I | INTRODUCTION |
Karl
Marx (1818-1883), German political philosopher and revolutionary, the
most important of all socialist thinkers and the creator of a system of thought
called Marxism. With political economist Friedrich Engels, he founded scientific
socialism (now known as communism); for this, Marx is considered one of the most
influential thinkers of all time.
Karl Heinrich Marx was born on May 5, 1818,
into a comfortably middle-class family in the city of Trier, Germany. He was
educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly after
contributing his first article to the Cologne newspaper Rheinische
Zeitung, Marx became editor of the paper. His writings in the Rheinische
Zeitung criticizing contemporary political and social conditions embroiled
him in controversy with the authorities, and in 1843 Marx was compelled to
resign his editorial post, and soon afterward the Rheinische Zeitung was
forced to discontinue publication.
Marx then went to Paris. There, as a result of
his further studies in philosophy, history, and political science, he adopted
communist beliefs. In 1844, when Engels visited him in Paris, the two men found
that they had independently arrived at identical views on the nature of
revolutionary problems. They began a collaboration to elucidate systematically
the theoretical principles of communism and to organize an international
working-class movement dedicated to those principles. For information on their
collaboration, which continued until Marx’s death, see Engels,
Friedrich.
II | THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO |
In 1845 Marx was ordered to leave Paris
because of his revolutionary activities. He settled in Brussels and began
organizing and directing a network of revolutionary groups, called Communist
Correspondence Committees, in a number of European cities. In 1847 these
committees were consolidated to form the Communist League, and Marx and Engels
were commissioned to formulate a statement of principles. The program they
submitted, known throughout the world as the Communist Manifesto, was the
first systematic statement of modern socialist doctrine and was written by Marx,
partly on the basis of a draft prepared by Engels. Marx contributed the central
propositions of the Manifesto, which embody the materialist conception of
history, or historical materialism. This theory was later explicitly formulated
in Marx’s Critique of Political Economy (1859).
The Manifesto’s propositions are that
in every historical epoch the prevailing economic system by which the
necessities of life are produced determines the form of societal organization
and the political and intellectual history of the epoch; and that the history of
society is a history of struggles between exploiting and exploited, that is,
between ruling and oppressed, social classes. From these premises, Marx drew the
conclusion in the Manifesto that the capitalist class would be overthrown
and that it would be eliminated by a worldwide working-class revolution and
replaced by a classless society. The Manifesto influenced all subsequent
communist literature and revolutionary thought generally; it has been translated
into many languages and published in hundreds of millions of copies.
III | POLITICAL EXILE |
In 1848 revolutions occurred in France and
Germany, and the Belgian government, fearful that the revolutionary tide would
engulf Belgium, banished Marx. He went first to Paris and then to the Rhineland.
In Cologne he established and edited a communist periodical, the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung, and engaged in organizing activities. In 1849 Marx was
arrested and tried in Cologne on a charge of incitement to armed insurrection;
he was acquitted but was expelled from Germany, and the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung was suppressed. Later in the same year he was again banished from
France; he spent the remainder of his life in London.
In England Marx devoted himself to study and
writing and to efforts to build an international communist movement. During this
period he wrote a number of works that are regarded as classics of communist
theory. These include his greatest work, Das Kapital (volume 1, 1867;
volumes 2 and 3, edited by Engels and published posthumously in 1885 and 1894,
respectively; translated 1907-1909), a systematic and historical analysis of the
economy of the capitalist system of society, in which he developed the theory
that the capitalist class exploits the working class by appropriating the
“surplus value” produced by the working class. See Capital.
Marx’s next work, The Civil War in
France (1871), analyzed the experience of the short-lived revolutionary
government established in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (see
Commune of Paris, 1871). In this work Marx interpreted the formation and
existence of the Commune as a historical confirmation of his theory that it is
necessary for workers to seize political power by armed insurrection and then to
destroy the capitalist state; he hailed the Commune as “the finally discovered
political form under which the economic emancipation of labor could take place.”
This theory was explicitly projected in Critique of the Gotha Program
(1875; translated 1922): “Between the capitalist and communist systems of
society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the
other. This corresponds to a political transition period, whose state can be
nothing else but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
During his residence in England Marx also
contributed articles on contemporary political and social events to newspapers
in Europe and the United States. He was a correspondent of the New York Daily
Tribune, edited by Horace Greeley, from 1852 to 1861, and in 1857 and 1858
he wrote a number of articles for the New American Cyclopedia, edited
jointly by the American writer and editor Charles Anderson Dana and American
journalist and literary critic George Ripley.
IV | LATER YEARS |
When the Communist League dissolved in 1852,
Marx continued to correspond with hundreds of revolutionists with the aim of
forming another revolutionary organization. These efforts and those of his many
collaborators culminated in 1864 when the First International was established in
London. Marx made the inaugural address, wrote the statutes of the International
and subsequently directed the work of its general council or governing body.
After the suppression of the Commune, in which members of the First
International participated, the International declined, and Marx recommended
moving its headquarters to the United States. The last eight years of his life
were marked by an incessant struggle with physical ailments that impeded his
political and literary labors. He died in London on March 13, 1883.
Manuscripts and notes found after his death
revealed that he had projected a fourth volume of Das Kapital to comprise
a history of economic doctrines; these fragments were edited by German socialist
Karl Johann Kautsky and published under the title Theories of Surplus
Value (4 volumes, 1905-1910; translated 1952). Other works planned and not
executed by Marx included mathematical studies, studies embodying applications
of mathematics to economic problems, and studies on the historical aspects of
various technological developments.
V | INFLUENCE |
Marx’s influence during his life was not great.
After his death it increased with the growth of the labor movement. Marx’s ideas
and theories came to be known as Marxism, or scientific socialism, which
constituted one of the principal currents of 20th-century political thought. His
analysis of capitalist economy and his theories of historical materialism, the
class struggle, and surplus value have become the basis of modern socialist
doctrine. Of decisive importance with respect to revolutionary action are his
theories on the nature of the capitalist state, the road to power, and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. These doctrines, revised by most socialists
after his death, were revived in the 20th century by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who
developed and applied them. They became the core of the theory and practice of
Bolshevism and the Third International. Marx’s ideas, as interpreted by Lenin,
continued to have influence throughout most of the 20th century. In much of the
world, including Africa and South America, emerging nations were formed by
leaders who claimed to represent the proletariat.
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