by Gill Hands
Class struggle and revolution
Marx believed capitalism had divided society into two opposing camps, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie were the class of capitalists, who owned the means of production and employed wage labourers. The proletariat were the workers, who had no means of production of their own and were reduced to selling their labour.
Although workers were exploited they accepted the status quo because they did not understand that they were being exploited. Marx believed the only way of changing this was to begin a revolutionary workers party to educate working people. This was one of the reasons that he became involved with the Communist League and wrote The Communist Manifesto. He thought that when the proletariat had become a class ‘for itself’ then revolution would follow.
Further Marxist thought
In a communist society private property would be abolished, class distinctions would disappear, and eventually society would become a self-governing community. Work would still exist but there would be no alienation or exploitation.
Although The Communist Manifesto puts forward some ways in which a communist society might be run there is not much detail in any of Marx’s writings. A lot of what we know about this subject is taken from the work of Engels, in particular The Principles of Communism, written in 1847. Engels proposed that banks and industry would be nationalized, there would be free education, slums would be demolished to make way for communal housing, private property would be abolished and eventually money would cease to exist.
How Marxism changed the world
After Marx’s death in 1883, Engels continued with his work. With the help of Eleanor Marx, Marx’s youngest daughter, he started to make the later volumes of Das Kapital fit for publication. The ideas of Marx led to Russia becoming the first communist country in the world in 1917. The civil war that followed meant that the economy was left in ruins and a true communist state did not emerge. Instead the Soviet Union became a virtual dictatorship under the leadership of Josef Stalin.
Marxism after Marx
Numerous schools of Marxism flourished in the twentieth century during which academics hotly debated the ‘true’ meaning of Marx’s legacy. Classical Marxism is the theory of Marxism that Marx and Engels developed. It is based on what Marx said or wrote. Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong in China, developed their own forms of Marxism as they struggled to make communism work. Marx’s ideas were further developed by thinkers such as the Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci, who brought in the theory of hegemony – a development of Marx’s theory of ideology.
The philosophers of the Frankfurt School developed a form of Marxism sometimes know as Western Marxism. They looked at critiquing society as a whole in order to bring about desired changes.
There has been a great deal of debate about the relevance of Marx in the twenty-first century and Marx has gone in and out of fashion in academic circles. Post-modern theorists, such as Jean Baudrillard, argued that Marx’s economic theories do not take mass media and modern consumerism into account; and those who follow the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard think that ‘grand narratives’ like those Marx described in Das Kapital, are flawed. There was a resurgence of interest in Marx’s predictions for the economy after the start of the world economic crisis that began in 2007. There is also interest in his ideas on consumerism by those in the green movement who see capitalism as the main enemy of the environment.
Introduction
Karl Marx is considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of the last thousand years. Born in Germany in 1818, he was a great philosopher, historian, economist and social theorist. What I find fascinating is that he was not a specialist in any of these areas of expertise, but his writing led to revolution and to a total change in the political structure of the world.
Marx lived during a time of great social and industrial change in Europe and this book explains the historical context of his writings, how they led to revolution after his death and the rise and fall of communist states. I am interested in the way society, morals and manners change through the ages. Marx was interested in many of the same factors, and his analysis of ideology (the assumptions each society makes about the nature of the world), seems obvious to us today. At the time it was a radical idea to say that people can only think in the way that their language and the concepts handed down to them allow.
Marx became almost a god to those living under communism; I find this ironic as Marx believed that ‘religion is the opium of the people.’ He became a well known figurehead for the Communist world and subject to so much propaganda that details about his life and work are often misunderstood. He is known as the ‘father of communism,’ although he did not invent this title. The word ‘communist’ came into the English language in 1840, coined by Goodwyn Barmby the founder of the London Communist Propaganda Society. He derived it from the French word ‘commune’, a description of the social structure that emerged after the French Revolution. However such is the iconic power of Marx that he will always be identified with the word in everybody’s minds. It is also the case that many of his sayings have become well known but are often misquoted or misunderstood. People often talk of the ‘bourgeoisie’ or the ‘proletariat’ without knowing exactly what the terms mean. This book is an introduction to his thought and so all terms and jargon are explained in the text.
Despite being an iconic figure Marx was only human, with human weaknesses and prejudices. He had a towering intellect and a volatile and forceful personality, often clashing with other thinkers of his day, but he was a loving family man and father to his children. They lived in poverty for a great deal of their lives because he continued to write about and support a cause he believed in. He wrote vividly about the horrors of the factory system, yet he depended heavily on an industrialist, Friedrich Engels, for financial support in order to write what is considered to be his great masterwork. This analysis of class structure and the industrial capitalist system took many years of his life and took a toll on his health.
Marx did not live in a vacuum, he was influenced greatly by the German philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach; by British political economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo; and by French socialists including Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Blanc. Their influence on him is explained in detail in the chapter on philosophy which shows the development of his own thought processes into a Marxist philosophy.
Marx challenged the received wisdom of his day and prompted questions about the nature of society and class structure. He looked for patterns of development in the history of mankind and used these to understand and comment on the capitalist system. He documented the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the power of capitalist society. He saw that modern industry had a great potential for improving lives but instead it crushed and impoverished people because it was a tool of a capitalist system that he was deeply critical of. He believed the capitalist system exploited and alienated those who lived under it, so that money came to rule the lives of both rich and poor. He was one of the first writers to examine the beginnings of the consumer-led society that we now live in and he predicted it would spread around the world.
His view of the world was one of class struggle, where one dominant class had come to oppress another. He believed that this could not last and it would lead to an inevitable world-wide revolution. This would be followed by the setting up of societies of equals under communism. In the twentieth century this seemed to be a real possibility as more and more countries came under communist rule, but true communism as Marx envisaged it, did not follow and many communist states had collapsed by the end of the century.
The fall of communist regimes in many countries has led to doubts about Marx’s relevance in the twenty-first century. He predicted world-wide revolution, which hasn’t happened and these facts have led to a great discussion over the validity of his theories. Were they only applicable to
the time in which he was writing, or are they still applicable? Might a revolution still be a possibility? Did the world financial crisis that began in 2007 show that he was right about the inherent instability of the capitalist system? There are no easy answers to these questions but the book presents many of the key facts and ideas so that the reader is invited to make up his or her own mind.
There are numerous books about Marx on the market that assume the reader already has an understanding of economics and philosophy. Many books are written by academics for other academics, who already know what Marx wrote and wish to discuss the finer points of his ideas in detail. This book aims to give a background to his life and times, an understanding of the key areas of Marx’s thought and to show how his ideas have affected the world we live in today. It makes more sense if read in order from cover to cover as it follows the development of his thought, although chapters can be read in isolation.
Marx was a prolific writer and there is no way that a book introducing his theories can cover all the points that he made, or attempt to analyse all the arguments for and against what he believed. At the end of the book there is a reading list for those who want a deeper understanding of what Marx said and further insight into the philosophical, political and academic arguments that his work has inspired over the last century.
1
Marx’s early life
In this chapter you will learn:
about Marx’s personal life and character
the background to the society in which he lived
key facts about his early life and career
about his work on The Communist Manifesto
why he became an exile.
Europe at the time of Marx
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, during a time of rapid social change throughout Europe. There were two main forces for this change. The first was the Industrial Revolution that had started in Britain. This led to the growth of the factory system throughout Europe and to an increase in the size and number of cities. The invention of the steam engine and the spread of the factory system meant that people were beginning to live in a completely different way to their ancestors. In the past, people had lived and worked in closely knit communities and worked in traditional agriculture or as craftsmen. They now began flocking from rural areas into the huge new cities that were beginning to spring up all over Europe.
Agricultural reforms and machinery had increased the efficiency of farms and led to unemployment in rural areas. In addition, landowners took over common rights and grazing areas that had once belonged to everyone under the feudal system. This also increased rural poverty.
The new towns and cities were soon flooded with destitute farmers, craftsmen and their families who were desperate for work under any circumstance. They mainly worked long hours for subsistence wages in factories and mines that were completely unregulated. Even young children worked for hours with unguarded and dangerous machinery. These unfortunate people lived in appalling conditions: squashed into slum housing with inadequate sanitation, poor food and no clean drinking water. Disease was rife and mortality rates were high.
Secondly, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic wars (1799–1815) had led to the downfall of the monarchy and the abolition of feudalism throughout much of Europe. The feudal system was a society where the power of the ruling class, or aristocracy, rested on its control of farmable lands or fiefs. The way these societies worked varied from country to country, but in general the lands were divided out among vassals (free men), who managed them in return for military service on behalf of the aristocracy. The land was then farmed by serfs or peasants, who were not free. Marx believed that this led to a class society based upon the exploitation of the peasants who farmed the lands. His views on this are discussed later in the book.
Marx’s birthplace, Trier in the Rhineland, was then part of Prussia, in central Europe. Prussia was a large semi-feudal empire that covered what is known today as Germany and parts of what are now Poland and Sweden. Prussia had been invaded on several occasions by the French and Trier had been part of Napoleon’s Confederation of the Rhine. When Napoleon was eventually defeated and exiled in 1815, Prussia returned to being a set of kingdoms and principalities ruled by hereditary monarchies. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, state boundaries were redefined and an agreement was drawn up between Prussia, Russia and Austria; this was known as the ‘Holy Alliance’. It was an attempt by the ruling classes to preserve the social order; the aristocracy and landowners were determined to hang on to power now they had regained it.
Prussia was really a very loose patchwork of scattered countries, so it had always had a large army to keep order and had a government-controlled economy. Revolutions were sweeping through most of Europe and fear of these changes led to the Prussian state becoming overly bureaucratic, backward-looking and resistant to trade and industry. The police were particularly powerful as landowners were fearful of the democratic ideals that had led to the French Revolution. There was a deep suspicion of any new ideas, especially those that were seen to be liberal. Many free thinkers, including artists, writers and poets, moved to Paris or Switzerland to escape from this oppressive regime. Most liberal thinkers in Prussia wanted to see a united German state with a democratic constitution. In contrast the conservatives of the time wanted to keep Germany as separate countries within the Prussian Empire.
Marx’s father, Heinrich Marx, was a lawyer. He was Jewish and came from a family that had several rabbis in its history, but he had registered as a Protestant Christian when laws were passed preventing Jews from holding public positions. Marx’s mother, Henriette, was a Dutch Jew who also came from a family that included a long line of rabbis. Marx himself did not hold any strong religious beliefs and ended his life as an atheist, but the strong anti-Jewish feeling in the Rhineland during his youth must have had some influence on him.
Although Prussia was a mainly agricultural country, the area of the Rhineland where Marx grew up was its most industrialized region. Marx’s early life there meant that he observed rural life under threat, experienced repression of religious belief and understood the power of the State and private ownership, all at first hand. These formative experiences had a part in shaping his later philosophy.
The early life of Marx
Marx’s upbringing was a middle-class one. Little is known of his very early life as he became somewhat estranged from his family in his later life. He came from a fairly large family with both brothers and sisters, but he was the oldest son and his brothers both died young.
His father was said to be a serious, well-educated man but not particularly imaginative. He wanted his children to fit in with the society around them and he tried to encourage them to be good members of the State and church. He was a bit of a social climber and became a member of the Casino Club, where in 1816 he met Baron von Westphalen, a senior government officer from an aristocratic family. The two families soon became friendly; Marx’s older sister Sophie was a great friend of the Baron’s daughter Jenny, and Karl was at school with Edgar, one of the Baron’s sons.
Marx’s mother was not formally educated but this was fairly normal for women at the time. She put all her energies into bringing up her family and was forever anxious about them, even when they had grown up and left home.
Young Karl was soon seen to be possessed of a strong and creative intelligence. He was fiercely independent, domineering and argumentative from a young age. His sisters told his daughter Eleanor that he used to force them to eat mud pies but they put up with it because he would tell them imaginative stories that they loved to listen to.
His intelligence soon caught the attention of their family friend Baron von Westphalen. The Baron was a very cultured and educated man, somewhat radical in his beliefs and fond of literature, including Shakespeare, who he liked to quote in the original English. The Baron became friendly with young Karl and encouraged him in his studies; they often took walks together and talked about Greek po
etry. He lent many of his own books to the boy so that he could further his education and Marx dedicated his doctoral thesis to him in appreciation.
It is thought that Marx was privately educated until he joined the Trier High School in 1830 at the age of 13. His school records do not show flashes of any particular genius but he showed signs of independent thought and of not going along with the crowd in his refusal to talk to a new state-appointed headmaster who was given a position at the school.
The old headmaster was a man of fairly liberal ideas and this led to a police raid on the school in 1832: literature in support of free speech was found circulating there and one of the schoolboy ringleaders was expelled. The headmaster was put under surveillance and eventually the authorities employed a very conservative co-headmaster to keep an eye on things. Marx would not talk to this man at all, and was one of the few boys who did not visit him after he graduated from school, much to his father’s embarrassment.
Although intellectually powerful, Marx never had a particularly strong constitution and was dogged by ill health for most of his life. He had a weak chest, which eventually led to him being found unfit for military service in 1836. His parents constantly fretted about his health when he went off to university in Bonn at the age of 17. They bombarded him with letters advising him not to study more than his health could bear, not to smoke, stay up late, drink too much wine and to keep his rooms and himself clean and hygienic. He never took much notice of their advice and for most of his life he lived in a disordered way, smoked and drank far too much, and spent long hours studying and writing.