Karl Marx died on the 14th of March 1883. The work he did lives on. An enormous amount has been written about him as an individual and about his materialist philosophy; less has been written about his work on economics. His theory of surplus-value is still largely ignored. Of those few who have written on this subject, many appear never to have read Marx himself. In fact most pseudo-intellectuals who write or have written about Marx, being in many cases of the type Marx so often castigated as bourgeois reformers, ignore those facets of his work — either not liking or failing to see the importance of them.
Making this small addition to the mass of material on Marx the man is done in no spirit of hero-worship but to place Marx in line with the conditions which produced him. The writer has chosen for the most part the early stages of Marx’s career in order to show a man reacting to the conditions and, as far possible in a short article, the conditions shaping the man.
A Time of Revolution
Karl Heinrich Marx was born at Trier (Trèves) in Germany on 5th May 1818. Both the date and the place of his birth are significant. Not many years before, the armies of republican France had advanced over Europe carrying with them the emotional ideas of liberal democracy, ideas about liberty, equality and fraternity.
The victory of European reaction did not destroy the influence of revolutionary ideas in the backward countries of Europe. Politically and economically, Germany was a backward country, and consisted of thirty-six semi-independent states and principalities in which a feudal aristocracy held power. The whole of Germany was dominated by the extremely reactionary states of Austria and Prussia. Growing industry and commerce had created a capitalist class, but the aristocracy had no intention of giving way to the rising capitalists and were strong supporters of the absolute forms of government then existing throughout the German state.
In these circumstances the capitalists were in revolt and were demanding the setting up of a democratic form of government over a unified Germany, which was to be completely separated from Austria. Conditions thus brought into revolt much of the youth in Germany, and it is not surprising that Marx and others of that period became revolutionaries.
Philosophical Questions
The parents of Karl Marx were able to provide for their children what was by the standards of the time a good education. Karl appears to have shown good intellectual ability at an early age. He was attending Bonn University at the age of 16, and went from there to the Berlin University. Apparently it was the intention of his parents that he should prepare for a legal career. Marx, however, like many young students, was impatient of the ordinary methods of study, and was for some time very undecided. He dabbled in poetry, and toyed with the idea of writing a work on the philosophy of law, and engaged in other forms of literary activity.
At that time the main intellectual influence on the students of Berlin was the philosophy of Hegel, which was used to criticize the existing regime. Marx became one of a band of “Young Hegelians”. He now decided upon an academic career; in 1841 he obtained his doctor’s degree from Jena University for a thesis upon the Natural Philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. This thesis was an anticipatory part of a larger work in which Marx intended to deal with the cycle of Epicurean, Stoic and Sceptic philosophy as a whole. In the end Marx did not publish his thesis. Its immediate aim was no longer a matter of urgency; political and philosophic affairs of quite another kind did not permit Marx to carry out his original intention.
For a short time Marx was editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, a paper owned by a group of radical industrialists which operated under great difficulties due to a strict police censorship. As editor Marx was confronted with questions concerning economics and socialism. Due to the kind of academic training he had, he found great difficulty in dealing with such questions. He decided to study these subjects as soon as possible. The possibility arose when the backer of the paper, in an attempt to save it from suppression by the adoption of a milder policy, forced Marx from his position as editor.
Revolutionary Theory
It was during this period, on the 19th of June 1843, that Marx married Jenny von Westphalen who became his support and counsellor up to the end of her life. Shortly afterwards they moved to Paris, where Marx had been offered employment as editor of the Franco-German Year Book. Here it was that he contacted Engels; it was this event which led to the lifelong friendship and collaboration which has left an invaluable legacy to the Socialist movement.
In Paris, Marx was in contact with and took part in the revolutionary movements of the time. He thus became acquainted with the numerous schools of thought existing in the revolutionary movements and made a deep study of economics and social questions. At the time Marx was editing the Rheinische Zeitung he was a radical democrat: it was his studies in Paris which transformed him into a communist, as that word was then understood. With the political change occurred the philosophical one. He became a materialist.
Due to the vindictiveness of the Prussian government, Marx was forced to leave Paris and went to live in Brussels. It was while he was resident in that town, in 1847, he gave a series of lectures on economics to the German Workingmen’s Club. The purpose of these lectures was to show the economic conditions which formed the basis of the class struggle. It is in the lectures, now to be found in the pamphlet Wage-Labour and Capital, that we find the germ of the theory of surplus-value.
1847 was also the year in which Marx published his book The Poverty of Philosophy. This work was levelled at the French Utopian, Proudhon, and in this criticism Marx outlined the fundamentals of scientific Socialism.
The Communist Manifesto
The Manifesto was published as the platform of the “Communist League”, a working-men’s association at first German and later international. Due to the political conditions on the continent before 1848, it was a secret society. At a congress of the League, held in London in November 1847, Marx and Engels were asked to prepare for publication a theoretical and practical party programme, and this was published in 1848 as The Communist Manifesto. It has since been published in many languages. In an edition of 1888 Engels wrote a preface in which he gave in detail the history of the Manifesto.
The following quotations are important:
“Yet when it was written we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists in 1847 were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances — in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the “Educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class has become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself communist.”
Second:
“And our notion from the very beginning was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself” “
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Third:
“The Manifesto being our joint production, I feel bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, forms the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the intellectual history of that epoch.”
For the German edition of 1872 Engels wrote as follows:
“However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That passage would in many respects be very differently worded today.”
Engels made it clear that although much of the Manifesto had become outdated, as shown by his 1888 preface: “But then, the Manifesto has become an historical document which we have no longer any right to alter.”
The first quotation gives an insight to the political situation in the working-class movement of 1847. Engels leaves no doubt as to why it was called the Communist Manifesto. An explanation is provided for those who have become tired and frustrated, an answer to the cynics is to be found, in the second quotation: the establishment of Socialism as the work of the working class. That class is not yet ready to accomplish its historic mission.
The third quotation is important and interesting Here we have Engels telling us that Marx had, as early as 1847, mastered and was able to apply the materialist conception of history. Engels gives us in this statement a concise definition of the materialist conception of history.
Cologne and London
1848 was a year of European revolt. There was an insurrection in Paris and Marx, expelled from Brussels, accepted an invitation from the Parisian government to return to that city. Shortly afterwards the wave of revolt spread to Germany, and Marx and Engels decided to return there.
In Cologne they commenced the paper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, of which Marx was the editor. The paper was a radical democratic journal, but in it Marx put forward his view that it was only the workers who could be relied upon in the revolution and that the industrialists who were the leaders of the movement would check it as soon as its full possibilities became clear. Marx’s view of the rôle of the leaders proved correct, and the revolt in Germany collapsed.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed and Marx himself arrested and tried for high treason. He was acquitted, but was forced to go to Paris. With the crushing of the revolt there, expulsion again threatened him and he travelled to what was to be his home for the rest of his life, London.
The early years of their life in London were extremely hard for the Marx family. A period of European reaction set in after the revolts of 1848. The Communist League broke up, and Marx had to provide for his family by poorly-paid journalistic work. During this period of extreme poverty Marx continued his social studies, making use of the reading room at the British Museum, which finally led to the publication of Capital.
Marx and the 1st International
Marx associated himself with working-class organizations although they were not Socialist in character. In his day as today, very few workers had a Socialist policy.
The International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) was founded at a meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London, on 28th September 1864. It was not the work of one individual, and it was not “a small body with a large head”. It was neither “an insignificant shadow” nor “a terrible menace”, as it was described by various sections of the press of the period. The First International was a transitional form of the working-class struggle for better conditions, and it was as necessary as it was transitional.
In the capitalist mode of production, an embodied contradiction both produces and destroys modern states. It intensifies all national antagonisms to the utmost and at the same time it creates all nations in its own image. So long as the capitalist mode of production exists these contradictions are insoluble, and therefore the brotherhood of man about which we have heard from the apologists for capitalism has had no existence. While large-scale industry preaches freedom and peace between nations, it also has turned the world into an armed camp as never before in history. However, with the disappearance of capitalist production its contradiction will vanish also.
Early in the history of the working-class movement a tendency towards internationalism made itself felt. This is a vital condition for the very existence of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. The workers possess no magic wand in this respect any more than in any other — there is no level and easy path. The modern working class has to fight its battles under conditions created by historical development. It cannot overcome these conditions by any short cut but can triumph over them only by understanding, in the sense that to understand is to overcome.
This understanding was made more difficult owing to the circumstances of Marx’s time. The beginnings of the working-class movement coincided with, crossed and recrossed, the beginnings of a number of national states which were founded as a result of the capitalist mode of production. By drawing lessons from the struggles of the different sections of the International with their capitalist governments, Marx hoped to win various groups to his point of view and mould them into an international Socialist party. On the General Council of the International, and at its international conferences, he worked hard to realize his hopes.
Marx’s chief rôle in the First International began after it was organized. He soon became the guiding spirit of it. To him fell the task of presenting the inaugural address. It must be admitted that this address contained many compromises and concessions. Marx himself in a letter to Engels, dated 4th November 1864, in which he deals with the formation of the International, states:
“I was obliged to insert two phrases about “duty” and “right” into the Preamble to the Statutes, ditto “truth, morality and justice”, but these are placed in such a way that they can do no harm.”
The address opens by recording the fact that in the years from 1848 to 1864 the poverty of the working class did not diminish, although this period had been one of unparalleled industrial development and commercial growth. It proves its point by comparing the statistics published in the official Blue Book concerning the poverty of the English working class with the official figures used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, in a Budget speech to show “the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” which had taken place in the same period but had been “entirely confined to the classes of property”. The address exposed this contradiction of English conditions because England was the leading country of European trade and industry, but it pointed out that similar conditions existed on a somewhat smaller scale in, making allowances for local differences, all the continental countries where large-scale industry was beginning to develop.
All over the world this “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” was “entirely confined to the classes of property”, with the one exception perhaps that a small section of the workers as in England were receiving somewhat higher wages, though even this improvement was cancelled out by the general increase in prices.
”Everywhere the great mass of the working class sank into ever deeper misery to the same extent as the upper class rose in the social scale. In all the countries of Europe it is now an irrefutable fact, undeniable for every unprejudiced enquirer and denied only by those who have an interest in awakening deceptive hopes in others, that neither the perfection of machinery nor the application of science to industry and agriculture, neither the resources and artifices of communication, neither the conquests of new markets nor free trade, or all these things combined can succeed in abolishing the misery of the working class, and that on the contrary, every new development of the creative power of labour is calculated on the false bases of existing conditions to intensify the social antagonisms and aggravate the social conflict. During this intoxicating period economic progress, starvation raised itself almost to the level of a social institution in the capital of the British Empire. The period is characterised in the annals of history by accelerated return, the extended compass and the deadly effects of the social pest known as industrial and commercial crises.”
The address then went on to look at the defeat of the working-class movement in 1850, and came to the conclusion that this period had its compensating characteristics. Two facts were stressed, first of all the legal enactment of the ten-hour day with its effects on the English working class. The struggle for the legal limitation of the working day had been a direct intervention in the conflict between the blind forces of the law of supply and demand, which summed up capitalist-class political economy, and production regulated by social welfare as represented by the working class.
“And therefore the Ten-Hour Bill was not only a great practical success, but also a victory of a principle; for the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie was defeated by the political economy of the working class.”
After a reference to the co-operative movement of the period, and the revival of the working-class movements in England, France, Germany and Italy and their efforts to reorganize politically, the address continues:
“They possess an element of success — numbers. But numbers are weighty in the scales only when they are united in an organization and led towards a conscious aim.”
Past experience had shown that to ignore the fraternity which should exist between the workers of different countries and spur them on to stand together in all the struggles for their emancipation, always resulted in a general failure of all their unrelated efforts. This consideration had moved the meeting in St. Martin’s Hall to found the International Workingmen’s Association. The address concluded with the words: “Workers of the world, unite!”
The provisional rules, for which Marx was responsible, may be summed up as follows. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. The struggle for the emancipation of the working class is not a struggle for the establishment of new class privileges, but the abolition of class rule altogether. The economic subjection of the worker to those who have appropriated the tools of labour, i.e. the source of life, results in servitude in all its forms: social misery, intellectual atrophy and political dependence. The economic emancipation of the working class is therefore the great aim for which all political movement must serve as a means.
The conference of the International held at The Hague in 1872 concluded with a public meeting at which Marx in the course of his speech said:
“One day the working class must hold political power in its hands in order to establish a new organization of labour. It must overthrow the old political system which maintains the old institutions in being, unless it wishes, like the old Christians, who despised and neglected such action, to renounce “the Kingdom of the World”.”
We now know that the First International was bound to collapse, due to the conditions which gave rise to it and the conflicts which arose within it. Marx from this period concentrated on his literary work. He suffered several personal losses. In December 1881 his wife died, and this was followed by the death of his eldest daughter. Engels tells us he never recovered from these losses, and they aggravated a condition of poor health from which he suffered for some time. On the fourteenth of March 1883 he died quietly in his chair.
Bob Ambridge
October/November 1973 issues of the Socialist Standard
