Karl Marx by Frederick Engels (1940)

From the August 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

[We are indebted to Messrs. Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., for permission to reproduce the following essay on Marx, taken from “Karl Marx: Man, Thinker and Revolutionist,” a symposium edited by D. Riazanov. This book, published in 1927, is now out of print.

Engels’ essay was written for the German workers several years before Marx’s death.]

Karl Marx, the first to provide Socialism and therewith the whole modern labour movement with a scientific foundation, was born at Treves in the year 1818. In his student days at Bonn and Berlin he devoted himself, to begin with, to the study of jurisprudence, but soon turned from this field to concentrate upon history and philosophy. In 1842 he was on the point of becoming an instructor in philosophy when he was involved in the political movement which had originated since the death of Frederick William III., and he was thus switched into a different career. He collaborated with the leaders of the Rhenish liberal bourgeoisie (Camphausen, Hansemann, etc.) in founding the Rheinische Zeitung at Cologne; and, in the autumn of 1842, his criticism of the proceedings of the Rhenish provincial diet having aroused widespread attention, Marx became editor-in-chief of the new journal. Of course, the Rheinische Zeitung was subject to the prevailing censorship, but the censorship was not equal to the task of controlling it. [1] The Rheinische Zeitung nearly always managed to publish what it wanted. Sometimes articles of no importance, written to be censored, were sent in as a preliminary. At other times the official’s hands were forced by telling him : “If you censor this article, we shall not be able to publish the paper tomorrow.” Had there been ten newspapers as bold as the Rheinische, ten journals whose editors had had a few hundred thalers more to squander upon type-setting, the German press censorship would already have become impracticable in 1843. But the German newspaper proprietors were timid folk, humdrum fellows with small ideas and limited means, so the Rheinische Zeitung had to fight alone. Its activities wore out one censor after another. At length a twofold censorship was imposed ; after the matter for publication had been passed by the ordinary censor, it had to be submitted to the provincial governor for final approval. Even this was inadequate. Early in 1843, government realised that the newspaper was too much for it, and the Rheinische Zeitung was unceremoniously suppressed.

Marx, who that summer married Jenny von Westphalen (the father was in later years a reactionary minister of State), now removed to Paris. There, in conjunction with A. Ruge, he issued the “Deutsche-franzosische Jahrbücher,” beginning here the series of his Socialist writings with a criticism of Hegel’s philosophy of law. He also combined with the present writer in the publication of a book entitled “Die Helige Familie; gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten (The Holy Family; against Bruno Bauer and Co) a satirical critique of one of the latest forms then assumed by German idealist philosophy.

While engaged in these activities and in the study of political economy and of the great French revolution, Marx still had time to spare for occasional attacks on the Prussian government. In the spring of 1845, the Prussian authorities revenged themselves by inducing the Guizot ministry to order the expulsion of the offender from France. (Alexander von Humboldt is said to have acted as intermediary in this matter.) Marx now set up house in Brussels, and there, in the year 1846, published his “Discours sur le libre echange” (Essay on Free Trade), and in 1847 Misère de la philosophic (Poverty of Philosophy), a criticism of Proudhon’s “Philosophie de la misère” (Philosophy of Poverty). While thus engaged, he now made his first entry into the field of practical agitation by founding in Brussels a German Arbeiterverein (workers’ association). His participation in the revolutionary movement became still more active when, in 1847, he and his political associates joined the Communist League, which had already been in existence for several years as a secret society. The whole nature of this body was now transformed. Hitherto it had been more or less conspiratorial in scope and method. Now it remained secret only because secrecy was forced upon it, becoming an organisation for communist propaganda, the first organisation of the German Social Democratic Party. The League struck root wherever German workers’ associations existed. The leading members of nearly all such associations in England, Belgium, France, and Switzerland, and those of manv of the associations in Germany, were members of the Communist League, and this body played a notable part in the initiation of the German labour movement. Furthermore, our League was the first to stress the international charter of the labour movement as a whole; the first to unite Englishmen. Belgians, Hungarians. Poles, etc., as active participators in a working-class organisation; the first to call international meetings of the workers (this especially in London).

The metamorphosis of the League was effected at two congresses held during the year 1847. At the second of these, it was agreed that the party principles should be formulated and published in a manifesto to be drafted by Marx and Engels. Such was the origin of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which appeared in 1848 shortly before the February revolution, and has since then been translated into almost all the languages of Europe.

In Brussels there was a German newspaper, the Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung, which ruthlessly exposed the Fatherland’s police-made paradise. Here the hand of Marx was once more at work, and the Prussian government therefore moved, though fruitlessly for the nonce, to secure his expulsion from Belgium. But when the February revolution in Paris was followed by a popular movement in Brussels, so that a revolution seemed imminent in Belgium likewise, the Belgian government laid hands on Marx and summarily expelled him from the country. Meanwhile the French provisional government had, through Flocon, invited him to return to Paris, and he accepted the invitation.

In the French capital his chief business was to withstand the crazy scheme of the German workers there, who designed to form themselves into armed legions, bring about a revolution in Germany, and establish a German republic. Marx pointed out: first of all that it was Germany’s task to make her own revolution; and, secondly, that the Lamartines and their kind in the provisional government would infallibly betray to the enemy any foreign revolutionary legion organised on French soil — as actually happened in Belgium and Baden.

After the March revolution, Marx went to Cologne where he founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. This newspaper was issued from June 1, 1848, to May 19, 1849, and was the only organ of the democratic movement of that period to represent the outlook of the proletariat. It did this, above all, by its unqualified support of the June insurrection in Paris (1848) — a policy which almost all the shareholders of the journal repudiated. In vain did the Kreuz Zeitung complain of the “colossal impudence” with which the Neue Rheinische Zeitung attacked everything sacred, from king and vice-regent down to the ordinary policemen — and this in a Prussian fortress city then garrisoned by 8,000 men. In vain did the Rhenish liberals, who had suddenly become reactionaries, furiously rage. In vain did the local authorities of Cologne, where a state of siege had been declared, suspend the offending newspaper for a long period during the autumn of 1848. In vain did the Ministry of Justice in Frankfort instruct the Cologne public prosecutor to take legal proceedings on account of article after article. The work of editing and printing the Neue Rheinische Zeitung went on unhindered; and the circulation and the repute of the journal grew as the fierceness of its attacks on the government and the bourgeoisie increased. When the Prussian coup d’état occurred in November, 1848, at the head of each issue the Rheinische appealed to the people to refuse payment of taxes and to counter force with force. In the spring of 1849, it was prosecuted twice, once for this offence, and once for a specific article; but in both cases the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. At length, however, when the May rising of 1849 in Dresden and Rhenish Prussia had been suppressed, and when the Prussian campaign against the insurgents in Baden and the Palatinate had been begun by the concentration and mobilisation of a large force of troops, the government felt strong enough to make an end of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung by force. The last issue, that of May 19th, was printed in red ink.

Marx now returned to Paris, but within a few weeks after the demonstration of June 13, 1849, the French government confronted him with the choice of going to live in Brittany or of leaving France altogether. He chose the latter alternative, and went to London, where he has lived ever since.

During the year 1850, an attempt was made to reissue the Neue Rheinische Zeitung at Hamburg, in the form of a review; but the scheme was soon dropped owing to the increasing violence of the reaction. Soon after the coup d’état in Paris (December, 1851), Marx wrote “Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte.” [2] In 1853 he wrote “Enthüllungen über den kölner Kommunistenprozess “(Revelations concerning the Cologne Communist Trial), first published in Boston, U.S.A.; subsequently reissued at Basle, and later still at Leipzig.

After the condemnation of the members of the Communist League in Cologne, Marx withdrew from the work of political agitation for the next ten years. During this period he was mainly devoted to the study of the treasures of economic literature to be found in the British Museum Reading Room. Throughout the earlier part of this period (down to the outbreak of the American civil war) he was a regular contributor to the New York Tribune, which published, in addition to Marx’s signed contributions, a considerable number of leading articles penned by him and dealing with European and Asiatic affairs. His attacks on Lord Palmerston, based upon a detailed examination of British official documents, were reissued in London as pamphlets.

The first fruit of his economic researches was entitled “Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomte” (published by Duncker, Berlin, 1859). [3]

This work contains the first coherent exposition of the Marxist theory of value together with the theory of money. During the Italian war, Marx (writing in Das Volk, a German newspaper published in London) was busied in attacking Bonapartism, which was masquerading as a liberal movement for the freeing of oppressed nationalities; and also in onslaughts upon the Prussian policy of the day, showing how Prussia, under the pretext of neutrality, was trying to fish in troubled waters. In the same connexion it was necessary to attack Herr Karl Vogt, who, commissioned by Prince Napoleon (“Plon-Plon”) and paid by Louis Bonaparte, was working to secure German “neutrality” (read “sympathy”). Assailed by Vogt with the most abominable and deliberate calumnies, Marx replied in the work “Herr Vogt” (London, 1860). Herein the machinations of Vogt and other gentlemen wearing false democratic colours were exposed, and on both external and internal evidence Vogt was accused of accepting bribes from the Second Empire. The justice of this accusation was confirmed ten years later, for in the list of the sums paid to Bonapartist hirelings (found in the Tuileries in 1870, and published by the September government) was an item among the V’s : “Vogt, Handed over to him in August, 1859, frs. 40,000.”

Finally, in the year 1867, there was published at Hamburg, “Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, erster Band”, Marx’s chief work, an exposition of his Socialist economics and of the fundamentals of his criticism of the extant order of society, of the capitalist method of production and its consequences. The second edition of this epoch-making book appeared in 1872. The present writer is now engaged in the elaboration of the second volume.

Meanwhile the labour movement had been regaining strength in the various countries of Europe, so that Marx was now able to work for the realisation of a wish he had long cherished. This was for the foundation of a workingmen’s association in the most advanced lands of Europe and America, which should give the workers, and also the bourgeois and the governments, a concrete demonstration of the international character of the Socialist movement, should encourage and strengthen the proletariat, and should strike terror into the hearts of its enemies. An opportunity was provided at a public meeting, primarily summoned on behalf of the Poles (then suffering from renewed oppression at the hands of the Russian government), and held on September 28, 1864, in St. Martin’s Hall, London. The proposal to found the International Workingmen’s Association was enthusiastically adopted; and a provisional General Council, to sit in London, was elected at the meeting. In this General Council, and in all the subsequent General Councils down to the time of the Hague Congress, Marx was the leading spirit. Almost all the documents issued by the General Council, from the Inaugural Address (1864) down to The Civil War in France (1871), were drafted by him. A description of Marx’s activities in the International would be a history of the Association, which still lives in the memory of the European workers.

The fall of the Paris Commune made the position of the International untenable. It was thrust into the foreground of European history at a moment when all possibilities of successful practical action had been cut off. The events which raised it to the position of a seventh great Power, made the mobilisation of its fighting forces and their use in the field out of the question — for defeat would have been inevitable, and thereby the working-class movement would have been checked for decades. Furthermore, the suddenly acquired fame of the Association had attracted to it elements spurred on by personal vanity, and individuals eager to turn it to account for the gratification of their own ambition, ignorant or regardless of the real position of the International. Heroic measures were needed, and once more it was Marx who conceived them and then carried them into effect at The Hague Congress. The International, in a formal resolution, disclaimed all responsibility for the doings of the Bakuninists, who were the most active among the before-mentioned foolish and unsavoury elements. Then, in view of the impracticability (under the shadow of the general reaction) of coping with the increased demands now being made upon the International, and of continuing actively at work except at the cost of sacrifices which would have drained the labour movement of its life-blood, it was agreed that the organisation should temporarily withdraw from the stage, the seat of the General Council being transferred to the United States. This decision has often been criticised, but events have shown that it was sound. On the one hand, the step put an end to the endeavours to make the International responsible for futile insurrections. On the other hand, the continued and close association between the Socialist labour parties of the various countries showed that community of interest and solidarity of feeling (once awakened among the workers of all lands through the formation of the International) were able to secure active expression without the existence of a formal International Workingmen’s Association — which had for the time being become a hindrance to progress.

After The Hague Congress, Marx could at length find repose and leisure for the resumption of his studies in the theoretical field, and there is good reason to hope that ere long the second volume of “Capital” will be ready for the press.

Among the numerous important discoveries for which Marx’s name will be famous in the history of science, two only can be mentioned here.

The first of these is the transformation he has brought about in our general conception of universal history. Hitherto the accepted view has been that the ultimate causes of historical changes are to be found in the changing ideas of human beings; and that, among all historical changes, political changes are the most important — are dominant in history. People did not trouble to ask whence ideas came into men’s minds, or to enquire what were the primary causes of political changes. Only upon the newer school of French historians, and to some extent also upon recent English historians, had the conviction forced itself that, since the Middle Ages at any rate, the chief motive force of European history had been the struggle of the rising bourgeoisie to wrest social and political power from the feudal nobility. But Marx has shown that all history down to the present day has been the history of class struggles; that in all the manifold and complicated political struggles, what is really at issue is nothing more or less than the social and political dominion of social classes — the struggle of an old-established class to maintain power, and the struggle of a subordinate class to rise to power. But how do these classes originate, and upon what does their existence depend? Classes arise out of, and their existence depends upon, the material conditions under which society at any given time produces and exchanges the means of life.

The feudal regime of the Middle Ages was based upon the self-sufficing economy of small communities of peasants, who themselves produced almost everything they needed, so that there was practically no system of exchange. The nobles, a fighting caste, protected these peasant communities against attack from outside, and gave them national, or at any rate political cohesion. But with the growth of the towns there arose a system of handicrafts, and commerce developed — national at first and then international. Therewith the urban bourgeoisie came into being; and even before the close of the Middle Ages this new class, after a struggle with the nobility, secured acceptance into the feudal order of society. Then, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, and especially after the discovery of the extra-European world, the bourgeoisie began to find a much wider area for its commercial activities, and there with to feel a new spur to its industry. Handicraft, in most fields of production, gave place to the factory system of manufacture. Then, thanks to the discoveries of the eighteenth century (and especially thanks to the discovery of the steam engine), the development of large-scale industry became possible; and this in its turn reacted upon commerce, for in the more backward countries it drove out the old, handicrafts, and in the more advanced lands it brought into being new means of communication — steam transport, railways, and electric telegraphs. Thus the bourgeoisie was able to an increasing extent to concentrate social wealth and social power into its hands, whilst political power was still exclusively vested in the nobility and in the monarchy based upon the nobility. But at a certain stage the bourgeoisie is able to win political power as well (in France this happened through the great revolution), and thenceforward it becomes the governing class, holding sway over the proletariat and the lesser peasantry.

From this outlook we can find the simplest possible explanation of all historical happenings, provided we have sufficient knowledge concerning the economico-social conditions of the period we are studying — a knowledge which, however, our professional historians never possess. Thus, too, we can readily explain the prevailing ideas in any historical epoch as the outcome of the economic vital conditions of the time and the social and political relationships that issue from these conditions. Marx’s discovery for the first time set history upon its true foundation. The obvious fact (which, though obvious, had previously been overlooked) that human beings must eat and drink, must have clothing and shelter, in a word must work, before they can fight for dominion or cultivate politics and religion and philosophy — this obvious fact was at last able to enter into its historical heritage.

The new philosophy of history was of supreme importance to Socialist theory. It showed that hitherto all history had been the history of class contrasts end class struggles; that there had always been ruling and ruled, exploiting and exploited classes; and that the great majority of human beings had been invariably condemned to hard labour and little enjoyment. Why was this? For the simple reason that, in all earlier phases of social evolution, production had been so little developed that historical progress had been substantially dependent upon the activity of a small privileged minority, whilst to the vast majority had been left the task of producing their own bare subsistence and also the increasingly generous portion of the privileged minority. Such an analysis of history gives a natural and reasonable explanation of class rule, which had previously seemed explicable only as the outcome of human malevolence. But it does more than this, for it leads us to the view that nowadays, thanks to the tremendous increase in the forces of production, the last pretext for a division of mankind into rulers and ruled, exploiters and exploited, has vanished — at any rate in the more advanced countries of the world. It shows us that the dominant great bourgeoisie has fulfilled its historic mission, that it is no longer competent to lead society on the forward march and has actually become a hindrance to the development of production (as we can see from the occurrence of commercial crises, and especially from the last great collapse and from the depressed condition of industry in all lands). It shows, likewise, that the historic mission of leadership now devolves on the proletariat, a class which, in virtue of its social position, can only free itself by doing away once for all with class dominion, subjugation, and exploitation. It shows, finally, that the social forces of production, which have outgrown the control of the bourgeoisie, only await seizure by the associated proletariat in order to bring about a state of affairs in which every member of society will not merely participate in the production of social wealth, but will have an equal share in the distribution and administration of this wealth ; and it shows that, by the purposively organised control of production as a whole, the forces of production and the social yield will be so greatly intensified and expanded that there will be guarantees for the satisfaction of every individual’s reasonable needs to an ever-increasing degree.

The second of Marx’s epoch-making discoveries is his definitive explanation of the relationship between capital and labour; in other words, his elucidation of the way in which, within existing society and under the dominion of the extant capitalist method of production, the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists is effected. As soon as economic science had proved that labour was the source of all wealth and all value, it became inevitable that people should go on to ask : “How can this demonstration be reconciled with the fact that the wage worker does not receive the whole of the value created by his labour, but is compelled to part with a portion of it to the capitalist?” The bourgeois economists and the Socialists alike did their utmost to find an answer that should be scientifically valid, but all their attempts were vain until Marx solved the problem. 

Here is the Marxist solution. The present capitalist method of production presupposes the existence of two social classes : on the one hand the capitalists, who own the means of production and life; and, on the other, the proletarians, who, being dispossessed, have nothing to sell but their labour power, and are forced to sell this in order to get the means of life. But the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour time incorporated in its production or requisite for its reproduction; and the value of the labour power of an average human being for a day, a month, or a year, is thus determined by the amount of labour incorporated in the quantity of the necessaries of life requisite for the maintenance of this labour power during a day, a month, or a year. Let us assume that the necessaries of life requisite for the maintenance of a worker throughout a working day needed six working hours for their production, or (which is the same thing) that the labour incorporated in them represents a labour quantum of six hours; in that case the value of one day’s labour power will be expressed by a sum of money which likewise incorporates six working hours. Let us assume, further, that the capitalist who employs our workman pays him this sum, which is the full value of his labour power. Then, as soon as the workman has worked six hours for the capitalist, he has fully repaid the capitalist’s outlay — has given six hours labour for six hours’ labour. There is nothing left over for the capitalist, who therefore looks at the matter from a very different standpoint. The capitalist says : “I have bought this worker’s labour power not for six hours only, but for a whole day”; and he therefore makes the workman stick to the job for eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, or more hours (as the case may be), so that the product of the seventh, eighth, and subsequent working hours is the outcome of unpaid labour, and finds it ways into the capitalist’s pocket. Thus the worker in capitalist employ produces, not merely the value of his labour power (which he receives as his wages), but also a surplus value which, in the first instance appropriated by the capitalist, is subsequently distributed throughout the capitalist class in accordance with definite economic laws, and forms the source of land-rent, profit, the accumulation of capital — in a word of all the wealth that is consumed or hoarded by the leisure classes.

This demonstration shows that the acquisition of wealth by latter-day capitalists is just as much the appropriation of others’ labour, of unpaid labour, as was the acquisition of wealth by the slave-owner or by the feudal baron imposing forced labour on his serfs; it shows that these various forms of exploitation are merely distinguished one from another by variations in the method whereby the unpaid labour is appropriated. It cuts the ground from under the feet of the hypocritical contention of the possessing classes that law and justice dominate the existing order of society, that in that order there are established equality of rights and duties and a general harmony of interests. Contemporary bourgeois society is seen, no less than its forerunners, to be a gigantic institution for the exploitation of the overwhelming majority of the population by a small and continually decreasing minority.

Modern scientific Socialism is grounded upon these two salient facts. In the second volume of “Capital” this and other hardly less important discoveries concerning the capitalist system of society will be further developed; and certain aspects of political economy not touched upon in the first volume will likewise be revolutionised. We may hope that Marx will soon be able to send it to the printers.

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[1] The first censor of the Rheinische Zeitung was Police Councillor Dolleschal. This worthy once blue-pencilled in the Kolnische Zeitung an advertisement of a translation of Dante’s Divina Comedia (the translation was by “Philolethes,” later King John of Saxony), with the remark: “No comedy must be written about divine affairs.”

[2] First published in the United States (1852), and reissued at Hamburg (1869) shortly before the Franco-German war. English translations, as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Daniel De Leon, New York, 1897, and by Eden and Cedar Paul, London, 1926.

[3] Englished as “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,” translated from the second German edition by N. I. Stone, second edition, London and New York, 1904.