Socialism 101

by Kathleen Sears

  Marx and his family settled in London. He spent his working days in the British Museum reading room, where he wrote prolifically and educated himself in economics with the help of parliamentary blue books and Engels’s firsthand experience of British industry. His only regular income came from writing articles on the European political situation for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune at the rate of £1 per article. He depended heavily on Engels, who often ghostwrote the Tribune articles and gave him money with a generous hand. It is one of history’s ironies that the Engels family’s factory in Manchester supported Marx as he studied and wrote about the downfall of capitalism.

  CAPITAL

  The Foundation of Marxism

  During his years in exile in Britain Marx worked remorselessly on his theory of capitalism, seeking to explain how it worked and how it must inevitably succumb to the forces of history. In 1867 he published the first volume of his masterpiece, Capital. He described his purpose in writing the work as laying bare “the economic law of motion of modern society.” In it, Marx examined the models of the classical economists in terms of his theory of class struggle. The result is an analysis of the economic injustices of the capitalist system and contradictions in the system that would create its ultimate fall.

  Capital in Russia

  * * *

  The Imperial Russian censor approved a Russian translation of Capital for publication in 1872 on the grounds that “it is possible to state for certainty that very few people in Russia will read it and even fewer will understand it.”

  * * *

  MARX’S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM

  According to Marx, the class conflict that will bring an end to capitalism lies in the contradictory economic interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, specifically in regard to the value of labor. The labor theory of value, as defined by David Ricardo, argues that the value of a product is determined by the amount of labor needed to produce it. Before capitalism, economies were based on the exchange of useful products. Under capitalism, products became commodities to be bought or sold for a profit. Labor has also become a commodity, but its price is not as great as the value of the product it creates. Marx called the difference “surplus value.”

  SURPLUS VALUE

  Under capitalism, those who own the means of production, like factory owners, produce commodities for sale in the market in order to make a profit. To do so, they need two kinds of capital:

  • Constant capital (e.g., raw material, machinery, and buildings), which does not change its value during production

  • Variable capital (i.e., labor), which does change its value during production

  Profit comes through the variable value of labor. The base value of a laborer is her wage. If she works for eight hours and produces enough goods to cover her wage in the first four hours of the day, everything that she produces in the second four hours is surplus value. Surplus value is the source of the capitalist’s profits and her ability to invest in new machinery and technology.

  Women’s Work

  * * *

  Those feminine pronouns aren’t an attempt at political correctness. Surplus value was an even bigger issue for women than men. In the 1830s and 1840s more than half of the factory workers and coal miners in Europe were women. Children of both sexes earned roughly the same wage. After the age of sixteen women earned roughly one-third of a man’s wage.

  * * *

  The basic economic struggle between labor and capitalist was over what Marx called the “rate of surplus value” or, more negatively, the “rate of exploitation.” Owners wanted to increase the rate through longer hours and/or lower wages. Labor wanted to decrease the rate through shorter hours and/or higher wages.

  According to Marx, the struggle over the rate of surplus value revealed an inherent flaw in capitalism. In order to remain competitive, capitalists needed to modernize their machinery, which required them to increase their investment in constant capital at the expense of labor’s share of the surplus value. More efficient production meant more commodities reached the market, but reduced wages meant laborers could not afford to buy more goods, causing a crisis of overproduction. At each crisis of overproduction stronger companies would force weaker competitors out of business. With fewer companies in business, unemployment would rise and wages would go down, causing more poverty among the proletariat. Lower wages meant the businesses that survived were able to keep a larger share of surplus value as profit. Eventually, the economy would recover as a result of the new capital that business owners accumulated, and the cycle would resume. Each crisis would be more serious than the last, leading to the eventual breakdown of capitalism and the rise of communism in its place.

  Analysis of a Commodity

  * * *

  Although the scope of Capital is extremely broad, volume 1, chapter 1 starts with Marx’s analysis of a single commodity. Thus, he establishes the basic form of his argument: a commodity’s value is determined by the labor that went into creating it, and that only human labor can create value.

  * * *

  CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

  According to Marx, capitalist society is divided into two classes: those who control the means of production and those who sell their labor. Throughout history the relationship between classes has always been one of exploitation and domination: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to each other.” As in the historical stages before it, the structure of capitalism created a natural antagonism between its two fundamental classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. Class struggle would end with the destruction of capitalism, because communism would be a classless society.

  ENGELS COMPLETES MARX’S WORK

  Although Marx had compiled a vast amount of notes for the next two volumes of his work, he did not live to complete them. Worn out from work and living on the edge of poverty, Marx died on March 14, 1883. It was left to his comrade, Engels, to compile and edit the notes to create the final two volumes of the work.

  Speaking at Marx’s grave in 1883, Engels described Marx’s place in history:

  As Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history…that human beings must first of all eat, drink, shelter and clothe themselves before they can turn their attention to politics, science, art and religion.

  Having spent the previous thirty-five years making sure that the Marx family members were, in fact, able to eat, drink, and shelter and clothe themselves, Engels devoted the rest of his life to editing and published the remaining two volumes of Capital. He also continued political work, eventually forming the organization known as the Second International, an association of socialist parties from around the world.

  Marx’s Daughters

  * * *

  Two of Marx’s three daughters, Laura and Eleanor, also played significant roles in the socialist movement. Laura Marx Lafargue (1845–1911) translated her father’s work into French. She and her husband, Paul Lafargue, were active in French socialist politics and also helped spread Marxism to Spain. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1855–1898) was one of the leaders of the British Social Democratic Federation and later the Socialist League. She worked in support of numerous strikes and other socialist activities. Like her sister, she was a translator, primarily of dramatists. She translated several works by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen into English.

  * * *

  CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE

  The Paris Commune

  In 1871 the Franco-Prussian War brought the Second Empire of France to a humiliating end. The newest version of the National Assembly was prepared to reestablish the monarchy, again. Angered by both events, the workers of Paris took to the streets in protest, seized command of the city, and founded their own short-lived government. Watching the rise and defeat of the Paris Commune from London, Marx described it as the first proletarian revolution. Later historians have sugg
ested that it was the last convulsion of the French Revolution of 1789.

  THE SECOND EMPIRE

  Prior to the Revolution of 1848, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808–1873), tried to take the French throne by force twice. Each time the would-be king was stopped and sent into exile.

  When the revolution broke out in 1871, Bonaparte hurried to Paris to place his claim again. The provisional government was no happier to see him than their predecessors had been in 1836 and 1840, but he was not entirely without supporters. When the time came, the small Bonapartist party nominated him for a seat in the National Assembly. He was elected deputy by Paris and three other districts but refused to take his seat because conditions were so unsettled. In September he was elected again, this time by five districts.

  Bonaparte began to campaign for the presidency as soon as he arrived in Paris to take his place in the Assembly, evoking the glamour of the Napoleonic legend and indiscriminately promising to protect the interests of all voting groups. In December 1848 he was elected by an overwhelming majority to a four-year term as president of the Second Republic, the only candidate to receive votes from all classes of the population.

  Bonaparte had no interest in being president. Instead, he had his eye on his uncle’s old job as emperor. He spent his first year in office in a power struggle with members of the Assembly, most of whom favored a return to the Bourbon or Orléans monarchies. When the Assembly refused to revise the constitution to allow his reelection, Bonaparte staged a coup d’état on December 2, 1851. A year later he took the title of Emperor Napoleon III, an act that was also ratified by the voting public.

  “Napoleon the Little”

  France enthusiastically supported Napoleon III in the restoration of the empire, expecting a revival of Napoleonic glory. If they didn’t get glory, at least they got comfort. Under Napoleon III’s rule, France enjoyed two decades of domestic prosperity for the middle and upper classes. Surrounded by Saint-Simonian advisors, the emperor threw the state’s resources at encouraging industrial development, resulting in increased industrialization, the creation of a national railroad system, imperial expansion in Asia and Africa, and Baron Haussmann’s transformation of Paris into what author Rupert Christiansen called “a crazy tinsel circus of all fleshly pleasures and all earthly magnificence.” The emperor even remembered to throw a bone to the working classes in the form of lower tariffs on food.

  Not satisfied with domestic success, Napoleon III wanted to reestablish France’s position as a powerful player in Europe. However, he damaged French relations with both Russia and Austria and helped replace weak neighbors with the powerful new states of Germany and Italy.

  THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

  Looking at Napoleon III’s foreign policy track record, one member of the National Assembly, Adolphe Thiers, concluded, “There are no mistakes left to commit.” He was wrong. On July 19, 1870, the emperor crowned his diplomatic errors in Europe by declaring war on Prussia.

  By July 30 the Prussian chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, had almost 500,000 men in the field, drawn from both the Prussian army and those of its allies among the smaller German states. The French mustered less than half that number, badly organized, badly equipped, and badly led by Napoleon III himself, who really wasn’t the military leader that his uncle had been. The Germans soon had one French army bottled up at Metz, near the German border in Lorraine, and another cornered slightly to the west at Sedan. On September 1 the French were decisively beaten at the Battle of Sedan, and the Germans captured Napoleon III and a large portion of the French army.

  The Siege of Paris

  When the news reached Paris three days later, republican members of the Assembly proclaimed the establishment of a new republic and set up an emergency government of national defense. On September 19 German forces surrounded Paris.

  For the first six weeks of the siege Paris enjoyed an almost festive mood. The city stayed in contact with the outside world through the use of hot-air balloons and carrier pigeons.

  Resistance

  * * *

  Léon Gambetta, a Paris attorney and the new minister of war and the interior, escaped from the besieged capital in a hot-air balloon on October 7 and organized a resistance movement in the provinces. Under Gambetta’s leadership, untrained and undersupplied guerilla forces successfully harassed the German supply lines but were unable to get a relief force through to Paris.

  * * *

  With the onset of cold weather, conditions grew harder and the festive mood evaporated. The winter of 1870 proved to be one of the coldest on record in the nineteenth century—so cold that the Seine froze solid for three weeks. The price of fuel quadrupled. Smallpox, typhoid, and pneumonia ran through the population. Communications with the world outside the city became less reliable when it became too cold for the pigeons to fly. More than 200,000 refugees poured into the city ahead of the German troops, only to find no housing or livelihood. Business ground to a halt, creating massive unemployment and leaving small middle-class businesses in ruins.

  Worst of all, food supplies ran low. Early in the siege voices from the left, including socialist agitator Auguste Blanqui, argued for mandatory food rationing. Assuming in October that the siege would end quickly, the government chose to ration meat instead of grain and left the city to the vagaries of the free market.

  Those who had money and foresight stockpiled food in the early days of the siege, but most scrambled to find food. Municipal authorities did what they could. The mayors in the city’s working-class arrondissements (administrative districts) opened soup kitchens and employed women to sew uniforms for the National Guard.

  Wealthy versus Poor

  * * *

  The threat of starvation did not affect everyone equally. The wealthy bought horsemeat and, when the Paris zoo could no longer feed its animals, elephant, kangaroo, and yak. Rat salami became a delicacy, and butchered cats were sold as “gutter rabbits.” The average working-class family couldn’t even afford to eat rat.

  * * *

  In early January the Germans upped the pressure by bombarding the city. Rumors spread that the government had stockpiles of food in the forts surrounding Paris. The number of radical political clubs in the city increased, spawning a resurgence of revolutionary socialism. Revolutionary organizations placarded the city with posters denouncing the government’s handling of the war and demanding that it relinquish its authority to the people of Paris.

  With Paris in a state of starvation, and no relief in sight from either Gambetta’s guerillas or the other European powers, the provisional French government signed an armistice on January 28, 1871, deposing Napoleon III.

  THE WORKERS’ INSURRECTION

  The citizens of Paris were not happy. They had experienced the burden of the war during the four-month siege of the city. They had watched the Germans march through the Arc de Triomph, a small humiliation provided for in the peace treaty. They resented the transfer of the government to Versailles rather than to Paris—a symbolic statement in favor of monarchy over republic.

  In February the conservative majority in the Assembly passed three laws that did nothing to improve the negative attitude in Paris:

  • They ended the wartime moratorium on debt repayment.

  • They required the immediate payment of any rent that was not paid during the war.

  • They canceled the pay of the National Guard, which was composed of workers who had defended Paris during the siege.

  This last decision was intended to demobilize the National Guard, which significantly outnumbered the regular army units then at the government’s disposal; it deprived many working-class families of their only income.

  The National Guard took the first step of resistance, organizing itself into a governing federation under a central committee with the broad mandate of safeguarding the republic. Within a few days the Central Committee of the National Guard federation was the unofficial power. It made no moves toward vi
olent revolution, but it took the precaution of securing the city’s chief arsenals and seizing four hundred cannons that were left behind by the regular army.

  Instead of trying to defuse the situation, the head of the government, Adolfe Thiers, sent six thousand regular army troops into the city early in the morning on March 18 to recapture the cannons from the working-class district of Montmartre and bring the city under control. Thiers’s troops easily overran the Guard unit and recaptured the cannons. Only then did they realize that they had forgotten to bring horses to haul the cannons away. While the army scrambled for horses, an agitated crowd gathered. As usual, when the Parisian mob and the army interacted, things grew violent. Even though the soldiers refused orders to fire on their fellow citizens, two generals were captured and lynched by a mob that included army troops.

  What started out as resistance against the effort to disarm the city turned into a full-scale insurrection. As violence spread through the city, Thiers withdrew all troops and government offices out of Paris to Versailles.

  THE ELECTION OF THE COMMUNAL COUNCIL

  On March 26 Parisians repudiated the authority of the National Assembly and elected their own government, calling it the Paris Commune after the revolutionary government of 1793. The leaders of the new government were a mixed group of old-style Jacobins, anti-clericals, miscellaneous socialists, and political opportunists. (During the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, the Jacobins represented the far left in the Assembly.)