by Gill Hands
The first meeting took place in London at St Martin’s Hall and the chairman was Edward Beesly, a professor of ancient history, who was also a radical and a supporter of trade unions. The meeting voted in favour of forming a constitution for an international federation that would work towards destroying the current system of economic relations. They intended to replace this with a system where workers owned the means of production, leading to the end of exploitation, a sharing out of the profits and the end of private property.
Marx was voted onto the executive committee as the representative of the German artisans and by the time of the second meeting, when the constitution was drawn up, he had effectively taken control. Marx did not usually like to be associated with groups that he had not initiated himself. It was well known that he preferred to be in control of everything and he only made the exception of going to the first meeting because he had great respect for Edward Beesly. He also believed strongly in the principles of the workers and could see that they had been greatly influenced by his own writing.
He managed to obtain a great degree of control because the delegates who had been issued with the task of writing the constitution failed to do a good job and he took over and wrote the constitution and inaugural address himself. The address began with the words ‘The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves’.
The constitution was a daring statement at the time, for the International members were pledged to assist one another in improving their ‘common condition’ and to subvert and possibly overthrow the existing capitalist regime by open political action. They were to do this by democratic means where possible by trying to enter parliament. The foundations of the British Labour Party and many European socialist parties can be traced back to the work of the early International, although Marx did not see these formed in his lifetime.
Marx also included a short survey of economic and social conditions in his inaugural address, showing that the ruling classes benefited by setting workers against the workers in other countries. He pointed out that wars only benefited the ruling class and not the ordinary man. He concluded that in order to make changes in the system the workers should protest, demonstrate and harass their governments. It was up to the workers to make changes in the existing social structure for they were the only class that this would benefit. The address finished with the words famous from The Communist Manifesto, ‘Workers of the world unite’.
The aims of the International were to establish close relations and co-operation between workers in various countries and close relations between different trades and trade unions, which up until then had often worked against each other. This was to be achieved by collecting relevant statistics and passing information on the conditions, needs and plans of workers from one country to another. There were also to be discussion groups, publication of regular reports and international co-ordination in times of crisis. Yearly meetings were to be convened by a democratically elected council.
Marx found that he became a well-known public figure, among socialist circles at least, and much of his time was soon taken up by the International. It grew rapidly as more and more unions joined and it was efficient and well organized. He dominated the meetings and writings of the International because of his vast experience and his forceful personality. There was no one else in the group who could really match his intelligence and idealism and his work for them took up his nights and days, although he was not paid. He did not usually attend the meetings of the congress for he preferred to stay in London at the centre of operations, dealing with correspondence and issuing orders.
This finally led to a dispute with Bakunin, the Russian anarchist leader. Marx and Bakunin were old enemies. Marx had a habit of enthusiastically embracing people only to utterly reject them later when they disagreed with his theories. Both men grudgingly admired the intellect of the other but there was a great personal animosity between them. As can be seen later, in Chapter 3, Bakunin believed that the only way for the workers to be freed from the chains of capitalism was by violent means and the destruction of all governments.
Bakunin wanted the International to be run more loosely as a federation of semi-independent local bodies and he had followers in Italy and Switzerland. They decided to form a splinter group, loosely affiliated to the International but with its own organizational structure. This went against the principles of the International, which was supposed to be a united party. Marx finally had Bakunin and his supporters expelled from the International after they became affiliated with a Russian terrorist, Nechaev.
Marx fell out of favour with many members of the International during the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870. The Paris Commune was a result of a revolution that occurred when the National Guard, a volunteer citizens’ force, took over Paris. They deposed government officials and elected a revolutionary committee which they said was the true government of France.
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Insight
Paris came under siege in 1870 as a result of war with Prussia. This caused terrible hardship and led to the formation of a short-lived government of the people known as the Paris Commune. It existed formally between March and May 1871 before being overthrown. In this short time the Communards, as they were called, had begun implementing social policies of separating the church and state and giving the right to employees to take over business enterprises. They also planned to make education and training free for all citizens.
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It was not a communist revolution but it was one of the first examples of open class war ever to take place. Workers, soldiers, artists, writers, all manner of free thinkers, joined forces to overthrow a rule that they saw as unjust. There was mass hysteria and the Communards had only vague plans of how they would rule after the initial violent revolution had taken place. Paris was besieged by troops and a reign of terror began. Food ran out, innocent people were blamed and hostages were guillotined, including the archbishop of Paris. Many of the middle classes believed the Communards to be a bunch of criminally insane thugs and their actions horrified the bourgeois citizens of Europe, even those in the International who welcomed revolution.
Marx, however, wrote a pamphlet, The Civil War in France, in which he applauded the measures the Communards had taken and said they had not gone far enough. It brought notoriety to the members of the International and they were publicly identified with violence and outrageous behaviour. This was not in keeping with the beliefs expressed in their constitution and many members blamed Marx for bringing the group into disrepute. This led to factions being set up in the group and weakened its power.
The International finally fizzled out in 1876 after the council was transferred to the USA at Marx’s request. He felt there was still a lot of bad feeling towards him since his writing on the Commune and this was a way of winding everything down without explicitly having to do so. He knew he could not keep control over its affairs and warring factions for ever and if he couldn’t be in control he didn’t want to be involved. He admitted privately to friends that he felt tired and it was all wearing him out. Although the members were shocked and stunned they voted to have the headquarters move to the USA by a small majority. The US socialist movement was remote from the European one and without their support it fell into disrepute. The International was reconvened later after Marx’s death but by then it was much more conciliatory in nature than it had been when Marx was alive.
The later years
Marx became much less of a public figure after the International was dissolved. He spent a lot of time writing and he saw Engels frequently after his move to London. They were now the world authorities on socialism.
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Insight
At the time Marx and Engels were writing, the terms socialism and communism were almost interchangeable, meaning a society where there was collective ownership of goods and equality for all. For Marx, socialism was the stage before true communism.
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As Marx grew older he lost some of his fiery temper and did not write the vitriolic attacks on his opponents that he had in the past. Visitors who came to see him were surprised that he seemed such a genial man, for his reputation had portrayed him as a morose and irritable monster.
Marx took great pleasure from his grandchildren and spent a lot of time with them. Jennychen had married Charles Longuet, a French socialist who lectured at London University, and they had five sons. Laura married another Frenchman, Paul Lafargue, also a socialist. They had three children who all died.
Eleanor did not marry and stayed at home. She wanted to be an actress, which was not a very reputable profession in those days and she scandalized people by smoking, something a respectable young woman did not do. She was the daughter who was most like Marx in temperament and looks, with very dark, piercing eyes. She also shared his nervous health problems and together they visited spas around Europe looking for a cure for their skin and lung problems. These were probably not helped by the fact that they both chain-smoked, even when taking treatments.
Jenny Marx became seriously ill in 1880 and the family went to Ramsgate for a seaside rest, something that was very popular at that time. Her health did not improve and she became terribly emaciated. It was found she had cancer and she lived with a great deal of pain until her death in December 1881. Marx could not even go to her funeral for he was terribly ill with bronchitis at the time.
Engels said that Marx was now ‘effectively dead’. He did not have the strength to write much and relied on Eleanor as his companion but she was suffering from a kind of nervous exhaustion brought on by her thwarted ambition. She was desperate to go on stage but remained with her father. He had not approved of the man she wished to marry and she lived under a kind of mental pressure that drove her into times when she starved herself and lived off nothing but tea. Marx realized that he had to let her live her own life and after that he spent time visiting Europe and North Africa, trying to find a climate that would improve his health. His lungs were in a very poor state and he was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis.
By 1883 he was very weak and tired and when his favourite daughter, Jennychen, died of bladder cancer he seemed to finally lose the will to live. He had not seen the revolutionary changes that he had hoped for and did not know that they would ever occur. He felt despair that most of his work had been for nothing. When Eleanor went to France to help with the Longuet children she said she believed her father had gone home to die. He had bronchitis and pleurisy with abscesses on his lungs and was too weak even to read. Engels was terribly worried about him and visited often.
On 14 March 1883 Engels visited and was told by Lenchen that Marx was dozing by the bedroom fire in his favourite armchair. By the time Engels went upstairs Marx was dead.
He was buried in Highgate cemetery. Only 11 mourners were at the grave, and a short paragraph in The Times obituary column noted his passing. He was not well known or respected, except in socialist circles, and few people believed that anything he had said would have any effect on the world around them.
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THINGS TO REMEMBER
Marx moved to London after his exile in 1849, intending to stay for only a few months, but lived there until his death.
Marx and his family lived in poverty for a lot of that time and of his seven legitimate children only three survived into adulthood.
Marx relied greatly on the support of Engels both financially and with his writing.
Marx spent most of his days at the British Library working on Das Kapital as well as working for the International.
Das Kapital was his attempt to make a scientific study of politics, economics and capitalism. It was not well received at the time.
He died in 1883 in some obscurity and only 11 mourners attended his funeral.
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3
Marx and philosophy
In this chapter you will learn:
about the philosophers who came before Marx
about political economists and Utopian Socialists
how they influenced his thinking
how he differed from them.
Marx is seen by some as a great philosopher and by others as a great economist. He was in fact both of these things, although he claimed to have little time for most of the philosophers who went before him: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it’, he wrote in a thesis on Feuerbach, the German philosopher. This is sometimes seen as a statement that he was totally against the study of philosophy and saw it as a waste of time. In fact, he believed that philosophy should be made clearer by scientific study and then used to bring about social change.
His interest in the serious study of philosophy began while at the university in Berlin. His doctoral thesis was written on the contrasts between two ancient Greek philosophers: Democritus and Epicurus. Marx saw parallels between the thoughts of these ancient philosophers and the interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel was an important figure in Germany at that time and his ideas were hotly debated by students, who have always enjoyed sitting around discussing what a terrible state the world is in and how they would like to change it. When Marx’s father accused him of ‘debauchery in a dressing gown’ he probably had no idea that his son would be one of the few students who would go on to change the world in a significant way.
The main debate among philosophers of the time centred around the differences between the views of idealist and materialist philosophers. To explain this very simply, idealist philosophers assume there is a divine force of some kind which is responsible for the development of ideas and beliefs among mankind; on the other hand, materialist philosophers believe that all ideas and beliefs come out of life and its conditions and not from any divine being or supernatural force.
The debate between idealists and materialists had been recorded from the time of the ancient Greeks but it had been renewed by the popularity of Hegel in Germany at the time Marx was a student. It is easier to understand the importance of the debate, and of the development of Hegel’s philosophy by Marx, if we look at the development of Western philosophy up to the nineteenth century (the incorporation of Eastern philosophy into European thinking did not really begin until after the death of Marx, becoming popularized in the works of psychologist Carl Jung, 1875–1961, and Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900).
A brief history of philosophy
As philosophy tries to explain the truth behind life itself it must have been around for as long as mankind has existed. The earliest people had no means of recording what they believed so we can only surmise that they were superstitious and tried to explain natural phenomena as products of some divine force. Natural elements such as fire and water were worshipped as gods and from this organized religion developed.
In the Western world, the first philosophers (as we understand the term today) were ancient Greeks who started by criticizing religious beliefs. They used the scientific knowledge that was available to them at the time to explain the world around them and this sometimes brought them into conflict with organized religion and led to persecution.
The conflict between organized religion and free-thinkers went on for centuries. In Europe the dominance of the Christian church did not encourage the development of philosophical thought. Anyone who did not agree with orthodox Christian doctrines was likely to be branded as a heretic and tortured to death.
It was not until the fifteenth century that freer debate began, and it was not until the French and American Revolutions in the eighteenth century that the Church began to lose its dominance over the thoughts of the masses.
The materialist philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries debated the existence of God and whether this could be proved by scientific means. Scientific development at that time was in the fields of mathematics and mechanical laws, for example Newton’s Laws of Motion. This influenced the world view of the phi
losophers who saw society as fixed and unchanging, believing it followed immutable scientific rules. It meant that people believed they had a fixed place in society which could not be altered. It was not until Hegel developed the idea of the dialectic that people began to understand that nothing was constant and that they themselves had a part to play in influencing the course of history.
Which philosophers influenced Marx?
Marx did not arrive at his own philosophy without studying, and being influenced by, those who went before him. He wrote, ‘no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes … nor yet the struggle between them’. Philosophers in the distant past, such as Aristotle, had seen the influence of class. Marx analysed the ideas of these ancient philosophers and read voraciously on many subjects. He also met many of the idealists and revolutionaries in Europe who wanted to change society. As he read and digested what they had to say, certain groups of thinkers became more important to him and became part of his own political and economic philosophy. Among these groups there were individuals whose ideas can be seen to have definitely influenced the philosophy of Marx.
Ancient Greek philosophers
The study of ancient Greek philosophy was an important part of the education of young Europeans in Marx’s time. It became even more popular in Germany under the influence of Hegel. There were three main ancient Greek influences on Marx’s philosophy.