A World to Win

by Sven-Eric Liedman

  To describe the development of both technology and the economy, Marx had to broaden his reading. He referred not only to a growing number of economists and showed not only a renewed and in-depth reading of Ricardo’s great 1817 work Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. He also cited in detail works by Charles Babbage and Andrew Ure. Both were important conquests and reminders of the intellectual strength that distinguished Marx from most other theoreticians. He was willing to incessantly incorporate new areas into his work and never hesitated to make the effort to learn something new.

  These were important new territories he was surveying. Babbage was an outstanding mathematician who was convinced that his subject would play a crucial role in technological and industrial development. He devoted himself to organizing the previously rather anarchic British sciences, and for posterity he became famous for his ideas on an analytical machine – one of the most important forerunners of the modern computer. Babbage’s work was taken on by people such as Ada Lovelace, another British mathematician and the daughter of the poet Lord Byron. The Swedish polymath Georg Scheutz, who was the first to construct a machine in the spirit of Babbage, also joined the group.

  It was, however, not these ideas that attracted Marx but Babbage’s 1832 work On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. Economics was thus a major subject for him, but observed with a different eye and from a different direction than the usual one. In present-day terms, it could be said that Babbage was trying to establish relations between technology and business economics; this would become important for Marx.87 In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx faces Babbage’s definition of the concept of a machine. If the division of labour is reduced to the management of a simple tool, and if all these tools are set in motion by a single motor, then we are talking about a machine, Babbage said.88 Marx would continue to ruminate over what characterized a machine for a long time.

  The other new conquest, Andrew Ure, had trained as a doctor, became famous as a chemist and would take great interest in contemporary technological development. By travelling around among various industries, he acquired an overview that he accounted for in works like his 1835 book Philosophy of Manufactures. It was a work that played a large role for Marx both here and later, although at the same time he had an ironic perspective of Ure’s praises of the modern workplace. In The Poverty of Philosophy, he could refute Proudhon’s idea that mechanization would reduce the division of labour through long quotes from Philosophy of Manufactures.89

  Marx’s increasing interest in the interaction between the natural sciences and technology also comes out in another section of The Poverty of Philosophy. Speaking of the fertility of the soil, Marx pointed out that it could now be improved chemically. Agricultural chemistry had thereby come into his field of vision.90 It would come to interest him ever after.

  Marx asserted throughout that Proudhon overestimated humanity’s possibility of influencing fundamental social development through subjective decisions. Proudhon hinted, for example, that the system of manufacture could have arisen through a kind of peaceable agreement, while according to Marx it was a natural result of development.91

  In his polemical zeal, Marx exaggerated his opponent’s idealism. He asserted, for example, that Proudhon believed that it was kings and dukes and others in power who turned gold and silver into money by their own efforts, whereas in fact they were subject to ‘economic relations’ (once again, Verhältnisse in German – that is, firmly entwined relations). It was not money that was stamped; it was the weight of the coins.92

  Even more exaggerated is the statement that Proudhon saw competition as a consequence of economists’ theories. But Marx’s comparison is telling: asserting that economists’ theories push forth competition is like asserting that circulation of the blood is a consequence of Harvey’s discovery of 1628. Once again, then, a way of comparing the context of society with the conformity of nature to law.93

  The difference between Proudhon’s and Marx’s opinions is substantial in another, more down-to-earth area: the importance of trade unions. Proudhon was sceptical of such associations. In his opinion, they disturbed development towards increasing equality in society, which was a consequence of industrial development. The trade unions’ weapon was the strike, and their goal was wage increases. But the effect of wage increases, from beginning to end, was price increases.

  Marx noted that Proudhon was just as damning towards workers uniting – or entering into ‘coalitions’ – as the leading political economists, with Ricardo at their head. The reason was not quite the same: Ricardo argued that such associations disturbed the steady pace of industry, whereas Proudhon was occupied with the determination of prices. But the opposition was the same.

  Marx was of a different opinion. There is no self-evident connection between wages and prices. Higher wages had decreasing profits as an immediate effect. Machines were replacing human workers to an increasing extent, and machines received no wages. Strikes and higher wages forced technological development, since over the long term it would become cheaper for factory owners to mechanize their production. This was a consequence Marx did not at all find negative – quite the contrary. The development of productive forces was the precondition for another type of society.

  Marx had previously placed his chief hopes in development in France. England – or, rather, Great Britain – had only come second. But now he emphasized the British example. The trade unions there had expanded rapidly and efficiently. Since 1845, there had been a National Association of United Trades with 80,000 members. He also pointed out that the union movement had arisen at the same time as the Chartists were taking up the political struggle.

  This was an early example of how he saw trade unions and political actions as two sides of the same workers’ movement. He himself could only participate in political work, but here it was the trade union side whose importance he emphasized. It was no prospect of a reformist path with gradual improvements of the workers’ situation that he held out. The trade union actions had developed into a ‘veritable civil war’ and were preparing the way for the coming battle, he said. Thus, revolution!

  It is easy to see in hindsight that his ideas about the development of the early British workers’ movement quickly came to naught. Chartism lost its significance, and the early national union organization was left rather powerless after the great ideological change that took place around 1850. It was formally dissolved in 1861.

  But the pages about trade unions and strikes that conclude The Poverty of Philosophy are important ones. Marx gives the final word to George Sand, his friend from Paris, who in her 1843 historical novel Jean Ziska exclaims: ‘Combat or death; bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.’ (Jean Ziska was actually named Jan Žižka z Trocnova a Kalicha and led the rebellious troops in the Hussite Wars in Bohemia, which lasted from 1419 to 1436. The Hussite Wars were both an important part of the pre-Luther Reformation, and a stage in a popular Czech liberation struggle against German supremacy.) These words, which reflected the rebellious moods among many intellectuals in Paris of the 1840s, also gave voice to Marx’s view of social development in 1847.94

  The Poverty of Philosophy has become known above all for its reckoning with Proudhon’s Hegelianism. It is correct that Marx aimed withering criticism at Proudhon’s attempt to create a philosophy of society with its starting point in Hegel’s dialectic. The criticism was otherwise not unfounded; the dialectical play Proudhon was chiefly interested in was that between positive and negative sides in various economic categories. It is not necessary to go to Hegel to find inspiration for this double meaning. On the other hand, he did not take up the interesting aspects of the dialectic.

  But in his critique of superficial Hegelianism, Marx went no further than he had in The Holy Family, or – with Engels’s support – in The German Ideology. The Poverty of Philosophy is important chiefly because it testifies to the fact that Marx had gone further in his thinking on soci
ety, and in particular in his handling of economists’ theories. He had not only broadened his reading. He also clarified his distinction between concrete and abstract labour, and between productive forces and what he now called ‘relations of production’. He had developed a distinct view of the importance of union organizations.

  At the same time, the book represents an extreme in his writings. He forcefully and unreservedly established his convictions – both new and a few years older – in a way that he rarely did before or after. His voice was more solitary than before; the recently so-admired Proudhon was brusquely dismissed and Weitling already revealed as an ignorant chatterbox. The proletarians no longer had their own spokesperson; now it was only Marx who, with the support of Engels, could point out the path to the future.

  And the future? The future was blood and struggle and revolution. Only beyond that could something else be glimpsed. An unexpected light, like through a door ajar, enters Marx’s text: ‘a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes’. It is no longer exchange value that rules, but use value.95

  They are four lines in a text of more than 120 pages.

  In another, more tangible sense The Poverty of Philosophy also meant something new and extreme in Marx’s writings: it was written in French and thus intended for a circle of readers Marx saw as setting the tone for the questions the book dealt with. If it were only spread widely, its success would be assured.

  But its impact was limited. Both Engels and Marx certainly thought that it sold decently – Engels reported ninety-six copies after a few weeks – but it did not rouse any debate to speak of. To rouse interest, Engels visited Louis Blanc, one of the leading socialists in Paris. Engels assured him that Marx was the leader for ‘our party’ which was ‘the most advanced section of German democracy’, and that the book about Proudhon was to be regarded as the programme of the party. Blanc declared himself interested, but when Engels returned to him a few months later, it turned out that he had only managed to leaf through Marx’s book and that he saw that Proudhon had been ‘assez vivement attaqué’ (quite vigorously attacked) in it. He did not have the time to write a review, but offered to have Engels do it instead: his report would be published in the periodical La Réforme – something Engels declined.96

  Other matters besides The Poverty of Philosophy and its fate had already occupied both Marx’s and Engels’s attention. Time hurried on; the year 1848, a memorable year in history – of Europe and these two men – loomed on the horizon.

  Theory and Practice

  The Manuscripts, for all their incompleteness, are a captivating work. Where Marx calls on himself to speak, they are stylistically brilliant; the image of humanity he draws is part of the great humanistic tradition from Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. Marx succeeded in formulating a classic, and yet also modern, ideal of humanity in the merciless epoch of early industrialism.

  What Marx wrote in the years that followed had sharper edges. He had not abandoned his ideas about what a person could be, but the outlooks for a better future only gleam in passing in texts that are otherwise marked by sharp polemic, merciless reckoning, and heartless satire. In The Holy Family, The German Ideology, and The Poverty of Philosophy, the targets of attack come closer and closer to Marx’s own standpoints, as he had more or less recently formulated them. First the Young Hegelians were castigated, then also the ‘true socialists’, and finally Proudhon, who was still spoken of in the warmest terms in The Holy Family. He did not condescend to give Weitling, so recently admired, even a mention in the work, only a scolding face to face. Something clearly had happened.

  We have already touched upon one reason for the change: the purely personal. Marx experienced the deportation from France as a deep outrage. In addition, the exile to Brussels made his financial situation more difficult. For example, he was forced to write a begging letter to his Russian friend Annenkov.97

  But there were also other reasons. Marx was not alone in calling himself sometimes a socialist and sometimes a communist from the beginning. He found himself in a large and growing circle of especially young women and men who wanted to work for a new, better, more equal and more just society. The apex of culture in the salons, and the journeymen and workers of the dark cellars seemed united in the hope of being able to fundamentally change a society where either avarice (as in France) or stale prejudice (as in Prussia) reigned. There were various opinions on how the change itself would come about, but that was not in focus. In the Manuscripts, it was not a question of political revolution, only social upheaval.

  But the question of the transition to another society inevitably became decisive as soon as their enthusiasm was channelled into various associations and organizations of struggle. Marx was not alone in creating a sharply outlined picture of these issues in the years up to 1848.

  Many among them who had recently stood out as his fellow thinkers developed a political outlook that they called ‘true socialism’. Its representatives were mostly those close to the author of the Manuscripts; this applied in particular to Moses Hess, intellectually the sharpest among them. But by degrees they developed a markedly more optimistic view of the social upheaval Marx felt they were working for. They argued that the new society they sought could be helped forth by the social, cultural, and political development that itself was already in progress. In particular, if people were enlightened about its character, they would be so moved that they would work to realize it.

  Proudhon was no ‘true socialist’ – they were mainly Germans – but he was also hopeful about the possibilities of abolishing poverty and injustices in a peaceful way. It was not only Marx’s annoyance over Proudhon’s sharply unsympathetic response to the letter in which Karl Grün was painted as a charlatan that fuelled the rage in The Poverty of Philosophy. There were more objective reasons.

  Weitling, on the other hand, was a revolutionary but had a different understanding of strategy than Marx. Weitling asserted that a broad popular uprising was a realistic possibility in Prussia and the other German states as well. Marx, on the other hand, argued that a bourgeois revolution – such as the French Revolution in 1789 – was a necessary condition for the proletariat to seize power. Whereas Weitling was ready to march off with an army of journeymen and industrial workers, Marx advocated a more cautious approach. A popular army could easily be put down by professional Prussian soldiers. Nor were the necessary political institutions in place. Weitling’s way would result in chaos.

  Both the bright hopes of a peaceful path to an equitable society and Weitling’s more violent strategy – sweetened with a dollop of Christian messianism – won many adherents. The path that Marx identified seemed both longer and more strenuous. It also required more thought to fully understand it, lined as it was by rather abstract reasoning about the difference between political and social conditions and the possibilities of democracy. Convincing organized revolutionaries about the correctness of this strategy became important.

  How they succeeded is an important question in the next chapter. But before that, the question must be asked: why did Marx choose the path of violent revolution? The importance of Engels cannot be understated. In contrast to nearly all other socialists and communists at the time, he had direct occupational experience of the businesses of the time, seen from the side of the owners. He knew that the world of the factory would scarcely be conquered with Weitling’s tactic of surprise; nor could he be convinced by the thoughts that the current society could be transformed from a class society to an egalitarian republic in a peaceful way. The political institutions with military and police power at their head would not voluntarily let something like that happen.

  But Marx could have also drawn similar conclusions on his own. Moreover, both his intensive study of economic theory and his rapidly increasing reading in modern history – with an emphasis on French history – contributed. It should also be added that he still made use of central categories from
Hegel’s dialectic, particularly Aufhebung – sublation – which coloured his ideas about what a coming revolution could be. Current society would be overthrown to make room for a new one, but in this new society what was valuable in the former society would be preserved and at the same time raised to a new level.

  Thus there were not only personal reasons for his polemical outbreak. It was only their ardour that can be explained by his increasingly precarious living conditions.

  7

  The Manifesto and the Revolutions

  The Struggle for Influence

  With his increasingly polemical writings, Marx seemed to have put himself into a difficult position in the political and ideological left wing. He heatedly opposed Weitling’s proposals for an immediate popular uprising. But he just as unhesitatingly distanced himself from the optimistic conviction that united Proudhon and his followers with those who claimed to be the only true socialists. According to them, the opportunities for a peaceful transition to a just world would soon reveal themselves. It was only a question of spreading this insight to the oppressed.

  Marx met this hopefulness with contempt. Without struggle and conflict, the lords of today would also be the lords of tomorrow, he held. But the rancour in Marx’s reckoning with both the advocates of immediate action and those of the peaceful transition roused a certain degree of consternation. When Marx contacted Heinrich Otto Lüning, a doctor and journalist living in Switzerland, Lüning expressed delight with the contact but also objected to the quarrelsome tone in Marx’s writings. ‘You attack everything that deviates from your opinions in any way,’ he wrote, and asked, ‘Why use a cudgel when you are working in the same direction, more or less …?’1 Even close friends of Marx such as Heinrich Bürgers expressed concern over Marx’s style of writing. Bürgers’s concern was less over the tone in the polemics than it was over the degree of difficulty. There was a point at which our ideas diverged, he acknowledged in a long letter. Marx assumed he had his readers on his side. But Bürgers doubted that was so. It was certainly good to assume that people know more than they actually do. But in The Poverty of Philosophy it was a matter of knowledge that was entirely foreign to most. You then become entirely incomprehensible in their eyes, Bürgers said. Not even in France does your work on Proudhon make the impression it should; in Germany, the level of readers and critics was unacceptably low. Here it was not a matter of opponents who were equal in merit; they had to be created first.2