Chapter 12

Karl Marx (1818—1883)

“It ts doubtless true, as often asserted, that every sone of the Marxism ed’flce was prefigured
in the works of poitical and economic thinkers antedating Marx, but that does not stamp
Marx as a secondhand philosopher oi lesseij the significance of what he did. The Important
thing about the’ work of Marx was not its originality, but Its synthetic power. He seized upon
philosophic materlalsk which had been lying about loose and largely unused for many years
and fused them into a systematic whole that supplied the proletarian movement with a
dynamic theory and a tremendous impulse to action. Prolelarianism before Marx was mainly
protest and aspiration, proletarianism after Marx confidently put forth the claim that science
was on irs side, knew what objectives It wished to attain, had a definite technique of
organisation and attack, and thus become militantly aggressive.”

C. C. Maxey.

1. Life and Work of Karl Marx

Marx is regarded as the founder, with Engels of a scientific socialism of a workingmen’s

movement. Communism which we define as a philosophy of histori, based on a metarialistic
conception of human development owes its beginnings to karl marx. He is rever together with
lenin and stalin as the prophet of a new gospel based not on brotherly love, but on thr dogma
of class conflict and revolt. His is the greatest single influence in the development of
evolutionary communism. In In the communist manisfesto he explains how social change
through revolution actually occurs. Philosophere have sought to interpret the world what
matters however is to change it, Marx declared, Judged by the standard he himself would
have applied Marx must be regarded as one of the most important and most influential
political philosophers who have ever lived. He did indeed offer an interpretation of the
world., but much more important from his point of view he can claim to have fashioned one
of the great formative forces of history. His then has been a shattering impact on the world.
Men continue to die gladly in answer to his appeal. The secret of his appeal is known to
everyone who has accepted socialism as his creed.
There were two men in marx curiosly mingled, the philosopher or reflecting men, and the
prophet or agitating man. The one appealed to the intellect, the other to emotion and his
influence rests on this double basis. It is hard to say which of the two has contributed more to
reverence in which his name is held by the sect, which has canonised him both capacities but
the combination is the secret of his fame. The one has impressed the few who are given to
study and theory the other has attracted the many who respon to a cry. It is however difficult
to deal temperately with the philosophy of a person who has been regarded by half of the
world as a and by the rest of the half as a devil. To speak dispassionately of Karl Marx is to
invite denunciation as a black reactionary by all who worship at the Marxian shrine and
denunciation as a red Red or Red Sympathizer by all who fear and hate the Marxian cult. If
Marx could be ignored there would be no need to run this gauntlet violen antiphaties but there
is no ignoring a man whose thought has devided the word into two hostile camps. The only
honest way to deal with such a thinker is to throw emotion out of the window and try to
understand him.
This controlversial figure the father of scientific socialism Karl Marx was bon in 1818 of
Jewish parents in Trier in Rhineland province of Prusia. His father was a moderately well to
do lawyer. His parents were descended of a long time of Jewish Rabbis. His father became a
Prostestant Christian when Marx was six years old and his children were also baptized in that
faith. It may have been a nominal conversion so far as the parents were concerned but for
Karl marx it became untimately a deep intellectual and emotional rebirth. He not only ceased
to a jew, he became bitterly anti semitic and charged Judaism with many of the inequities
cited against it by the jew baiting Nazis of the third reich. Indeed one of the sore trials of
Marx’s life was the fact that the cast of his countenance was so characteristically Hebraic that
he could never be mistaken for anything but a jew ! When he was seventeen years of age Karl
marx began the study of law at the Universities of Bonn but soon he abandoned the study of
law in favour of philosophythe study of which he pursued at the Universirties of Berlin and
Jena. As a youth he displayed signs of entellectual brilliance and achieved distinction in his
University studies at Bonn and Berlin. He came to be interested specially in the Hegelian
philosophy which was predominant in the German universities at that time. He became an
active member of the Young Hegelians while still a student. In 1841 he completed his
doctoral dissertation at the university of Jena on the difference between the Natural
Philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. He fell in love wit Jenny Westphalen the daughter
of a noble family in treves who had many suitors and whose parents as well as his own, were
opposed to the match. Marx defied them all, staged a whirwind courtship won the love of the
girl and argued with their parents into conserting to the betrothal before he went off to the
University of berlin.

Unable to secure a university appointment as a teacher Marx joined the staff of the
Rheintsche Zietung a democratic newspaper in cologne. Had young Karl marx succeeded in
getting the job he wqnted, it is quite probable that The Communist manisfesto and das capital
would never have been written, Marx would have been abrilliant University Professor and
doubless would have written profound treatises of some sort, for he had the necessary
learning and mental ability, but in a comfortable academic chairs it is unlikely that he would
ever have turned to prolestarian economics. The following year the paper was suppressed by
the Prussian Goverment, and marx went to Paris then the European Headquater of radical
movements. In Paris Marx met Proudhan the leading French Socialist thinker, Bakunin the
Russian arnarcist and Frederich Engels, a Rhinerlander like Marx and soon to become his
lifelong companion and close collaborator. Engels was the first to draw the attention of Marx
to England as a laboratory in which industrial capitalism could be most accurately observed.
Marx was expelled frpm France in 1845 throught the intervention of the Prusian Goverment
and he went to Brussel, another centre of political refugees from all over Europe. It was here
that Karl marx with the aid of his friend Frederich Engels composed The Communi.....” the
most influential ao all his writing, a pamphlet that has made history. Inspired devotion and
hatred, and divided mankind more profoundly than any other political document . In
revolution of 1848 in French and Germany he actively participated and as early as 1849 he
went to London where he took up permanent residence for the remainder of his life. He was
soon followed by his friend Frederich Engels. He spent most of his time in British museum
digging up obscure source throwing light on the history and working of industrial capitalism.
In sept 1864, Marx was active in the imformation in London of the international Working’s
Association. The organization has since been called the First International and it continued in
existence with annual meetings until about 1872, when its headquarters were traferred from
London to ney York where it soon died. After the disruption of this body marx devoted
himself exclusively to research and writing. Shortly after he moved to London he began
contributing article on the German situasion to the New York Herald Tribune, then under the
editorship of Horace Greeley. His Life in London was spent in porverty until the 1860 when
throught the receipt of some legacies and the generosity of his friend Engels he was able to
live a more comfortable existence. He was in ill health from 1875 to his dealth in 1883.
In 1844 he wrote “The holy Family”, The Thesis on Feuerbach” was written by Marx when
he was only twentyseven and his conception of the task of philosophy is clearly indicated by
his charge that “ the philosophers have only interpreted the word. The point however to
change it. This activist approach to philosophy is dintintly un Hegelian and marx life was
dedicated to the anti Hegelian proposition, that the actual was far from rational and that the
rational would fanally be imposed upon actuality, nor by a mystical world spirit, but by the
new social class that was the hier of bourgeois science and rationalism: the proletariat. The
Communist Manifesto” was written by marx in collaboration with his friend and inseparable
companion Frederich Engels and was published in 1848. He published a polemic directed
against Proudhan’s Philosophy of Poverty” and entitled it the Poverty of Philosophy in 1947.
Marx wrote numerous articles and book but his major works are the ‘Critique of Political
Economy” (1859), “Communist Manifesto” and “Das Capital”, the first volume of which
appeared in 1867. He was never able to complete the writing of his magnum opus, some say
because of ill-health, others because he had worked himself into contradictions from which
he could not extricate himself.

The “Manifesto” was prepared for a ‘League of Communists’a society of exiled working
men, organised early in 1847 chiefly through the efforts of Marx and Engels whose lifelong
friendship and cooperation had begun two years earlier. The “Manifesto” is the most widely
read of all socialist documents and has been translated into almost every civilized tongue of
today. It contains the clearest and most compact statement of Marx’s conceptions of the past
struggle, between economic classes, the’modern bourgeois proletarian conflict, the inevitable
movement of present-day capitalism towards its own destruction, and the programme of
action working men must adopt in order to fit in their efforts with thc actual march of events.

In his “Critique of Political Economy”, Marx briefly states his general philosophy of history,
based on the thesis that “the anatomy of civil society is to be found in political economy”. Pre
Marxian social analysis had emphasized law and politics as the determining factors in society
and social change. Marx reverses the ,sca1e of importance and considers the “productive
forces” of society as the-basis,whereas legal relations and forms of government are the
“superstructure”.” Marx puts it in this fashion: “The mode of production of the material
means of existence conditions the whole process of social, political and intellectual life”. In
“Political Economy”, Marx has formulated in detail his economic interpretation of History
and the theory of surplus value.

“Das Capital” was written by Karl Marx in the bitter years of proverty. As Marx said that the
profits of “Das Capital” would not pay even for the cheap cigars that he smoked while he
wrote it.’’ “Das Capital” is often called the “Gospel” or “Bible” of socialists. This work
displays considerable historical and psychological insight and contains a wealth of factual
detail; it presents an unusual combination of abstract theory and realistic observation. In his
“Das Capital”, Marx was attempting to sveal to manual labourers their actual place in modern
society what part they played in the capitalist system, how they had got into their lowly
position, why it was economically impossible for their position to be raised by willing help
from above, and yet how help from above was inevitably coming to them. He was concerned
in showing wage- earners why they should, and could successfully unite in overthrowing the
present economic order, rather than specifically, ho they should go about it.”
In the “Holy Family”, Marx makes it explicitly clear the sepse in which: his philosophy
was.materialist. He distinguished sharply between his own dialectical materialism and the
French. materialism of the 18th century. The latter. he identified with mechanical
explanation, whih he regarded as the proper method of natural sciences such as Physics and
Chemistry, where the subject matter presents to problems of historical development. Like
Hegel, he considered dialectic to be a more powerful method precisely because it is able to
deal with a continuous evolving subject matter and to reveal the necessity inherent in it.”
In his “Poverty of Philosophy”, Marx applied the new point of view to a criticism of
economic science, both the classical economy and the economics of contemporary socialism.
For the former he had a high admiration, being convinced that a revolu: tionary philosophy
must make use of the most exact result of economic analysis. His objections to it were aimed
at the incredible naivete of the economists in respect to historical knowledge. As Engels said
later, “They speak as if Richard the Lion-Hearted, had he only known a little economics,
might have saved six centuries of bungling by setting up free trade, in place of wasting
his time on he crusades. As theologians divide religion into true and false, their own and all
others, so the economists treat all economic systems as if they were blundering
approximations to capitalism, while the latter they treat as if its relation, and categories were
natural and eternal. Against this Marx set up the view that economics is an historical science.
The laws are ap1icable only to the stage of ecnomic production to which they belong; its
categories such as profits, wages, and rent are theoretical expressions,the abstractions of the
social relation of production. These ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the
relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. Thus, for Marx economics
became a combination of history and analysis: analysis of the relations prevailing in any
given system of production, supplemented by history of the rise and development of that
system.

2 The Seed Bed of Socialist Thought

Though Marx is regarded as the fathier of socialism, yet the seeds of socialistic thought had
already been sown much before his days. Many of the basic economic doctrines of
Marxian’socialism, however, are to he found in writings of several decades earlier notably in
the works of William Thompson, Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray, John Francis Bray, and other
British writers. These men set forth fully “the doctrine that wage-workers in fields, factories,
and mines are the seal producers of wealth, most of which is unjustly taken away from them
by employers, traders, and other non-producers; and they proposed collectivist schemes a
state monopoly of the services of marketing and banking, a currency system based on time
unit of Lbour, voluntary cooperative societies in order either to ensure exchange of good on
the basis of th quantities of labour emjloyed n producing them or to secure generally an
equitable distribution of wealth among those who create it:

In 1815, when peace carne and the trying period of adjustment followed, a new factor in the
general economic situation became at once predominant and England assumed the first place
in the socialistic movement. The new element was the factory system of production. In
England, Industrial Revolution had definitely been accomplished owing to the invention of
steam power and machinery. Textile and iron industries had assumed the form and
organization that in substance they have today. Other industries were in process of the same
transformation. Great shiftings of population. were in progress, with the attendant tumult,
suffering and general unrest. Wage-earners in the large establishment found themselves at the
mercy of the owners, and found all efforts to better their condition thwarted by laws that were
often antiquated, often brutal. Trade unions, strikes and other means for safeguarding the
interests of the workers were subjected to severe penalties, The antithesis of capitalists and
wage-earners was rapidly hardening, and the strife of these two new social classes, though
they were not yet wholly self conscious, was conspicuous feature jn.the life of the people.
Capitalist philosopher were adding fuel to the fire. Malthus was suggesting if not proving
that the forelorn condition of the working masses was permanent and inevitable. Ricardo was
proving that the dominant right of the landowner and the capitalist in the ptoducts of industry
was imbedded in the very nature of created things. James Mill was coldly formulating the
rulel of economic existence, summed up in pitiless competition, with the wall always for the
worker

It was against the spirit of these doctrines as well as againt the conditions on which they were
based, that the more influential and practical, efforts were made by the ‘Utopian’ and
‘Christian Socialists. These reformers challenged the psychological at ethical assumptions
upon hich the current defenses of private property rested, and showed the inhuman and
‘unnatural’ consequences of unrestrained competition. They looked for relief to the.
deliberate and pacific efforts of men inspired by feelings benevolence and justice. ‘Utopian
socialist’ is a term which generally applied to Count Henri De Saint Simon, Charles Fourie
and .E. Cabet in France and Robert Owen in England. The men regarded poverty as the
principal source of all evils and private property as the chief cause of poverty. Saint-Simon
as Fourier analysed the emotional and rational qualities of man and explained that in actual
life of a society the traditional moral code and the whole legal order accorded a special
privileged position to the owners of private property. They were convinced that the desired
changes could be achieved by making appeals to the reason and sense of justice of influential
members of the community, They did not look either to revolutionary or to political action for
bringing about the changes. They sought rather to set up select communities in which
principles of justice, benevolence and intelegence would rule and from the example of which
the whole of society would be gradually converted to their ideals. These utopian socialist
attracted many followers from different walks of life, who attempted for many years to
propagate and apply their teachings.

The term ‘Christian socialism’ was first used in connection with a movement that. originated
in Englaud in the of the midle of the century. The Christian Soçialist movement. in England
was led by two famous literary clergymen of the Church of England. Their name are Charles
Kingsley and Frederick Denison Morie, and J.M Ludlow,.who was a lawyer. Their,.general
doctrine was that no one, facing conditions as they actually are in an industrial civilization,
could reconcile a policy of un-regulated competition with the doctrines of Christianity. The
prevailing economic creed, it was said advised men to deal with one another as rivals and put
its approval upon those who outdistanced their fellows in the pursuit of success; whereas
Christ: invited men to live together as brothers and co-labourers and taught that the rich
should not be looked upon as the peculiarly successful members of society. Priests and others
urged the Church to recognise both the dignity of human labour and the social responsibility
of property. and to see that the principles of Christanity were reflected in the laws of the state.
These men in their efforts to apply Christian ethics to the reform of social condition accepted
considerable parts of programme of the newly emerging proletarian socialism. They regarded
the latter in general as a natural outgrowth of Christanity and decribed their own movement
as an effort to socialize Christianity and christianize socialism. The miracles,. parables, and
sermons of Christ, they said, show that His supreme interest was not in formal creeds and
rituals but rather in seeing that the ordinary man was housed, clothed, fed, protected from .
distress, and enabled to live temperate and decent life. The interest of the true Christian .
cannot be altogether other-worldly; he must be concerned with establishing a righteous and
happy society on earth and must use his influence to see that his government takes positive
steps to that end.

The Christian socialists of the mid-nineteenth century devoted their practical efforts specially
to the tasks of educating industrial worker through meetings, conferences, free night schools
and cheap periodicals and aiding them in forming cooperative producers associations. On
political questions the leaders had no comprehensive ideas. They had slight contact with the
growing trade union movement. They, however, succeeded in promoting a general movement
for cooperation among working men and also in securing the enactment of laws to facilitate
the organization of cooperative societies. Both the ‘utopian socialists’ and ‘Christian
socialists’ were hopeless visionaries and they had failed to explain scientifically how the
existing system of capitalism was to be ended and a new society based on justice and
cooperation, was to come into existence. In spite of the sincere., attempts done by those
reformers, the..evils continued to increase which had saddened the mind and temper of Karl
Marx. Karl Marx was sick of his age.

3 The Age of Karl Marx

The age in which Karl Marx was living and writing was one of great physical and technical
achievements It was an age of industrial development and valued nothing but technical
achievement Marx was disgusted with his age. ‘Greek slavery, Marx maintained, at least
produced an aristocracy of marvellous taste, a culture which still thrills the world. Industrial
slavery, on the contrary could claim for itself no more impressive purpose than to transform a
few vulgar and half-educated upstarts into eminent cotton spinners, extensive sausage makers
and influential blacking dealers. It was an age in which religion was not exercising its former
appeal, and the world bad gone colder in consequence. Condemning the industrial era he once
again writes, It has left intact no other bond between man and man but naked self-interest, but
callous cash payment”.’ It has drowned the sacred awe of pious ecstasy, of chivalrous
enthusiasm, of bourgeois’ sensibility, in the ice cold water of egoistic calculation. It has
dissolved personal dignity into exchange value. torn off the veil ‘of feeling and affection
from family relationship and reduced them to purely financial connection. Seeing the
enormous growth of capitalism, Marx values it correctly. It was in short an age of which it
could be said as Milton said of his time, “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed’.this was
the age in which Marx lived.” It was because that he was able.to fill that emptiness that he
was gone, striding the world 1ike a giant to this day. To the. working-men he gives a
promise and a meassage and the salvation of. that class lies in the fulfilment and. carrying ou
of that message.

4 The Message of Karl Marx

The message of Karl Marx is a revolutionary call to the working class : “The workers have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, Unite”. It is

a call for the working class to follow the leadership of the Communist Party, the vanguard of
the proletariate. It is. a call for the working class to adopt certain tactics, highly flexible in
kind and changing with changing circumstances, but consistent in their revolutionary
purpose. “The thing to do now”, Marx wrote to Lassalle, “is to instil poison wherever
possible”. Thus, it is laid down in the “Communist Manifesto” that communists must make
use of all antagonisms between the bourgeosie of different countries and between different
bourgeois groups within every country. Thus, the Communist Manifesto has no interest in
reform but “only in revolution. The communists ever since have understood that the only
consistency which has any meaning for them is consisted devotion to the course of
Proletarian Revolution, in the words of Yaroslavsky, “What coincides with the interest of
‘,Proletarian Revolution of ethical”. The true Marxist is inconsistent only if, in the opinion of
his leaders he acts in such a way as to delay or prevent successful revolution. Marxism Is
further a call for the working class to follow a certain strategy to strike home and rise in
revolt only in revolutionary situations. Marx had as little patience as Lenin and Stalin with
revolutions which have no hope of success. Marxism is much more than this clarion call to
the working class. It is also a means of knowing exactly as a vesult of detailed study of a
particular kind of the stresses and strains in existing societies, what aie revolutionary
situations. it is an assurance of the ultimate victory of the working class.

It is to be noted that Marx was not a fatalist. Men, he held, suffer inevitably the influences of
their economic invironrnent but not possively, they react positvely to these influences and
they can, to a significant degree, although acting always under normal economic pressures of
the time, change the environment. He regarded it as the business of the social philosopher not
only to explain what human society is but also to . show how, and with what limits, it can be
changed. Although capitalism proceeds naturally to its own destruction, it does not create
socialism. . In other words, capitalism inevitably prepares the way for hut does not inevitably
lead to, socialism. Deliberate, intelligent, and informed action is needed for the achievement
of socialism.

Marx’s ideas of economic determinism surplus value, the class strugggle, and the process of
past and future social evolution and revolution supply the logical foundation of his system of
practical socia]ism.his justification of his program. If the whole social order is determined by
the relations of production, then the of an existing social order can be remedied only by a
change in these relation. Thus, the logic and movement of facts indicate to the workers their
program of action. The function of socialist programme, Marx held, is to show wage worker
how to convert their potential into an actual superiority or how prepare themselves for
transforming an automatic economic struggle into a consciously designed political struggle.
The first step in such a programme is to “win the battle of democracy” The workers must
organize as an oppressed class and raise themselve “to the position of ruling class” It is to be
understood that Marx’s program is both evolutionary and revolutionary.