The life and teaching of Karl Marx

by Max Beer

Of the Franco-German Year Books only one number appeared (Spring, 1844). Alongside Marx's contributions (an Introduction to the criticism of Hegel's "Philosophy of Jurisprudence" and a review of Bauer's book on the Jewish Question) the volume contains a comprehensive treatise, "Outlines for a Criticism of Political Economy," from the pen of Friedrich Engels (born in Barmen, 1820; died in London, 1895), who was then living in Manchester. In September, 1844, Engels went to visit Marx in Paris. This visit was the beginning of the lifelong intimate friendship between the two men, who without a close collaboration would not have achieved what they did.

Marx was a highly-gifted theorist, a master in the realm of thought, but he was quite unpractical in the affairs of everyday life. Had he enjoyed a regular income throughout life, he would probably have attained his end even without the help of Engels. On the other hand, Engels was an exceedingly able, energetic, and highly-cultured man, eminently practical and successful in everything he undertook, but not endowed with that speculative temperament which surmounts intellectual crises and opens out new horizons. But for his intellectual association with Marx he would, in all probability, have remained little more than a Moses Hess. Marx was never a Utopian; the complete saturation of his mind with Hegelian dialectics made him immune to all eternal truths and final social forms. On the contrary, up to 1844 Engels was a Utopian—until Marx explained to him the meaning of political and social conflicts, the basis and the motive force, the statics and dynamics of the history of civilised mankind. Engels' "Criticism of Political Economy" is a very noteworthy performance for a youth of twenty-three engaged in commerce, but it does not rise above the level of the writings of Owen, Fourier, and Proudhon. Engels' contributions to Owen's "New Moral World" (1843-44) are indeed more philosophical than the other articles by Owenites, but as far as matter goes, there is no perceptible difference between them. "The System of Economic Contradictions," on which Proudhon was working when Engels published his "Outlines," is couched, as far as the critical side is concerned, in the same strain of thought as we find in Engels. Both sought to expose the contradictions of the middle-class economic system, not in order to discover in them the source of the progress of society, but to condemn them in the name of justice. Whereas the Owenites considered their system as perfect, Proudhon and Engels had, independently of one another, striven to free themselves from the Socialist Utopias. Proudhon became a peaceful Anarchist and found salvation in the scheme of autonomous economic groups, which should carry on an exchange of labour equivalents with one another. Engels, on the other hand, found a solution of his difficulties in Marx, whom he rewarded with a lifelong friendship and devotion, which proved to be Marx's salvation. Without Engels' literary and financial help, Marx, with his unpractical, helpless, and, at the same time, proud and uncompromising disposition, would most probably have perished in exile.

III. Controversies with Bauer and Ruge.

After the Franco-German Year Books had been discontinued, Marx, recognising the importance of economics, studied English and French systems of political economy with still greater zeal than before, and continued his studies in Socialism and history with remarkable steadiness of purpose. No longer now did he show signs of hesitation or wavering; he knew exactly what he wanted. He had left behind him that period of ideological speculation when he was still a disciple of Hegel, and he was impelled, as in the autumn of 1837, to envisage, from his new standpoint, the past and the future. He takes such a survey in "The Holy Family," which had its genesis in the autumn of 1844, and to which Engels also furnished a slight contribution. It is a settling of accounts with his former friend and master, Bruno Bauer, and his brother Edgar, who had not been able to break away from Hegel. The aim of the book was to force the Young Hegelians into the path of social criticism, to urge them forward and prevent them from falling into stereotyped and abstract ways of thinking. It is not easy reading. In it Marx has compressed the knowledge he then had of philosophy, history, economics, and Socialism in concentrated and sharply-cut form. Besides the excellent sketch of English and French materialism, which among other things discloses in a few short but pregnant sentences the connection between this and English and French Socialism, "The Holy Family" contains the germs of the materialistic conception of history as well as the first attempt to give a social revolutionary interpretation to the class struggle between Capital and Labour. In the Introduction to the present book a quotation from "The Holy Family" has been given. Speaking against Bauer's conception of history, Marx says: "Or can he believe that he has arrived even at the beginning of a knowledge of historical reality so long as he excludes science and industry from the historical movements? Or does he really think that he can understand any period without having studied, for example, the industries of that period, the immediate means of production of life itself?... In the same way as he separated thought from the senses, the soul from the body, and himself from the world, so he separates history from science and industry, and he does not see the birthplace of history in coarse, material production upon earth but in the nebulous constructions in the heavens."—("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp. 259-60.)

Bruno Bauer, who believed in the world-swaying might of the idea, but would not concede that the masses had any power whatever, wrote: "All the great movements of history up to this time were therefore doomed to failure and could not have lasting success, because the masses had taken an interest in them and inspired them—or they must come to a lamentable conclusion because the underlying idea was of such a nature that a superficial apprehension of it must suffice, that is to say, it must reckon on the approval of the masses."

Marx's answer to this was that "the great historical movements had been always determined by mass interests, and only in so far as they represented these interests could the ideas prevail in these movements; otherwise the ideas might indeed stir up enthusiasm, but they could not achieve any results. The idea always fell into disrepute in so far as it differed from the interest. On the other hand, it is easy to understand that, when it makes its first appearance on the world-stage, every mass interest working itself out in history far exceeds, as an idea or in its presentation, its actual limits and identifies itself purely and simply with the interest of humanity. Thus the idea of the French Revolution not only took hold of the middle classes, in whose interest it manifested itself in great movements, but it also aroused enthusiasm in the labouring masses, for whose conditions of existence it could do nothing. As history has shown, then, ideas have only had effective results in so far as they corresponded to class interests. The enthusiasm, to which such ideas gave birth, arose from the illusion that these ideas signified the liberation of mankind in general."—("Posthumous Works," Vol. II., pp. 181-3.)

In August, 1844, Marx published under the title "Marginal Notes" in the Paris Vorwärts a lengthy polemic against Ruge, which is a defence of Socialism and revolution and takes the part of the German proletariat against Ruge. "As regards the stage of culture or the capacity for culture of the German workers, let me refer to Weitling's clever writings, which in their theoretical aspect often surpass those of Proudhon, however much they may fall behind them in execution. Where would the middle classes, their scholars and philosophers included, be able to show a work like Weitling's 'Guarantees of Peace and Concord' bearing on the question of emancipation? If one compares the insipid, spiritless mediocrity of German political literature with this unconstrained and brilliant literary début of the German workers, if one compares these gigantic baby shoes of the proletariat with the dwarfishness of the worn-out political shoes of the German middle classes, one can only prophesy an athletic stature for the German Cinderella. One must admit that the German proletariat is the philosopher of the European proletariat, just as the English proletariat is its political economist and the French proletariat its politician. One must admit that Germany is destined to play just as classic a rôle in the social revolution as it is incompetent to play one in the political. For, as the impotence of the German middle classes is the political impotence of Germany, so the capacity of the German proletariat—even leaving out of account German philosophy—is the social capacity of Germany."

At that time (1844) Marx had already begun to mix among the German working classes resident in Paris, who clung to the various Socialist and Anarchist doctrines which then held sway, and he sought to influence them according to his own ideas. With Heine, too, who at that time was coquetting with Communism, he carried on a sprightly and not unfruitful intercourse. He likewise came into frequent contact with Proudhon, whom he endeavoured to make familiar with Hegelian philosophy. Already in his first work, "What is Property?" (1840) Proudhon had played with Hegelian formulæ, and Marx probably believed that he could win him over to Socialism. Proudhon, who, like the German Weitling, sprang from the proletariat, ushered in his activity as a social theorist with the above-mentioned work, which had a stimulating effect on Marx and on German Socialists in general, all the more so as Proudhon manifested some acquaintance with classical German philosophy. In this book ("What is Property?" German edition, 1844, p. 289) he sums up the whole matter as follows: "Expressing this according to the Hegelian formula, I should say that Communism, the first kind, the first determination of social life, is the first link in social evolution, the thesis; property is the antagonistic principle, the antithesis; if only we can get the third factor, the synthesis, the question is solved. This synthesis comes about only through the cancelling of the thesis by the antithesis; one must therefore in the last instance examine its characteristics, discard what is anti-social, and in the union of the remaining two is then seen the real kind of human social life."

That was indeed a superficial conception of Hegelian dialectics, for what Proudhon wanted to find was not a synthesis but a combination; still for a French working man it was a smart performance to have manipulated German philosophical formulæ, and would justify the most sanguine hopes. Marx did not want to let this opportunity slip, and in "debates both late and long" he discussed Hegelian philosophy with Proudhon.—(Marx: "The Poverty of Philosophy," German edition, Stuttgart, 1885, p. 29.)