The life and teaching of Karl Marx Part 5

IV.

THE MARXIAN SYSTEM.

I. THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY.

As a guide to his studies from 1843-4 onwards, Marx used the conception of history, or method of investigation, which--in contradistinction to the idealist conception of history of Hegel--was named materialistic. As its nature is dialectic--as it seeks to conceive in thought the evolving antagonisms of the social process--it is, like Hegel's dialectic, a conception of history and a method of investigation at the same time. Nowhere did Marx work out his method of investigation in a special and comprehensive form; the elements of it are scattered throughout his writings, particularly in the Communist Manifesto and in the "Poverty of Philosophy," and serve the purpose of polemics or demonstration. Only in the preface to his book, "On the Critique of Political Economy" (1859) did he devote two pages to a sketch of his conception of history, but in phraseology which is not always clear, sequential, or free from objection. It was the intention of Marx to write a work on Logic, where he would certainly have formulated clearly his materialistic dialectic. As, however, his fundamental ideas on this subject are available, we are able to extract the essentials of his position.

A glance over human history suffices to teach us that from age to age man has held to be true or false various opinions on rights, customs, religion, the State, philosophy, land-holding, trade, industry, etc., that he has had various economic arrangements, and forms of the State and of society, and that he has gone through an endless series of struggles and wars and migrations. How has this complicated variety of human thought and action come about? Marx raises that question, which, so far as he is concerned, does not aim in the first place at the discovery of the origin of thought, of rights, of religion, of society, of trade, etc.; these he takes to be historically given. He is rather concerned to find out the causes, the impulses, or the springs which produce the changes and revolutions of the essentials and forms of the mental and social phenomena, or which create the tendencies thereto. In a sentence: What interested Marx here was not the _origin_, but the development and change of things--he is searching for the dynamic law of history.

Marx answered: The prime motive power of human society, which is responsible for the changes of human consciousness and thought, or which causes the various social inst.i.tutions and conflicts to arise, does not originate, in the first place, from thought, from the Idea, from the world-reason or the world-spirit, but from the material conditions of life. The basis of human history is therefore material.

The material conditions of life--that is, the manner in which men as social beings, with the aid of environing nature, and of their own in-dwelling physical and intellectual qualities, shape their material life, provide for their sustenance, and produce, distribute and exchange the necessary goods for the satisfaction of their needs.

Of all categories of material conditions of existence, the most important is production of the necessary means of life. And this is determined by the nature of the productive forces. These are of two kinds: inanimate and personal. The inanimate productive forces are: soil, water, climate, raw materials, tools and machines. The personal productive forces are: the labourers, the inventors, discoverers, engineers, and finally, the qualities of the race--the inherited capacities of specific groups of men, which facilitate work.

The foremost place among the productive forces belongs to the manual and mental labourers; they are the real creators of exchange-value in capitalist society. The next place of importance is taken by modern technology, which is an eminently revolutionising force in society.--("Capital" (German), Vol. I., Chapters 1, 12, 13 and 14, "Poverty of Philosophy" (German edition, 1885, pp. 100-101.))

So much for the conception "Productive Forces," which plays an important part with Marx. We come now to the other equally important notion, "Conditions of production." By this phrase Marx understands the legal and State forms, ordinances and laws, as well as the grouping of social cla.s.ses and sections: thus, the social conditions which regulate property and determine the reciprocal human relations in which production is carried on. The conditions of production are the work of men in society. Just as men produce various material goods out of the materials and forces made available to them by Nature, so they create out of the reactions of the productive forces upon the mind definite social, political, and legal inst.i.tutions, as well as systems of religion, morals, and philosophy.

"Men make their own history, but do not so spontaneously in conditions chosen by them, but on the contrary, in conditions which they have found ready to hand transmitted and given."--(Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire," I.)

That is to say, under the influence of productive work and its needs, men build their form of society, their State, their religion, their philosophy and science. The material production is the substructure or the groundwork, while the corresponding political, religious, and philosophical systems are the superstructure. And in such a manner that the superstructure corresponds to the foundation, lends it strength, and promotes its development.

The foundation is material, and the superstructure is the psychical reflex and effect.

In broad outlines this conception may be ill.u.s.trated somewhat as follows:

Primitive human groups lived under Communism and were organised according to blood relationship. Their deities have the characteristics of their natural environment, and reflect the physical effects of this environment upon the primitive mental life of the "savage"; their religion, their morality, and their laws promote the communal life and the tribal discipline. Feudal society is based on the possession of land by the n.o.bles and on the industrial labour of the corporations of the towns. The inherited religious ideas are soon transformed in accordance with the dominant interests of these historical periods (primitive Christianity became a State religion); all religious, ethical, and philosophical ideas antagonistic to these interests were fought and persecuted. The middle-cla.s.s society, which is based on personal property, is endeavouring to sweep away all vestiges of communal and corporation rights, to set free the individual, to mobilise labour and property, to abolish Feudalism and the old Church and monasterial inst.i.tutions, and to put in their place the individual relation between man and G.o.d, or the personal conscience (the Reformation), introducing individual rights as well; it struggles against the independent sovereignty of the feudal domains, and labours for a united national territory, which will afford greater scope to trade and commerce; it supports Absolutism, so long as the latter is in conflict with the feudal lords; and when, afterwards, Absolutism is a hindrance to the development of middle-cla.s.s society, this also is fought and a const.i.tutional monarchy or a republic demanded. And all this takes place not because certain human intelligences, by reason of more intense thought, or enlightenment, or the call of a supernatural power, are primarily at work, but as a consequence of the influence of the material basis, of the economic foundation of society, upon the mind, which translates and transforms these external realities into religious, juridical, and philosophic conceptions:

"It is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness."--(Marx, Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")

Man, even the most heroic, is not the sovereign maker and law-giver of social life, but its executive; he only follows out the tendencies and currents set up by the material foundation of society. Nevertheless, a great deal depends upon the executive officials. If they possess comprehensive knowledge, energetic natures, and outstanding capacities, they are able, within the boundaries drawn for them, to accomplish great things, and to accelerate the development.

"Up to the present the philosophers have but interpreted the world; it is, however, necessary to change it."--(Marx, "Theses to Feuerbach.")

We have referred in various places to interests. We are not to understand by this personal, but general social or cla.s.s interests.

Marx is not of the opinion that everybody acts in accordance with his personal welfare. This is not Marxian doctrine, but that of the middle-cla.s.s moral philosophers, like Helvetius (1715-1771) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), who regarded pleasure and pain of the individual as the measure and motive of his actions and conduct. Marx is rather of the opinion that men often, in the most important events of their lives, act contrary to their personal interests, as in their feelings and thoughts they identify themselves with that which they hold to be the interests of the community or of their cla.s.s. According to Marx, individual interest generally plays a slight part in history. He is preoccupied with the collective interest of social production. Only the latter does he hold to be determining in the formation of the intellectual superstructure.

Up till now we have only spoken of various forms of production and society, and their corresponding mental systems. But we do not yet know why and how one form of production and society becomes obsolete and gives place to another, that is, how and why revolutionary changes are brought about. Or in other words: we have hitherto considered the statics of society; we will now look at its dynamics.

The revolutionary changes in society depend on two groups of phenomena, which, although casually connected with each other, yet work differently. One of these groups of phenomena is technical, and consists in changes in the productive forces. The other group, which is the effect of the first, is of a personal nature, and consists in struggles between the social cla.s.ses. Let us consider the first group of causes.

As the productive forces expand, through greater skill on the part of the worker, through discoveries of new raw material and markets, through the invention of new labour processes, tools and machines, and through the better organisation of trade and exchange, so that the material basis or the economic foundation of society is altered, then the old conditions of production cease to promote the interests of production. For the conditions of production: the former social cla.s.ses, the former laws, State inst.i.tutions, and intellectual systems were adapted to a state of the productive forces which is either in process of disappearing, or no longer exists. The social and intellectual superstructure no longer corresponds to the economic foundation. The productive forces and the conditions of production come into conflict with each other.

This conflict between the new realty and the old form, this conflict between new causes and the obsolete effects of bygone causes, begins gradually to influence the thoughts of men. Men commence to feel that they are confronted with a new external world, and that a new era has been opened.

Social divisions acquire a new significance: cla.s.ses and sections which were formerly despised gain in social and economic power; cla.s.ses which were formerly honoured decline. While this transformation of the social foundation is proceeding, the old religious, legal, philosophical, and political systems cling to their inherited positions, and insist on remaining, although they are obsolete and can no longer satisfy mental needs. For human thought is conservative: it follows external events slowly, just as our eye perceives the sun at a point which the sun has in reality already pa.s.sed, as the rays require several minutes of time in order to strike our optic nerves. We may recall Hegel's fine metaphor: "The Owl of Minerva begins its flight only when twilight gathers." However late, it does begin. Great thinkers gradually arise, who explain the new situation, and create new ideas and trains of thought which correspond to the new situation. The human consciousness gives birth to anxious doubts and questionings, and then new truths; leading to differences of opinion, disputes, strifes, schisms, cla.s.s struggles, and revolutions.

In the next chapter we will consider more closely the cla.s.s struggle between Labour and Capital. Meanwhile, we will look at the cla.s.s struggle generally.

In primitive societies, where private property is yet unknown, or still undeveloped, there are no cla.s.s distinctions, no cla.s.s domination, and no cla.s.s antagonisms. The chief, the medicine man, and the judge regulate or supervise the observance of the customary usages, religious ceremonies, and social arrangements. But as soon as the old order is dissolved, and private property develops, in consequence of trade with other peoples or through wars, there arise cla.s.ses of those who possess and those who do not. The possessing cla.s.s carries on the Government, makes laws, and creates inst.i.tutions, which chiefly serve the end of protecting the interests of the possessing and ruling cla.s.ses. The intellectual structure of the cla.s.s society likewise corresponds to the interests of those who possess and rule. So long as these interests promote the common good in some measure, so long as the old forms of production and the old conditions of production are largely in harmony with each other, a certain truce prevails between the cla.s.ses. But should there set in the above-mentioned opposition between the productive forces and the conditions of production, the latter will cease to satisfy the oppressed cla.s.ses, and cla.s.s conflicts will arise, which will either result in legal compromises (reforms) or will end in the overthrow of the society concerned, or will lead to a new set of conditions.

Ancient history (Hebrew, Greek, Roman) is full of these social struggles; all the great reform laws of these peoples were attempts to establish social peace, but the rich and the poor, the Patricians and the Plebeians, the Slaves and Freemen, continued their struggles until the downfall of the old world, which has bequeathed to us great intellectual treasures as the fruit of these struggles. In the Middle Ages social struggles between the feudal lords and the traders, between n.o.bles and peasants, were kindled. In more recent times the middle cla.s.ses fought Autocracy and Squirearchy, and at length the proletariat was pitted against the bourgeoisie--cla.s.s struggles which led to rebellions and revolutions, and powerfully influenced the intellectual life.

From these historical antagonisms and struggles arose the intellectual and political antagonisms, personified by the leaders of the social groups and cla.s.ses, of which world-history relates: opposing religious and philosophical systems: Brahma and Buddha, Baal and Jahveh, National G.o.d and Universal G.o.d, Heathendom and Christendom, Catholicism and Protestantism, Materialism and Idealism, Realism and Nominalism. However abstract or metaphysical, however remote from actual life and material production they may appear to be, nevertheless, in the last resort they are to be traced back through many intermediate stages to changes in the economic foundation of the society in question, to the contradiction between this foundation and the conditions of production, as well as to the great struggles between conflicting interests which spring therefrom. The ethical, political, and politico-economic systems which strive with each other for mastery, as well as national and world wars, are separated from the real basis of society by a progressively smaller number of intermediate stages: the questions of idealist or utilitarian ethics, monarchy or republic, oligarchy or democracy, protection or free trade, State regulation or free scope for the economic forces, Socialism or private enterprise, etc., however lofty and humanitarian may be the arguments and ideal motives which their champions may adduce, are connected with the material foundation and the conditions of production which have come into conflict with it.

Marx and Engels have set forth this conception in the Communist Manifesto, in popular form, as follows:

"Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views, and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

"What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes in character in proportion as material production is changed. The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling cla.s.s.

"When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

"When the ancient world was in its last throes the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succ.u.mbed in the eighteenth century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death-battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free compet.i.tion within the domain of knowledge."

Now one step farther. When the conditions of production, the social divisions into cla.s.ses, and the laws of property become fetters to the productive forces, when the conflict of interests condense themselves into cla.s.s struggles, then comes a period of social revolution.

"With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic--in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we are not able to judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the conditions of production."--(Preface to "Critique of Political Economy.")

The revolutionary period only closes when the social order that had become full of contradictions liberates the productive forces and strikes off their fetters, and creates new conditions of production which correspond to them. The old society, which is doomed to disappear, evolves the new conditions of existence before it sinks into oblivion. The men who a.s.sist the progress of the new society accordingly occupy themselves with problems which they are able to solve, as the means thereto are given in the material development.

Such problems are set before them because, regarded from the theoretical standpoint, they are the mental reflex of the contradictions and revolutionary tendencies within society.

Accordingly, the essence of the historical development of human society has been so far the progressive dialectical unfolding and perfection of the productive forces.

"In broad outlines," says Marx, "we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production, as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production--antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism.

This social formation const.i.tutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society."

Prehistoric stage of human society! What significant words! The capitalist economic order is the last phase of this stage, which is written in streams of blood and tears of the dispossessed and exploited, and to which is given the task of developing the productive forces and liberating men from the material fetters, so that they may enter into a life of mental culture. The materialist conception of history, unethical and unidealist like all natural science, opens up wide and elevating prospects. During thousands of years man struggled on the physical plane to obtain release from the animal kingdom, and was subjected to the discipline of unfeeling nature. After he had emerged from the animal kingdom, man laboured for thousands of years to lay the foundation of human society, a process which was performed under the hunger whip of stern taskmasters, and which powerfully stimulated the intellectual capacities of men, but only disclosed the ideal of justice and humanity as a remote and inaccessible star.

The materialist conception of history has shown itself to be a fruitful method of historical investigation. Some aspects of this idea were uttered both before and during Marx's lifetime. The revolution in the positions of cla.s.ses and the struggles which followed hard on the English industrial revolution (1760-1825), and everywhere attended the transition from an agrarian to an industrial State, were too palpable to be overlooked. It was Marx who fused these ideas, with the aid of the Hegelian dialectics made of them a method of investigation, and pressed them into the service of Socialism and historical research.

II. CLa.s.sES, CLa.s.s STRUGGLES, AND CLa.s.s-CONSCIOUSNESS.

One of the most important contributions of Marx to the understanding of historical processes is his conception of social cla.s.ses and of cla.s.s struggles. Although, prior to Marx, there were historians and politicians who pointed out the part played by social cla.s.ses in politics and in social convulsions, it was Marx who first grasped this conception in its entire scope and significance, giving it precise form, and making it an essential part of political and social thought.

He refers to the subject in the Communist Manifesto in the following terms:

"The Socialist and Communist systems properly so called, those of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. The founders of these systems see, indeed, the cla.s.s antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a cla.s.s without any historical initiative or any independent political movement."

The cla.s.sification of the various groups of society, or the division of human society into cla.s.ses, is as logical a process, that is, a result attained by the operations of reason, as the division of animals, plants, and minerals into various cla.s.ses. A specific group of social beings, which bear the stamp of common characteristics, is put in a certain cla.s.s by social science. This cla.s.sification cannot be made by purely empirical methods of immediate sensuous perceptions.

It cannot be determined from the appearance of modern men, whether they are capitalists or workers. We must look for certain scientifically established features which determine the social cla.s.sification of men. As we have just seen, Marx held economic facts to be fundamental, and he contended that the economic characteristics were valid for purposes of cla.s.sification. In his view, the manner in which a specific human group obtained its sustenance was the chief characteristic. Men whose chief means of life are wages form the working cla.s.s. Men whose most important source of livelihood is the ownership of capital (land, buildings, workshops, and raw material) form the capitalist cla.s.s. It is of little moment that a worker owns a savings-bankbook, and draws interest or dividends from a co-operative society, or that a capitalist personally supervises his undertaking, or organises his business, so that his profits partly consist in wages of superintendence or salary. The outstanding feature is that the chief interest of the worker is concentrated on wages, whilst that of the capitalist is directed on property. It goes without saying that the social cla.s.ses are not completely h.o.m.ogeneous. Like botanical and zoological cla.s.ses, they may be divided into kinds and species; the working cla.s.ses include well-paid hand and brain workers, as well as sweated sections; but all the subdivisions of the social cla.s.ses possess the common outstanding quality of the same source of livelihood, which is either personal labour or the possession of capital. One cla.s.s disposes only of labour-power, while the other cla.s.s owns the means of production.

Between these two cla.s.ses, says Marx, there are deep-seated, unbridgeable antagonisms, which lead to a cla.s.s struggle. The antagonisms are primarily of an economic nature. The wage-earners, as the owners of labour power, are constrained to sell this as dear as possible, i.e., to obtain the highest possible wages, whereas the owners of capital endeavour to buy such labour-power as cheap as possible, i.e., to pay the least possible wages. This antagonism is indeed fundamental, but, at first sight, does not touch the intellectual sphere very deeply. On the surface, this antagonism is only one as between buyer and seller, but in reality the distinction is very great, as the seller of labour-power will quickly starve if he does not market his commodity. The owner of the means of production is therefore in a position to cause the seller of labour-power to starve, if the latter does not accept the conditions which the capitalist imposes. Ownership of capital reveals itself as a power that can oppress the owner of labour-power.

This antagonism leads to the formation of Trade Unions. It is also the prime cause of the cla.s.s struggle, but mere trade unionism is but its incipient stage. It develops into a cla.s.s struggle when the workers recognise that their condition of subjection is not a temporary state, but the result of the economic system of private capitalism, that the subjection will last so long as this economic system exists, and that the latter could be replaced by an economic order in which the means of production belong to all the members of society. The wage-workers only partic.i.p.ate in the cla.s.s struggle when they learn to think in a Socialist sense, when hostility to the existing social order develops out of the sporadic and unrelated wage struggle and actions of Trade Unions, and when the proletariat, as an organised cla.s.s, turns from the preoccupations of the present to the tasks of the future, and strives to change the basis of society from private property to common property. The workers then become aware that there can be neither freedom nor equality for them in the existing society, and that their emanc.i.p.ation can only be attained through Socialism. The cla.s.s struggle may, however, stop short at the recognition of these facts.