The life and teaching of Karl Marx Part 3

"Feudalism, too, had its proletariat--the villeinage--which contains all the germs of the middle cla.s.s. 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s.

They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out history.

"When the middle cla.s.s 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 cla.s.ses, how one of these cla.s.ses, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian cla.s.s and the middle cla.s.s, 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 cla.s.s movement, standing in opposition to the middle cla.s.s; which, however, does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the cla.s.ses themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as cla.s.s is brought against cla.s.s:

"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of production, among which the middle cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, at the cost of the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this cla.s.s and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."--("Poverty of Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)

This ant.i.thetical 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s is a vital condition of any society founded upon cla.s.s antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed cla.s.s necessarily includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the oppressed cla.s.s may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing social inst.i.tutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the revolutionary cla.s.s itself. The organisation of the revolutionary elements as a cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s domination culminating in a new political power? The condition of the emanc.i.p.ation of the working cla.s.s is the abolition of all cla.s.ses, as the condition of the emanc.i.p.ation of the third estate, of the middle cla.s.s, was the abolition of all the three estates. The working cla.s.s will, in the course of its evolution, replace the old middle-cla.s.s society by an a.s.sociation excluding cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s antagonism within the community.

"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a struggle of cla.s.s against cla.s.s, a struggle which, when brought to its highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be surprised that a society founded upon cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses and no cla.s.s 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; b.l.o.o.d.y 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 cla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulating 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 a.s.sembly 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 ma.s.ses, the surer becomes emanc.i.p.ation."

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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s struggle as the executive council of the ruling and possessing cla.s.ses.

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 _Vorwarts_, 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 ent.i.tle 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 ma.n.u.script 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 cla.s.s, 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.--("Grundsatze des Kommunismus," published by _Vorwarts_, 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 cla.s.s, its character, its positive and negative achievement--modern capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical conceptions and conclusions--the doctrine of the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s franchise, the national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the middle cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, the middle cla.s.s 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, steams.h.i.+ps, 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 cla.s.s. 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 quant.i.ty 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s--and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to the awakening of cla.s.s consciousness, and, as a result, to the formation of the political labour party.

(2) The movements within middle-cla.s.s 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 owners.h.i.+p is the history of cla.s.s struggles, and that in these cla.s.s struggles, carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of society and of owners.h.i.+p, new economic systems arise or else end with the common destruction of the two cla.s.ses. The antagonistic cla.s.ses are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of owners.h.i.+p 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 cla.s.s 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 owners.h.i.+p but for the socially conducted utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and of the goods produced. The middle cla.s.s has therefore created in the proletariat a social cla.s.s which must have as its object to do away with the middle cla.s.s system of owners.h.i.+p and to set up the proletarian system of common owners.h.i.+p.

(3) In this struggle of the working cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s, the overthrow of middle-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 doc.u.ment 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 pa.s.sages we have quoted the part played in history by the middle cla.s.s is extolled by Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares that "the middle cla.s.s is the unwitting and inert instrument of industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the second section, where the middle cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s is lazy and does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 c.o.c.k 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 embarra.s.sment, 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._