The late
18th and early 19th centuries was a time of immense
social change – not just political revolution but the dawn of the industrial
revolution.
In the
mid-19th century, from around 1840 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
penned a series of books that reflected on this change, developed a theory for
explaining social change and political revolution, and drew up a programme for
action that became enormously influential among the working class worldwide.
One of
the key insights of Marxism was to identify political revolutions as rooted in
wide struggles for power among social classes. On this basis the revolutions
above can be distinguished. The earlier ones are revolutions led by the rising
capitalist class against feudalism. The later ones reflect the growth of the working
class with the industrial revolution. The express the working class struggle
for power against the new capitalist rulers.
Not only
did they develop a theory for working class liberation, but they were leading
activists in some of the first attempts at working class revolutions in Europe,
founders of the Communist League in 1847 and the International Workingman’s
Association or First Internationale in 1864. You can imagine the terror amongst
the ruling classes struck by the emergence of these organisations among
workers, who were viewed as little different from animals. Newspaper
commentaries of the time are full of alarmist warnings about the “reds”.
The
influence of Marxism, and the fear and loathing by which it is perceived by the
powerful, stems from its systematic attention to the unanswered questions of
the foremost minds of humanity. Far from being the isolated philosophy of a
sect, Marxism, engages with the central problems of philosophy, political economy and sociology, and provides
theoretical and practical advances on traditional thinking.
Marxism,
then, is a direct and critical successor to humanity’s best thinking in the 19th
century. The height of philosophy at this time was found in Germany, with the
work of Kant and Hegel. The most developed
political economy was that of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. And the most
advanced sociology or socialism as it was known was found in France, among
theorists such as St Simon and Fourier. Marx and Engels engaged critically with
each.
These
are the three sources and, at the same time, the component parts of Marxism.
Let’s briefly review each of these.
The
philosophy of Marxism is materialism.
This
philosophy emerged in France in the struggle against feudalism. Against
religious superstition, materialism asserted natural science and logic.
Marx did
not simply adopt the materialism of the nineteenth century, he enriched it,
drawing from German classical philosophy of the time. The major development was
integrating materialism with the German concept of dialectics.
Dialectics
is a means of conceiving the world in change. Simple or mechanical materialism
has a one-sided view of the world; a mechanical view; for every effect there is
an external cause; things are or they are not. Newtonian physics is a prime
example.
Dialectical
materialism sees the world in constant change; things are and they are not. Eg.
Heraclitus’ river; knowledge is consequently relative. Modern physics,
Einstein’s theory of relativity, quantum physics etc. utilises a dialectical
view (Einstein was a socialist incidentally).
Marx
further extended philosophy by developing a materialist approach to the study
of human society. Against chaotic and arbitrary accounts of society as the
product of heroic individuals, god’s will, or chance Marx argued that society
is systemically organised around the predominant productive forces, and
develops systematically over time.
Just as
a person’s knowledge reflects nature, which exists independently of the person,
so a person’s social knowledge (values, philosophy, religion, political
outlook) reflects the nature of the productive or economic system. Thus
contemporary politics, the political system and parties, full of superficiality
and with little room for participation by workers, reflects the capitalist
nature of the economy.
Marxist
philosophy, then, represents a much more complete form of materialism. Drawing
from the most advanced capitalist thinking and extending it, Marxist philosophy
has provided particularly powerful tools of knowledge.
Having
identified the economic system as central to social organisation, Marx devoted
most of his attention to the study of this economic system. Marx’s principal
work, Capital, is devoted to a study of the economic system of modern,
capitalist society.
Classical
political economy, before Marx, evolved in England, the most developed of the
capitalist countries. Adam Smith and David Ricardo laid the foundations of the
labour theory of value. Marx extended their work. He argued that the value of
every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time
spent on its production.
Where
the capitalist economists saw a relation of things (the exchange of one
commodity for another), Marx revealed a relation among people. The exchange of
commodities expresses the tie by which individual producers are bound through
the market. Money signifies that this tie is becoming closer and closer,
inseparably binding the entire economic life of the individual producers into
one whole. Capital signifies a further development of this tie: people’s labour
power becomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells labour power to the owner of
the land, factories and instruments of labour. The worker uses one part of the
labour day to cover living expenses (wages), while the other part of the day
the worker toils without remuneration, creating surplus value for the
capitalist. This is the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the
capitalist class.
The
theory of surplus value is the cornerstone of Marx's economic theory.
Capital,
created by the labour of the worker, presses on the worker by ruining the small
producers and creating an army of unemployed. The advantages of large-scale
production is very clear in industry. Huge firms with worldwide operations
dominate [Fortune 500]. In agriculture too, large-scale capitalist agriculture
drives out peasant and small family producers.
By
destroying small-scale production, capital leads to an increase in productivity
of labour and to the creation of a monopoly position for the associations of
big capitalists. Production itself becomes more and more social as hundreds of
thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a systematic
economic organism. Yet the product of
this collective labour is appropriated by a handful of capitalists.
In this
situation, economic crises grow ever-greater; the furious chase after markets
and the insecurity of existence of the mass of the population.
While
increasing the dependence of the workers on capital, the capitalist system at
the same time creates the great power of united labour. Marx traced the
development of capitalism from the first germs of commodity economy, from
simple exchange, to its highest forms, to large-scale production. He foresaw
ever-greater confrontations between capital and labour, only resolvable by the
ultimate triumph of labour.
When
feudalism was overthrown, and "free" capitalist society
emerged, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of
oppression and exploitation of the toilers. Various socialist doctrines
immediately began to rise as a reflection of and protest against this
oppression. But early socialism was utopian socialism. It criticised capitalist
society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it indulged
in fancies of a better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the
immorality of exploitation.
However,
utopian socialism could not point the real way out. It had not explained the
essence of wage-slavery under capitalism; it did not examine the process of
social development; it did not identify a social force capable of creating a
new society. These were developments that Marx and Engels provided.
It was
the stormy revolutions everywhere in Europe, and especially in France,
accompanying the fall of feudalism, that ever more clearly revealed the
struggle of classes as the basis and the motive force of the whole development.
Not a
single victory of political freedom over the feudal class was won except
against desperate resistance. Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more
or less free and democratic basis except by a life and death struggle between
the various classes of capitalist society.
The
genius of Marx consists in the fact that he was able before anybody else to
draw from this and apply consistently the deduction that world history revolves
around class struggle.
Marx and
Engels repeatedly exposed the way people fell victims of deceit and self-deceit
in politics until they learned to discover the interests of some class behind
the moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
They
argued that the supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by
the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution,
however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces
of some ruling classes.
They
insisted that there is only one way of smashing the resistance of these
classes, and that is to find in the very society which surrounds us, the forces
capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new. The task of socialists
was not to concoct utopian schemes but to enlighten and organise these forces
for this struggle.