When the two men met for the first time, in 1844, they were drawn together by an irresistible impulse. They were kindred spirits. Marx had gone to Paris mainly for the purpose of studying the Socialist movement of the time. During his editorship of the Rhenish Gazette several articles had appeared on the subject, and he had refused to attack the Socialists in any manner. He had gone to Paris with a considerable reputation already established as a leader of radical thought, and at once sought out the Saint-Simonians, under whose influence he was led to declare himself definitely a Socialist. At first this seems difficult to explain, so wide is the chasm which yawns between the "New Christianity" of Saint-Simon and the materialism of Marx. There seems to be no bond of sympathy between the religious mysticism of the French dreamer and the scientific thought of the German economist and philosopher.
Marx has been described as being "rigidly mathematical,"[53] and the picture of the man one gets from his writings is that of a cold, unemotional philosopher, dealing only with facts and caring nothing for idealism. But the real Marx was a very different sort of man. His life was itself a splendid example of noble idealism, and underlying all his materialism there was a great religious spirit, using the word "religious" in its noblest and best sense, quite independent of dogmatic theology. All his life he was a deep student of Dante, the Divine Comedy being his constant companion, so that he knew it almost completely by heart. Some of his attacks upon Christianity are very bitter, and have been much quoted against Socialism, but they are not one whit more bitter than the superb thunderbolts of invective which the ancient Hebrew prophets hurled against an unfaithful Church and priesthood. For the most part, they are attacks upon religious hypocrisy rather than upon Christianity. Marx was, of course, an agnostic, even an atheist, but he was full of sympathy with the underlying ethical principles of all the great religions. Always tolerant of the religious opinions of others, he had nothing but scorn and contempt for the blatant dogmatic atheism of his time, and vigorously opposed committing the Socialist movement to atheism as part of its programme.[54] In short, he was a man of fine spiritual instincts, splendidly religious in his irreligion.
This spiritual side of Marx must be considered if we would understand the man. It is not necessary, however, to ascribe the influence of Saint-Simonian thought upon him to a predisposing spiritual temperament. Marx, with his usual penetration, saw in Saint-Simonism the hidden germ of a great truth, the embryo of a profound social theory. Saint-Simon, as we have seen, had vaguely indicated the two ideas which were afterward to be cardinal doctrines of the Marx-Engels Manifesto—the antagonism of classes, and the economic foundation of political institutions. Not only so, but Saint-Simon's grasp of political questions, instanced by his advocacy, in 1815, of a triple alliance between England, France, and Germany,[55] appealed to Marx, and impressed him alike by its fine perspicacity and its splendid courage. Engels, in whom, as stated, the working-class spirit of Chartism and the ideals of Owenism were blended, found in Marx a twin spirit. They were, indeed,—
"Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one."
III
The Communist Manifesto is the first declaration of an International Workingmen's Party. Its fine peroration is a call to the workers to transcend the petty divisions of nationalism and sectarianism: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" These concluding phrases of the Manifesto have become the shibboleths of millions. They are repeated with fervor by the disinherited workers of all the lands. Even in China, lately so rudely awakened from the slumbering peace of the centuries, they are voiced by an ever increasing army of voices. No sentences ever coined in the mint of human speech have held such magic power over such large numbers of men and women of so many diverse races and creeds. As a literary production, the Manifesto bears the unmistakable stamp of genius.
But it is not as literature that we are to consider the historic document. Its importance for us lies, not in its form, but in its fundamental principle. And the fundamental principle, the essence or soul of the declaration, is contained in this pregnant summary by Engels:—
"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch, that consequently the whole history of mankind (since primitive tribal society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes."[56]
Thus Engels summarizes the philosophy—as apart from the proposals of immediate measures to constitute the political programme of the party—of the Manifesto; the basis upon which the whole superstructure of modern, scientific Socialist theory rests. This is the materialistic, or economic, conception of history which distinguishes scientific Socialism from all the Utopian Socialisms which preceded it. Socialism is henceforth a theory of social evolution, not a scheme of world-building; a spirit, not a thing. Thus, twelve years before the appearance of "The Origin of Species," nearly twenty years after the death of Lamarck, the authors of the Communist Manifesto formulated a great theory of social evolution as the basis of the mightiest proletarian movement in history. Socialism had become a science instead of a dream.