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.