The life and teaching of Karl Marx

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Title: The life and teaching of Karl Marx

Author: M. Beer

Release Date: September 2, 2011 [EBook #37290]

Language: English

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.

SOCIAL STUDIES SERIES

(VOLUME TWO).

THE LIFE AND TEACHING OF

KARL MARX

First Published in 1921

[All rights reserved.]

THE

LIFE AND TEACHING

OF

KARL MARX

BY

M. BEER

Author of A History of British Socialism

Translated by T.C. PARTINGTON

and H.J. STENNING, and Revised

by the Author

NATIONAL LABOUR PRESS, LIMITED,

LONDON: 8/9, Johnson's Court, E.C. 4

MANCHESTER: 30, Blackfriars Street

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.ToC

I. The Significance of Marx.

Karl Marx belongs to the ranks of those philosophical and sociological thinkers who throw potent thought-ferment into the world, and set in motion the masses of mankind. They awaken slumbering doubts and contradictions. They proclaim new modes of thought, new social forms. Their systems may sooner or later become obsolete, and the ruthless march of time may finally overthrow their intellectual edifice; meanwhile, however, they stimulate into activity the minds of countless men, inflame countless human hearts, imprinting on them characteristics which are transmitted to coming generations. This is the grandest and finest work to which any human being can be called. Because these thinkers have lived and worked, their contemporaries and successors think more clearly, feel more intensely, and are richer in knowledge and self-consciousness.

The history of philosophy and of social science is comprised in such systems and generalisations. They are the index to the annals of mankind. None of these systems is complete, none comprehends all human motives and capacities, none exhausts all the forces and currents of human society. They all express only fragmentary truths, which, however, become effective and achieve success because they are shining lights amidst the intellectual confusion of the generation which gives them birth, bringing it to a consciousness of the questions of the time, rendering its further development less difficult, and enabling its strongest spirits to stand erect, with fixity of purpose, in critical periods.

Hegel expresses himself in a similar sense where he remarks: When the refutation of a philosophy is spoken of, this is usually meant in an abstract negative (completely destructive) sense, so that the confuted philosophy has no longer any validity whatever, and is set aside and done with. If this be so, the study of the history of philosophy must be regarded as a thoroughly depressing business, seeing that this study teaches that every system of philosophy which has arisen in the course of time has found its refutation. But if it is as good as granted that every philosophy has been refuted, yet at the same time it must be also asserted that no philosophy has been refuted, nor ever can be refuted ... for every philosophical system is to be considered as the presentation of a particular moment or a particular stage in the evolutionary process of the idea. The history of philosophy ... is not, in its totality, a gallery of the aberrations of the human intellect, but is rather to be compared to a pantheon of deities.

—(Hegel, Encyclopædia, vol. 1, section 86, note 2.)

What Hegel says here about philosophy is true also of systems of social science, and styles and forms in art. The displacement of one system by another reflects the historical sequence of the various stages of social evolution. The characteristic which is common to all these systems is their vitality.

In spite of their defects and difficulties there surges through them a living spirit from the influence of which contemporaries cannot escape. Opponents may put themselves to endless trouble to contradict such systems, and show up their shortcomings and inconsistencies, and yet, with all their pains, they do not succeed in attaining their object; their logical sapping and mining, their passionate attacks break against the vital spirit which the creative genius has breathed into his work. The deep impression made on us by this vitality is one of the main factors in the formation of our judgments upon scientific and artistic achievements. Mere formal perfection and beauty through which the life of the times does not throb can never create this impression.

Walter Scott, who was often reproached with defects and inconsistencies in the construction of his novels, once made answer with the following anecdote: A French sculptor, who had taken up his abode in Rome, was fond of taking to the Capitol his artistically inclined countrymen who were travelling in Italy, to show them the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, on which occasions he was at pains to demonstrate that the horse was defectively modelled, and did not meet the requirements of anatomy. After one of these criticisms a visitor urged him to prove his case in a concrete form by constructing a horse on correct artistic principles. The critic set to work, and when, after the lapse of a year, his friends were again visiting Rome, exhibited to them his horse. It was anatomically perfect. Proudly he had it brought to the Capitol, in order to compare both productions and so celebrate his triumph. Quite absorbed in his critical comparison, the French sculptor after a while gave way to a burst of genuine artistic feeling, which caused him pathetically to exclaim, "Et pourtant cette bête-là est vivante, et la mienne est morte!" (And yet that animal is alive, while mine is dead.)

Quite a number of Marxian critics find themselves in the same position as the hypercritical French sculptor. Their formal and logically complete economic doctrines and systems of historical philosophy, provided with pedantically correct details and definitions, remain dead and ineffective. They do not put us into contact with the relations of the time, whereas Marx has bequeathed both to the educated and the uneducated, to his readers and to non-readers, a multitude of ideas and expressions relating to social science, which have become current throughout the whole world.

In Petrograd and in Tokio, in Berlin and in London, in Paris and in Pittsburg, people speak of capital and of the capitalist system, of means of production and of the class struggle; of Reform and Revolution; of the Proletariat and of Socialism. The extent of Marx's influence is shown by the economic explanation of the world-war, which is even accepted by the most decided opponents of the materialist conception of history. A generation after Marx's death, the sovereignty of Capital shrinks visibly, works' committees and shops' stewards interfere with the productive processes, Socialists and Labour men fill the Parliaments, working men and their representatives rise to or take by storm the highest position of political power in States and Empires. Many of their triumphs would scarcely have received Marx's approval. His theory, white-hot with indomitable passion, demanded that the new tables of the Law should be given to men amidst thunder and lightning. But still the essential thing is that the proletariat is loosening its bonds, even if it does not burst them noisily asunder. We find ourselves in the first stages of the evolution of Socialist society. Through whatever forms this evolutionary process may pass in its logical development, this much is certain, that only by active thought on the part of Socialists and by the loyal co-operation of the workers can it be brought to its perfection.

We are already using Hegelian expressions, and must therefore pause here to note briefly Hegel's contribution to the subject. Without a knowledge of this, no one can be in a position to appreciate the important factors in the life and influence of Marx, or even to understand his first intellectual achievements during his student years.

II. The Work of Hegel.

Until towards the end of the eighteenth century, learned and unlearned, philosophers and philistines, had some such general notions as the following. The world has either been created, or it has existed from eternity. It is either governed by a personal, supernatural god or universal spirit, or it is kept going by nature, like some delicate machine. It exists in accordance with eternal laws, and is perfect, ordained to fulfil some design, and constant. The things and beings which are found in it are divided into kinds, species and classes. All is fixed, constant and eternal. Things and beings are contiguous in space, and succeed one another in time, as they have done ever since time was. It is the same with the incidents and events of the world and of mankind. Such common proverbs as There is nothing new under the sun and History repeats itself are but the popular expression of this view.

Correlative to this philosophy was Logic, or the science of the laws of thinking (Greek logos—reason, word). It taught how men should use their reason, how they should express themselves reasonably, how concepts arise (in what manner, for example, the human understanding arrived at the concepts stone, tree, animal, man, virtue, vice, etc.); further, how such concepts are combined into judgments (propositions), and finally, how conclusions are drawn from these judgments. This logic exhibited the intellectual processes of the human mind. It was founded by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 to 322 B.C.), and remained essentially unaltered until the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the same way as our whole conception of the universe remained unchanged. This science of human intellectual processes was based on three original laws of thought, which best characterise it. Just as an examining magistrate looks a prisoner in the face, and identifies him, so that uncertainty and contradiction may be avoided, so this logic began by establishing the identity of the conceptions with which it was to operate. Consequently, it established as the first law of thought the Principle of Identity, which runs as follows: A = A, i.e., each thing, each being, is like itself; it possesses an individuality of its own, peculiar to itself. To put it more clearly, this principle affirms that the earth is the earth, a state is a state, Capital is Capital, Socialism is Socialism.

From this proceeds the second law of thought, the Principle of Contradiction. A cannot be A and not—A. Or following our example given above, the earth cannot be the earth and a ball of fire; a State cannot be a State and an Anarchy; Capital cannot be Capital and Poverty; Socialism cannot be Socialism and Individualism. Therefore there must be no contradictions, for a thing which contradicts itself is nonsense; where, however, this occurs either in actuality or in thought, it is only an accidental exception to the rule, as it were, or a passing and irregular phenomenon.

From this law of thought follows directly the third, viz., the Principle of the Excluded Middle. A thing is either A or non-A; there is no middle term. Or, according to our example, the earth is either a solid body, or, if it is not solid, it is no earth; there is no middle term. The State is either monarchical, or, if it is not monarchical, it is no State. Capitalism is either oppressive, or altogether not Capitalism. Socialism is either revolutionary, or not Socialism at all; there is no middle term. (Socialism is either reformist, or not Socialism at all; there is no middle term.)

With these three intellectual laws of identity, of contradiction, and of the excluded middle, formal logic begins.

It is at once apparent that this logic operates with rigid, constant, unchanging, dogmatic conceptions, something like geometry, which deals with definitely bounded spatial forms. Such was the rationale of the old world-philosophy.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century a new conception of