all the germs of the middle class. Feudal production, too, had two
contradictory elements which are likewise characterised as the 'good'
and 'bad' sides of feudalism without regard to the fact that it is
always the 'bad' side which triumphs ultimately over the 'good' side.
It is the bad side which calls into being the movement which makes
history, in that it brings the struggle to a head. If, at the time of
the supremacy of feudalism, the economists, in their enthusiasm for
knightly virtues, for the beautiful harmony between rights and duties,
for the patriarchal life of the towns, for the flourishing home
industries in the country, for the development of industry organised
in corporations, companies and guilds, in a word, for everything which
forms the finer side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of
eliminating everything which could throw a shadow on this
picture--serfdom, privileges, anarchy--where would it all have ended?
They would have destroyed every element which called forth strife,
they would have nipped in the bud the development of the middle class.
They would have set themselves the absurd problem of blotting out
history.
"When the middle class had come to the top, neither the good nor the
bad side of feudalism come into question. The productive forces, which
had been developed under feudalism through its agency, fell to its
control. All old economic forms, the legal relations between private
individuals, which corresponded to them, the political order, which
was the official expression of the old society, were shattered."
"Those Socialists and social revolutionaries who regard the hardships
and struggles of society as an absolute evil and plan the
construction of a society comprised solely of good elements, have not
grasped the meaning of the history of mankind. They think abstractly.
They misjudge both the past and the present.
"Hence to form a correct judgment of production under feudalism one
must consider it a method of production based upon contradiction. One
must show how wealth was produced within this contradiction, how
productive power developed contemporaneously with the antagonism of
classes, how one of these classes, the bad side, the social evil,
constantly increased until the material conditions for its liberation
were fully ripe.
"Does that not show clearly enough that the means of production, the
conditions under which productive power is developed, are anything but
eternal laws, that they rather correspond to a definite stage in the
evolution of mankind and of its productive power, and that a variation
in the productive power of mankind necessarily brings about a
variation in its conditions of production?
"The middle class begins with a proletariat, which in its turn is
itself a remnant of the feudal proletariat. In the course of its
historical development the middle class necessarily develops its
contradictory character, which on its first appearance is more or less
veiled, existing only in a latent form. In proportion as the middle
class develops, there develops in its bosom a new proletariat, a
modern proletariat; and a struggle arises between the proletarian
class and the middle class, a struggle which, before being felt,
observed, estimated, understood, acknowledged, and finally openly
proclaimed on both sides, issues in the meanwhile only in partial and
transitory conflicts and acts of destruction."
In a special chapter Marx shows the necessity and the historical
significance of the Trade Unions, which in spite of all the
apprehensions and warnings of Utopians and Economists the workers have
gone on establishing and perfecting, in order to be able to withstand
the domination of capital. That means the gathering together of the
divided interests and activities of the workers in a vast class
movement, standing in opposition to the middle class; which, however,
does not exclude the possibility of conflicting interests within the
classes themselves, though these shall be put aside as soon as class
is brought against class:
"From day to day it becomes clearer then that the conditions of
production, among which the middle class moves, have not a simple,
uniform character but one which involves conflicting elements; that the
same conditions which produce wealth produce also poverty; that the same
conditions which tend to the development of productive power develop
also the power of repression; that these conditions only create
bourgeois wealth, i.e., the wealth of the middle class, at the cost of
the continued destruction of the wealth of individual members of this
class and the creation of an ever-increasing proletariat."--("Poverty of
Philosophy," 1885, pp. 116-118, 177 sq.)
This antithetical character of capitalist society has for its effect
that the political economists, who are the philosophers of the
existing order, lose their bearings, while the Socialists, who are the
philosophers of the proletariat, look round for means to relieve the
distress. They condemn class struggles,[4] build Utopias and plan
schemes of salvation, whereas the only real solution, because it is
the only one which arises from the actual conditions, must be to
further the organisation of the oppressed class and make it conscious
of the objects of its struggles. For out of these struggles the new
society will arise, and that, of course, can only happen when
productive power has reached a high stage of development. Or as Marx
himself proceeds:
"An oppressed class is a vital condition of any society founded upon
class antagonism. The liberation of the oppressed class necessarily
includes, therefore, the creation of a new society. In order that the
oppressed class may be able to free itself, a stage must be reached in
which the already acquired powers of production and the prevailing
social institutions can no longer exist side by side. Of all the
instruments of production, the greatest productive force is the
revolutionary class itself. The organisation of the revolutionary
elements as a class presupposes the existence in perfected form of all
the productive forces that could in any way be developed in the bosom
of the old society. Does this mean that after the collapse of the old
order of society there will be a new class domination culminating in a
new political power? The condition of the emancipation of the working
class is the abolition of all classes, as the condition of the
emancipation of the third estate, of the middle class, was the
abolition of all the three estates. The working class will, in the
course of its evolution, replace the old middle-class society by an
association excluding classes and their antagonism, and there will no
longer be any real political power,[5] because it is just this
political power which is the official expression of class antagonism
within the community.
"Meanwhile the antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a
struggle of class against class, a struggle which, when brought to its
highest expression, means a complete revolution. And can one indeed be
surprised that a society founded upon class antagonism should, at its
final dissolution, issue in brutal conflict and collision of man
against man? Let it not be said that the social movement excludes the
political. There never was a political movement which was not at the
same time a social movement.
"Only in an order of things where there are no classes and no class
antagonism will social evolution cease to be political revolution.
Until then the last word of social science on the eve of every general
reconstruction of society must ever be: 'Fight or die; bloody war or
annihilation. Thus are we confronted with the inexorable
question.'--(George Sand)."
With this battle-cry "The Poverty of Philosophy" comes to a close. It
is the prologue to the "Communist Manifesto," which in itself is but a
popular version of the positive doctrines developed in the controversy
against Proudhon.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] The Socialists of those times were the Owenites and the
Fourierists, who condemned all class struggles, Trade Unionist
strikes, and Labour politics.
[5] Marx means the State.
III.
YEARS OF AGITATION AND VARYING FORTUNES.
I. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE FORTIES.
Marx was a revolutionary not only in the sense that he was the
representative of a new conception of society and the founder of a
theory of a new economic order, but also in the popular sense of
advocating the use of force, in which connection he looked to the
first years of the French Revolution as a model. He had a keen ear for
the revolutionary rumblings in the depths of the populace. The years
during which the elements of his new conception of society were
accumulating in his mind and shaping themselves into a system were
involved in a revolutionary atmosphere. In 1842 England witnessed the
first strike on a large scale, which threatened to extend into a
general strike and bore a political revolutionary character. In 1843
and 1844 the idea of the impending revolution was widely spread in
England. Insurrections broke out among the Silesian weavers in 1844.
In 1845 and 1846 Socialism spread rapidly on all sides in Germany, and
Socialist periodicals appeared in the industrial centres. France
swarmed with Socialist systems, Socialist novels and newspaper
articles. The spectre of Communism was abroad in Europe. The
convention of the United Assembly by Frederick William IV. at the
beginning of February, 1847, was looked upon as the harbinger of the
German Revolution. The connection between these phenomena could not
escape acute intellects. Hand in hand with the extension of industry
and the rapid construction of railways and telegraphs came
alternations of economic prosperity and crisis, poverty grew, and the
workers fought with ever-increasing bitterness against the iron law of
wages and against the scanty pay, which hardly allowed the proletariat
to eke out a bare subsistence. The cry in England was: "More
factories, more poverty," but at the same time: "The greater the
political rights of the masses, the surer becomes emancipation."
Whoever lived in England and France during these years and had
dealings with Socialism could not help feeling that political and
social revolutions were on the march.
Already in his first letter to Ruge, written from Holland in March,
1843, Marx deals with the coming revolution, and foresees, to the
astonishment of Ruge, who refused to believe it, that the Government
of Frederick William IV. was drifting towards a revolution. At that
time Marx had hardly begun his studies in Socialism; and the further
he advanced in these studies, elaborating his social dialectics and
evolving the ideas of the class struggle, the more inevitably was he
driven to the conclusion that the proletarian revolution, the seizure
of political power by the proletariat, was the indispensable
preliminary to the triumph of Communism.
Utopian Socialism stood outside the State and attempted to set up a
Socialist Commonwealth apart from the State and behind the back of the
State. Utopianism, with its moral and religious motives and mediaeval
Communist traditions, was pervaded with that spirit of contempt for
the State which was characteristic of the Catholic Church during the
period of its splendour. Moreover Marx, who recognised all practical
forms of power, even if he did not always estimate them at their true
value, saw in the State an executive power which it was a question of
overturning and using as an extremely powerful instrument in the
social revolution. As a result of his excursions into politics and
French and English Socialism, Marx gave up Hegel's overstrained idea
of the State and accepted the view current in Western European thought
of the time; but he interpreted the State in the sense of the doctrine
of the class struggle as the executive council of the ruling and
possessing classes.
The impressions, the ideas, the experiences and the modes of thinking
which took root in the mind of Marx during the evolution of the
fundamental principles of his sociological and historical system
dominated the whole of his life's work.
Marxism is quite a natural growth of the revolutionary soil of the
first half of the nineteenth century. Marx completes the social
revolutionary doctrines of that time, of which he is, as it were, the
executor. All his thoughts and sentiments are deeply rooted in it;
they have nothing specifically Jewish about them. I know of no Jewish
philosopher, sociologist, or poet who had so little of the Jewish
character as had Marx.
II. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
As in Paris, so too in Brussels, Marx frequented the society of German
working men in order to instruct them by lectures and by conversation.
He was loyally seconded by Engels, who had more time and more money
to devote to this task, and who worked for the new doctrine in Paris,
Cologne, Elberfeld and other towns. Since 1836 the German working men
living abroad had been organised in the League of the Just, which from
1840 had its head-quarters in London. The individual groups were kept
in touch with one another by means of Communist correspondence
committees. The Paris and Brussels groups drew the attention of the
London Committee to Marx, and in January, 1847, Joseph Moll, one of
its members, was commissioned to go to Brussels and obtain information
about Marx.--("Mehring's Introduction to the Reprint of the Cologne
Communist Proceedings," published by _Vorwaerts_, Berlin, 1914, pp.
10-11.) The result was the transformation of the League of the Just
into the League of Communists, which held its first Congress in London
in the summer of 1847, Engels and Wilhelm Wolff (Lupus) being among
those present as delegates. At the second Congress, held in London
towards the end of November and beginning of December, 1847, Marx also
appeared, and together with Engels was commissioned to prepare a new
program. The new program is the Communist Manifesto. Engels had come
from Paris, Marx from Brussels. Before leaving Paris, Engels wrote a
letter to Marx, dated November 24, in which he speaks as follows on
the subject of the Manifesto:
"Just think over the confession of faith a little. I believe it
will be best if we leave out the form of catechism and entitle
the thing 'The Communist Manifesto.' And then, as more or less
of it will consist in historical narrative, the present form is
quite unsuitable. I am bringing along the manuscript which I
have written; it is a plain narrative, but is badly put
together, and has been done in a frightful hurry. I begin, 'What
is Communism?' and then straight away with the proletariat--the
history of its origin, difference from earlier workers,
development of the antagonism of the proletariat and the middle
class, crises, conclusions, with all kinds of secondary
considerations thrown in, and lastly party politics of the
Communists, as much as is good for the public to
know."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. I., p. 84.)
Engels' draft of the Communist Manifesto has been edited by Eduard
Bernstein.--("Grundsaetze des Kommunismus," published by _Vorwaerts_,
1914.) A comparison of this draft with the actual "Communist
Manifesto" makes evident the full extent of Marx's intellectual
superiority to Engels. The Communist Manifesto contains four main
groups of ideas: (1) The history of the evolution of the middle class,
its character, its positive and negative achievement--modern
capitalism and the rise of the proletariat. (2) Theoretical
conceptions and conclusions--the doctrine of the class struggle and
the role of the proletariat. (3) Practical application--revolutionary
action by the Communists. (4) Criticism of other Socialist schools.
The last section has long ago lost all practical interest, so that we
need only deal with the first three sections.
(1) The middle class developed in the bosom of feudal society, in the
mediaeval industrial towns. With the geographical discoveries of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries its sphere of activity was
extended; it revolutionised the methods of industry, agriculture and
communication; it broke through the mediaeval economic and political
bonds; it overthrew feudalism, the guilds, the little self-governing
regions, absolute monarchy, and established modern industry with its
accelerated and concentrated production, middle-class franchise, the
national State, and, at the same time, international trade. It was the
middle class which first showed what human activity can accomplish.
"It has achieved greater miracles than the construction of Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts, or Gothic cathedrals, it has carried out
greater movements than the migration of peoples or the crusades....
Although it is scarcely a century since it came to be the dominating
class, the middle class has created more powerful and more gigantic
forces of production than all past generations put together." The
subjugation of natural forces, machinery, the application of chemistry
to industry and to agriculture, steamships, railways, electric
telegraphs, the clearing of whole continents, making the rivers
navigable, the conjuring forth of whole peoples out of the ground:
that is the positive achievement of the middle class. Now for the
negative: it created the proletariat, immeasurable, uncontrollable,
anarchical economic conditions, periodical crises--poverty and famine
in consequence of over-production and a glut of wealth, over-driving
and reckless exploitation of the workers, whose labour is bought in
exchange for the minimum quantity of the necessaries of life. These
facts show that the forces of production are more extensive and more
powerful than is demanded by the conditions under which they are
operative: the economic system can produce and deliver more goods than
society can use under the existing laws concerning property, i.e., the
distribution and the effective demand fall short of the manufacture
and the supply. The material forces of production press upon the
limits imposed upon them by the laws of private property. This
happens, too, because the working class must reduce its consumption of
goods to a minimum in consequence of the existing laws of property,
which give to capital the right of distribution. All these conditions
taken together, the positive as well as the negative ones, make
possible and give rise to the struggles of the workers against the
middle class--and so the productive agents rise in rebellion. These
struggles lead to the organisation of the workers in trade unions, to
the awakening of class consciousness, and, as a result, to the
formation of the political labour party.
(2) The movements within middle-class society, as well as in feudal
and ancient society, where freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
baron and serf, guild-master and journeyman, capitalist and working
man stood and stand in constant antagonism to one another, prove that
the whole history of mankind since the rise of private ownership is
the history of class struggles, and that in these class struggles,
carried on now openly, now under the surface, either new forms of
society and of ownership, new economic systems arise or else end with
the common destruction of the two classes. The antagonistic classes
are supporters of conflicting economic interests, systems of ownership
and ideals of culture. The craftsman and tradesman of the towns, the
burgher, fought against the feudal lord and knight for individual
property, for freedom of industry and trade, for freedom to dispose of
personal property and for the national State. With the triumphal
progress of the middle class private property fell into fewer and
fewer hands. The proletarians are without property, they have no share
in the wealth of their country; on the other hand, the production of
capital becomes more and more a matter of common co-operation, and
capital becomes a joint product. The proletariat can, accordingly, no
longer fight for individual ownership but for the socially conducted
utilisation of the means of production belonging to the community and
of the goods produced. The middle class has therefore created in the
proletariat a social class which must have as its object to do away
with the middle class system of ownership and to set up the
proletarian system of common ownership.
(3) In this struggle of the working classes the Communists are
therefore the pioneers of the movement. They are at once the
philosophers and the self-sacrificing champions of the proletariat
awakened into class consciousness. "The Communists are not a special
party in contradistinction to the other Labour parties. They have no
interests apart from the interests of the whole proletariat. They set
up no special principles according to which they wish to mould the
proletarian movement." The Communists lay stress on the common
interests of the whole proletariat and of the collective movement.
Their aim is the organisation of the proletariat into a class, the
overthrow of middle-class domination, and the conquest of political
power by the proletariat. They support everywhere "any revolutionary
movement against the existing social and political conditions. In all
these movements they emphasise the question of property, in whatever
state of evolution it may appear, as the foundation of the movement.
And finally the Communists work everywhere for the union and agreement
of democratic parties[6] of all nationalities. The Communists disdain
to conceal their views and intentions. They declare openly that their
ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of every obtaining
order of society. Let the ruling classes tremble before a Communist
revolution; the workers have nothing to lose by it but their chains.
They have the world to win. Workers of every land, unite!"
From the standpoint of social philosophy, the Manifesto, a document
reflecting its time, is almost perfect. Strong emotion and
extraordinary intellectual power are united in it. Years of study of
one of the boldest and most fertile minds are here welded together in
the glowing heat of one of the most active of intellectual workshops.
But the work is not free from logical flaws. In the passages we have
quoted the part played in history by the middle class is extolled by
Marx; yet in the last few lines of the very same section he declares
that "the middle class is the unwitting and inert instrument of
industrial progress," and still more scathing is his criticism in the
second section, where the middle class is accused of indolence. "It
has been objected that, if private property were done away with, all
activity would cease and a general laziness set in. According to that,
middle-class society would have been ruined by idleness long ago; for
those of its members who work gain nothing, and those who gain do not
work." That is as much as to say that the middle class is lazy and
does not work, and yet the Manifesto says that the middle class has
achieved more marvellous works than Egypt, Rome, and the Middle Ages,
and that, in its reign of power of scarcely a hundred years, it has
created more powerful and more gigantic forces of production than all
past generations put together. How can a class which does not work
produce more marvellous works than the whole ancient and mediaeval
world?
Marx frees himself later from this inconsistency by ascribing surplus
value solely to the operation of the variable part of capital
(wage-labour)--a doctrine which he develops with iron logic in his
principal work, "Capital."
III. THE REVOLUTION OF 1848.
The ink had hardly dried on the Communist Manifesto when the February
Revolution broke out. The crowing of the Gallic cock soon awoke an
echo in the various German States, whilst in Brussels the democrats
were attacked and ill-treated by the mob. One of the victims of this
attack was Karl Marx, who was, moreover, banished shortly afterwards
by the Belgian Government. This action, however, did not cause him any
embarrassment, as he was ready in any case to proceed to Paris,
whither the Provisional Government of the French Republic had already
invited him in the following terms:
"Paris, March 1, 1848.