who welcomes every progressive movement with the enthusiasm and sober
+judgment of a lover of truth, and who is a living proof that Idealism
+is no imagination, but the truth."&mdash;(Dedication of Marx's doctor
+thesis.)</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>After quitting the public school, Marx went to the University of Bonn,
+in order to study jurisprudence, according to his father's wishes.
+After a year of the merry life of a student, he removed in the autumn
+of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre of culture and truth, as
+Hegel had called it in his Inaugural Lecture (1818). Before his
+departure for Berlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny Von
+Westphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, a woman distinguished
+alike for beauty, culture, and strength of character.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">II. Student.</h4>
+
+<p>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
+was insatiable; in these matters only superlatives can be used to
+describe, Marx. In one of his poems dating, from this period, he says
+of himself:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ne'er can I perform in calmness<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What has seized my soul with might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But must strive and struggle onward<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In a ceaseless, restless flight.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All divine, enhancing graces<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Would I make of life a part;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Penetrate the realms of science,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grasp the joys of Song and Art."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>Giving up all social intercourse, he worked night and day, making
+abstracts of what he read, translating from Greek and Latin, working
+at philosophical systems, setting down a considerable number of his
+own thoughts, and drafting outlines of philosophy or jurisprudence, as
+well as writing three volumes of poems. The year 1837 marks one of the
+critical periods of Marx's intellectual development; it was a time of
+vacillation and ferment and of internal struggle, at the end of which
+he found refuge in the Hegelian dialectics. In so doing he turned his
+back on the abstract idealism of Kant and Fichte, and made the first
+step towards reality; and indeed at that time Marx firmly believed
+that Hegel actually stood for reality. In a somewhat lengthy letter
+dated November 10, 1837, a truly human document, Marx gives his father
+an account of his intense activity during that remarkable period,
+comprising his first two terms at the University of Berlin, when he
+was still so very young:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="noin sc">"Dear Father,</p>
+
+<p>"There are times which are landmarks in our lives; and they not
+only mark off a phase that has passed, but, at the same time,
+point out clearly our new direction. At such turning points we
+feel impelled to make a critical survey of the past and the
+present, so as to attain to a clear knowledge of our actual
+position. Nay, mankind itself, as all history shows, loves to
+indulge in this retrospection and contemplation, and thereby
+often appears to be going backward or standing still, when after
+all it has only thrown itself back in its armchair, the better
+to apprehend itself, to grasp its own doings, and to penetrate
+into the workings of the spirit.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>"The individual, however, becomes lyrical at such times; for
+every metamorphosis is in part an elegy on the past and in part
+the prologue of a great new poem that is striving for permanent
+expression in a chaos of resplendent but fleeting colours. Be
+that as it may, we would fain set up a monument to our past
+experiences that they may regain in memory the significance
+which they have lost in the active affairs of life: and what
+more fitting way can we find of doing that than by bringing them
+and laying them before the hearts of our parents!</p>
+
+<p>"And so now, when I take stock of the year which I have just
+spent here, and in so doing answer your very welcome letter from
+Ems, let me consider my position, in the same way as I look on
+life altogether, as the embodiment of a spiritual force that
+seeks expression in every direction: in science, in art, and in
+one's own personality.... On my arrival in Berlin I broke off
+all my former connections, paid visits rarely and unwillingly,
+and sought to bury myself in science and art.... In accordance
+with my ideas at the time, poetry must of necessity be my first
+concern, or at least the most agreeable of my pursuits, and the
+one for which I most cared; but, as might be expected from my
+disposition and the whole trend of my development, it was purely
+idealistic. Next I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I
+felt a strong impulse to grapple with philosophy. Both studies,
+however, were so interwoven that on the one hand I worked
+through the Jurist's Heineccius and Thibaut and the Sources
+docilely and quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the
+first two books of the Pandects of Justinian, while on the other
+hand I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>attempted to evolve a philosophy of law in the sphere of
+jurisprudence. By way of introduction I laid down a few
+metaphysical principles, and carried this unfortunate work as
+far as Public Rights, in all about 300 sheets.</p>
+
+<p>"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 disagreeably prominent. In the first place
+there was what I had so graciously christened the Metaphysics of
+Law, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions, standing
+aloof from all established jurisprudence and from every actual
+form of legal practice. Then the unscientific form of
+mathematical dogmatism in which there is so much beating about
+the bush, so much diffuse argumentation without any fruitful
+development or vital creation, hindered me from the outset from
+arriving at the Truth. A triangle may be constructed and
+reasoned about by the mathematician; it is a mere spatial
+concept and does not of itself undergo any further evolution; it
+must be brought in conjunction with something else, when it
+requires other properties, and thus by placing the same thing in
+various relationships we are enabled to deduce new relationships
+and new truths. Whereas in the concrete expression of the mental
+life as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature, and in the
+whole of philosophy, the object of our study must be considered
+in its development.... The individual's reason must proceed with
+its self-contradiction until it discovers its own unity."</p></div>
+
+<p>In this we perceive the first trace of the Hegelian dialectic in Marx.
+We see rigid geometrical forms <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>contrasted with the continually
+evolving organism, with social forms and human institutions. Marx had
+put up a stout resistance against the influence of the Hegelian
+philosophy; nay, he had even hated it and had made mighty efforts to
+cling faithfully to his idealism, but in the end he, too, must fall
+under the spell of the idea of evolution, in the form which it then
+assumed in Hegelian speculation in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Marx then goes on to speak of his legal studies as well as of his
+poems, and thus continues:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"As a result of these various activities I passed many sleepless
+nights during my first term, engaged in many battles, and had to
+endure much mental and physical excitement; and at the end of it
+all I found myself not very much better off, having in the
+meanwhile neglected nature, art and society, and spurned
+pleasure: such, indeed, was the comment which my body seemed to
+make. My doctor advised me to try the country, and so, having
+for the first time passed through the whole length of the city,
+I found myself before the gate on the Stralau Road.... From the
+idealism which I had cherished so long I fell to seeking the
+ideal in reality itself. Whereas before the gods had dwelt above
+the earth, they had now become its very centre.</p>
+
+<p>"I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the strange, rugged
+melody of which had not pleased me. Once again I wished to dive
+into the depths of the sea, this time with the resolute
+intention of finding a spiritual nature just as essential,
+concrete, and perfect as the physical, and instead of indulging
+in intellectual gymnastics, bringing up pure pearls into the
+sunlight.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>"I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled 'Cleantes or on
+the Source and Inevitable Development of Philosophy.' In this,
+art and science, which had hitherto been kept asunder, were to
+some extent blended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even set
+about the task of evolving a philosophical, dialectical
+exposition of the nature of the Deity as it is manifested in a
+pure concept, in religion, in nature, and in history. My last
+thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system; and this work,
+in course of which I had to make some acquaintance with science,
+Schelling and history, and which had occasioned me an infinite
+amount of hard thinking, delivers me like a faithless siren into
+the hands of the enemy....</p>
+
+<p>"Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitlessness and utter
+failure of my intellectual labours, and torn with vexation at
+having to make into my idol a view which I had hated, I fell
+ill, as I have already told you in a previous letter. On my
+recovery I burnt all my poems and material for projected short
+stories in the vain belief that I could give all that up; and,
+to be sure, so far I have not given cause to gainsay it.</p>
+
+<p>"During my illness I had made acquaintance with Hegel from
+beginning to end, as also with most of his disciples. Through
+frequent meetings with friends in Stralau I got an introduction
+into a Graduates' Club, in which were a number of professors and
+Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlin friends. In the
+discussions that took place many conflicting views were put
+forward, and more and more securely did I get involved in the
+meshes of the new philosophy which I had sought to escape; but
+everything articulate in me was put to silence, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>a veritable
+ironical rage fell upon me, as well it might after so much
+negation."&mdash;("Neue Zeit," 16th year, Vol. I., No. 1.)</p></div>
+
+<p>His father was anything but pleased with this letter. He reproached
+Karl with the aimless and discursive way in which he worked. He had
+expected that these Berlin studies would lead to something more than
+breeding monstrosities and destroying them again. He believed that
+Karl would, before everything else, have considered his future career,
+that he would have devoted all his attention to the lectures in his
+course, that he would have cultivated the acquaintance of people in
+authority, that he would have been economical, and that he would have
+avoided all philosophical extravagances. He refers him to the example
+of his fellow students who attend their lectures regularly and have an
+eye to their future:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they
+now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure,
+whereas my clever and gifted son Karl passes wretched sleepless
+nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing
+all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to
+abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again
+to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he
+already had, without having gained anything from other people.
+At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused,
+whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and
+attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than
+those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health
+in order to snatch at the ghost of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>erudition, which they could
+probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in
+the society of competent men&mdash;with social enjoyment into the
+bargain!"</p></div>
+
+<p>In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate
+from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after
+having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain
+to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not
+easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to
+new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a
+distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would
+never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Therefore let us, all things daring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Never from our task recede;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never sink in sullen silence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Paralysed in will and deed.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Let us not in base subjection<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Brood away our fearful life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When with deed and aspiration<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We might enter in the strife.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He
+worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions,
+and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club
+stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno
+Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich K&ouml;ppen, a master in a
+grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated
+him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and
+looked forward to obtaining a lectureship <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>in some university or
+other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings
+of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's
+subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838,
+at the age of fifty-six.</p>
+
+<p>Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked
+all the more assiduously at the perfecting of his philosophical
+knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order&mdash;at
+the instigation of Bruno Bauer&mdash;to get himself admitted as quickly as
+possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer
+himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having
+served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the
+year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of
+Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of
+Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his
+friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as
+lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities
+were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even
+possible for Bauer to obtain a professorship; still less could Marx,
+who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on
+an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was
+free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented
+itself.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">III. Beginnings of Public Life.</h4>
+
+<p>Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical
+training and with an irrestrainable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>impulse to enter into the
+struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he
+understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in
+politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be
+used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become
+ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of
+criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being,
+or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified
+conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune
+is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the
+weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away
+existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for
+life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the
+clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.
+For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the
+best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in
+polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war&mdash;ruthless war&mdash;against
+the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field
+of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that
+of journalism. His material circumstances compelled him, moreover, to
+consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this
+time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the
+foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way
+for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon
+procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for
+editors and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first
+number of the <i>Rheinische Zeitung</i> was published at Cologne. The
+editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friendship with
+Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin;
+and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted
+the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold
+Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary
+undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and
+others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of
+the <i>Rheinische Zeitung</i>, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement
+of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In
+his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and
+political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor
+would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed
+the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In
+October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held
+in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were
+discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning
+landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the
+editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely
+philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censorship made the way hard for
+a paper conducted with such critical acumen, and did not allow the
+editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of
+Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial
+life:</p>
+
+<p>"As editor of the <i>Rheinische Zeitung</i>, in 1842 and 1843 I came up,
+for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in
+the controversy over so-called <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>material interests. The proceedings of
+the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and
+parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the
+farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and
+Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic
+questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and
+Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself
+heard in the columns of the <i>Rheinische Zeitung</i>. I declared myself
+against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the
+studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of
+my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took
+advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the
+<i>Rheinische Zeitung</i>, who believed they could reverse the death
+sentence passed on that journal as a result of weak management, in
+order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."</p>
+
+<p>And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and
+Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity,
+resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was
+about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own
+household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his
+material existence to his spiritual aspirations.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="II" id="II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>II.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">I. The Franco-German Year Books.</h4>
+
+<p>Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the
+most important critical period in the intellectual development of
+Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy
+he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.
+Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two
+years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines
+associated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by
+what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be
+said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of
+French Socialist literature just as assiduously as he did the study of
+Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and
+printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few passages which
+bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May,
+1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of
+possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more
+swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present
+society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not
+the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."</p>
+
+<p>That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical
+criticism. In the following few months, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>however, he made surprisingly
+rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of
+history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and
+which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless
+years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from
+Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance
+with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not
+in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and
+social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of
+the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as
+to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of
+his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and
+asks which is the class that could bring about the liberation of
+Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German
+revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a
+class in chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but
+which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The
+product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is
+the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the
+beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting
+from natural circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the
+masses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the
+multitude arising from the acute break-up of society&mdash;especially of
+the middle class&mdash;which gives rise to the proletariat. When the
+proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,
+it is merely announcing the secret of its own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>existence, for it is in
+itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the
+proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely
+elevating to a general principle of society what it already
+involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."</p>
+
+<p>Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife
+in October, 1843, in order to take up the editorship of the
+Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed
+to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program
+of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its
+final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more
+evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the
+fearless criticism of all existing institutions&mdash;fearless in the sense
+that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from
+the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those
+who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we
+should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved
+in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own
+principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy,
+Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want
+to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German
+contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors
+cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place
+politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany
+of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political
+State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through
+Socialist demands, exactly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>fulfils, in all its modern forms, the
+demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason
+everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself
+everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real
+achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State
+with itself social truth is evolved."</p>
+
+<p>Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the
+embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the
+constitution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to
+remark that in its history the political State is the expression of
+the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not
+true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the
+treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.
+Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and
+away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world
+in doctrinaire fashion any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down
+before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'
+We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to
+the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."</p>
+
+<p>That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker
+propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but
+awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past,
+inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of
+their own action.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span><br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">II. Friendship with Friedrich Engels.</h4>
+
+<p>Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring,
+1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the
+criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of
+Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a
+comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political
+Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died
+in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September,
+1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning
+of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a
+close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.</p>
+
+<p>Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought,
+but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he
+enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have
+attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand,
+Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man,
+eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not
+endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual
+crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual
+association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained
+little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete
+saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all
+eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844
+Engels was a Utopian&mdash;until Marx explained to him the meaning of
+political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the
+statics and dynamics of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>history of civilised mankind. Engels'
+"Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for
+a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise
+above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon.
+Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed
+more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as
+matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The
+System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when
+Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical
+side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels.
+Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic
+system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of
+society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the
+Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had,
+independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the
+Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found
+salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should
+carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels,
+on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom
+he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to
+be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help,
+Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and
+uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in
+exile.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span><br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">III. Controversies with Bauer and Ruge.</h4>
+
+<p>After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx,
+recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French
+systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and
+continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable
+steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation
+or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him
+that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of
+Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage,
+from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a
+survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of
+1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is
+a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer,
+and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel.
+The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of
+social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling
+into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy
+reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of
+philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and
+sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French
+materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but
+pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French
+Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic
+conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social
+revolutionary interpretation to the class struggle between Capital and
+Labour. In the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The
+Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of
+history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the
+beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes
+science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really
+think that he can understand any period without having studied, for
+example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of
+production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought
+from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world,
+so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see
+the birthplace of history in coarse, material production upon earth
+but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."&mdash;("Posthumous
+Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)</p>
+
+<p>Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but
+would not concede that the masses had any power whatever, wrote: "All
+the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed
+to failure and could not have lasting success, because the masses had
+taken an interest in them and inspired them&mdash;or they must come to a
+lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature
+that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it
+must reckon on the approval of the masses."</p>
+
+<p>Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had
+been always determined by mass interests, and only in so far as they
+represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these
+movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but
+they could not achieve any results. The idea <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>always fell into
+disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other
+hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first
+appearance on the world-stage, every mass interest working itself out
+in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual
+limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of
+humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of
+the middle classes, in whose interest it manifested itself in great
+movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring masses, for
+whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has
+shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they
+corresponded to class interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas
+gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the
+liberation of mankind in general."&mdash;("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp.
+181-3.)</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1844, Marx published under the title "Marginal Notes" in
+the Paris <i>Vorw&auml;rts</i> a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a
+defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German
+proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the
+capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's
+clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpass those
+of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution.
+Where would the middle classes, their scholars and philosophers
+included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace
+and Concord' bearing on the question of emancipation? If one compares
+the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with
+this unconstrained and brilliant literary d&eacute;but of the German workers,
+if one compares these gigantic baby <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>shoes of the proletariat with the
+dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle
+classes, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German
+Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the
+philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English
+proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its
+politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as
+classic a r&ocirc;le in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play
+one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle
+classes is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the
+German proletariat&mdash;even leaving out of account German philosophy&mdash;is
+the social capacity of Germany."</p>
+
+<p>At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German
+working classes resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist
+and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to
+influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at
+that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and
+not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact
+with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian
+philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840)
+Proudhon had played with Hegelian formul&aelig;, and Marx probably believed
+that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the
+German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity
+as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a
+stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all
+the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with classical
+German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>German edition,
+1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this
+according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the
+first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link
+in social evolution, the <i>thesis</i>; property is the antagonistic
+principle, the <i>antithesis</i>; if only we can get the third factor, the
+<i>synthesis</i>, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only
+through the cancelling of the thesis by the antithesis; one must
+therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard
+what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then
+seen the real kind of human social life."</p>
+
+<p>That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for
+what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination;
+still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have
+manipulated German philosophical formul&aelig;, and would justify the most
+sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in
+"debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with
+Proudhon.&mdash;(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition,
+Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of this activity, however, Marx and other German
+contributors to the Paris <i>Vorw&auml;rts</i> were expelled from France in
+January, 1845, at the instigation of the Prussian Government. Marx
+packed up his traps and left for Brussels, where he lived, with short
+interruptions, until the outbreak of the European Revolution in
+February, 1848. During his sojourn in Brussels his time was occupied
+mainly with economic studies, for which Engels placed his library of
+works on political economy at his disposal. Marx embodied the result
+of these studies in the criticism directed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>against Proudhon in his
+"Mis&egrave;re de la Philosophie" (Poverty of Philosophy), published in 1847.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">IV. Controversy with Proudhon.</h4>
+
+<p>Marx's "Mis&egrave;re de la Philosophie" indicates the culmination of the
+fist phase of his creative work. In this critical review he makes his
+position clear with respect not only to Proudhon but to Utopian
+Socialism in general. It marks also the turning point in the studies
+of Marx: English political economy occupied henceforth the place which
+German philosophy had held. The anti-Proudhon controversy is therefore
+worthy of a fuller treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Pierre Joseph Proudhon (b. 1809 in Besan&ccedil;on, d. 1865 in Paris) was one
+of the most gifted and most distinguished of social philosophers which
+the modern proletariat has produced. He was originally a compositor,
+like his similarly minded English contemporary, John Francis Bray, the
+author of "Labour's Wrongs," published in 1839, but he had a much
+greater inclination for study and a more fruitful literary talent. He
+managed to acquire, self-taught, a knowledge of the classical
+languages, of mathematics and of science, read assiduously but
+indiscriminately works on economics, philosophy, and history, and
+applied himself to social criticism. It is rare for a working man in
+the West of Europe to feel impelled to make an acquaintance with Kant,
+Hegel, and Feuerbach as Proudhon did through French translations and
+through intercourse with German scholars in Paris. He possessed the
+noble ambition of blending <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>French sprightliness with German
+thoroughness. But self-instruction failed to give him that
+intellectual training which is more valuable than knowledge, and which
+alone gives the power to order and to utilise the information
+acquired, as well as to submit one's own work to self-criticism. The
+value of a systematic education does not consist in the main in the
+acquisition of knowledge but in the training of our intellectual
+faculties as instruments of inquiry and apprehension, of methodical
+thinking and of sound judgment, to enable us to find our bearings more
+easily in the chaos of phenomena, experiences, and ideas. A
+self-taught man may no doubt attain to this degree of culture, but
+only if his first attempts at independent creative work are submitted
+to a strict but kindly criticism, which makes him discipline his
+thoughts. This was not the case with Proudhon; he lacked mental
+self-discipline. His first work, "What is Property?" (1840) brought
+him immediate recognition and strengthened him in his high opinion of
+his knowledge and his powers, even to the point of making him
+conceited. When, for example, the French historian, Michelet,
+disapproved of his dictum, "Property is robbery," Proudhon replied,
+"Not twice in a thousand years does one come across a pronouncement
+like that."&mdash;("Economic Contradictions," Leipzig, 1847. Vol. II., p.
+301.) And yet the idea is as old as Communism itself. Besides all
+this, the vivacity and exuberance of language for which Proudhon was
+noted easily blinded him to the shortcomings of his intellectual
+culture. Thus it often happened that he rediscovered ideas of his
+predecessors and published them to the world with na&iuml;ve pride. Through
+page after page of argument he holds the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>reader in expectation of the
+explanation, which he is about to give, of the nature of value, which
+he rightly characterises as the "corner-stone of political economy."
+At last he will disclose the secret: "It is time to make ourselves
+acquainted with this power. This power ... is <i>labour</i>." His main
+work, "The System of Economic Contradictions," swarms with
+philosophical formul&aelig; and expressions like thesis, antithesis,
+antinomies, synthesis, dialectics, induction, syllogisms, etc., as
+also with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew etymologies; it often wanders into
+irrelevant theological and philosophical digressions and side issues,
+not so much with the intention of parading the author's knowledge as
+from his lack of intellectual discipline and insufficient command of
+his material. The work in question was to combine German philosophy
+with French and English political economy, and its author believed
+that it would secure for him before everything else the admiration of
+the German Socialists, especially of Marx. He drew the latter's
+attention to it by letter, and awaited his "rigorous criticism." The
+criticism came in "Mis&egrave;re de la Philosophie" (Brussels, 1847), but it
+could no longer fulfil its purpose, as the fundamental difference
+between the two men had already widened to a gulf that could not be
+bridged. Marx had almost completed his materialistic, logical, and
+revolutionary Socialism, Proudhon had laid the foundations of his
+peaceful Anarchism with its federative economic basis. With his
+searching analysis, his systematised knowledge, and his great
+indignation at the presumptuous attacks on every Socialist school and
+leader, Marx sat in judgment upon Proudhon, exposing him as a
+dilettante in philosophy and economics, and at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>the same time
+sketching in outline his own conception of history and economics.</p>
+
+<p>Marx's verdict is damning, yet one cannot but acknowledge that
+Proudhon, in spite of his obvious insufficiency, had endeavoured,
+honestly and zealously, to extricate himself from Capitalism as well
+as from Utopianism, and to outline a scheme for an economic order, in
+which men, such as he had found them, might lead a free, industrious,
+and righteous life. The task which Proudhon had set himself was the
+same as that which engaged the attention of Marx, the criticism of
+political economy and of the sentimental Utopian Socialism. That is
+the key-note of Proudhon's system, and it is sounded in almost every
+chapter. He lacked, however, the requisite knowledge and the
+historical sense which alone could have made him equal to his task.
+The whole of his criticism consists virtually in the complaint that
+riches and poverty accumulate side by side, and that the economic
+categories&mdash;use value, exchange value, division of labour,
+competition, monopoly, machinery, property, ground rent, credit, tax,
+etc.&mdash;manifest contradictions. Proudhon's special problem was the
+following: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the
+value, let us say, of 20 milliards. But if the workers, as consumers,
+wish to buy back these goods they have to pay 25 milliards. The
+workers are thus cheated out of a fifth. That is a terrible
+contradiction."&mdash;("What is Property?" Chap. IV.; "Economic
+Contradictions," Vol. I., pp. 292-93.) This statement of the problem
+shows that Proudhon had no inkling of the essential features of the
+question of value, in spite of the fact that he cites Adam Smith,
+David Ricardo, etc., whom he must therefore have read. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>Had he really
+understood these economists and taken up his critical attitude towards
+them from the standpoint of justice, he would have stated the problem
+somewhat as follows: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods
+to the value, say, of 20 milliards. For their work, however, they
+receive as wages a quantity of goods of the value of only 10 or 12
+milliards. Is that just?" Only this way of stating the question could
+possibly have revealed to him the nature of wages, of value, of
+profit, of capital and its contradictions. Proudhon sees the
+perpetration of fraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and not in
+that of production, and he does not ask himself how, if labour
+produces goods to the value of only 20 milliards, they can be
+exchanged at a value of 25 milliards, and what is responsible for the
+increase of five milliards. The other contradictions which he brings
+forward are not indeed new, but they are ingeniously treated. For
+example: the essence of exchange-value is labour, which creates
+wealth; but the more the wealth produced, the less becomes its
+exchange-value. Or this: the division of labour is, according to
+Smith, one of the most effective means of increasing wealth, but the
+further the division of labour proceeds the lower sinks the workman,
+being reduced to the level of an unintelligent automaton engaged in
+the performance of a fractional operation. The same thing holds good
+for machinery. So, too, competition stimulates effort, but brings much
+misery in its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices, and
+strife between man and man. Further, taxation should be proportional
+to riches, in reality it is proportional to poverty. Or again, private
+ownership of land ought to increase productivity; in practice <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>it
+deprives the farmer of the land. In this way he runs to earth the
+contradictions in political economy, and so we find everywhere the
+words thesis and anti-thesis or antinomies (contradictions between two
+well-established propositions). And out of this contradiction springs
+poverty. The solution or the synthesis is the creation of an economic
+order which shall preserve the good elements in this category and
+eliminate the bad ones, and so satisfy the demands of justice. And
+that is what Socialism cannot do. "For the economic order is based
+upon calculations of an inexorable justice and not upon those angelic
+sentiments of brotherhood, sacrifice, and love which so many
+well-meaning Socialists of the present time are endeavouring to awake
+in the people. It is useless for them to preach, after the example of
+Jesus Christ, the necessity for sacrifice, and to set an example of it
+in their own lives: selfishness is stronger than they and can only be
+restrained by rigid justice and immutable economic law. Humanitarian
+enthusiasm may cause upheavals which are conducive to the progress of
+civilisation, but such emotional crises, like the fluctuations in
+value, simply result in the establishing of law and order on a more
+rigid and more restricted basis. Nature or the Deity planted mistrust
+in our hearts, having no faith in the love of man for his fellow men;
+and though I say it to the shame of the human conscience (for our
+hypocrisy must be confronted with it sooner or later), every
+disclosure which science has made to us concerning the designs of
+providence with respect to the progress of society points to a deeply
+rooted hatred of mankind on God's part."&mdash;("System of Economic
+Contradictions or the Philosophy of Poverty," Vol. I., p. 107.) Just
+as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>severely does he denounce the institution of Trade Unionism and
+its methods of warfare, together with State politics, as indeed the
+working of class organisation and of the State generally. The only way
+to realise social justice is to create a society of producers who
+exchange their goods among one another according to their equivalents
+in labour and carry on work in adequate relationship to the production
+of wealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an order where supply
+and demand balance one another.</p>
+
+<p>Marx's answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" is indicated at once by
+the title "The Poverty of Philosophy." He deals first of all with the
+economic details of Proudhon's work, and proves with documentary
+evidence that the theses and antitheses it contains partly spring from
+a half-understood reading of English and French political economists,
+and in part have been taken direct from the English Communists. Marx
+already displays in this section an extensive knowledge of economic
+literature. Then he confronts Proudhon's philosophical and social
+theories with his own deductions and gives many positive results.
+Marx's main object was to induce the Socialists to give up their
+Utopianism and think in terms of realism, and to regard social and
+economic <i>categories</i> in their historical setting:</p>
+
+<p>"Economic <i>categories</i> are only the theoretical expressions, ideal
+conceptions of the conditions of production obtaining in society....
+Proudhon has grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth, linen,
+etc., under certain conditions of production. But what he has not
+grasped is that these social conditions themselves are just as much
+human products as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>intimately
+bound up with productive power. With the acquisition of new productive
+power men change their methods of production, and with the change in
+the methods of production, in the manner of obtaining a livelihood,
+they change their social conditions. The hand-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 conditions in
+conformity with the material means of production, shape also the
+principles, the ideas, the <i>categories</i> in conformity with their
+social conditions. Consequently these ideas, these <i>categories</i>, are
+just as little eternal as are the conditions to which they give
+expression. They are the transitory and changing products of history.
+We are living in the midst of a continuous movement of growth in
+productive power, of destruction of existing social conditions, of
+formation of ideas."&mdash;("Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart, 1885, pp.
+100-101.)</p>
+
+<p>Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marx ascribes to
+industrialism a powerful revolutionary effect, and that he
+characterises the different forms of society by their different
+methods of labour. Or, as he says later in "Capital," "not <i>what</i> is
+produced, but <i>how</i> it is produced distinguishes the various forms of
+society." What he means to say, then, is that ideas and systems are
+limited by their time, that they are conditioned by the prevailing
+means of production. To understand them one must study the times which
+have preceded them, as well as investigate the ideas and systems
+themselves, and find out whether new forms have not arisen which stand
+in contradiction or in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>"Feudalism, too, had its proletariat&mdash;the villeinage&mdash;which contains
+all the germs of the middle class. Feudal production, too, had two
+contradictory elements which are likewise characterised as the 'good'
+and 'bad' sides of feudalism without regard to the fact that it is
+always the 'bad' side which triumphs ultimately over the 'good' side.
+It is the bad side which calls into being the movement which makes
+history, in that it brings the struggle to a head. If, at the time of
+the supremacy of feudalism, the economists, in their enthusiasm for
+knightly virtues, for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,
+for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishing home
+industries in the country, for the development of industry organised
+in corporations, companies and guilds, in a word, for everything which
+forms the finer side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
+eliminating everything which could throw a shadow on this
+picture&mdash;serfdom, privileges, anarchy&mdash;where would it all have ended?
+They would have destroyed every element which called forth strife,
+they would have nipped in the bud the development of the middle class.
+They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out
+history.</p>
+
+<p>"When the middle class had come to the top, neither the good nor the
+bad side of feudalism come into question. The productive forces, which
+had been developed under feudalism through its agency, fell to its
+control. All old economic forms, the legal relations between private
+individuals, which corresponded to them, the political order, which
+was the official expression of the old society, were shattered."</p>
+
+<p>"Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who regard the hardships
+and struggles of society <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>as an absolute evil and plan the
+construction of a society comprised solely of good elements, have not
+grasped the meaning of the history of mankind. They think abstractly.
+They misjudge both the past and the present.</p>
+
+<p>"Hence to form a correct judgment of production under feudalism one
+must consider it a method of production based upon contradiction. One
+must show how wealth was produced within this contradiction, how
+productive power developed contemporaneously with the antagonism of
+classes, how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil,
+constantly increased until the material conditions for its liberation
+were fully ripe.</p>
+
+<p>"Does that not show clearly enough that the means of production, the
+conditions under which productive power is developed, are anything but
+eternal laws, that they rather correspond to a definite stage in the
+evolution of mankind and of its productive power, and that a variation
+in the productive power of mankind necessarily brings about a
+variation in its conditions of production?</p>
+
+<p>"The middle class begins with a proletariat, which in its turn is
+itself a remnant of the feudal proletariat. In the course of its
+historical development the middle class necessarily develops its
+contradictory character, which on its first appearance is more or less
+veiled, existing only in a latent form. In proportion as the middle
+class develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
+modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian
+class and the middle class, a struggle which, before being felt,
+observed, estimated, understood, acknowledged, and finally openly
+proclaimed on both sides, issues in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>meanwhile only in partial and
+transitory conflicts and acts of destruction."</p>
+
+<p>In a special chapter Marx shows the necessity and the historical
+significance of the Trade Unions, which in spite of all the
+apprehensions and warnings of Utopians and Economists the workers have
+gone on establishing and perfecting, in order to be able to withstand
+the domination of capital. That means the gathering together of the
+divided interests and activities of the workers in a vast class
+movement, standing in opposition to the middle class; which, however,
+does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the
+classes themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as class
+is brought against class:</p>
+
+<p>"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of
+production, among which the middle class moves, have not a simple,
+uniform character but one which involves conflicting elements; that the
+same conditions which produce wealth produce also poverty; that the same
+conditions which tend to the development of productive power develop
+also the power of repression; that these conditions only create
+bourgeois wealth, i.e., the wealth of the middle class, at the cost of
+the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this
+class and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."&mdash;("Poverty of
+Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)</p>
+
+<p>This antithetical character of capitalist society has for its effect
+that the political economists, who are the philosophers of the
+existing order, lose their bearings, while the Socialists, who are the
+philosophers of the proletariat, look round for means to relieve the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>distress. They condemn class struggles,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> build Utopias and plan
+schemes of salvation, whereas the only real solution, because it is
+the only one which arises from the actual conditions, must be to
+further the organisation of the oppressed class and make it conscious
+of the objects of its struggles. For out of these struggles the new
+society will arise, and that, of course, can only happen when
+productive power has reached a high stage of development. Or as Marx
+himself proceeds:</p>
+
+<p>"An oppressed class is a vital condition of any society founded upon
+class antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed class necessarily
+includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the
+oppressed class may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in
+which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing
+social institutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the
+instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the
+revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary
+elements as a class presupposes the existence in perfected form of all
+the productive forces that could in any way be developed in the bosom
+of the old society. Does this mean that after the collapse of the old
+order of society there will be a new class domination culminating in a
+new political power? The condition of the emancipation of the working
+class is the abolition of all classes, as the condition of the
+emancipation of the third estate, of the middle class, was the
+abolition of all the three estates. The working class will, in the
+course of its evolution, replace the old middle-class society by an
+association <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>excluding classes and their antagonism, and there will no
+longer be any real political power,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> because it is just this
+political power which is the official expression of class antagonism
+within the community.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a
+struggle of class against class, a struggle which, when brought to its
+highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be
+surprised that a society founded upon class antagonism should, at its
+final dissolution, issue in brutal conflict and collision of man
+against man? Let it not be said that the social movement excludes the
+political. There never was a political movement which was not at the
+same time a social movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Only in an order of things where there are no classes and no class
+antagonism will social evolution cease to be political revolution.
+Until then the last word of social science on the eve of every general
+reconstruction of society must ever be: 'Fight or die; bloody war or
+annihilation. Thus are we confronted with the inexorable
+question.'&mdash;(George Sand)."</p>
+
+<p>With this battle-cry "The Poverty of Philosophy" comes to a close. It
+is the prologue to the "Communist Manifesto," which in itself is but a
+popular version of the positive doctrines developed in the controversy
+against Proudhon.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr class="fnhr" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The Socialists of those times were the Owenites and the
+Fourierists, who condemned all class struggles, Trade Unionist
+strikes, and Labour politics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> Marx means the State.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="III" id="III"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>III.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">I. The Revolutionary Spirit of the Forties.</h4>
+
+<p>Marx was a revolutionary not only in the sense that he was the
+representative of a new conception of society and the founder of a
+theory of a new economic order, but also in the popular sense of
+advocating the use of force, in which connection he looked to the
+first years of the French Revolution as a model. He had a keen ear for
+the revolutionary rumblings in the depths of the populace. The years
+during which the elements of his new conception of society were
+accumulating in his mind and shaping themselves into a system were
+involved in a revolutionary atmosphere. In 1842 England witnessed the
+first strike on a large scale, which threatened to extend into a
+general strike and bore a political revolutionary character. In 1843
+and 1844 the idea of the impending revolution was widely spread in
+England. Insurrections broke out among the Silesian weavers in 1844.
+In 1845 and 1846 Socialism spread rapidly on all sides in Germany, and
+Socialist periodicals appeared in the industrial centres. France
+swarmed with Socialist systems, Socialist novels and newspaper
+articles. The spectre of Communism was abroad in Europe. The
+convention of the United Assembly by Frederick William IV. at the
+beginning of February, 1847, was looked upon as the harbinger of the
+German Revolution. The connection between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>these phenomena could not
+escape acute intellects. Hand in hand with the extension of industry
+and the rapid construction of railways and telegraphs came
+alternations of economic prosperity and crisis, poverty grew, and the
+workers fought with ever-increasing bitterness against the iron law of
+wages and against the scanty pay, which hardly allowed the proletariat
+to eke out a bare subsistence. The cry in England was: "More
+factories, more poverty," but at the same time: "The greater the
+political rights of the masses, the surer becomes emancipation."
+Whoever lived in England and France during these years and had
+dealings with Socialism could not help feeling that political and
+social revolutions were on the march.</p>
+
+<p>Already in his first letter to Ruge, written from Holland in March,
+1843, Marx deals with the coming revolution, and foresees, to the
+astonishment of Ruge, who refused to believe it, that the Government
+of Frederick William IV. was drifting towards a revolution. At that
+time Marx had hardly begun his studies in Socialism; and the further
+he advanced in these studies, elaborating his social dialectics and
+evolving the ideas of the class struggle, the more inevitably was he
+driven to the conclusion that the proletarian revolution, the seizure
+of political power by the proletariat, was the indispensable
+preliminary to the triumph of Communism.</p>
+
+<p>Utopian Socialism stood outside the State and attempted to set up a
+Socialist Commonwealth apart from the State and behind the back of the
+State. Utopianism, with its moral and religious motives and medi&aelig;val
+Communist traditions, was pervaded with that spirit of contempt for
+the State which was characteristic of the Catholic Church during the
+period of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognised all practical
+forms of power, even if he did not always estimate them at their true
+value, saw in the State an executive power which it was a question of
+overturning and using as an extremely powerful instrument in the
+social revolution. As a result of his excursions into politics and
+French and English Socialism, Marx gave up Hegel's overstrained idea
+of the State and accepted the view current in Western European thought
+of the time; but he interpreted the State in the sense of the doctrine
+of the class struggle as the executive council of the ruling and
+possessing classes.</p>
+
+<p>The impressions, the ideas, the experiences and the modes of thinking
+which took root in the mind of Marx during the evolution of the
+fundamental principles of his sociological and historical system
+dominated the whole of his life's work.</p>
+
+<p>Marxism is quite a natural growth of the revolutionary soil of the
+first half of the nineteenth century. Marx completes the social
+revolutionary doctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, the
+executor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeply rooted in it;
+they have nothing specifically Jewish about them. I know of no Jewish
+philosopher, sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewish
+character as had Marx.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">II. The Communist Manifesto.</h4>
+
+<p>As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented the society of German
+working men in order to instruct them by lectures and by conversation.
+He <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>was loyally seconded by Engels, who had more time and more money
+to devote to this task, and who worked for the new doctrine in Paris,
+Cologne, Elberfeld and other towns. Since 1836 the German working men
+living abroad had been organised in the League of the Just, which from
+1840 had its head-quarters in London. The individual groups were kept
+in touch with one another by means of Communist correspondence
+committees. The Paris and Brussels groups drew the attention of the
+London Committee to Marx, and in January, 1847, Joseph Moll, one of
+its members, was commissioned to go to Brussels and obtain information
+about Marx.&mdash;("Mehring's Introduction to the Reprint of the Cologne
+Communist Proceedings," published by <i>Vorw&auml;rts</i>, Berlin, 1914, pp.
+10-11.) The result was the transformation of the League of the Just
+into the League of Communists, which held its first Congress in London
+in the summer of 1847, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) being among
+those present as delegates. At the second Congress, held in London
+towards the end of November and beginning of December, 1847, Marx also
+appeared, and together with Engels was commissioned to prepare a new
+program. The new program is the Communist Manifesto. Engels had come
+from Paris, Marx from Brussels. Before leaving Paris, Engels wrote a
+letter to Marx, dated November 24, in which he speaks as follows on
+the subject of the Manifesto:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Just think over the confession of faith a little. I believe it
+will be best if we leave out the form of catechism and entitle
+the thing 'The Communist Manifesto.' And then, as more or less
+of it will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>consist in historical narrative, the present form is
+quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the manuscript which I
+have written; it is a plain narrative, but is badly put
+together, and has been done in a frightful hurry. I begin, 'What
+is Communism?' and then straight away with the proletariat&mdash;the
+history of its origin, difference from earlier workers,
+development of the antagonism of the proletariat and the middle
+class, crises, conclusions, with all kinds of secondary
+considerations thrown in, and lastly party politics of the
+Communists, as much as is good for the public to
+know."&mdash;("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. I., p. 84.)</p></div>
+
+<p>Engels' draft of the Communist Manifesto has been edited by Eduard
+Bernstein.&mdash;("Grunds&auml;tze des Kommunismus," published by <i>Vorw&auml;rts</i>,
+1914.) A comparison of this draft with the actual "Communist
+Manifesto" makes evident the full extent of Marx's intellectual
+superiority to Engels. The Communist Manifesto contains four main
+groups of ideas: (1) The history of the evolution of the middle class,
+its character, its positive and negative achievement&mdash;modern
+capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical
+conceptions and conclusions&mdash;the doctrine of the class struggle and
+the r&ocirc;le of the proletariat. (3) Practical application&mdash;revolutionary
+action by the Communists. (4) Criticism of other Socialist schools.
+The last section has long ago lost all practical interest, so that we
+need only deal with the first three sections.</p>
+
+<p>(1) The middle class developed in the bosom of feudal society, in the
+medi&aelig;val industrial towns. With the geographical discoveries of the
+sixteenth and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>seventeenth centuries its sphere of activity was
+extended; it revolutionised the methods of industry, agriculture and
+communication; it broke through the medi&aelig;val economic and political
+bonds; it overthrew feudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing
+regions, absolute monarchy, and established modern industry with its
+accelerated and concentrated production, middle-class franchise, the
+national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the
+middle class which first showed what human activity can accomplish.
+"It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian
+pyramids, Roman aqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried out
+greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades....
+Although it is scarcely a century since it came to be the dominating
+class, the middle class has created more powerful and more gigantic
+forces of production than all past generations put together." The
+subjugation of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry
+to industry and to agriculture, steamships, railways, electric
+telegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, making the rivers
+navigable, the conjuring forth of whole peoples out of the ground:
+that is the positive achievement of the middle class. Now for the
+negative: it created the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,
+anarchical economic conditions, periodical crises&mdash;poverty and famine
+in consequence of over-production and a glut of wealth, over-driving
+and reckless exploitation of the workers, whose labour is bought in
+exchange for the minimum quantity of the necessaries of life. These
+facts show that the forces of production are more extensive and more
+powerful than is demanded by the conditions under which they are
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>operative: the economic system can produce and deliver more goods than
+society can use under the existing laws concerning property, i.e., the
+distribution and the effective demand fall short of the manufacture
+and the supply. The material forces of production press upon the
+limits imposed upon them by the laws of private property. This
+happens, too, because the working class must reduce its consumption of
+goods to a minimum in consequence of the existing laws of property,
+which give to capital the right of distribution. All these conditions
+taken together, the positive as well as the negative ones, make
+possible and give rise to the struggles of the workers against the
+middle class&mdash;and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These
+struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to
+the awakening of class consciousness, and, as a result, to the
+formation of the political labour party.</p>
+
+<p>(2) The movements within middle-class society, as well as in feudal
+and ancient society, where freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
+baron and serf, guild-master and journeyman, capitalist and working
+man stood and stand in constant antagonism to one another, prove that
+the whole history of mankind since the rise of private ownership is
+the history of class struggles, and that in these class struggles,
+carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of
+society and of ownership, new economic systems arise or else end with
+the common destruction of the two classes. The antagonistic classes
+are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of ownership
+and ideals of culture. The craftsman and tradesman of the towns, the
+burgher, fought against the feudal lord and knight for individual
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>property, for freedom of industry and trade, for freedom to dispose of
+personal property and for the national State. With the triumphal
+progress of the middle class private property fell into fewer and
+fewer hands. The proletarians are without property, they have no share
+in the wealth of their country; on the other hand, the production of
+capital becomes more and more a matter of common co-operation, and
+capital becomes a joint product. The proletariat can, accordingly, no
+longer fight for individual ownership but for the socially conducted
+utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and
+of the goods produced. The middle class has therefore created in the
+proletariat a social class which must have as its object to do away
+with the middle class system of ownership and to set up the
+proletarian system of common ownership.</p>
+
+<p>(3) In this struggle of the working classes the Communists are
+therefore the pioneers of the movement. They are at once the
+philosophers and the self-sacrificing champions of the proletariat
+awakened into class consciousness. "The Communists are not a special
+party in contradistinction to the other Labour parties. They have no
+interests apart from the interests of the whole proletariat. They set
+up no special principles according to which they wish to mould the
+proletarian movement." The Communists lay stress on the common
+interests of the whole proletariat and of the collective movement.
+Their aim is the organisation of the proletariat into a class, the
+overthrow of middle-class domination, and the conquest of political
+power by the proletariat. They support everywhere "any revolutionary
+movement against the existing social and political conditions. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>In all
+these movements they emphasise the question of property, in whatever
+state of evolution it may appear, as the foundation of the movement.
+And finally the Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement
+of democratic parties<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> of all nationalities. The Communists disdain
+to conceal their views and intentions. They declare openly that their
+ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining
+order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communist
+revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains.
+They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite!"</p>
+
+<p>From the standpoint of social philosophy, the Manifesto, a document
+reflecting its time, is almost perfect. Strong emotion and
+extraordinary intellectual power are united in it. Years of study of
+one of the boldest and most fertile minds are here welded together in
+the glowing heat of one of the most active of intellectual workshops.
+But the work is not free from logical flaws. In the passages we have
+quoted the part played in history by the middle class is extolled by
+Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares
+that "the middle class is the unwitting and inert instrument of
+industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the
+second section, where the middle class is accused of indolence. "It
+has been objected that, if private property were done away with, all
+activity would cease and a general laziness set in. According to that,
+middle-class society would have been ruined by idleness long ago; for
+those of its members who work gain nothing, and those who gain do not
+work." That <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>is as much as to say that the middle class is lazy and
+does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle class has
+achieved more marvellous works than Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages,
+and that, in its reign of power of scarcely a hundred years, it has
+created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all
+past generations put together. How can a class which does not work
+produce more marvellous works than the whole ancient and medi&aelig;val
+world?</p>
+
+<p>Marx frees himself later from this inconsistency by ascribing surplus
+value solely to the operation of the variable part of capital
+(wage-labour)&mdash;a doctrine which he develops with iron logic in his
+principal work, "Capital."</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">III. The Revolution of 1848.</h4>
+
+<p>The ink had hardly dried on the Communist Manifesto when the February
+Revolution broke out. The crowing of the Gallic cock soon awoke an
+echo in the various German States, whilst in Brussels the democrats
+were attacked and ill-treated by the mob. One of the victims of this
+attack was Karl Marx, who was, moreover, banished shortly afterwards
+by the Belgian Government. This action, however, did not cause him any
+embarrassment, as he was ready in any case to proceed to Paris,
+whither the Provisional Government of the French Republic had already
+invited him in the following terms:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span><p class="right">"Paris, March 1, 1848.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="sc">Brave and Faithful Marx</span>,</p>
+
+<p>"The soil of the French Republic is a place of refuge for all
+friends of freedom. Tyranny has banished you; France, the free,
+opens to you her gates&mdash;to you and to all who fight for the holy
+cause, the fraternal cause of every people. In this sense shall
+every officer of the French Government understand his duty.
+<i>Salut et Fraternit&eacute;.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc" style="padding-right: 5%;">Ferdinand Flocon,</span><br />
+Member of the Provisional Government."</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The stay in Paris was, however, of short duration. Marx and Engels
+gathered together the members of the League of Communists and procured
+them the means for returning to Germany to take part in the German
+revolution. They themselves travelled to the Rhineland and succeeded
+in getting the establishment of the newspaper planned in Cologne into
+their hands. On the first of June, 1848, the <i>Neue Rheinische Zeitung</i>
+appeared for the first time. It goes without saying that the editor
+was Karl Marx, and among his collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath,
+Wilhelm Wolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, Lassalle sent
+contributions. It is but rarely given to a daily paper to have such an
+editorial staff. In the third volume of his "Collected Papers of Marx
+and Engels," Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles which
+appeared in this journal. They are still worth reading. Here are a few
+examples. After the fall of Vienna he wrote an article concluding with
+the following words: "With the victory of the 'Red Republic' in Paris
+the armies from the inmost recesses of every <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>land will be vomited
+forth upon the boundaries and over them, and the real strength of the
+combatants will clearly appear. Then we shall remember June and
+October, and we too shall cry, 'Woe to the vanquished!' The fruitless
+butcheries which have occurred since those June and October days ...
+will convince the peoples that there is only one means of shortening,
+simplifying, and concentrating the torturing death agonies of
+society&mdash;only one means&mdash;revolutionary terrorism."&mdash;(<i>Neue Rheinische
+Zeitung</i>, November 6, 1848.)</p>
+
+<p>Or take, for example, this passage from the last article of the paper,
+when on May 18, 1849, it succumbed to the "craft and cunning of the
+dirty West Kalmucks" (i.e., the Prussians).</p>
+
+<p>"In taking leave of our readers we remind them of the words in our
+first January number: 'Revolutionary upheaval of the French working
+class, general war&mdash;that is the index for the year 1849. And already
+in the east a revolutionary army comprised of warriors of all
+nationalities stands confronting the old Europe represented by and in
+league with the Russian army, already from Paris looms the Red
+Republic.'"</p>
+
+<p>In reading these extracts one has only to substitute Russia for France
+and Moscow for Paris and we get at one of the sources of Lenin's and
+Trotsky's revolutionary policy. The articles written by Marx in 1848
+and 1849 have supplied the Bolsheviks their tactics.</p>
+
+<p>The censorship, Press lawsuits, and the decline of the revolution
+severed the life threads of the paper after scarcely a year of its
+existence. Marx sacrificed everything he had in money and
+valuables&mdash;in all, 7,000 thalers&mdash;in order to satisfy creditors and to
+pay <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>the contributors and printers. Then he travelled to Paris, where
+he witnessed not the triumph of the Red Republic but that of the
+counter-revolution. In July, 1849, he was banished by the French
+Government to the boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; he
+preferred, however, to go over to London, where he remained to the end
+of his life.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">IV. Days of Cloud and Sunshine in London.</h4>
+
+<p>Marx lived for more than a generation in London. Half of this time was
+spent in a wearying struggle for existence, which, however, did not
+prevent him from collecting and systematising a vast amount of
+material for his life-work, "Capital," nor from taking a decisive part
+in the Labour movement as soon as the opportunity presented itself, as
+it did on the founding of the International. The first decade was
+particularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851, by Marx's wife
+to Weydemeyer, in America, gives an affecting picture of their poverty
+during these first years of exile.&mdash;("Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II.,
+pp. 18-21.)</p>
+
+<p>The attempt to continue the <i>Neue Rheinische Zeitung</i> under the title
+<i>Neue Rheinische Revue</i> had only the negative result of swallowing up
+Marx's last resources. How poor Marx then was can be judged from the
+fact that he had to send his last coat to the pawnshop in order that
+he might buy paper for his pamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial
+(towards the end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentable differences
+sprang up among the German exiles, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>who, deceived in their
+revolutionary illusions, overwhelmed one another with recriminations;
+an echo of these conflicts is heard in the pamphlet "Herr Vogt"
+(1860). Marx's only regular source of income in the years 1851-60 was
+his earnings as correspondent of the <i>New York Tribune</i>, which paid
+him at the rate of a sovereign per article, and this hardly covered
+his rent and the cost of newspapers and postage. Yet his articles were
+veritable essays, the fruit of researches which cost him a good deal
+of time. And in the midst of this penury the idea of writing a
+Socialistic criticism of political economy burnt within him. One might
+almost say that since 1845 this idea had allowed him no peace.
+Freiligrath's lines are, as it were, stamped upon him:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In the clouds his goal he planted;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In the dust had he to live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bare existence daily granted.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cramped, hemmed in on every side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pinched by poverty and urged<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By want, he, of all denied,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">By necessity was scourged.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family
+inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over &pound;800, and Engels' more
+plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about
+&pound;350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume
+of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.</p>
+
+<p>To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's
+reminiscences&mdash;("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)&mdash;of
+his intercourse with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>Marx family. In particular he depicts the
+personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and
+among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial
+companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with
+mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a
+prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never
+asserted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion
+in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and
+notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great
+hardships and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the
+side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which
+linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright
+disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every
+one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich
+Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished
+the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife.
+Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his
+wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his manuscripts to
+her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were
+born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the
+girls grew up&mdash;Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became
+the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor,
+who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.</p>
+
+<p>The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and
+seemed to promise an abundant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>harvest in his later life. But his
+health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work.
+The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847
+and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these
+years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his
+activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the
+Commune).</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">V. The International.</h4>
+
+<p>The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into
+the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and
+nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class
+movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign,
+have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and
+expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and
+especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and
+adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to
+obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part
+in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which
+in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist
+questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change
+seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The
+London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform
+movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was
+an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>an interest in the
+fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning
+liberty.</p>
+
+<p>At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour
+leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men,
+with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and
+1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an
+international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of
+September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates
+from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the
+28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering
+in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an
+invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be
+represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the
+formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees
+and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles
+and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a
+Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be
+elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and
+wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers
+since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The
+declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by
+no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to
+please English and French working men; it consists essentially of
+Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to
+English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to
+Engels&mdash;("Correspondence," Vol. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>III., p. 191)&mdash;"so to arrange matters
+that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to
+the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time
+before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of
+speech. One must go <i>fortiter in re, suaviter in modo</i> (firmly
+maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."</p>
+
+<p>The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class
+from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from
+modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt
+by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the
+working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the
+ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of
+workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist
+diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to
+the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In
+1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next
+revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and
+I) have this powerful machinery <i>in our hands</i>."&mdash;("Correspondence of
+Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)</p>
+
+<p>The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the
+followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the
+ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately
+broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of
+Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative
+economic form of social organisation, only the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>Bakunists were also
+Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to
+Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one
+point&mdash;that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement.
+Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting
+to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands.
+Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national
+prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The
+Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and
+conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late
+as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume,
+the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx,
+Pangermaniste" (Paris).</p>
+
+<p>Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne)
+lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he
+took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia
+and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living
+in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent
+theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical
+Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary
+activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he
+exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the
+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 his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following
+letter which he addressed to Marx:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span><p class="right">"123, Montbrillant, Geneva,<br />
+<span style="padding-right: 3%;">"December 22, 1868.</span></p>
+
+<p>"Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns
+me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than
+ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how
+truly right you are when you advance along the high road of
+economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set
+those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national
+or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same
+thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since
+my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne
+Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu,
+than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the
+'International,' of which you are one of the most illustrious
+founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple&mdash;and
+I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my attitude
+and my feelings toward you."&mdash;("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I.,
+p. 6.)</p></div>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, this discipleship did not hinder Bakunin from secretly
+forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of
+the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of
+school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but
+it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected.
+The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social
+revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the
+working-class movement.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span><br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">VI. The Paris Commune.</h4>
+
+<p>On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Army was defeated near
+Sedan and compelled to capitulate on the following day. Among the
+prisoners was Louis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empire fell on
+September 4, and France was proclaimed a Republic. On September 6 Marx
+wrote to Engels: "The French section of the International travelled
+from London to Paris in order to do foolish things in the name of the
+International. They want to overthrow the Provisional Government and
+set up a <i>Commune de Paris</i>."&mdash;("Correspondence," Vol. IV., p. 330).</p>
+
+<p>Although the Provisional Government of the newly-baked French Republic
+was in no wise made up of friends of the democracy, Marx and Engels
+expressed themselves <i>against</i> any revolutionary action by the Paris
+working class. In the second Address (or declaration) of the General
+Council of the International, written on September 9, and composed by
+Marx, the question is discussed as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Thus the French working class finds itself placed in extremely
+difficult circumstances. Any attempt to overthrow the new
+Government, when the enemy is already knocking at the gates of
+Paris, would be a hopeless piece of folly. The French workers
+must do their duty as citizens; but they must not let themselves
+be overcome by the national reminiscences of 1792.... They have
+not to repeat the past but to build the future. Let them quietly
+and with determination make the most of the republican freedom
+granted to them, in order to carry out thoroughly the
+organisation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>of their own class. That will give them new,
+Herculean strength for the rebirth of France and for our common
+task&mdash;the emancipation of the proletariat."&mdash;("Civil War in
+France," Second Address.)</p></div>
+
+<p>Marx then urged the French workers not to do anything foolish, not to
+set up a revolutionary Commune of Paris, but to make use of their
+republican liberties to create proletarian organisations and to save
+and discipline their forces for future tasks. Circumstances, however,
+proved much stronger than any 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 fury against the "capitulards," the Paris working men cast
+Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolution on 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&mdash;and "Vae victis!" (Woe to the vanquished!) Marx afterwards
+wrote the pamphlet on "The Civil War in France, 1871," which is one of
+the most mature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirely
+adrift from the revolutionaries&mdash;the Bolsheviks of that time&mdash;but
+defended them with unsurpassable energy. It is the swan song of Marx
+and of the first International.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">VII. The Evening of Life.</h4>
+
+<p>During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost
+uninterruptedly against various bodily <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>ailments, all of which had
+their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His
+work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend,
+"health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his
+enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of
+rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he
+likewise occupied himself with studies of the Stock Exchange, banking,
+geology, physiology, and higher mathematics. In 1875 he wrote his
+"Criticism of the Gotha Program"&mdash;("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., No.
+18)&mdash;which contains some very important data as to Marx's attitude to
+the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism
+to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself.</p>
+
+<p>He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877
+and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and
+set about arranging his manuscripts and getting the second volume of
+"Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his
+capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no
+longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places
+proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find
+recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M.
+Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and
+Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this
+recognition had 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 <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>January, 1883, gave the finishing stroke to his enfeebled
+body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an
+account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge,
+dated March 15, 1883:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Yesterday, at half-past two in the afternoon, the best time for
+visiting him, I went down to see him; everybody was in tears; it
+looked as if the end had come. I made inquiries, trying to get
+at the truth of the matter and to offer consolation. There had
+been a slight h&aelig;morrhage, but a sudden collapse had supervened.
+Our good old Lena, who had tended him better than any mother
+does her child, went up, came down. He was half asleep, she
+said; I could go up. As we went in, he lay there, sleeping,
+never to wake again. Pulse and breathing had ceased. In those
+two minutes he had gone painlessly and peacefully to sleep....
+Mankind is less by a head, and indeed by the most important head
+it had to-day. The working-class movement will pursue its
+course, but its central point, to which French, Russians,
+Americans, and Germans turned of their own accord in decisive
+moments, always to receive that clear, unambiguous counsel which
+genius and perfect mastery alone can give&mdash;is gone."</p></div>
+
+<p>On Saturday, March 17, he was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London.
+Among those who spoke at the graveside were Friedrich Engels and
+Wilhelm Liebknecht. The former gave a brief account of his
+revolutionary struggles, in which he said:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Just as Darwin discovered the law of the evolution of organic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+nature, so Marx discovered the evolutionary law of human
+history&mdash;the simple fact, hitherto hidden under ideological
+overgrowths, that above all things men must eat, drink, dress,
+and find shelter before they can give themselves to politics,
+science, art, religion, or anything else, and that therefore the
+production of the material necessaries of life and the
+corresponding stage of economic evolution of a people or a
+period provides the foundation upon which the national
+institutions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideas of
+the people in question have been built, and upon which,
+therefore, their explanation must be based, a procedure the
+reverse of that which has hitherto been adopted. Marx discovered
+also the special law of motion for the modern capitalist mode of
+production and for the middle-class society which it begets.
+With the discovery of surplus value light was at once thrown
+upon a subject, all the earlier investigations of which, whether
+by middle-class economists or by Socialist critics, had been
+gropings in the dark...."</p></div>
+
+<p>After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened from Germany to pay a
+last tribute to his friend and master:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was great in his love and in
+his hate. His hate sprang from his love. He had a great heart,
+as he had a great intellect. He has raised social democracy from
+a sect, from a school, to a party, which now already fights
+unconquered, and in the end will win the victory."</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>Engels, who outlived him by twelve years, edited the two last volumes
+of "Capital," while Karl Kautsky, the disciple and successor of Engels
+and the real disseminator of Marxian doctrines, edited the three
+volumes of Marx's historical studies on surplus value. The latter work
+is not far short of being a great history of political economy.</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr class="fnhr" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> By democratic parties were then understood working-class
+political movements, such as Chartism, etc.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="IV" id="IV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>IV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<h3>THE MARXIAN SYSTEM.</h3>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">I. The Materialist Conception of History.</h4>
+
+<p>As a guide to his studies from 1843-4 onwards, Marx used the
+conception of history, or method of investigation, which&mdash;in
+contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel&mdash;was
+named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic&mdash;as it seeks to
+conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process&mdash;it
+is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of
+investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method
+of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of
+it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the
+Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the
+purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book,
+"On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages
+to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is
+not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the
+intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly
+have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his
+fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to
+extract the essentials of his position.</p>
+
+<p>A glance over human history suffices to teach us that from age to age
+man has held to be true or false various opinions on rights, customs,
+religion, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>State, philosophy, land-holding, trade, industry, etc.,
+that he has had various economic arrangements, and forms of the State
+and of society, and that he has gone through an endless series of
+struggles and wars and migrations. How has this complicated variety of
+human thought and action come about? Marx raises that question, which,
+so far as he is concerned, does not aim in the first place at the
+discovery of the origin of thought, of rights, of religion, of
+society, of trade, etc.; these he takes to be historically given. He
+is rather concerned to find out the causes, the impulses, or the
+springs which produce the changes and revolutions of the essentials
+and forms of the mental and social phenomena, or which create the
+tendencies thereto. In a sentence: What interested Marx here was not
+the <i>origin</i>, but the development and change of things&mdash;he is
+searching for the dynamic law of history.</p>
+
+<p>Marx answered: The prime motive power of human society, which is
+responsible for the changes of human consciousness and thought, or
+which causes the various social institutions and conflicts to arise,
+does not originate, in the first place, from thought, from the Idea,
+from the world-reason or the world-spirit, but from the material
+conditions of life. The basis of human history is therefore material.
+The material conditions of life&mdash;that is, the manner in which men as
+social beings, with the aid of environing nature, and of their own
+in-dwelling physical and intellectual qualities, shape their material
+life, provide for their sustenance, and produce, distribute and
+exchange the necessary goods for the satisfaction of their needs.</p>
+
+<p>Of all categories of material conditions of existence, the most
+important is production of the necessary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>means of life. And this is
+determined by the nature of the productive forces. These are of two
+kinds: inanimate and personal. The inanimate productive forces are:
+soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools and machines. The personal
+productive forces are: the labourers, the inventors, discoverers,
+engineers, and finally, the qualities of the race&mdash;the inherited
+capacities of specific groups of men, which facilitate work.</p>
+
+<p>The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual
+and mental labourers; they are the real creators of exchange-value in
+capitalist society. The next place of importance is taken by modern
+technology, which is an eminently revolutionising force in
+society.&mdash;("Capital" (German), Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14,
+"Poverty of Philosophy" (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.))</p>
+
+<p>So much for the conception "Productive Forces," which plays an
+important part with Marx. We come now to the other equally important
+notion, "Conditions of production." By this phrase Marx understands
+the legal and State forms, ordinances and laws, as well as the
+grouping of social classes and sections: thus, the social conditions
+which regulate property and determine the reciprocal human relations
+in which production is carried on. The conditions of production are
+the work of men in society. Just as men produce various material goods
+out of the materials and forces made available to them by Nature, so
+they create out of the reactions of the productive forces upon the
+mind definite social, political, and legal institutions, as well as
+systems of religion, morals, and philosophy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>"Men make their own history, but do not so spontaneously in conditions
+chosen by them, but on the contrary, in conditions which they have
+found ready to hand transmitted and given."&mdash;(Marx, "The Eighteenth
+Brumaire," I.)</p>
+
+<p>That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs,
+men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their
+philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or
+the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and
+philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner
+that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it
+strength, and promotes its development.</p>
+
+<p>The foundation is material, and the superstructure is the psychical
+reflex and effect.</p>
+
+<p>In broad outlines this conception may be illustrated somewhat as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>Primitive human groups lived under Communism and were organised
+according to blood relationship. Their deities have the
+characteristics of their natural environment, and reflect the physical
+effects of this environment upon the primitive mental life of the
+"savage"; their religion, their morality, and their laws promote the
+communal life and the tribal discipline. Feudal society is based on
+the possession of land by the nobles and on the industrial labour of
+the corporations of the towns. The inherited religious ideas are soon
+transformed in accordance with the dominant interests of these
+historical periods (primitive Christianity became a State religion);
+all religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas antagonistic to these
+interests were fought and persecuted. The middle-class society, which
+is based on personal property, is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>endeavouring to sweep away all
+vestiges of communal and corporation rights, to set free the
+individual, to mobilise labour and property, to abolish Feudalism and
+the old Church and monasterial institutions, and to put in their place
+the individual relation between man and God, or the personal
+conscience (the Reformation), introducing individual rights as well;
+it struggles against the independent sovereignty of the feudal
+domains, and labours for a united national territory, which will
+afford greater scope to trade and commerce; it supports Absolutism, so
+long as the latter is in conflict with the feudal lords; and when,
+afterwards, Absolutism is a hindrance to the development of
+middle-class society, this also is fought and a constitutional
+monarchy or a republic demanded. And all this takes place not because
+certain human intelligences, by reason of more intense thought, or
+enlightenment, or the call of a supernatural power, are primarily at
+work, but as a consequence of the influence of the material basis, of
+the economic foundation of society, upon the mind, which translates
+and transforms these external realities into religious, juridical, and
+philosophic conceptions:</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence,
+but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their
+consciousness."&mdash;(Marx, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")</p>
+
+<p>Man, even the most heroic, is not the sovereign maker and law-giver of
+social life, but its executive; he only follows out the tendencies and
+currents set up by the material foundation of society. Nevertheless, a
+great deal depends upon the executive officials. If they possess
+comprehensive knowledge, energetic natures, and outstanding
+capacities, they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>are able, within the boundaries drawn for them, to
+accomplish great things, and to accelerate the development.</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the present the philosophers have but interpreted the world; it
+is, however, necessary to change it."&mdash;(Marx, "Theses to Feuerbach.")</p>
+
+<p>We have referred in various places to interests. We are not to
+understand by this personal, but general social or class interests.
+Marx is not of the opinion that everybody acts in accordance with his
+personal welfare. This is not Marxian doctrine, but that of the
+middle-class moral philosophers, like Helvetius (1715-1771) and Jeremy
+Bentham (1748-1832), who regarded pleasure and pain of the individual
+as the measure and motive of his actions and conduct. Marx is rather
+of the opinion that men often, in the most important events of their
+lives, act contrary to their personal interests, as in their feelings
+and thoughts they identify themselves with that which they hold to be
+the interests of the community or of their class. According to Marx,
+individual interest generally plays a slight part in history. He is
+preoccupied with the collective interest of social production. Only
+the latter does he hold to be determining in the formation of the
+intellectual superstructure.</p>
+
+<p>Up till now we have only spoken of various forms of production and
+society, and their corresponding mental systems. But we do not yet
+know why and how one form of production and society becomes obsolete
+and gives place to another, that is, how and why revolutionary changes
+are brought about. Or in other words: we have hitherto considered the
+statics of society; we will now look at its dynamics.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>The revolutionary changes in society depend on two groups of
+phenomena, which, although casually connected with each other, yet
+work differently. One of these groups of phenomena is technical, and
+consists in changes in the productive forces. The other group, which
+is the effect of the first, is of a personal nature, and consists in
+struggles between the social classes. Let us consider the first group
+of causes.</p>
+
+<p>As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of
+the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets,
+through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and
+through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the
+material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then
+the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of
+production. For the conditions of production: the former social
+classes, the former laws, State institutions, and intellectual systems
+were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in
+process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and
+intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic
+foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production
+come into conflict with each other.</p>
+
+<p>This conflict between the new realty and the old form, this conflict
+between new causes and the obsolete effects of bygone causes, begins
+gradually to influence the thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that
+they are confronted with a new external world, and that a new era has
+been opened.</p>
+
+<p>Social divisions acquire a new significance: classes and sections
+which were formerly despised gain in social and economic power;
+classes which were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>formerly honoured decline. While this
+transformation of the social foundation is proceeding, the old
+religious, legal, philosophical, and political systems cling to their
+inherited positions, and insist on remaining, although they are
+obsolete and can no longer satisfy mental needs. For human thought is
+conservative: it follows external events slowly, just as our eye
+perceives the sun at a point which the sun has in reality already
+passed, as the rays require several minutes of time in order to strike
+our optic nerves. We may recall Hegel's fine metaphor: "The Owl of
+Minerva begins its flight only when twilight gathers." However late,
+it does begin. Great thinkers gradually arise, who explain the new
+situation, and create new ideas and trains of thought which correspond
+to the new situation. The human consciousness gives birth to anxious
+doubts and questionings, and then new truths; leading to differences
+of opinion, disputes, strifes, schisms, class struggles, and
+revolutions.</p>
+
+<p>In the next chapter we will consider more closely the class struggle
+between Labour and Capital. Meanwhile, we will look at the class
+struggle generally.</p>
+
+<p>In primitive societies, where private property is yet unknown, or
+still undeveloped, there are no class distinctions, no class
+domination, and no class antagonisms. The chief, the medicine man, and
+the judge regulate or supervise the observance of the customary
+usages, religious ceremonies, and social arrangements. But as soon as
+the old order is dissolved, and private property develops, in
+consequence of trade with other peoples or through wars, there arise
+classes of those who possess and those who do not. The possessing
+class carries on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>Government, makes laws, and creates
+institutions, which chiefly serve the end of protecting the interests
+of the possessing and ruling classes. The intellectual structure of
+the class society likewise corresponds to the interests of those who
+possess and rule. So long as these interests promote the common good
+in some measure, so long as the old forms of production and the old
+conditions of production are largely in harmony with each other, a
+certain truce prevails between the classes. But should there set in
+the above-mentioned opposition between the productive forces and the
+conditions of production, the latter will cease to satisfy the
+oppressed classes, and class conflicts will arise, which will either
+result in legal compromises (reforms) or will end in the overthrow of
+the society concerned, or will lead to a new set of conditions.
+Ancient history (Hebrew, Greek, Roman) is full of these social
+struggles; all the great reform laws of these peoples were attempts to
+establish social peace, but the rich and the poor, the Patricians and
+the Plebeians, the Slaves and Freemen, continued their struggles until
+the downfall of the old world, which has bequeathed to us great
+intellectual treasures as the fruit of these struggles. In the Middle
+Ages social struggles between the feudal lords and the traders,
+between nobles and peasants, were kindled. In more recent times the
+middle classes fought Autocracy and Squirearchy, and at length the
+proletariat was pitted against the bourgeoisie&mdash;class struggles which
+led to rebellions and revolutions, and powerfully influenced the
+intellectual life.</p>
+
+<p>From these historical antagonisms and struggles arose the intellectual
+and political antagonisms, personified by the leaders of the social
+groups and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>classes, of which world-history relates: opposing
+religious and philosophical systems: Brahma and Buddha, Baal and
+Jahveh, National God and Universal God, Heathendom and Christendom,
+Catholicism and Protestantism, Materialism and Idealism, Realism and
+Nominalism. However abstract or metaphysical, however remote from
+actual life and material production they may appear to be,
+nevertheless, in the last resort they are to be traced back through
+many intermediate stages to changes in the economic foundation of the
+society in question, to the contradiction between this foundation and
+the conditions of production, as well as to the great struggles
+between conflicting interests which spring therefrom. The ethical,
+political, and politico-economic systems which strive with each other
+for mastery, as well as national and world wars, are separated from
+the real basis of society by a progressively smaller number of
+intermediate stages: the questions of idealist or utilitarian ethics,
+monarchy or republic, oligarchy or democracy, protection or free
+trade, State regulation or free scope for the economic forces,
+Socialism or private enterprise, etc., however lofty and humanitarian
+may be the arguments and ideal motives which their champions may
+adduce, are connected with the material foundation and the conditions
+of production which have come into conflict with it.</p>
+
+<p>Marx and Engels have set forth this conception in the Communist
+Manifesto, in popular form, as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
+views, and conceptions, in one <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>word, man's consciousness,
+changes with every change in the conditions of his material
+existence, in his social relations and in his social life?</p>
+
+<p>"What else does the history of ideas prove than that
+intellectual production changes in character in proportion as
+material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age
+have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.</p>
+
+<p>"When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do
+but express the fact that within the old society the elements of
+a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old
+ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions
+of existence.</p>
+
+<p>"When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient
+religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
+succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal
+society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary
+bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
+conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
+competition within the domain of knowledge."</p></div>
+
+<p>Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social
+divisions into classes, and the laws of property become fetters to the
+productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves
+into class struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense
+superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
+considering such transformations the distinction should always
+be made <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>between the material transformation of the economic
+conditions of production which can be determined with the
+precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
+religious, &aelig;sthetic, or philosophic&mdash;in short, ideological forms
+in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
+Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
+thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period
+of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
+this consciousness must rather be explained from the
+contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
+between the social forces of production and the conditions of
+production."&mdash;(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")</p></div>
+
+<p>The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had
+become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and
+strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production
+which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to
+disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks
+into oblivion. The men who assist the progress of the new society
+accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to
+solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development.
+Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the
+theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the
+contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human
+society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and
+perfection of the productive forces.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the
+ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production,
+as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of
+society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last
+antagonistic form of the social process of production&mdash;antagonistic
+not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from
+conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same
+time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society
+create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.
+This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of
+the prehistoric stage of human society."</p>
+
+<p>Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The
+capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is
+written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and
+exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive
+forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may
+enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of
+history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up
+wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled
+on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and
+was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had
+emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years
+to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed
+under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully
+stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the
+ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a
+fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea
+were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in
+the positions of classes and the struggles which followed hard on the
+English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the
+transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable
+to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of
+the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and
+pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">II. Classes, Class Struggles, and Class-Consciousness.</h4>
+
+<p>One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding
+of historical processes is his conception of social classes and of
+class struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and
+politicians who pointed out the part played by social classes in
+politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this
+conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise
+form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought.
+He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following
+terms:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those
+of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence
+in the early undeveloped <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>period of the struggle between
+proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see,
+indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
+decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the
+proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle
+of a class without any historical initiative or any independent
+political movement."</p></div>
+
+<p>The classification of the various groups of society, or the division
+of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
+result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
+animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
+of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
+put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
+be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
+It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
+they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
+scientifically established features which determine the social
+classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
+to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
+were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
+which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
+characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
+working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
+ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
+form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
+savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
+or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
+of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
+chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
+the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
+the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
+zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
+working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
+sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
+possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
+livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
+capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
+class owns the means of production.</p>
+
+<p>Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated,
+unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The
+antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as
+the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as
+possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the
+owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as
+possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is
+indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the
+intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is
+only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction
+is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he
+does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is
+therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve,
+if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist
+imposes. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can
+oppress the owner of labour-power.</p>
+
+<p>This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the
+prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its
+incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers
+recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state,
+but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the
+subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that
+the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means
+of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers
+only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a
+Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops
+out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade
+Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from
+the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and
+strives to change the basis of society from private property to common
+property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither
+freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their
+emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class
+struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.
+The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does
+not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has
+the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents
+itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and
+benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the
+beginnings of the Socialist movement, when the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>workers saw in
+Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate
+into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian,
+when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made
+Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these
+personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to
+philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that
+reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism
+should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences
+abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the
+further development of industry, the progress of machine technique,
+the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and
+exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength,
+organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is
+the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in
+particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by
+paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society
+to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the
+reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that
+the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of
+Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in
+harmony with the course of social development.</p>
+
+<p>In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded
+upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class,
+of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>the
+capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of
+social revolution.</p>
+
+<p>The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and
+hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over
+the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and
+economic system&mdash;one of which classes fights for the existing order of
+private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system.
+Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles.
+The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of
+the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to
+maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest
+of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.</p>
+
+<p>The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour
+movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of
+Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political
+thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of
+political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great
+personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now,
+political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class
+and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations.
+These new political and historical orientations are largely the result
+of Marx's life-work.</p>
+
+<p>Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the
+class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the
+Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and
+Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle
+constitutes the lever of social revolution and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>impulse of the
+dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is
+justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the
+capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the
+transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from
+the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible,
+or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The
+Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic
+reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that
+in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy.
+This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">III. The Role of the Labour Movement and the Proletarian Dictatorship.</h4>
+
+<p>The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union
+movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed
+towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will
+function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted
+task, as its foundation&mdash;the Trade Union movement&mdash;becomes established
+and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The
+Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the
+present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the
+proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation
+process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most
+effective lever for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>the achievement of this object is the conquest of
+political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry
+out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To
+this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition
+period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat.&mdash;(Marx, Letter to the German Social
+Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)</p>
+
+<p>Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852,
+to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the
+existence of classes in modern society or their strife against
+one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the
+evolution of the class struggles, and political economists
+showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a
+new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the
+existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material
+production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is
+but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the
+creation of a society of free and equal."&mdash;("Neue Zeit," Vol.
+XXV., second part, p. 164.)</p></div>
+
+<p>With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his
+doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in
+1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship
+in the Communist Manifesto:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"The first step in the revolution by the working class is to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
+the battle of democracy.</p>
+
+<p>"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
+degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
+instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of
+the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
+the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
+means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
+conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
+therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
+but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves,
+necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
+unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of
+production."</p></div>
+
+<p>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 the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the
+following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to
+the League of Communists in 1850 he said:</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
+are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
+resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
+factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
+struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
+attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
+possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
+arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
+the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
+power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
+doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
+over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
+such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
+middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
+substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
+facilitated.</p>
+
+<p>"The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
+afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
+the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
+present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
+subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
+victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
+long as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
+hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
+remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
+rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
+direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
+after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
+present their own demands side by side with those of the
+middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
+soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
+government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
+exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
+possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
+compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
+cool and dispassionate fashion, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>and manifest open distrust of
+the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
+ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
+every successful street fight. Against the new official
+Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
+government, either in the form of local committees, communal
+councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
+democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
+its support amongst the working classes, but from the
+commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
+jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working
+class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers
+must no longer level their distrust against the defeated
+reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies,
+who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.
+The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to
+threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to
+the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The
+arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must
+be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving
+of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers.
+But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to
+organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own
+chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State
+power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are
+employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a
+special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part
+of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up
+their arms and equipment, and any attempt at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>disarmament must
+be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the
+middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent
+and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the
+most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule
+of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time
+unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power
+in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged
+to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will
+be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the
+workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers
+cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1)
+compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many
+sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise
+themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as
+possible of the productive forces, means of transport,
+factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose
+measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the
+workers must press them to the point of turning such measures
+into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if
+the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and
+factories the workers must demand that such railways and
+factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be
+simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the
+Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a
+progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a
+moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
+steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
+the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
+workers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>must demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the
+workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and
+measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either
+work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they
+cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to
+paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to
+the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set
+themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and
+indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as
+possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by
+democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes,
+self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the
+revolution in permanence.'"</p></div>
+
+<p>This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the
+Bolsheviks and Spartacists.</p>
+
+<p>The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate
+emancipation from their political victory.</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>"In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that
+higher form of life which present-day society inevitably
+opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole
+series of historical processes, in the course of which men and
+circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to
+realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new
+society, which have already developed in the womb of the
+collapsing bourgeois society."&mdash;(Marx, "Civil War in France.")</p></div>
+
+<p>The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will
+be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with
+productive work, in order to transform the members of society into
+producers. So long as the transition period lasts the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>Communist
+maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his
+needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every
+respect&mdash;economic, social, and intellectual&mdash;still tainted with the
+marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic
+structure of society, and the cultural development which it
+determines."&mdash;(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given
+according to his deeds.</p>
+
+<p>"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives
+to society, after deductions for government, education, and other
+social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour.
+For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of
+individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual
+producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes;
+his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he
+has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social
+funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social
+provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of
+labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society
+in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers
+will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will
+consist in the application of the same measure: labour."</p>
+
+<p>Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and
+degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place
+during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic
+society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical
+labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first
+need of life, when the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>all-round development of the individual and
+the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of
+co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow
+middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist
+principle of equality be put into operation.</p>
+
+<p>Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the
+emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all
+other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not
+mistake the economic, political, and historical r&ocirc;le of the nation:
+this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the
+national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young
+enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an
+obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably
+under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered
+from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised
+mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic
+dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and
+political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through
+international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should
+act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse
+of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program
+with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and
+Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples,
+whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of
+the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes
+and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the
+bourgeoisie.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span><br />
+
+<h4 class="sc">IV. Outlines of the Economic Doctrines.</h4>
+
+<p class="noin">1. <i>Capital.</i></p>
+
+<p>As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a
+believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood
+by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and
+its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result
+that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society.
+Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his
+studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists,
+especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of
+England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian
+theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and
+materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and
+origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the
+standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society.
+Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first
+volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other
+two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by
+Engels after Marx's death.</p>
+
+<p>The first volume deals with the origin and tendencies of large
+industrial capital, with the immediate and simple process of commodity
+production, so far as it concerns the relations between employer and
+worker, the exploitation of the proletariat, wages and labour time,
+and the influence of modern technique on the condition of the worker.
+We see in the first volume the effect of the factory system in
+creating capital. Its chief figure is the producing, suffering,
+rebellious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>working class. In the second volume, the employer appears
+on the market, sells his commodities, and sets the wheels of
+production again in motion, so that commodities will continue to be
+produced. In the third volume, the realisation process of the
+undertakings of the capitalist class, or the movement of capital as a
+whole is exhibited: cost of production, cost price, total gains and
+their division into profit, interest and ground rent. The first volume
+presents the greatest difficulties. The tremendous efforts of the
+author to produce a masterpiece unnecessarily refined and sublimated
+and overloaded with learning the doctrines of value and surplus value
+until they attained the level of a philosophy, an example of Hegelian
+logic. He played with his subject like an intellectual athlete. That
+Marx could handle complicated economic questions in a clear, vigorous
+manner is shown by the third volume, which is written just as it came
+out of the author's head, and without the apparatus of learning
+subsequently erected, without the crutches of notes and
+polemico-philosophical excursions.</p>
+
+<p>To understand "Capital" it is necessary to bear in mind that (1) Marx
+regarded the scientifically discovered principles as the real inner
+being of things, practice he regarded as the superficial appearance of
+things, capable of being apprehended empirically; for example, Value
+is the theoretical expression, Price the empirical; Surplus Value is
+the theoretical, and Profit the empirical expression; the appearances
+apprehended by experience (Price and Profit) deviate indeed from
+theory, but without the theory they cannot be understood; (2) he
+looked at the capitalist economic system as being essentially free
+from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>external hindrances and disturbances, free from invasions both
+by the State and the proletariat: the Labour struggles of factory
+protection laws of which Marx speaks in "Capital" serve rather to
+perfect the productive forces than to restrict the exploiting
+proclivities of sovereign capital.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">2. <i>Value.</i></p>
+
+<p>The life and motion of capitalistic society appears as an infinite net
+of exchange operations, formed out of numerous entwined meshes.</p>
+
+<p>Through the medium of money, men continually exchange the most varied
+commodities and services. A ceaseless buying and selling, an
+uninterrupted series of exchanges of things, and labour power&mdash;this
+constitutes the essential part of human relations in capitalistic
+society. An economic map of these relations, graphically displayed,
+would not be less confusing than an astronomical map which exhibited
+the manifold and intersected orbits of the heavenly bodies. And yet
+there must be some rule or law which operates in this seeming medley
+of movements; for men do not work or exchange their goods by hazard,
+like savages who give their entire lumps of gold or rough diamonds for
+a necklace of glass pearls. The English and French economists in the
+seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, amongst whom Petty
+(1623-87), Quesnay (1694-1759), Adam Smith (1723-96), and Ricardo
+(1772-1823) were the most original, sought for the laws which
+regulated exchange operations, and their theories were designated by
+Marx as classical bourgeois economy. Following up their
+investigations, Marx declared: Every commodity, that is, every thing
+or good produced under <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>Capitalism and brought to the market possesses
+a use value and an exchange value.</p>
+
+<p>The use value is the utility of the commodity to satisfy a physical or
+mental need of its user: a commodity without use value is not
+exchangeable or saleable. As use values, commodities are materially
+different from each other; nobody will exchange a ton of wheat for a
+ton of wheat of the same kind, but he will for clothes.</p>
+
+<p>In what measure will commodities exchange with one another? The
+measure is the exchange value, and this consists in the trouble and
+quantity of labour which the production of a commodity costs. Equal
+quantities of labour are exchanged with each other on the market. As
+exchange values, as the embodiment of human labour, commodities are
+essentially equal to each other, only quantitatively are they
+different, as different categories of commodities embody different
+quantities of labour. It is obvious that the quantities of labour will
+not be calculated according to the working methods of the individual
+producers, but according to the prevailing social working methods.</p>
+
+<p>If, for example, hand-weaver A requires twenty hours for the
+production of a piece of cloth, which in a modern factory will be
+produced in five hours, the cloth of the hand-weaver does not
+therefore possess four-fold exchange value. If hand-weaver A demands
+of consumer B an equivalent of twenty working hours, B answers that a
+similar piece of cloth can be produced in five hours, and therefore it
+only represents an exchange value of five working hours. Thus,
+according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity consists in the
+quantity of socially necessary labour power which its reproduction
+would require.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>This quantity of labour is no constant factor. New inventions,
+improvements in labour processes, increase in the productivity of
+labour, etc., cause a diminution in the quantity of labour necessary
+for the reproduction of a commodity; its exchange value, or expressed
+in terms of money, its price, will therefore sink, provided that other
+things (demand, medium of exchange) remain equal.</p>
+
+<p>Consequently, labour is the source of exchange value, and the latter
+is the principle which regulates exchange operations. Exchange value
+even measures the extent of the commodity wealth of society. Wealth
+may increase in volume, but decrease in value, in so far as a less
+quantity of socially necessary labour becomes necessary for its
+reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>The more progressive a country is industrially and the higher the
+level of its civilisation, the greater is its wealth, and the smaller
+is the quantity of labour which must be expended on the creation of
+wealth. In the practical Labour politics of our times, this is
+expressed in higher wages and shorter working hours.</p>
+
+<p>It was said above that use value is a basic condition for the exchange
+of the individual commodity. This does not exhaust the r&ocirc;le of use
+value. The quantity of use value of which society has need determines
+the quantity of the exchange values to be created. If more commodities
+are required than society requires, the superfluous commodities have
+no exchange value, in spite of the labour that is expended on
+them.&mdash;("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 1, pp. 175-176.)</p>
+
+<p>The complete realisation of exchange values or the social labour that
+is performed depends, as is seen, on the adaptation of supply to
+demand, and is a matter of organisation, of social direction.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>We have noticed that the Marxian theory of value is related to that of
+the classical economists, but they are by no means the same thing.
+Apart from some improvements and definitions which Marx made, they are
+distinguished by the following conceptions: In the classical theory of
+value, the capitalist who directs production and provides with his
+capital the tools and raw materials of labour, markets the finished
+commodity, and keeps going the processes of reproduction, appears as
+the only creator of value: the wage worker is only one of his means of
+production. In the Marxian theory of value, on the other hand, the
+wage worker who transforms the raw materials into commodities, or
+removes the raw materials to the place of production, appears as the
+sole creator of value. Value is only created by the worker in
+production, and in distribution connected therewith.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">3. <i>Wages and Labour.</i></p>
+
+<p>The worker appears to receive wages for his work. In reality he
+receives wages as the equivalent for the labour power expended by him,
+quite in accordance with the law of value, inasmuch as he receives by
+way of exchange as much means of sustenance as is usual and customary
+to replace the labour power he has expended, just as the working horse
+receives as much oats and hay as are necessary to maintain it capable
+of work.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist and the worker exchange certain quantities of
+commodities in proportions determined by economic laws (means of
+subsistence against a quantity of the commodity, labour power, of
+equal value, commodity for commodity, exchange value for exchange
+value).</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>As, therefore, the wages of labour signify a certain quantity of the
+means of subsistence, so they increase even if their money form
+remains unaltered with a fall in the price of the means of life, for
+the worker is then in the position, with his unaltered wage, to buy a
+greater quantity of the means of life. In the reverse case, if the
+prices of the means of life rise, the wages of labour fall, even if
+their money form remains the same as previously. This law of wages,
+formulated by Ricardo, was accepted by Marx, but he did not content
+himself with this acceptance. Ricardo regarded the capitalist world as
+the only possible and reasonable one, at least at the time when he
+wrote his "Principles," while Marx from the year 1843 adopted a
+critical attitude towards it, and sought to negate it. Consequently,
+he investigated further, and expressed himself somewhat as follows:</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist theoricians believed that the wages question was
+disposed of when it was settled by the law of value. We know, however,
+that every commodity possesses not only an exchange value, but also a
+use value, and is bought for the sake of the latter. The use value of
+the commodity labour power is distinguished in a very remarkable way
+from the use value of all other commodities.</p>
+
+<p>The use or the employment of labour power creates exchange value, and
+can create much more exchange value than itself possesses.</p>
+
+<p>The employer can make use of labour power so long that it not only
+creates its own exchange value (the value of the means of
+subsistence), but double this. To create the value of wages, the
+worker needs five or six hours daily, but he is obliged to produce for
+the capitalist during ten or twelve hours. If the worker <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>were
+independent he would only produce during one half of the working day
+in order to receive his means of subsistence. This period of producing
+Marx called "necessary labour." As he is dependent on the capitalist,
+the worker must not only perform "necessary labour" but also surplus
+labour: the worker can generally only find employment under the
+conditions that, besides the time needed for himself, he also works a
+definite number of hours for the capitalist without payment. Or, as
+Marx says: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the
+labourer alive during the 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him
+from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and
+the value which labour creates in the labour process are two entirely
+different magnitudes. And this difference in the two values was what
+the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power. The
+circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power
+costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same
+labour power can work during a whole day; that consequently the value
+which its use during one day creates is double what he pays for that
+use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
+buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."</p>
+
+<p>"No injury to the seller," which is quite correct from the standpoint
+of Ricardo, but not from that of Marx. He often calls surplus value
+"unpaid labour," and says, for example, "the capitalist appropriates
+one half of every day's labour without payment." In other words, he
+takes away something without return. This is a very distinct ethical
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it is very important that in our consideration of
+the wages question we have come up <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>against the Marxian doctrine of
+surplus value. For this doctrine is the cornerstone of the whole
+economic system of Marx.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">4. <i>Surplus Value.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have already noted that Marx followed the classical economics in
+his treatment of the theory of value, but improved the definition of
+it, and brought it to bear on wages. In doing this he laid stress on
+the conflict between Capital and Labour.</p>
+
+<p>The beginning of this dialectical process, so far as England was
+concerned, was the work of the anti-capitalistic critics, who uttered
+their protest about 1820, or three years after the appearance of
+Ricardo's work. They declared, according to Ricardo, labour is the
+source and the measure of value. And yet according to his opinion
+labour is nothing and capital everything.</p>
+
+<p>This should be reversed: labour must be all, and capital nothing. This
+literature was contemporaneous with the emergence of the English
+revolutionary Labour movement, from which Chartism arose at a later
+date. Piercy Ravenstone (1821) called capital a metaphysical (airy,
+impalpable) entity. Hodgskin (1827) called it a fetish, whereas they
+described labour as the economic reality. The expressions
+surplus-product and surplus-value were already known to this
+anti-capitalist school, with which Marx also connected himself when he
+set to work to elaborate his criticism of political economy.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> But
+this literature supplied him with much less material for the
+construction of the theory of surplus value than the formulation of
+the theory of value of the classical economy. Besides, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>while the
+English anti-capitalist critics, like Ravenstone, Gray, Hodgskin, and
+J.F. Bray merely condemned surplus value as immoral and as the source
+of all social wrongs, Marx used the theory of surplus value as the key
+to unlock the mechanism of the capitalist system and to reveal its
+workings, its tendencies, and its final destiny. This appears to be
+the real difference between the English anti-capitalist critics and
+Marx. In this matter he was obliged to perform most of the work
+himself. The question he put was no longer "What is the substance of
+wealth and how is it measured?" but "How is its growth and continual
+accretions to be explained?" Capital is that portion of wealth which
+is employed for the purpose of gain, of increase. Whence comes this
+gain, this increase? The answer is as follows:</p>
+
+<p>All capital that is embarked on a productive undertaking consists of
+two parts: one part is expended on the technical means of
+production&mdash;on buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials, the
+other on wages. The first part Marx calls Constant Capital (c), the
+other part Variable Capital (v). The first is called constant, because
+it only adds to the commodities just as much value as it loses in the
+course of the productive process; it creates no fresh value: Marx also
+calls it the passive portion. The outlay on wages is called variable
+capital because it undergoes an alteration in the process of
+production: it creates new additional value: Marx also called variable
+capital the active portion, for it creates surplus value (s).</p>
+
+<p>This composition of capital of constant and variable parts Marx calls
+its organic composition. He calls it average or normal composition
+when the capital of a business is 80 per cent. constant and 20 per
+cent. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>variable. If the constant part is higher, and the variable part
+lower, he calls it capital of a high composition.</p>
+
+<p>Capital of under 80 per cent. constant portion and over 20 per cent.
+variable portion he calls capital of a lower composition. And rightly,
+because the higher the ladder of capitalist production is, the more
+costly and extensive are the machinery and factory buildings and the
+greater is the outlay on raw materials, whereas primitive businesses
+employ less machinery, cheaper workshops, but a relatively greater
+number of workers. The relation between (c) and (v) reveals at the
+same time the stage to which production has developed.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, according to Marx, it is solely the variable capital which
+creates surplus value, or, as it is commonly expressed, profit. We
+have seen above, in the explanation of the nature of wages, why
+variable capital creates more value than it is paid for by the
+capitalist; the worker does indeed receive the exchange value of his
+labour power, but the use value of the labour power functions, we have
+assumed, twice as many hours as are necessary for its reproduction.
+This surplus labour is embodied in surplus value. While the worker
+receives, let us say, a daily wage of three shillings, for the
+reproduction of which five hours of work suffice, his labour power
+will be used for ten hours. These five hours of surplus labour appear
+in the exchange value of the commodity, so that the value of the
+commodity is composed of the transferred portion of the constant
+capital, the outlay on wages, and the added surplus value. Immediately
+before the production process only constant and variable capital
+existed, or, in brief (c) and (v); after the completion <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>of the
+production process, the commodity embodies constant and variable
+capital and also surplus value, or (c) and (v) and (s). This is the
+actual value of the commodity, (c) or, shortly expressed, c + v + s.</p>
+
+<p>The relation between wages and surplus value, or between paid and
+unpaid labour, or, shortly, s/v, Marx calls the rate of surplus value:
+it expresses the degree of the exploitation of labour.</p>
+
+<p>If wages amount to three shillings, which can be produced in five
+working hours, and if the worker works in the factory ten hours for
+these wages, so that he creates exchange value to the amount of six
+shillings, then the rate of surplus value is 100 per cent. The whole
+of the surplus value which arises in this manner in the process of
+production is called the mass of the surplus value, or shortly, m.s.,
+that is to say, the individual rate of surplus value multiplied by the
+total number of workers engaged in an undertaking, or the total amount
+of wages.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">5. <i>Profit.</i></p>
+
+<p>The mass of surplus value appears to the capitalist in the shape of
+profit. Surplus value is a Marxian scientific term which exactly
+expresses the principle of profit. Profit is a commercial expression
+which describes surplus value as it appears in practical life as a
+subject of experience, i.e., empirically.</p>
+
+<p>The distinction between the Marxian theoretical and the commercial
+empirical conception is, however, not so simple: it arises from the
+different conceptions of the influence of capital and labour in the
+economic process. Let us explain it more distinctly.</p>
+
+<p>As is known, Marx divided the capital embarked in industrial
+enterprise into two parts: into constant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>(technical means of
+production) and variable (living labour power, wages). He assumed that
+only the living labour power (wage labour) creates surplus value,
+whilst the constant capital only adds its own value to the new
+products.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist divides his capital outlay otherwise: into fixed
+(buildings and machines) and circulating (raw materials and wages)
+capital. The fixed capital is only used up slowly and only passes
+entirely into production during a series of years&mdash;let us say 15
+years: thus of a fixed capital of &pound;75,000, &pound;5,000 would each year be
+consumed in the production of commodities, and written off in the
+balance sheet. On the other hand, the circulating capital (raw
+materials and wages) are wholly consumed in every period of
+production, and must be renewed at the beginning of a new period of
+production.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose an industrial undertaking about to be started requires a
+capital expenditure of &pound;105,000: &pound;75,000 fixed capital (for buildings
+and machinery), &pound;20,000 for raw materials, &pound;10,000 for wages. For
+convenience sake, we will suppose that the period of production lasts
+a year, and that the rate of surplus value amounts to 100 per cent.,
+that is, the labour power receives a payment of &pound;10,000, and produces
+a value of &pound;20,000. At the end of the year, the capitalist reckons an
+expenditure of &pound;5,000 on account of fixed capital, and &pound;30,000 of
+circulating capital: the commodities produced cost, therefore, a net
+outlay of &pound;35,000. This is the cost price, without adding profit.
+According to Marx, cost price signifies (c) and (v), therefore without
+(s), (surplus value).</p>
+
+<p>But the capitalist knows that the manufactured commodities represent a
+greater value than the cost <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>price. According to Marx, the surplus
+value amounts to &pound;10,000 (as the variable capital of &pound;10,000 creates
+surplus value at the rate of 100 per cent.); but the capitalist adds
+to the cost price a profit which includes the gains of the enterprise
+and interest on the capital outlay. If the capitalist were alone in
+the market, his profit might suck up the whole of the surplus value of
+&pound;10,000; but he has to reckon with competition and the state of the
+market. The cost price, plus profit, is the production price as
+established by the capitalist. But according to Marx, that is, in pure
+theory, the production price is equal to the cost price, plus surplus
+value. There is thus a quantitative distinction&mdash;a difference in the
+amount of money&mdash;between the theoretical and practical production
+price, as well as a qualitative distinction between the notions of the
+capitalist and Marx respecting the source of profit. The capitalist
+believes that profit is the result of the portion of capital which he
+has put into the process of production, combined with his own
+commercial ability. On the other hand, Marx asserts that the
+capitalist can only extract a profit because the wage workers (the
+living labour power) create a surplus value in the process of
+production for which they receive no payment.</p>
+
+<p>We assumed that the surplus value amounted to 100 per cent. measured
+with variable capital, and that &pound;10,000 expended on wages produced
+&pound;20,000. The annual balance sheet, however, would show the percentage
+of profit to the total outlay. Consequently, we must spread the
+&pound;10,000 surplus value over the &pound;35,000 which have been expended. The
+surplus value of an undertaking spread over the total capital <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>(c)
+Marx calls the rate of profit, or shortly, s/c = 10000/35000 = 28.58
+per cent.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the capitalist cannot sell under cost price without
+becoming bankrupt, but he can quite easily sell under the production
+price, and mostly does so. In the example already given, his rate of
+profit amounts to over 28 per cent. According to the degree of
+competition, or by reason of other circumstances which we will examine
+in the next chapter, he can content himself with a rate of profit of
+10, 15, or 20 per cent., which will serve him partly as an income and
+partly be expended in the development of his enterprise. The 28 per
+cent. profit generally forms a circle within which he fixes his
+manufactured price. Under favourable circumstances he can add the
+whole 28 per cent, to the price; under less favourable, only 20, 15,
+or 10 per cent. Accordingly, several portions of surplus value remain
+in the commodities which are not yet realised. What happens to them?
+The remaining portions of profit or of surplus value fall to the large
+or small traders who are interposed between producer and consumer, or
+go in the form of interest to the banking institutions, in the event
+of the capitalist operating with borrowed money. As the profit is only
+realised in the process of circulation (in commerce and exchange) and
+there divided amongst the various economic classes and sections, most
+people believe that profit arises in commercial transactions. They do
+not know that the price of a commodity can only be increased in trade
+because its manufactured price was fixed below its price of production
+or its value, that is, because the commodities contain surplus value
+which is only gradually realised in the process of circulation.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>The social significance of this doctrine is far-reaching. If it is
+correct, then all the social sections which are not engaged as manual
+and brain workers in the process of production, or in the transport of
+raw material, lead a parasitical life and consume the surplus value
+which is squeezed by the capitalist class out of the proletariat and
+appropriated without payment.</p>
+
+<p>Quite otherwise are capitalist ideas. According to them, profit is the
+result both of the spirit of the enterprise and the ability of the
+capitalist, added to that portion of the capital which is put into the
+process of production: the machines and buildings and raw materials
+which are used up, and the labour power, all of which are bought at
+their proper exchange value. It is only fit and proper that the trader
+and moneylender should receive a portion of the profit so created, for
+they assist in realising the exchange value by bringing the
+commodities to the consumer, and thus rendering possible the process
+of production.</p>
+
+<p>Surplus value or profit? Labour or Capital? Behind this question lurks
+the great class struggle of the modern social order. No wonder the
+Marxian doctrine of value and surplus value was the occasion for an
+extensive controversy, in which the famous problem of the average rate
+of profit played a great part.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">6. <i>The Average Rate of Profit.</i></p>
+
+<p>According to Marx's doctrine of value and surplus value only variable
+capital creates fresh value and surplus value. An industrial
+undertaking of a lower organic composition, which thus employs much
+variable capital and little constant capital, must <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>consequently
+create a greater surplus value or more profit than an industrial
+undertaking of higher composition which may employ the same total
+capital, but composed of greater constant and smaller variable
+portions than the former. Let us take two industrial capitals of
+&pound;35,000 each. One expends &pound;15,000 on the constant elements (machinery,
+raw materials) and &pound;20,000 on the variable element (wages of labour).
+The other shows &pound;20,000 constant part and &pound;15,000 variable part. With
+an equal rate of surplus value&mdash;100 per cent.&mdash;the first capital would
+produce &pound;20,000 surplus value (profit) and the other only &pound;15,000
+profit. Experience shows, however, that equal amounts of capital&mdash;in
+spite of temporary differences in profits&mdash;tend to produce equal
+profits. From this, it would appear that it is actually the capital
+expended and not the labour employed which determines the magnitude of
+the surplus value (profit), that the concrete results of the
+capitalist process of production do not confirm the Marxian theory of
+value, that the facts directly contradict the theory. It was Marx
+himself who drew attention to this problem. After he had constructed
+his theory of surplus value in the form of a scientific law, he
+continued: "This law clearly contradicts all experience based on
+appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the
+percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant
+capital and little variable capital, does not, on account of this,
+pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets
+in motion much variable and little constant capital."</p>
+
+<p>How, then, can the equal rate of profit in the case of capitals of
+different organic composition be harmonised with the theory of surplus
+value?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>Marx concedes that equal capital sums whose organic parts are
+unequally employed give an equal rate of profit, although the volumes
+of surplus value created are different. Two capital sums of &pound;50,000
+each, one of which, for example, represents &pound;40,000 constant and
+&pound;10,000 variable capital, and with a rate of surplus value of 100 per
+cent. gives &pound;10,000 surplus value, while the other is composed of
+&pound;10,000 constant and &pound;40,000 variable capital, and with an equal rate
+of surplus value gives an amount of &pound;40,000 surplus value, will
+nevertheless yield an equal rate of profit, although theoretically
+they would be unequal if the rate of surplus value directly determined
+the rate of profit. In the first case, the rate of profit would amount
+to 20 per cent. and in the second to 80 per cent. In reality both
+undertakings yield an equal rate of profit.</p>
+
+<p>How is this explained, according to Marx? By means of competition, the
+different rates of profit are levelled to a general rate of profit,
+which is the average of all the various rates of profit. Thus the
+capitalists do not realise the surplus value as it is created in any
+particular factory, but in the form of average rate of profit as it is
+produced by the operations of the total capital of society. The
+average rate of profit may be lower or higher than the individual rate
+of profit, for the "various capitalists," as Marx explains, "so far as
+profits are concerned, are so many stockholders in a stock company in
+which the shares of profits are uniformly divided for every 100 shares
+of capital, so that profits differ in the case of the individual
+capitalists only according to the amount of capital invested by each
+of them in the social enterprise, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>according to his investment in
+social production as a whole, according to his shares."</p>
+
+<p>While thus the individual rates of profit do not proportionately
+coincide with the rates of surplus value, i.e., while the degree of
+exploitation of the worker in the individual factory, and the volume
+of surplus value thus individually created, do not directly determine
+the individual rate of profit, it is the total mass of social surplus
+value which is the source of the average rate of profit. If the mass
+of the surplus value be large, the average rate of profit will also be
+great. Marx says: "It is here just the same as with average rate of
+interest which a usurer makes who lends out various portions of his
+capital at different rates of interest. The level of his average rate
+depends entirely on how much of his capital he has lent at each of the
+different rates of interest." The higher the various individual rates
+of interest, the higher will be the average rate of interest at which
+his capital has been put out.</p>
+
+<p>The individual price of production signifies, therefore, cost price
+plus the average rate of profit, and not plus surplus value: it does
+not necessarily correspond with the total amount of the constant and
+variable portions of capital employed in an individual enterprise,
+plus the mass of the surplus value: the prices and magnitudes of value
+of commodities are not manifestly equal, as Marx has often pointed
+out. Of course, the total profits of the capitalist class coincide
+with the total surplus value extracted from the working class,
+provided, of course, that the supply of commodities corresponds with
+the social needs.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the law of surplus value, in spite of all deviations and
+refractions, holds good in the last resort. "In theory," observes
+Marx, "it is assumed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>that the laws of the capitalist mode of
+production develop freely. In reality, there is always only an
+approximation."</p>
+
+<p>And the more capitalist production develops, the greater will be the
+degree of approximation in particular cases, for the progress of
+Capitalism signifies a continuous increase of constant capital, a more
+mechanical character being given to industrial processes, and a
+reduction of variable capital to the necessary minimum, so that the
+differences in the organic composition of capitalist undertakings
+become less, thus bringing the average rate of profit and the rate of
+surplus value nearer to each other.</p>
+
+<p>This indirect and difficult method of realising profits involves the
+fact that the capitalist does not distinctly observe the exploitation
+of wage labour practised by him, but he believes that the profit is
+owing to his own commercial ability.</p>
+
+<p>This difficult section of the outlines of the economic doctrines of
+Marx can be most fitly concluded by quoting the comprehensive
+observations of Marx himself upon this subject, which he gives at the
+end of his book.&mdash;("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 2, pp. 355-6.)</p>
+
+<p>"In a capitalist society, this surplus value or this surplus product
+(leaving aside accidental fluctuations in its distribution and
+considering only the regulating law of these fluctuations) is divided
+among the capitalists as a dividend in proportion to the percentage of
+the total social capital held by each. In this shape the surplus value
+appears as the average profit, which in its turn is separated into
+profits of enterprise and interest, and which in this way may fall
+into the hands of different kinds of capitalists. Just as the active
+capitalist squeezes surplus labour, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>and with it surplus value in the
+form of profit out of the worker, so the landlord in his turn squeezes
+a portion of this surplus value from the capitalist in the shape of
+rent. Hence when speaking of profit as that portion of surplus value
+which falls to the share of capital, we mean average profit....
+Profits of capital (profits of enterprise plus interest) and ground
+rent are merely particular constituents of surplus value.... If added
+together, these parts form the sum of the social surplus value. A
+large part of profits is immediately transformed into capital." In
+this way, capital grows, or, as Marx says, accumulates.</p>
+
+<br />
+
+<p class="noin">7. <i>Surplus Value as Social Driving Force.</i></p>
+
+<p>It has been said already that capital is that portion of wealth which
+is devoted to the object of increasing wealth, of gain, the extraction
+of profit or surplus value. This object dominates the capitalist
+class; the desire for surplus value is the leading impulse and
+principle motive of their activity. Goaded by this desire and
+exclusively occupied with their special interests, this class
+unconsciously and unintentionally develops the entire capitalist
+system and leads it to ever higher and more comprehensive stages.</p>
+
+<p>Surplus value is thus the driving force of the history of modern
+capitalist society. This principle is rigidly followed out by Marx in
+his theoretical system, which aims at showing the rise and growth of
+Capitalism.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist is no scientific investigator: he is not clear himself
+whether profit is created by a portion of the capital, or is the
+result of personal productive forces, but he knows one thing&mdash;without
+living labour power, without the wage worker, his whole capital
+remains dead and does not increase; all the fixed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>capital and raw
+materials are of no use to him so long as they are not set in motion
+by living labour power and transformed into commodities. His efforts
+are, therefore, primarily directed to making proper use of the living
+labour power. Historically considered, little constant and relatively
+much variable capital was employed in the primitive stage of the large
+scale industry: there was as yet little machinery, and the chief thing
+was the living labour power. The workers were not yet factory
+proletarians in the modern sense, but artisans who had lost their
+independent existence.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist harnessed them and utilised their labour power and
+special ability. Consequently, he strives to lengthen the working day,
+in order that as many commodities and as much profit as possible may
+be produced.</p>
+
+<p>If previously the wage worker had laboured ten hours, of which five
+were devoted to the production of the value of his wages and five to
+surplus value, he is now obliged to work for twelve hours, which
+increases the period for surplus labour to seven hours. The surplus
+value which is extracted through the lengthening of the working day is
+called by Marx "absolute surplus value."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the capitalist learns by experience that if the workers are
+so organised as to co-operate with one another, the productivity of
+labour increases. From this arises the mode of labour which Marx calls
+Co-operation, or a reorganisation of the workplace, which raises the
+entire production of commodities to a higher level. The co-operation
+of the workers in the process of production soon leads to the
+discovery that, if the worker does not himself create the whole
+product, but only a part thereof, he loses less time <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>and becomes
+quicker and more skilful in his work and produces more than
+previously. This discovery leads to the "division of labour," which
+indeed reduces the worker to the position of an automaton, or a living
+machine, but considerably augments commodity wealth. Division of
+labour again demands finer tools; mechanical problems arise to be
+solved by mechanicians and engineers. This favours the progress of
+mechanics. The growing commodity wealth, and the pressure to realise
+it profitably, renders necessary more extensive markets; the need for
+extension comes up against transport difficulties; transport problems
+arise, to be solved by road and canal engineers. The increasing
+variety of the labour process and the categories of commodities which
+are produced results in new metallurgical, physical, and chemical
+problems. Natural science flourishes.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, things are not so peaceful in the places of manufacture.
+The lengthening of labour the closer strain on their nerves and
+muscles, as well as the arrangement of the work, cause the workers to
+combine and struggle for improved conditions of labour. This struggle,
+together with the progress of natural science, of technology, and the
+expansion of markets, result in the discovery of machine technology,
+of steam and electricity, the foundation of large-scale industry.</p>
+
+<p>The capitalist is impelled, on the one hand, to make himself as
+independent as possible of living labour-power; on the other hand, to
+increase the volume of his profits. The means thereto are offered him
+by the new technical discoveries. Those workers who still possessed
+some pride in handicraft, or as expropriated small peasants were not
+able to submit to factory <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>discipline, and showed themselves
+rebellious, were partly replaced by the labour of women and children,
+and partly curbed and made pliable. The labour time is repeatedly
+lengthened, and the exploitation of the labour of women and children
+assumes terrible proportions. The wage worker, who entered into the
+manufacturing premises of the employer full of the pride of his
+calling and often with his own tools, became then a small cog in a
+gigantic, relentless piece of working machinery.</p>
+
+<p>In this extensive and hitherto unprecedented social transformation the
+old forms of handicraft disappear: whole sections of society, which
+are the representatives of the disappearing forms of handicraft, sink
+into poverty, and augment the class of proletarians. The progress of
+the industrial revolution extends also to agriculture: the greed for
+surplus value (ground rent) leads to enclosure of common lands by the
+great landlords, the independent yeomanry is decimated, the small
+proprietor and small tenant are made proletarians. A transmutation of
+social classes takes place; the urban population grows rapidly, the
+country districts are depopulated: out of the revolutionary process
+the outlines of two classes become more and more distinct: Capitalist
+and Proletarian.</p>
+
+<p>Both the factory proletariat and the other social sections which adopt
+a hostile attitude towards Capitalism react against the
+health-destroying exploitation, and struggle for a normal working day.</p>
+
+<p>The working time is curtailed and bounds are set to the efforts of the
+capitalist to lengthen the working day and obtain surplus value, but
+soon the progress of machine technique compels the worker to labour
+more intensely in the shorter working time: the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>accelerated movement
+of the machine determines the pace and necessitates a sharper
+straining of the nerves. Henceforth, the worker must compress into a
+working hour as much effort as was previously expended in an hour and
+a half. The surplus value which is extracted in this way Marx calls
+"relative surplus value." The struggle of the workers to secure a
+shorter working day is a powerful incentive to the manufacturers to
+perfect their machinery, in order to increase the amount of relative
+surplus value. The intensification of work or the creation of relative
+surplus value is one of the most immediate effects and one of the most
+striking features of advanced Capitalism. The understanding of this
+new phase is a preliminary condition to the comprehension of the
+Marxian system. In this matter, Marx goes considerably beyond the
+anti-capitalist theoreticians who followed upon Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p>What happens when the capitalist observes that the extraction of
+absolute surplus value comes up against an insurmountable obstacle? He
+sets himself to fit up his enterprise with the newest and most costly
+machinery, in order to supplant living labour-power and to work more
+intensively the living labour-power which he employs.</p>
+
+<p>As, however, less living labour-power brings forth less exchange value
+and less surplus value, he is obliged to multiply production, in order
+to cover the fall in surplus value by a larger mass of commodities: if
+the single commodity brings him less profit, he produces it in such
+large quantities that the profit thereon is the same, or even greater,
+than formerly. The more complicated machinery, the greater quantities
+of raw materials consumed, and the relatively <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>smaller amount of
+labour-power signify obviously an alteration in the organic
+composition of capital: the constant portion (machinery, raw
+materials) preponderates more and more over the variable portion. If,
+previously, the composition was 50 per cent. constant and 50 per cent.
+variable, it becomes now something like 80 per cent.: 20 per cent. At
+the same time, the initial capital is also increased greatly, as
+machines and large quantities of raw and auxiliary materials demand
+such increase of capital. If, for example, the initial capital
+previously amounted to &pound;100,000, divided into &pound;50,000 constant and
+&pound;50,000 variable capital, it would now amount to &pound;500,000, comprising
+&pound;400,000 constant and &pound;100,000 variable. This organic composition
+signifies: that relatively smaller masses of labour set in motion
+large masses of technical means of production; labour is more
+productive because more intense; the sum total of commodities is
+increased; the profit on single articles is smaller, but the total
+profit is greater; the reconversion of profits into capital proceeds
+rapidly.</p>
+
+<p>The scale of production is more and more extended, and the amount of
+initial outlay becomes ever greater, because only large capitals are
+capable of creating relative surplus value in sufficient sums to
+assure a profit on the enterprise and payment of interest, and thus
+assist the accumulation of capital.</p>
+
+<p>The more extended scale of production is not possible to the less
+powerful capitalist undertakings. They partly disappear and partly
+combine in joint stock companies. The first alternative gives rise to
+the concentration of the means of production in fewer hands, and the
+second to the centralisation of the means of production. This is the
+effect of the new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>organic composition of capital on the capitalist
+class.</p>
+
+<p>The effect on the working class is not less profound. As long as the
+hand-worker still played an important part in the works premises, as
+long as the variable part was superior or equal to the constant part
+in the organic composition of capital, as was the case prior to and at
+the beginning of large-scale industry, the accumulation of capital
+meant an increased demand for wage-labour. The position was changed as
+Capitalism developed, in the manner just described. Although the mass
+of capital grows, there is a relative decrease in the demand for
+workers. For this growth of capital refers chiefly to the constant
+part (machinery and raw materials), while there is a relative
+shrinkage in the variable part; that means the worker is obliged to
+consume a much greater quantity of raw material than formerly.</p>
+
+<p>And whereas the prices of commodities fall during the phase of the
+high organic composition of capital, the period of necessary labour
+(the hours needed for the reproduction of wages) becomes shorter,
+while the period of surplus labour becomes longer. The great
+industrial development therefore signifies for the worker: intensive
+exploitation and relative over-population, a reserve army of
+labour-power, which is absorbed by industry in times of prosperous
+trade, and is speedily demobilised when the slump comes. In times of
+good business the reserve army serves to check the wage demands of the
+workers regularly employed, and in times of bad trade it serves to
+depress wages. The outcome for the workers is as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social
+productiveness of labour are brought <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>about at the cost of the
+individual labourer; all means for the development of production
+transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation
+of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a
+man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy
+every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into a hated toil;
+they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the
+labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it
+as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he
+works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more
+hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into
+working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the
+Juggernaut of Capital. But all methods for the production of surplus
+value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every
+extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of
+those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital
+accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must
+grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the
+same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
+brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side
+of the class that produces its own product in the form of
+capital."&mdash;("Capital" (German), Vol. I., pp. 660-1.)</p>
+
+<p>The result of the capitalist social order is the unfolding of the
+productive forces, the efflorescence of science, the expansion of
+material civilisation, the dividing of society into antagonistic
+classes, the conferring of economic power on the few, and the
+enslavement and degradation of the many.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span><br />
+
+<p class="noin">8. <i>Economic Contradictions. Decay of Society and its Reconstruction.</i></p>
+
+<p>As the ripening of the capitalist social order to its highest point
+proceeds, its innate contradictions develop, and announce distinctly
+the fact that Capitalism has outlived its usefulness, while new life,
+a higher form of society, is emerging from its womb. The most
+important contradictions are:</p>
+
+<p>The driving force of the capitalist is to obtain the largest measure
+of surplus value or profit. The latest stage of Capitalism is,
+however, marked by the fact of the high organic composition of
+capital, which means that living labour-power, the source of surplus
+value, has relatively decreased. The decrease of variable capital
+signifies manifestly a lower rate of profit. Capitalism in normal
+times exhibits a tendency towards a lowering of the rate of profit.
+Therefore it gives rise to a phenomenon which contradicts the aim of
+the endeavours of the capitalists. The capitalist strives to
+accumulate capital, but as variable capital and the rate of profit
+relatively decrease, a tendency towards the depreciation of capital is
+revealed. The capitalist endeavours to counteract this tendency, and
+to achieve his object by extending the scale of production, so that
+the mass of commodities will compensate him for what he loses on them
+singly. But while he furthers this object by resorting to a higher
+organic composition of capital, he squeezes out the middleman, reduces
+the numbers of workers in employment, and creates a relative
+over-population, a reserve of those who are only employed
+intermittently; there is a substantial shrinkage in the demand for
+commodities, as the impoverished masses of the people have obviously
+less purchasing power. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>The capitalist extends production, and at the
+same time contracts the market. The upshot is over-production,
+under-consumption&mdash;crisis: wasting of capital, restriction of
+production, paralysis of the productive forces. And if Marx lived
+to-day he would add: the developed economy of large-scale capitalism,
+that is, the high organic composition of industrial capital, requires
+enormous quantities of raw materials, which, in part, are only to be
+had from tropical and sub-tropical countries, and also from eastern
+Asia; the struggle for these sources of raw materials, and for access
+to them, leads to wars in which capital sums of unprecedented amount
+are destroyed. Since 1894 these wars over raw materials and trade
+routes have broken out every few years. Economic crises and
+imperialist wars; immeasurable destruction of capital and productive
+forces. This is a consequence which stands in sharp contradiction to
+the historical task of the economic order of Capitalism, and to the
+immediate aims of the individual capitalists.</p>
+
+<p>Further, the capitalist tries from the beginning to create docile and
+unresisting masses of workers, and yet unites and combines them by the
+creation of large centres of production; the factories become centres
+for the organisation of the workers, and for the welding of the
+individual wills of the proletarians into a class will; they abolish
+the scattered and antagonistic interests of single sections of the
+workers, and consolidate them into a unified class interest. Finally,
+the whole economic process, which began by resting on individualist
+principles, has assumed a common character; thousands upon thousands
+of hand and brain workers engage in production in economic
+undertakings upon a single and uniform plan, with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>the aid of
+productive implements which can only be used in common.</p>
+
+<p>The significance and tendency of these contradictions are sketched by
+Marx in the great finale, which properly belongs to the concluding
+chapter of the third volume:</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
+the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are
+turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon
+as the capitalist means of production stands on its own feet, then the
+further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land
+and other means of production into socially exploited, and therefore
+common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of
+private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be
+expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the
+capitalist employing many labourers. This expropriation is
+accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist
+production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist
+always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this
+expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop on an
+ever-extending scale the co-operative form of the labour process, the
+conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
+of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
+instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all
+means of production by their use as the means of production of
+combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the
+net of the world market, and with this, the international character of
+the capitalist regime. Along with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>constantly diminishing number
+of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of
+this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
+slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the
+revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
+disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
+capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
+on the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
+with it, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and
+socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become
+incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is
+burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
+expropriators are expropriated."&mdash;("Capital," Vol. I. English edition,
+chap. 84.)</p>
+
+<br />
+<hr class="fnhr" />
+<br />
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Compare M. Beer, "History of British Socialism," Vol, I.,
+pp. 245-270.</p></div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="CONCLUSION" id="CONCLUSION"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CONCLUSION.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>An appreciation of Marx can only be arrived at by adopting the Marxian
+method. We must judge him in the same way as any other towering figure
+in the realm of thought or of action. Marx was a child of his time,
+and his system is a logical conception of certain economic and social
+phenomena of his age, owing something to the pioneer work and thinking
+of some of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>Two important events dominated his thinking: the French Revolution and
+the English Industrial Revolution. Even apart from the statement of
+Arnold Ruge that in 1843-44 Marx had collected a vast amount of
+material for a history of the French National Convention, we know from
+the work he did between 1844 and 1852 how profound was the influence
+of the French Revolution on his intellectual life. Still deeper,
+however, were the traces left upon his mind by the studies he made on
+the economic transformation of England during the period 1700-1825.
+Both events are obvious, catastrophic expressions of class movements
+and class conflicts, in which the middle class, as the representative
+of a higher economic order, gains the victory over autocratic forms of
+feudal authority and oligarchic systems of organisation through State
+regulation, in which, however, at the same time, a new class&mdash;the
+working class&mdash;raises its head and begins to make a stand against the
+victor.</p>
+
+<p>Marx was led to interpret these events in this way and to make them
+the basis of his conception of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>history chiefly through the influence
+of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist school following
+upon Ricardo. To the end of his life he clung to the opinion that
+dialectic, as Hegel had formulated it, was indeed mystical but, when
+materialistically conceived, contains the laws of the movement of
+society. "The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands
+in no wise hinders him from presenting in a comprehensive and
+intelligible manner its general processes."&mdash;(Preface to second German
+edition of "Capital," 1873.)</p>
+
+<p>The splitting up of the concept into contradictories, and the
+attainment of a higher positive through the negation of these
+contradictories, that was what, to Marx's mind, constituted the
+essence and the deepest meaning of the French Revolution and of the
+English Industrial Revolution. Society, the positive, split up into
+feudal and bourgeois, into two sharply divided contradictories, the
+bourgeoisie appearing as the negation, to be supplanted by the
+proletariat and so to make room for a Communist society, the higher
+synthesis.</p>
+
+<p>What he got from Hegel in a mystical form found an economic expression
+in Ricardo and the anti-capitalist school. Ricardo's writings, which
+belong to the second decade of the nineteenth century and which
+formulate, in the guise of a system of economics, the antagonisms and
+the conflicts between industry and landed nobility, presented
+themselves as a practical demonstration of the validity of dialectic.
+The fundamental idea of Ricardo's system may be expressed as follows:</p>
+
+<p>Capital is the motive force of society and the creator of
+civilisation, but the fruits of its activity are enjoyed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>not by
+capital but by the landed nobility. That is the thesis; now for the
+proof. The value of all commodities which can be made in any quantity
+desired consists in the quantity of labour which is expended for the
+purpose of producing them. The value is expressed in the costs of
+production, the most important components of which are wages and
+profit. Wages and profit stand in opposition to one another: if wages
+rise, profit falls, and conversely. Wages consist in a definite
+quantity of the necessaries of life, sufficient to keep the worker
+effective. Wages must obviously rise whenever the cost of living
+rises. The facts show that this is actually the case. The following
+reasons make this clear. In consequence of the civilising effects of
+capital, there is an increase in the opportunities for work and in
+population, resulting in an increased demand for the necessaries of
+life. Agriculture must be extended, but agricultural land is limited
+and of varying quality. The extension of agriculture brings into use
+the inferior kinds of land, which demand a greater amount of labour
+for their cultivation. And as the amount of labour determines the
+value of the commodity, the cost of living increases, and there is a
+rapid rise in ground rents. The workers demand higher wages, whereby
+the profits of the employers are diminished. But there is still
+another circumstance to be taken into consideration. Whereas the
+prices of agricultural products rise, those of industrial products
+fall, since, in consequence of the invention of machinery and of the
+superior division of labour, smaller quantities of labour are required
+to produce manufactured goods. The result of the entire working of
+capital for the civilised community is accordingly the reduction of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>profits, the depreciation of capital, and the increase of wages. This
+latter, however, is of no advantage to the workers, for food prices
+rise higher and higher; on the contrary, the whole advantage falls to
+the landed nobility, who do nothing for the furtherance of
+civilisation, but who, through ground rents and protective tariffs,
+receive everything.</p>
+
+<p>We have, then, in Ricardo a system of economic contradictions between
+profit, wages, and rent, or between bourgeoisie, proletariat, and
+nobility, in which the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat
+is still undeveloped.</p>
+
+<p>The year of the publication of Ricardo's "Principles" (1817) is the
+year which witnessed the rise of English Socialism. In that year,
+Robert Owen, in a public meeting in the City of London, declared
+himself a Socialist. Three years later appeared the first criticisms
+of Ricardo's political economy. In these it was argued that, according
+to Ricardo, labour is the source of value, yet he considers capital as
+the creative factor of society and the working class as a mere
+appendage of capital. It must be the reverse; for the workers create
+values together with the surplus products which are appropriated by
+capital. In 1817, Robert Owen openly declares himself a Socialist;
+four years later appears the anonymous letter to Lord John Russell;
+Percy Ravenstone publishes his "Criticism of Capitalism," John Gray
+his Lecture, and Hodgskin his pamphlet on the unproductive nature of
+capital, in which he establishes the existence of a raging class
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p>The deep impression which these writings made on Marx is clearly seen
+in the second and third volumes of his "Theories on Surplus Value."
+And he links <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>on to them. He completed what Ricardo hinted at and what
+the anti-capitalist school deduced from Ricardo. How Marx continued
+and elaborated these deductions we haw already seen in Chapter 3,
+"Outlines of Marx's Economics," and Chapter 7, "Surplus Value as the
+Motive Force of Society," where capital is shown to be the mass of
+surplus value of which the workers have been deprived.</p>
+
+<p>The deductions made by the English anti-capitalist school from Ricardo
+signified, politically, the first awakenings of the English workers to
+class-consciousness, to the struggle against capital. Just as
+Ricardo's theory of value and rent was the battle-cry of capital
+against the aristocracy&mdash;a battle-cry which created the free trade
+movement and shattered the economic power of the landed nobility, so
+the theory of value and surplus value was to become the battle-cry of
+the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the declaration of
+independence, so to speak, of the working class. The English
+proletariat lacked a philosopher who could work out the idea to its
+logical conclusion, until Marx applied himself to the problem and
+solved it, so far indeed as philosophical problems can be solved, by a
+science which places itself at the disposal of a class movement.</p>
+
+<p>For it is impossible to set aside the view that Marx's theory of value
+and surplus value has rather the significance of a political and
+social slogan than of an economic truth. It is for Marx the basis of
+the class struggle of the workers against the middle class, just as
+Ricardo's theory of rent was the basis of the class struggle of the
+bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, or as the doctrines of the social
+contract and of the natural rights of man formed the basis <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>of the
+struggle of the middle classes against autocracy and divine right.
+Such militant philosophies need not in themselves be true, only they
+must accord with the sentiments of the struggling mass. It is with
+such philosophical fictions that human history works. Marx's theory of
+value explains neither the vast and unparalleled accumulation of
+wealth nor the movement of prices during the last sixty years. Wealth,
+measured in values, has, in the last few decades, increased by many
+times the increase in living labour-power. In this connection the old
+formula can be reversed: wealth increases in geometrical, living
+labour-power in arithmetical progression. The greatest difficulty in
+Marx is that the inventors and discoverers, the chemists and
+physicists, the pioneers and organisers of industry and agriculture,
+are not regarded by him as creators of surplus values. Thinkers, who
+by chemical researches and discoveries double the productive capacity
+of the soil and conjure forth values in millions from the waste
+products of industry: physicists who place new sources of power and
+new means of production at the disposal of mankind and multiply the
+productivity of labour; organisers who co-ordinate the forces of
+production and introduce new methods of working&mdash;all this creative and
+directive work, demanding, as it often does, an infinite amount of
+intensive intellectual effort, is not considered to increase the total
+sum of exchange values of the nation.</p>
+
+<p>However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's
+theory is, generally speaking, correct; distribution is carried out
+under the capitalist economic system not according to the amount of
+productive work done, but in proportion to the outlay <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>of capital and
+the skill in commercial man&oelig;uvring which obtains in the sphere of
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>Unique as an investigator of the laws of the proletarian movement,
+eminent and even a great pioneer as a sociologist, Marx is, in respect
+of economic theory, predominantly an agitator. His system, more than
+any other system of Socialism or of political economy, is the
+revolutionary expression of proletarian thought and feeling. His
+doctrines of value, surplus value, the economic determination of
+history, the evolution from Capitalism to Socialism, the political and
+economic class struggle, will for long have the force of truth for the
+masses and will continue to move them.</p>
+
+<p>Marx's heart must have been filled with joy and gladness when, out of
+the elements of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist
+school, out of his studies of the French Revolution, of the English
+Industrial Revolution, and of French and English Socialism there arose
+a unified system whose destiny it was to lead mankind out of the
+earth-bound history of the past into the new world wherein a spiritual
+civilisation should fully blossom forth. Man is to quit the realm of
+necessity and to enter into that of freedom, where he shall cease to
+be a tool for the profit of others and shall rise to have a purpose of
+his own, freely associating himself with his fellow men to work in the
+service of all.</p>
+
+<p>"The realm of freedom, indeed, only begins there where work
+conditioned by necessity and external utility ceases. According to the
+nature of the thing, therefore, it lies beyond the sphere of actual
+material production. Just as the savage must struggle with nature for
+the satisfaction of his needs, for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>self-preservation and
+self-reproduction, so too must the civilised man, whatever be the form
+of society or the methods of production obtaining. Side by side with
+his own evolution develops this constitutional necessity, because his
+needs increase; but, at the same time, the forces of production which
+satisfy these needs likewise increase. Freedom in this sphere can only
+consist in this&mdash;that men in their social relationship, the associated
+producers, should regulate this material exchange with Nature in a
+rational manner and bring it under their united control, instead of
+being governed by it as by some blind power; it should be carried on
+with the minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most
+adapted to and most worthy of human nature. Yet it remains all the
+same a realm of necessity. It is beyond this where that development of
+human power, which may be called independent purpose, begins, the true
+realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon the basis of
+that realm of necessity."&mdash;("Capital," Vol. III., 2, p. 355.)</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>The National Labour Press, Ltd., Manchester and London. 31258</h4>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page 37: &nbsp;FN4: Fouvierists replaced with Fourierists<br />
+Page 42: &nbsp;Wilhelm Wolf replaced with Wilhelm Wolff<br />
+Page 60: &nbsp;"That will give give them new" replaced with "That will give them new"<br />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The life and teaching of Karl Marx
+
+Author: M. Beer
+
+Release Date: September 2, 2011 [EBook #37290]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF KARL MARX ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Adrian Mastronardi and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has     |
+    | been preserved.                                           |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+  _SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES_
+
+  (_VOLUME TWO_).
+
+  THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF
+        KARL MARX
+
+
+
+
+FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1921
+
+
+[_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+
+  LIFE AND TEACHING
+
+  OF
+
+  KARL MARX
+
+
+  BY
+  M. BEER
+  _Author of "A History of British Socialism"_
+
+
+  TRANSLATED BY T.C. PARTINGTON
+  AND H.J. STENNING, AND REVISED
+  BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+  NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,
+  LONDON: 8/9, JOHNSON'S COURT, E.C. 4
+  MANCHESTER: 30, BLACKFRIARS STREET
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                    PAGE
+
+      INTRODUCTION:
+
+         I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX                          ix.
+
+        II. THE WORK OF HEGEL                               xiii.
+
+
+    I. PARENTS AND FRIENDS:
+
+         I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP                               1
+
+        II. STUDENT                                             3
+
+       III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE                          11
+
+
+   II. THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM:
+
+         I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS                       15
+
+        II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS                   19
+
+       III. CONTROVERSY WITH BAUER AND RUGE                    21
+
+        IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON                          26
+
+
+  III. YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES:
+
+         I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES            39
+
+        II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO                            41
+
+       III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848                             48
+
+        IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNSHINE IN LONDON               51
+
+         V. THE INTERNATIONAL                                  54
+
+        VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE                                  59
+
+       VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE                                60
+
+
+   IV. THE MARXIAN SYSTEM:
+
+         I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY              65
+
+        II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS   78
+
+       III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE
+            PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP                           84
+
+        IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES                 93
+
+
+    V. CONCLUSION                                             125
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARX.
+
+Karl Marx belongs to the ranks of those philosophical and sociological
+thinkers who throw potent thought-ferment into the world, and set in
+motion the masses of mankind. They awaken slumbering doubts and
+contradictions. They proclaim new modes of thought, new social forms.
+Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete, and the ruthless
+march of time may finally overthrow their intellectual edifice;
+meanwhile, however, they stimulate into activity the minds of
+countless men, inflame countless human hearts, imprinting on them
+characteristics which are transmitted to coming generations. This is
+the grandest and finest work to which any human being can be called.
+Because these thinkers have lived and worked, their contemporaries and
+successors think more clearly, feel more intensely, and are richer in
+knowledge and self-consciousness.
+
+The history of philosophy and of social science is comprised in such
+systems and generalisations. They are the index to the annals of
+mankind. None of these systems is complete, none comprehends all human
+motives and capacities, none exhausts all the forces and currents of
+human society. They all express only fragmentary truths, which,
+however, become effective and achieve success because they are shining
+lights amidst the intellectual confusion of the generation which gives
+them birth, bringing it to a consciousness of the questions of the
+time, rendering its further development less difficult, and enabling
+its strongest spirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in
+critical periods.
+
+Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where he remarks: "When the
+refutation of a philosophy is spoken of, this is usually meant in an
+abstract negative (completely destructive) sense, so that the confuted
+philosophy has no longer any validity whatever, and is set aside and
+done with. If this be so, the study of the history of philosophy must
+be regarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeing that this
+study teaches that every system of philosophy which has arisen in the
+course of time has found its refutation. But if it is as good as
+granted that every philosophy has been refuted, yet at the same time
+it must be also asserted that no philosophy has been refuted, nor ever
+can be refuted ... for every philosophical system is to be considered
+as the presentation of a particular moment or a particular stage in
+the evolutionary process of the idea. The history of philosophy ... is
+not, in its totality, a gallery of the aberrations of the human
+intellect, but is 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 in art. The displacement of one
+system by another reflects the historical sequence of the various
+stages of social evolution. The characteristic which is common 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 contemporaries cannot
+escape. Opponents may put themselves to endless trouble to contradict
+such systems, and show up their shortcomings and inconsistencies, and
+yet, with all their pains, they do not succeed in attaining their
+object; their logical sapping and mining, their passionate attacks
+break against the vital spirit which the creative genius has breathed
+into his work. The deep impression made on us by this vitality is one
+of the main factors in the formation of our judgments upon scientific
+and artistic achievements. Mere formal perfection and beauty through
+which the life of the times does not throb can never create 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: A French sculptor, who had taken up his
+abode in Rome, was fond of taking to the Capitol his artistically
+inclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, to show them the
+equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which occasions he was at
+pains to demonstrate that the horse was defectively modelled, and did
+not meet the requirements of anatomy. After one of these criticisms a
+visitor urged him to prove his case in a concrete form by constructing
+a horse on correct artistic principles. The critic set to work, and
+when, after the lapse of a year, his friends were again visiting Rome,
+exhibited to them his horse. It was anatomically perfect. Proudly he
+had it brought to the Capitol, in order to compare both productions
+and so celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in his critical
+comparison, the French sculptor after a while gave way to a burst of
+genuine artistic feeling, which caused him pathetically to exclaim,
+"_Et pourtant cette bete-la est vivante, et la mienne est morte!_"
+(And yet that animal is alive, while mine is dead.)
+
+Quite a number of Marxian critics find themselves in the same position
+as the hypercritical French sculptor. Their formal and logically
+complete economic doctrines and systems of historical philosophy,
+provided with pedantically correct details and definitions, remain
+dead and ineffective. They do not put us into contact with the
+relations of the time, whereas Marx has bequeathed both to the
+educated and the uneducated, to his readers and to non-readers, a
+multitude of ideas and expressions relating to social science, which
+have become current throughout the whole world.
+
+In Petrograd and in Tokio, in Berlin and in London, in Paris and in
+Pittsburg, people speak of capital and of the capitalist system, of
+means of production and of the class struggle; of Reform and
+Revolution; of the Proletariat and of Socialism. The extent of Marx's
+influence is shown by the economic explanation of the world-war, which
+is even accepted by the most decided opponents of the materialist
+conception of history. A generation after Marx's death, the
+sovereignty of Capital shrinks visibly, works' committees and shops'
+stewards interfere with the productive processes, Socialists and
+Labour men fill the Parliaments, working men and their representatives
+rise to or take by storm the highest position of political power in
+States and Empires. Many of their triumphs would scarcely have
+received Marx's approval. His theory, white-hot with indomitable
+passion, demanded that the new tables of the Law should be given to
+men amidst thunder and lightning. But still the essential thing is
+that the proletariat is loosening its bonds, even if it does not
+burst them noisily asunder. We find ourselves in the first stages of
+the evolution of Socialist society. Through whatever forms this
+evolutionary process may pass in its logical development, this much is
+certain, that only by active thought on the part of Socialists and by
+the loyal co-operation of the workers can it be brought to its
+perfection.
+
+We are already using Hegelian expressions, and must therefore pause
+here to note briefly Hegel's contribution to the subject. Without a
+knowledge of this, no one can be in a position to appreciate the
+important factors in the life and influence of Marx, or even to
+understand his first intellectual achievements during his student
+years.
+
+
+II. THE WORK OF HEGEL.
+
+Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, learned and
+unlearned, philosophers and philistines, had some such general notions
+as the following. The world has either been created, or it has existed
+from eternity. It is either governed by a personal, supernatural god
+or universal spirit, or it is kept going by nature, like some delicate
+machine. It exists in accordance with eternal laws, and is perfect,
+ordained to fulfil some design, and constant. The things and beings
+which are found in it are divided into kinds, species and classes. All
+is fixed, constant and eternal. Things and beings are contiguous in
+space, and succeed one another in time, as they have done ever since
+time was. It is the same with the incidents and events of the world
+and of mankind. Such common proverbs as "There is nothing new under
+the sun" and "History repeats itself" are but the popular expression
+of this view.
+
+Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or the science of the laws
+of thinking (Greek logos--reason, word). It taught how men should use
+their reason, how they should express themselves reasonably, how
+concepts arise (in what manner, for example, the human understanding
+arrived at the concepts stone, tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.);
+further, how such concepts are combined into judgments (propositions),
+and finally, how conclusions are drawn from these judgments. This
+logic exhibited the intellectual processes of the human mind. It was
+founded by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.), and
+remained essentially unaltered until the beginning of the nineteenth
+century, in the same way as our whole conception of the universe
+remained unchanged. This science of human intellectual processes was
+based on three original laws of thought, which best characterise it.
+Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisoner in the face, and
+identifies him, so that uncertainty and contradiction may be avoided,
+so this logic began by establishing the identity of the conceptions
+with which it was to operate. Consequently, it established as the
+first law of thought the Principle of Identity, which runs as follows:
+A = A, i.e., each thing, each being, is like itself; it possesses an
+individuality of its own, peculiar to itself. To put it more clearly,
+this principle affirms that the earth is the earth, a state is a
+state, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.
+
+From this proceeds the second law of thought, the Principle of
+Contradiction. A cannot be A and not--A. Or following our example
+given above, the earth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a
+State cannot be a State and an Anarchy; Capital cannot be Capital and
+Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialism and Individualism. Therefore
+there must be no contradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself
+is nonsense; where, however, this occurs either in actuality or in
+thought, it is only an accidental exception to the rule, as it were,
+or a passing and irregular phenomenon.
+
+From this law of thought follows directly the third, viz., the
+Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thing is either A or non-A; there
+is no middle term. Or, according to our example, the earth is either a
+solid body, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is no middle
+term. The State is either monarchical, or, if it is not monarchical,
+it is no State. Capitalism is either oppressive, or altogether not
+Capitalism. Socialism 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, of contradiction, and
+of the excluded middle, formal logic begins.
+
+It is at once apparent that this logic operates with rigid, constant,
+unchanging, dogmatic conceptions, something like geometry, which deals
+with definitely bounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of the
+old 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 time
+immemorial, but has developed in the course of uncounted thousands of
+years, and is still in process of development. It has traversed a
+whole series of changes, transformations, and catastrophes. The earth
+was a gaseous mass, then a ball of fire; the species and classes of
+things and beings which exist on the earth have partly arisen by
+gradual transition from one sort into another, and partly made their
+appearance as a result of sudden changes. And in human history it is
+the same as in nature; the form and significance of the family, of the
+State, of production, of religion, of law, etc., are subjected to a
+process of development. All things are in flux, in a state of
+becoming, of arising and disappearing. There is nothing rigid,
+constant, unchanging in the Cosmos.
+
+In view of the new conception, the old formal logic could no longer
+satisfy the intellect; it could not adequately deal with things in a
+state of evolution. In ever-increasing measure it became impossible
+for the thinker to work with hard and fast conceptions. From the
+beginning of the nineteenth century a new logic was sought, and it was
+G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who made a comprehensive and thoroughly
+painstaking endeavour to formulate a new logic in accordance with the
+universal process of evolution. This task appeared to him to be the
+more urgent, as his whole philosophy aimed at bringing thought and
+being, reason and the universe, into the closest connection and
+agreement, dealing with them as inseparable from each other, regarding
+them as identical, and representing the universe as the gradual
+embodiment of Reason. "What is reasonable is real; what is real is
+reasonable." The task of philosophy is to comprehend what is. Every
+individual is the child of his time. Even philosophy is its time
+grasped in thought. No individual can overleap his time. (Pref. to
+Phil, of Law.) It is evident that, in his way, Hegel was no abstract
+thinker, divorced from actuality, and speculating at large. Rather he
+set himself to give material content to the abstract and purely ideal,
+to make it concrete, in fact. The idea without reality, or reality
+without the idea, seemed to him unthinkable. Accordingly his logic
+could not deal merely with the laws of thought, but must at the same
+time take account of the laws of cosmic evolution. Merely to play with
+the forms of thought, and to fence with ideas, as the old logicians,
+especially in the Middle Ages, were wont to do, seemed to him a
+useless, abstract, unreal operation. He, therefore, created a science
+of thinking, which formulated not only the laws of thought, but also
+the laws of evolution, albeit, unfortunately, in a language which
+offered immense difficulties to his readers.
+
+The essence of his logic is the dialectic.
+
+By dialectic the old Greeks understood the art of discourse and
+rejoinder, the refutation of an opponent by the destruction of his
+assertions and proofs, the bringing into relief of the contradictions
+and antitheses. When examined closely, this art of discussion, in
+spite of its contradictory and apparently negative (destructive)
+intellectual work, is seen to be very useful, because, out of the
+clash of opposing opinions, it brings forth the truth and stimulates
+to deeper thought. Hegel seized hold of this expression, and named his
+logical method after it. This is the dialectical method, or the manner
+of conceiving the things and beings of the universe as in the process
+of becoming, through the struggle of contradictory elements and their
+resolution. With its aid, he brings to judgment the three original
+laws of thought which have already been alluded to. The principle of
+identity is an abstract, incomplete truth, for it separates a thing
+from the variety of other things, and its relations to them. Everybody
+will see this to be true. Let us take the proposition: the earth is
+the earth. Whoever hears the first three words of this proposition
+naturally expects that what is predicated of the earth should tell him
+something which distinguishes the earth from other things. Instead of
+this, he is offered an empty, hard and fast identity, the dead husk of
+an idea. If the principle of identity is at best only an incomplete
+truth, the principles of contradiction and of the excluded middle are
+complete untruths. Far from making a thought nonsense, contradiction
+is the very thing which unfolds and develops the thought, and hence,
+too, the object which it expresses. It is precisely opposition, or
+antithesis, which sets things in motion, which is the mainspring of
+evolution, which calls forth and develops the latent forces and powers
+of being. Had the earth as a fiery, gaseous mass remained in that
+state, without the contradiction, that is, the cooling and
+condensation, taking place, then no life would have appeared on it.
+Had the State remained autocratic, and the contradictory principle,
+middle-class freedom, been absent, then the life of the State would
+have become rigid, and the bloom of culture rendered impossible. Had
+Capitalism remained without its proletarian contradiction, then it
+would have reverted to an industrial feudalism. It is the
+contradiction, or the antithesis, which brings into being the whole
+kingdom of the potentialities and gifts of nature and of humanity.
+Only when the contradictory begins to reveal itself does evolution to
+a higher plane of thought and existence begin. It is obvious that we
+are not concerned here with logical contradictions, which usually
+arise from unclear thinking or from confusion in the presentation of
+facts; Hegel, and after him Marx, dealt rather with real
+contradictions, with antitheses and conflicts, as they arise of
+themselves in the process of evolution of things and conditions.
+
+The thing or the being, against which the contradiction operates, was
+called by Hegel the Positive, and the contradiction, the antagonistic
+element, or the antithesis, he called the Negation. As may be seen
+from our example, this negation is not mere annihilation, not a
+resolution into nothing, but a clearing away and a building up at the
+same time; a disappearance and a coming into existence; a movement to
+a higher stage. Hegel says in this connection: "It has been hitherto
+one of the rooted prejudices of logic and a commonly accepted belief
+that the contradiction is not so essential or so inherent a
+characteristic (in thought and existence) as the identity. Yet in
+comparison with it the identity is, in truth, but the characteristic
+of what is simply and directly perceived, of lifeless existence. The
+contradiction, however, is the source of all movement and life; only
+in so far as it contains a contradiction can anything have movement,
+power, and effect."
+
+The part played by the contradiction, the antithesis, or the negation
+very easily escapes a superficial observer. He sees, indeed, that the
+world is filled with a variety of things, and that where anything is
+there is 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--Materialism, Romanticism--Classicism, etc.,
+but superficial thought does not realise that it is faced with a world
+of contradictions and antitheses; it only knows that the world is full
+of varied and manifold things. "Only active reason," says Hegel,
+"reduced the mere multiplicity and diversity of phenomena to
+antithesis. And only when pushed to this point do the manifold
+phenomena become active and mutually stimulating, producing the state
+of negation, which is the very heart-beat of progress and life." Only
+through their differentiation and unfolding as opposing forces and
+factors is further progress beyond the antithesis to a higher positive
+stage made possible. "Where, however," continues Hegel, "the power to
+develop the contradiction and bring it to a head is lacking, the thing
+or the being is shattered on the contradiction."--(Hegel, "Science of
+Logic," Pt. 1, Sec. 2, pp. 66, 69, 70.)
+
+This thought of Hegel's is of extraordinary importance for the
+understanding of Marxism. It is the soul of the Marxian doctrine of
+the class-struggle, nay, of the whole Marxian system. One may say that
+Marx is always on the look-out for contradictions within the social
+development, for wherever the contradiction (antithesis--class
+struggle) shows itself, there begins, according to Marx-Hegel, the
+progress to a higher plane.[1]
+
+We have now become familiar with two expressions of the dialectical
+method, the positive and the negation. We have seen the first two
+stages of the process of growth in thought and in reality. The process
+is not yet complete. It still requires a third stage. This third step
+Hegel called the Negation of the Negation. With the continued
+operation of the negation, a new thing or being comes into existence.
+
+To revert to our examples: the complete cooling and condensation of
+the earth's crust: the rise of the middle-class State: the victory of
+the Proletariat: these things represent the suspension or the setting
+aside of the Negation; the contradiction is thus resolved, and a new
+stage in the process of evolution is reached. The expressions Positive
+(or affirmation), Negation, and Negation of the Negation, are also
+known as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
+
+In order to understand this more distinctly, and to visualise it, let
+us consider an egg. It is something positive, but it contains a germ,
+which, awakening to life, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the
+contents of the egg. This negation is, however, no mere destruction
+and annihilation; on the contrary, it results in the germ developing
+into a living thing. The negation being complete, the chick breaks
+through the egg shell. This represents the negation of the negation,
+whereby there has arisen something organically higher than an egg.
+
+This mode of procedure in human thinking and in the operations of
+nature and history Hegel called the dialectical method, or the
+dialectical process. It is evident that the dialectic is at the same
+time a method of investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines his
+dialectic in the following words:
+
+"The only thing which is required for scientific progress, an
+elementary principle for the understanding of which one should really
+strive, is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative
+is just as much a positive, or that the contradictory does not
+resolve into nothing, into an abstract nothingness, but actually only
+into the negation of a special content.... In so far as the resultant,
+the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new
+conception, but a higher and richer conception than the preceding one;
+for it has been enriched by the negation or antithesis of this; it
+therefore contains it and more than contains it, being indeed the
+synthetic unity of itself and its contrary. In this way the system of
+concepts has to be formed--and is to be perfected by a continual and
+purely intellectual process which is independent of outside
+influences."--(Hegel, "Science of Logic" (German), Bk. I.,
+Introduction.)
+
+The dialectical process completes itself not only by gradual
+transitions, but also by leaps. Hegel remarks:
+
+"It has been said that there are no sudden leaps in nature, and it is
+a common notion that things have their origin through gradual increase
+or decrease. But there is also such a thing as sudden transformation
+from quantity into quality. For example, water does not become
+gradually hard on cooling, becoming first pulpy and ultimately
+attaining the rigidity of ice, but turns hard at once. If the
+temperature be lowered to a certain degree, the water is suddenly
+changed into ice, i.e., the quantity--the number of degrees of
+temperature--is transformed into quality--a change in the nature of
+the thing."--("Logic" (German), Pt. 1, Sec. 1, p. 464, Ed. 1841.)
+
+Marx handled this method with unsurpassed mastery; with its aid he
+formulated the laws of the evolution of Socialism. In his earliest
+works, "The Holy Family" (1844) and the "Poverty of Philosophy"
+(1847), written when he was formulating his materialist conception of
+history, as also in his "Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel
+that he investigates these laws.
+
+"Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would have said Capital) are
+antitheses. As such they constitute a whole; both are manifestations
+of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the
+specific position which both occupy in the antithesis. To describe
+them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private
+property as private property, as riches, is compelled to preserve its
+own existence, and along with it that of its antithesis, the
+Proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side
+of the antithesis. The Proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as
+Proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property,
+its conditioned antithesis, which makes it the Proletariat. It is a
+negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of unrest, the
+disintegrated and disintegrating Proletariat.... Within the
+antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is the
+conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From the
+former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the
+latter the action of destroying 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 is independent 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, poverty conscious of
+its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralised humanity
+conscious of its own demoralisation and consequently striving against
+it.
+
+"The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the
+creation of the Proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils
+the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien
+riches and its own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs, it does
+not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only
+by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the
+Proletariat and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done
+away with."[2]
+
+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 as the labour process operates merely between man and nature,
+its simple elements are common to every form of its social
+development. But any given historical form of this process further
+develops its material foundations and its social forms. When it has
+attained a certain degree of maturity the given historical form is
+cast off and makes room for a higher one. That the moment of such a
+crisis has arrived is shown as soon as there is a deepening and
+widening of the contradiction and antithesis between the conditions of
+distribution, and consequently also the existing historical form of
+the conditions of production corresponding to them, on the one hand,
+and the forces of production, productive capacity, and the state of
+evolution of its agents, on the other. There then arises a conflict
+between the material development of production and its corresponding
+social form."
+
+But the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in the famous
+twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the first volume of "Capital"
+(German), where the evolution of capitalism from small middle-class
+ownership through all phases up to the Socialist revolution is
+comprehensively outlined in bold strokes: "The capitalist method of
+appropriation, which springs from the capitalist method of production,
+and therefore capitalist private property, is the first negation of
+individual private property based on one's own labour. But capitalist
+production begets with the inevitableness of a natural process its own
+negation. It is the negation of the negation." Here we have the three
+stages: the thesis--private property; the antithesis--capitalism; the
+synthesis--common ownership.
+
+Of critical social writers outside Germany it was Proudhon, in
+particular, who, in his works "What is Property?" and "Economic
+Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty" (1840, 1846), attempted
+to use the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave his chief book
+the title "Economic Contradictions" shows that Proudhon was largely
+preoccupied with Hegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below the
+surface; he used the Hegelian formulae quite mechanically, and lacked
+the conception of an immanent process of development (the
+forward-impelling force within the social organism).
+
+If we look at the dialectical method as here presented, Hegel might be
+taken for a materialist thinker. Such a notion would be erroneous. For
+Hegel is an idealist: the origin and essence of the process of growth
+is to be sought, according to him, not in material forces, but in the
+logical idea, reason, the universal spirit, the absolute, or--in its
+religious expression--God. Before He created the world He is to be
+regarded as an Idea, containing within itself all forms of being,
+which it develops dialectically. The idea creates for itself a
+material embodiment; it first expresses itself in the objects of
+inorganic nature; then in plants, organisms wherein life awakens; then
+in animals, in which the Idea attains to the twilight of reason;
+finally, in men, where reason rises into mind and achieves
+self-consciousness and freedom. As self-conscious mind it expresses
+itself in the history of peoples, in religion, art and philosophy, in
+human institutions, in the family and in law, until it realises itself
+in the State as its latest and highest object.
+
+According to Hegel, then, the universal Idea develops into Godhead in
+proportion as the material world rises from the inorganic to the
+organic, and, finally, to man. In the mental part of man, the Idea
+arrives at self-consciousness and freedom and becomes God. In his
+cosmology, Hegel is a direct descendant of the German mystics,
+Sebastion Franck and Jacob Boehme. He was in a much higher degree
+German than any of the German philosophers since Leibnitz.
+
+The strangest thing, however, is that Germanism, Protestantism, and
+the Prussian State appeared to Hegel as the highest expression of the
+universal mind. Particularly the Prussian State as it existed before
+March, 1848, with its repudiation of all middle-class reforms and
+liberalism (of any kind), and its basis of strong governmental force.
+
+There is little purpose in trying to acquire a logical conception of
+Hegelian cosmology. It is not only idealist, but, as we said,
+mystical; it is as inconceivable to human reason as the biblical; it
+is irrational, and lies beyond the sphere of reason. Making the
+universe arise out of pure reason, out of the logical idea, developing
+through the dialectical process with a consciousness of freedom, it
+yet concludes in unreason and an obstinate determinism. In Liberalism
+Hegel saw only a simple negation, a purely destructive factor, which
+disintegrates the State and resolves it into individuals, thus
+depriving it of all cohesion and organising strength. He blamed
+Parliamentarism for demanding "that everything should take place
+through their (the individuals) expressed power and consent. The will
+of the many overturns the Ministry, and what was the Opposition now
+takes control, but, so far as it is the Government, the latter finds
+the many against it. Thus agitation and unrest continue. This
+collision, this knot, this problem, is what confronts history, a
+problem which it must resolve at some future time." One would have
+thought that it was precisely Parliamentarism, with its unrest and
+agitation, its antitheses and antagonisms, which would have had a
+special attraction for Hegel, but nevertheless he turned aside from
+it. How is this to be explained?
+
+Hegel's relation to the Prussian State is to be accounted for by his
+strong patriotic sentiments. His disposition inclined him strongly to
+nationalism in politics. In his early manhood he witnessed the
+complete dissolution of the German Empire, and deeply bewailed the
+wretchedness of German conditions. He wrote: "Germany is no longer a
+State; even the wars which Germany waged have not ended in a
+particularly honourable manner for her. Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine
+have been torn away. The Peace of Westphalia has often been alluded to
+as Germany's Palladium, although by it the complete dismemberment of
+Germany has only been established more thoroughly than before. The
+Germans have been grateful to Richelieu, who destroyed their power."
+On the other hand, the achievements of Prussia in the Seven Years'
+War, and in the War of Liberation against the French, awoke in him the
+hope that it was this State which could save Germany. To this thought
+he gave eloquent and enthusiastic expression in his address at the
+opening of his Berlin lectures in October, 1818, and also in his
+lecture on Frederick the Great. Hegel therefore rejected everything
+which seemed to him to spell a weakening of the Prussia State power.
+The dialectician was overcome by national feelings.
+
+However, Hegel's place in the history of thought rests, not on his
+explanations of the creation of the world, nor on his German
+nationalist politics, but upon the dialectical method. In exploring,
+by means of this method, the wide expanse of human knowledge, he
+scattered an astonishing abundance of materialistic and strictly
+scientific observations and suggestions, and inspired his pupils and
+readers with a living conception of history, of the development of
+mankind to self-consciousness and freedom, thus rendering them capable
+of pushing their studies further, and emancipating themselves from all
+mysticism. As an example of the materialist tendency of his
+philosophy, the following references will serve. His "Philosophy of
+History" contains a whole chapter upon the geographical foundations of
+universal history. In this chapter he expresses himself--quite
+contrary to his deification of the State--as follows: "A real State
+and a real central government only arise when the distinction of
+classes is already given, when Riches and Poverty have become very
+great, and such conditions have arisen that a great multitude can no
+longer satisfy their needs in the way to which they have been
+accustomed." Or take his explanation of the founding of colonies by
+the Greeks.
+
+"This projecting of colonies, particularly in the period after the
+Trojan War until Cyrus, is here a peculiar phenomenon, which may thus
+be explained: in the individual towns the people had the governing
+power in their hands, in that they decided the affairs of State in the
+last resort. In consequence of the long peace, population and
+development greatly increased, and quickly brought about the
+accumulation of great riches, which is always accompanied by the
+phenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry, in our sense, did
+not exist at that time, and the land was speedily monopolised.
+Nevertheless, a section of the poorer classes would not allow
+themselves to be depressed to the poverty line, for each man felt
+himself to be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, was
+colonisation."
+
+Or even the following passage, which conceives the philosophical
+system merely as the result and reflection of the accomplished facts
+of existence, and therefore rejects all painting of Utopias: "Besides,
+philosophy comes always too late to say a word as to how the world
+ought to be. As an idea of the universe, it only arises in the period
+after reality has completed its formative process and attained its
+final shape. What this conception teaches is necessarily demonstrated
+by history, namely, that the ideal appears over against the real only
+after the consummation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the
+same world, comprehended in the substance of reality, in the form of
+an intellectual realm. A form of life has become old when philosophy
+paints its grey on grey, and with grey on grey it cannot be
+rejuvenated but only recognised. The owl of Minerva begins its flight
+only with the falling twilight."--Preface to the "Philosophy of Law."
+
+No materialist could have said this better: the owl--the symbol of
+wisdom--only begins her flight in the evening, after the busy
+activities of the world are over. Thus we have first the universe, and
+then thought; first existence, and then consciousness.
+
+Hegel himself was therefore an example of his own teaching that
+contradictory elements are to be found side by side. His mind
+contained both idealism and realism, but he did not bring them by a
+process of reasoning to the point of acute contradiction in order to
+reach a higher plane of thought. And as he regarded it as the task of
+philosophy to recognise the principle of things, and to follow it out
+systematically and logically throughout the whole vast domain of
+reality, and as further, owing to his mystical bent, he asserted the
+idea to be the ultimate reality, he remained a consistent Idealist.
+
+The Conservatism of Hegel, who was the philosophical representative of
+the Prussian State, was, however, sadly incompatible with the
+awakening consciousness of the German middle class, which, in spite of
+its economic weakness, aspired to a freer State constitution, and
+greater liberty of action. These aspirations were already somewhat
+more strongly developed in the larger towns and industrial centres of
+Prussia and the other German States. The Young Hegelians[3] championed
+this middle-class awakening in the 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 fight against the conservative section of
+Hegel's disciples and the Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The
+antagonism between the old and the new school made itself felt both in
+religious philosophy and political literature, but both tendencies
+were seldom combined in the same persons. David Strauss subjected the
+Gospels to a candid criticism; Feuerbach investigated the nature of
+Christianity and of religion generally, and in this department
+inverted Hegel's Idealism to Materialism; Bruno Bauer trained his
+heavy historical and philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmas
+concerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, however, they
+remained at the stage of the freedom of the individual: that is, they
+were merely moderate Liberals. Nevertheless, there were also less
+prominent Young Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberal left
+wing as regards their political opinions, such as Arnold Ruge.
+
+None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used the dialectical method
+to develop still further the teaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the
+youngest of the Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage in
+social science. He was no longer known to Hegel, who might otherwise
+have died with a more contented or perhaps even still more perturbed
+mind. Heinrich Heine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirties
+and forties, relates the following anecdote, which if not true yet
+excellently illustrates the extraordinary difficulties of the Master's
+doctrines:--
+
+As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered round him, seeing
+the furrows deepen on the Master's care-worn countenance, inquired the
+cause of his grief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him of the
+large number of admiring disciples and followers he would leave
+behind. Breathing with difficulty, he replied: "None of my disciples
+has understood me; only Michelet has understood me, and," he added
+with a sigh, "even he has misunderstood me."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] In one of the later chapters the reader will find the series of
+contradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of capitalism. Sec.
+IV., "Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8, "Economic
+Contradictions."
+
+[2] Marx, in "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring in the
+"Collected Works or Literary Remains of Marx and Engels," vol. II., p.
+132.
+
+[3] After the death of Hegel differences of opinion arose among his
+disciples, chiefly with respect to his doctrines of the Deity,
+immortality and the personality of Christ. One section, the so-called
+"Right Wing," inclined to orthodoxy on these questions. In opposition
+to them stood the "Young Hegelians," the progressive "Left Wing." To
+this section belonged Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and
+Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus."
+
+
+
+
+The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+PARENTS AND FRIENDS.
+
+
+I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+Karl Heinrich Marx first saw the light of day in Treves on May 5,
+1818. His father, an enlightened, fine feeling, and philanthropic Jew,
+was a Jurist who had slowly risen from the humble circumstances of a
+German Rabbi family and acquired a respectable practice, but who never
+learnt the art of making money. His mother was a Dutchwoman, and came
+of a Rabbi family called Pressburg, which, as the name indicates, had
+emigrated from Pressburg, in Hungary, to Holland, in the seventeenth
+century. She spoke German very imperfectly. Marx has handed on to us
+one of her sayings, "If Karl made a lot of Capital, instead of writing
+a lot about Capital, it would have been much better." The Marxes had
+several children, of whom Karl alone showed special mental gifts.
+
+In the year 1824 the family embraced Christianity. The baptism of Jews
+was at that time no longer a rarity. The enlightenment of the last
+half of the eighteenth century had undermined the dogmatic beliefs of
+many cultured Jews, and the succeeding period of German Christian
+Romanticism brought a strengthening and idealising of Christianity and
+of national feeling, from which, for practical just as much as for
+spiritual reasons, the Jews who had renounced their own religion could
+not escape. They were completely assimilated, felt and thought like
+the rest of their Christian and German fellow-citizens. Marx's father
+felt himself to be a good Prussian, and once recommended his son to
+compose an ode, in the grand style, on Napoleon's downfall and
+Prussia's victory. Karl did not, in truth, follow his father's advice,
+but from that time of Christian enthusiasm and German patriotic
+sentiment until his life's end, there remained with him an anti-Jewish
+prejudice; the Jew was generally to him either a usurer or a cadger.
+
+Karl was sent to the grammar school in his native town, leaving with a
+highly creditable record. The school was, however, not the only place
+where he developed his mind. During his school years he used to
+frequent the house of the Government Privy Councillor, L. von
+Westphalen, a highly cultured Prussian official, whose favourite poets
+were Homer and Shakespeare, and who followed attentively the
+intellectual tendencies of his time. Although he had already reached
+advanced age, he liked to converse with the precocious youth, and to
+influence his mental growth. Marx honoured him as a fatherly friend
+"who welcomes every progressive movement with the enthusiasm and sober
+judgment of a lover of truth, and who is a living proof that Idealism
+is no imagination, but the truth."--(Dedication of Marx's doctor
+thesis.)
+
+After quitting the public school, Marx went to the University of Bonn,
+in order to study jurisprudence, according to his father's wishes.
+After a year of the merry life of a student, he removed in the autumn
+of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre of culture and truth, as
+Hegel had called it in his Inaugural Lecture (1818). Before his
+departure for Berlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny Von
+Westphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, a woman distinguished
+alike for beauty, culture, and strength 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
+was insatiable; in these matters only superlatives can be used to
+describe, Marx. In one of his poems dating, from this period, he says
+of himself:
+
+    "Ne'er can I perform in calmness
+      What has seized my soul with might,
+    But must strive and struggle onward
+      In a ceaseless, restless flight.
+
+    All divine, enhancing graces
+      Would I make of life a part;
+    Penetrate the realms of science,
+      Grasp the joys of Song and Art."
+
+Giving up all social intercourse, he worked night and day, making
+abstracts of what he read, translating from Greek and Latin, working
+at philosophical systems, setting down a considerable number of his
+own thoughts, and drafting outlines of philosophy or jurisprudence, as
+well as writing three volumes of poems. The year 1837 marks one of the
+critical periods of Marx's intellectual development; it was a time of
+vacillation and ferment and of internal struggle, at the end of which
+he found refuge in the Hegelian dialectics. In so doing he turned his
+back on the abstract idealism of Kant and Fichte, and made the first
+step towards reality; and indeed at that time Marx firmly believed
+that Hegel actually stood for reality. In a somewhat lengthy letter
+dated November 10, 1837, a truly human document, Marx gives his father
+an account of his intense activity during that remarkable period,
+comprising his first two terms at the University of Berlin, when he
+was still so very young:
+
+    "DEAR FATHER,
+
+    "There are times which are landmarks in our lives; and they not
+    only mark off a phase that has passed, but, at the same time,
+    point out clearly our new direction. At such turning points we
+    feel impelled to make a critical survey of the past and the
+    present, so as to attain to a clear knowledge of our actual
+    position. Nay, mankind itself, as all history shows, loves to
+    indulge in this retrospection and contemplation, and thereby
+    often appears to be going backward or standing still, when after
+    all it has only thrown itself back in its armchair, the better
+    to apprehend itself, to grasp its own doings, and to penetrate
+    into the workings of the spirit.
+
+    "The individual, however, becomes lyrical at such times; for
+    every metamorphosis is in part an elegy on the past and in part
+    the prologue of a great new poem that is striving for permanent
+    expression in a chaos of resplendent but fleeting colours. Be
+    that as it may, we would fain set up a monument to our past
+    experiences that they may regain in memory the significance
+    which they have lost in the active affairs of life: and what
+    more fitting way can we find of doing that than by bringing them
+    and laying them before the hearts of our parents!
+
+    "And so now, when I take stock of the year which I have just
+    spent here, and in so doing answer your very welcome letter from
+    Ems, let me consider my position, in the same way as I look on
+    life altogether, as the embodiment of a spiritual force that
+    seeks expression in every direction: in science, in art, and in
+    one's own personality.... On my arrival in Berlin I broke off
+    all my former connections, paid visits rarely and unwillingly,
+    and sought to bury myself in science and art.... In accordance
+    with my ideas at the time, poetry must of necessity be my first
+    concern, or at least the most agreeable of my pursuits, and the
+    one for which I most cared; but, as might be expected from my
+    disposition and the whole trend of my development, it was purely
+    idealistic. Next I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I
+    felt a strong impulse to grapple with philosophy. Both studies,
+    however, were so interwoven that on the one hand I worked
+    through the Jurist's Heineccius and Thibaut and the Sources
+    docilely and quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the
+    first two books of the Pandects of Justinian, while on the other
+    hand I attempted to evolve a philosophy of law in the sphere of
+    jurisprudence. By way of introduction I laid down a few
+    metaphysical principles, and carried this unfortunate work as
+    far as Public Rights, 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 disagreeably prominent. In the first place
+    there was what I had so graciously christened the Metaphysics of
+    Law, i.e., first principles, reflections, definitions, standing
+    aloof from all established jurisprudence and from every actual
+    form of legal practice. Then the unscientific form of
+    mathematical dogmatism in which there is so much beating about
+    the bush, so much diffuse argumentation without any fruitful
+    development or vital creation, hindered me from the outset from
+    arriving at the Truth. A triangle may be constructed and
+    reasoned about by the mathematician; it is a mere spatial
+    concept and does not of itself undergo any further evolution; it
+    must be brought in conjunction with something else, when it
+    requires other properties, and thus by placing the same thing in
+    various relationships we are enabled to deduce new relationships
+    and new truths. Whereas in the concrete expression of the mental
+    life as we have it in Law, in the State, in Nature, and in the
+    whole of philosophy, the object of our study 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 contrasted with the continually
+evolving organism, with social forms and human institutions. Marx had
+put up a stout resistance against the influence of the Hegelian
+philosophy; nay, he had even hated it and had made mighty efforts to
+cling faithfully to his idealism, but in the end he, too, must fall
+under the spell of the idea of evolution, in the form which it then
+assumed in Hegelian speculation in Germany.
+
+Marx then goes on to speak of his legal studies as well as of his
+poems, and thus continues:
+
+    "As a result of these various activities I passed many sleepless
+    nights during my first term, engaged in many battles, and had to
+    endure much mental and physical excitement; and at the end of it
+    all I found myself not very much better off, having in the
+    meanwhile neglected nature, art and society, and spurned
+    pleasure: such, indeed, was the comment which my body seemed to
+    make. My doctor advised me to try the country, and so, having
+    for the first time passed through the whole length of the city,
+    I found myself before the gate on the Stralau Road.... From the
+    idealism which I had cherished so long I fell to seeking the
+    ideal in reality itself. Whereas before the gods had dwelt above
+    the earth, they had now become its very centre.
+
+    "I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the strange, rugged
+    melody of which had not pleased me. Once again I wished to dive
+    into the depths of the sea, this time with the resolute
+    intention of finding a spiritual nature just as essential,
+    concrete, and perfect as the physical, and instead of indulging
+    in intellectual gymnastics, bringing up pure pearls into the
+    sunlight.
+
+    "I wrote about 24 sheets of a dialogue entitled 'Cleantes or on
+    the Source and Inevitable Development of Philosophy.' In this,
+    art and science, which had hitherto been kept asunder, were to
+    some extent blended, and bold adventurer that I was, I even set
+    about the task of evolving a philosophical, dialectical
+    exposition of the nature of the Deity as it is manifested in a
+    pure concept, in religion, in nature, and in history. My last
+    thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system; and this work,
+    in course of which I had to make some acquaintance with science,
+    Schelling and history, and which had occasioned me an infinite
+    amount of hard thinking, delivers me like a faithless siren into
+    the hands of the enemy....
+
+    "Upset by Jenny's illness and by the fruitlessness and utter
+    failure of my intellectual labours, and torn with vexation at
+    having to make into my idol a view which I had hated, I fell
+    ill, as I have already told you in a previous letter. On my
+    recovery I burnt all my poems and material for projected short
+    stories in the vain belief that I could give all that up; and,
+    to be sure, so far I have not given cause to gainsay it.
+
+    "During my illness I had made acquaintance with Hegel from
+    beginning to end, as also with most of his disciples. Through
+    frequent meetings with friends in Stralau I got an introduction
+    into a Graduates' Club, in which were a number of professors and
+    Dr. Rutenberg, the closest of my Berlin friends. In the
+    discussions that took place many conflicting views were put
+    forward, and more and more securely did I get involved in the
+    meshes of the new philosophy which I had sought to escape; but
+    everything articulate in me was put to silence, a veritable
+    ironical rage fell upon me, as well it might after so much
+    negation."--("Neue Zeit," 16th year, Vol. I., No. 1.)
+
+His father was anything but pleased with this letter. He reproached
+Karl with the aimless and discursive way in which he worked. He had
+expected that these Berlin studies would lead to something more than
+breeding monstrosities and destroying them again. He believed that
+Karl would, before everything else, have considered his future career,
+that he would have devoted all his attention to the lectures in his
+course, that he would have cultivated the acquaintance of people in
+authority, that he would have been economical, and that he would have
+avoided all philosophical extravagances. He refers him to the example
+of his fellow students who attend their lectures regularly and have an
+eye to their future:
+
+    "Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they
+    now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure,
+    whereas my clever and gifted son Karl passes wretched sleepless
+    nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing
+    all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to
+    abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again
+    to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he
+    already had, without having gained anything from other people.
+    At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused,
+    whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and
+    attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than
+    those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health
+    in order to snatch at the ghost of erudition, which they could
+    probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in
+    the society of competent men--with social enjoyment into the
+    bargain!"
+
+In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate
+from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after
+having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain
+to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not
+easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to
+new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a
+distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would
+never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:
+
+    Therefore let us, all things daring,
+      Never from our task recede;
+    Never sink in sullen silence,
+      Paralysed in will and deed.
+
+    Let us not in base subjection
+      Brood away our fearful life,
+    When with deed and aspiration
+      We might enter in the strife.
+
+His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He
+worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions,
+and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club
+stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno
+Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich Koeppen, a master in a
+grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated
+him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and
+looked forward to obtaining a lectureship in some university or
+other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings
+of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's
+subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838,
+at the age of fifty-six.
+
+Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked
+all the more assiduously at the perfecting of his philosophical
+knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order--at
+the instigation of Bruno Bauer--to get himself admitted as quickly as
+possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer
+himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having
+served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the
+year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of
+Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of
+Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his
+friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as
+lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities
+were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even
+possible for Bauer to obtain a professorship; still less could Marx,
+who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on
+an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was
+free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented
+itself.
+
+
+III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE.
+
+Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical
+training and with an irrestrainable impulse to enter into the
+struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he
+understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in
+politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be
+used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become
+ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of
+criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being,
+or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified
+conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune
+is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the
+weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away
+existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for
+life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the
+clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.
+For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the
+best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in
+polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war--ruthless war--against
+the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.
+
+After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field
+of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that
+of journalism. His material circumstances compelled him, moreover, to
+consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this
+time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the
+foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way
+for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon
+procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for
+editors and contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first
+number of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ was published at Cologne. The
+editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friendship with
+Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin;
+and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted
+the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold
+Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary
+undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and
+others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of
+the _Rheinische Zeitung_, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement
+of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In
+his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and
+political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor
+would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed
+the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In
+October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held
+in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were
+discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning
+landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the
+editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely
+philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censorship made the way hard for
+a paper conducted with such critical acumen, and did not allow the
+editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of
+Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial
+life:
+
+"As editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, in 1842 and 1843 I came up,
+for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in
+the controversy over so-called material interests. The proceedings of
+the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and
+parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the
+farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and
+Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic
+questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and
+Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself
+heard in the columns of the _Rheinische Zeitung_. I declared myself
+against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the
+studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of
+my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took
+advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the
+_Rheinische Zeitung_, who believed they could reverse the death
+sentence passed on that journal as a result of weak management, in
+order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."
+
+And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and
+Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity,
+resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was
+about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own
+household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his
+material existence to his spiritual aspirations.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.
+
+
+I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS.
+
+Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the
+most important critical period in the intellectual development of
+Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy
+he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.
+Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two
+years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines
+associated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by
+what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be
+said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of
+French Socialist literature just as assiduously as he did the study of
+Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and
+printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few passages which
+bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May,
+1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of
+possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more
+swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present
+society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not
+the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."
+
+That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical
+criticism. In the following few months, however, he made surprisingly
+rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of
+history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and
+which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless
+years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from
+Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance
+with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not
+in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and
+social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of
+the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as
+to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's
+"Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of
+his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and
+asks which is the class that could bring about the liberation of
+Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German
+revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a
+class in chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but
+which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The
+product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is
+the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the
+beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting
+from natural circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the
+masses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the
+multitude arising from the acute break-up of society--especially of
+the middle class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the
+proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,
+it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in
+itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the
+proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely
+elevating to a general principle of society what it already
+involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."
+
+Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife
+in October, 1843, in order to take up the editorship of the
+Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed
+to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program
+of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its
+final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more
+evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the
+fearless criticism of all existing institutions--fearless in the sense
+that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from
+the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those
+who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we
+should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved
+in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own
+principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy,
+Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want
+to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German
+contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors
+cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place
+politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany
+of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political
+State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through
+Socialist demands, exactly fulfils, in all its modern forms, the
+demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason
+everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself
+everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real
+achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State
+with itself social truth is evolved."
+
+Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the
+embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the
+constitution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to
+remark that in its history the political State is the expression of
+the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not
+true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the
+treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.
+Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and
+away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world
+in doctrinaire fashion any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down
+before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'
+We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to
+the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."
+
+That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker
+propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but
+awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past,
+inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of
+their own action.
+
+
+II. FRIENDSHIP WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS.
+
+Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring,
+1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the
+criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of
+Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a
+comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political
+Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died
+in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September,
+1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning
+of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a
+close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.
+
+Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought,
+but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he
+enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have
+attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand,
+Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man,
+eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not
+endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual
+crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual
+association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained
+little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete
+saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all
+eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844
+Engels was a Utopian--until Marx explained to him the meaning of
+political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the
+statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels'
+"Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for
+a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise
+above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon.
+Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed
+more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as
+matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The
+System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when
+Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical
+side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels.
+Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic
+system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of
+society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the
+Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had,
+independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the
+Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found
+salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should
+carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels,
+on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom
+he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to
+be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help,
+Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and
+uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in
+exile.
+
+
+III. CONTROVERSIES WITH BAUER AND RUGE.
+
+After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx,
+recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French
+systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and
+continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable
+steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation
+or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him
+that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of
+Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage,
+from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a
+survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of
+1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is
+a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer,
+and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel.
+The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of
+social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling
+into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy
+reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of
+philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and
+sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French
+materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but
+pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French
+Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic
+conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social
+revolutionary interpretation to the class struggle between Capital and
+Labour. In the Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The
+Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of
+history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the
+beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes
+science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really
+think that he can understand any period without having studied, for
+example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of
+production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought
+from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world,
+so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see
+the birthplace of history in coarse, material production upon earth
+but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."--("Posthumous
+Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)
+
+Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but
+would not concede that the masses had any power whatever, wrote: "All
+the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed
+to failure and could not have lasting success, because the masses had
+taken an interest in them and inspired them--or they must come to a
+lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature
+that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it
+must reckon on the approval of the masses."
+
+Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had
+been always determined by mass interests, and only in so far as they
+represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these
+movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but
+they could not achieve any results. The idea always fell into
+disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other
+hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first
+appearance on the world-stage, every mass interest working itself out
+in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual
+limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of
+humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of
+the middle classes, in whose interest it manifested itself in great
+movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring masses, for
+whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has
+shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they
+corresponded to class interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas
+gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the
+liberation of mankind in general."--("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp.
+181-3.)
+
+In August, 1844, Marx published under the title "Marginal Notes" in
+the Paris _Vorwaerts_ a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a
+defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German
+proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the
+capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's
+clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpass those
+of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution.
+Where would the middle classes, their scholars and philosophers
+included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace
+and Concord' bearing on the question of emancipation? If one compares
+the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with
+this unconstrained and brilliant literary debut of the German workers,
+if one compares these gigantic baby shoes of the proletariat with the
+dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle
+classes, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German
+Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the
+philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English
+proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its
+politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as
+classic a role in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play
+one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle
+classes is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the
+German proletariat--even leaving out of account German philosophy--is
+the social capacity of Germany."
+
+At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German
+working classes resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist
+and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to
+influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at
+that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and
+not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact
+with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian
+philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840)
+Proudhon had played with Hegelian formulae, and Marx probably believed
+that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the
+German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity
+as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a
+stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all
+the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with classical
+German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" German edition,
+1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this
+according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the
+first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link
+in social evolution, the _thesis_; property is the antagonistic
+principle, the _antithesis_; if only we can get the third factor, the
+_synthesis_, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only
+through the cancelling of the thesis by the antithesis; one must
+therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard
+what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then
+seen the real kind of human social life."
+
+That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for
+what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination;
+still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have
+manipulated German philosophical formulae, and would justify the most
+sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in
+"debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with
+Proudhon.--(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition,
+Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)
+
+In the midst of this activity, however, Marx and other German
+contributors to the Paris _Vorwaerts_ were expelled from France in
+January, 1845, at the instigation of the Prussian Government. Marx
+packed up his traps and left for Brussels, where he lived, with short
+interruptions, until the outbreak of the European Revolution in
+February, 1848. During his sojourn in Brussels his time was occupied
+mainly with economic studies, for which Engels placed his library of
+works on political economy at his disposal. Marx embodied the result
+of these studies in the criticism directed against Proudhon in his
+"Misere de la Philosophie" (Poverty of Philosophy), published in 1847.
+
+
+IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON.
+
+Marx's "Misere de la Philosophie" indicates the culmination of the
+fist phase of his creative work. In this critical review he makes his
+position clear with respect not only to Proudhon but to Utopian
+Socialism in general. It marks also the turning point in the studies
+of Marx: English political economy occupied henceforth the place which
+German philosophy had held. The anti-Proudhon controversy is therefore
+worthy of a fuller treatment.
+
+Pierre Joseph Proudhon (b. 1809 in Besancon, d. 1865 in Paris) was one
+of the most gifted and most distinguished of social philosophers which
+the modern proletariat has produced. He was originally a compositor,
+like his similarly minded English contemporary, John Francis Bray, the
+author of "Labour's Wrongs," published in 1839, but he had a much
+greater inclination for study and a more fruitful literary talent. He
+managed to acquire, self-taught, a knowledge of the classical
+languages, of mathematics and of science, read assiduously but
+indiscriminately works on economics, philosophy, and history, and
+applied himself to social criticism. It is rare for a working man in
+the West of Europe to feel impelled to make an acquaintance with Kant,
+Hegel, and Feuerbach as Proudhon did through French translations and
+through intercourse with German scholars in Paris. He possessed the
+noble ambition of blending French sprightliness with German
+thoroughness. But self-instruction failed to give him that
+intellectual training which is more valuable than knowledge, and which
+alone gives the power to order and to utilise the information
+acquired, as well as to submit one's own work to self-criticism. The
+value of a systematic education does not consist in the main in the
+acquisition of knowledge but in the training of our intellectual
+faculties as instruments of inquiry and apprehension, of methodical
+thinking and of sound judgment, to enable us to find our bearings more
+easily in the chaos of phenomena, experiences, and ideas. A
+self-taught man may no doubt attain to this degree of culture, but
+only if his first attempts at independent creative work are submitted
+to a strict but kindly criticism, which makes him discipline his
+thoughts. This was not the case with Proudhon; he lacked mental
+self-discipline. His first work, "What is Property?" (1840) brought
+him immediate recognition and strengthened him in his high opinion of
+his knowledge and his powers, even to the point of making him
+conceited. When, for example, the French historian, Michelet,
+disapproved of his dictum, "Property is robbery," Proudhon replied,
+"Not twice in a thousand years does one come across a pronouncement
+like that."--("Economic Contradictions," Leipzig, 1847. Vol. II., p.
+301.) And yet the idea is as old as Communism itself. Besides all
+this, the vivacity and exuberance of language for which Proudhon was
+noted easily blinded him to the shortcomings of his intellectual
+culture. Thus it often happened that he rediscovered ideas of his
+predecessors and published them to the world with naive pride. Through
+page after page of argument he holds the reader in expectation of the
+explanation, which he is about to give, of the nature of value, which
+he rightly characterises as the "corner-stone of political economy."
+At last he will disclose the secret: "It is time to make ourselves
+acquainted with this power. This power ... is _labour_." His main
+work, "The System of Economic Contradictions," swarms with
+philosophical formulae and expressions like thesis, antithesis,
+antinomies, synthesis, dialectics, induction, syllogisms, etc., as
+also with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew etymologies; it often wanders into
+irrelevant theological and philosophical digressions and side issues,
+not so much with the intention of parading the author's knowledge as
+from his lack of intellectual discipline and insufficient command of
+his material. The work in question was to combine German philosophy
+with French and English political economy, and its author believed
+that it would secure for him before everything else the admiration of
+the German Socialists, especially of Marx. He drew the latter's
+attention to it by letter, and awaited his "rigorous criticism." The
+criticism came in "Misere de la Philosophie" (Brussels, 1847), but it
+could no longer fulfil its purpose, as the fundamental difference
+between the two men had already widened to a gulf that could not be
+bridged. Marx had almost completed his materialistic, logical, and
+revolutionary Socialism, Proudhon had laid the foundations of his
+peaceful Anarchism with its federative economic basis. With his
+searching analysis, his systematised knowledge, and his great
+indignation at the presumptuous attacks on every Socialist school and
+leader, Marx sat in judgment upon Proudhon, exposing him as a
+dilettante in philosophy and economics, and at the same time
+sketching in outline his own conception of history and economics.
+
+Marx's verdict is damning, yet one cannot but acknowledge that
+Proudhon, in spite of his obvious insufficiency, had endeavoured,
+honestly and zealously, to extricate himself from Capitalism as well
+as from Utopianism, and to outline a scheme for an economic order, in
+which men, such as he had found them, might lead a free, industrious,
+and righteous life. The task which Proudhon had set himself was the
+same as that which engaged the attention of Marx, the criticism of
+political economy and of the sentimental Utopian Socialism. That is
+the key-note of Proudhon's system, and it is sounded in almost every
+chapter. He lacked, however, the requisite knowledge and the
+historical sense which alone could have made him equal to his task.
+The whole of his criticism consists virtually in the complaint that
+riches and poverty accumulate side by side, and that the economic
+categories--use value, exchange value, division of labour,
+competition, monopoly, machinery, property, ground rent, credit, tax,
+etc.--manifest contradictions. Proudhon's special problem was the
+following: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the
+value, let us say, of 20 milliards. But if the workers, as consumers,
+wish to buy back these goods they have to pay 25 milliards. The
+workers are thus cheated out of a fifth. That is a terrible
+contradiction."--("What is Property?" Chap. IV.; "Economic
+Contradictions," Vol. I., pp. 292-93.) This statement of the problem
+shows that Proudhon had no inkling of the essential features of the
+question of value, in spite of the fact that he cites Adam Smith,
+David Ricardo, etc., whom he must therefore have read. Had he really
+understood these economists and taken up his critical attitude towards
+them from the standpoint of justice, he would have stated the problem
+somewhat as follows: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods
+to the value, say, of 20 milliards. For their work, however, they
+receive as wages a quantity of goods of the value of only 10 or 12
+milliards. Is that just?" Only this way of stating the question could
+possibly have revealed to him the nature of wages, of value, of
+profit, of capital and its contradictions. Proudhon sees the
+perpetration of fraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and not in
+that of production, and he does not ask himself how, if labour
+produces goods to the value of only 20 milliards, they can be
+exchanged at a value of 25 milliards, and what is responsible for the
+increase of five milliards. The other contradictions which he brings
+forward are not indeed new, but they are ingeniously treated. For
+example: the essence of exchange-value is labour, which creates
+wealth; but the more the wealth produced, the less becomes its
+exchange-value. Or this: the division of labour is, according to
+Smith, one of the most effective means of increasing wealth, but the
+further the division of labour proceeds the lower sinks the workman,
+being reduced to the level of an unintelligent automaton engaged in
+the performance of a fractional operation. The same thing holds good
+for machinery. So, too, competition stimulates effort, but brings much
+misery in its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices, and
+strife between man and man. Further, taxation should be proportional
+to riches, in reality it is proportional to poverty. Or again, private
+ownership of land ought to increase productivity; in practice it
+deprives the farmer of the land. In this way he runs to earth the
+contradictions in political economy, and so we find everywhere the
+words thesis and anti-thesis or antinomies (contradictions between two
+well-established propositions). And out of this contradiction springs
+poverty. The solution or the synthesis is the creation of an economic
+order which shall preserve the good elements in this category and
+eliminate the bad ones, and so satisfy the demands of justice. And
+that is what Socialism cannot do. "For the economic order is based
+upon calculations of an inexorable justice and not upon those angelic
+sentiments of brotherhood, sacrifice, and love which so many
+well-meaning Socialists of the present time are endeavouring to awake
+in the people. It is useless for them to preach, after the example of
+Jesus Christ, the necessity for sacrifice, and to set an example of it
+in their own lives: selfishness is stronger than they and can only be
+restrained by rigid justice and immutable economic law. Humanitarian
+enthusiasm may cause upheavals which are conducive to the progress of
+civilisation, but such emotional crises, like the fluctuations in
+value, simply result in the establishing of law and order on a more
+rigid and more restricted basis. Nature or the Deity planted mistrust
+in our hearts, having no faith in the love of man for his fellow men;
+and though I say it to the shame of the human conscience (for our
+hypocrisy must be confronted with it sooner or later), every
+disclosure which science has made to us concerning the designs of
+providence with respect to the progress of society points to a deeply
+rooted hatred of mankind on God's part."--("System of Economic
+Contradictions or the Philosophy of Poverty," Vol. I., p. 107.) Just
+as severely does he denounce the institution of Trade Unionism and
+its methods of warfare, together with State politics, as indeed the
+working of class organisation and of the State generally. The only way
+to realise social justice is to create a society of producers who
+exchange their goods among one another according to their equivalents
+in labour and carry on work in adequate relationship to the production
+of wealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an order where supply
+and demand balance one another.
+
+Marx's answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" is indicated at once by
+the title "The Poverty of Philosophy." He deals first of all with the
+economic details of Proudhon's work, and proves with documentary
+evidence that the theses and antitheses it contains partly spring from
+a half-understood reading of English and French political economists,
+and in part have been taken direct from the English Communists. Marx
+already displays in this section an extensive knowledge of economic
+literature. Then he confronts Proudhon's philosophical and social
+theories with his own deductions and gives many positive results.
+Marx's main object was to induce the Socialists to give up their
+Utopianism and think in terms of realism, and to regard social and
+economic _categories_ in their historical setting:
+
+"Economic _categories_ are only the theoretical expressions, ideal
+conceptions of the conditions of production obtaining in society....
+Proudhon has grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth, linen,
+etc., under certain conditions of production. But what he has not
+grasped is that these social conditions themselves are just as much
+human products as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are intimately
+bound up with productive power. With the acquisition of new productive
+power men change their methods of production, and with the change in
+the methods of production, in the manner of obtaining a livelihood,
+they change their social conditions. The hand-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 conditions in
+conformity with the material means of production, shape also the
+principles, the ideas, the _categories_ in conformity with their
+social conditions. Consequently these ideas, these _categories_, are
+just as little eternal as are the conditions to which they give
+expression. They are the transitory and changing products of history.
+We are living in the midst of a continuous movement of growth in
+productive power, of destruction of existing social conditions, of
+formation of ideas."--("Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart, 1885, pp.
+100-101.)
+
+Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marx ascribes to
+industrialism a powerful revolutionary effect, and that he
+characterises the different forms of 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 forms of
+society." What he means to say, then, is that ideas and systems are
+limited by their time, that they are conditioned by the prevailing
+means of production. To understand them one must study the times which
+have preceded them, as well as investigate the ideas and systems
+themselves, and find out whether new forms have not arisen which stand
+in contradiction or in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says:
+
+"Feudalism, too, had its proletariat--the villeinage--which contains
+all the germs of the middle class. Feudal production, too, had two
+contradictory elements which are likewise characterised as the 'good'
+and 'bad' sides of feudalism without regard to the fact that it is
+always the 'bad' side which triumphs ultimately over the 'good' side.
+It is the bad side which calls into being the movement which makes
+history, in that it brings the struggle to a head. If, at the time of
+the supremacy of feudalism, the economists, in their enthusiasm for
+knightly virtues, for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,
+for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishing home
+industries in the country, for the development of industry organised
+in corporations, companies and guilds, in a word, for everything which
+forms the finer side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
+eliminating everything which could throw a shadow on this
+picture--serfdom, privileges, anarchy--where would it all have ended?
+They would have destroyed every element which called forth strife,
+they would have nipped in the bud the development of the middle class.
+They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out
+history.
+
+"When the middle class had come to the top, neither the good nor the
+bad side of feudalism come into question. The productive forces, which
+had been developed under feudalism through its agency, fell to its
+control. All old economic forms, the legal relations between private
+individuals, which corresponded to them, the political order, which
+was the official expression of the old society, were shattered."
+
+"Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who regard the hardships
+and struggles of society as an absolute evil and plan the
+construction of a society comprised solely of good elements, have not
+grasped the meaning of the history of mankind. They think abstractly.
+They misjudge both the past and the present.
+
+"Hence to form a correct judgment of production under feudalism one
+must consider it a method of production based upon contradiction. One
+must show how wealth was produced within this contradiction, how
+productive power developed contemporaneously with the antagonism of
+classes, how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil,
+constantly increased until the material conditions for its liberation
+were fully ripe.
+
+"Does that not show clearly enough that the means of production, the
+conditions under which productive power is developed, are anything but
+eternal laws, that they rather correspond to a definite stage in the
+evolution of mankind and of its productive power, and that a variation
+in the productive power of mankind necessarily brings about a
+variation in its conditions of production?
+
+"The middle class begins with a proletariat, which in its turn is
+itself a remnant of the feudal proletariat. In the course of its
+historical development the middle class necessarily develops its
+contradictory character, which on its first appearance is more or less
+veiled, existing only in a latent form. In proportion as the middle
+class develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
+modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian
+class and the middle class, a struggle which, before being felt,
+observed, estimated, understood, acknowledged, and finally openly
+proclaimed on both sides, issues in the meanwhile only in partial and
+transitory conflicts and acts of destruction."
+
+In a special chapter Marx shows the necessity and the historical
+significance of the Trade Unions, which in spite of all the
+apprehensions and warnings of Utopians and Economists the workers have
+gone on establishing and perfecting, in order to be able to withstand
+the domination of capital. That means the gathering together of the
+divided interests and activities of the workers in a vast class
+movement, standing in opposition to the middle class; which, however,
+does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the
+classes themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as class
+is brought against class:
+
+"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of
+production, among which the middle class moves, have not a simple,
+uniform character but one which involves conflicting elements; that the
+same conditions which produce wealth produce also poverty; that the same
+conditions which tend to the development of productive power develop
+also the power of repression; that these conditions only create
+bourgeois wealth, i.e., the wealth of the middle class, at the cost of
+the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this
+class and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."--("Poverty of
+Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)
+
+This antithetical character of capitalist society has for its effect
+that the political economists, who are the philosophers of the
+existing order, lose their bearings, while the Socialists, who are the
+philosophers of the proletariat, look round for means to relieve the
+distress. They condemn class struggles,[4] build Utopias and plan
+schemes of salvation, whereas the only real solution, because it is
+the only one which arises from the actual conditions, must be to
+further the organisation of the oppressed class and make it conscious
+of the objects of its struggles. For out of these struggles the new
+society will arise, and that, of course, can only happen when
+productive power has reached a high stage of development. Or as Marx
+himself proceeds:
+
+"An oppressed class is a vital condition of any society founded upon
+class antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed class necessarily
+includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the
+oppressed class may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in
+which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing
+social institutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the
+instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the
+revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary
+elements as a class presupposes the existence in perfected form of all
+the productive forces that could in any way be developed in the bosom
+of the old society. Does this mean that after the collapse of the old
+order of society there will be a new class domination culminating in a
+new political power? The condition of the emancipation of the working
+class is the abolition of all classes, as the condition of the
+emancipation of the third estate, of the middle class, was the
+abolition of all the three estates. The working class will, in the
+course of its evolution, replace the old middle-class society by an
+association excluding classes and their antagonism, and there will no
+longer be any real political power,[5] because it is just this
+political power which is the official expression of class antagonism
+within the community.
+
+"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a
+struggle of class against class, a struggle which, when brought to its
+highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be
+surprised that a society founded upon class antagonism should, at its
+final dissolution, issue in brutal conflict and collision of man
+against man? Let it not be said that the social movement excludes the
+political. There never was a political movement which was not at the
+same time a social movement.
+
+"Only in an order of things where there are no classes and no class
+antagonism will social evolution cease to be political revolution.
+Until then the last word of social science on the eve of every general
+reconstruction of society must ever be: 'Fight or die; bloody war or
+annihilation. Thus are we confronted with the inexorable
+question.'--(George Sand)."
+
+With this battle-cry "The Poverty of Philosophy" comes to a close. It
+is the prologue to the "Communist Manifesto," which in itself is but a
+popular version of the positive doctrines developed in the controversy
+against Proudhon.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] The Socialists of those times were the Owenites and the
+Fourierists, who condemned all class struggles, Trade Unionist
+strikes, and Labour politics.
+
+[5] Marx means the State.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES.
+
+
+I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES.
+
+Marx was a revolutionary not only in the sense that he was the
+representative of a new conception of society and the founder of a
+theory of a new economic order, but also in the popular sense of
+advocating the use of force, in which connection he looked to the
+first years of the French Revolution as a model. He had a keen ear for
+the revolutionary rumblings in the depths of the populace. The years
+during which the elements of his new conception of society were
+accumulating in his mind and shaping themselves into a system were
+involved in a revolutionary atmosphere. In 1842 England witnessed the
+first strike on a large scale, which threatened to extend into a
+general strike and bore a political revolutionary character. In 1843
+and 1844 the idea of the impending revolution was widely spread in
+England. Insurrections broke out among the Silesian weavers in 1844.
+In 1845 and 1846 Socialism spread rapidly on all sides in Germany, and
+Socialist periodicals appeared in the industrial centres. France
+swarmed with Socialist systems, Socialist novels and newspaper
+articles. The spectre of Communism was abroad in Europe. The
+convention of the United Assembly by Frederick William IV. at the
+beginning of February, 1847, was looked upon as the harbinger of the
+German Revolution. The connection between these phenomena could not
+escape acute intellects. Hand in hand with the extension of industry
+and the rapid construction of railways and telegraphs came
+alternations of economic prosperity and crisis, poverty grew, and the
+workers fought with ever-increasing bitterness against the iron law of
+wages and against the scanty pay, which hardly allowed the proletariat
+to eke out a bare subsistence. The cry in England was: "More
+factories, more poverty," but at the same time: "The greater the
+political rights of the masses, the surer becomes emancipation."
+Whoever lived in England and France during these years and had
+dealings with Socialism could not help feeling that political and
+social revolutions were on the march.
+
+Already in his first letter to Ruge, written from Holland in March,
+1843, Marx deals with the coming revolution, and foresees, to the
+astonishment of Ruge, who refused to believe it, that the Government
+of Frederick William IV. was drifting towards a revolution. At that
+time Marx had hardly begun his studies in Socialism; and the further
+he advanced in these studies, elaborating his social dialectics and
+evolving the ideas of the class struggle, the more inevitably was he
+driven to the conclusion that the proletarian revolution, the seizure
+of political power by the proletariat, was the indispensable
+preliminary to the triumph of Communism.
+
+Utopian Socialism stood outside the State and attempted to set up a
+Socialist Commonwealth apart from the State and behind the back of the
+State. Utopianism, with its moral and religious motives and mediaeval
+Communist traditions, was pervaded with that spirit of contempt for
+the State which was characteristic of the Catholic Church during the
+period of its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognised all practical
+forms of power, even if he did not always estimate them at their true
+value, saw in the State an executive power which it was a question of
+overturning and using as an extremely powerful instrument in the
+social revolution. As a result of his excursions into politics and
+French and English Socialism, Marx gave up Hegel's overstrained idea
+of the State and accepted the view current in Western European thought
+of the time; but he interpreted the State in the sense of the doctrine
+of the class struggle as the executive council of the ruling and
+possessing classes.
+
+The impressions, the ideas, the experiences and the modes of thinking
+which took root in the mind of Marx during the evolution of the
+fundamental principles of his sociological and historical system
+dominated the whole of his life's work.
+
+Marxism is quite a natural growth of the revolutionary soil of the
+first half of the nineteenth century. Marx completes the social
+revolutionary doctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, the
+executor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeply rooted in it;
+they have nothing specifically Jewish about them. I know of no Jewish
+philosopher, sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewish
+character as had Marx.
+
+
+II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
+
+As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented the society of German
+working men in order to instruct them by lectures and by conversation.
+He was loyally seconded by Engels, who had more time and more money
+to devote to this task, and who worked for the new doctrine in Paris,
+Cologne, Elberfeld and other towns. Since 1836 the German working men
+living abroad had been organised in the League of the Just, which from
+1840 had its head-quarters in London. The individual groups were kept
+in touch with one another by means of Communist correspondence
+committees. The Paris and Brussels groups drew the attention of the
+London Committee to Marx, and in January, 1847, Joseph Moll, one of
+its members, was commissioned to go to Brussels and obtain information
+about Marx.--("Mehring's Introduction to the Reprint of the Cologne
+Communist Proceedings," published by _Vorwaerts_, Berlin, 1914, pp.
+10-11.) The result was the transformation of the League of the Just
+into the League of Communists, which held its first Congress in London
+in the summer of 1847, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) being among
+those present as delegates. At the second Congress, held in London
+towards the end of November and beginning of December, 1847, Marx also
+appeared, and together with Engels was commissioned to prepare a new
+program. The new program is the Communist Manifesto. Engels had come
+from Paris, Marx from Brussels. Before leaving Paris, Engels wrote a
+letter to Marx, dated November 24, in which he speaks as follows on
+the subject of the Manifesto:
+
+    "Just think over the confession of faith a little. I believe it
+    will be best if we leave out the form of catechism and entitle
+    the thing 'The Communist Manifesto.' And then, as more or less
+    of it will consist in historical narrative, the present form is
+    quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the manuscript which I
+    have written; it is a plain narrative, but is badly put
+    together, and has been done in a frightful hurry. I begin, 'What
+    is Communism?' and then straight away with the proletariat--the
+    history of its origin, difference from earlier workers,
+    development of the antagonism of the proletariat and the middle
+    class, crises, conclusions, with all kinds of secondary
+    considerations thrown in, and lastly party politics of the
+    Communists, as much as is good for the public to
+    know."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. I., p. 84.)
+
+Engels' draft of the Communist Manifesto has been edited by Eduard
+Bernstein.--("Grundsaetze des Kommunismus," published by _Vorwaerts_,
+1914.) A comparison of this draft with the actual "Communist
+Manifesto" makes evident the full extent of Marx's intellectual
+superiority to Engels. The Communist Manifesto contains four main
+groups of ideas: (1) The history of the evolution of the middle class,
+its character, its positive and negative achievement--modern
+capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical
+conceptions and conclusions--the doctrine of the class struggle and
+the role of the proletariat. (3) Practical application--revolutionary
+action by the Communists. (4) Criticism of other Socialist schools.
+The last section has long ago lost all practical interest, so that we
+need only deal with the first three sections.
+
+(1) The middle class developed in the bosom of feudal society, in the
+mediaeval industrial towns. With the geographical discoveries of the
+sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its sphere of activity was
+extended; it revolutionised the methods of industry, agriculture and
+communication; it broke through the mediaeval economic and political
+bonds; it overthrew feudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing
+regions, absolute monarchy, and established modern industry with its
+accelerated and concentrated production, middle-class franchise, the
+national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the
+middle class which first showed what human activity can accomplish.
+"It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian
+pyramids, Roman aqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried out
+greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades....
+Although it is scarcely a century since it came to be the dominating
+class, the middle class has created more powerful and more gigantic
+forces of production than all past generations put together." The
+subjugation of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry
+to industry and to agriculture, steamships, railways, electric
+telegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, making the rivers
+navigable, the conjuring forth of whole peoples out of the ground:
+that is the positive achievement of the middle class. Now for the
+negative: it created the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,
+anarchical economic conditions, periodical crises--poverty and famine
+in consequence of over-production and a glut of wealth, over-driving
+and reckless exploitation of the workers, whose labour is bought in
+exchange for the minimum quantity of the necessaries of life. These
+facts show that the forces of production are more extensive and more
+powerful than is demanded by the conditions under which they are
+operative: the economic system can produce and deliver more goods than
+society can use under the existing laws concerning property, i.e., the
+distribution and the effective demand fall short of the manufacture
+and the supply. The material forces of production press upon the
+limits imposed upon them by the laws of private property. This
+happens, too, because the working class must reduce its consumption of
+goods to a minimum in consequence of the existing laws of property,
+which give to capital the right of distribution. All these conditions
+taken together, the positive as well as the negative ones, make
+possible and give rise to the struggles of the workers against the
+middle class--and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These
+struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to
+the awakening of class consciousness, and, as a result, to the
+formation of the political labour party.
+
+(2) The movements within middle-class society, as well as in feudal
+and ancient society, where freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
+baron and serf, guild-master and journeyman, capitalist and working
+man stood and stand in constant antagonism to one another, prove that
+the whole history of mankind since the rise of private ownership is
+the history of class struggles, and that in these class struggles,
+carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of
+society and of ownership, new economic systems arise or else end with
+the common destruction of the two classes. The antagonistic classes
+are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of ownership
+and ideals of culture. The craftsman and tradesman of the towns, the
+burgher, fought against the feudal lord and knight for individual
+property, for freedom of industry and trade, for freedom to dispose of
+personal property and for the national State. With the triumphal
+progress of the middle class private property fell into fewer and
+fewer hands. The proletarians are without property, they have no share
+in the wealth of their country; on the other hand, the production of
+capital becomes more and more a matter of common co-operation, and
+capital becomes a joint product. The proletariat can, accordingly, no
+longer fight for individual ownership but for the socially conducted
+utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and
+of the goods produced. The middle class has therefore created in the
+proletariat a social class which must have as its object to do away
+with the middle class system of ownership and to set up the
+proletarian system of common ownership.
+
+(3) In this struggle of the working classes the Communists are
+therefore the pioneers of the movement. They are at once the
+philosophers and the self-sacrificing champions of the proletariat
+awakened into class consciousness. "The Communists are not a special
+party in contradistinction to the other Labour parties. They have no
+interests apart from the interests of the whole proletariat. They set
+up no special principles according to which they wish to mould the
+proletarian movement." The Communists lay stress on the common
+interests of the whole proletariat and of the collective movement.
+Their aim is the organisation of the proletariat into a class, the
+overthrow of middle-class domination, and the conquest of political
+power by the proletariat. They support everywhere "any revolutionary
+movement against the existing social and political conditions. In all
+these movements they emphasise the question of property, in whatever
+state of evolution it may appear, as the foundation of the movement.
+And finally the Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement
+of democratic parties[6] of all nationalities. The Communists disdain
+to conceal their views and intentions. They declare openly that their
+ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining
+order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communist
+revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains.
+They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite!"
+
+From the standpoint of social philosophy, the Manifesto, a document
+reflecting its time, is almost perfect. Strong emotion and
+extraordinary intellectual power are united in it. Years of study of
+one of the boldest and most fertile minds are here welded together in
+the glowing heat of one of the most active of intellectual workshops.
+But the work is not free from logical flaws. In the passages we have
+quoted the part played in history by the middle class is extolled by
+Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares
+that "the middle class is the unwitting and inert instrument of
+industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the
+second section, where the middle class is accused of indolence. "It
+has been objected that, if private property were done away with, all
+activity would cease and a general laziness set in. According to that,
+middle-class society would have been ruined by idleness long ago; for
+those of its members who work gain nothing, and those who gain do not
+work." That is as much as to say that the middle class is lazy and
+does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle class has
+achieved more marvellous works than Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages,
+and that, in its reign of power of scarcely a hundred years, it has
+created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all
+past generations put together. How can a class which does not work
+produce more marvellous works than the whole ancient and mediaeval
+world?
+
+Marx frees himself later from this inconsistency by ascribing surplus
+value solely to the operation of the variable part of capital
+(wage-labour)--a doctrine which he develops with iron logic in his
+principal work, "Capital."
+
+
+III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848.
+
+The ink had hardly dried on the Communist Manifesto when the February
+Revolution broke out. The crowing of the Gallic cock soon awoke an
+echo in the various German States, whilst in Brussels the democrats
+were attacked and ill-treated by the mob. One of the victims of this
+attack was Karl Marx, who was, moreover, banished shortly afterwards
+by the Belgian Government. This action, however, did not cause him any
+embarrassment, as he was ready in any case to proceed to Paris,
+whither the Provisional Government of the French Republic had already
+invited him in the following terms:
+
+                                           "Paris, March 1, 1848.
+
+    "BRAVE AND FAITHFUL MARX,
+
+    "The soil of the French Republic is a place of refuge for all
+    friends of freedom. Tyranny has banished you; France, the free,
+    opens to you her gates--to you and to all who fight for the holy
+    cause, the fraternal cause of every people. In this sense shall
+    every officer of the French Government understand 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 the means for returning to Germany to take part in the German
+revolution. They themselves travelled to the Rhineland and succeeded
+in getting the establishment of the newspaper planned in Cologne into
+their hands. On the first of June, 1848, the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_
+appeared for the first time. It goes without saying that the editor
+was Karl Marx, and among his collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath,
+Wilhelm Wolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, Lassalle sent
+contributions. It is but rarely given to a daily paper to have such an
+editorial staff. In the third volume of his "Collected Papers of Marx
+and Engels," Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles which
+appeared in this journal. They are still worth reading. Here are a few
+examples. After the fall of Vienna he wrote an article concluding with
+the following words: "With the victory of the 'Red Republic' in Paris
+the armies from the inmost recesses of every land will be vomited
+forth upon the boundaries and over them, and the real strength of the
+combatants will clearly appear. Then we shall remember June and
+October, and we too shall cry, 'Woe to the vanquished!' The fruitless
+butcheries which have occurred since those June and October days ...
+will convince the peoples that there is only one means of shortening,
+simplifying, and concentrating the torturing death agonies of
+society--only one means--revolutionary terrorism."--(_Neue Rheinische
+Zeitung_, November 6, 1848.)
+
+Or take, for example, this passage from the last article of the paper,
+when on May 18, 1849, it succumbed to the "craft and cunning of the
+dirty West Kalmucks" (i.e., the Prussians).
+
+"In taking leave of our readers we remind them of the words in our
+first January number: 'Revolutionary upheaval of the French working
+class, general war--that is the index for the year 1849. And already
+in the east a revolutionary army comprised of warriors of all
+nationalities stands confronting the old Europe represented by and in
+league with the Russian army, already from Paris looms the Red
+Republic.'"
+
+In reading these extracts one has only to substitute Russia for France
+and Moscow for Paris and we get at one of the sources of Lenin's and
+Trotsky's revolutionary policy. The articles written by Marx in 1848
+and 1849 have supplied the Bolsheviks their tactics.
+
+The censorship, Press lawsuits, and the decline of the revolution
+severed the life threads of the paper after scarcely a year of its
+existence. Marx sacrificed everything he had in money and
+valuables--in all, 7,000 thalers--in order to satisfy creditors and to
+pay the contributors and printers. Then he travelled to Paris, where
+he witnessed not the triumph of the Red Republic but that of the
+counter-revolution. In July, 1849, he was banished by the French
+Government to the boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; he
+preferred, however, to go over to London, where he remained 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 struggle for existence, which, however, did not
+prevent him from collecting and systematising a vast amount of
+material for his life-work, "Capital," nor from taking a decisive part
+in the Labour movement as soon as the opportunity presented itself, as
+it did on the founding of the International. The first decade was
+particularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851, by Marx's wife
+to Weydemeyer, in America, gives an affecting picture of their poverty
+during these first years of exile.--("Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II.,
+pp. 18-21.)
+
+The attempt to continue the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ under the title
+_Neue Rheinische Revue_ had only the negative result of swallowing up
+Marx's last resources. How poor Marx then was can be judged from the
+fact that he had to send his last coat to the pawnshop in order that
+he might buy paper for his pamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial
+(towards the end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentable differences
+sprang up among the German exiles, who, deceived in their
+revolutionary illusions, overwhelmed one another with recriminations;
+an echo of these conflicts is heard in the pamphlet "Herr Vogt"
+(1860). Marx's only regular source of income in the years 1851-60 was
+his earnings as correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which paid
+him at the rate of a sovereign per article, and this hardly covered
+his rent and the cost of newspapers and postage. Yet his articles were
+veritable essays, the fruit of researches which cost him a good deal
+of time. And in the midst of this penury the idea of writing a
+Socialistic criticism of political economy burnt within him. One might
+almost say that since 1845 this idea had allowed him no peace.
+Freiligrath's lines are, as it were, stamped upon him:
+
+    In the clouds his goal he planted;
+      In the dust had he to live,
+    Bare existence daily granted.
+    Cramped, hemmed in on every side,
+      Pinched by poverty and urged
+    By want, he, of all denied,
+      By necessity was scourged.
+
+Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family
+inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over L800, and Engels' more
+plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about
+L350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume
+of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.
+
+To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's
+reminiscences--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)--of
+his intercourse with the Marx family. In particular he depicts the
+personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and
+among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial
+companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with
+mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a
+prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never
+asserted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion
+in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and
+notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great
+hardships and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the
+side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which
+linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright
+disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every
+one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich
+Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished
+the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife.
+Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his
+wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his manuscripts to
+her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were
+born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the
+girls grew up--Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became
+the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor,
+who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.
+
+The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and
+seemed to promise an abundant harvest in his later life. But his
+health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work.
+The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847
+and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these
+years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his
+activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the
+Commune).
+
+
+V. THE INTERNATIONAL.
+
+The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into
+the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and
+nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class
+movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign,
+have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and
+expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and
+especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and
+adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to
+obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part
+in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which
+in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist
+questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change
+seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The
+London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform
+movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was
+an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested an interest in the
+fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning
+liberty.
+
+At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour
+leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men,
+with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and
+1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an
+international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of
+September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates
+from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the
+28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering
+in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an
+invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be
+represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the
+formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees
+and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles
+and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a
+Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be
+elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and
+wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers
+since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The
+declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by
+no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to
+please English and French working men; it consists essentially of
+Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to
+English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to
+Engels--("Correspondence," Vol. III., p. 191)--"so to arrange matters
+that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to
+the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time
+before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of
+speech. One must go _fortiter in re, suaviter in modo_ (firmly
+maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."
+
+The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class
+from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from
+modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt
+by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the
+working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the
+ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of
+workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist
+diplomacy.
+
+Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to
+the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In
+1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next
+revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and
+I) have this powerful machinery _in our hands_."--("Correspondence of
+Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)
+
+The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the
+followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the
+ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately
+broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of
+Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative
+economic form of social organisation, only the Bakunists were also
+Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to
+Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one
+point--that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement.
+Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting
+to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands.
+Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national
+prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The
+Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and
+conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late
+as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume,
+the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx,
+Pangermaniste" (Paris).
+
+Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne)
+lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he
+took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia
+and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living
+in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent
+theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical
+Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary
+activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he
+exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the
+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 his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following
+letter which he addressed to Marx:
+
+                                      "123, Montbrillant, Geneva,
+                                          "December 22, 1868.
+
+    "Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns
+    me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than
+    ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how
+    truly right you are when you advance along the high road of
+    economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set
+    those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national
+    or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same
+    thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since
+    my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne
+    Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu,
+    than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the
+    'International,' of which you are one of the most illustrious
+    founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple--and
+    I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my attitude
+    and my feelings toward you."--("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I.,
+    p. 6.)
+
+Nevertheless, this discipleship did not hinder Bakunin from secretly
+forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of
+the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of
+school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but
+it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected.
+The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social
+revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the
+working-class movement.
+
+
+VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE.
+
+On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Army was defeated near
+Sedan and compelled to capitulate on the following day. Among the
+prisoners was Louis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empire fell on
+September 4, and France was proclaimed a Republic. On September 6 Marx
+wrote to Engels: "The French section of the International travelled
+from London to Paris in order to do foolish things in the name of the
+International. They want to overthrow the Provisional Government and
+set up a _Commune de Paris_."--("Correspondence," Vol. IV., p. 330).
+
+Although the Provisional Government of the newly-baked French Republic
+was in no wise made up of friends of the democracy, Marx and Engels
+expressed themselves _against_ any revolutionary action by the Paris
+working class. In the second Address (or declaration) of the General
+Council of the International, written on September 9, and composed by
+Marx, the question is discussed as follows:
+
+    "Thus the French working class finds itself placed in extremely
+    difficult circumstances. Any attempt to overthrow the new
+    Government, when the enemy is already knocking at the gates of
+    Paris, would be a hopeless piece of folly. The French workers
+    must do their duty as citizens; but they must not let themselves
+    be overcome by the national reminiscences of 1792.... They have
+    not to repeat the past but to build the future. Let them quietly
+    and with determination make the most of the republican freedom
+    granted to them, in order to carry out thoroughly the
+    organisation of their own class. That will give them new,
+    Herculean strength for the rebirth of France and for our common
+    task--the emancipation of the proletariat."--("Civil War in
+    France," Second Address.)
+
+Marx then urged the French workers not to do anything foolish, not to
+set up a revolutionary Commune of Paris, but to make use of their
+republican liberties to create proletarian organisations and to save
+and discipline their forces for future tasks. Circumstances, however,
+proved much stronger than any 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 fury against the "capitulards," the Paris working men cast
+Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolution on 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 Civil War in France, 1871," which is one of
+the most mature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirely
+adrift from the revolutionaries--the Bolsheviks of that time--but
+defended them with unsurpassable energy. It is the swan song of Marx
+and of the first International.
+
+
+VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE.
+
+During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost
+uninterruptedly against various bodily ailments, all of which had
+their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His
+work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend,
+"health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his
+enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of
+rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he
+likewise occupied himself with studies of the 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 some very important data as to Marx's attitude to
+the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism
+to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself.
+
+He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877
+and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and
+set about arranging his manuscripts and getting the second volume of
+"Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his
+capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no
+longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places
+proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find
+recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M.
+Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and
+Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this
+recognition had 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 January, 1883, gave the finishing stroke to his enfeebled
+body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an
+account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge,
+dated March 15, 1883:
+
+    "Yesterday, at half-past two in the afternoon, the best time for
+    visiting him, I went down to see him; everybody was in tears; it
+    looked as if the end had come. I made inquiries, trying to get
+    at the truth of the matter and to offer consolation. There had
+    been a slight haemorrhage, but a sudden collapse had supervened.
+    Our good old Lena, who had tended him better than any mother
+    does her child, went up, came down. He was half asleep, she
+    said; I could go up. As we went in, he lay there, sleeping,
+    never to wake again. Pulse and breathing had ceased. In those
+    two minutes he had gone painlessly and peacefully to sleep....
+    Mankind is less by a head, and indeed by the most important head
+    it had to-day. The working-class movement will pursue its
+    course, but its central point, to which French, Russians,
+    Americans, and Germans turned of their own accord in decisive
+    moments, always to receive that clear, unambiguous counsel which
+    genius and perfect mastery alone can give--is gone."
+
+On Saturday, March 17, he was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London.
+Among those who spoke at the graveside were Friedrich Engels and
+Wilhelm Liebknecht. The former gave a brief account of his
+revolutionary struggles, in which he said:
+
+    "Just as Darwin discovered the law of the evolution of organic
+    nature, so Marx discovered the evolutionary law of human
+    history--the simple fact, hitherto hidden under ideological
+    overgrowths, that above all things men must eat, drink, dress,
+    and find shelter before they can give themselves to politics,
+    science, art, religion, or anything else, and that therefore the
+    production of the material necessaries of life and the
+    corresponding stage of economic evolution of a people or a
+    period provides the foundation upon which the national
+    institutions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideas of
+    the people in question have been built, and upon which,
+    therefore, their explanation must be based, a procedure the
+    reverse of that which has hitherto been adopted. Marx discovered
+    also the special law of motion for the modern capitalist mode of
+    production and for the middle-class society which it begets.
+    With the discovery of surplus value light was at once thrown
+    upon a subject, all the earlier investigations of which, whether
+    by middle-class economists or by Socialist critics, had been
+    gropings in the dark...."
+
+After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened from Germany to pay a
+last tribute to his friend and master:
+
+    "The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was great in his love and in
+    his hate. His hate sprang from his love. He had a great heart,
+    as he had a great intellect. He has raised social democracy from
+    a sect, from a school, to a party, which now already fights
+    unconquered, and in the end will win the victory."
+
+Engels, who outlived him by twelve years, edited the two last volumes
+of "Capital," while Karl Kautsky, the disciple and successor of Engels
+and the real disseminator of Marxian doctrines, edited the three
+volumes of Marx's historical studies on surplus value. The latter work
+is not far short of being a great history of political economy.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] By democratic parties were then understood working-class political
+movements, such as Chartism, etc.
+
+
+
+
+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, or method of investigation, which--in
+contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel--was
+named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic--as it seeks to
+conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process--it
+is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of
+investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method
+of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of
+it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the
+Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the
+purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book,
+"On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages
+to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is
+not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the
+intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly
+have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his
+fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to
+extract the essentials of his position.
+
+A glance over human history suffices to teach us that from age to age
+man has held to be true or false various opinions on rights, customs,
+religion, the State, philosophy, land-holding, trade, industry, etc.,
+that he has had various economic arrangements, and forms of the State
+and of society, and that he has gone through an endless series of
+struggles and wars and migrations. How has this complicated variety of
+human thought and action come about? Marx raises that question, which,
+so far as he is concerned, does not aim in the first place at the
+discovery of the origin of thought, of rights, of religion, of
+society, of trade, etc.; these he takes to be historically given. He
+is rather concerned to find out the causes, the impulses, or the
+springs which produce the changes and revolutions of the essentials
+and forms of the mental and social phenomena, or which create the
+tendencies thereto. In a sentence: What interested Marx here was not
+the _origin_, but the development and change of things--he is
+searching for the dynamic law of history.
+
+Marx answered: The prime motive power of human society, which is
+responsible for the changes of human consciousness and thought, or
+which causes the various social institutions and conflicts to arise,
+does not originate, in the first place, from thought, from the Idea,
+from the world-reason or the world-spirit, but from the material
+conditions of life. The basis of human history is therefore material.
+The material conditions of life--that is, the manner in which men as
+social beings, with the aid of environing nature, and of their own
+in-dwelling physical and intellectual qualities, shape their material
+life, provide for their sustenance, and produce, distribute and
+exchange the necessary goods for the satisfaction of their needs.
+
+Of all categories of material conditions of existence, the most
+important is production of the necessary means of life. And this is
+determined by the nature of the productive forces. These are of two
+kinds: inanimate and personal. The inanimate productive forces are:
+soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools and machines. The personal
+productive forces are: the labourers, the inventors, discoverers,
+engineers, and finally, the qualities of the race--the inherited
+capacities of specific groups of men, which facilitate work.
+
+The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual
+and mental labourers; they are the real creators of exchange-value in
+capitalist society. The next place of importance is taken by modern
+technology, which is an eminently revolutionising force in
+society.--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14,
+"Poverty of Philosophy" (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.))
+
+So much for the conception "Productive Forces," which plays an
+important part with Marx. We come now to the other equally important
+notion, "Conditions of production." By this phrase Marx understands
+the legal and State forms, ordinances and laws, as well as the
+grouping of social classes and sections: thus, the social conditions
+which regulate property and determine the reciprocal human relations
+in which production is carried on. The conditions of production are
+the work of men in society. Just as men produce various material goods
+out of the materials and forces made available to them by Nature, so
+they create out of the reactions of the productive forces upon the
+mind definite social, political, and legal institutions, as well as
+systems of religion, morals, and philosophy.
+
+"Men make their own history, but do not so spontaneously in conditions
+chosen by them, but on the contrary, in conditions which they have
+found ready to hand transmitted and given."--(Marx, "The Eighteenth
+Brumaire," I.)
+
+That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs,
+men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their
+philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or
+the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and
+philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner
+that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it
+strength, and promotes its development.
+
+The foundation is material, and the superstructure is the psychical
+reflex and effect.
+
+In broad outlines this conception may be illustrated somewhat as
+follows:
+
+Primitive human groups lived under Communism and were organised
+according to blood relationship. Their deities have the
+characteristics of their natural environment, and reflect the physical
+effects of this environment upon the primitive mental life of the
+"savage"; their religion, their morality, and their laws promote the
+communal life and the tribal discipline. Feudal society is based on
+the possession of land by the nobles and on the industrial labour of
+the corporations of the towns. The inherited religious ideas are soon
+transformed in accordance with the dominant interests of these
+historical periods (primitive Christianity became a State religion);
+all religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas antagonistic to these
+interests were fought and persecuted. The middle-class society, which
+is based on personal property, is endeavouring to sweep away all
+vestiges of communal and corporation rights, to set free the
+individual, to mobilise labour and property, to abolish Feudalism and
+the old Church and monasterial institutions, and to put in their place
+the individual relation between man and God, or the personal
+conscience (the Reformation), introducing individual rights as well;
+it struggles against the independent sovereignty of the feudal
+domains, and labours for a united national territory, which will
+afford greater scope to trade and commerce; it supports Absolutism, so
+long as the latter is in conflict with the feudal lords; and when,
+afterwards, Absolutism is a hindrance to the development of
+middle-class society, this also is fought and a constitutional
+monarchy or a republic demanded. And all this takes place not because
+certain human intelligences, by reason of more intense thought, or
+enlightenment, or the call of a supernatural power, are primarily at
+work, but as a consequence of the influence of the material basis, of
+the economic foundation of society, upon the mind, which translates
+and transforms these external realities into religious, juridical, and
+philosophic conceptions:
+
+"It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence,
+but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their
+consciousness."--(Marx, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
+
+Man, even the most heroic, is not the sovereign maker and law-giver of
+social life, but its executive; he only follows out the tendencies and
+currents set up by the material foundation of society. Nevertheless, a
+great deal depends upon the executive officials. If they possess
+comprehensive knowledge, energetic natures, and outstanding
+capacities, they are able, within the boundaries drawn for them, to
+accomplish great things, and to accelerate the development.
+
+"Up to the present the philosophers have but interpreted the world; it
+is, however, necessary to change it."--(Marx, "Theses to Feuerbach.")
+
+We have referred in various places to interests. We are not to
+understand by this personal, but general social or class interests.
+Marx is not of the opinion that everybody acts in accordance with his
+personal welfare. This is not Marxian doctrine, but that of the
+middle-class moral philosophers, like Helvetius (1715-1771) and Jeremy
+Bentham (1748-1832), who regarded pleasure and pain of the individual
+as the measure and motive of his actions and conduct. Marx is rather
+of the opinion that men often, in the most important events of their
+lives, act contrary to their personal interests, as in their feelings
+and thoughts they identify themselves with that which they hold to be
+the interests of the community or of their class. According to Marx,
+individual interest generally plays a slight part in history. He is
+preoccupied with the collective interest of social production. Only
+the latter does he hold to be determining in the formation of the
+intellectual superstructure.
+
+Up till now we have only spoken of various forms of production and
+society, and their corresponding mental systems. But we do not yet
+know why and how one form of production and society becomes obsolete
+and gives place to another, that is, how and why revolutionary changes
+are brought about. Or in other words: we have hitherto considered the
+statics of society; we will now look at its dynamics.
+
+The revolutionary changes in society depend on two groups of
+phenomena, which, although casually connected with each other, yet
+work differently. One of these groups of phenomena is technical, and
+consists in changes in the productive forces. The other group, which
+is the effect of the first, is of a personal nature, and consists in
+struggles between the social classes. Let us consider the first group
+of causes.
+
+As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of
+the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets,
+through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and
+through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the
+material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then
+the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of
+production. For the conditions of production: the former social
+classes, the former laws, State institutions, and intellectual systems
+were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in
+process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and
+intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic
+foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production
+come into conflict with each other.
+
+This conflict between the new realty and the old form, this conflict
+between new causes and the obsolete effects of bygone causes, begins
+gradually to influence the thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that
+they are confronted with a new external world, and that a new era has
+been opened.
+
+Social divisions acquire a new significance: classes and sections
+which were formerly despised gain in social and economic power;
+classes which were formerly honoured decline. While this
+transformation of the social foundation is proceeding, the old
+religious, legal, philosophical, and political systems cling to their
+inherited positions, and insist on remaining, although they are
+obsolete and can no longer satisfy mental needs. For human thought is
+conservative: it follows external events slowly, just as our eye
+perceives the sun at a point which the sun has in reality already
+passed, as the rays require several minutes of time in order to strike
+our optic nerves. We may recall Hegel's fine metaphor: "The Owl of
+Minerva begins its flight only when twilight gathers." However late,
+it does begin. Great thinkers gradually arise, who explain the new
+situation, and create new ideas and trains of thought which correspond
+to the new situation. The human consciousness gives birth to anxious
+doubts and questionings, and then new truths; leading to differences
+of opinion, disputes, strifes, schisms, class struggles, and
+revolutions.
+
+In the next chapter we will consider more closely the class struggle
+between Labour and Capital. Meanwhile, we will look at the class
+struggle generally.
+
+In primitive societies, where private property is yet unknown, or
+still undeveloped, there are no class distinctions, no class
+domination, and no class antagonisms. The chief, the medicine man, and
+the judge regulate or supervise the observance of the customary
+usages, religious ceremonies, and social arrangements. But as soon as
+the old order is dissolved, and private property develops, in
+consequence of trade with other peoples or through wars, there arise
+classes of those who possess and those who do not. The possessing
+class carries on the Government, makes laws, and creates
+institutions, which chiefly serve the end of protecting the interests
+of the possessing and ruling classes. The intellectual structure of
+the class society likewise corresponds to the interests of those who
+possess and rule. So long as these interests promote the common good
+in some measure, so long as the old forms of production and the old
+conditions of production are largely in harmony with each other, a
+certain truce prevails between the classes. But should there set in
+the above-mentioned opposition between the productive forces and the
+conditions of production, the latter will cease to satisfy the
+oppressed classes, and class conflicts will arise, which will either
+result in legal compromises (reforms) or will end in the overthrow of
+the society concerned, or will lead to a new set of conditions.
+Ancient history (Hebrew, Greek, Roman) is full of these social
+struggles; all the great reform laws of these peoples were attempts to
+establish social peace, but the rich and the poor, the Patricians and
+the Plebeians, the Slaves and Freemen, continued their struggles until
+the downfall of the old world, which has bequeathed to us great
+intellectual treasures as the fruit of these struggles. In the Middle
+Ages social struggles between the feudal lords and the traders,
+between nobles and peasants, were kindled. In more recent times the
+middle classes fought Autocracy and Squirearchy, and at length the
+proletariat was pitted against the bourgeoisie--class struggles which
+led to rebellions and revolutions, and powerfully influenced the
+intellectual life.
+
+From these historical antagonisms and struggles arose the intellectual
+and political antagonisms, personified by the leaders of the social
+groups and classes, of which world-history relates: opposing
+religious and philosophical systems: Brahma and Buddha, Baal and
+Jahveh, National God and Universal God, Heathendom and Christendom,
+Catholicism and Protestantism, Materialism and Idealism, Realism and
+Nominalism. However abstract or metaphysical, however remote from
+actual life and material production they may appear to be,
+nevertheless, in the last resort they are to be traced back through
+many intermediate stages to changes in the economic foundation of the
+society in question, to the contradiction between this foundation and
+the conditions of production, as well as to the great struggles
+between conflicting interests which spring therefrom. The ethical,
+political, and politico-economic systems which strive with each other
+for mastery, as well as national and world wars, are separated from
+the real basis of society by a progressively smaller number of
+intermediate stages: the questions of idealist or utilitarian ethics,
+monarchy or republic, oligarchy or democracy, protection or free
+trade, State regulation or free scope for the economic forces,
+Socialism or private enterprise, etc., however lofty and humanitarian
+may be the arguments and ideal motives which their champions may
+adduce, are connected with the material foundation and the conditions
+of production which have come into conflict with it.
+
+Marx and Engels have set forth this conception in the Communist
+Manifesto, in popular form, as follows:
+
+    "Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas,
+    views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness,
+    changes with every change in the conditions of his material
+    existence, in his social relations and in his social life?
+
+    "What else does the history of ideas prove than that
+    intellectual production changes in character in proportion as
+    material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age
+    have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
+
+    "When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do
+    but express the fact that within the old society the elements of
+    a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old
+    ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions
+    of existence.
+
+    "When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient
+    religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas
+    succumbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal
+    society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary
+    bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of
+    conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free
+    competition within the domain of knowledge."
+
+Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social
+divisions into classes, and the laws of property become fetters to the
+productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves
+into class struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.
+
+    "With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense
+    superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
+    considering such transformations the distinction should always
+    be made between the material transformation of the economic
+    conditions of production which can be determined with the
+    precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
+    religious, aesthetic, or philosophic--in short, ideological forms
+    in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
+    Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
+    thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period
+    of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
+    this consciousness must rather be explained from the
+    contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
+    between the social forces of production and the conditions of
+    production."--(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")
+
+The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had
+become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and
+strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production
+which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to
+disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks
+into oblivion. The men who assist the progress of the new society
+accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to
+solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development.
+Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the
+theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the
+contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.
+
+Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human
+society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and
+perfection of the productive forces.
+
+"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the
+ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production,
+as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of
+society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last
+antagonistic form of the social process of production--antagonistic
+not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from
+conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same
+time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society
+create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.
+This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of
+the prehistoric stage of human society."
+
+Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The
+capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is
+written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and
+exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive
+forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may
+enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of
+history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up
+wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled
+on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and
+was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had
+emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years
+to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed
+under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully
+stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the
+ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.
+
+The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a
+fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea
+were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in
+the positions of classes and the struggles which followed hard on the
+English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the
+transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable
+to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of
+the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and
+pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.
+
+
+II. CLASSES, CLASS STRUGGLES, AND CLASS-CONSCIOUSNESS.
+
+One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding
+of historical processes is his conception of social classes and of
+class struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and
+politicians who pointed out the part played by social classes in
+politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this
+conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise
+form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought.
+He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following
+terms:
+
+    "The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those
+    of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence
+    in the early undeveloped period of the struggle between
+    proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see,
+    indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the
+    decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the
+    proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle
+    of a class without any historical initiative or any independent
+    political movement."
+
+The classification of the various groups of society, or the division
+of human society into classes, is as logical a process, that is, a
+result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of
+animals, plants, and minerals into various classes. A specific group
+of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is
+put in a certain class by social science. This classification cannot
+be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.
+It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether
+they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain
+scientifically established features which determine the social
+classification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts
+to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics
+were valid for purposes of classification. In his view, the manner in
+which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief
+characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the
+working class. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the
+ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material)
+form the capitalist class. It is of little moment that a worker owns a
+savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative
+society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking,
+or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages
+of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the
+chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of
+the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that
+the social classes are not completely homogeneous. Like botanical and
+zoological classes, they may be divided into kinds and species; the
+working classes include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as
+sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social classes
+possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of
+livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of
+capital. One class disposes only of labour-power, while the other
+class owns the means of production.
+
+Between these two classes, says Marx, there are deep-seated,
+unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a class struggle. The
+antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as
+the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as
+possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the
+owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as
+possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is
+indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the
+intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is
+only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction
+is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he
+does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is
+therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve,
+if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist
+imposes. Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can
+oppress the owner of labour-power.
+
+This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the
+prime cause of the class struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its
+incipient stage. It develops into a class struggle when the workers
+recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state,
+but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the
+subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that
+the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means
+of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers
+only participate in the class struggle when they learn to think in a
+Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops
+out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade
+Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised class, turns from
+the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and
+strives to change the basis of society from private property to common
+property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither
+freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their
+emancipation can only be attained through Socialism. The class
+struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.
+The dialectical movement will be incomplete if the working class does
+not take its fate into its own hands, and is not convinced that it has
+the power to achieve its own emancipation, and therefore contents
+itself with small social reforms, or relies on noble-minded and
+benevolent men and heroic redeemers. This was actually the case in the
+beginnings of the Socialist movement, when the workers saw in
+Socialism the only way out, but were still too weak to take their fate
+into their own hands. This was the period which Marx called Utopian,
+when outstanding personalities spread Socialist ideas, and made
+Socialist plans and experiments to free the labouring masses. As these
+personalities knew the impotence of the masses, they turned to
+philanthropists and humane rulers, and sought to convince them that
+reason, justice, and the general welfare demanded that Socialism
+should be introduced, and poverty, misery, and their consequences
+abolished. This period of Utopian Socialism gave way before the
+further development of industry, the progress of machine technique,
+the centralisation and concentration of the means of production and
+exchange, which brought with it an increase in the number, strength,
+organisation, and class-consciousness of the working classes. It is
+the centralisation of the means of production and exchange, in
+particular, which renders it possible for the working class, by
+paralysing industry and power stations, to cause the whole of society
+to feel that living labour-power forms the soul of the economic life.
+
+At the same time Socialist investigators appear, who not only show the
+reasonableness and justice of Socialism, but exhibit the proof that
+the new economic order of Socialism is being prepared in the womb of
+Capitalism, and that therefore the aspirations of the worker are in
+harmony with the course of social development.
+
+In this wise, a science and an aspiring Socialist movement founded
+upon reality develops from Utopian Socialism, and, conscious of class,
+of power, and of aim, enters upon the decisive struggle with the
+capitalist economic order. The class struggle acts as a lever of
+social revolution.
+
+The original antagonism of the worker and capitalist over wages and
+hours of labour becomes am impassionate struggle of two classes over
+the question of the maintenance or transformation of the social and
+economic system--one of which classes fights for the existing order of
+private property and the other for the coming Socialistic system.
+Great social class struggles inevitably become political struggles.
+The immediate object of the struggle is the possession of the power of
+the State, with the aid of which the capitalist class endeavours to
+maintain its position, whilst the working class aims at the conquest
+of the power of the State in order to accomplish its larger objects.
+
+The following chapter will show the direction taken by the Labour
+movement. Here we will but briefly refer to the profound influence of
+Marx's doctrine of the class struggle as exercised in political
+thought. Prior to Marx, political thought and the struggles of
+political parties seemed to revolve around ideas and great
+personalities. Idealogy and hero-worship were prevalent. Now,
+political thought, consciously or unconsciously, proceeds along class
+and economic lines. This is equally true of historical investigations.
+These new political and historical orientations are largely the result
+of Marx's life-work.
+
+Rigidly conceived and applied, the Marxian doctrine of the
+class-struggle may lead to ultra-revolutionary tactics of the
+Socialist and Labour movement, to the system of Workers' Councils, and
+Proletarian Dictatorship. If the emerging class and its struggle
+constitutes the lever of social revolution and the impulse of the
+dialectical social process, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat is
+justified, and in any case, democracy, which includes both the
+capitalist and working class, cannot be the State form during the
+transition period from private property to Socialism. Considered from
+the economic standpoint, political democracy is generally impossible,
+or only sham democracy so long as economic inequality exists. The
+Communist Manifesto does not contain a single political democratic
+reform. The conclusion can be drawn from Marx's idea, as a whole, that
+in his estimation, the class stood higher than so-called democracy.
+This is one of the sources of Bolshevism.
+
+
+III. THE ROLE OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AND THE PROLETARIAN DICTATORSHIP.
+
+The Labour Party is the political expression of the whole Trade Union
+movement so far as the latter formulates national demands, directed
+towards the State and society generally. The Labour Party will
+function the more effectively, and be able to accomplish its allotted
+task, as its foundation--the Trade Union movement--becomes established
+and strengthened, and the more comprehensive will be its effects. The
+Trade Unions are not merely to be satisfied with the work of the
+present, but are to become the focus and centre of gravity of the
+proletarian aspirations which arise out of the social transformation
+process, and are to work for the abolition of Capitalism. The most
+effective lever for the achievement of this object is the conquest of
+political power. With its aid the proletariat can consciously carry
+out the transformation of a Capitalist into a Communist society. To
+this transformation, there also corresponds a political transition
+period, the state of which can be nothing else than a revolutionary
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat.--(Marx, Letter to the German Social
+Democracy, 1875, on their Gotha Programme.)
+
+Marx considered himself to be the real author of the idea of the
+Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In a letter written by him, in 1852,
+to his American friend, Weydemeyer, he declares:
+
+    "As far as I am concerned, I can't claim to have discovered the
+    existence of classes in modern society or their strife against
+    one another. Middle-class historians long ago described the
+    evolution of the class struggles, and political economists
+    showed the economic physiology of the classes. I have added as a
+    new contribution the following propositions: (1) that the
+    existence of classes is bound up with certain phases of material
+    production; (2) that the class struggle leads necessarily to the
+    Dictatorship of the Proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship is
+    but the transition to the abolition of all classes and to the
+    creation of a society of free and equal."--("Neue Zeit," Vol.
+    XXV., second part, p. 164.)
+
+With the exception of the year 1870, Marx remained true to his
+doctrine of Proletarian Dictatorship: he thought in 1875 as he did in
+1847, when he sketched the groundwork of the Proletarian Dictatorship
+in the Communist Manifesto:
+
+    "The first step in the revolution by the working class is to
+    raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win
+    the battle of democracy.
+
+    "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by
+    degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all
+    instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of
+    the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase
+    the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.
+
+    "Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
+    means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the
+    conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
+    therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable,
+    but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves,
+    necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are
+    unavoidable as a means of entirely 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 the social reformists. In this case, Marx gives the
+following advice: "Separate from it, and fight it." In the address to
+the League of Communists in 1850 he said:
+
+    "It may be taken for granted that in the bloody conflicts that
+    are coming, as in the case of previous ones, the courage,
+    resolution, and sacrifice of the workers will be the chief
+    factor in the attainment of victory. As hitherto, so in this
+    struggle, the mass of the lower middle class will maintain an
+    attitude of delay, irresolution, and inactivity as long as
+    possible, in order that, as soon as victory is assured, to
+    arrogate it to themselves and call on the workers to remain
+    quiet, return to work, avoid so-called excesses, and to exclude
+    the proletariat from the fruits of victory. It is not in the
+    power of the workers to hinder the lower middle classes from
+    doing this, but it is within their power to render their success
+    over the armed proletariat very difficult, to dictate to them
+    such conditions that from the beginning the rule of the
+    middle-class democrats is doomed to failure, and its later
+    substitution by the rule of the proletariat is considerably
+    facilitated.
+
+    "The workers must, during the conflict and immediately
+    afterwards, as much as ever possible, oppose the compromises of
+    the middle class, and compel the democrats to execute their
+    present terrorist threats. They must aim at preventing the
+    subsiding of the revolutionary excitement immediately after the
+    victory. On the contrary, they must endeavour to maintain it as
+    long as possible.
+
+    "Far from opposing so-called excesses, and making examples of
+    hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful
+    remembrances are attached, by sacrificing them to the popular
+    rage, such examples must not only be tolerated, but their
+    direction must even be taken in hand. During the struggle and
+    after the struggle, the workers must seize every opportunity to
+    present their own demands side by side with those of the
+    middle-class democrats. The workers must demand guarantees as
+    soon as the middle-class democrats propose to take the
+    government in hand. If necessary, these guarantees must be
+    exacted, and the new rulers must be compelled to make every
+    possible promise and concession, which is the surest way to
+    compromise them. The workers must size up the conditions in a
+    cool and dispassionate fashion, and manifest open distrust of
+    the new Government, in order to quench, as much as possible, the
+    ardour for the new order of things and the elation which follows
+    every successful street fight. Against the new official
+    Government, they must set up a revolutionary workers'
+    government, either in the form of local committees, communal
+    councils, or workers' clubs or workers' committees, so that the
+    democratic middle-class government not only immediately loses
+    its support amongst the working classes, but from the
+    commencement finds itself supervised and threatened by a
+    jurisdiction, behind which stands the entire mass of the working
+    class. In a word: from the first moment of victory the workers
+    must no longer level their distrust against the defeated
+    reactionary party, but direct it against their former allies,
+    who would seek to exploit the common victory for their own ends.
+    The workers must be armed and organised to enable them to
+    threaten energetic opposition to this party, whose treason to
+    the workers will commence in the first hour of victory. The
+    arming of the whole proletariat with rifles and ammunition must
+    be carried out at once, and steps taken to prevent the reviving
+    of the old militia, which would be directed against the workers.
+    But should this not be successful, the workers must endeavour to
+    organise themselves as an independent guard, choosing their own
+    chief and general staff, with orders to support not the State
+    power, but the councils formed by the workers. Where workers are
+    employed in State service, they must arm and organise in a
+    special corps, with a chief chosen by themselves, or form a part
+    of the Proletarian Guard. Under no pretext must they give up
+    their arms and equipment, and any attempt at disarmament must
+    be forcibly resisted. Destruction of the influence of the
+    middle-class democrats over the workers, immediate independent
+    and armed organisation of the workers, and the imposition of the
+    most irksome and compromising conditions possible upon the rule
+    of the bourgeois democracy, which is for the time
+    unavoidable.... We have noted that the Democrats come to power
+    in the next phase of the movement, and how they will be obliged
+    to impose measures of a more or less Socialistic nature. It will
+    be asked what contrary measures should be proposed by the
+    workers. Naturally, in the beginning of the movement the workers
+    cannot propose actual Communist measures, but they can (1)
+    compel the Democrats to attack the old social order from as many
+    sides as possible, disturb its regular course, and compromise
+    themselves, and concentrate in the hands of the State as much as
+    possible of the productive forces, means of transport,
+    factories, railways, etc. (2) When the Democrats propose
+    measures which are not revolutionary, but merely reformist, the
+    workers must press them to the point of turning such measures
+    into direct attacks on private property; thus, for example, if
+    the small middle class propose to purchase the railways and
+    factories the workers must demand that such railways and
+    factories, being the property of the reactionaries, shall be
+    simply confiscated by the State, without compensation. If the
+    Democrats propose a proportional tax, the workers must demand a
+    progressive tax; if the Democrats themselves declare for a
+    moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a tax so
+    steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large fortunes; if
+    the Democrats demand the regulation of the State debt, the
+    workers must demand State bankruptcy. Thus the demands of the
+    workers must everywhere be directed against the concessions and
+    measures of the Democrats.... Further, the Democrats will either
+    work directly for a Federal Republic, or, at least, if they
+    cannot avoid the Republic one and indivisible, will seek to
+    paralyse it by granting the greatest possible independence to
+    the municipalities and provinces. The workers must set
+    themselves against this plan, not only to secure the one and
+    indivisible German Republic, but to concentrate as much power as
+    possible in the hands of the State. They need not be misled by
+    democratic platitudes about the freedom of the Communes,
+    self-determination, etc. Their battle-cry must be 'the
+    revolution in permanence.'"
+
+This Address of Marx, written in 1850, appears to be the guide of the
+Bolsheviks and Spartacists.
+
+The working classes may, however, not expect their immediate
+emancipation from their political victory.
+
+    "In order to work out their own emancipation, and with it that
+    higher form of life which present-day society inevitably
+    opposes, the protracted struggle must pass through a whole
+    series of historical processes, in the course of which men and
+    circumstances alike will be changed. They have no ideal to
+    realise; they have only to set free the elements of the new
+    society, which have already developed in the womb of the
+    collapsing bourgeois society."--(Marx, "Civil War in France.")
+
+The means of production will gradually be socialised, production will
+be placed on a co-operative basis, education will be combined with
+productive work, in order to transform the members of society into
+producers. So long as the transition period lasts the Communist
+maxim, "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his
+needs," cannot become operative. For this period is in every
+respect--economic, social, and intellectual--still tainted with the
+marks of the old society, and "rights cannot transcend the economic
+structure of society, and the cultural development which it
+determines."--(Criticism of Gotha Program.) To each will be given
+according to his deeds.
+
+"Accordingly the individual producer will receive back what he gives
+to society, after deductions for government, education, and other
+social charges. He will give society his individual quota of labour.
+For example: the social working day consists in the sum total of
+individual working days; the individual labour time of the individual
+producer is the part of the social working day which he contributes;
+his share thereof. He will receive from society a certificate that he
+has performed so much work (after deducting his work for social
+funds), and with this certificate he will draw from the social
+provision of articles of consumption as much as a similar quantity of
+labour costs. The same quantity of labour as he will give to society
+in one form he will receive back in another.... The right of producers
+will be proportionate to the work they will perform: the equality will
+consist in the application of the same measure: labour."
+
+Because performances will vary in accordance with unequal gifts and
+degrees of diligence, an unequal distribution will actually take place
+during the transition period. Only in a fully developed Communistic
+society, after the distinction between intellectual and physical
+labour has disappeared, when productive activity has become a first
+need of life, when the all-round development of the individual and
+the productive forces has been achieved, and all the springs of
+co-operative riches flow abundantly; only then can the narrow
+middle-class idea of rights be improved on, and the Communist
+principle of equality be put into operation.
+
+Marx, who reasoned on strictly economic lines, and placed the
+emancipation of the working class as the highest goal, to which all
+other political and economic movements are subordinated, did not
+mistake the economic, political, and historical role of the nation:
+this is shown by the Communist Manifesto, where the creation of the
+national State by the bourgeoisie is indicated. He mocked at the young
+enthusiasts who thought they could brush aside the nation as an
+obsolete prejudice, but, in spite of this, he considerably
+under-estimated the unifying force of national feeling, considered
+from a biological and cultural point of view. He divided civilised
+mankind into antagonistic classes, and assumed that the economic
+dividing lines would prove to be more effective than national and
+political boundary lines. He was, therefore, through and through
+international. Marx demanded that the national Labour Parties should
+act internationally as soon as there was a possibility of the collapse
+of the capitalist domination. He reproached the original Gotha program
+with the fact that "it borrowed from middle-class Leagues of Peace and
+Freedom the phrase of the international brotherhood of peoples,
+whereas it was necessary to promote the international combination of
+the working classes in a common struggle against the ruling classes
+and their Governments." Marx had no confidence in the pacifism of the
+bourgeoisie.
+
+
+IV. OUTLINES OF THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINES.
+
+
+1. _Capital._
+
+As we already know, Marx became a Socialist in the year 1843. As a
+believer in dialectics, he knew that Socialism can only be understood
+by a knowledge of the movement operating in middle-class society and
+its developing forces. His investigations in 1843-4 led to the result
+that political economy forms the basis of bourgeois society.
+Henceforth political economy became the chief department of his
+studies. His comprehensive studies of French and English economists,
+especially Sismondi and Ricardo, and the anti-capitalist literature of
+England of the years 1820-40, which were connected with the Ricardian
+theory of value, furnished him with a wealth of suggestions and
+materials for the criticism of political economy, for the source and
+origin and development and decline of capitalism, written from the
+standpoint of the working class and the coming Socialistic society.
+Such a work is "Capital." It consists of three volumes. Only the first
+volume (1867) was carried through the press by Marx himself. The other
+two volumes he only sketched, and they were completed and published by
+Engels after Marx's death.
+
+The first volume deals with the origin and tendencies of large
+industrial capital, with the immediate and simple process of commodity
+production, so far as it concerns the relations between employer and
+worker, the exploitation of the proletariat, wages and labour time,
+and the influence of modern technique on the condition of the worker.
+We see in the first volume the effect of the factory system in
+creating capital. Its chief figure is the producing, suffering,
+rebellious working class. In the second volume, the employer appears
+on the market, sells his commodities, and sets the wheels of
+production again in motion, so that commodities will continue to be
+produced. In the third volume, the realisation process of the
+undertakings of the capitalist class, or the movement of capital as a
+whole is exhibited: cost of production, cost price, total gains and
+their division into profit, interest and ground rent. The first volume
+presents the greatest difficulties. The tremendous efforts of the
+author to produce a masterpiece unnecessarily refined and sublimated
+and overloaded with learning the doctrines of value and surplus value
+until they attained the level of a philosophy, an example of Hegelian
+logic. He played with his subject like an intellectual athlete. That
+Marx could handle complicated economic questions in a clear, vigorous
+manner is shown by the third volume, which is written just as it came
+out of the author's head, and without the apparatus of learning
+subsequently erected, without the crutches of notes and
+polemico-philosophical excursions.
+
+To understand "Capital" it is necessary to bear in mind that (1) Marx
+regarded the scientifically discovered principles as the real inner
+being of things, practice he regarded as the superficial appearance of
+things, capable of being apprehended empirically; for example, Value
+is the theoretical expression, Price the empirical; Surplus Value is
+the theoretical, and Profit the empirical expression; the appearances
+apprehended by experience (Price and Profit) deviate indeed from
+theory, but without the theory they cannot be understood; (2) he
+looked at the capitalist economic system as being essentially free
+from external hindrances and disturbances, free from invasions both
+by the State and the proletariat: the Labour struggles of factory
+protection laws of which Marx speaks in "Capital" serve rather to
+perfect the productive forces than to restrict the exploiting
+proclivities of sovereign capital.
+
+
+2. _Value._
+
+The life and motion of capitalistic society appears as an infinite net
+of exchange operations, formed out of numerous entwined meshes.
+
+Through the medium of money, men continually exchange the most varied
+commodities and services. A ceaseless buying and selling, an
+uninterrupted series of exchanges of things, and labour power--this
+constitutes the essential part of human relations in capitalistic
+society. An economic map of these relations, graphically displayed,
+would not be less confusing than an astronomical map which exhibited
+the manifold and intersected orbits of the heavenly bodies. And yet
+there must be some rule or law which operates in this seeming medley
+of movements; for men do not work or exchange their goods by hazard,
+like savages who give their entire lumps of gold or rough diamonds for
+a necklace of glass pearls. The English and French economists in the
+seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, amongst whom Petty
+(1623-87), Quesnay (1694-1759), Adam Smith (1723-96), and Ricardo
+(1772-1823) were the most original, sought for the laws which
+regulated exchange operations, and their theories were designated by
+Marx as classical bourgeois economy. Following up their
+investigations, Marx declared: Every commodity, that is, every thing
+or good produced under Capitalism and brought to the market possesses
+a use value and an exchange value.
+
+The use value is the utility of the commodity to satisfy a physical or
+mental need of its user: a commodity without use value is not
+exchangeable or saleable. As use values, commodities are materially
+different from each other; nobody will exchange a ton of wheat for a
+ton of wheat of the same kind, but he will for clothes.
+
+In what measure will commodities exchange with one another? The
+measure is the exchange value, and this consists in the trouble and
+quantity of labour which the production of a commodity costs. Equal
+quantities of labour are exchanged with each other on the market. As
+exchange values, as the embodiment of human labour, commodities are
+essentially equal to each other, only quantitatively are they
+different, as different categories of commodities embody different
+quantities of labour. It is obvious that the quantities of labour will
+not be calculated according to the working methods of the individual
+producers, but according to the prevailing social working methods.
+
+If, for example, hand-weaver A requires twenty hours for the
+production of a piece of cloth, which in a modern factory will be
+produced in five hours, the cloth of the hand-weaver does not
+therefore possess four-fold exchange value. If hand-weaver A demands
+of consumer B an equivalent of twenty working hours, B answers that a
+similar piece of cloth can be produced in five hours, and therefore it
+only represents an exchange value of five working hours. Thus,
+according to Marx, the exchange value of a commodity consists in the
+quantity of socially necessary labour power which its reproduction
+would require.
+
+This quantity of labour is no constant factor. New inventions,
+improvements in labour processes, increase in the productivity of
+labour, etc., cause a diminution in the quantity of labour necessary
+for the reproduction of a commodity; its exchange value, or expressed
+in terms of money, its price, will therefore sink, provided that other
+things (demand, medium of exchange) remain equal.
+
+Consequently, labour is the source of exchange value, and the latter
+is the principle which regulates exchange operations. Exchange value
+even measures the extent of the commodity wealth of society. Wealth
+may increase in volume, but decrease in value, in so far as a less
+quantity of socially necessary labour becomes necessary for its
+reproduction.
+
+The more progressive a country is industrially and the higher the
+level of its civilisation, the greater is its wealth, and the smaller
+is the quantity of labour which must be expended on the creation of
+wealth. In the practical Labour politics of our times, this is
+expressed in higher wages and shorter working hours.
+
+It was said above that use value is a basic condition for the exchange
+of the individual commodity. This does not exhaust the role of use
+value. The quantity of use value of which society has need determines
+the quantity of the exchange values to be created. If more commodities
+are required than society requires, the superfluous commodities have
+no exchange value, in spite of the labour that is expended on
+them.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 1, pp. 175-176.)
+
+The complete realisation of exchange values or the social labour that
+is performed depends, as is seen, on the adaptation of supply to
+demand, and is a matter of organisation, of social direction.
+
+We have noticed that the Marxian theory of value is related to that of
+the classical economists, but they are by no means the same thing.
+Apart from some improvements and definitions which Marx made, they are
+distinguished by the following conceptions: In the classical theory of
+value, the capitalist who directs production and provides with his
+capital the tools and raw materials of labour, markets the finished
+commodity, and keeps going the processes of reproduction, appears as
+the only creator of value: the wage worker is only one of his means of
+production. In the Marxian theory of value, on the other hand, the
+wage worker who transforms the raw materials into commodities, or
+removes the raw materials to the place of production, appears as the
+sole creator of value. Value is only created by the worker in
+production, and in distribution connected therewith.
+
+
+3. _Wages and Labour._
+
+The worker appears to receive wages for his work. In reality he
+receives wages as the equivalent for the labour power expended by him,
+quite in accordance with the law of value, inasmuch as he receives by
+way of exchange as much means of sustenance as is usual and customary
+to replace the labour power he has expended, just as the working horse
+receives as much oats and hay as are necessary to maintain it capable
+of work.
+
+The capitalist and the worker exchange certain quantities of
+commodities in proportions determined by economic laws (means of
+subsistence against a quantity of the commodity, labour power, of
+equal value, commodity for commodity, exchange value for exchange
+value).
+
+As, therefore, the wages of labour signify a certain quantity of the
+means of subsistence, so they increase even if their money form
+remains unaltered with a fall in the price of the means of life, for
+the worker is then in the position, with his unaltered wage, to buy a
+greater quantity of the means of life. In the reverse case, if the
+prices of the means of life rise, the wages of labour fall, even if
+their money form remains the same as previously. This law of wages,
+formulated by Ricardo, was accepted by Marx, but he did not content
+himself with this acceptance. Ricardo regarded the capitalist world as
+the only possible and reasonable one, at least at the time when he
+wrote his "Principles," while Marx from the year 1843 adopted a
+critical attitude towards it, and sought to negate it. Consequently,
+he investigated further, and expressed himself somewhat as follows:
+
+The capitalist theoricians believed that the wages question was
+disposed of when it was settled by the law of value. We know, however,
+that every commodity possesses not only an exchange value, but also a
+use value, and is bought for the sake of the latter. The use value of
+the commodity labour power is distinguished in a very remarkable way
+from the use value of all other commodities.
+
+The use or the employment of labour power creates exchange value, and
+can create much more exchange value than itself possesses.
+
+The employer can make use of labour power so long that it not only
+creates its own exchange value (the value of the means of
+subsistence), but double this. To create the value of wages, the
+worker needs five or six hours daily, but he is obliged to produce for
+the capitalist during ten or twelve hours. If the worker were
+independent he would only produce during one half of the working day
+in order to receive his means of subsistence. This period of producing
+Marx called "necessary labour." As he is dependent on the capitalist,
+the worker must not only perform "necessary labour" but also surplus
+labour: the worker can generally only find employment under the
+conditions that, besides the time needed for himself, he also works a
+definite number of hours for the capitalist without payment. Or, as
+Marx says: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the
+labourer alive during the 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him
+from working the whole day. Therefore, the value of labour power and
+the value which labour creates in the labour process are two entirely
+different magnitudes. And this difference in the two values was what
+the capitalist had in view when he was purchasing labour power. The
+circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power
+costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same
+labour power can work during a whole day; that consequently the value
+which its use during one day creates is double what he pays for that
+use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the
+buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."
+
+"No injury to the seller," which is quite correct from the standpoint
+of Ricardo, but not from that of Marx. He often calls surplus value
+"unpaid labour," and says, for example, "the capitalist appropriates
+one half of every day's labour without payment." In other words, he
+takes away something without return. This is a very distinct ethical
+judgment.
+
+On the other hand, it is very important that in our consideration of
+the wages question we have come up against the Marxian doctrine of
+surplus value. For this doctrine is the cornerstone of the whole
+economic system of Marx.
+
+
+4. _Surplus Value._
+
+We have already noted that Marx followed the classical economics in
+his treatment of the theory of value, but improved the definition of
+it, and brought it to bear on wages. In doing this he laid stress on
+the conflict between Capital and Labour.
+
+The beginning of this dialectical process, so far as England was
+concerned, was the work of the anti-capitalistic critics, who uttered
+their protest about 1820, or three years after the appearance of
+Ricardo's work. They declared, according to Ricardo, labour is the
+source and the measure of value. And yet according to his opinion
+labour is nothing and capital everything.
+
+This should be reversed: labour must be all, and capital nothing. This
+literature was contemporaneous with the emergence of the English
+revolutionary Labour movement, from which Chartism arose at a later
+date. Piercy Ravenstone (1821) called capital a metaphysical (airy,
+impalpable) entity. Hodgskin (1827) called it a fetish, whereas they
+described labour as the economic reality. The expressions
+surplus-product and surplus-value were already known to this
+anti-capitalist school, with which Marx also connected himself when he
+set to work to elaborate his criticism of political economy.[7] But
+this literature supplied him with much less material for the
+construction of the theory of surplus value than the formulation of
+the theory of value of the classical economy. Besides, while the
+English anti-capitalist critics, like Ravenstone, Gray, Hodgskin, and
+J.F. Bray merely condemned surplus value as immoral and as the source
+of all social wrongs, Marx used the theory of surplus value as the key
+to unlock the mechanism of the capitalist system and to reveal its
+workings, its tendencies, and its final destiny. This appears to be
+the real difference between the English anti-capitalist critics and
+Marx. In this matter he was obliged to perform most of the work
+himself. The question he put was no longer "What is the substance of
+wealth and how is it measured?" but "How is its growth and continual
+accretions to be explained?" Capital is that portion of wealth which
+is employed for the purpose of gain, of increase. Whence comes this
+gain, this increase? The answer is as follows:
+
+All capital that is embarked on a productive undertaking consists of
+two parts: one part is expended on the technical means of
+production--on buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials, the
+other on wages. The first part Marx calls Constant Capital (c), the
+other part Variable Capital (v). The first is called constant, because
+it only adds to the commodities just as much value as it loses in the
+course of the productive process; it creates no fresh value: Marx also
+calls it the passive portion. The outlay on wages is called variable
+capital because it undergoes an alteration in the process of
+production: it creates new additional value: Marx also called variable
+capital the active portion, for it creates surplus value (s).
+
+This composition of capital of constant and variable parts Marx calls
+its organic composition. He calls it average or normal composition
+when the capital of a business is 80 per cent. constant and 20 per
+cent. variable. If the constant part is higher, and the variable part
+lower, he calls it capital of a high composition.
+
+Capital of under 80 per cent. constant portion and over 20 per cent.
+variable portion he calls capital of a lower composition. And rightly,
+because the higher the ladder of capitalist production is, the more
+costly and extensive are the machinery and factory buildings and the
+greater is the outlay on raw materials, whereas primitive businesses
+employ less machinery, cheaper workshops, but a relatively greater
+number of workers. The relation between (c) and (v) reveals at the
+same time the stage to which production has developed.
+
+Thus, according to Marx, it is solely the variable capital which
+creates surplus value, or, as it is commonly expressed, profit. We
+have seen above, in the explanation of the nature of wages, why
+variable capital creates more value than it is paid for by the
+capitalist; the worker does indeed receive the exchange value of his
+labour power, but the use value of the labour power functions, we have
+assumed, twice as many hours as are necessary for its reproduction.
+This surplus labour is embodied in surplus value. While the worker
+receives, let us say, a daily wage of three shillings, for the
+reproduction of which five hours of work suffice, his labour power
+will be used for ten hours. These five hours of surplus labour appear
+in the exchange value of the commodity, so that the value of the
+commodity is composed of the transferred portion of the constant
+capital, the outlay on wages, and the added surplus value. Immediately
+before the production process only constant and variable capital
+existed, or, in brief (c) and (v); after the completion of the
+production process, the commodity embodies constant and variable
+capital and also surplus value, or (c) and (v) and (s). This is the
+actual value of the commodity, (c) or, shortly expressed, c + v + s.
+
+The relation between wages and surplus value, or between paid and
+unpaid labour, or, shortly, s/v, Marx calls the rate of surplus value:
+it expresses the degree of the exploitation of labour.
+
+If wages amount to three shillings, which can be produced in five
+working hours, and if the worker works in the factory ten hours for
+these wages, so that he creates exchange value to the amount of six
+shillings, then the rate of surplus value is 100 per cent. The whole
+of the surplus value which arises in this manner in the process of
+production is called the mass of the surplus value, or shortly, m.s.,
+that is to say, the individual rate of surplus value multiplied by the
+total number of workers engaged in an undertaking, or the total amount
+of wages.
+
+
+5. _Profit._
+
+The mass of surplus value appears to the capitalist in the shape of
+profit. Surplus value is a Marxian scientific term which exactly
+expresses the principle of profit. Profit is a commercial expression
+which describes surplus value as it appears in practical life as a
+subject of experience, i.e., empirically.
+
+The distinction between the Marxian theoretical and the commercial
+empirical conception is, however, not so simple: it arises from the
+different conceptions of the influence of capital and labour in the
+economic process. Let us explain it more distinctly.
+
+As is known, Marx divided the capital embarked in industrial
+enterprise into two parts: into constant (technical means of
+production) and variable (living labour power, wages). He assumed that
+only the living labour power (wage labour) creates surplus value,
+whilst the constant capital only adds its own value to the new
+products.
+
+The capitalist divides his capital outlay otherwise: into fixed
+(buildings and machines) and circulating (raw materials and wages)
+capital. The fixed capital is only used up slowly and only passes
+entirely into production during a series of years--let us say 15
+years: thus of a fixed capital of L75,000, L5,000 would each year be
+consumed in the production of commodities, and written off in the
+balance sheet. On the other hand, the circulating capital (raw
+materials and wages) are wholly consumed in every period of
+production, and must be renewed at the beginning of a new period of
+production.
+
+Suppose an industrial undertaking about to be started requires a
+capital expenditure of L105,000: L75,000 fixed capital (for buildings
+and machinery), L20,000 for raw materials, L10,000 for wages. For
+convenience sake, we will suppose that the period of production lasts
+a year, and that the rate of surplus value amounts to 100 per cent.,
+that is, the labour power receives a payment of L10,000, and produces
+a value of L20,000. At the end of the year, the capitalist reckons an
+expenditure of L5,000 on account of fixed capital, and L30,000 of
+circulating capital: the commodities produced cost, therefore, a net
+outlay of L35,000. This is the cost price, without adding profit.
+According to Marx, cost price signifies (c) and (v), therefore without
+(s), (surplus value).
+
+But the capitalist knows that the manufactured commodities represent a
+greater value than the cost price. According to Marx, the surplus
+value amounts to L10,000 (as the variable capital of L10,000 creates
+surplus value at the rate of 100 per cent.); but the capitalist adds
+to the cost price a profit which includes the gains of the enterprise
+and interest on the capital outlay. If the capitalist were alone in
+the market, his profit might suck up the whole of the surplus value of
+L10,000; but he has to reckon with competition and the state of the
+market. The cost price, plus profit, is the production price as
+established by the capitalist. But according to Marx, that is, in pure
+theory, the production price is equal to the cost price, plus surplus
+value. There is thus a quantitative distinction--a difference in the
+amount of money--between the theoretical and practical production
+price, as well as a qualitative distinction between the notions of the
+capitalist and Marx respecting the source of profit. The capitalist
+believes that profit is the result of the portion of capital which he
+has put into the process of production, combined with his own
+commercial ability. On the other hand, Marx asserts that the
+capitalist can only extract a profit because the wage workers (the
+living labour power) create a surplus value in the process of
+production for which they receive no payment.
+
+We assumed that the surplus value amounted to 100 per cent. measured
+with variable capital, and that L10,000 expended on wages produced
+L20,000. The annual balance sheet, however, would show the percentage
+of profit to the total outlay. Consequently, we must spread the
+L10,000 surplus value over the L35,000 which have been expended. The
+surplus value of an undertaking spread over the total capital (c)
+Marx calls the rate of profit, or shortly, s/c = 10000/35000 = 28.58
+per cent.
+
+As a rule, the capitalist cannot sell under cost price without
+becoming bankrupt, but he can quite easily sell under the production
+price, and mostly does so. In the example already given, his rate of
+profit amounts to over 28 per cent. According to the degree of
+competition, or by reason of other circumstances which we will examine
+in the next chapter, he can content himself with a rate of profit of
+10, 15, or 20 per cent., which will serve him partly as an income and
+partly be expended in the development of his enterprise. The 28 per
+cent. profit generally forms a circle within which he fixes his
+manufactured price. Under favourable circumstances he can add the
+whole 28 per cent, to the price; under less favourable, only 20, 15,
+or 10 per cent. Accordingly, several portions of surplus value remain
+in the commodities which are not yet realised. What happens to them?
+The remaining portions of profit or of surplus value fall to the large
+or small traders who are interposed between producer and consumer, or
+go in the form of interest to the banking institutions, in the event
+of the capitalist operating with borrowed money. As the profit is only
+realised in the process of circulation (in commerce and exchange) and
+there divided amongst the various economic classes and sections, most
+people believe that profit arises in commercial transactions. They do
+not know that the price of a commodity can only be increased in trade
+because its manufactured price was fixed below its price of production
+or its value, that is, because the commodities contain surplus value
+which is only gradually realised in the process of circulation.
+
+The social significance of this doctrine is far-reaching. If it is
+correct, then all the social sections which are not engaged as manual
+and brain workers in the process of production, or in the transport of
+raw material, lead a parasitical life and consume the surplus value
+which is squeezed by the capitalist class out of the proletariat and
+appropriated without payment.
+
+Quite otherwise are capitalist ideas. According to them, profit is the
+result both of the spirit of the enterprise and the ability of the
+capitalist, added to that portion of the capital which is put into the
+process of production: the machines and buildings and raw materials
+which are used up, and the labour power, all of which are bought at
+their proper exchange value. It is only fit and proper that the trader
+and moneylender should receive a portion of the profit so created, for
+they assist in realising the exchange value by bringing the
+commodities to the consumer, and thus rendering possible the process
+of production.
+
+Surplus value or profit? Labour or Capital? Behind this question lurks
+the great class struggle of the modern social order. No wonder the
+Marxian doctrine of value and surplus value was the occasion for an
+extensive controversy, in which the famous problem of the average rate
+of profit played a great part.
+
+
+6. _The Average Rate of Profit._
+
+According to Marx's doctrine of value and surplus value only variable
+capital creates fresh value and surplus value. An industrial
+undertaking of a lower organic composition, which thus employs much
+variable capital and little constant capital, must consequently
+create a greater surplus value or more profit than an industrial
+undertaking of higher composition which may employ the same total
+capital, but composed of greater constant and smaller variable
+portions than the former. Let us take two industrial capitals of
+L35,000 each. One expends L15,000 on the constant elements (machinery,
+raw materials) and L20,000 on the variable element (wages of labour).
+The other shows L20,000 constant part and L15,000 variable part. With
+an equal rate of surplus value--100 per cent.--the first capital would
+produce L20,000 surplus value (profit) and the other only L15,000
+profit. Experience shows, however, that equal amounts of capital--in
+spite of temporary differences in profits--tend to produce equal
+profits. From this, it would appear that it is actually the capital
+expended and not the labour employed which determines the magnitude of
+the surplus value (profit), that the concrete results of the
+capitalist process of production do not confirm the Marxian theory of
+value, that the facts directly contradict the theory. It was Marx
+himself who drew attention to this problem. After he had constructed
+his theory of surplus value in the form of a scientific law, he
+continued: "This law clearly contradicts all experience based on
+appearance. Everyone knows that a cotton spinner, who, reckoning the
+percentage on the whole of his applied capital, employs much constant
+capital and little variable capital, does not, on account of this,
+pocket less profit or surplus value than a baker, who relatively sets
+in motion much variable and little constant capital."
+
+How, then, can the equal rate of profit in the case of capitals of
+different organic composition be harmonised with the theory of surplus
+value?
+
+Marx concedes that equal capital sums whose organic parts are
+unequally employed give an equal rate of profit, although the volumes
+of surplus value created are different. Two capital sums of L50,000
+each, one of which, for example, represents L40,000 constant and
+L10,000 variable capital, and with a rate of surplus value of 100 per
+cent. gives L10,000 surplus value, while the other is composed of
+L10,000 constant and L40,000 variable capital, and with an equal rate
+of surplus value gives an amount of L40,000 surplus value, will
+nevertheless yield an equal rate of profit, although theoretically
+they would be unequal if the rate of surplus value directly determined
+the rate of profit. In the first case, the rate of profit would amount
+to 20 per cent. and in the second to 80 per cent. In reality both
+undertakings yield an equal rate of profit.
+
+How is this explained, according to Marx? By means of competition, the
+different rates of profit are levelled to a general rate of profit,
+which is the average of all the various rates of profit. Thus the
+capitalists do not realise the surplus value as it is created in any
+particular factory, but in the form of average rate of profit as it is
+produced by the operations of the total capital of society. The
+average rate of profit may be lower or higher than the individual rate
+of profit, for the "various capitalists," as Marx explains, "so far as
+profits are concerned, are so many stockholders in a stock company in
+which the shares of profits are uniformly divided for every 100 shares
+of capital, so that profits differ in the case of the individual
+capitalists only according to the amount of capital invested by each
+of them in the social enterprise, according to his investment in
+social production as a whole, according to his shares."
+
+While thus the individual rates of profit do not proportionately
+coincide with the rates of surplus value, i.e., while the degree of
+exploitation of the worker in the individual factory, and the volume
+of surplus value thus individually created, do not directly determine
+the individual rate of profit, it is the total mass of social surplus
+value which is the source of the average rate of profit. If the mass
+of the surplus value be large, the average rate of profit will also be
+great. Marx says: "It is here just the same as with average rate of
+interest which a usurer makes who lends out various portions of his
+capital at different rates of interest. The level of his average rate
+depends entirely on how much of his capital he has lent at each of the
+different rates of interest." The higher the various individual rates
+of interest, the higher will be the average rate of interest at which
+his capital has been put out.
+
+The individual price of production signifies, therefore, cost price
+plus the average rate of profit, and not plus surplus value: it does
+not necessarily correspond with the total amount of the constant and
+variable portions of capital employed in an individual enterprise,
+plus the mass of the surplus value: the prices and magnitudes of value
+of commodities are not manifestly equal, as Marx has often pointed
+out. Of course, the total profits of the capitalist class coincide
+with the total surplus value extracted from the working class,
+provided, of course, that the supply of commodities corresponds with
+the social needs.
+
+Thus the law of surplus value, in spite of all deviations and
+refractions, holds good in the last resort. "In theory," observes
+Marx, "it is assumed that the laws of the capitalist mode of
+production develop freely. In reality, there is always only an
+approximation."
+
+And the more capitalist production develops, the greater will be the
+degree of approximation in particular cases, for the progress of
+Capitalism signifies a continuous increase of constant capital, a more
+mechanical character being given to industrial processes, and a
+reduction of variable capital to the necessary minimum, so that the
+differences in the organic composition of capitalist undertakings
+become less, thus bringing the average rate of profit and the rate of
+surplus value nearer to each other.
+
+This indirect and difficult method of realising profits involves the
+fact that the capitalist does not distinctly observe the exploitation
+of wage labour practised by him, but he believes that the profit is
+owing to his own commercial ability.
+
+This difficult section of the outlines of the economic doctrines of
+Marx can be most fitly concluded by quoting the comprehensive
+observations of Marx himself upon this subject, which he gives at the
+end of his book.--("Capital" (German), Vol. III., 2, pp. 355-6.)
+
+"In a capitalist society, this surplus value or this surplus product
+(leaving aside accidental fluctuations in its distribution and
+considering only the regulating law of these fluctuations) is divided
+among the capitalists as a dividend in proportion to the percentage of
+the total social capital held by each. In this shape the surplus value
+appears as the average profit, which in its turn is separated into
+profits of enterprise and interest, and which in this way may fall
+into the hands of different kinds of capitalists. Just as the active
+capitalist squeezes surplus labour, and with it surplus value in the
+form of profit out of the worker, so the landlord in his turn squeezes
+a portion of this surplus value from the capitalist in the shape of
+rent. Hence when speaking of profit as that portion of surplus value
+which falls to the share of capital, we mean average profit....
+Profits of capital (profits of enterprise plus interest) and ground
+rent are merely particular constituents of surplus value.... If added
+together, these parts form the sum of the social surplus value. A
+large part of profits is immediately transformed into capital." In
+this way, capital grows, or, as Marx says, accumulates.
+
+
+7. _Surplus Value as Social Driving Force._
+
+It has been said already that capital is that portion of wealth which
+is devoted to the object of increasing wealth, of gain, the extraction
+of profit or surplus value. This object dominates the capitalist
+class; the desire for surplus value is the leading impulse and
+principle motive of their activity. Goaded by this desire and
+exclusively occupied with their special interests, this class
+unconsciously and unintentionally develops the entire capitalist
+system and leads it to ever higher and more comprehensive stages.
+
+Surplus value is thus the driving force of the history of modern
+capitalist society. This principle is rigidly followed out by Marx in
+his theoretical system, which aims at showing the rise and growth of
+Capitalism.
+
+The capitalist is no scientific investigator: he is not clear himself
+whether profit is created by a portion of the capital, or is the
+result of personal productive forces, but he knows one thing--without
+living labour power, without the wage worker, his whole capital
+remains dead and does not increase; all the fixed capital and raw
+materials are of no use to him so long as they are not set in motion
+by living labour power and transformed into commodities. His efforts
+are, therefore, primarily directed to making proper use of the living
+labour power. Historically considered, little constant and relatively
+much variable capital was employed in the primitive stage of the large
+scale industry: there was as yet little machinery, and the chief thing
+was the living labour power. The workers were not yet factory
+proletarians in the modern sense, but artisans who had lost their
+independent existence.
+
+The capitalist harnessed them and utilised their labour power and
+special ability. Consequently, he strives to lengthen the working day,
+in order that as many commodities and as much profit as possible may
+be produced.
+
+If previously the wage worker had laboured ten hours, of which five
+were devoted to the production of the value of his wages and five to
+surplus value, he is now obliged to work for twelve hours, which
+increases the period for surplus labour to seven hours. The surplus
+value which is extracted through the lengthening of the working day is
+called by Marx "absolute surplus value."
+
+Meanwhile, the capitalist learns by experience that if the workers are
+so organised as to co-operate with one another, the productivity of
+labour increases. From this arises the mode of labour which Marx calls
+Co-operation, or a reorganisation of the workplace, which raises the
+entire production of commodities to a higher level. The co-operation
+of the workers in the process of production soon leads to the
+discovery that, if the worker does not himself create the whole
+product, but only a part thereof, he loses less time and becomes
+quicker and more skilful in his work and produces more than
+previously. This discovery leads to the "division of labour," which
+indeed reduces the worker to the position of an automaton, or a living
+machine, but considerably augments commodity wealth. Division of
+labour again demands finer tools; mechanical problems arise to be
+solved by mechanicians and engineers. This favours the progress of
+mechanics. The growing commodity wealth, and the pressure to realise
+it profitably, renders necessary more extensive markets; the need for
+extension comes up against transport difficulties; transport problems
+arise, to be solved by road and canal engineers. The increasing
+variety of the labour process and the categories of commodities which
+are produced results in new metallurgical, physical, and chemical
+problems. Natural science flourishes.
+
+Meanwhile, things are not so peaceful in the places of manufacture.
+The lengthening of labour the closer strain on their nerves and
+muscles, as well as the arrangement of the work, cause the workers to
+combine and struggle for improved conditions of labour. This struggle,
+together with the progress of natural science, of technology, and the
+expansion of markets, result in the discovery of machine technology,
+of steam and electricity, the foundation of large-scale industry.
+
+The capitalist is impelled, on the one hand, to make himself as
+independent as possible of living labour-power; on the other hand, to
+increase the volume of his profits. The means thereto are offered him
+by the new technical discoveries. Those workers who still possessed
+some pride in handicraft, or as expropriated small peasants were not
+able to submit to factory discipline, and showed themselves
+rebellious, were partly replaced by the labour of women and children,
+and partly curbed and made pliable. The labour time is repeatedly
+lengthened, and the exploitation of the labour of women and children
+assumes terrible proportions. The wage worker, who entered into the
+manufacturing premises of the employer full of the pride of his
+calling and often with his own tools, became then a small cog in a
+gigantic, relentless piece of working machinery.
+
+In this extensive and hitherto unprecedented social transformation the
+old forms of handicraft disappear: whole sections of society, which
+are the representatives of the disappearing forms of handicraft, sink
+into poverty, and augment the class of proletarians. The progress of
+the industrial revolution extends also to agriculture: the greed for
+surplus value (ground rent) leads to enclosure of common lands by the
+great landlords, the independent yeomanry is decimated, the small
+proprietor and small tenant are made proletarians. A transmutation of
+social classes takes place; the urban population grows rapidly, the
+country districts are depopulated: out of the revolutionary process
+the outlines of two classes become more and more distinct: Capitalist
+and Proletarian.
+
+Both the factory proletariat and the other social sections which adopt
+a hostile attitude towards Capitalism react against the
+health-destroying exploitation, and struggle for a normal working day.
+
+The working time is curtailed and bounds are set to the efforts of the
+capitalist to lengthen the working day and obtain surplus value, but
+soon the progress of machine technique compels the worker to labour
+more intensely in the shorter working time: the accelerated movement
+of the machine determines the pace and necessitates a sharper
+straining of the nerves. Henceforth, the worker must compress into a
+working hour as much effort as was previously expended in an hour and
+a half. The surplus value which is extracted in this way Marx calls
+"relative surplus value." The struggle of the workers to secure a
+shorter working day is a powerful incentive to the manufacturers to
+perfect their machinery, in order to increase the amount of relative
+surplus value. The intensification of work or the creation of relative
+surplus value is one of the most immediate effects and one of the most
+striking features of advanced Capitalism. The understanding of this
+new phase is a preliminary condition to the comprehension of the
+Marxian system. In this matter, Marx goes considerably beyond the
+anti-capitalist theoreticians who followed upon Ricardo.
+
+What happens when the capitalist observes that the extraction of
+absolute surplus value comes up against an insurmountable obstacle? He
+sets himself to fit up his enterprise with the newest and most costly
+machinery, in order to supplant living labour-power and to work more
+intensively the living labour-power which he employs.
+
+As, however, less living labour-power brings forth less exchange value
+and less surplus value, he is obliged to multiply production, in order
+to cover the fall in surplus value by a larger mass of commodities: if
+the single commodity brings him less profit, he produces it in such
+large quantities that the profit thereon is the same, or even greater,
+than formerly. The more complicated machinery, the greater quantities
+of raw materials consumed, and the relatively smaller amount of
+labour-power signify obviously an alteration in the organic
+composition of capital: the constant portion (machinery, raw
+materials) preponderates more and more over the variable portion. If,
+previously, the composition was 50 per cent. constant and 50 per cent.
+variable, it becomes now something like 80 per cent.: 20 per cent. At
+the same time, the initial capital is also increased greatly, as
+machines and large quantities of raw and auxiliary materials demand
+such increase of capital. If, for example, the initial capital
+previously amounted to L100,000, divided into L50,000 constant and
+L50,000 variable capital, it would now amount to L500,000, comprising
+L400,000 constant and L100,000 variable. This organic composition
+signifies: that relatively smaller masses of labour set in motion
+large masses of technical means of production; labour is more
+productive because more intense; the sum total of commodities is
+increased; the profit on single articles is smaller, but the total
+profit is greater; the reconversion of profits into capital proceeds
+rapidly.
+
+The scale of production is more and more extended, and the amount of
+initial outlay becomes ever greater, because only large capitals are
+capable of creating relative surplus value in sufficient sums to
+assure a profit on the enterprise and payment of interest, and thus
+assist the accumulation of capital.
+
+The more extended scale of production is not possible to the less
+powerful capitalist undertakings. They partly disappear and partly
+combine in joint stock companies. The first alternative gives rise to
+the concentration of the means of production in fewer hands, and the
+second to the centralisation of the means of production. This is the
+effect of the new organic composition of capital on the capitalist
+class.
+
+The effect on the working class is not less profound. As long as the
+hand-worker still played an important part in the works premises, as
+long as the variable part was superior or equal to the constant part
+in the organic composition of capital, as was the case prior to and at
+the beginning of large-scale industry, the accumulation of capital
+meant an increased demand for wage-labour. The position was changed as
+Capitalism developed, in the manner just described. Although the mass
+of capital grows, there is a relative decrease in the demand for
+workers. For this growth of capital refers chiefly to the constant
+part (machinery and raw materials), while there is a relative
+shrinkage in the variable part; that means the worker is obliged to
+consume a much greater quantity of raw material than formerly.
+
+And whereas the prices of commodities fall during the phase of the
+high organic composition of capital, the period of necessary labour
+(the hours needed for the reproduction of wages) becomes shorter,
+while the period of surplus labour becomes longer. The great
+industrial development therefore signifies for the worker: intensive
+exploitation and relative over-population, a reserve army of
+labour-power, which is absorbed by industry in times of prosperous
+trade, and is speedily demobilised when the slump comes. In times of
+good business the reserve army serves to check the wage demands of the
+workers regularly employed, and in times of bad trade it serves to
+depress wages. The outcome for the workers is as follows:
+
+"Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social
+productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the
+individual labourer; all means for the development of production
+transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation
+of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a
+man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy
+every remnant of charm in his work, and turn it into a hated toil;
+they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the
+labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it
+as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he
+works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more
+hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into
+working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the
+Juggernaut of Capital. But all methods for the production of surplus
+value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every
+extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of
+those methods. It follows, therefore, that in proportion as capital
+accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must
+grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the
+same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance,
+brutality, mental degradation at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side
+of the class that produces its own product in the form of
+capital."--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., pp. 660-1.)
+
+The result of the capitalist social order is the unfolding of the
+productive forces, the efflorescence of science, the expansion of
+material civilisation, the dividing of society into antagonistic
+classes, the conferring of economic power on the few, and the
+enslavement and degradation of the many.
+
+
+8. _Economic Contradictions. Decay of Society and its Reconstruction._
+
+As the ripening of the capitalist social order to its highest point
+proceeds, its innate contradictions develop, and announce distinctly
+the fact that Capitalism has outlived its usefulness, while new life,
+a higher form of society, is emerging from its womb. The most
+important contradictions are:
+
+The driving force of the capitalist is to obtain the largest measure
+of surplus value or profit. The latest stage of Capitalism is,
+however, marked by the fact of the high organic composition of
+capital, which means that living labour-power, the source of surplus
+value, has relatively decreased. The decrease of variable capital
+signifies manifestly a lower rate of profit. Capitalism in normal
+times exhibits a tendency towards a lowering of the rate of profit.
+Therefore it gives rise to a phenomenon which contradicts the aim of
+the endeavours of the capitalists. The capitalist strives to
+accumulate capital, but as variable capital and the rate of profit
+relatively decrease, a tendency towards the depreciation of capital is
+revealed. The capitalist endeavours to counteract this tendency, and
+to achieve his object by extending the scale of production, so that
+the mass of commodities will compensate him for what he loses on them
+singly. But while he furthers this object by resorting to a higher
+organic composition of capital, he squeezes out the middleman, reduces
+the numbers of workers in employment, and creates a relative
+over-population, a reserve of those who are only employed
+intermittently; there is a substantial shrinkage in the demand for
+commodities, as the impoverished masses of the people have obviously
+less purchasing power. The capitalist extends production, and at the
+same time contracts the market. The upshot is over-production,
+under-consumption--crisis: wasting of capital, restriction of
+production, paralysis of the productive forces. And if Marx lived
+to-day he would add: the developed economy of large-scale capitalism,
+that is, the high organic composition of industrial capital, requires
+enormous quantities of raw materials, which, in part, are only to be
+had from tropical and sub-tropical countries, and also from eastern
+Asia; the struggle for these sources of raw materials, and for access
+to them, leads to wars in which capital sums of unprecedented amount
+are destroyed. Since 1894 these wars over raw materials and trade
+routes have broken out every few years. Economic crises and
+imperialist wars; immeasurable destruction of capital and productive
+forces. This is a consequence which stands in sharp contradiction to
+the historical task of the economic order of Capitalism, and to the
+immediate aims of the individual capitalists.
+
+Further, the capitalist tries from the beginning to create docile and
+unresisting masses of workers, and yet unites and combines them by the
+creation of large centres of production; the factories become centres
+for the organisation of the workers, and for the welding of the
+individual wills of the proletarians into a class will; they abolish
+the scattered and antagonistic interests of single sections of the
+workers, and consolidate them into a unified class interest. Finally,
+the whole economic process, which began by resting on individualist
+principles, has assumed a common character; thousands upon thousands
+of hand and brain workers engage in production in economic
+undertakings upon a single and uniform plan, with the aid of
+productive implements which can only be used in common.
+
+The significance and tendency of these contradictions are sketched by
+Marx in the great finale, which properly belongs to the concluding
+chapter of the third volume:
+
+"As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed
+the old society from top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are
+turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon
+as the capitalist means of production stands on its own feet, then the
+further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land
+and other means of production into socially exploited, and therefore
+common means of production, as well as the further expropriation of
+private proprietors, takes a new form. That which is now to be
+expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the
+capitalist employing many labourers. This expropriation is
+accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalist
+production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist
+always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this
+expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop on an
+ever-extending scale the co-operative form of the labour process, the
+conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation
+of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into
+instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all
+means of production by their use as the means of production of
+combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the
+net of the world market, and with this, the international character of
+the capitalist regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number
+of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of
+this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression,
+slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this, too, grows the
+revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
+disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
+capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter
+on the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along
+with it, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and
+socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become
+incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is
+burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The
+expropriators are expropriated."--("Capital," Vol. I. English edition,
+chap. 84.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] Compare M. Beer, "History of British Socialism," Vol, I., pp.
+245-270.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+An appreciation of Marx can only be arrived at by adopting the Marxian
+method. We must judge him in the same way as any other towering figure
+in the realm of thought or of action. Marx was a child of his time,
+and his system is a logical conception of certain economic and social
+phenomena of his age, owing something to the pioneer work and thinking
+of some of his predecessors.
+
+Two important events dominated his thinking: the French Revolution and
+the English Industrial Revolution. Even apart from the statement of
+Arnold Ruge that in 1843-44 Marx had collected a vast amount of
+material for a history of the French National Convention, we know from
+the work he did between 1844 and 1852 how profound was the influence
+of the French Revolution on his intellectual life. Still deeper,
+however, were the traces left upon his mind by the studies he made on
+the economic transformation of England during the period 1700-1825.
+Both events are obvious, catastrophic expressions of class movements
+and class conflicts, in which the middle class, as the representative
+of a higher economic order, gains the victory over autocratic forms of
+feudal authority and oligarchic systems of organisation through State
+regulation, in which, however, at the same time, a new class--the
+working class--raises its head and begins to make a stand against the
+victor.
+
+Marx was led to interpret these events in this way and to make them
+the basis of his conception of history chiefly through the influence
+of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist school following
+upon Ricardo. To the end of his life he clung to the opinion that
+dialectic, as Hegel had formulated it, was indeed mystical but, when
+materialistically conceived, contains the laws of the movement of
+society. "The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands
+in no wise hinders him from presenting in a comprehensive and
+intelligible manner its general processes."--(Preface to second German
+edition of "Capital," 1873.)
+
+The splitting up of the concept into contradictories, and the
+attainment of a higher positive through the negation of these
+contradictories, that was what, to Marx's mind, constituted the
+essence and the deepest meaning of the French Revolution and of the
+English Industrial Revolution. Society, the positive, split up into
+feudal and bourgeois, into two sharply divided contradictories, the
+bourgeoisie appearing as the negation, to be supplanted by the
+proletariat and so to make room for a Communist society, the higher
+synthesis.
+
+What he got from Hegel in a mystical form found an economic expression
+in Ricardo and the anti-capitalist school. Ricardo's writings, which
+belong to the second decade of the nineteenth century and which
+formulate, in the guise of a system of economics, the antagonisms and
+the conflicts between industry and landed nobility, presented
+themselves as a practical demonstration of the validity of dialectic.
+The fundamental idea of Ricardo's system may be expressed as follows:
+
+Capital is the motive force of society and the creator of
+civilisation, but the fruits of its activity are enjoyed not by
+capital but by the landed nobility. That is the thesis; now for the
+proof. The value of all commodities which can be made in any quantity
+desired consists in the quantity of labour which is expended for the
+purpose of producing them. The value is expressed in the costs of
+production, the most important components of which are wages and
+profit. Wages and profit stand in opposition to one another: if wages
+rise, profit falls, and conversely. Wages consist in a definite
+quantity of the necessaries of life, sufficient to keep the worker
+effective. Wages must obviously rise whenever the cost of living
+rises. The facts show that this is actually the case. The following
+reasons make this clear. In consequence of the civilising effects of
+capital, there is an increase in the opportunities for work and in
+population, resulting in an increased demand for the necessaries of
+life. Agriculture must be extended, but agricultural land is limited
+and of varying quality. The extension of agriculture brings into use
+the inferior kinds of land, which demand a greater amount of labour
+for their cultivation. And as the amount of labour determines the
+value of the commodity, the cost of living increases, and there is a
+rapid rise in ground rents. The workers demand higher wages, whereby
+the profits of the employers are diminished. But there is still
+another circumstance to be taken into consideration. Whereas the
+prices of agricultural products rise, those of industrial products
+fall, since, in consequence of the invention of machinery and of the
+superior division of labour, smaller quantities of labour are required
+to produce manufactured goods. The result of the entire working of
+capital for the civilised community is accordingly the reduction of
+profits, the depreciation of capital, and the increase of wages. This
+latter, however, is of no advantage to the workers, for food prices
+rise higher and higher; on the contrary, the whole advantage falls to
+the landed nobility, who do nothing for the furtherance of
+civilisation, but who, through ground rents and protective tariffs,
+receive everything.
+
+We have, then, in Ricardo a system of economic contradictions between
+profit, wages, and rent, or between bourgeoisie, proletariat, and
+nobility, in which the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat
+is still undeveloped.
+
+The year of the publication of Ricardo's "Principles" (1817) is the
+year which witnessed the rise of English Socialism. In that year,
+Robert Owen, in a public meeting in the City of London, declared
+himself a Socialist. Three years later appeared the first criticisms
+of Ricardo's political economy. In these it was argued that, according
+to Ricardo, labour is the source of value, yet he considers capital as
+the creative factor of society and the working class as a mere
+appendage of capital. It must be the reverse; for the workers create
+values together with the surplus products which are appropriated by
+capital. In 1817, Robert Owen openly declares himself a Socialist;
+four years later appears the anonymous letter to Lord John Russell;
+Percy Ravenstone publishes his "Criticism of Capitalism," John Gray
+his Lecture, and Hodgskin his pamphlet on the unproductive nature of
+capital, in which he establishes the existence of a raging class
+struggle.
+
+The deep impression which these writings made on Marx is clearly seen
+in the second and third volumes of his "Theories on Surplus Value."
+And he links on to them. He completed what Ricardo hinted at and what
+the anti-capitalist school deduced from Ricardo. How Marx continued
+and elaborated these deductions we haw already seen in Chapter 3,
+"Outlines of Marx's Economics," and Chapter 7, "Surplus Value as the
+Motive Force of Society," where capital is shown to be the mass of
+surplus value of which the workers have been deprived.
+
+The deductions made by the English anti-capitalist school from Ricardo
+signified, politically, the first awakenings of the English workers to
+class-consciousness, to the struggle against capital. Just as
+Ricardo's theory of value and rent was the battle-cry of capital
+against the aristocracy--a battle-cry which created the free trade
+movement and shattered the economic power of the landed nobility, so
+the theory of value and surplus value was to become the battle-cry of
+the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the declaration of
+independence, so to speak, of the working class. The English
+proletariat lacked a philosopher who could work out the idea to its
+logical conclusion, until Marx applied himself to the problem and
+solved it, so far indeed as philosophical problems can be solved, by a
+science which places itself at the disposal of a class movement.
+
+For it is impossible to set aside the view that Marx's theory of value
+and surplus value has rather the significance of a political and
+social slogan than of an economic truth. It is for Marx the basis of
+the class struggle of the workers against the middle class, just as
+Ricardo's theory of rent was the basis of the class struggle of the
+bourgeoisie against the aristocracy, or as the doctrines of the social
+contract and of the natural rights of man formed the basis of the
+struggle of the middle classes against autocracy and divine right.
+Such militant philosophies need not in themselves be true, only they
+must accord with the sentiments of the struggling mass. It is with
+such philosophical fictions that human history works. Marx's theory of
+value explains neither the vast and unparalleled accumulation of
+wealth nor the movement of prices during the last sixty years. Wealth,
+measured in values, has, in the last few decades, increased by many
+times the increase in living labour-power. In this connection the old
+formula can be reversed: wealth increases in geometrical, living
+labour-power in arithmetical progression. The greatest difficulty in
+Marx is that the inventors and discoverers, the chemists and
+physicists, the pioneers and organisers of industry and agriculture,
+are not regarded by him as creators of surplus values. Thinkers, who
+by chemical researches and discoveries double the productive capacity
+of the soil and conjure forth values in millions from the waste
+products of industry: physicists who place new sources of power and
+new means of production at the disposal of mankind and multiply the
+productivity of labour; organisers who co-ordinate the forces of
+production and introduce new methods of working--all this creative and
+directive work, demanding, as it often does, an infinite amount of
+intensive intellectual effort, is not considered to increase the total
+sum of exchange values of the nation.
+
+However, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, Marx's
+theory is, generally speaking, correct; distribution is carried out
+under the capitalist economic system not according to the amount of
+productive work done, but in proportion to the outlay of capital and
+the skill in commercial manoeuvring which obtains in the sphere of
+circulation.
+
+Unique as an investigator of the laws of the proletarian movement,
+eminent and even a great pioneer as a sociologist, Marx is, in respect
+of economic theory, predominantly an agitator. His system, more than
+any other system of Socialism or of political economy, is the
+revolutionary expression of proletarian thought and feeling. His
+doctrines of value, surplus value, the economic determination of
+history, the evolution from Capitalism to Socialism, the political and
+economic class struggle, will for long have the force of truth for the
+masses and will continue to move them.
+
+Marx's heart must have been filled with joy and gladness when, out of
+the elements of Hegel, Ricardo, and the English anti-capitalist
+school, out of his studies of the French Revolution, of the English
+Industrial Revolution, and of French and English Socialism there arose
+a unified system whose destiny it was to lead mankind out of the
+earth-bound history of the past into the new world wherein a spiritual
+civilisation should fully blossom forth. Man is to quit the realm of
+necessity and to enter into that of freedom, where he shall cease to
+be a tool for the profit of others and shall rise to have a purpose of
+his own, freely associating himself with his fellow men to work in the
+service of all.
+
+"The realm of freedom, indeed, only begins there where work
+conditioned by necessity and external utility ceases. According to the
+nature of the thing, therefore, it lies beyond the sphere of actual
+material production. Just as the savage must struggle with nature for
+the satisfaction of his needs, for self-preservation and
+self-reproduction, so too must the civilised man, whatever be the form
+of society or the methods of production obtaining. Side by side with
+his own evolution develops this constitutional necessity, because his
+needs increase; but, at the same time, the forces of production which
+satisfy these needs likewise increase. Freedom in this sphere can only
+consist in this--that men in their social relationship, the associated
+producers, should regulate this material exchange with Nature in a
+rational manner and bring it under their united control, instead of
+being governed by it as by some blind power; it should be carried on
+with the minimum expenditure of energy and under conditions most
+adapted to and most worthy of human nature. Yet it remains all the
+same a realm of necessity. It is beyond this where that development of
+human power, which may be called independent purpose, begins, the true
+realm of freedom, which, however, can only flourish upon the basis of
+that realm of necessity."--("Capital," Vol. III., 2, p. 355.)
+
+
+The National Labour Press, Ltd., Manchester and London. 31258
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 37: FN4: Fouvierists replaced with Fourierists       |
+    | Page 42: Wilhelm Wolf replaced with Wilhelm Wolff         |
+    | Page 60: "That will give give them new" replaced with     |
+    |          "That will give them new"                        |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The life and teaching of Karl Marx, by M. Beer
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