The life and teaching of Karl Marx Part 2

"Indeed these young men sleep quite peacefully except when they now and then devote the whole or part of a night to pleasure, whereas my clever and gifted son Karl pa.s.ses wretched sleepless nights, wearying body and mind with cheerless study, forbearing all pleasures with the sole object of applying himself to abstruse studies: but what he builds to-day he destroys again to-morrow, and in the end he finds that he has destroyed what he already had, without having gained anything from other people.

At last the body begins to ail and the mind gets confused, whilst these ordinary folks steal along in easy marches, and attain their goal if not better at least more comfortably than those who contemn youthful pleasures and undermine their health in order to s.n.a.t.c.h at the ghost of erudition, which they could probably have exorcised more successfully in an hour spent in the society of competent men--with social enjoyment into the bargain!"

In spite of his unbounded love for his father, Marx could not deviate from the path which he had chosen. Those deeper natures who, after having lost their religious beliefs, have the good fortune to attain to a philosophical or scientific conception of the universe, do not easily shrink from a conflict between filial affection and loyalty to new convictions. Nor was Marx allured by the prospects of a distinguished official career. Indeed his fighting temperament would never have admitted of that. He wrote the lines:

Therefore let us, all things daring, Never from our task recede; Never sink in sullen silence, Paralysed in will and deed.

Let us not in base subjection Brood away our fearful life, When with deed and aspiration We might enter in the strife.

His stay in Stralau had the most beneficial effects on his health. He worked strenuously at his newly-acquired philosophical convictions, and for this his relations with the members of the Graduates' Club stood him in good stead, more especially his acquaintance with Bruno Bauer, a lecturer in theology, and Friedrich Koppen, a master in a grammar school, who in spite of difference of age and position treated him as an equal. Marx gave up all thought of an official career, and looked forward to obtaining a lectures.h.i.+p in some university or other. His father reconciled himself to the new studies and strivings of his son; he was, however, not destined to rejoice at Karl's subsequent achievements. After a short illness he died in May, 1838, at the age of fifty-six.

Marx then gave up altogether the study of jurisprudence, and worked all the more a.s.siduously at the perfecting of his philosophical knowledge, preparing himself for his degree examination in order--at the instigation of Bruno Bauer--to get himself admitted as quickly as possible as lecturer in philosophy at the University of Bonn. Bauer himself expected to be made Professor of Theology in Bonn after having served as lecturer in Berlin from 1834 to 1839 and in Bonn during the year 1840. Marx wrote a thesis on the Natural Philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus, and in 1841 the degree of Doctor of Philosophy was conferred on him at Jena. He then went over to his friend Bauer in Bonn, where he thought to begin his career as lecturer. Meanwhile his hopes had disappeared. Prussian universities were at that time no places for free inquirers. It was not even possible for Bauer to obtain a professors.h.i.+p; still less could Marx, who was much more violent in the expression of his opinions, reckon on an academic career. His only way out of this blind alley was free-lance journalism, and for this an opportunity soon presented itself.

III. BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC LIFE.

Marx made his entry into public life with a thorough philosophical training and with an irrestrainable impulse to enter into the struggle for the spiritual freedom of Germany. By spiritual freedom he understood first and foremost freedom in religion and liberalism in politics. He was, too, perfectly clear as to the instrument to be used: it was criticism. The positive and rigid having become ineffectual and unreasonable, is to fall before the weapon of criticism and so make room for a living stream of thought and being, or as Marx himself expressed it in 1844, "to make the petrified conditions dance by singing to them their own tune." Their own tune is, of course, the dialectic. Criticism, generally speaking, was the weapon of the Young Hegelians. Criticism is negation, sweeping away existing conditions and prevailing dogmas to make a clear path for life. Not the setting up of new principles or new dogmas, but the clearing away of the old dogmas is the task of the Young Hegelians.

For if dialectic be rightly understood, criticism or negation is the best positive work. Criticism finds expression, above all, in polemics, in the literal meaning of waging war--ruthless war--against the unreal for the purpose of shaking up one's contemporaries.

After Marx had given up all hope of an academic career, the only field of labour that remained open to him was, as we have already said, that of journalism. His material circ.u.mstances compelled him, moreover, to consider the question of an independent livelihood. Just about this time the Liberals in the Rhine provinces took up a scheme for the foundation of a newspaper, the object of which was to prepare the way for conditions of greater freedom. The necessary money was soon procured. Significantly enough, Young Hegelians were kept in view for editors and contributors. On the first of January, 1842, the first number of the _Rheinische Zeitung_ was published at Cologne. The editor was Dr. Rutenberg, who had formed an intimate friends.h.i.+p with Marx at the time the latter was attending the University of Berlin; and so Marx, then in Bonn, was also invited to contribute. He accepted the invitation, and his essays brought him to the notice of Arnold Ruge, who likewise invited him to take part in his literary undertakings in conjunction with Feuerbach, Bauer, Moses Hess, and others. Marx's essays were greatly appreciated, too, by the readers of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, so that in October, 1842, on the retirement of Rutenberg, he was called to the editorial chair of that journal. In his new position he had to deal with a series of economic and political questions which, no doubt, with a less conscientious editor would have occasioned little hard thinking, but which for Marx showed the need of a thorough study of political economy and Socialism. In October, 1842, a congress of French and German intellectuals was held in Strasburg, and amongst other things French Socialist theories were discussed. Likewise in the Rhine provinces arose questions concerning landed property and taxes, which had to be dealt with from the editorial chair, questions which were not to be answered by a purely philosophical knowledge. Besides, the censors.h.i.+p made the way hard for a paper conducted with such critical ac.u.men, and did not allow the editor to fulfil his real mission. In the preface to "The Critique of Political Economy" (1859) Marx gives a short sketch of his editorial life:

"As editor of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, in 1842 and 1843 I came up, for the first time, against the difficulty of having to take part in the controversy over so-called material interests. The proceedings of the Diet of the Rhine provinces with regard to wood stealing and parcelling out of landed property, and their action towards the farmers of the Moselle districts, and lastly debates on Free Trade and Protection, gave the first stimulus to my investigation of economic questions. On the other hand, an echo of French Socialism and Communism, feebly philosophical in tone, had at that time made itself heard in the columns of the _Rheinische Zeitung_. I declared myself against superficiality, confessing, however, at the same time that the studies I had made so far did not allow me to venture any judgment of my own on the significance of the French tendencies. I readily took advantage of the illusion cherished by the directors of the _Rheinische Zeitung_, who believed they could reverse the death sentence pa.s.sed on that journal as a result of weak management, in order to withdraw from the public platform into my study."

And so the intellectual need which he felt of studying economics and Socialism, as well as his thirst for free, unfettered activity, resulted in Marx's retirement from his post as editor, although he was about to enter upon married life and had to make provision for his own household. But he was from the beginning determined to subordinate his material existence to his spiritual aspirations.

II.

THE FORMATIVE PERIOD OF MARXISM.

I. THE FRANCO-GERMAN YEAR BOOKS.

Between the years 1843 and 1844 we have the second and probably the most important critical period in the intellectual development of Marx. In 1837 he had become a disciple of Hegel, into whose philosophy he penetrated deeper and deeper during the two years which ensued.

Between 1843 and 1844 he became a Socialist, and in the following two years he laid the foundations of those social and historical doctrines a.s.sociated with his name. Of the way he came to be a Socialist and by what studies he was led to Socialism, we know nothing. All that can be said is that in the summer of 1848 he must have pursued the reading of French Socialist literature just as a.s.siduously as he did the study of Hegel in 1837. In his letters to Arnold Ruge, written about 1843, and printed in the Franco-German Year Books, we find a few pa.s.sages which bear witness to his sudden turnover. In a letter from Cologne (May, 1843) he remarks: "This system of acquisition and commercialism, of possession and of the exploitation of mankind, is leading even more swiftly than the increase of population to a breach within the present society, which the old system cannot heal, because indeed it has not the power either to heal or create, but only to exist and enjoy."

That is still in the sentimental vein, and anything but dialectical criticism. In the following few months, however, he made surprisingly rapid progress towards the fundamental ideas of that conception of history and society, which later on came to be known as Marxism, and which he almost built up into a complete system during those restless years of exuberant creative activity, 1845-46. In a letter from Kreuznach, dated September, 1843, he shows already an acquaintance with Fourier, Proudhon, Cabet, Weitling, etc., and sees his task not in the setting up of Utopias but in the criticism of political and social conditions, "in interpreting the struggles and aspirations of the age." And by the winter of 1843 he has already advanced so much as to be able to write the introduction to the criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Law," which is one of the boldest and most brilliant of his essays. He deals with the question of a German revolution, and asks which is the cla.s.s that could bring about the liberation of Germany. His answer is that the positive conditions for the German revolution and liberation are to be sought "in the formation of a cla.s.s in chains, a cla.s.s which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it, of an order which shall break up all orders. The product of this dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat. The proletariat arises in Germany only with the beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting from natural circ.u.mstances but poverty artificially created, not the ma.s.ses who are held down by the weight of the social system but the mult.i.tude arising from the acute break-up of society--especially of the middle cla.s.s--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things, it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the proletariat desires the negation of private property, it is merely elevating to a general principle of society what it already involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society."

Marx wrote this in Paris, whither he had removed with his young wife in October, 1843, in order to take up the editors.h.i.+p of the Franco-German Year Books founded by Arnold Ruge. In a letter addressed to Ruge from Kreuznach in September, 1843, Marx summed up the program of this periodical as follows: "If the shaping of the future and its final reconstruction is not our business, yet it is all the more evident what we have to accomplish with our joint efforts, I mean the fearless criticism of all existing inst.i.tutions--fearless in the sense that it does not flinch either from its logical consequences or from the conflict with the powers that be. I am therefore not with those who would have us set up the standard of dogmatism; far from it; we should rather try to give what help we can to those who are involved in dogma, so that they may realise the implications of their own principles. So, for example, Communism as taught by Cabet, Dezamy, Weitling, and others is a dogmatic abstraction.... Moreover, we want to work upon our contemporaries, and particularly on our German contemporaries. The question is: How is that to be done? Two factors cannot be ignored. In the first place religion, in the second place politics, are the two things which claim most attention in the Germany of to-day.... As far as everyday life is concerned, the political State, even where it has not been consciously perfected through Socialist demands, exactly fulfils, in all its modern forms, the demands of reason. Nor does it stop there. It presupposes reason everywhere as having been realised. But in so doing it lands itself everywhere in the contradiction between its ideal purpose and its real achievements. Out of this conflict, therefore, of the political State with itself social truth is evolved."

Without a doubt, the Hegelian conception of the State as the embodiment of reason and morality did not accord well with the const.i.tution and the working of the actual State. And Marx goes on to remark that in its history the political State is the expression of the struggles, the needs, and the realities of society. It is not true, then, as the French and English Utopians have thought, that the treatment of political questions is beneath the dignity of Socialists.

Rather is it work of this kind which leads into party conflict and away from the abstract theory. "We do not then proclaim to the world in doctrinaire fas.h.i.+on any new principle: 'This is the truth, bow down before it!' We do not say: 'Refrain from strife, it is foolishness!'

We only make clear to men for what they are really struggling, and to the consciousness of this they must come whether they will or not."

That is conceived in a thoroughly dialectical vein. The thinker propounds no fresh problems, brings forward no abstract dogmas, but awakens an understanding for the growth of the future out of the past, inspiring the political and social warriors with the consciousness of their own action.

II. FRIENDs.h.i.+P WITH FRIEDRICH ENGELS.

Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring, 1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September, 1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning of the lifelong intimate friends.h.i.+p between the two men, who without a close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.

Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought, but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand, Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man, eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual a.s.sociation with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844 Engels was a Utopian--until Marx explained to him the meaning of political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels'

"Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon.

Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels.

Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-cla.s.s economic system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had, independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels, on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom he rewarded with a lifelong friends.h.i.+p and devotion, which proved to be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help, Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in exile.

III. CONTROVERSIES WITH BAUER AND RUGE.

After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx, recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage, from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of 1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer, and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel.

The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social revolutionary interpretation to the cla.s.s struggle between Capital and Labour. In the Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really think that he can understand any period without having studied, for example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world, so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see the birthplace of history in coa.r.s.e, material production upon earth but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."--("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)

Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but would not concede that the ma.s.ses had any power whatever, wrote: "All the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed to failure and could not have lasting success, because the ma.s.ses had taken an interest in them and inspired them--or they must come to a lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it must reckon on the approval of the ma.s.ses."

Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had been always determined by ma.s.s interests, and only in so far as they represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but they could not achieve any results. The idea always fell into disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first appearance on the world-stage, every ma.s.s interest working itself out in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of the middle cla.s.ses, in whose interest it manifested itself in great movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring ma.s.ses, for whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they corresponded to cla.s.s interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the liberation of mankind in general."--("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp.

181-3.)

In August, 1844, Marx published under the t.i.tle "Marginal Notes" in the Paris _Vorwarts_ a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpa.s.s those of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution.

Where would the middle cla.s.ses, their scholars and philosophers included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace and Concord' bearing on the question of emanc.i.p.ation? If one compares the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with this unconstrained and brilliant literary debut of the German workers, if one compares these gigantic baby shoes of the proletariat with the dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle cla.s.ses, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as cla.s.sic a role in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle cla.s.ses is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the German proletariat--even leaving out of account German philosophy--is the social capacity of Germany."

At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German working cla.s.ses resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840) Proudhon had played with Hegelian formulae, and Marx probably believed that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with cla.s.sical German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" German edition, 1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link in social evolution, the _thesis_; property is the antagonistic principle, the _ant.i.thesis_; if only we can get the third factor, the _synthesis_, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only through the cancelling of the thesis by the ant.i.thesis; one must therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then seen the real kind of human social life."

That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination; still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have manipulated German philosophical formulae, and would justify the most sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in "debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with Proudhon.--(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition, Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)

In the midst of this activity, however, Marx and other German contributors to the Paris _Vorwarts_ were expelled from France in January, 1845, at the instigation of the Prussian Government. Marx packed up his traps and left for Brussels, where he lived, with short interruptions, until the outbreak of the European Revolution in February, 1848. During his sojourn in Brussels his time was occupied mainly with economic studies, for which Engels placed his library of works on political economy at his disposal. Marx embodied the result of these studies in the criticism directed against Proudhon in his "Misere de la Philosophie" (Poverty of Philosophy), published in 1847.

IV. CONTROVERSY WITH PROUDHON.

Marx's "Misere de la Philosophie" indicates the culmination of the fist phase of his creative work. In this critical review he makes his position clear with respect not only to Proudhon but to Utopian Socialism in general. It marks also the turning point in the studies of Marx: English political economy occupied henceforth the place which German philosophy had held. The anti-Proudhon controversy is therefore worthy of a fuller treatment.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (b. 1809 in Besancon, d. 1865 in Paris) was one of the most gifted and most distinguished of social philosophers which the modern proletariat has produced. He was originally a compositor, like his similarly minded English contemporary, John Francis Bray, the author of "Labour's Wrongs," published in 1839, but he had a much greater inclination for study and a more fruitful literary talent. He managed to acquire, self-taught, a knowledge of the cla.s.sical languages, of mathematics and of science, read a.s.siduously but indiscriminately works on economics, philosophy, and history, and applied himself to social criticism. It is rare for a working man in the West of Europe to feel impelled to make an acquaintance with Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach as Proudhon did through French translations and through intercourse with German scholars in Paris. He possessed the n.o.ble ambition of blending French sprightliness with German thoroughness. But self-instruction failed to give him that intellectual training which is more valuable than knowledge, and which alone gives the power to order and to utilise the information acquired, as well as to submit one's own work to self-criticism. The value of a systematic education does not consist in the main in the acquisition of knowledge but in the training of our intellectual faculties as instruments of inquiry and apprehension, of methodical thinking and of sound judgment, to enable us to find our bearings more easily in the chaos of phenomena, experiences, and ideas. A self-taught man may no doubt attain to this degree of culture, but only if his first attempts at independent creative work are submitted to a strict but kindly criticism, which makes him discipline his thoughts. This was not the case with Proudhon; he lacked mental self-discipline. His first work, "What is Property?" (1840) brought him immediate recognition and strengthened him in his high opinion of his knowledge and his powers, even to the point of making him conceited. When, for example, the French historian, Michelet, disapproved of his dictum, "Property is robbery," Proudhon replied, "Not twice in a thousand years does one come across a p.r.o.nouncement like that."--("Economic Contradictions," Leipzig, 1847. Vol. II., p.

301.) And yet the idea is as old as Communism itself. Besides all this, the vivacity and exuberance of language for which Proudhon was noted easily blinded him to the shortcomings of his intellectual culture. Thus it often happened that he rediscovered ideas of his predecessors and published them to the world with nave pride. Through page after page of argument he holds the reader in expectation of the explanation, which he is about to give, of the nature of value, which he rightly characterises as the "corner-stone of political economy."

At last he will disclose the secret: "It is time to make ourselves acquainted with this power. This power ... is _labour_." His main work, "The System of Economic Contradictions," swarms with philosophical formulae and expressions like thesis, ant.i.thesis, antinomies, synthesis, dialectics, induction, syllogisms, etc., as also with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew etymologies; it often wanders into irrelevant theological and philosophical digressions and side issues, not so much with the intention of parading the author's knowledge as from his lack of intellectual discipline and insufficient command of his material. The work in question was to combine German philosophy with French and English political economy, and its author believed that it would secure for him before everything else the admiration of the German Socialists, especially of Marx. He drew the latter's attention to it by letter, and awaited his "rigorous criticism." The criticism came in "Misere de la Philosophie" (Brussels, 1847), but it could no longer fulfil its purpose, as the fundamental difference between the two men had already widened to a gulf that could not be bridged. Marx had almost completed his materialistic, logical, and revolutionary Socialism, Proudhon had laid the foundations of his peaceful Anarchism with its federative economic basis. With his searching a.n.a.lysis, his systematised knowledge, and his great indignation at the presumptuous attacks on every Socialist school and leader, Marx sat in judgment upon Proudhon, exposing him as a dilettante in philosophy and economics, and at the same time sketching in outline his own conception of history and economics.

Marx's verdict is d.a.m.ning, yet one cannot but acknowledge that Proudhon, in spite of his obvious insufficiency, had endeavoured, honestly and zealously, to extricate himself from Capitalism as well as from Utopianism, and to outline a scheme for an economic order, in which men, such as he had found them, might lead a free, industrious, and righteous life. The task which Proudhon had set himself was the same as that which engaged the attention of Marx, the criticism of political economy and of the sentimental Utopian Socialism. That is the key-note of Proudhon's system, and it is sounded in almost every chapter. He lacked, however, the requisite knowledge and the historical sense which alone could have made him equal to his task.

The whole of his criticism consists virtually in the complaint that riches and poverty acc.u.mulate side by side, and that the economic categories--use value, exchange value, division of labour, compet.i.tion, monopoly, machinery, property, ground rent, credit, tax, etc.--manifest contradictions. Proudhon's special problem was the following: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the value, let us say, of 20 milliards. But if the workers, as consumers, wish to buy back these goods they have to pay 25 milliards. The workers are thus cheated out of a fifth. That is a terrible contradiction."--("What is Property?" Chap. IV.; "Economic Contradictions," Vol. I., pp. 292-93.) This statement of the problem shows that Proudhon had no inkling of the essential features of the question of value, in spite of the fact that he cites Adam Smith, David Ricardo, etc., whom he must therefore have read. Had he really understood these economists and taken up his critical att.i.tude towards them from the standpoint of justice, he would have stated the problem somewhat as follows: "The workers of any country produce yearly goods to the value, say, of 20 milliards. For their work, however, they receive as wages a quant.i.ty of goods of the value of only 10 or 12 milliards. Is that just?" Only this way of stating the question could possibly have revealed to him the nature of wages, of value, of profit, of capital and its contradictions. Proudhon sees the perpetration of fraud or robbery in the sphere of exchange and not in that of production, and he does not ask himself how, if labour produces goods to the value of only 20 milliards, they can be exchanged at a value of 25 milliards, and what is responsible for the increase of five milliards. The other contradictions which he brings forward are not indeed new, but they are ingeniously treated. For example: the essence of exchange-value is labour, which creates wealth; but the more the wealth produced, the less becomes its exchange-value. Or this: the division of labour is, according to Smith, one of the most effective means of increasing wealth, but the further the division of labour proceeds the lower sinks the workman, being reduced to the level of an unintelligent automaton engaged in the performance of a fractional operation. The same thing holds good for machinery. So, too, compet.i.tion stimulates effort, but brings much misery in its train by leading to adulteration, sharp practices, and strife between man and man. Further, taxation should be proportional to riches, in reality it is proportional to poverty. Or again, private owners.h.i.+p of land ought to increase productivity; in practice it deprives the farmer of the land. In this way he runs to earth the contradictions in political economy, and so we find everywhere the words thesis and anti-thesis or antinomies (contradictions between two well-established propositions). And out of this contradiction springs poverty. The solution or the synthesis is the creation of an economic order which shall preserve the good elements in this category and eliminate the bad ones, and so satisfy the demands of justice. And that is what Socialism cannot do. "For the economic order is based upon calculations of an inexorable justice and not upon those angelic sentiments of brotherhood, sacrifice, and love which so many well-meaning Socialists of the present time are endeavouring to awake in the people. It is useless for them to preach, after the example of Jesus Christ, the necessity for sacrifice, and to set an example of it in their own lives: selfishness is stronger than they and can only be restrained by rigid justice and immutable economic law. Humanitarian enthusiasm may cause upheavals which are conducive to the progress of civilisation, but such emotional crises, like the fluctuations in value, simply result in the establis.h.i.+ng of law and order on a more rigid and more restricted basis. Nature or the Deity planted mistrust in our hearts, having no faith in the love of man for his fellow men; and though I say it to the shame of the human conscience (for our hypocrisy must be confronted with it sooner or later), every disclosure which science has made to us concerning the designs of providence with respect to the progress of society points to a deeply rooted hatred of mankind on G.o.d's part."--("System of Economic Contradictions or the Philosophy of Poverty," Vol. I., p. 107.) Just as severely does he denounce the inst.i.tution of Trade Unionism and its methods of warfare, together with State politics, as indeed the working of cla.s.s organisation and of the State generally. The only way to realise social justice is to create a society of producers who exchange their goods among one another according to their equivalents in labour and carry on work in adequate relations.h.i.+p to the production of wealth, or, to put it clearly, to establish an order where supply and demand balance one another.

Marx's answer to the "Philosophy of Poverty" is indicated at once by the t.i.tle "The Poverty of Philosophy." He deals first of all with the economic details of Proudhon's work, and proves with doc.u.mentary evidence that the theses and ant.i.theses it contains partly spring from a half-understood reading of English and French political economists, and in part have been taken direct from the English Communists. Marx already displays in this section an extensive knowledge of economic literature. Then he confronts Proudhon's philosophical and social theories with his own deductions and gives many positive results.

Marx's main object was to induce the Socialists to give up their Utopianism and think in terms of realism, and to regard social and economic _categories_ in their historical setting:

"Economic _categories_ are only the theoretical expressions, ideal conceptions of the conditions of production obtaining in society....

Proudhon has grasped well enough that men manufacture cloth, linen, etc., under certain conditions of production. But what he has not grasped is that these social conditions themselves are just as much human products as cloth, linen, etc. Social conditions are intimately bound up with productive power. With the acquisition of new productive power men change their methods of production, and with the change in the methods of production, in the manner of obtaining a livelihood, they change their social conditions. The hand-mill gives rise to a society with feudal lords, the steam-mill to a society with industrial capitalists. But the same men who shape the social conditions in conformity with the material means of production, shape also the principles, the ideas, the _categories_ in conformity with their social conditions. Consequently these ideas, these _categories_, are just as little eternal as are the conditions to which they give expression. They are the transitory and changing products of history.

We are living in the midst of a continuous movement of growth in productive power, of destruction of existing social conditions, of formation of ideas."--("Poverty of Philosophy," Stuttgart, 1885, pp.

100-101.)

Here it should, above all, be noticed that Marx ascribes to industrialism a powerful revolutionary effect, and that he characterises the different forms of society by their different methods of labour. Or, as he says later in "Capital," "not _what_ is produced, but _how_ it is produced distinguishes the various forms of society." What he means to say, then, is that ideas and systems are limited by their time, that they are conditioned by the prevailing means of production. To understand them one must study the times which have preceded them, as well as investigate the ideas and systems themselves, and find out whether new forms have not arisen which stand in contradiction or in contrast to the old one. Or, as Marx says: