Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Marx

Marx, Karl (1818-1883), was a German philosopher, so­cial scientist, and professional revolutionary. Few writ­ers have had such a great and lasting influence on the world. Marx was the chief founder of two of the most

powerful mass movements in history-democratic socialism and revolutionary communism. See Commu­nism; Socialism.

Marx was sometimes ignored or misunderstood, even by his followers. Yet many of the social sciences- especially sociology—have been influenced by his theories. Many important social scientists of the late 18O0_S and the 1900's can be fully understood only by realizing how much they were reacting to Marx's beliefs.

The life of Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was born and raised in Trier, in what was then Prussia. His father was a lawyer. Marx showed intellectual promise in school and went to the University of Bonn in 1835 to study law. The next year, he transferred to the University of Berlin. There he be­came much more interested in philosophy, a highly po­litical subject in Prussia. Marx joined a group of radical leftist students and professors whose philosophic views implied strong criticism of the severe way in which Prussia was governed.

In 1841, Marx obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the university in Jena.

He tried to get a teaching position but failed because of his opposition to the Prussian government. He became a freelance jour­nalist and helped create and manage several radical journals.

After his marriage in 1843, Marx and his wife moved to Paris. There they met Friedrich Engels, a young German radical, who became Marx's best

friend and worked with him on several articles and books. Marx lived in Brussels, Belgium, from 1845 to 1848, when he returned to Germany. He edited the Neue RheinischeZeitung, which was published in Cologne during the German revolution of 1848. Marx became known throughout Germany as a spokesman for radical democratic reform. See Germany (History [The Revolu­tion of 18481).

After the collapse of the 1848 revolution, Marx fled from Prussia. He spent the rest of his life as a political exile in London.

Marx led a hand-to-mouth existence because he was too proud or too much a professional revolutionary- to work for a living. He did write occasional articles for newspapers. His most regular job of this kind was that of political reporter for the New York Tribune. But gen­erally, Marx, his wife, and their six children survived only because Engels sent them money regularly. In 1864, Marx founded The International Workingmen's Associa­tion, an organization dedicated to improving the life of the working classes and preparing for a socialist revolu­tion (see International, The).

Marx suffered from frequent illnesses, many of which may have been psychological. Even when physically healthy, he suffered from long periods of apathy and de­pression and could not work. Marx was learned and so­phisticated, but he was often opinionated and arrogant.

He had many admirers but few friends. Except for Engels, he lost most of his friends—and many of them became enemies. He broke all contact with his mother and was cool to his sisters. But with his wife and children, Marx was relaxed, witty, and playful.

Marx's writings

Most of Marx's writings have been preserved. They include not only his books, but also most of his correspondence and the notes of his speeches, philosophic essays. Some of Marx's philosophic essays were published during his lifetime, but others were not discovered until the 1900's. Marx wrote some of alone and some with Engels. The essays range from one of about 15 sentences to a 700-page book, The Cerman Ideology (1845-1846), written with Engels.

Marx wrote his essays between 1842 and 1847. They spell out the philosophic foundations of his radicalism. The chief themes in the essays include Marx's bitter view that economic forces were increasingly oppress­ing human beings and his belief that political action is a necessary p_art of philosophy. The essays also show the influence of the philosophy of history developed by the Cerman philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Hegel, G. W. F.t.

The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution of 1848. Its full title is the Manifesto of the Communist \ forty. The manifesto is a brief but forceful presentation of the authors' political and historical theories. It is the only work they produced that can be considered a sys­tematic statement of the theories that became known as Marxism. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. It predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class. The result of this revolution, according to Marx and Engels, will be a classless society in which the chief means of production are publicly owned.

Das Kapital Capital) was Marx's major work. He spent about 30 years writing it The first volume ap­peared in 1867. Engels edited the second and third vol­umes from Marx's manuscripts. Both of these volumes were published after Marx's death. The fourth volume exists only as a mass of scattered notes.

In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He considered it the most efficient, dynamic economic system ever devised. But he also re­garded it as afflicted with flaws that would destroy it through increasingly severe periods of inflation and de­pression. The most serious flaw in the free enterprise system, according to Marx, is that it accumulates more and more wealth but becomes less and less capable of using this wealth wisely. As a result, Marx saw the accu­mulation of riches being accompanied by the rapid spread of human misery. See Capitalism.

Other writings. Marx and Engels also wrote about all sorts of events in and influences on national and interna­tional affairs—personalities, overthrowing of govern­ments, cabinet changes, parliamentary debates, wars, and workers' uprisings.

Marx also wrote about the practical problems of lead- ^ln9 an international revolutionary movement. The major source of these comments is his correspondence with Engels and other friends.

  

Marx's theories

Marx's doctrine is sometimes called dialectical mate­rialism, and part of it is referred to as historical material­ism. These terms were taken from Hegel's philosophy of history. Marx never used them, but Engels did and so have most later Marxists. The concepts of dialectical and historical materialism are difficult and obscure and may be unnecessary for an understanding of Marx's theories. See Materialism.

Marx's writings cover more than 40 years. His inter­ests shifted and he often changed his mind. But his phi­losophy remained surprisingly consistent—and very complex. Apart from the brief Communist Manifesto, he never presented his ideas systematically.

Production and society. The basis of Marxism is the conviction that socialism is inevitable. Marx believed that the free enterprise system, or capitalism, was doomed and that socialism was the only alternative.

Marx discussed capitalism within a broad historical perspective that covered the history of the human race. He believed that the individual, not God, is the highest being. People have made themselves what they are by their own labour. They use their intelligence and cre­ative talent to dominate the world by a process called production. Through production, people make the goods they need to live. The means of production in­clude natural resources, factories, machinery, and la­bour.

The process of production, according to Marx, is a collective effort, not an individual one. Organized socie­ties are the chief creative agents in human history, and historical progress requires increasingly developed so­cieties for production. Such societies are achieved by continual refinement of production methods and of the division of labour. By the division of labour, Marx meant that each person specializes in one job, resulting in the development of two classes of people—the rulers and the workers. The ruling class owns the means of pro­duction. The working class consists of the nonowners, who are exploited (treated unfairly) by the owners.

The class struggle. Marx believed there was a strain in all societies because the social organization never kept pace with the development of the means of pro­duction. An even greater strain developed from the divi­sion of people into two classes.

According to Marx, all history is a struggle between the ruling and working classes, and all societies have been torn by this conflict. Past societies tried to keep the exploited class under control by using elaborate politi­cal organizations, laws, customs, traditions, ideologies, religions, and rituals. Marx argued that personality, be­liefs, and activities are shaped by these institutions. By recognizing these forces, he reasoned, people will be able to overcome them through revolutionary action.

Marx believed that private ownership of the chief means of production was the heart of the class system. For people to be truly free, he declared, the means of production must be publicly owned—by the community as a whole. With the resulting general economic and so­cial equality, all people would have an opportunity to follow their own desires and to use their leisure time creatively. Unfair institutions and customs would disap­pear. All these events, said Marx, will take place when the proletariat (working class) revolts against the bour­geoisie (owners of the means of production).

Political strategy. It is not clear what strategy Marx might have proposed to achieve the revolution he fa­voured. An idea of this strategy can come only from his speeches, articles, letters, and political activities. As a guideline for practical politics, Marxism is vague. Marx's followers have quarrelled bitterly among themselves over different interpretations and policies.

Marx today

Today, Marx is studied as both a revolutionary and an economist. His importance as a pioneer in the social sci­ences is being recognized increasingly. Marx has often been attacked because he rebelled against all estab­lished societies, because he was an arrogant writer who scorned his critics, and because of his radical views.

As the founding father of the Communist movement, Marx is regarded in most Communist countries as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. In those countries, many people believe that Marx's writings are the source of all important truths in social science as well as philos­ophy. They believe that a person cannot be an intelligent student of society, history, economics, philosophy, and numerous other fields without first studying Marx or his principal disciples.

Scholars in the Western world were slow to recog­nize the importance of Marx. For many years, few peo­ple bothered to study his writings. But today, in a variety of fields, it has become essential to have some knowl­edge of Marx. One of these fields is economics. Al­though his methods of analysing capitalism are consid­ered old-fashioned, many scholars recognize the brilliance of this analysis. Many people consider his crit­icism of capitalism and his view of what humanity has made of the world as timely today as they were 100 years ago. Even the analysis that Marx made of the busi­ness cycle is studied as one of the many explanations of inflation and depression.

In sociology, Marx's work is also regarded with in­creasing respect. Without his contributions, sociology would not have developed into what it is today. Marx wrote on social classes, on the relationship between the economy and the state, and on the principles that un­derlie a political or economic system.

Many people still turn to Marx for an explanation of current social, economic, and political evils. But most of them are unlikely to agree with his view of the ease and speed with which the working class will overthrow the class system and set up a Communist classless society. See also Economic determinism; Engels, Friedrich; Lenin, V. I.