A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

Early in 1845, Marx, at the instance of Prussia, was expelled from Paris by the Guizot Ministry. Marx settled in Brussels, where he resided three years. He gave up his Prussian citizenship without again becoming naturalised in any country. It was in 1845 that Engels published his important work, The Condition of the Working Class in England. In Brussels, in 1847, Marx published his controversial work on Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère, entitled Misère de la Philosophie. Proudhon, it must be remembered, was at that time the leading name in European socialism, and Marx had been on very intimate terms with him. Marx’s criticism of his friend is nevertheless most merciless. In defense of the German we can but say that such scathing methods were not unusual at that time, and that where the cause of truth and of the proletariat as he understood it was concerned, he scorned all manner of compromise and consideration for personal feelings. His book on Proudhon, in spite of its controversial form, is interesting as the first general statement of his views.

This book on Proudhon scarcely attracted any attention whatever. In the same year, 1847, he and his friend Engels had a notable opportunity for an expression of their common opinions which excited wide attention, and which has had a great and still growing influence in the cause of the working man.

A society of socialists, a kind of forerunner of the International, had established itself in London, and had been attracted by the new theories of Marx and the spirit of strong and uncompromising conviction with which he advocated them. They entered into relation with Marx and Engels; the society was reorganised under the name of the Communist League; and a congress was held, which resulted, in 1847, in the framing of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was published in most of the languages of Western Europe, and is the first proclamation of that revolutionary socialism armed with all the learning of the nineteenth century, but expressed with the fire and energy of the agitator, which in the International and other movements has so startled the world.

During the revolutionary troubles in 1848 Marx returned to Germany, and along with his comrades, Engels, Wolff, etc., he supported the most advanced democracy in the New Rhenish Gazette. In 1849 he settled in London, where he spent his after-life in the elaboration of his economic views and in the realisation of his revolutionary programme. In 1859 he published Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. This book was for the most part incorporated in the first volume of his great work on capital, Das Kapital, which appeared in 1867.[^[2]] Much of his later life was spent in ill health, due to the excessive work by which he undermined a constitution that had originally been exceptionally healthy and vigorous. He died in London, March 14, 1883. It was a time of the year which had been marked by the outbreak of the Commune at Paris, and is therefore for a twofold reason a notable period in the history of the proletariat.

Since the death of Marx his great work, Das Kapital, has been completed by the publication of the second and third volumes, which have been edited by Engels from manuscripts left by his friend. But neither of these two volumes has the historical interest which may fairly be claimed for the first. In 1877 Engels published on his own account a work called Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft,[^[3]] a controversial treatise against Dühring (a teacher of philosophy in the university of Berlin) which has had considerable influence on the development of the German Social Democracy. Engels died in 1895, after loyal and consistent service in the cause of the proletariat, which extended over more than fifty years.

The causes which have variously contributed to the rise of German socialism are sufficiently clear. With the accession of the romanticist Frederick William IV. to the throne of Prussia in 1840 German liberalism received a fresh expansion. At the same time the Hegelian school began to break up, and the interest in pure philosophy began to wane. It was a time of disillusionment, of dissatisfaction with idealism, of transition to realistic and even to materialistic ways of thinking. This found strongest expression in the Hegelian left, to which, after the ideals of the old religions and philosophies had proved unsubstantial, there remained as solid residuum the real fact of man with his positive interests in this life. The devotion and enthusiasm which had previously been fixed on ideal and spiritual conceptions were concentrated on humanity. To adherents of the Hegelian left, who had been delivered from intellectual routine by the most intrepid spirit of criticism, and who therefore had little respect for the conventionalisms of a feudal society, it naturally appeared that the interests of humanity had been cruelly sacrificed in favour of class privilege and prejudice.

The greatest thinkers of Germany had recognised the noble elements in the French Revolution. To recognise also the noble and promising features of French socialism was a natural thing, especially for Germans who had been in Paris, the great hearth of the new ideas. Here they found themselves definitely and consciously in presence of the last and greatest interest of humanity, the suffering and struggling proletariat of Western Europe, which had so recently made its definite entry in the history of the world. Thus socialism became a social, political, and economic creed to Karl Marx and his associates. But they felt that the theories which preceded them were wanting in scientific basis; and it was henceforward the twofold aim of the school to give scientific form to socialism, and to propagate it in Europe by the best and most effective revolutionary methods.

The fundamental principle of the Marx school and of the whole cognate socialism is the theory of ‘surplus value’—the doctrine, namely, that, after the labourer has been paid the wage necessary for the subsistence of himself and family, the surplus produce of his labour is appropriated by the capitalist who exploits it. This theory is an application of the principle that labour is the source of value, which was enunciated by many of the old writers on economics, such as Locke and Petty, which was set forth with some vagueness and inconsistency by Adam Smith, and was more systematically expounded by Ricardo. The socialistic application of the principle in the doctrine of surplus value had been made both by Owenites and Chartists. It was to prevent this appropriation of surplus value by capitalists and middlemen that the Owen school tried the system of exchange by labour notes in 1832, the value of goods being estimated in labour time, represented by labour notes.

The principle that labour is the source of value has been accepted in all its logical consequences by Marx, and by him elaborated with extraordinary dialectical skill and historical learning into the most complete presentation of socialism that has ever been offered to the world. A like application of the principle, but in a less comprehensive fashion, has been made by Rodbertus; and it is the same theory that underlies the extravagances and paradoxes of Proudhon. The question whether the priority in the scientific development of the principle is due to Marx or Rodbertus cannot be discussed here. But it may be said that, the theory had been set forth by Rodbertus in his first work in 1842, that the importance of the principle was understood by the Marx school as early as 1845, and that in a broad and general way it had indeed become the common property of socialists. The historical importance and scientific worth of the writings of Rodbertus should not be overlooked; nor are they likely to be when so much attention has been given to him by A. Wagner and other distinguished German economists.

But in the great work of Marx the socialist theory is elaborated with a fulness of learning and a logical power to which Rodbertus has no claim. With Marx the doctrine of surplus value receives its widest application and development: it supplies the key to his explanation of the history and influence of capital, and consequently of the present economic era, which is dominated by it. It is the basis, in fact, of a vast and elaborate system of social philosophy. In any case it is an absurdity as well as an historical error to speak of Marx as having borrowed from Rodbertus. Marx was an independent thinker of great originality and force of character, who had made the economic development of modern Europe the study of a laborious lifetime, and who was in the habit, not of borrowing, but of strongly asserting the results of his own research and of impressing them upon other men.