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Reprint from the July-September, October- 
 December, 1917, January-March and April- 
 June, 1918, issues of "The Radical Review" 
 
 
 I 
 
AT the same time, and quite apart from the gen- 
 eral servitude involved in the wages system, 
 the working class ought not to exaggerate to 
 themselves the ultimate working of these every- 
 day struggles. They ought not to forget that they 
 are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of 
 those effects; that they are retarding the downward 
 movement, but not changing its direction, that they 
 are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They 
 ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in 
 these unavoidable guerilla fights, incessantly spring- 
 ing up from the ever-ceasing encroachments of 
 capital or changes of the market. They ought to 
 understand that, with all the miseries it imposes 
 upon them, the present system simultaneously en- 
 genders the material conditions and the social forms 
 necessary for an economical reconstruction of so- 
 ciety. Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair 
 day's wages for a fair day's work!" they ought to 
 inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watch- 
 word, "Abolition of the wages system!"— Karl Marx. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Karl Marx: The Man and His Work: 
 
 First Lecture 11 
 
 Second Lecture 41 
 
 Third Lecture 65 
 
 An Outline for the Study of Marxism 85 
 
 The Constructive Elements of Socialism: 
 
 First Part 103 
 
 Second Part 113 
 
KARL MARX: 
 
 THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 A STUDY IN HISTORICAL MATERIALISM 
 
FIRST LECTURE 
 
FIRST LECTURE 11 
 
 Workingmen and Workingwomen : 
 
 THERE is probably no name in the labor movement today, yes 
 and in the scientific world, which is more revered and idolized 
 than that of the founder of scientific Socialism : Karl Marx. In 
 the proletarian movement the name of Marx has become a syno- 
 nym for scientific soundness and irrefutable accuracy on the one 
 hand, and also a cloak with which to cover and label the most 
 spurious intellectual wares on the other. In scientific circles 
 practically the same conditions prevail, only with the gratifying 
 exception that here the distorters and corrupters of Marx: the 
 Mallocks, Boehm-Bawerks, Skeltons and Simkhovitches, quickly 
 meet their Waterloo at the hands of a competent Marxian, and 
 are thus prevented from accomplishing any further confusion and 
 material harm. As implied above, in the labor movement or 
 Socialist movement proper the task is not so simple, yes a great 
 deal more difficult, and the reason for this peculiarity is to be 
 found in the astonishing ignorance prevalent amongst so-called 
 Marxian Socialists 'on matters Marxian ; furthermore in the fact 
 that the corrupter and distorter of Marx in this case generally 
 carries on his work, knowingly or unknowingly matters little, in 
 the name of Socialist propaganda or under the cover of Marxism. 
 
 With so many of his great predecessors, Karl Marx, in the 
 course of years and through the highly scientific character of his 
 works, has been gradually elevated to the position of an infallible 
 demi-god by veritable legions of adherents. Thousands, yes 
 hundreds of thousands of sincere and well meaning Socialists 
 never tire of acclaiming their allegiance to the teachings of this 
 great economist, but — and this is a most regrettable truth — very 
 rarely will the inquisitive seeker find a disciple amongst these 
 
 / 
 
12 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 masses who has intelligently read or studied the works of his 
 idol. Nothing is more repulsive and disgusting than just this 
 unqualified Marx-deification: a deification which like all idolatry 
 finds its source in the ignorance of the masses, and a deification 
 which is everything but a tribute to Marx and his teachings. To 
 combat just these godlike conceptions of Marx and to familiarize 
 the workers with the social significance of this truly great indi- 
 vidual, is one of the cardinal objects of these lectures. 
 
 I fully appreciate the largeness of this task, also the impossi- 
 bility to present to you even a fair pen-picture of the man, or an 
 adequate synopsis of his theoretical system in the limited time 
 at my disposal. These lectures, therefore, do not lay claim to 
 exhaustiveness, neither are they to be considered a condensed 
 compendium or handbook of Marxism made easy. Socialist 
 literature is already plentifully supplied with works of this kind, 
 many of which are excellent, and still more that would have per- 
 formed a great service to Socialist clarity had they remained 
 unwritten. 
 
 My aim in presenting these lectures is to bring the man and 
 social creature Marx nearer to you. I would like to interest 
 many of my comrades and fellow men in the teachings of this 
 master of Socialist letters. To do this successfully, that is cor- 
 rectly, we must examine the historic conditions and the more 
 immediate social atmosphere out of or in which Marx came to be 
 and developed. By becoming familiar with the life of Marx and 
 the distinct material conditions of which this life was but a pro- 
 duct, much of the sanctimonious hero-worship will sink into 
 oblivion, and make room for an intelligent appreciation based 
 upon a sound perception. If I succeed in arousing and stimulat- 
 ing the interest of my auditors to the extent that they will make 
 an effort to study and familiarize themselves with the works of 
 Marx, then I believe the purpose of these lectures has been ac- 
 complished. 
 
 With these few preliminary remarks as a compass before us, 
 
FIRST LECTURE 13 
 
 let us embark on our journey into the fields of Marx and 
 Marxism. 
 
 It is now practically a half century ago that Marx presented 
 the first volume of his immortal work "Capital". to the world: a 
 work which for the first time, since the inception of the capitalist 
 mode of production, laid bare the laws and forces governing this 
 economic structure. Through the analysis of capitalist produc- 
 tion, Marx exposed the source of all profits, and showed this to 
 rest in the appropriation of surplus value from the workers. His 
 theory of surplus value is a most valuable addition to classical 
 political economy, and raises itself upon the theories of value 
 evolved by Petty, Ricardo and Adam Smith, however, also sup- 
 plemented and perfected by Marx. With the aid of this theory, 
 Marx demonstrated that although the worker under the system of 
 capitalist production receives in the last analysis the full value of 
 his labor-power, he is nevertheless exploited, because he produces 
 in excess of this value, and does not receive the full value of his 
 product. 
 
 Going out from the theory of value as evolved by classical 
 political economy of which Ricardo was the last representative, 
 and which formulated that the value of a commodity is deter- 
 mined by the quantity of labor time consumed in its production, 
 Marx started to analyze the only thing the worker has left to sell, 
 namely his labor-power, and also stamped this a commodity. 
 And in just this commodity-status of labor-power he conceived 
 the source of all profit and the source of all accumulated wealth. 
 Marx clearly pointed out that the value of the worker's labor- 
 power is determined by the same law that controls the values of 
 all other commodities, namely : that the value of a worker's labor- 
 power is also fixed by the volume of socially necessary labor time 
 required to produce the commodities necessary to maintain the 
 life of a wage-slave, i. e., that the articles— food, clothes, shelter, 
 e t c>j — consumed by the worker in order to sustain life, a life that 
 is again fixed by a certain historical and social standard, deter- 
 
14 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 mine the size of his wage. Marx now shows that due to its 
 physical peculiarities and the wonderful productivity of our age, 
 labor-power is the only commodity which in the process of pro- 
 ductive consumption yields far more than its value, i. e., far more 
 than it needs to reproduce itself. He clearly underscored that 
 where all other commodities when consumed yield but the value 
 contained in them, labor-power yields far in excess of its value, 
 because the worker is the only commodity which produces or 
 yields far more than what is consumed in its production. And 
 he concluded that all work performed by the worker in excess of 
 the work necessary to keep him alive, or to produce the value of 
 his wages, is surplus work, or surplus labor appropriated by the 
 purchaser of the worker's labor-power, the capitalist. 
 
 With the aid of this theory of surplus value, he was able to 
 explain the cause and nature of the periodical crisis or panic in 
 capitalist society. He predicted that as capitalism developed, the 
 markets in which to dispose of the surplus wares, or in which to 
 realize the surplus value extracted from the workers at home 
 were bound to become scarcer, and the industrial depressions 
 more frequent. And in the contradiction between the ever in- 
 creasing social aspects of production and the growing features of 
 individual ownership; in the contradiction that increased produc- 
 tivity on the one hand spells increased laziness on the other; in 
 the contradiction between over-production and underconsumption 
 — a contradiction which so graphically illustrates the economic 
 status of the surplus-value sponging idler and the exploited pro- 
 letarian respectively; and finally in the contradiction between 
 social creation and individual appropriation, a contradiction 
 which is the dynamo of the class struggle, Marx saw the inevit- 
 able collapse of the capitalist system of production. By cementing 
 his economic deductions with his philosophical system of his- 
 torical development, known as the Materialist Conception of 
 History, he was able to clearly outline and formulate the histor- 
 ical mission of the workers, a mission based upon hard economic 
 conditions and clearly flowing from and truly in accord with the 
 
FIRST LECTURE 15 
 
 class interests of the proletariat. As stated before, these interests 
 lie found were but the logical product of the material conditions 
 underlying capitalist production : conditions which were bound to 
 make the workers conscious of their class interests, and develop 
 to such a climax where the expropriation of the expropriators 
 would become a dictate of historic evolution: where individual 
 social property would give way to social individual property, as 
 the next step in the dialectical process of social development. 
 
 Practically fifty years have elapsed since the publication of 
 the first volume of "Capital,", and the formulation of the theories 
 just touched upon. And on' March 14th of this year it will be 
 thirty-four years since Karl Marx has passed from us. In these 
 days of hurry and scurry, thirty-four years seem a veritable age. 
 How many refutations, corrections, revisions, and annihilations 
 of Marxism were we not compelled to witness in this short span 
 of time? Let me again remind you of the Brentanos, Mallocks, 
 Simkhovitches, Skeltons, Boehm-Bawerks, Bernsteins and con- 
 sorts. Consider the bulky tomes, highly praised by capitalist 
 journals and professorial fossils, they wrote in their valiant at- 
 tempt to overthrow the theoretical system of Marx ; consider how 
 the combined schools of vulgar-economy have thundered for 
 years against the theoretical premises of this proletarian econo- 
 mist ; consider how these henchmen of capital, in the face of irre- 
 futable facts and figures, in the face of undeniable conditions, 
 have sought by intimidation and fraud to ignore, stifle jind finally 
 corrupt the economic and philosophical deductions of Marx; 
 consider these events well, and then take an inventory of the 
 results accomplished. You will find that the majority of the 
 "learned" books written to refute Marxism have been relegated 
 into oblivion, or, probably, act as dust absorbers on the shelves 
 of various libraries. Of course, the Mallocks, Skeltons and 
 Boehm-Bawerks are still with us and plying their trade vigorously 
 as ever. Are their theoretical effusions, however, taken as serious 
 as of yore? No, they have neutralized the effect of their theo- 
 retical vaporings with the poison of their past idiosyncracies, to 
 
16 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 use a mild term. Only one opponent named above has had the 
 courage of convictions to admit his errors and that was the stron- 
 gest opponent of Marxism in Europe, the father of Revisionism 
 — Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein has openly admitted himself 
 mistaken in his deductions on capitalist development; since the 
 outbreak of the war he has repudiated Revisionism and Revision- 
 ists, and is today the chief collaborator of Karl Kautsky, the fore- 
 most exponent of Marxism in the world. At a whole the bourgeois 
 economists, in their attempt to refute Marx's theory of value and 
 surplus value and the logical deductions flowing therefrom, or 
 in their futile efforts to disprove the Materialist Conception of 
 History have failed, yes, miserably failed. 
 
 And how many experiments, "practical" experiments along 
 the lines of sugar-coated reforms, social uplift work and philan- 
 thropic saps have not been launched, in order to exterminate by 
 practical demonstration the class hatred (understand class-con- 
 sciousness) inherent in the Marxian conception of society, and so 
 grandly symbolized by the fighting proletariat conscious of its 
 aim. Have these efforts accomplished their task?; have the class 
 cleavages been bridged over, or the antagonism abolished?; is the 
 identity between Capital and Labor today a reality?; and finally, 
 has the class struggle, this diabolical invention of satan, been 
 substituted by social harmony? Has the spectre of Communism 
 ceased to haunt Europe since the issuing of the Communist 
 Manifesto? When we look upon society today, and compare the 
 gigantic accumulations of wealth in the hands of an ever decreas- 
 ing number of capitalists on the one hand with the, relatively 
 speaking, dependency and misery of an ever growing proletariat 
 on the other; when we compare the colossal struggles between 
 the robbers and the exploited of today with the comparatively 
 pygmean struggles of the past ; and when we compare the social 
 relations between the feudal-capitalist and the enslaved worker 
 of our present oligarchic-capitalism with the relations between 
 capitalist and worker of even fifty years ago, then every unbiased 
 student will admit that the class demarcations are sharper drawn, 
 
FIRST LECTURE 17 
 
 the interests of the conflicting classes more opposed, and the 
 class-struggle raging with greater vigor today than ever before. 
 And, true to the Marxian conception of capitalism, class-lines 
 will continue to become more distinct and the class struggle cor- 
 respondingly more intensive, the industrial depressions more 
 frequent and the lot of the worker more unsettled, as the capital- 
 ist mode of production reaches ever higher forms in its develop- 
 ment. To sum up : today, more lucidly than ever, the economic 
 and philosophical deductions and principles of Marx stand veri- 
 fied and vindicated by the force of past experience and the facts 
 of current events — an intellectual oasis in the desert of vulgar- 
 economy. 
 
 And the teachings of the founder of scientific Socialism have 
 not only been verified by the undeniable facts of economic evolu- 
 tion, but also by a corresponding increasing class-consciousness 
 accompanying this inexorable historic process. When Marx 
 went to eternal rest in 1883, already more than the proverbial 
 baker's dozen had declared their allegiance to Socialism : it was • 
 the period when hundreds and thousands followed the standard 
 of working-class emancipation — the dawn of modern capitalism, 
 and the embryonic stage in the development of the modern labor 
 movement. Today millions of disinherited all over the globe 
 gather around the banner dedicated to the proletariat by Marx: 
 a banner truly expressive of the demands of economic and social 
 necessity, and symbolizing the ideals and historic mission of the 
 working-class — the destruction of the political class state and the 
 inauguration of the Industrial Republic. 
 
 II. 
 
 Upon the death of Marx, Frederick Engels wrote amongst 
 ethers to Wilhelm Liebknecht : "The greatest mind of the second 
 half of our century has ceased to think." He ends his pathetic 
 letter with the following glowing tribute : "Whatever we are, we 
 are through him; and whatever the movement of today is, it is 
 
18 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 through his theoretical and practical work; without him, we 
 would still be stuck in the mire of confusion." 
 
 These words may seem pretentious and illogical, especially 
 when uttered by a Historical Materialist, but when we consider 
 the scientific reputation of their author, they command attention 
 and respect. They seem more so pretentious, when we consider 
 that the nineteenth century was particularly representative of 
 great men. Was this not also the century that produced a Dar- 
 win, a man who achieved the same results in the field of biology 
 that immortalized Marx's name in the annals of the social 
 sciences? Just as Marx investigated and laid bare the great 
 motive forces and the social laws which actuate and propel the 
 development of society from a lower to a higher stage, so Darwin 
 uncovered and pointed out the dynamic powers and laws of 
 nature which compel life in its simplest form to develop endless- 
 chain-like into more complicated organisms. However, when 
 critically comparing Marx with Darwin, it seems to me that 
 Engels' praise is just. In my humble opinion, Marx was the 
 stronger and more diversified personality. In Darwin we cele- 
 brate the scholar, who searched and accumulated knowledge for 
 the purpose of knowing and presenting his findings. His field 
 was far away from the social conflict, and his findings, compar- 
 atively speaking, did not affect the social destiny and the class 
 interests of certain social layers so vitally, as did the application 
 of the evolutionary principle by Marx to History and Political 
 Economy. In Marx we notice a blending of the earnest and 
 searching scientist, who yearns for clearness and truth, with the 
 man of action and deeds — the revolutionist. Darwin confined 
 himself to, or at least was forced to confine himself to the estab- 
 lishment of the laws actuating life, i. e., to that what was and is in 
 nature. After Marx had discovered the iron laws governing 
 social development, after he had laid down these laws in the text- 
 book of the proletariat, "Capital," he then did not rest satisfied 
 with his achievements. Marx studied in order to place his fin- 
 dings into the service of social development : in order to actively 
 
FIRST LECTURE 19 
 
 participate in the struggle for the Socialist Commonwealth. He 
 desired to know, so he could act, and he wanted to be well equip- 
 ped for the task meted out to him and his class-conscious com- 
 rades by the unrelenting course of historic events. To him 
 philosophical clarity implied philosophical clarity to the workers ; 
 the same as we see all his activity radiating from a class-con- 
 scious premise and inaugurated solely for the purpose of 
 abolishing class-rule. He well appreciated, with the aid of the 
 Materialist Conception of History, the great role the proletariat 
 had to play in the advancement of society to a higher stage in 
 civilization; he knew that social evolution had formulated this 
 position of the workers in the social struggle, but he also knew 
 that the workers had first to become conscious of their historic 
 mission in order to fulfill the same successfully — in order to 
 desire to perform the same. 
 
 Writing on the relation of philosophy to working-class ac- 
 tivity in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbikher (German-French 
 Annals), he gives the following piece of advice to his erstwhile 
 friends, the Young-Hegelians : "You can not realize a philosophy 
 without abolishing it." However, he did not forget what he had 
 learned from them, and addressing the bourgeoisie says : "You 
 can not abolish a philosophy without realizing it. Just as philo- 
 sophy finds in the proletariat its material weapons, so the prole- 
 tariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons. The head of 
 emancipation is philosophy, its heart is the proletariat. The 
 philosophy can not be realized without the abolition of the pro- 
 letariat, and the proletariat can not abolish itself without the 
 realization of philosophy." If the readers will substitute Social- 
 ism for the word philosophy, then the last sentence will read: 
 Socialism can not be realized without the abolition of the prole- 
 tariat, and the proletariat can not abolish itself without the reali- 
 zation of Socialism. 
 
 Before entering upon an examination of the details in Marx's 
 life, details which are as interesting as they are plentiful and 
 
20 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 which in their totality furnish the sum-total of this turbulent life, 
 let us subject the immediate and also the larger social environ- 
 ment out of which and in which Marx grew and developed to a 
 casual examination. I believe, it is quite essential to have at 
 least a general knowledge of the social and historic background 
 overshadowing and influencing every step in the life of this 
 genius, before you will be able to comprehend and appreciate the 
 detailed phases of his tumultuous career intelligently. 
 
 Considering Marx's parentage, Klara Zetkin, a profound 
 Marxian scholar, remarks : "The customary theories fail us, when 
 we propound the question how this great personality, this genial 
 thinker, grew and came to be. The parents of Marx were good 
 and intelligent folks, although in no sense intellectually superior 
 to the average. Neither do the family annals of either mother or 
 father point to any ancestor whose intellectual endowments and 
 characteristics remind us of or are comparable to Marx's." 
 
 Wilhelm Liebknecht, who for years shared the hard days of 
 exile with Marx in London, writing on this subject states: "On 
 the 5th of May, 1818, at Treves — the oldest German town — 
 among the monuments of Roman civilization and amid the recent 
 traces of the French Revolution that had cleaned the Rhenish 
 province of medieval rubbish, a son was born in a Jewish family: 
 Karl Marx. Only four years had passed since the province of 
 the Rhine had been occupied by Prussia, and the new masters 
 hastened, in the service of the "Holy Alliance," to replace the 
 Heathenish-French by a Christian-German spirit. The pagan 
 Frenchmen had proclaimed the equal rights of all human beings 
 in the German Rhineland, and had removed from the Jews the 
 curse of a thousand years' persecution and oppression, had made 
 citizens and human beings of them. The Christian-German 
 spirit of the "Holy Alliance" condemned the Heathenish-French 
 spirit of equalization and demanded renovation of the old curse. 
 
 "Shortly after the birth of the boy, an edict was issued leaving 
 
FIRST LECTURE 21 
 
 to all the Jews no other choice but to be baptized or to forego all 
 official position and activity. 
 
 "The father of Marx, a prominent Jewish lawyer and notary 
 at the county court, submitted to the unavoidable, and, with his 
 family, adopted the Christian faith. 
 
 "Twenty years later, when the boy had grown to be a man, 
 he gave the first reply to this act of violence in his pamphlet on 
 the Hebrew Question. And his whole life was a reply and was 
 the revenge." 
 
 
 'Marx's father," writes Marx's daughter, "was a man of 
 great talent, and thoroughly imbued with the French ideas of the 
 eighteenth century concerning religion, science and art; his mo- 
 ther was descended from Hungarian Jews who had settled in 
 Holland in the seventeenth century. Among his earliest friends 
 and companions were Jenny — later his wife — and Edgar von 
 Westfalen. It was their father — a half Scot — who inspired Marx 
 with his first love for the romantic school; and while his father 
 read Voltaire and Racine to him, Westfalen read Homer and 
 Shakespeare to him. And these remained his favorite authors." 
 
 It seems to me that the most desirable potentialities of the 
 Jewish race lived in Marx. We find in him the untiring seeker 
 for truth; the seeker who climbed lonely mountain peaks and 
 strove to wrest from the fiery bush that which humanity has sought 
 and striven for since the daybreak of culture: the knowledge of 
 life. Furthermore, we meet here also the tenacious clinging to 
 convictions, and the joy of faith and devotion to a cause: traits 
 which are all predominant in the Jewish race. Then we find in 
 him the flaming rage against injustice and slavery, and that strong 
 developed brotherly feeling, which, according to a biblical legend, 
 prompted Moses to clench his fist to strike the Egyptian who was 
 maltreating a brother of his race. Nevertheless, all these charac- 
 teristics do not possess anything typically Jewish or racial, be- 
 cause their uniqueness was not developed in sectarian seclusion, and 
 
22 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 because they are blended or prompted by a cosmopolitanism 
 utterly foreign to the orthodox sectarian : a cosmopolitanism that 
 tears down the boundaries of creed, color or race, and that ex- 
 presses itself through the brotherhood of man based on the foun- 
 dation of economic equality. However, wherever Marx's natural 
 endowments, traits which singularly fitted and are no doubt to a 
 large degree the product of the requirements of the historic hour, 
 may come from matters little, especially when we note that in 
 their manifestations they were always placed into the service of 
 disinterested progress in general and into the cause of that class, 
 ordained to be the vanguard of all progress, in particular — the 
 working-class. 
 
 We know that Marx's cradle stood in that part of Germany 
 which had been swept over and thoroughly cleansed of medieval 
 refuse by the liberating and invigorating winds of the French 
 Revolution. And, if we take into consideration that the Rhine- 
 land borders closely upon that country, which at the beginning 
 of the fifteenth century was the first to give expression to bour- 
 geois sentiments and interests; a country in which capitalism, 
 still shut up in its f eudalic womb, ripened first ; a country that in 
 those days produced an Erasmus and a Spinoza — the Nether- 
 lands; then it will not surprise you, when I emphasize that the 
 Rhenish Province is today and always has been the most classical 
 seat of capitalism in Germany, ergo, also the most progressive 
 province in Prussia or the German Empire. During Marx's boy- 
 hood days, the pulsating throbs of the great French uprising were 
 still felt in the Rhineland, and were graphically visible in the bold 
 stand taken by the bourgeoisie against the powers of reaction — 
 a spirit that remained unbroken and rose to its most magnificent 
 heights in the turbulent days of 1848. 
 
 And now we come to a time in which Marx developed and 
 worked to advance his views and ideals : the period of his life, 
 and the period of victorious, advancing capitalism. England had 
 practically achieved the mastery over the markets of the world. 
 
FIRST LECTURE 23 
 
 France or at least French capitalism was organizing gigantic ac- 
 cumulations of wealth for exploitation. In the sixties, Marx 
 sees how victorious capitalism invades Austria, Italy, yes even 
 Bohemia. He also is compelled to witness the liberation of the 
 serfs by Alexander II., and thus receives valid indications that 
 capitalism has also commenced to revolutionize the empire of the 
 "little father." He further observes how capitalist production 
 spreads across the ocean, and how the new world also succumbs 
 to the irresistible economic forces making for social progress. 
 Everywhere he sees the advancing forces, the dynamic powers of 
 capitalist production, undermining and destroying the old econo- 
 mic foundations, and setting in their place devices more com- 
 petent to carry on the process of production. And to be sure, 
 these economic revolutions were bound to be followed by corre- 
 sponding political upheavals whose aim and object it was to adapt 
 the political institutions to meet the requirements of the new and 
 changed economic conditions. The new capitalist society in the 
 making was no exception to the rule : the nineteenth century may 
 be correctly called a century of political revolutions. 
 
 In this manner, historical development presented to or spread 
 before the eyes of Marx incomparable economic and political 
 material : data as important to the searching eye of a student as 
 the compass is to the destination of a ship. This development 
 was internationally so plainly conceivable as the growth of 
 plants in a hot-house, and quite naturally attracted the attention 
 and animated the deeper searching intellects of the world to ex- 
 plain the underlying forces of this gigantic process. However, 
 that Marx was able to penetrate and master this large, manifold 
 and chaotic mass of material, that he was able to crystallize the 
 results of his investigation in a manner as clear as crystal, he 
 owes to the German classical philosophy. This philosophy gave 
 him the scientific equipment, the scientific training, without which 
 his achievements would have been impossible. 
 
 When the youthful Marx, imbued with an insatiable desire 
 
24 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 for truth, began to question the laws of social evolution, the sun 
 of classical philosophy and art was already setting in Germany. 
 Her splendour and warmth, however, still permeated the intel- 
 lectual atmosphere of this period. The' grand philosophy of 
 Hegel particularly continued to affect, influence and live on in 
 the progressive minds. This philosophy conceived everything 
 existing or in a state of creation, whether in nature or in society, 
 as the outcome of a harmonious, well regulated process of evo- 
 lution: an evolution which in its continuous flow destroys and 
 creates, and whose final cause can be conceived in the self-asser- 
 tion or movement of the absolute idea. According to this con- 
 ception,evolution is stimulated or whipped on through the struggle 
 of contradictions or antitheses : a struggle which usually or finally 
 is bound to end with the coming together or amalgamation of the 
 conflicting elements into a higher unit. Governed by the idea of 
 evolution, Hegel's philosophy did not approach the objects of its 
 investigation as completed and fixed creations, which are the same 
 in life as in death, but in their rich diversity of growth and de- 
 cline, i. e., in their various expressions or manifestations of life. 
 This system of research was known as the dialectic method. 
 Young Marx felt in Hegel a congenial intellect, whose teachings 
 attracted him with an irresistible power. These teachings have 
 been a determining factor in his development and work. Marx, 
 more so than any other man, accepted the legacy of Hegel: a 
 legacy which he found in the concept of evolution. However, as 
 Engels so pointedly remarks : he placed this conception, standing 
 on its head, upon the feet. He sought for the driving forces of 
 historic life not outside of nature or society, not in the mystical 
 absolute idea of Hegel, but as far as history is concerned, in 
 society itself : in the conditions of production and exchange. In 
 what manner, however, and with the aid of what forces these 
 conditions manifest themselves and compel recognition, i. e., by 
 what forces economic and social development is impelled, also the 
 laws underlying these movements, upon these questions Marx 
 threw light with the aid of the dialectic mode of investigation : a 
 
FIRST LECTURE 25 
 
 method which he had accepted from Hegel and applied with a 
 sovereign mastery. 
 
 III. 
 
 After yonng Marx had graduated with honors from the Trier 
 Gymnasium, he matriculated at the University of Bonn. It was 
 the fondest wish of his father, to see his son also a member o'f 
 the legal profession — a wish, however, which was not to be 
 realized. In Bonn he spent several terms without pursuing any 
 definite studies, and in 1836 we find Marx at the University of 
 Berlin. Here he was for the first time brought in contact with 
 Hegel's philosophy and some prominent Young-Hegelians like 
 Bruno Bauer, David Strauss, Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., who be- 
 friended him. As his interest in these problems and studies grew, 
 his nominal studies or ''Brotstudium," as the Germans call the 
 grind for an income, were sadly neglected and removed ever 
 farther from the centre of his work and future plans and aspira- 
 tions. However, as a dutiful son, he continued these studies, but 
 without any great enthusiasm or success, and for the sole reason 
 of avoiding a conflict with his father and to create a source of 
 income for the future. He was also a passionate lover and be- 
 throthed to Jenny von Westfalen, his slightly senior playmate and 
 the prettiest and most refined damsel in Trier. When we peruse 
 some of the youthful poems of Marx, we can about realize the 
 consuming love which he cherished for his beloved, and also how 
 anxiously he looked forward to their wedding day, and how 
 gladly he would have presented a safe and sunny future as a 
 wedding gift to his Jenny. 
 
 However, stronger than every other desire there burned in 
 Marx a yearning for knowledge — a desire to know. With an 
 insatiable thirst he entered upon the study of the various sciences, 
 however, specializing in philosophy and history. He consulted 
 scholarly treatises, contemporary life and closely dissected and 
 questioned scientific systems. Overstudy and also the gruelling 
 inner conflict between the feverish wish for clarity and the inex- 
 
26 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 orable duty endangered his health. The future was also beclouded 
 by a threatening conflict with his father. An early death of Hein- 
 rich Marx, however, saved Marx from these ungratifying scenes. 
 The youth remained steadfast in his determination. With tena- 
 cious perseverance, he devoted himself to his purposes and aims 
 in life; he battled bravely with the sciences; toiled endlessly and 
 unceasingly to achieve results; and he was rewarded for his 
 untiring efforts, not over night mind you, but after many years 
 of profound and conscientious research. Craving for knowledge 
 and desirous of doing things, Marx, as a disciple of Hegel, delved 
 through history, and particularly the history of his time, in 
 search for the absolute idea: the idea that governs and propels 
 everything in life. He desired to study the manifestations of this 
 force in the intellectual progress of the people, in the form and 
 institutions of social life; he desired to vision direction and aim 
 of its effect clearly, in order to be able to serve evolution con- 
 scientiously. However, this process of self-enlightenment netted 
 him at first, outside of a few fruitful doubts, only some starting 
 points to his later conception of history. Only after years he 
 found, instead of the absolute idea, the real driving power behind 
 social development ; he found the force that has shaped, determin- 
 ed and influenced ideas in history ever since the day society was 
 organized upon private-property, namely: the class-struggles, 
 which again are unchained and have their origin and aim in the 
 conditions of production and exchange prevailing in a community 
 at a certain historic period. 
 
 Before he was able to arrive at above conclusions, before he 
 could formulate his findings into a clear and scientific theory, 
 conditions compelled him to discontinue his studies, and with a 
 dissertation on the "Philosophy of Epicure" he graduated, al- 
 though not present, from the University of Jena in 1841, receiving 
 the degree of doctor of philosophy. He had hoped and harbored 
 the fond ambition to serve the cause of intellectual freedom, by 
 becoming a lecturer at one of the German universities, but the 
 
FIRST LECTURE 27 
 
 dismissal of his friend Bruno Bauer in Bonn showed this antici- 
 pation to he a dream : a f ata-morgana in a desert of bureaucratic 
 intolerance. And when we today compare these events with 
 conditions in our universities and other seats of learning, when 
 we take the disciplining and the spectacular and unwarranted 
 dismissal of Scott Nearing from the University of Pennsylvania 
 as an analogy, we will be compelled to conclude that these insti- 
 tutions are as of yore dominated by class interests of the bour- 
 geoisie and everything else but agencies of free thought and 
 investigation. Academic liberty always was and is a fetish upon 
 whose altar high-sounding phrases are sacrificed, but which like 
 so many of our "inalienable rights" is in reality but one of the 
 many conventional lies. In the face of these insurmountable 
 obstacles, Marx decided to become a writer. In 1842, still resid- 
 ing in Bonn, he started to contribute to the "Rheinische Zeitung," 
 published in Cologne, and whose editorship he shortly afterwards 
 assumed. This paper was founded by a circle of class-conscious 
 capitalists of the Rhineland ; it was intended to be the official 
 organ of the Rhenish bourgeoisie, and as such advocated in a 
 moderate form such constitutional changes and liberties, as con- 
 ceived by and were to the benefit of the capitalist class. It sulked 
 against the so-called god-ordained powers of monarchy, aristo- 
 cracy and bureaucracy; but as a whole the paper presented a 
 somewhat lame opposition — but it was at least an opposition to 
 the forces of reaction so dominant and provokingly brutal in 
 Prussia before the memorable March days of 1848. Under the 
 editorial guidance of Marx, this opposition gained in force and 
 sharpness. He stormed against the censorship and advocated its 
 abolition, voicing the demand for a free and unfettered press. 
 As a political writer, he severely criticized the proceedings of the 
 Rhenish Diet, and we also detect here the first manifestations of 
 an awakening interest in Marx in economic conditions. He 
 
 i 
 
 earnestly grapples with these problems to obtain a clear concep- 
 tion, but also feels here the insufficiency of Hegel's philosophy. 
 The problem of the lumber thefts and the poverty amongst the 
 
28 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 wine-growers on the Mosel furnished Marx with actual material 
 in this connection. These peasants had been alternately exploited 
 and oppressed by the officials of the god-ordained government 
 and unscrupulous usurers, and found in Marx a warm and fear- 
 less attorney. The struggle in behalf of these impoverished 
 peasants was a thorn in the sides of the government, and only 
 tended to swell the already lengthy list of treasonable offences 
 and undesirable acts committed by this now formidable opponent. 
 Shortly and upon explicit decree of Wilhelm IV. the suppression 
 of the "Rheinische Zeitung" was ordered. Marx was practically 
 now without any means of support and also, and that depressed 
 him still more, without a field of public activity, and without the 
 least possibility of creating such a field in Germany. In less 
 than two years, it had forcefully dawned upon Marx that any 
 work which aimed at the liberation of Germany from feudal 
 domination was nigh impossible on German soil. He, conse- 
 quently, decided to go to Paris — the center of political life and 
 libertarian aspirations. Before his departure, he was wedded to 
 Jenny von Westfalen after a courtship of seven years. 
 
 The material basis for the support of the family in Paris was 
 to be created by the Deutsch-Franzosischen Jahrbucher ("Ger- 
 man-French Annals"), which Marx contemplated publishing in 
 collaboration with Arnold Ruge. The "Deutsch-Franzosischen 
 Jahrbucher" were to be a forum for the free expression and cul- 
 tivation of radical thought; the periodical was to be a literary 
 gauntlet thrown down to the conservative and sterile elements in 
 Europe ; and finally aimed to become a factor in the marshalling, 
 organizing and intellectually clarifying the republican or demo- 
 cratic forces in Germany. As such, the annals were bound to 
 become a medium for the continuation, development and perfec- 
 tion of Marx's search and studies of the driving forces and laws 
 in social life. In this connection it may be of interest to cite the 
 following lines of a letter which Ruge addressed to Feuerbach on 
 this subject. Amongst others Ruge writes: "We intend to publish 
 the "German-French Annals" in a foreign country, and desire to 
 
FIRST LECTURE 29 
 
 'discard entirely the mediocre scholastic junk of the old almanachs 
 with the end in view of uniting ourselves with prominent French- 
 men like Leroux, Proudhon, Louis Blanc, may be Lamartine — 
 Lammendis and Cormenin are probably neither procurable or 
 usable — to such an extent, as to have them directly contribute to 
 the journal (French can be read by everybody) and also to function 
 on the editorial board. The title and prospect we will then issue 
 together, and thus suddenly set up the intellectual alliance of 
 these two nations." The first and last copy of the "German 
 French Annals" appeared in March, 1844, as a double number; 
 it consisted of 236 pages, and contained contributions from Marx. 
 Engels, Ruge, Heine, Bakunin, Herwegh, Feuerbach and several 
 others. A series of causes is responsible for the early failure of 
 this most creditable venture. First the financial resources of the 
 undertaking were insufficient and practically consumed in the 
 publication of the first issue. Secondly, the conditions in Ger- 
 many were not conducive to the life and development of the 
 periodical. In Germany its circulation was forbidden, and the 
 smuggling of the books over the border was attended with heavy 
 costs and ungratifying difficulties. Neither did the collaboration of 
 the French waiters, as anticipated and solicited, materialize. 
 Finally the break and everlasting disagreement of Marx with 
 Ruge was a tributary cause which aided in undermining the 
 young life of the periodical. Marx, who through his historic 
 philosophical conception was daily creating a wider gulf between 
 himself and his associates, was unable to accept or subscribe to 
 the views of Ruge on many important topics, until these differ- 
 ences culminated into an open quarrel that finally led to a sever- 
 ance of connections. These tempestuous days of strife and 
 uncertainty reached their climax, when in 1845 Marx was ex- 
 pelled from Paris by the liberal government of that fossilized 
 citizen-king, Louis Phillipe. Behind this act the untiring efforts 
 of the Prussian government were plainly visible: a government 
 which in this surreptitious manner sought to gratify its. base lust 
 for revenge on the hated and much feared revolutionist. 
 
30 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Poor in material possessions but rich in intellectual values, 
 Marx and his young wife were compelled to leave Paris in search 
 of a new exile. In Paris he definitely concluded his discourse 
 with Hegelianism, i. e., with the Hegelian conception that pro- 
 claimed the absolute idea as the driving force in historic evolu- 
 tion. The great French Revolution served him as a mine of 
 historic treasures from which he drew lesson after lesson of 
 social significance. And the profound study of this gigantic 
 epoch in the evolution of mankind, so ably laid down in "The 
 Holy Family ; or a Critical Critique against Bruno Bauer and his 
 Followers," finally ripened his materialist conception oif history. 
 In the manifestations of this period of colossal upheavals, he 
 found the real potential force that set the idea in motion, the force 
 behind all ideological activity, and the force which was the gen- 
 erator of this as well as all previous historical dramas, namely: 
 the struggle of clashes. And the formulation of this conception 
 also furnished him with an explanation of the passionate and tur- 
 bulent life in Paris — a life which was but the forerunner of the 
 February revolution. With the aid of the material gathered in 
 Paris, he was able to estimate the value which the elements of 
 production and exchange played in social evolution, and finally 
 concluded that these were the ultimately determining forces, the 
 so-called basic powers, in social development. In his book "The 
 Holy Family," addressing his erstwhile Hegelian comrades on 
 this subject, he scornfully hurls the following expressive ques- 
 tions at them : "Do these gentlemen think that they can under- 
 stand the first word of history so long as they exclude the rela- 
 tions of man to nature, natural science and industry? Do they 
 believe that they can actually comprehend any epoch without 
 grasping the industry of the period, the immediate method of 
 production in actual life?" 
 
 Equipped with this theoretical key, Marx was able to discern, 
 dissect and explain the complicated and confused political atmo- 
 sphere in France as well as in the other European countries. 
 Everywhere the powerful rays shed by the searchlight of Histor- 
 
FIRST LECTURE 31 
 
 ical Materialism penetrated the superficial but popular miscon- 
 ceptions of political issues ; everywhere they laid open the deeper, 
 underlying laws of social activity ; and everywhere they traced the 
 basic force, animating this activity and formulating these issues, 
 to the material conditions in society. And when Marx ascertained 
 the factors governing social activity and found them to rest in 
 the prevailing system of production of a given historic period, 
 then he had also found the answer to the question of the ultimate 
 outcome of the class war: an answer that contained the goal and 
 course for future working-class activity. 
 
 It is to Frederick Engels that Marx owes the fruitful sug- 
 gestions which led to this epoch-making and revolutionary dis- 
 covery. Engels, filled with libertarian aspirations and in his 
 "Sturm und Drang" phase of life, had come to Paris in 1844. He 
 became acquainted with Marx and quickly attached to him. This 
 acquaintance was to result into a lifelong friendship : a friend- 
 ship that was to be cemented by many years of literary collab- 
 oration and activity in the labor movement, and which furnishes 
 s:lent testimony to the beautiful devotion with which these 
 master-minds served the cause embodying their principles and 
 ideals — the cause of the disinherited and exploited workers. 
 Engels was also a graduate from the Hegelian school. It was, 
 however, not History which had sharpened and trained his 
 vision to perceive the laws of social development, but the indus- 
 trial conditions of highly developed capitalist England. Engels 
 was the son of a prominent manufacturer in Barmen, a highly 
 developed industrial city in the Rhenish Province, who enter- 
 tained quite some business relations with England and had a 
 branch office of his undertaking in Manchester. Actual business 
 practice had given him a thorough insight into the structure and 
 the various phases of capitalism, and upon this solid foundation 
 he based his final conceptions of the role played by the conditions 
 of production and exchange in historical evolution. In conjunc- 
 tion with these practical observations, the fearful effects of the 
 capitalist system in England flashed the importance of private 
 
32 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 ownership under capitalist production upon his mind, and ex- 
 posed to him the source of the innumerable contradictions so 
 peculiar to capitalist society. Following these thoughts to their 
 logical conclusion, it was but natural, and also only the conse- 
 quence of a firmly established historical conception, to conceive of 
 the economic necessity of converting the private ownership in 
 the means of production into communistic property. And in the 
 above rough, imperfect and still vague conclusions and apprecia- 
 tions, we can see the raw material out of which the Materialist 
 Conception of History was constructed, and which together with 
 this theory furnished the basic elements necessary for the estab- 
 lishment of scientific Socialism. It was up to Marx and Engels 
 to clarify, amplify and develop these elementary truths, and this 
 they have masterfully accomplished in the many years of joint 
 efforts. Today the fruit of these efforts can be seen in the clas- 
 sical Socialist philosophy: a philosophy which has withstood the 
 onslaughts of the master-minds of bourgeois intelligence ; a philo- 
 sophy, which furnishes scientific and incontrovertible knowledge 
 appertaining to the cause, goal, driving forces and course of 
 historic life; and a philosophy which is truly the beaconlight of 
 the proletariat in its struggle for emancipation. 
 
 The intellectual struggle of these two men for clarity, this 
 slow process full of doubt, speculation and relentless self-criti- 
 cism, has been productive of brilliant documents. In these days 
 Marx wrote "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie" (a 
 criticism of Hegel's Philosophy of Law), "Zur Judenfrage" 
 ("The Jewish Question"), being a reply to Bruno Bauer's meta- 
 physical treatment of the subject as visioned by a historical ma- 
 terialist, and "Die Heilige Familie" ("The Lloly Family") to 
 which I have already referred in the preceding paragraph, and to 
 which also Engels contributed. From Engels we find "Umrisse 
 zu, einer Kritik der Nationalokonomie" ("An Outline to a Cri- 
 tique of Political Economy"), "Die Lage Englands" ("England's 
 Situation"), and later that masterly sociological study "Die Lage 
 
FIRST LECTURE 33 
 
 der Arbeitenden Klasse in England" ("The Condition of the 
 Working Class in England in 1844"). 
 
 During his short stay in Paris, Marx also familiarized him- 
 self with the various systems and sects of the French Socialists. 
 Particularly in these years of revolutionary unrest, their teachings 
 enjoyed quite some popularity in Paris, especially amongst the 
 workers and the small bourgeois. To Marx, as a student of all 
 social manifestations, these Socialist tendencies were intensely 
 interesting. He had received but meagre and incomplete news of 
 these activities in Germany, and as a conscientious investigator 
 and student, he was averse to forming' an opinion or reaching a 
 conclusion until the actual facts were at his disposal and had been 
 examined. His stay in Paris enabled him to receive first hand 
 information, and to study the theoretical and practical aspects of 
 these movements at their original sources. The first product of 
 this diligent work was his sharp criticism of Proudhon's book 
 "La Philosophic de la Misere" ("The Philosophy of Poverty"), 
 published in 1846. This critical work appeared in Brussels in 
 1847, under the significant title "La Misere de la Philosophic" 
 ("The Poverty of Philosophy"). Aside from the important fact, 
 that this book completely shattered an obsession with which even 
 up to this late day some Socialists and particularly Anarchists 
 are still taken up, namely that abject poverty is the generator of 
 and a prerequisite to revolutionary vitality, it also contained the 
 first comprehensive exposition of Historical Materialism. Here 
 in his quest for knowledge, Marx for the first time came in close 
 contact with Socialist and revolutionary workingmen — an inter- 
 course which was to be of far-reaching importance to his future 
 work. 
 
 Driven out of Paris in 1845, Marx turns his steps towards 
 Brussels. Completely disregarding his really precarious material 
 conditions, and in the face of dire poverty, harassed by the police, 
 Marx continues his activities as a serious student and indefatig- 
 able fighter. With an enthusiasm that recognized no bounds, he 
 
34 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 worked amongst the progressive elements in the labor movement 
 of this city, and to the critical analysis of Proudhon's middle-class 
 Utopianism, he adds a scathing refutation of the confused, hazy 
 sentimental German Communism of the Weitling school. His 
 lectures on "Wage-Labor and Capital," held before a Democratic 
 Workingmen's Club, and the speech on "Free Trade"; also the 
 treatise on "Free Trade or Protective Tariff," published in the 
 "Deutschen Briisseler Zeitung," show the marked and growing 
 interest which Marx begins to manifest for economic problems. 
 We note here the penetrating thoroughness with which he 
 visualizes and dissects capitalist production, in order to intelli- 
 gently appreciate its historic character, and in order to be able to 
 define and deduce therefrom the position of the proletariat to the 
 miscellaneous questions of the day. Through their untiring ac- 
 tivity and distinguished faculties, Marx and Engels quickly be- 
 came the centre of a brilliant circle of intellectuals in Brussels. 
 This circle was made up of heterogeneous elements, including 
 impatient Democrats and Socialists from the various parts of 
 Germany, amongst them Wilhelm Wolf, to whom Marx later 
 dedicated his masterpiece "Capital," Moses Hess, Robert Weit- 
 ling, Ferdinand Freiligrath and others. And through his per- 
 sonal agitation and influence, even more so than through his con- 
 tributions to the "Deutsche Briisseler Zeitung," Marx shaped 
 and molded the intellectual development of these German, Rus- 
 sian and French exiles and revolutionists, and thus actually pre- 
 pared and assisted in whipping on the evolution of things in these 
 countries. In the Rhineland, Westphalia, Silesia and other parts 
 of Germany his friends and disciples were openly or secretly 
 carrying on the propaganda, always in the thickest of the fray, 
 and thus their call and agitation very ominously announces the 
 approach of the revolutionary year. 
 
 The first victory for Marxist principles — a victory of inter- 
 national magnitude — was scored, when Marx and Engels received 
 an encouraging invitation from England. London had been for 
 years the seat of a society calling itself the League of the Just. 
 
FIRST LECTURE 35 
 
 This organization was composed of revolutionary elements of 
 various shades, and had been originally a conspiratory society 
 devoted to the Young German idea, an offshoot of Mazzini's 
 Young Europe agitation. In 1847, when Marx and Engels were 
 invited to join the league, this organization represented the only 
 internationally organized expression of the European proletariat. 
 Its principles were a mixture of French-English Communism 
 evolved and born with the aid of German philosophy : They were 
 teachings as mysterious and hazy as the mystery with which their 
 propagators surrounded themselves. After a thorough discussion 
 with Joseph Moll, a representative of the League, Marx and 
 Engels decided to join the organization, and reorganize the move- 
 ment along lines fully in accord with their principles : the prin- 
 ciples of scientific Socialism in the making. These principles of 
 Marx in 1847, as today, strove and aimed primarily at the polit- 
 ical unification of the laboring classes into a compact proletarian 
 political party, pursuing ■ a definite revolutionary aim, flowing 
 from a clear and scientific conception of the workers' position in 
 society. As we have seen, these principles were not the result of 
 abstract Utopian speculations, evolved as a protest against the 
 barbaric injustice and inhumanity of bourgeois society, and pro- 
 claiming to be the only true offspring of pure reason, divine 
 justice and true humanity, but were rather the product of a 
 thorough analysis of the capitalist mode of production : an 
 analysis which exposed the origin of profit or surplus value, and 
 thereby projected the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Of course, 
 such principles based upon the bedrock of sound economics were 
 bound to collide with the Utopianism on the one hand and the 
 Nihilism on the other of the various intellectuals in the League 
 of the Just. Marx anticipated this conflict, but was also con- 
 vinced that the abstract speculative idiosyncracies of a Cabet or 
 Weitling were no match for the coherent and irrefutable argu- 
 ments and recommendations contained in the "Communist Mani- 
 festo. " In November and December Marx and Engels attended 
 a Congress of the League in London, and the message of Marx, 
 
36 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 which he recommended as the theoretical basis and working pro- 
 gramme of the organization and which was practically a rough 
 draft of the famous Manifesto, was received with great enthu- 
 siasm. The secret organization of the League of the Just was 
 reorganized into a propaganda society calling itself the Commu- 
 nist League. Marx and Engels were authorized to draw up a 
 document setting forth the fundamental principles of the League ; 
 and at the beginning of that stormy, revolutionary year of 1848 
 the most remarkable and epoch-making document in the annals 
 of history appeared, a document in which the working-class for 
 the first time since the inception of modern capitalism proclaimed 
 itself the deadly enemy of bourgeois society: The Communist 
 Manifesto. 
 
 In the "Communist Manifesto" we view the concerted efforts 
 of Marx and Engels to present to the world a concise and scien- 
 tific summary of their ideas. This document can without any 
 undue exaggeration be called the birth certificate of scientific So- 
 cialism, and was destined to become the declaration of industrial 
 emancipation for the world's workers. In the "Communist Ma- 
 nifesto" for the first time scientific Socialism speaks to the world, 
 and proudly it proclaims its distinctive difference when compared 
 with the childish antics of Utopian Socialism or Democratic Re- 
 formism. In a masterly manner and on a grand scale historical 
 development is here analyzed, and the causes and forces actuating 
 this process are exposed to the reader. This also leads to a dis- 
 section and scathing criticism of the capitalist order, winding up 
 with the convincing demonstration that capitalist society bears 
 within its womb the material germs of Communism; also that 
 this society at the same time rears in the working-class the might 
 necessary to execute the inexorable dictate of historical evolu- 
 tion. And in order to make the workers conscious of their his- 
 toric mission, this masterpiece of keen scientific analysis, concise- 
 ness and literary beauty concludes with that world-renowned 
 battle-cry : "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" 
 
FIRST LECTURE 37 
 
 To quote the words of Klara Zetkin, a celebrated German 
 Marxist : "The Communist Manifesto, aside from its historic and 
 political significance, will remain a conspicuous monument in the 
 literature of the world; as long as thoughts possess a sense and 
 words have a sound." 
 
 
SECOND LECTURE 
 
SECOND LECTURE 41 
 
 I. 
 
 Workingmen and Workingwomen : 
 
 THE "Communist Manifesto" was now to be considered the 
 theoretical basis upon which all future activity of the 
 League's members had to rest: all subsequent propaganda, acts 
 and the tactics flowing therefrom were to be evolved in accord or 
 along the lines with the axiomatic principles and aims promulgated 
 in this historic document. However, historic conditions soon 
 compelled the various national groups and members to somewhat 
 loosen their connections with the League, which gave rise to a 
 condition of affairs that bordered upon dissolution of the young 
 organization. Through the compelling force of social events, 
 events which finally culminated into the various revolutionary 
 uprisings of 1848, the workers were forced to unite with 
 the bourgeoisie in their respective countries, and battle 
 unitedly for constitutional government and civil liberties. This 
 struggle of the proletariat and capitalist class against feudal pre- 
 rogatives gave Marx and his followers the opportunity to propa- 
 gate their principles in the open : to present for the first time in 
 history the workers' position in this revolutionary drama before 
 the public. 
 
 The February revolution in Paris, a revolution that deposed 
 Louis Phillipe, the citizen-king, was the signal for a general up- 
 rising against despotism in Europe. This insurrection of the 
 industrial capitalists of Paris against the government of the large 
 agrarian interests (bourgeois as well as feudal) was the summons 
 of social evolution to adapt the obsolete political organs in capi- 
 talist society to the changed economic conditions : conditions which 
 were retarded in their growth and development by the anti- 
 quated, reactionary and abnormal character of the existing politi- 
 cal institutions. In Germany, Austria, Hungary and Italy the 
 
42 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 smoldering fires of revolt also burst into bright flames, eating 
 and devouring the worm-eaten and brittle social and political 
 remnants of past ages. Everywhere the representatives of mod- 
 ern society vigorously fought for political recognition and rights, 
 and everywhere, even in arch-reactionary Prussia, the so-called 
 god-ordained ruling powers were compelled to capitulate before 
 the united onslaughts of the workers and the bourgeoisie. 
 
 The powers in Belgium, which had not been affected by the 
 revolutionary wave, sought to insure their tranquillity by in- 
 augurating a most brutal and unwarranted persecution against 
 Marx and his followers. Under the charge of being alien agita- 
 tors and inflamers to riot, they were subjected to the most infam- 
 ous indignities by the governmental officials and finally expelled. 
 Marx and comrades were virtually hounded over the boundary 
 line; the former, in the haste of the moment, being compelled to 
 leave his young wife behind, at the tender mercies of the uphold- 
 ers of law and order. These chivalrous authorities, delighted with 
 the opportunity, gratified their lust for "revenge" by craftily and 
 brutally torturing helpless and penniless Jenny Marx. 
 
 Marx retraced his steps to Paris, having been honored by the 
 victorious revolutionary government there with an invitation to 
 return to do practical work. After the outbreak of the revolu- 
 tion, the central committee or executive offices of the Communist 
 League had been transferred from London to Brussels. How- 
 ever, through the autocratic expulsion by the police, these con- 
 nections were broken up and Marx was momentarily entrusted 
 with the management of the League's affairs, being also charged 
 with the authority to organize a new executive body in Paris. 
 However, Marx's stay in Paris was not to be of a long duration. 
 
 As stated before, in Prussia the revolutionary wave had 
 swept away the god-ordained, feudal despotism of the Hohen- 
 zollerns. Humiliated and trembling, the king of Prussia ac- 
 cepted the generous but foolish gift of his crown out of the 
 blood-stained hands of the barricade-fighters, thereby accepting 
 
SECOND LECTURE 43 
 
 a crown which made him king not by the grace of god, as he had 
 so haughtily contended before the revolution, but by the grace of 
 the people — a crown that was restored to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. 
 in return for certain constitutional guarantees, guarantees which 
 he subsequently as readily annulled as he had conceded them. 
 
 Under such turbulent conditions, it was impossible for Marx 
 to stay in Paris. He, who had been so often accused of treason- 
 able motives and proclaimed as a man without a country, he, the 
 outcast, was drawn by an irresistible passion, a feverish longing, 
 to the fatherland. Taking the given historic conditions as a 
 criterion, he felt and knew that at home was the field upon which 
 he could and would fight with the greatest and most telling force 
 for the revolution in Europe. The ship of the German bourgeois 
 revolution had followed in the wake of the Parisian uprising, and 
 in this revolution the proletariat for the first time had affirmed 
 its interests as a class, unfolding the banner of the Industrial Re- 
 public. And in Germany the bourgeoisie had only shattered the 
 absolute monarchy with the massive fists of the proletariat. It 
 was, therefore, easily conceivable, why in the beginning the bour- 
 geoisie watched the rapid progress of the revolution with anxiety, 
 and saw in this progress more an element of danger than victory. 
 This growing class-consciousness of the working-class had sent 
 a cold chill down the spine of the capitalists, and had greatly 
 dampened the spirit of elation over the immediate victory. How- 
 ever, one thing was certain: If the revolution were to run its full 
 course in Germany, i. e., if the revolution were to develop into a 
 full-fledged bourgeois revolution, a revolution that would sweep 
 away the last vestige of feudal prerogatives, then all the forces 
 of the bourgeoisie would have to be enlisted in its cause and 
 zvhipped on to a determined struggle. It was clear to 
 Marx that this revolution could only be victorious, if it 
 downed, together with the brutal forces of reaction, also 
 the secret fears of the bourgeoisie for the proletariat. 
 And in this peculiar creation of history, Marx saw the 
 
44 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 duty which for the time being would tax the utmost revo- 
 lutionary energies of the Communists. And that Germany 
 was destined to be the next field of battle of the Communists, was 
 to be found in another deduction made from a peculiar combi- 
 nation of historic facts. It was Marx's contention that if the 
 achievements of the revolution were not to be eradicated by a 
 counter- force, if the waves of the revolution were not to break on 
 the shores of Russian despotism, then, he maintained, it would 
 be absolutely imperative to concentrate all the revolutionary forces 
 on the constitutional or republican development of Germany. A 
 revolutionized Germany — revolutionized in the fullest demo- 
 cratic conception — he deduced, was bound to be the most massive 
 bulwark of Democracy in Europe. And this deduction was strik- 
 ingly verified by subsequent events. Not only did Russian despot- 
 ism subsequently throw down and drown in seas of blood the 
 heroic struggle of the Hungarians for independence ; not only did 
 300,000 troops of the Russian despot shatter the revolution in 
 Austria and save the Hapsburg dynasty; but the failure. of the 
 revolution in Germany — the failure to create that bulwark of 
 Democracy — was bound to very materially affect the Russian 
 people's struggle for liberty at a later date. During the Russian 
 Revolution and after, particularly in the stormy years of 1905 to 
 1906, the German government viewed with open fear this gallant 
 i-t niggle of a people for constitutionalism, apprehending with 
 anxiety the effect which a successful conclusion of this uprising 
 would have upon the German people. It, therefore, sought to aid 
 Russian despotism in every possible way to crush the revolt. In 
 the capacity of henchman of the Czar this government, to the 
 eternal shame of the German people, arrested thousands upon 
 thousands of the flower of Russian Democracy in Germany; 
 hounded thousands upon thousands of Russian students from the 
 high-schools and universities; and, in true Russian fashion, 
 searched houses and intimidated the people against the much- 
 hated "reds." And for what purpose? Did the German govern- 
 
SECOND LECTURE 45 
 
 ment expel or try these undesirable residents for a breach of the 
 law or some other valid reason? No, the imperial government 
 was paying its debt of 1849 to the "little father"; the imperial 
 government saw in Russian autocracy a citadel of absolutism 
 and a bulwark, not only against political Democracy, but also 
 against the rising tide of Socialism — the spectre of which was 
 truly haunting Europe and particularly Germany. With fiendish 
 glee Junkerdom and its awe-stricken capitalist lackeys surren- 
 dered thousands of Russian fugitives, who had deemed them- 
 selves safely out of the reach of the bloody monster, to- the 
 executioners of the Czar. And this identical government has to- 
 day the brazen audacity to bewail and indict erstwhile Russian 
 barbarism, calling itself a pillar of culture. 
 
 In Paris, Marx and Engels organized a communist club of 
 German workingmen. Herwegh, the genial poet, was at that 
 time attempting to form a battallion of German republicans for 
 the purpose of invading Germany. Marx very emphatically dis- 
 couraged this adventurous and highly spectacular and purely 
 sentimental movement, and advised the workers to return to Ger- 
 many individually and unobserved, and to there begin a revo- 
 lutionary agitation amongst their fellow-workers. 
 
 In April we find Marx in Cologne, one of the most important 
 centers of events and the heart of the highly developed and indus- 
 trialized Rhine district. He had preferred Cologne to Berlin, 
 because the Code Napoleon, a legacy of the Napoleonic era and 
 the French Revolution, insured to him a greater field of activity 
 and more unmolested movement. At least here political trials 
 were not brought before professional judges of the feudal- 
 bureaucratic state, but tried by a jury. As stated before, in the 
 Rhineland the capitalist mode of production had revolutionized 
 conditions more thoroughly than either in the East of Prussia or 
 the southern part of Germany, consequently, the capitalist class 
 was here more progressive and democratic, and more inclined to 
 a vigorous struggle for a constitutional government. The prole- 
 
46 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 tariat, reared by such conditions, was, therefore, comparatively 
 large and intensely revolutionary. 
 
 Marx was here confronted with the task to put the theories 
 laid down in the "Communist Manifesto" into practice, i. e., to 
 apply the principles of scientific Socialism to concrete historical 
 conditions. And how splendidly he fulfilled this difficult duty 
 of making the workers conscious of their role and duties in this 
 great struggle of the awakening bourgeoisie against Feudalism; 
 how clearly he emphasized the historical necessity of constitu- 
 tional government to the development of capitalism — a develop- 
 ment which was inseparably interwoven with the growth of an 
 independent working-class movement — can be best appreciated 
 through a perusal of his writings of and on this period. In all 
 the leading cities, friends and disciples of Marx and members of 
 the Communist League agitated and worked along the lines dic- 
 tated by the "Communist Manifesto." The turbulent times with 
 their various political issues, wage struggles and strikes were 
 thus skilfully exploited and utilized to bring home the message 
 of Socialism and independent class action to the workers. Every- 
 where clubs and organizations of workingmen sprang up. After 
 the memorable March days, a Central Committee of Workingmen 
 with the Communist Born at the head was organized in Berlin. 
 Through the untiring efforts of this committee, the Brotherhood 
 of Workingmen, an organization that was to embrace and unite 
 all the workers in Germany, was organized in August. Every- 
 where the workers were seen fighting in the front ranks against 
 the powers of absolutism; everywhere they solidly stood their 
 ground, bravely repulsing the onslaughts of reaction; and wher- 
 ever they battled most courageously and were nigh unconquer- 
 able the communist influence was most markedly recognizable. 
 
 This epoch-making phase in the development of Germany is 
 pre-eminently the work of Marx : it is an achievement that was 
 made possible through the intelligence shed by the rays of His- 
 torical Materialism — a philosophy which for the first time in 
 
SECOND LECTURE 47 
 
 history explained to the disinherited class its place and function 
 in particularly the bourgeois revolution and society in general. 
 In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" ("New Rhenish Gazette"), a 
 daily newspaper, Marx sought to erect a beaconlight of the ex- 
 treme democratic and communist wing of the revolution. The 
 first number of this paper was published on June 1st, 1848, and 
 the last issue appeared on May 19th, 1849. The short but stormy 
 life of the paper, therefore, begins and ends with the fortune and 
 misfortune of the revolution respectively. The paper was founded 
 as an "Organ of Democracy" ; however, under the editorship of 
 Marx, it soon became an undaunted and fearless advocate of 
 communist theories, viewing and criticising current events from 
 the basic premises as formulated in the "Communist Manifesto" 
 and conceived with the aid of Historical Materialism. Here the 
 Materialist Conception of History was submitted to the acid test 
 and, needless to state, the theory's application to current occur- 
 rences and the results obtained thereby furnished convincing evi- 
 dence of its soundness. By the light of Historical Materialism, 
 Marx explained the revolution as a normal and legitimate histori- 
 cal process, a process which was but the political reflex of an 
 economic revolution that had but shortly preceded it. Marx, 
 again with the aid of the Materialist Conception of History, was 
 able to combine his passionate revolutionary temperament with 
 a cool and well-balanced historical intellect : he appreciated and 
 judged the present by the past, and was thus able to intelligently 
 vision the future. 
 
 Marx was a journalist and editor in the broader conception of 
 the term, and in this connection he was ably assisted by Frederick 
 Engels, the two Wolffs, Ferdinand Freiligrath, the genial poet, 
 and others. Equipped with a clear insight and creative revolu- 
 tionary vitality, the ''Neue Rheinische Zeitung" was able to show 
 the way to the democratic and Socialist forces. And the "Neue 
 Rheinische Zeitung" was a fighting organ, that engaged and 
 grappled actively with the problems of the day. As emphasized 
 
48 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 before, these problems, and the historical conditions of which 
 they were born, compelled the Socialists and workers to fight 
 as the extreme radical wing in the army of Democracy. The 
 prize of victory and object of the struggle were to save the revolu- 
 tion, and thereby to insure the political rights and liberties 
 necessary to the proletariat for the preparation of its own revo- 
 lution — a revolution which Marx perceived germinating in the 
 womb of the same society that he and his class were assisting 
 in its struggle to emancipate itself completely from the yoke of 
 Feudalism. For these reasons the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" was 
 compelled to engage in democratic politics; it was compelled to 
 fight with and for the bourgeoisie, but it discharged itself of this 
 duty creditably, by steadily keeping the ultimate goal and things 
 of permanent interest to the proletariat in view. In other words, 
 the bourgeois revolution was but a means to the end, a stepping 
 stone, to Marx and his followers ; the end, the aim to be kept in 
 mind, was — the proletarian revolution. In consequence, the 
 "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" did not seek to enlist the support of 
 the luke-warm democrats with the aid of compromise and flat- 
 tery, but attempted to whip them on and wrest them out of their 
 lethargy, through a biting and unmerciful criticism. To this 
 organ, as stated before, the revolution was an imperious com- 
 mand of the hour; a command which the bourgeoisie could not 
 ignore but had to follow : a command clearly formulated by the 
 force of material conditions and the scientific knowledge of social 
 development flowing therefrom. 
 
 The immediate demands of the Communist Party in Ger- 
 many were, due to the above-mentioned causes, therefore, far 
 more moderate than the so-called minimum demands formulated 
 in the "Communist Manifesto" for the rising revolution. They 
 were demands chiefly created by the backward conditions of the 
 economic life in that country, and were intended to improve the 
 social conditions of the small farmer, artisan and laborer in gen- 
 eral. The cardinal political demands were the undivided republic 
 
SECOND LECTURE 49 
 
 and the creation of a citizen's army. As pointed out, to Marx the 
 lepublic in her most developed form was the logical battleground 
 for the settling of the differences between the capitalist class and 
 the proletariat. He further conceived, that the struggle of the 
 Socialists and workers would only begin in earnest, when the 
 struggle for political enfranchisement or Democracy had ended. 
 In the arming of the people, the citizen's army, Marx saw the 
 victory of the revolution. To him constitutional questions were 
 not primarily questions of right but questions of might. And time 
 and time again the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" underscored that 
 the best constitution was only a scrap of paper, if not supported 
 or backed up by the armed might of the people. And the paper 
 emphasized that all the nicely worded paragraphs and promising 
 clauses in the constitution would not prevent the assassination 
 of the people's rights, as long as the feudalic governments were 
 able to "train their cannons on the untrained people." With 
 bitter sarcasm the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," therefore, crit- 
 icised and chastised the garrulous politicians in the National 
 Assembly at Frankfort, who were celebrating rhetorical orgies 
 and entirely neglected to provide the might with which to enforce 
 their legislative decisions. While these political clowns were 
 philosophizing and taxing the people's patience to the utmost, 
 the governments in Berlin and Vienna were in the meantime pre- 
 paring to mow down the imperial constitution, the freedom of the 
 press and assembly, universal suffrage, and all the gains and 
 achievements of the revolutionary March days, together with its 
 most energetic defenders, with volleys of grape-shot. The crit- 
 icisms of the German and Prussian parliaments in Frankfort and 
 Berlin respectively belong to the most brilliant publications of the 
 "Neue Rheinische Zeitung." Here we recognize the superior 
 creative power of Historical Materialism asserting itself on the 
 field of politics; and to those narrow-minded dullards, who still 
 think that history is made in parliaments, these angry and pas- 
 sionate, but nevertheless profound critical essays are even at this 
 
50 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 late date of inestimable value. This critical work of the paper is 
 an important part of a thorough discussion having for its basic 
 theme the principles and programs of the liberals and democrats, 
 and here Marx once and for all and unrelentlessly settles his 
 account with the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie acknowledged 
 receipt of this thorough spanking in its own peculiar way: the 
 "liberty loving" democratic stockholders in the paper withdrawing 
 their support from the enterprise. Thereby, however, the paper 
 gained a firmer foothold amongst the workers. 
 
 As previously emphasized, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" 
 as a beaconlight of Democracy was naturally a most con- 
 sequent opponent of Feudalism. In no paper was Feudalism or 
 feudal prerogatives fought with more vigor and intelligence than 
 in Marx's paper. Knowing and fully appreciating the importance 
 of the bourgeois revolution, through a thorough conception of 
 Feudalism, Marx and his followers saw in the complete van- 
 quishment of Feudalism a quicker and more favorable develop- 
 ment of Capitalism, which in turn implied a quicker and more 
 favorable development of a class-conscious Socialist movement. 
 Therefore, Feudalism and absolutism did not have a more 
 bitter enemy than the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung." And 
 when the counter-revolution, the reaction, swept over Ger- 
 many; when the treasonable and cowardly action of the 
 terror-stricken bourgeoisie was everywhere perceivable; when 
 Vienna had fallen and the troops of the king were 
 butchering citizens in the streets of Berlin, even then Marx 
 defied the victorious forces of reaction in his paper. And 
 only after the insurrections had been put down in Elberfeld and 
 Dresden, and the Rhineland had been practically turned into a 
 veritable garrison, did the government undertake to suppress the 
 "Xeue Rheinische Zeitung." On May 18th, 1849, Marx received 
 his order of expulsion from Germany. Certain editors of the 
 paper were already being persecuted by the courts, and still others 
 were, as undesirable ''foreigners," sure to share Marx's fate. 
 
SECOND LECTURE 51 
 
 Therefore, the expulsion of Marx was practically the death sen- 
 tence of the paper. On May 19th the last number appeared with 
 Freiligrath's defiant poem as a leader : 
 
 Farewell of the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" 
 
 May 19th, 1849. 
 
 No open blow in an open fight, 
 
 But with quips and with quirks they arraign me, 
 
 By creeping treachery's secret blight 
 
 The Western Calmucks have slain me. 
 
 The fatal shaft in the dark did fly; 
 
 I was struck by an ambushed knave; 
 
 And here in the pride of my strength I lie, 
 
 Like a corpse of a rebel brave! 
 
 With a deathless scorn in my dying breath, 
 In my hand the sword still cherished; 
 ''Rebellion" still for my shout of death, 
 In my manhood untainted, I perished. 
 Oh ! gladly, full gladly, the Pruss and the Czar 
 The grass from my grave would clear; 
 But Germany sends me, with Hungary far, 
 Three salvoes to honor my bier. 
 
 And the tattered poor man takes his stand, 
 
 On my head the cold sods heaving; 
 
 He casts them down with a diligent hand, 
 
 Where the glory of toil is cleaving. 
 
 And a garland of flowers and May he brought 
 
 On my burning wounds to cast; 
 
 His wife and his daughters the wreath had wrought 
 
 When the work of the day was past. 
 
52 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Farewell! farewell! thou turbulent life! 
 Farewell to ye! armies engaging! 
 Farewell! cloud canopied fields of strife, 
 Where the greatness of war is raging! 
 Farewell ! but not forever farewell ! 
 They can not kill the spirit, my brother! 
 In thunder I'll rise on the field where I fell, 
 More boldly to fight out another. 
 
 When the last of crowns like glass shall break, 
 
 On the scene our sorrows have haunted, 
 
 And the People the last dread "guilty" shall speak, 
 
 On your side ye shall find me undaunted. 
 
 On Rhine, or on Danube, in word and deed, 
 
 Ye shall witness, true to his vow, 
 
 On the wrecks of thrones, in the midst of the freed, 
 
 The rebel who greets you now ! 
 
 II. 
 
 The "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" had been a piece of political 
 revolutionary practice. The "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," how- 
 ever, was Karl Marx. To speak somewhat with Engels : the edi- 
 torial policy or course of the paper was "the dictatorship of 
 Marx." 
 
 Marx's revolutionary activity in this tumultuous period, how- 
 ever, did not confine itself solely to literary or editorial work. He 
 was also chairman of one of the three large democratic organ- 
 izations in Cologne. And when we compare the courageous and 
 unified stand of the Rhenish Democracy against the threatening 
 onslaughts of reaction with the irresolute and in many cases 
 cowardly manifestations of the bourgeoisie in other localities, 
 then we begin to perceive not only the effects of a higher indus- 
 trial and social development, but also the effects of the propa- 
 
SECOND LECTURE 53 
 
 ganda resulting therefrom — Marx's propaganda. To illustrate: 
 In Cologne a gigantic mass meeting declared itself for the So- 
 cialist Republic, and when a false report was received that the 
 military forces of the reactionary government were advancing 
 to take possession of the city, barricades seemed to shoot like 
 mushrooms out of the earth. In contradistinction to the loud- 
 mouthed but cowardly bourgeoisie of Berlin, the Rhenish and 
 Westphalian Democracy in the eventful November days was 
 willing to support any opposition of the Prussian National 
 Assembly with the utmost development of strength. And when 
 this parliament called upon the people to answer the infamous 
 usurpations of the so-called "god-ordained" autocracy with the 
 refusal to pay taxes, i. e., with an economic strike of the bourgeoi- 
 sie against the feudal polity, the provincial committee in Cologne, 
 constituted out of Marx, Schapper and Becker, issued an order 
 requesting all democratic unions to adhere to the decision of par- 
 liament. The committee, furthermore, instructed the citizens to 
 resist the forceful collection of taxes with all means of opposi- 
 tion at their disposal ; to organize the citizen's army everywhere ; 
 to supply those without means with arms and ammunition out 
 of the communal funds or with the aid of voluntary contribu- 
 tions; to, if necessary, appoint committees of safety, in order to 
 be effectively prepared to meet force with force. The subsequent 
 despicable and cowardly conduct of the Prussian National As- 
 sembly broke this magnificent revolutionary spirit in the bud. 
 However, Marx, Schapper and Becker were indicted before the 
 grand- jury in Cologne on the charge of having incited the citizens 
 to armed resistance against the civil officials and the army. Of 
 greater importance than their acquittal was Marx's masterful 
 speech of defense. 
 
 After a year of unceasing struggle, Marx was finally con- 
 vinced by the inexorable facts of history that the revolution was 
 for the time being at an end ; that the bourgeoisie had obtained 
 in the form of social and political reforms all it desired and was 
 
54 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 able to obtain with its limited vitality ; and that the bourgeoisie — 
 the same bourgeoisie which had been until a few days ago fight- 
 ing shoulder to shoulder with the workers against the junkers 
 and their lackeys — would seek henceforth to ally itself with the 
 remnants of feudality against the workers. The bourgeois class- 
 interests dictated such an alliance with the limited feudal gov- 
 ernment, an alliance which was bound to end with the peaceful 
 conquest of the government by the bourgeoisie and the permea- 
 tion of the remaining remnants of feudalism with the principles 
 and ideas of capitalist production. As an eye-opener, pathfinder 
 and pioneer, the revolution had brought to the capitalists all they 
 were able to demand under the existing conditions, always taking 
 the fear-inspiring Communist workingmen as an ominous sign- 
 post into consideration. What the force of arms was unable to 
 accomplish in the stormy year of 1848-49, without also endanger- 
 ing the existence of capitalist society, economic evolution and its 
 social and political creatures were bound to realize slowly step by 
 step. Marx clearly foresaw these logical effects of an abortive 
 revolution, and also saw therein a dictate to revise the tactics 
 of the Communists. He fully appreciated that henceforth the 
 workers would have to organize as a class; that the capitalist 
 class would, as indicated before, quickly overshadow and absorb 
 all other minor ruling classes in Germany, including the junkers; 
 and that, therefore, in the future no pact or compromise with the 
 "democratically inclined" bourgeois elements would be advisable. 
 In the middle of April, 1849, Marx and his Communist friends 
 laid down their offices in the provincial committee. The Work- 
 ingmen's Club of Cologne severed its connection with the Demo- 
 cratic Union of the Rhineland, and advocated participation of all 
 radical organizations in a general congress of workingmen which 
 the Brotherhood of Workers, organized by the Communist Born 
 in Berlin, was organizing. 
 
 With the publication of Marx's "Wage-Labor and Capital," 
 the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" gave expression to these new 
 
SECOND LECTURE 55 
 
 tactics. In this keen analysis of capitalist production, the class 
 distinctions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were 
 heavily underscored, and thereby removed out of the shadow into 
 which the great historical epoch, the revolution, had for the 
 moment placed them. 
 
 Exiled from his fatherland, Marx returned to Paris, where 
 turbulent events seemed to be in the making. Here the capitalist 
 class, living in constant fear of the proletariat, was preparing its 
 coup d'etat. Of course, to the intriguing and conspiring govern- 
 ment of Louis Napoleon this clear-headed, discerning and uncom- 
 promising revolutionist was a most unwelcome visitor. There- 
 fore, as early as July, Marx was exiled, this time by a bourgeois 
 republic, to take up residence in the Department Morbihan, which 
 is situated somewhere in an obscure corner of the Bretagne. Here 
 Marx would have been condemned to political as well as scholarly 
 inactivity — a thing which Louis Napoleon sought to accomplish 
 by this move. Instead Marx, stripped of all means of subsistence 
 and with no future prospects anywhere in sight, decided to go to 
 London. He was certain that the revolution was only temporarily 
 suppressed, that it was bound to rise again; and he, a stranded 
 outcast with a family dependent upon him, started to work with 
 renewed vigor to make the coming revolution a class-conscious 
 proletarian revolution, as far as the material conditions of that 
 period permitted and made such a distinct class movement pos- 
 sible. His first task was the reorganization of the Communist 
 League whose leading men were now practically all in London, 
 but whose activity was henceforth mainly confined to Germany. 
 In the "Neue Rheinische Revue" ("New Rhenish Review"), he 
 sought to provide a fighting organ for the revolutionary forces in 
 Germany. The "Neue Rheinische Revue" was published in 
 Hamburg, and, of course, in close collaboration with Frederick 
 Engels and other friends. Marx desired this periodical to be a 
 continuation of the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," and quite posi- 
 tively hoped to turn this unpretentious monthly into a semi- 
 
56 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 monthly and then into a weekly on a large scale. And with a 
 fresh outbreak of the revolution, which he anticipated would be 
 the logical product of the reaction ruling with an iron hand in 
 Germany, the review was to be turned into a powerful daily 
 newspaper. As stated in the foregoing, however, Marx's plans 
 were not to materialize. The tidal wave of the revolution, which 
 had carried the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," was gradually break- 
 ing upon the rocks of a luke-warm bourgeois liberalism. The 
 fears of the capitalist class for the thorough measures and class- 
 aspirations of the proletariat were quickly turning their course 
 into the less dangerous avenue of a parliamentary struggle 
 against feudal prerogatives, a struggle in which the workers as a 
 class were destined to play a historical role, but which forever 
 separated them from the contaminating influence of bourgeois 
 liberalism. But four numbers of the "Neue Rheinische Revue" 
 were published and those under the most ungratifying pecuniary 
 difficulties. Three copies appeared somewhat regularly up to 
 April, 1850, and then after a lapse of four months, the review 
 with a double-number had to definitely suspend publication. 
 
 In this periodical Marx and Engels labored to prepare the 
 ground for the anticipated approaching revolution. By subjecting 
 the struggles of the preceding years, struggles in which they had 
 so actively participated, to a critical examination, they sought to 
 accomplish this task. Truly in accord with their Historical Ma- 
 terialistic Philosophy, they attempted to find the connecting 
 causes of these historical and social manifestations and upheavals 
 in the existing class antagonisms, thereby stripping these events 
 of their ideological cloak and exposing the class war in all its 
 nakedness. Aside from distinctly German and in the broader 
 aspect local subjects, Engels wrote a treatise on the Peasant War, 
 and Marx contributed his masterly work, so well known to all 
 Marxian students, "The Class- Struggles in France 1848-1850." 
 This study found its continuation in the profound and brilliant 
 essay entitled "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon," 
 
SECOND LECTURE 57 
 
 published in 1852, and its completion in the Manifesto or Address 
 of the Executive Committee of the International Workingmen's 
 Association on the Paris Commune, and better known under the 
 title of "The Civil War in France." 
 
 However, the rejuvenated revolution which Marx and his 
 associates so confidently looked forward to, was, as stated before, 
 not to materialize. Subsequent economic and historical studies 
 now showed Marx that the revolutionary year of 1848 had been 
 but the legitimate child of the terrific industrial panic of 1847. 
 And as prosperity gradually surged in upon the troubled sea of 
 European social and political conditions, the revolutionary vital- 
 ity born by industrial depression ebbed out. An economic era 
 of expansion and plenty had set in, more so intensified by the 
 discovery of gold in California. The anticipation of a rich har- 
 vest of profits exterminated the last spark of rebellion in the 
 bourgeoisie. As already dwelled upon above, henceforth the 
 capitalist class was to be guided by only one precept in its politi- 
 cal conduct, namely : to harmonize and compromise with feudality 
 and absolutism, in order to jointly exploit the proletariat. The 
 proletariat, however, was as yet weak in numbers, or, to be more 
 exact, weak in organization, and practically entirely lacking in the 
 conscious perception of its historic mission as a class. The col- 
 lapse of Chartism in England, the June massacre in Paris, the 
 fall of Vienna, the results of the revolutions and struggles in 
 Germany, Hungary and Italy had so physically and morally 
 weakened the workers that for the moment no revolutionary 
 action was to be expected of them. However, the interminable 
 circle of capitalist production, the anarchical features of this 
 production, already foreshadowed the advance of another eco- 
 nomic crisis: a crisis that was but the natural child of an eco- 
 nomic system based upon the appropriation of surplus-value, and 
 a crisis which in its multiplied form actually portended the in- 
 evitable downfall of the capitalist system and the expropriation of 
 the expropriators. These facts Marx conceived with the as yet 
 
58 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 relatively limited knowledge at his disposal. He also was aware 
 that the workers were only powerful against the exploiters when 
 organized upon class lines — a form and spirit of organization 
 which presupposed class-consciousness. In order to awaken and 
 generate this class-consciousness in the international proletariat, 
 the individual worker had first to recognize his economic status, 
 i. e., to conceive that he was but a commodity under capitalism. 
 Animated, yes whipped on by the compelling command of the 
 hour, Marx set to work to provide the intellectual weapons for 
 the working class in its struggle for emancipation. 
 
 III. 
 
 Buried amongst the dusty tomes and intellectual treasures of 
 the British Museum, years passed in which Marx once more de- 
 voted himself exclusively to investigation and study. They were 
 years of intellectual joys but material privations to Marx and his 
 family. The press as well as the publishers in Germany had insti- 
 tuted a tentative boycott against Marx, and this meant bitter 
 poverty to him and his beloved ones. For example, his brilliant- 
 essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" had to be 
 published in New York in a periodical issued by his friend 
 Weydemeyer. Also the brochure dealing with the trial of some 
 of Marx's comrades before the jury in Cologne and entitled 
 "Enthiillungen iiber den Kolner Kommunistenprozess" ("Reve- 
 lations on the Communists' Trial in Cologne") had to be pub- 
 lished in America, 1852. During this year, Marx also accepted 
 an offer of the "New York Tribune" to act as its London corre- 
 spondent; he was expected to contribute an article every week, 
 for which he received the flat rate of five dollars. This meagre 
 but welcome income was practically for years the only regular 
 source of revenue of the Marx family. In the "New York Trib- 
 une" Marx published various reviews and criticisms of social and 
 political conditions in Europe, and also a series of articles which 
 afterwards appeared in pamphlet form under the name of "Revo- 
 
SECOND LECTURE 59 
 
 lution and Counter-Revolution in Germany." This series of 
 articles was up to a few years ago credited to Marx ; the publi- 
 cation of the correspondence between Marx and Engels, how- 
 ever, shows without a doubt that they were written by Engels. 
 "Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany" is but a con- 
 tinuation of the historical work commenced in "The Rhenish 
 Review," and its purpose was to show the inner connection, or as 
 Buckle is so fond of saying, "the logical connection," i. e., the 
 historical mechanism of the struggles in the first half of the nine- 
 teenth century. 
 
 As you will recollect, in his studies, Marx had gone from 
 philosophy to history, and from history to political economy. It 
 is, therefore, quite logical to deduce that a close study of the po- 
 litical class struggles, which since the seventeenth century had 
 swept furiously over Europe as revolutions, brought him in con- 
 tact with the power or driving forces behind and responsible for 
 these upheavals. According to the Historical Materialism of 
 Marx and Engels, in order to intelligently explain the social 
 and political life of capitalist society, the economy or industrial 
 structure of that society must be first investigated and 
 its origin, motive forces, laws and course of development ex- 
 plained. To this task Marx devoted himself during the years of 
 his exile in London, an exile which lasted until his death, with 
 en industry, enthusiasm and disinterestedness truly unparalleled 
 in the history of modern science. As Klara Zetkin so symbol- 
 ically states: "He devoted himself to this task with the bee-like 
 industry and the patience of the scientist and the revolutionary 
 fervour of the Socialist." The first fruits of his labor were con- 
 tained in his "Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie" ("Contribu- 
 tion to the Critique of Political Economy"), published in 1859, a 
 book which was but a preliminary study of or an introduction to 
 his greatest work "Das Kapital" ("Capital"). 
 
 The first volume of "Capital" appeared in 1867. It would be 
 the height of folly to even attempt to give a somewhat compre- 
 
60 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 hensive review of this monumental work in these lectures. I will, 
 however, as a conclusion of this lecture, attempt to present to you 
 a rough but in no form exhaustive resume of this masterwork, 
 embracing the fundamental or quintessential principles upon 
 which the theoretical structure of "Capital" is predicated, and 
 which to-day are acclaimed as axiomatic truths of the Socialist 
 philosophy. A knowledge of these philosophical and economic 
 principles is absolutely indispensable and imperative to an intelli- 
 gent understanding and appreciation of "Capital," and certainly a 
 substantial aid in the studv of the work. In the last half of my 
 next and last lecture, I will endeavor to present to you an outline 
 of a reading and study course for the works of Marx, and let 
 me emphasize here that a methodical and well-directed study of 
 writings about and by Marx is also essential for a proper com- 
 prehension of "Capital." 
 
 To recapitulate part of my first Lecture, in "Capital" Marx, in 
 his search for the basic and causal conditions underlying the 
 production and exchange of wealth in capitalist society, con- 
 tinued the labors started by the classics of bourgeois political 
 economy, of whom Wm. Petty, Adam Smith and Ricardo are 
 distinguished representatives, by dissecting the prevailing mode 
 of production into its most elementary parts. He found that pri- 
 vate property in the means of production is the cornerstone and 
 historic peculiarity of capitalist society. With the aid of the 
 Materialist Conception of History, he analyzed the social and 
 historical position of the proletariat in society, and was able to 
 formulate the principles and tactics for this class in its struggle 
 against the bourgeoisie. By fixing the status of the worker in 
 present society and also exposing the surplus-value 'creating 
 faculties of his labor-power; by classifying the worker as a com- 
 modity — a living commodity that produces more than it consumes 
 — Marx laid bare the source and magnitude of capitalist exploi- 
 tation, and the social and historical function and significance of 
 capital. By thus uncovering the origin of capitalist society and 
 
SECOND LECTURE 61 
 
 defining the nature of its economic laws; by pointing out and 
 underscoring the transitoriness of and the ever changing forms in 
 the structure of the mode of production, and the inevitable con- 
 sequences of competition and surplus-value appropriation, he 
 entered an indictment of fact against capitalist society and pro- 
 claimed the ultimate collapse of this most "perfect" of all sys- 
 tems. Marx significantly and with the aid of his dialectical 
 method, a method which you will recollect he had taken over from 
 Hegel, pointed out that a system which originally started with 
 private individual property had rapidly developed into a system 
 of private social property, and was bound — through the dynamic 
 force of class-antagonisms — to culminate into a system of collec- 
 tive social property. In other words, he was forced to conclude that 
 the social character of production was bound to be supplemented 
 by a social system of distribution, and this change was only pos- 
 sible through the abolition of the cornerstone and bedrock of 
 capitalist exploitation — private property in the means of produc- 
 tion. The negation or antithesis of private property Marx found 
 in social property or — Socialism; and the negation or contradic- 
 tion of the class struggle he located in the abolition of all classes 
 and class prerogatives based on any form of property. To illus- 
 trate these philosophical deductions : Just as day implies the ap- 
 proach of night, and life portends death; just as truth is born 
 by the lie, and virtue is but the creature of sin ; just as morality is 
 measured with the yardstick of immorality, and the law is but 
 the product of an unlawful act; just as the city or town fore- 
 shadowed the province, and the province the nation ; so the nation 
 implies the inter-nation; capitalism finds its contradiction in So- 
 calism; and private property, in its growing social aspects, must 
 culminate into social property : thus ending the class struggle with 
 the inauguration of a social peace based on economic equality. 
 In the past the class struggle found its culmination in the victory 
 and supremacy of various economic classes, however, these 
 classes were always swept into power by virtue of certain eco- 
 nomic might and holdings, and always asserted their victory to the 
 
62 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 detriment of a subject class. The victory of the proletariat is the 
 first victory in which the vanquished class will at the same time 
 become part of the victor class, because this victory is the last 
 phase of the class struggle and announces the victory of society 
 over class rule. Different from all previous struggles in the 
 evolution of mankind, the battle of the proletariat is not a battle 
 for proletarian supremacy over capitalist supremacy — a suprem- 
 acy which is to be asserted at the expense and subjugation of an- 
 other economic class; the victory of the proletariat does not 
 imply the rule of the proletariat over a subject class, because the 
 victory of the proletariat implies the emancipation of the lowest 
 class in society, the abolition of all property prerogatives, and 
 spells the victory, not of a class, but of society. 
 
 With "Capital" Marx rendered an analysis of capitalist pro- 
 duction unequalled in profundity and thoroughness by any pre- 
 vious or subsequent economist. To the true scientist "Capital" 
 very quickly came to be considered a treasure island of politi- 
 cal economy; and to the working class it was and is to this day 
 the intellectual compass, with which the capitalist mode of pro- 
 duction through its unique exponent, Karl Marx, has equipped 
 the proletariat in its fight for the liberation of society from class 
 rule. 
 

 THIRD LECTURE 
 
THIRD LECTURE 65 
 
 Workingmen and Workingwomen : 
 
 THE beginning of the last half of the nineteenth century wit- 
 nessed in the principal European countries and also the 
 United States an unparalleled growth and development in the 
 capitalist system of production. It was the period in which the 
 gigantic cotton industry in the North of England was unable to 
 procure enough human flesh for absorption and transmutation into 
 surplus value; it was the period in which the northern part of the 
 Western Hemisphere was ravaged by a gigantic civil war, waged 
 to decide the question whether the semi-feudal Southern aris- 
 tocracy or the, comparatively speaking, progressive and impatient 
 capitalist class of the industrial North should henceforth dictate 
 the political policy and economic and social course of the Union ; 
 it was the period in which the gradually awakening Muscovite 
 Empire, through the at least nominal emancipation of the serfs, 
 created its first large armies of modern industrial and agrarian 
 proletarians, and thereby proclaimed to the world the definite 
 collapse of feudalism and the ascendancy of capitalism in Russia ; 
 it was the period in which the question of political and economic 
 unity was becoming an ever greater problem and necessity to the 
 general progress of the German States, and also the crying de- 
 mand of the hour in torn and disunited Italy; in other words: 
 it was the period in which the national units of capitalist produc- 
 tion became conscious of their interests, and also began to look 
 with envy upon the colonial possessions and the consequent 
 imperialistic domination of England ; it was the beginning of the 
 great battle of capitalist national units for international suprem- 
 acy — a struggle whose culmination is vividly illustrated by the 
 present Great War. In the sixties and seventies of the last cen- 
 tury, of course, the indications for a large era of imperialism 
 were as yet only mildly perceivable. As stated before, countries 
 like Germany, the United States and France were still occupied 
 
66 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 with the development, organization and exploitation of their 
 national resources or the reformation of their political institu- 
 tions, in other words : the modern capitalist mode of production 
 was still in its infancy — in its embryonic state. 
 
 However, one historic fact loomed forth portentously in all 
 these countries, namely : that in proportion as the capitalist mode 
 of production slowly.cast off its swaddling clothes and grew into 
 a vigorous specimen, so the class-consciousness of the exploited 
 masses showed signs of awakening and development. Indications 
 cf a growing unrest amongst the workers were visible every- 
 where. In England the remnants of the Chartist organization 
 were ably assisting in the building up of the trades-unions ; fac- 
 tory legislation, regulating the hours of employment and particu- 
 larly child labor, was the first direct product of this agitation 
 and growing consciousness. In Germany Ferdinand Lassalle was 
 sounding the tocsin of proletarian action along class lines ; and in 
 France the activity of the workers' organizations, particularly in 
 Paris, Lyons and other industrial centers, clearly betrayed an 
 ever growing spirit of working-class solidarity. 
 
 This growing solidarity amongst the workers was stimulated 
 and urged on to a more concrete manifestation, through the 
 growing friendship and fraternal relations between the capitalists 
 of various countries, an illustration of which was given at the 
 second Universal Exhibition, held in London in 1862. This 
 exhibition brought together a large number of business men and 
 manufacturers from every nook and corner of the globe. And 
 here, at receptions and banquets, the acquaintances were de- 
 veloped and the relations between the exploiters of the world 
 solidified to such an extent that the exhibition became to be 
 known amongst workingmen as the "International of the bour- 
 geoisie." The supplement to this "International" was born, 
 when on September 28th, 1864, workers' representatives from 
 England, France, Germany, Poland and Italy gathered in St. 
 Martin's Hall, London, and upon the proposal of the French 
 
THIRD LECTURE 67 
 
 delegate, M. Le Lubez, organized the proletarian expression of 
 international solidarity under the name of the International 
 Workingmen's Association — the first International. 
 
 Karl Marx actively participated in the preliminary work 
 necessary for the calling of the conference. As the correspond- 
 ing secretary for Germany, he was at the same time a member of 
 the committee elected to draw up the constitution, programme or 
 platform, etc., also to which the temporary management of the 
 young organization's affairs was entrusted. Needless to say, the 
 drafting of the association's declaration of principles and con- 
 stitution was quite a delicate and complicated matter, and neces- 
 sitated a thorough knowledge of working-class conditions in the 
 different European countries. Furthermore, at that early state 
 of capitalist development, relatively speaking of course, the pro- 
 gramme of the International Workingmen's Association had to 
 be formulated in such a manner as not to collide or be of 
 hindrance to the different countries in their various stages of 
 capitalist evolution. Under such manifold social and political 
 conditions and at this particular period of capitalist development, 
 the functions of the International could be at best only such of an 
 advisory and educational capacity, and their effect in the main of 
 a moral character. The International was to be a permanent or 
 standing manifestation of the international solidarity of the 
 proletariat, and its offices were to be employed to encourage, de- 
 velop and cement these relations amongst the workers in the 
 different countries wherever possible. Marx knew that only an 
 internationally organized and class-conscious proletariat could 
 hope to cope with and defeat the capitalist class and destroy the 
 capitalist mode of production — an international institution; he 
 also knew that organization and education of the workers would 
 have to go hand in hand with the development of capitalism, if 
 the workers were to achieve their end; he knew that no eco- 
 nomic system ever disappeared or was relieved by another system 
 until it had developed all faculties inherent in it ; he, therefore, 
 
6$ KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 knew that tedious pioneer work would have to be done and that 
 the social revolution was not to be accomplished via the route of 
 conspiracy, spontaneous direct action of self-styled "minorities," 
 assassination and bombastic phrase-mongery. Around what pro- 
 grammatic standard was the international proletariat to marshal 
 its forces? 
 
 It was Marx who drafted both the constitution and the pro- 
 gramme of the International Workingmen's Association, docu- 
 ments which were unanimously adopted by the organization. In 
 the declaration of principles, better known as the "Inaugural 
 Address," Marx outlined a plan of immediate action for the 
 proletariat. This activity formed but "a part," to speak in the 
 words of the "Address," "of the general struggle for emanci- 
 pation of the toiling classes." The "Inaugural Address" was a 
 child of the "Communist Manifesto." It also called attention to 
 <?i?d emphasized the ever growing wealth in the hands of the 
 possessing minority in society, and contrasts this with the ever 
 increasing numbers in the propertyless working class and the 
 increasing misery of this class, underscoring sharply the class 
 antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited — an antag- 
 onism which is but the reflex of the economic divisions in capi- 
 talist society, divisions that are the original source of the social 
 unrest. The "Inaugural Address" calls upon the workers to rise 
 against misery and exploitation and advises them — fully ap- 
 preciating the significance of the legal ten-hour day in England — 
 to conduct this struggle via the road of independent political 
 action and constructive, i. e., protective factory legislation; this 
 activity was to be engaged in, however, always with the ultimate 
 aim in view to conquer the political power for the proletariat in 
 order to use the political machinery of the capitalist state to de- 
 stroy forever all class rule. The document lays special weight 
 upon the necessity of international working-class solidarity, a 
 solidarity out of which an important duty arises, namely : to care- 
 fully control the foreign politics of the various capitalist govern- 
 
THIRD LECTURE 69 
 
 ments, and to protest most emphatically and use all the might 
 at the workers' command, should these politics pursue criminal 
 aims, consciously exploit national prejudices and tend to squan- 
 der the blood and possessions of the people in wars of conquest. 
 When we read this passage in the light of the present war, then 
 we can about perceive the significance of the warning: a warn- 
 ing which was, however, not heeded because the nationalism 
 generated by the material conditions at the bottom of modern 
 imperialism — understand full-fledged national capitalism — was 
 able to even permeate the working-class movement, becoming for 
 the time predominant in influence, even making international 
 solidarity, ergo the class interests of the proletariat, subservient 
 to its aim. 
 
 However, I am disgressing from the subject proper. The 
 principles and tactical suggestions just presented to you can be 
 considered the basic aspirations and the ultimate and immediate 
 aims of the first International at its inception. As the years of 
 experience and constant struggle swept over this yet crude and 
 immature class organization of the international proletariat, the 
 clear-headed thinkers at its head were compelled to admit that 
 the battle of the workers for emancipation was indeed an arduous 
 struggle : a struggle which was inseparably interwoven with the 
 development and perfection of the very system they, the prole- 
 tarians, were destined to destroy. In the organization and grow- 
 ing class-consciousness of the proletariat is reflexed the organi- 
 zation and growing power of the capitalist system of production ; 
 the growth of one social layer compels the growth of the other, 
 and just as intensive life foreshadows an early death, so does 
 this social antithesis portend its culmination in the social revo- 
 lution. 
 
 The process of economic evolution, with its accompanying 
 class manifestations, is, however, as stated before, a tediously 
 slow one. To the individual, conscious of his economic status 
 and aware of the historic role the proletariat is to play in the 
 
70 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 * 
 
 future, social development seems stagnant and society intellec- 
 tually corrupted or fossilized — dormant. To him the revolution 
 is a mental reality, and could become a material one, if, yes, if 
 the workers would only see the light and become class-conscious, 
 i. e., would only become Socialists. The individual who reasons 
 in this fashion, and who by the way is by no means a rarity in 
 the movement of to-day, is everything but a Socialist in the His- 
 torical Materialistic, that is scientific conception of the term. 
 He is a soaring idealist, who has lost the firm foundation of 
 historical reality and material possibility from under his feet, and 
 v/ho is, consequently, utopistic in his deductions, actions and 
 tactics. The first International, as is also the Socialist movement 
 of to-day, was abundantly blessed with a large number of these 
 undoubtedly sincere but intellectually ill-balanced comrades. Karl 
 Marx and his followers, perceiving capitalist society through the 
 spectacles of dialectical evolution and Historical Materialism, 
 and seeing in all its manifestations but the logical sign of social 
 development, were bound to collide with the gasconading idealist, 
 who contemplated revolutionizing society via the road of back- 
 room conspiracies and armed uprisings, especially at a time when 
 sporadic prosperity had momentarily blinded the average wage 
 slave to his actual conditions. 
 
 This struggle between Historical Materialism and Utopian 
 Idealism has been largely recorded by Socialist historians as a 
 personal struggle between Marx and Bakunin for leadership in 
 the International. Such writers are also everything else but 
 Socialist historians, because if their conception were true, then 
 the ghosts of Marx and Bakunin are at this advanced day still 
 seeking to settle their personal quarrel in the Socialist and radi- 
 cal movement of every modern country on the face of the globe. 
 The struggle between Historical Materialism, ergo scientific So- 
 cialism, and Utopian Idealism — whether disguised as Opportun- 
 ism, Impossibilism, Anarchist-Communism, etc., matters not — 
 first took on shape and form in the first International and was led 
 
THIRD LECTURE 71 
 
 by Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, respectively. It is not to 
 be confused with the intellectual battle and polemics between 
 scientific Socialism and the Utopianism of the French and Eng- 
 lish schools. As stated before, the intellectual struggle between 
 these two conceptions is still going on in the movement, and will 
 continue to go on until Historical Materialism or the Materialist 
 Conception of History becomes the predominating conception in 
 society — philosophically as well as socially: an intellectual revo- 
 lution which we are rapidly approaching and which has its roots 
 in the material conditions of capitalist production. The present 
 world-war, I believe, has been a wonderful schoolmaster in this 
 direction. Never were the interests, class aspirations and eco- 
 nomic forces of the ruling classes and their pliable governments 
 more openly exposed, and never have I read and perceived more 
 articles and books, dealing with the economic and social aspects 
 of the war, written and published by bourgeois members of so- 
 ciety than since the outbreak of the war. Of course, in the So- 
 cialist movement the war has been also a great incentive to study 
 and particularly to delve into the "mysteries" of the foundation 
 of Scientific Socialism — the Materialist Conception of History. 
 
 To return to the subject. It cannot be denied, however, that 
 the struggle between Historical Materialism and Utopian Ideal- 
 ism, as personified in Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin, tended 
 gradually to disrupt the already loose form of the International's 
 organization. This falling apart, however, carried within its 
 womb the germs of consolidation and organization along national 
 lines. And it is peculiar how the subsequent course of events 
 furnished additional proof of the soundness of the Marxian 
 method of historical analysis; for is it not indeed a striking co- 
 incidence only explainable with the aid of the Marxian key, when 
 we perceive that in all countries with a prominent capitalist 
 physiognomy, Marxism exercised full control in the organization, 
 and in the Latin and chiefly agrarian countries Bakunism side by 
 side with Marxism could be observed. 
 
72 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Then also capitalism was at this period commencing to carve 
 out its national destiny in countries like Germany, France, Italy, 
 the United States, etc., and in this process a series of so-called 
 national problems was raised : problems, however, that had a 
 disruptive influence and a disintegrating effect upon the Inter- 
 national. In this connection I desire to cite the Franco-Prussian 
 War which had resulted in the unification of the various German 
 states and the organization of a powerful capitalist class in Ger- 
 many. The reaction of the German conquests and annexation 
 of Alsace-Lorraine, and the beastly crushing of the Paris Com- 
 mune with the aid of Bismarck, had inflamed and aroused the 
 national pride of the French people, and conjured the spectre of 
 "revenge" upon the scene. England's undisturbed conquest of the 
 world's markets, a conquest securely cemented by ] icrative co- 
 lonial possessions, had brought an era of prosperity to the British 
 workers, of course relatively speaking; and the plan of the British 
 imperialists to create a so-called world-empire, of course under 
 the protectorate of Great Britain, a plan that was skilfully advo- 
 cated by Lord Beaconsfield and that actually turned the heads of 
 quite a few prominent men in the English labor movement, 
 amongst them Joseph Cowen, who had been a strong supporter 
 of the International, created such a spirit of jingoism in England 
 and was productive of a national arrogance, which at this late day 
 only finds its parallel in certain types of German workers. 
 
 These were the conditions and motives which prompted the 
 Congress of the International at the Hague, in 1872, to transfer 
 the seat of the organization's General Council to New York: a 
 decision that in reality and practical effect actually implied the 
 disbandment and the end of the International Workingmen's 
 Association. 
 
 As a member of the General Council, Marx remained true to 
 the International to the end. And to him the dissolution of this 
 much-dreaded body implied only the reorganization of the prole- 
 tarian forces on a larger and more class-conscious scale. The 
 
THIRD LECTURE 73 
 
 "Inaugural Address" and "The Civil War in France" are two 
 historic publications and documents of the International Work- 
 ingmen's Association of which he is the author, and which are 
 remarkable sign-posts of the proletariat's march to emancipation. 
 They are truly fitting supplements to the "Communist Mani- 
 festo." However, no one will ever know the volume of work per- 
 formed by Marx as the so-called intellectual head of the Inter- 
 national. Only a small portion of this activity is available in 
 documents. As a leader, educator and counsellor of leaders, he 
 performed invaluable services, not only while member of the 
 General Council, but up to his death. To one unfamiliar with the 
 conditions, the turbulent and primitive conditions that existed in 
 the early days of the modern labor movement, no adequate con- 
 ception of the colossal magnitude of this task can present itself. 
 However, it is no exaggeration when I state, and my assertion is 
 based upon the reports of men who for years lived in intimate 
 association with Marx, that it was primarily this daily slew of 
 details, which steadily kept pouring in upon him from every nook 
 and corner of the globe and demanded his time and attention, 
 that prevented him from devoting his undivided energies to the 
 far more important scientific studies. Marx was a most con- 
 scientious student and advisor, and could devote days to research, 
 in order to furnish an authentic reply to an inquiry. Aside from 
 the historic causes cited above, here we have a tributary cause 
 responsible for Marx's retirement from leadership in the Inter- 
 national — a retirement that fell together with the disintegration 
 of the organization. In just this energy-absorbing phase of 
 Marx's activity we can also locate the reason why on the day of 
 his death, March 14th, 1883, the second volume of "Capital" was 
 still uncompleted, and the material for the third volume had been 
 only collected and f ragmentally suggested or roughly sketched in 
 his note book. However, to again quote Klara Zetkin : "The 
 principal work of Marx is comparable to a grand torso of antique 
 art, which even in its mutilated form speaks more impressively 
 
74 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 and enchantingly to our soul than dozens of completed 
 sculptures." 
 
 This presentation of the life and works of Marx would, 
 however, be seriously defective, if no account of Marx's more 
 intimate domestic life would be rendered, i. e., if that phase of life 
 would be omitted which is really the basic element of all social 
 activity — the every-day life. In order to do this intelligently, an 
 understanding of the material conditions or social atmosphere in 
 which he lived and of the characteristics of Marx and his in- 
 separable companions is necessary. 
 
 Marx may truly and without indulging in platitudinous ex- 
 aggerations be celebrated as an ideal type of revolutionist. He 
 was, it is true, primarily a scientist; a scientist, however, who 
 after having reached a definite deduction demanding a certain 
 form of action did not shrink from the duty imposed upon him 
 by scientific investigation and social circumstances, but cheerfully 
 shouldered the task and unflinchingly labored to realize the de- 
 mands of social evolution. Karl Marx was a true scientist, who 
 did not consider himself a neutral and independent atom of the 
 social organism — an atom that could function without affecting 
 other atoms — but a scientist who through the result of his scien- 
 tific findings felt himself morally compelled to participate in the 
 reconstruction of society, who became a revolutionist, because he 
 wanted to be and remain a true scientist. In Marx, therefore, 
 the scientific world finds a man, who through his keen analysis 
 and comprehension of social phenomena dedicated his faculties 
 to the cause of the disinherited working-class ; because, unlike 
 so many of his contemporaries, he saw in that class the pioneer 
 of all real progress, and also because to him the social interest 
 was of far greater importance than his own material welfare. 
 He was a consistent revolutionist, because he sought to be and 
 remain a consistent scientist. Here we have a gratifying ex- 
 ample where theory is supplemented by corresponding action: 
 where a man's conduct squares with his principles. To Marx, 
 
THIRD LECTURE 75 
 
 scientific conviction and unhampered investigation were every- 
 thing, and with sovereign scorn did he look down upon and treat 
 that so numerous tribe of professorial scribes, who sell these in- 
 dispensable prerequisites of liberty for the proverbial mess of 
 pottage. And just because Marx was a searching scientist and 
 his scientific findings made out of him a revolutionist, that is why 
 he was ostracized by the class which to-day, by virtue of its eco- 
 nomic power, is in control of the institutions of learning: that 
 is why Marx was condemned to battle with the most dire poverty 
 during the greatest part of his life. 
 
 To Marx, however, poverty was an incident of secondary 
 importance and considered the legitimate product of a social 
 manifestation of prime significance to him, and that was the 
 movement — his ideal. Marx, like all great men of letters or 
 geniuses, was a poor business man and an absolute failure as an 
 administrator of the practical things in every-day life. To him 
 life seemed to be a medium for the realization of certain aims 
 and the promotion of the social welfare, and not an occasion for 
 the talking of shop, the gratification of petty personal desires and 
 the amassing of wealth, etc. 
 
 From the beginning of his exile in London and practically 
 up to his death Marx and his family bore a burden of poverty far 
 heavier and more unbearable than the one carried by the average 
 proletarian family in those days. There were days in the Marx 
 household when the stove was cold, the frost biting, the pantry 
 empty and hunger upon the bill of fare ; when the impatient land- 
 lord stormed and threatened, and the children's starved faces 
 and beseeching glances seemed to accusingly form themselves 
 into a veritable indictment against their father. These ungrati- 
 fying, yes, most miserable of miserable conditions pained Marx 
 severely. Not because he feared or cared for material suffer- 
 ings; no, Marx passed such vicissitudes of every-day life over 
 with truly noble unconcern. What, however, affected and 
 pained him so deeply was to see his wife, this faithful companion 
 
76 KARL MARX: THE MAX AXD HIS WORK 
 
 of his joyous boyhood days, and his beloved little ones suffer. 
 Marx worshipped his wife and adored his children with a love 
 and adoration that knew no bounds. And. therefore, when two 
 of his daughters and his only son. his little Moosh, succumbed to 
 this pitiful and devitalizing poverty, were, so to speak, sacrificed 
 upon the altar of incorruptible and path-breaking science and to 
 the cause of proletarian and social emancipation, his grief was 
 uncontrollable and laid the foundation for his early and untimely 
 death. From the death of his son, a child who bore the physical 
 curse of poverty from the day of his birth until his death, he 
 never recovered. In order that I may not awaken the feeling of 
 doubt in my auditors or be charged with exaggeration, permit me 
 herewith to quote a letter of Mrs. Marx to Mrs. Weydemeyer, the 
 wife of an intimate friend of Marx residing in New York : 
 
 ''My dear Mrs. Weydemeyer: 
 
 "In answer to your kind letter, which I received this morning, and in 
 order to show you how delighted I was to receive it, I will write you a de- 
 tailed letter at once, for now I see from your writing that you would like 
 to hear from us, and that you have still preserved the same feelings of 
 friendship as we have done. 
 
 "For how would it be possible for such old and tried comrades and 
 friends, to whom Fate has given the same sufferings, the same pleasures, 
 the same happy and sad days, ever to become strangers, though time and 
 the ocean intervene? And so I extend my hand to you, as to a brave, 
 true companion in adversity, a fellow struggler and sufferer. Yes, indeed, 
 my dear Mrs. Weydemeyer, our hearts have often been filled with sorrow 
 and gloom, and I can well imagine what you have had to contend with, 
 again lately! I fully realize all you have to contend with, the cares and 
 deprivations, for have I not often suffered the same! But suffering hard- 
 ships and love gives strength. 
 
 "The first years of our life here were bitter ones, but I will not dwell 
 on those sad memories to-day, on the losses we suffered, nor the dear, 
 sweet departed children, whose pictures are engraved in our hearts with 
 such deep sorrow. 
 
 "I will write of a newer period of our life rather, which, despite 
 much sadness, has nevertheless, brought us many bright gleams of 
 happiness. 
 
THIRD LECTURE 77 
 
 "In 1856 I travelled to Trier with mv three remaining daughters. My 
 dear mother was overjoyed at our arrival, but, unfortunately, the joy 
 was doomed to be of short duration. The most faithful, the best of 
 mothers became ill and, after suffering for eleven days, closed her dear, 
 tired eyes, her last glance resting fondly upon the children and me. Your 
 dear husband, who knew what a loving mother she was, can best estimate 
 my grief. We laid the dearly beloved body in its last resting place, and 
 left Trier, after having settled the little legacy of my dear mother, divid- 
 ing this equally between my brother Edgar and myself. 
 
 'Up to this time we had lived, in London, in two miserable rooms. 
 We were now enabled, by means of the few hundred thalers my dear 
 mother had left me, despite all the sacrifices she had made for us, to fur- 
 nish a little house for ourselves, not far from the beautiful Hampstead 
 Heath, and which we are still occupying, f As the translator of the 
 "Woman in White," you will probably recall this name.) 
 
 "It is, truly, a princely dwelling, compared with our former narrow 
 holes, and although the furnishing of the whole house cost us but forty 
 pounds ('second-hand rubbish' playing the leading role) we felt quite 
 'high-tonecl,' possessing, as we did, a parlour. All the linen and other 
 remnants of former greatness were now redeemed from the hands of the 
 Uncle/ and it was a joy to me to be able to count my damask napkins of 
 old Scotch origin once more. This grandeur, however, was of short dura- 
 tion, for soon afterward, one piece after the other had to wander back to 
 the "Pop House" (as the children call the mysterious Three-Balls shop). 
 Yet it gave us great pleasure to live once more in comparative comfort 
 and ease. 
 
 "Then the first American crisis came and our income was cut in half. 
 Our living expenses had to be screwed down once more, and we even had 
 to incur debts. These had to be incurred in order to be able to continue 
 the education of our girls further as begun. 
 
 "And now I come to the brightest part of our life, from which the 
 only light and happiness was shed on our existence — our dear children. 
 I feel certain that your husband, who was so fond of the girls when they 
 were children, would be more heartily pleased with them now since they 
 have grown into tall and blooming young women. 
 
 'Although I must fear that you will take me for a rather conceited 
 and weak mother, I will give you a description of these dear praise- 
 worthy girls. They are both exceptionally good-hearted, of generous 
 dispositions, of truly amiable modesty and girlish purity. Jenny will be 
 seventeen years of age on the first of May. She is a most charming girl, 
 
78 KARL MARX : THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 making quite a handsome appearance with her dark, shining, black hair 
 and equally dark, shining soft eyes and her brunette, Creole complexion 
 with its acquired healthy English tints. The pleasant, good-natured ex- 
 pression of her round, childlike face makes one forget that she has a stub 
 nose, which is perhaps not beautiful in itself, and it is a real pleasure 
 when she speaks, to observe the friendly mouth with its fine teeth. 
 
 "Laura, who was fifteen years old last September, is perhaps prettier 
 and of more regular features than her older sister, whose direct opposite 
 she is. Although she is just as tall as Jenny, as slender and delicately 
 formed, there is something lighter, brighter and more lucid about her. 
 The upper part of her face may well be called beautiful with its waves 
 of curly hair of chestnut brown, her sweet, dear eyes of changeable 
 greenish lights that burn like triumphal fires, and her finely formed and 
 noble forehead. The lower part of her face is less regular, being less de- 
 veloped. Both girls possess ros}', blooming complexions, and I often 
 marvel at their lack of vanity, for I remember very well that the same 
 could not have been said of their mother at a certain tender age ! 
 
 "At school they have always carried off the first prizes. They are per- 
 fectly at home in English and are quite advanced in French. They are able 
 to read Dante in Italian and also know a little Spanish ; the German 
 language seems to give them the greatest trouble; although I take every 
 means in my power to prevail on them to take a German lesson now and 
 then, my wishes do not always find obedience, so you see that respect for 
 me and my authority are not very great. Jenny's special talent is for 
 drawing, and the best ornaments in our home are her crayon drawings. 
 Laura was so negligent about drawing that we had to deprive her of this 
 instruction, as a punishment. She delights in practising on the piano, 
 however, and sings charming English and German duets with her sister. 
 Unfortunately, they commenced taking their musical instruction rather 
 late, having begun only a year and a half ago. It had been impossible for 
 us to raise the money for these expenses, for we had no piano. The one 
 which we have now is only a hired one, and is old and dilapidated. 
 
 "The girls, are a constant pleasure to us, owing to their affectionate 
 and unselfish dispositions. Their little sister, however, is the idol of the 
 whole house. 
 
 "This child was born at the time our poor, dear Edgar departed from 
 life, and all our love for the little brother, all the tenderness for him, were 
 now showered on the little sister, whom the older girls cherish with 
 motherly solicitude. But you could scarcely find a lovelier child, so 
 pretty, naive and full of droll humour is she. Her charming manner of 
 
THIRD LECTURE 79 
 
 speaking and relating stones is truly remarkable. This she learned from 
 the Grimm brothers, who are her companions by day and night. We all 
 have read the fairy tales until we are almost blind, but woe to us if we 
 were to forget one syllable of Rumpelstilzkin or Schneewittchen ! By means 
 of fairy stories, she has been able to learn the German language, which 
 she speaks correctly besides the English language, which of course lies 
 in the air. This little one is Karl's favourite pet, laughing and chatting 
 away many of his troubles. 
 
 "I am happy in still having our dear, loyal, conscientious Lenchen to 
 assist me in housekeeping; ask your dear husband about her, he will affirm 
 what a treasure she is to us. For sixteen years she has faithfully stood 
 by us through storm and adversity. 
 
 "Last year we had to suffer great annoyance from the infamous and 
 vile attacks made by the whole German, American, etc., press. You have 
 no idea how many sleepless nights and how much worry it all cost us. 
 Our lawsuit against the National-Zeitung cost us a large sum of money, 
 and when Karl had his book ready, he could find no publisher who would 
 accept it. He finally had to have it published at his own expense (pay- 
 ing 25 pounds) and now after its appearance, the cowardly, corrupt press 
 is trying to kill it by silence. I am delighted that you are pleased with 
 the book. Your opinion is almost literally identical with that of all our 
 other friends. Through the very intentional disregard of the book by 
 the press, it could not reach the splendid sale which we had every right to 
 expect. 
 
 'Meanwhile, the high approbation of all those of foremost intellectual 
 standing must satisfy us. Our adversaries and enemies even have had to 
 acknowledge its high value. Bucher described it as a compendium of the 
 history of ages, and Lassalle writes that the enjoyment afforded him and 
 his friends by this work of art was indescribable, and that their rejoicing 
 and delight at so much wit was limitless. Engels considers this to be 
 Karl's best book, as does 'Lupus.' Congratulations arrive from all sides, 
 even our old enemy, Ruge, calls it a good farce. I am curious to see if 
 America will observe the same silence. This would be actually revolting, 
 after having given space to all those worthless lies and calumnies. Per- 
 haps your dear husband could give some assistance in spreading its 
 circulation. 
 
 "I had scarcely finished copying the manuscript, when I suddenly 
 fell ill. A most terrible fever attacked me, and we had to send for a 
 doctor. On the 20th of November he came, examined me carefully, and 
 after keeping silent a long time broke out into the words : "My dear Mrs. 
 
80 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Marx, I am sorry to say you have got the smallpox — the children must 
 leave the house immediately." You can imagine the distress and grief 
 of the entire household at this verdict. What was to be done? The Lieb- 
 knechts fearlessly offered to shelter the girls in their home, and by noon 
 they had entered into exile, carrying their few belongings with them. 
 
 "I kept growing worse, hour after hour, the smallpox breaking out 
 in the worst form. I suffered very, very much. Awful, burning pains in 
 my face, complete sleepnessness, in deadly fear for Karl, who nursed me 
 with the greatest tenderness, finally the loss of all senses save the inner 
 sense of consciousness, which remained clear. I lay abed by the open 
 window, so that the cold November air blew in upon me. At the same 
 time there was a red hot fire in the stove; ice was placed upon my burn- 
 ing lips, and from time to time Bordeaux wine was infused in small 
 quantities. I could hardly swallow, my hearing kept growing weaker, at 
 last the eyes closed completely — who could tell if I should ever be able to 
 see the light of day again? 
 
 "But my constitution was victorious, the tenderest, most faithful 
 nursing assisted — and so I am sitting here again in complete health, but 
 with disfigured face, marked by scars and a dark red coloring — quite a la 
 hauteur de la mode couleur de Magenta! Christmas eve came and for the 
 first time since my illness the poor children were allowed to return to 
 their sadly missed home. This first meeting was indescribably pathetic. 
 The girls were deeply affected and could hardly repress their tears when 
 they saw me. But five weeks previous I had made quite an acceptable 
 appearance beside my blooming daughters. Due to the surprising fact 
 that I still had no gray hair and possessed good teeth and figure, I be- 
 longed to the class of well-preserved women — but now all this was gone! 
 I felt as though I were a hippopotamus, belonging, rather to the Zoologi- 
 cal Garden than to the Caucasian race. But do not let me frighten you 
 too much. My appearance has improved quite a little, and the scars are 
 beginning to heal. 
 
 "I had scarcely recovered sufficiently to be able to leave my bed, when 
 my dearly beloved Karl took sick. Excessive fear, anxiety and vexations 
 of every sort and description threw him upon his sick bed. For the first 
 time, his chronic liver trouble had become acute. But thank heavens, he 
 recovered after an illness of four weeks. In the meantime, the Tribune 
 had placed us at half-pay again and, instead of getting some receipts from 
 the book, we were obliged to meet a note. Added to this was the enor- 
 mous expense of the most terrible of sicknesses. In short, you now have 
 an idea how we fared last winter. 
 
THIRD LECTURE 81 
 
 "As a result of all these affairs, Karl resolved to make a plundering 
 expedition to Holland, the land of tobacco and cheese. He will endeavour 
 to induce his uncle to help him out with money. So I am a grass widow 
 at the present moment, and in high hope that the great Holland under- 
 taking will be successful. Saturday of last week I received the first letter, 
 which contained hopeful expressions and sixty gulden. Naturally, such 
 a mission is not easily fulfilled; it takes time; one must be expedient, use 
 diplomacy and be a good manager. I am in hopes, however, that Karl 
 will drain Holland dry and leave the country poverty-stricken. 
 
 '*As soon as he has attained success in Holland, he will undertake a 
 secret trip to Berlin, in order to reconnoitre the conditions there with the 
 possible plan of arranging for a weekly or monthly periodical. The 
 latest experiences have convinced us only too well that no progress is 
 possible without our own organ. If Karl's plan to create a new party 
 paper succeeds, he will certainly write to your husband and call upon 
 him for reports from America. 
 
 "Soon after Karl's departure, our faithful Lenchen took sick and to- 
 day she is still abed, though on the road to recovery. For this reason I 
 have my hands full of work, and have had to write this letter in the 
 greatest of hurry. But I could not and would not remain silent any 
 longer; it has been a great relief to me to unload my heart to my oldest, 
 truest friends. I will not make any excuses to you for having written in 
 detail of everything and everyone. My pen ran away with me, and I can 
 only hope and wish that you may experience only a little of the pleasure 
 I felt at reading your letter. I have already attended to the note and all 
 is quite in order, just as though my lord and master were here. 
 
 "My girls send their heartiest greetings and kisses to your dear chil- 
 dren — one Laura greets the other — and I kiss each one of them in spirit. 
 To you, my dear friend, I send my warmest regards. May you remain 
 brave, and unshaken in these days of trial. The world belongs to the 
 courageous. Continue to be the strong, faithful support of your dear 
 husband and remain elastic in mind and body, the true 'unrespected' com- 
 rade of your dear children, and let me hear from you again at your first 
 opportunity. Yours in sincere .friendship, 
 
 "Jenny Marx." 
 
 In the face of such cold, cruel and inhuman facts, in the 
 presence of such unbearable misery, comment and critical ap- 
 preciation become paralyzed : appalled by the shock inherent in 
 this tragic revelation of a page in a man's life, who is to-day 
 
82 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 acclaimed and idolized as the formulator of a philosophical sys- 
 tem for the proper conception of historical phenomena, and a 
 pathfinder, if not the head, of modern Political Economy— who is 
 considered the founder of a movement whose membership now 
 runs into millions and which exercises a potential influence in 
 every civilized country on the face of the globe ! Any additional 
 comment, in the face of such boundless and beautiful idealism 
 and august devotion, seems sacrilegious and would only mar the 
 profound impression created by this unpretentious narration of a 
 phase in the life of this truly great and noble man. In conclusion 
 I take the liberty to cite that well-known passage, a passage 
 which is also quoted by Marx's daughter in closing her comment 
 upon the turbulent life of her father : 
 
 "the elements 
 So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 
 And say to all the world : This was a man'." 
 
 The next article in this series will be an essay on "An Outline 
 for the Study of Marxism." 
 
AN OUTLINE FOR THE STUDY 
 OF MARXISM 
 
i! 
 
AN OUTLINE FOR THE STUDY OF MARXISM 
 
 AS a fitting supplement to the lectures published under this 
 title in the first three numbers of this magazine, I will now 
 endeavor to furnish the reader with a compilation of works 
 which I deem absolutely essential for a serious and compre- 
 hensive study of Socialism. In the humble opinion of the writer, 
 such a study must inevitably lead to a scientific understanding 
 of Marxism — an understanding quite imperative to an intelligent 
 and sound appreciation of Capitalism. 
 
 There is probably no social theory outside of the various 
 religious conceptions, and no book except the Bible that can boast 
 of more adherents and advocates the world over than Socialism 
 and "Capital." Socialism is to-day a factor in the social and 
 political life of every nation, and the theoretical propositions and 
 basic principles of Marxism are at this turbulent period the re- 
 volutionary force and intellectual standard around which the 
 workers and all truly disinterested students of Sociology and 
 Political Economy rally in their struggle against the debasing 
 influences of the mercenary Social Sciences. Marxism can, 
 therefore, and without indulging in exaggeration, lay claim to the 
 legacy of Classical Political Economy, and consider itself the 
 only legitimate heir to the scientific values of this science. And 
 acting in accord with this dictate of social development, Marx 
 has raised upon the solid foundation laid by a Petty, Smith, 
 Ricardo and Mills a structure truly massive, colossal and inspir- 
 ing in its mighty grandeur, and overpoweringly convincing, yes 
 unassailable and irrefutable in the scientific profundity of its 
 construction. 
 
 As has been amply elucidated and sufficiently explained, the 
 two propositions upon which the theoretical system of Marx rests 
 and whose proper appreciation is absolutely necessary for a 
 
86 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 thorough and rational understanding of Marxism are the Mate- 
 rialist Conception of History and the Socialist critique and 
 analysis of capitalist production, or Capitalism. I have dwelt at 
 length upon these two fundamental phases of Socialist letters in 
 my lectures, and, therefore, do not consider it essential to enter 
 upon a discussion of them here, or to even emphasize the im- 
 portance of their proper study and assimilation. 
 
 Every scientist will concede that the basis for a competent 
 understanding of or mastery over any branch of learning rests 
 solely in systematic study and the well organized classification 
 and application of the knowledge or subject matter absorbed. 
 Socialism is no exception to the rule. For a thorough know- 
 ledge of the elements of Socialist Philosophy and Economics a 
 well planned and systematically executed course of critical read- 
 ing and diligent study is absolutely essential. Such a course of 
 reading and study is, however, taking the present conditions in 
 the field of Socialist literature as a criterion, not so easily com- 
 piled; especially, if the prospective student attempts to perform 
 this task himself, i. e., without procuring the advice or counsel of 
 a competent authority. In no field of intellectual endeavor or 
 pursuit, in no science are there more snares, snags and traps 
 awaiting the unwary and trusting student than in the field of 
 theoretical Socialism. And when we view the innumerable col- 
 lections of irresponsible, defective, yes in many cases fundament- 
 ally erroneous works which are daily offered to the public as 
 "recognized textbooks" on Socialism, then we can easily account 
 for this ungratifying situation and also readily explain the 
 Babylonian confusion and criminal inconsistency at times 
 rampant in the Socialist movement. Furthermore, when per- 
 ceiving that such "textbooks," which in the most cases are at 
 best only unquestionable testimonials of their author's ignorance 
 of Socialism, are circulated by responsible agencies in the 
 Socialist Party, then the unbiased Socialist, to whom clarity in 
 Socialist letters is more than a cherished aspiration, must confess 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 87 
 
 that it certainly is not such a simple task after all for the un- 
 initiated seeker to arrive at a clear and scientific conception of 
 Marxism. 
 
 I believe I am not exaggerating when I state that no move- 
 ment has placed its founder upon a higher pedestal, or paid a 
 greater tribute to its master than the Socialist movement. If 
 anyone desires to view an example of deep gratitude and noble 
 affection let him study the whole-hearted idolization of Karl Marx 
 indulged in by the proletariat the world over. There is no civil- 
 ized country upon the globe in which there are not hundreds of 
 thousands of workingmen who proclaim themselves adherents to 
 Marx's teachings. The picture of this great thinker adorns the 
 parlor of every Socialist home, and can be found in every 
 Socialist or trades-union hall. His masterpiece and textbook of 
 scientific Socialism, "Capital," enjoys the undivided admiration 
 of all Socialists. Be they orthodox revolutionists or plastic oppor- 
 tunists matters not, in the laudation of Marx and his works they 
 are one and claim to be — Marxists. Another peculiarity, which 
 has its origin in the object to exploit the international reputation 
 of Marx for political purposes, is the persistency of Socialist 
 organizations or factions with the most conflicting principles to 
 proclaim their position to be in conformity with Marxian pre- 
 cepts, or to be the only "true" Marxian position. Consequently, 
 since the death of Marx, the most farcical and disgusting political 
 campaigns and pillaging expeditions have been labelled or mas- 
 queraded in the guise of Marxism, and are even at this late day 
 usurping the name of the great master for the purpose of political 
 capital. These unsavory tactics and ungratifying conditions are 
 made possible and tolerated in the Socialist movement, because 
 the reverence entertained for and unbounded confidence placed in 
 Marx are not predicated upon a sound knowledge of or an even 
 superficial familiarity with the actual works of this celebrated 
 economist. There is probably no book in the scientific literature 
 of the world that enjoys greater popularity, is more appealed to, 
 
88 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 oftener recommended and less read than "Capital." In conse- 
 quence, it will be difficult to find another science, enjoying the 
 same popularity as Marxism, in whose name are propagated so 
 many conflicting and erroneous views. As already insinuated, 
 the cause for these ungratifying conditions can be traced to the 
 colossal ignorance prevalent amongst so-called "Marxian" So- 
 cialists on matters Marxian. Therefore, the only force able to 
 curb and eventually obliterate "these evil powers of darkness" is 
 familiarity with the works of their idol, and an acquaintance with 
 the lucid teachings of their much heralded leader, through a 
 systematic study of Socialist classics. The organization of 
 classes or circles for the study of Socialist classics should, con- 
 sequently, be seriously taken in hand by all Socialists who have 
 the healthy development of Marxism at heart. A vigorous, revo- 
 lutionary political and industrial movement of Socialism can only 
 flow from a sound theoretical conception of Marxism; no con- 
 scious, effective and revolutionary policy can be expected from 
 the vast majority of the political and economic forces now operat- 
 ing under the banner of Socialism. 
 
 * * * 
 
 When a student enters upon the study of Socialism, the first 
 truism he should remember is that Socialism as a science does not 
 occupy itself nearly so extensively with the contemplation and 
 elucidation of future society, as with the examination and eco- 
 nomic analysis of the present one. Scientific Socialism is, 
 therefore, not as it is generally and mistakenly assumed, a theo- 
 retical system dealing solely with the multifarious phases of the 
 Cooperative Commonwealth, but one which constitutes primarily 
 an inquiry into the origin, foundation, laws and tendencies 
 noticeable in the development of capitalist production. In con- 
 sequence, a knowledge of Socialism does not consist of an indi- 
 vidual's competence to memorize a definition formulating the 
 economic and social basis of Socialist production, i. e., setting 
 forth the economic groundwork of the Industrial Republic and the 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 89 
 
 social consequences resulting therefrom, but rather of his ability 
 to file a brief for Socialism, by convincingly pointing out the ne- 
 cessity for and inevitability of the Cooperative Commonwealth 
 germinating in the womb of capitalist society. A knowledge of So- 
 cialism demands, therefore, in the first place not so much a study 
 of future society as it does a thorough investigation of present 
 social and economic life. In consequence, Socialism represents 
 more an investigation of capitalist production and an exposition 
 of the social and economic laws underlying the same than an 
 abstract theory or speculation of Industrial Democracy. How- 
 ever, it must be also emphasized that in order to have a normal, 
 that is scientifically sound conception of future society, and an 
 understanding of the forces and social elements making for it, a 
 deep and scientific appreciation of Capitalism is absolutely 
 indispensable. 
 
 As an excellent introduction into the so-called mysteries of 
 Economics and the peculiarities of the Socialist nomenclature, 
 also as a textbook of Socialism unparalleled for lucidness, pithi- 
 ness and accuracy I recommend a close study of "Das Erfurter 
 Programm," by Karl Kautsky, published in English complete 
 under the name of "The Class Struggle" and translated by Wm. 
 E. Bohn, or chapters of which are issued in pamphlet form under 
 the titles of "The Working Class," "The Capitalist Class," "The 
 Class Struggle" and "The Socialist Republic," translated and 
 adapted to American conditions by Daniel De Leon. There is 
 probably no book in the by no means limited assortment of 
 Socialist literature that equals this work in its scrupulous 
 accuracy of exposition; an accuracy made doubly effective be- 
 cause it is coupled with a remarkable and rare simplicity in the 
 presentation of Marxian fundamentals. Here we have a com- 
 pendium of Socialism, written by a Marxian scholar of inter- 
 national repute, classical in its treatment of the subject matter, 
 and truly deserving the widest possible circulation in the Socialist 
 and labor movement. "Das Erfurter Programm," as the German 
 
90 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 title of "The Class Struggle" suggests, was originally written to 
 furnish a theoretical explanation and scientific elucidation of the 
 programme of the German Social Democracy, adopted at Er- 
 furt, 1891, to the workers. The very purpose and nature of such 
 a work makes out of it a rich source of information for particu- 
 larly the serious student ; because here the penetrating rays of 
 Marxism are thrown upon the programmatic demands and prin- 
 ciples of a political party of Socialism, and employed or utilized 
 to verify the same before the bar of science. "Das Erfurter 
 Programm" (''The Class Struggle") succeeds admirably in pre- 
 senting and explaining Socialist fundamentals to the novice or 
 uninitiated. However, in doing this, it claims to be, as already 
 stated, substantiating the demands and theoretical propositions 
 laid down in the Erfurt programme of the Social Democratic 
 Party. In the opinion of the writer, the object of this splendid 
 work has been only partially fulfilled, at least the object of its 
 publishers, because as an advocate of sound, scientific funda- 
 mentals it has no rival in Socialist literature, in consequence, 
 neither can it find its equal as a repudiator of palliatives and so- 
 called immediate demands, so popular in the German Social 
 Democracy and with which the Erfurt programme is overloaded. 
 
 Possessing a working knowledge of the genesis and character 
 of capitalist production, also of the economic and social status of 
 the various classes in present society, the student should now seek 
 to familiarize himself more thoroughly with the Socialist concep- 
 tion of social evolution, i. e., with the philosophical foundation of 
 scientific Socialism. Familiarity with the elements and propo- 
 sitions of Historical Materialism will also lead to a better under- 
 standing and more competent appreciation of social phenomena, 
 and simultaneously equips the reader with the knowledge that 
 will henceforth enable him to differentiate intelligently between 
 Utopian and Scientific Socialism. An intensive study of Frederick 
 Engels' masterpiece "Development of Socialism from Utopia to a 
 Science" is now recommended. In conjunction with these philo- 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 91 
 
 sophical studies, the student ought to read the "Preliminary 
 Remarks" to "Principles of Political Economy," by John Stuart 
 Mills. In this introduction the great English Economist gives 
 in a lucid and brilliant form a short resume of the principal 
 stages in the evolution of the human race. If this work is not 
 procurable, then the student can commence immediately with 
 the "Evolution of Property," by Paul Lafargue. However, a 
 diligent perusal of Mills' "Preliminary Remarks" can not be too 
 strongly recommended. 
 
 In order to develop and broaden the student's knowledge of 
 Political Economy, the study of the following works is now 
 opportune and must be carried out in the order they are listed : 
 "Wage, Labor and Capital," by Karl Marx; "High Cost of 
 Living," by Arnold Petersen ; "Value, Price and Profit," by Karl 
 Marx. 
 
 Knowing the economic and social forces underlying social 
 development, also possessing a scientific conception of social 
 phenomena and historical manifestations; furthermore, being 
 somewhat familiar with the general phases of social evolution, it 
 is now desirable and quite essential that the student begin a 
 somewhat systematic study in Ethnology, Sociology and History. 
 As an introduction to this interesting course of reading, the 
 student should slowly and patiently explore that treasure island 
 of facts, that monumental work in Ethnology, "Ancient Society," 
 by Lewis H. Morgan. A thorough and diligent study of this 
 classic is absolutely imperative and will greatly assist in the 
 proper understanding of the subsequent periods in historical de- 
 velopment. A study of the following works is now recommended : 
 "The Ancient Lowly," by C. Osborne Ward; "Two Pages from 
 Roman History," by Daniel De Leon; "Crises in European His- 
 tory," by Gustav Bang; "An Introduction to the Study of the 
 Middle Ages" and "Medieval Europe," by Ephraim Emerton; 
 "The Middle Ages," by Henry Hallam; "History of European 
 Morals," by William Edward Hartpole Lecky ; "General History 
 
92 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 of Civilization in Europe," by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot ; 
 "History of Civilization in England," by Henry Thomas Buckle; 
 and as supplementary reading "The Mysteries of the People, or 
 History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages," by Eugene 
 Sue, translated from the original French by Daniel De Leon. 
 The last work by Sue in this series consists of 21 volumes, and 
 is really a universal history in itself, depicting the class struggle 
 as it has raged through the ages and under the different social 
 systems. For a study of social development in America the 
 works listed below will be found suitable ; these works are written 
 by scholars well ground in the theories of Historical Materialism, 
 and, consequently lay bare the actual driving forces responsible 
 for and behind social change in this country: "American Indus- 
 trial Evolution from Frontier to Factory," by Justus Ebert; 
 "Social Forces in American History," by A. M. Simons; and 
 "The Workers in American History," by James Oneal. 
 
 It is now also necessary that the student acquaint himself with 
 the inception and growth of the Socialist movement, a growth, 
 however, that has not always kept abreast with the development 
 of theoretical Socialism. The following classics of Socialist 
 literature and historic documents should now be critically read: 
 "The Communist Manifesto," by Karl Marx and Frederick 
 Engels; "Revolution and Counter-Revolution, or Germany in 
 1848," erroneously credited to and published under the name of 
 (Karl Marx, but actually written by Frederick Engels; "The 
 Class Struggle in France 1848-1850," by Karl Marx; "The 
 Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon," by Karl Marx; and 
 "The Civil War in France" ("The Paris Commune"), by Karl 
 Marx. In conjunction with the foregoing the following works, 
 dealing in the main with American conditions and problems, may 
 be profitably read: "History of Socialism in the United States," 
 by Morris Hillquit; "Proceedings of the Ninth Convention of 
 the S. L. P." ; "Proceedings of the Tenth National Convention of 
 the S. L. P., 1900"; "New Jersey Socialist Unity Conference"; \j 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 93 
 
 "Flashlights of the Amsterdam Congress," by Daniel De Leon; 
 "Launching of the I. W. W.," by Paul F. Brissenden; and "Pro- 
 ceedings of the First Convention of the Industrial Workers of 
 the World, Chicago, 1905/ V 
 
 Fully equipped with the various subjects and phases consti- 
 tuting the theoretical system of Marxism, and being also some- 
 what familiar with the various stages and periods of social de- 
 velopment, the student is now amply prepared to take up the 
 study of works usually considered too ponderous or "academic" 
 for the unprepared worker. These works form the basis of the 
 theoretical structure of Marxism, and their study is, therefore, 
 synonymous with imbibing the Socialist philosophy at its "original 
 sources." The first of this class of works to be assiduously 
 studied is Frederick Engels' "Landmarks of Scientific Socialism" 
 (Anti-Duehring). In conjunction with this invaluable gem of 
 Socialist literature "Feuerbach, Roots of Socialist Philosophy," 
 by the same author ; and "A Critique to Political Economy" and 
 "Poverty of Philosophy," by Karl Marx should be read; special 
 attention being given to the Preface of the "Critique." In this 
 connection "The Theoretical System of Karl Marx," by Louis 
 B. Boudin, will also serve as very effective and profitable sup- 
 plementary reading. 
 
 The next and final work to be taken up in this course of read- 
 ing will be the study of "Capital," the so-called foundation or 
 basic work of Socialist Political Economy. Before, however, 
 commencing this important and tedious task, the student should 
 do some additional preliminary reading and rehearse his studies 
 in Economics. He should, for example, reread "Wage, Labor 
 and Capital," "Value, Price and Profit," etc., and particularly seek 
 to master the contents of Marx's "A Critique to Political Eco- 
 nomy," already referred to above. Furthermore, a perusal of 
 works of a critical and more or less controversial nature, occu- 
 pying themselves with the various phases of Marxism as formu- 
 lated and substantiated in "Capital," will be of great assistance 
 
94 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 to a proper understanding of this masterpiece. For this purpose, 
 the following brochures are recommended as collateral reading: 
 "Vulgar Economy," by Daniel De Leon; "Marx on Mallock, or 
 Facts versus Fiction," by the same author; "Was Marx Wrong?", 
 £jby I. M. Rubinow ; and "Karl Marx and Boehm-Bawerk, Vulgar 
 Economy Illustrated," by W. H. Emmett. ; / 
 
 The study of "Capital" can now be taken up, and in this con- 
 nection the following suggestions should be observed. The social 
 and historical significance of this work has been, I believe, suf- 
 ficiently emphasized and dealt with in the lectures proper and, 
 therefore, requires no further elucidation. What is now of prime 
 importance to the prospective reader or student of "Capital" is a 
 plan or course of procedure netting the best possible results with 
 the smallest expenditure of energies. It can not be denied, all 
 popular assertions notwithstanding, that "Capital" is to the 
 average workingman, unaccustomed to scientific works, quite a 
 tedious and ponderous volume; furthermore, that an indiscrim- 
 inate and unsystematic reading of this book is not very conducive 
 to either the spirit and future efforts of the reader, or to an 
 intelligent appreciation of the work itself. As underscored in 
 this article before, in the humble opinion of the writer, an 
 EXHAUSTIVE course of preliminary reading and study is 
 absolutely essential, yes, a prerequisite, for a proper understand- 
 ing of "Capital." Hence if classes or individuals, not equipped 
 with the aforementioned knowledge so necessary for a proper 
 perception or understanding, i. e., unprepared and untrained to 
 assimilate or digest the intellectual food offered in this monu- 
 mental work, give up their studies in despair, then the reason 
 should not be ascribed to the "ponderous form of presentation in 
 'Capital'," but to the insufficient preparation and inability of 
 these students to understand the nature and mode of Marx's 
 investigations and deductions. However, those who have dili- 
 gently followed the lecturer through his discourses and studied 
 the books recommended in this Outline need have no fears on this 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 95 
 
 score, and will experience no difficulties in understanding 
 "Capital." 
 
 To the student desirous of conserving energy, also to the 
 teachers of "Capital" I would suggest and warmly recommend 
 that they begin the study of the book not in the customary way, 
 but commence with Part VIII, The So-Called Primitive Accumu- 
 lation. This section deals with and graphically depicts the social 
 and economic origin of capital and capitalist production, and 
 shatters once and for all time that well-known myth of capital 
 being the result or fruit of abstinence. In a powerful and highly 
 fascinating style, Marx unrolls before the eyes of the reader a 
 picture vividly showing the birth, development and culmination 
 of Capitalism. Here we have a history of the capitalistic stage 
 in the endless chain of social development, a history written by 
 the formulator of Historical Materialism, and it is truly a pre- 
 sentation throbbing with the creative vitality only inherent in con- 
 vincing and irrefutable arguments : arguments taken from and 
 corresponding with the indisputable facts of historic data and 
 events. In this section of the book the secret of primitive ac- 
 cumulation, the expropriation of the peasants and their disposses- 
 sion from the soil, the bloody and barbarous legislation against 
 the expropriated in the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries, the genesis 
 of agrarian and industrial capital, and the historical tendencies 
 of capitalist accumulation are exposed and dispassionately 
 analyzed ; including a scientific dissection of our modern theory 
 fot colonization — an examination that will prove to be particularly 
 Interesting when read in the light of the present war. 
 
 From this part of the book turn to Part III, Chapter X, on 
 The Working Day, and read Section 1, The Limits of the Work- 
 ing Day, Section 2, The Greed for Surplus Labor. — Manufacturer 
 and Boyard, Section 3, Branches of English Industries without 
 Legal Limits to Exploitation, Section 4, Day and Night Work. — 
 The Relay System, Section 5, The Struggle for a Normal Work- 
 ing Day, — Compulsory Laws for the Extension of the Working 
 
96 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 Day from the Middle of the 14th to v the End of the 17th 
 Century, Section 6, The Struggle for the Normal WorkingDay — 
 Compulsory Limitation by Law of the Working Time.— The 
 English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864, Section 7, The Struggle for 
 a Normal Working Day.— Reaction of the English Factory Acts 
 on Other Countries. As the sub-headings sufficiently indicate, 
 this chapter deals solely with the historical growth of and tend- 
 encies developed by capitalist exploitation, and thus furnishes an 
 indictment of fact fearlessly laying bare the revolting, barbarous 
 and anti-social character of the capitalist system of production. 
 
 In order to refresh the student's memory along the lines of 
 the Materialist Conception of History, and for the purpose of 
 familiarizing him with a brilliant piece of applied Historical 
 Materialism, he should turn to Part IV, and assiduously peruse 
 Chapter XV, dealing with Machinery and Modern Industry. In 
 this chapter the following interesting problems are taken up: 
 The Development of Machinery, The Value transferred by 
 Machinery to the Product, The Proximate Effects of Machinery 
 on the Workman (Appropriation of Supplementary Labor- 
 Power by Capital, The Employment of Women and Children, 
 Prolongation of the Working Day, Intensification of Labor), The 
 Factory, The Strife between Workman and Machinery, The 
 Theory of Compensation as regards Workpeople displaced by 
 Machinery, Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the 
 Factory System, Revolution effected in Manufacture, Handi- 
 crafts, and Domestic Industry by Modern Industry, The Factory 
 Acts, etc., and Modern Industry and Agriculture. 
 
 Being fully acquainted with the origin, development and 
 tendencies of Capitalism, also quite familiar with the historical 
 role assumed by it in the process of social evolution, the student 
 is now sufficiently equipped to study the economic structure and 
 laws of the capitalist system of production. And to this phase 
 of investigation the remaining and largest part of "Capital" is 
 devoted. Having digested such works as "Value, Price and 
 
OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 97 
 
 Profit," "The Class Struggle," "A Critique to Political Economy," 
 etc., the student is well ground and at home in the Socialist and 
 scientific terminology, also in the elements of Marxian Eco- 
 nomics, and should, therefore, experience no difficulties in the 
 study of such portions of the work dealing primarily with the 
 investigation and analysis of capitalist production in its pure 
 economic form. The first Chapter of Part I can be defined as 
 the bedrock of Socialist Economics. In the four sections com- 
 posing this masterly treatise on Commodities, the basic principles 
 and substance of Marxian Economics are laid down. In this 
 chapter such highly important subjects as The two Factors of a 
 Commodity, Use Value and Value (the Substance of Value and 
 the Magnitude of Value), The Twofold Character of the Labor 
 embodied in Commodities, The Form of Value or Exchange 
 Value and The Fetishism of Commodities are subjected to an 
 examination, the findings resulting therefrom elucidated and 
 formulated in concise statements and accurate deductions. A 
 mastery of the first ninety-six pages of "Capital" js, consequently, 
 essential for an intelligent understanding of the remaining chap- 
 ters in the book ; because such a mastery equips the student with 
 a faculty of scientific conception and differentiation quite con- 
 ducive and necessary to further progress ; again, the fact of being 
 at home in the labyrinth of theoretical definitions and economic 
 complexities constituting the groundwork of Marxian Eco- 
 nomics is in itself an invaluable asset to the future intellectual 
 labors of the student, and implies, without exaggeration, a 
 knowledge of the quintessential principles of Marxism. Once the 
 student has a correct conception of such familiar terms as 
 Wealth, Value, Use Value, Exchange Value, Commodity, Labor 
 Power, Surplus Value, Capital, etc., the hardest or most irksome 
 part of the task can be considered accomplished. The remaining 
 chapters in the work can now be taken up and studied in their 
 regular order, including a re-reading of those previously studied, 
 and the student should, relatively considered, experience no ex- 
 ceptional difficulties in his work. 
 
98 KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK 
 
 To not a few readers this course of study will no doubt seem 
 ponderous and unnecessarily voluminous. It will probably strike 
 many as being too "academic," "theoretical" and "impractical." 
 The absence of the current and popular works and tracts on 
 Socialism may also seem inexplicable to some and earn for this 
 course the reputation of being too "scientific" or "orthodox." To 
 all these antiquated and well known but superficial criticisms and 
 stereotype platitudes the author has only one reply to make, 
 namely: that the above is to be a course in Marxian Socialism, 
 aiming solely to equip the students with a working knowledge 
 of the fundamentals and basic elements of the Socialist philo- 
 sophy. It is not to be a course in the various "adaptations" and 
 "practical" revisions or abortions of Marxism, popularly taught 
 to a naive and guileless public as "scientific" Socialism by a set 
 of unscrupulous political fakirs. All the works listed and re- 
 commended in this course are recognized classics of Socialism, 
 and can be considered as standing proof for the absolute super- 
 fluousness of the countless collection of books and pamphlets 
 published on this subject, all claiming to be "popular expositions" 
 of Socialism and "filling a long felt want." Most of these works 
 contain as a rule nothing else but the intellectual drivel of a 
 coterie of, in many cases, well meaning but ignorant pseudo 
 intellectuals, and in other instances may be classified as the output 
 of a set of unprincipled mercenaries, who see in the labor and 
 Socialist movement a lucrative field for the realization of their 
 personal ambitions. Therefore, the author sincerely trusts that 
 the perusal and diligent study of the works listed in this course 
 will assist to create a sound conception of Marxism and a de- 
 mand for scientific SOCIALIST literature in the Socialist 
 movement. 
 
 8p 3fC 5|C 
 
 In the essay entitled "The Constructive Elements of Social- 
 ism," the author has attempted to combine Marxism proper with 
 the tactical and constructive phases of Socialism as they exist in 
 
I 
 
 OUTLINE FOR STUDY OF MARXISM 99 
 
 the modern labor movement and are necessitated or produced by 
 the social forces inherent in modern and full-fledged Capitalism. 
 This essay also concludes this series, and can be considered the 
 practical application of revolutionary Marxism to oligarchic, 
 imperialistic Capitalism. 
 
I * 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 103 
 
 I. 
 
 • 
 
 IT is a recognized and accepted proposition amongst Socialists 
 that Socialism derives its claim to a science from two branches 
 of scientific investigation: The first, Marxian Economics, is a 
 thorough dissection and profound critique of capitalist produc- 
 tion ; and the second, the Materialist Conception of History, pro- 
 vides the student with a theory for the understanding and appre- 
 ciation of historical phenomena or social development. 
 
 Through the application of the Socialist method of historic 
 investigation to social evolution, the various and ever changing 
 stages in the complex development of mankind assume a more 
 distinct form, and the driving forces and causes underlying this 
 endless chain of struggles, transformations and revolutions are 
 laid bare and exposed to the investigator. Through the proper 
 utilization of the Materialist Conception of History in studying 
 the past and present of human progress, history, with its many 
 almost impenetrable mysteries and strange labyrinths, ceases to be 
 a closed book to the student, and becomes a vital, interesting nar- 
 rative, depicting the unceasing struggles of the classes through 
 the ages : a struggle that finds its culmination in the furious class 
 war raging between Capital and Labor to-day, and that will be 
 definitely concluded with the abolition of class prerogatives in 
 property and the establishment of the Industrial Republic. As 
 stated before, to shed light on the multifarious phases of historical 
 development, and to thus enable the investigator to intelligently 
 appreciate and appraise existing conditions by a sound knowledge 
 of the past, also to enable him to vision and penetrate into the 
 future with the aid of scientific spectacles, that is the domain 
 of Historical Materialism, the groundwork of the Socialist 
 philosophy. 
 
104 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Upon this massive and imposing foundation the system of 
 Socialist, or, to be more exact, Marxian Economics is erected. 
 The Economics of Marx are nothing else but a key for the proper 
 understanding of the origin, nature and culmination of the capi- 
 talist system of production. Marxian Economics furnish to the 
 student a complete analysis of the laws underlying present-day 
 production; they point out the causes of the various industrial 
 manifestations and also expose and formulate the tendencies in- 
 herent in these economic potentialities. Thus the genesis of profit, 
 interest, rent, unemployment, panics, competition and wars is 
 easily ascertained with the aid of the Marxian system of economic 
 research. For a scientific conception of Capitalism, therefore, 
 the study of Socialist Economics is indispensable. And without 
 a sound knowledge of capitalist production, no effective Socialist 
 activity, economic or political, is possible. 
 
 The Materialist Conception of History and Marxian Econo- 
 mics, i. e., the Socialist conception of historic development plus 
 the Socialist analysis of capitalist production, these two theo- 
 retical systems are the intellectual pillars upon which the Socialist 
 movement rests — they symbolize the bedrock of Socialist science. 
 In proportion as the Socialist movement organizes and develops 
 in accord with the dictates flowing from a proper assimilation of 
 these principles, in that proportion will it become a Socialist 
 movement and possess the revolutionary and constructive vital- 
 ities so peculiar to a class-conscious movement, and vice versa. 
 Therefore the strength of the Socialist movement is necessarily 
 to be found in a sound and comprehensive understanding of its 
 principles and aims by the rank and file. Without this under- 
 standing no intelligent action is possible, and no responsible 
 opinion can be rendered or decision arrived at. Consequently, 
 familiarity with the fundamentals of the Socialist philosophy is 
 an imperative prerequisite for a competent conception of party 
 problems, and also for the proper understanding of Socialist 
 tactics. 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 105 
 
 The question of Socialist tactics belongs to the Constructive 
 ' Department of Socialism. It is a question which is generally 
 raised unwillingly, and mostly considered not worthy of serious 
 discussion. To many Socialists, and they are generally of the 
 . calibre who have not mastered the fundamental prerequisites 
 underscored above, the tactics of the Socialist movement are not 
 determined by the conscious efforts of the Socialists, but are 
 more or less the products of chance. And when we study the 
 tactics employed by the different state and local organizations of 
 the Socialist Party in this country, and notice the different con- 
 ceptions responsible for the same — conceptions that, in many 
 cases, go as far apart as day and night — then we must conclude : 
 that this melting pot of tactics, this tactical hash, is only conceiv- 
 able and possible in an organization whose members have as yet 
 developed no unity of opinion as to the aim and historic mission 
 of Socialism. A proper conception of the social significance of 
 Capitalism, coupled with a knowledge of the economic structure 
 or capitalist production, is bound to equip every worker with a 
 proper understanding of the role played, or to be played by the 
 Socialist movement in present society. Such an understanding 
 will necessarily and instinctively stimulate the imagination, and 
 create a vision of the goal of the Socialist movement in the mind 
 of every proletarian. The historic role and status, and the goal 
 of the Socialist movement being given, the determination of the 
 proper tactics and methods to be employed in the struggle for 
 industrial liberty now becomes imperative and a burning question. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Constructive Department of Socialism is that branch of 
 Socialist philosophy which occupies itself with the methods and 
 forms of organization to be employed by the workers in their 
 struggle against the exploiters for the Industrial Republic. It is 
 the logical supplement to the two theoretical systems touched 
 upon above; Marxian Economics and Historical Materialism 
 
106 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 emphasizing the necessity for and historic basis of Socialism, and 
 Constructive Socialism pointing out the method for its realization. 
 This constructive phase of Socialism is in reality the most im- 
 portant element in the Socialist philosophy, because the develop- 
 ment and success of the class-conscious proletariat actually 
 depend upon its proper organization and the correct tactical 
 interpretation and application of Socialist principles. Without the 
 proper appreciation of the Socialist goal and adoption of the 
 tactics resulting therefrom, no decisive victory for the working 
 class is possible — no victory for Socialism can be obtained. 
 The tactics, nature and form of organization of the Social- 
 ist movement may, therefore, be defined as the tools of the 
 working class absolutely essential to the erection of the Industrial 
 Republic. To determine and define these methods and forms of 
 proletarian organization is, consequently, synonymous with lay- 
 ing the theoretical foundation of the Socialist Commonwealth. 
 
 Marxian Economics clearly emphasize that the capitalist sys- 
 tem will only disappear with the abolition of private ownership 
 in the means of production. This proclaims the necessity for 
 industrial revolution. The basis of Capitalism is private owner- 
 ship, consequently, the basis of Socialism, its antithesis, can only 
 be social ownership; as can readily be seen — one excludes the 
 other, and the domination of one implies the subjugation of the 
 other. Industrial revolution or the movement for industrial re- 
 volution, can, therefore, project only one demand and that is the 
 socialization of industry and all agencies of production. Such a 
 demand, however, is not only in accord with the tendencies and 
 dictates of social evolution, but also voices at the same time the 
 specific class interests of the proletariat, and can, therefore, only 
 emanate from that social layer. The demand of social evolution, 
 whose obedient servant the working class is, is a demand at war 
 with the basic interests of the capitalist class. The working 
 class, as an agent of social evolution, and the capitalist class, as an 
 obstacle in the path of economic progress, have, therefore, nothing 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 107 
 
 in common. This fundamental difference of interests, functions 
 and historic destinies breeds the class antagonism and the struggle 
 for power. 
 
 To-day Capitalism is strongly fortified behind economic and 
 political bulwarks. By virtue of its industrial powers, it has 
 humanity the world over at the throat. To dislodge Capitalism 
 from this powerful position, and to thus lay the cornerstone of 
 the Socialist Commonwealth is the august mission of Constructive 
 Socialism. v. 
 
 In this struggle between the capitalist class and the proletariat, 
 the latter, being in the position of aggressor, is naturally at a dis- 
 advantage. It is a disadvantage, however, that compels a survey 
 of the battlefield by the workers, the results of which contain the 
 solution to the problem of how to overcome and eliminate this 
 obstacle. This survey of the economic, political and social posi- 
 tion of the capitalist class reveals, that the basic power or in- 
 fluence of this class resides not, as is so often erroneously 
 assumed, in its political domination or control of government, but 
 in its economic rule over society. History teaches and profusely 
 illustrates : that the class in control of the economic resources of 
 society in a given period has also been the class to exercise prac- 
 tical control over political society, i. e. — over society itself. 
 History vindicates the contention that the economic life of society, 
 the form of ownership and methods of production and exchange 
 existing at a certain stage of social development, is the compel- 
 ling factor, the preponderant form, which determines, influences 
 and shapes all other ethical, moral, intellectual and political, in 
 short — cultural phases of life. 
 
 A casual study of the periods of Antique Slavery, Feudalism 
 and Capitalism will serve to convincingly illustrate this conten- 
 tion. Such a study will reveal that the roots of Slavery rested in 
 the absolute domination of a people by another; that the enslave- 
 ment and exploitation of a people by Rome was made possible 
 only by the superior and well organized economic resources and 
 
108 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 the disciplined armies of the conquerors. The economic foundation 
 of Rome was predicated on organized slavery; and even the 
 classic period of Letters and Art in Greece and Rome, that as 
 yet uneclipsed period of splendour, was reared upon the backs of 
 slaves. With the decay and fall of Slavery, the marvellous splen- 
 dour, and the political and military power of Rome also collapsed. 
 The same tendencies are also detectable when examining Feudal- 
 ism. Here we note the unlimited power of social control vested 
 in the same feudality, which through its ownership or tenure of 
 the land — the then main agent of production — exerted practically 
 an undivided influence over every detail in the life of its subjects. 
 By virtue of this economic control — land ownership — the feudal 
 lord was actually elevated to the position of arbitrator over the 
 life, happiness and prosperity of his serfs : He held their destinies 
 in the hollow of his hand, because he monopolized the wherewith 
 of life — the land. And when we make an investigation of Capi- 
 talism, the by far preponderant role played by the economic 
 element of the capitalists' power in present society is easily dis- 
 cernible. Here we are compelled to admit that the class divisions 
 of to-day, similar to the ones of yore, are fundamentally economic 
 or property divisions. Furthermore, that the influence of a class 
 is not measured by the degree of its productivity, or the propor- 
 tion of its work for the social welfare, etc., but mainly by the 
 economic power in its control. To illustrate, in society to-day the 
 nigh illimitable and colossal dimensions of the workers' produc- 
 tive faculties are easily recognized and acknowledged by everyone. 
 At the same time the relatively insignificant and minor role played 
 by the capitalists in this industrial process is well known. If 
 social and political influence were apportioned in ratio to the 
 economic use-value of a class, then the proletariat would certainly 
 be the dominant class in society and the capitalists occupy a most 
 insignificant position. The opposite being the case, proves con- 
 clusively that political and social influence is not the fruit of social 
 service, but the product, as was the case in previous centuries, of 
 economic power in some shape or form. The economic power of 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 109 
 
 the capitalist class, a power to which the vast majority of the 
 population is compelled to pay homage, is not only lodged in the 
 private ownership of land, as in the case of Feudalism, but in the 
 private ownership of all instruments and agencies of wealth pro- 
 duction. The title of private ownership to the means necessary 
 to the life and prosperity of a nation, vested in a numerically 
 insignificant minority, gives this minority an unlimited control 
 over the welfare and happiness of a people. Here we have the 
 source of capitalist power — the genesis of the social and political 
 significance of the capitalist class. The title of private ownership 
 in the means of production is the cornerstone of the capitalists* 
 social influence — the generator of every form of capitalist power. 
 
 To shatter this foundation of capitalist class might, to cap- 
 ture this stronghold of industrial despotism in the interest of the 
 workers, must, therefore, be the one great object of Constructive 
 Socialism. The destruction of the economic power of the capi- 
 talist class, of course, also spells the collapse of its political rule, 
 together with the social position occupied by this class, and 
 announces the inception of the social revolution and the elevation 
 of all the producers in society to the rulership of society. The 
 question how to organize the proletarian forces for this momen- 
 tous and gigantic object; how to create the so essential power in 
 the working class ; this question is now in order, and its proper 
 solution forms the quintessence of Constructive Socialism — the 
 basis for scientific Socialist tactics and effective action. 
 
 5jC 3JC 5JC 
 
 It is a recognized truism that pressure begets pressure and 
 that might breeds might. Furthermore, must the inexorable fact 
 be recognized that the means and tactics of warfare of the ag- 
 gressor, in this case the proletariat, are largely dependent on and 
 determined by the strategical position and general methods em : 
 ployed by the enemy, the capitalist class. A study of the social 
 position of the capitalist class has already revealed to us that the 
 roots of the exploiters' power in society are to be found in their 
 
110 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 economic control of the socially necessary means of production. 
 The holding of this economic citadel imparts a strength or power 
 to the capitalist class phenomenal in scope and only explainable 
 by the absolute indispensability of these economic resources to 
 society. To capture this position from the capitalist class ; to meet 
 the economic power of the plutocrats with a superior economic 
 power of the workers, that is the next logical step in this gigantic 
 struggle. 
 
 Economic power, as has been sufficiently illustrated in the 
 foregoing pages, is the source of all other forms of social in- 
 fluence; therefore, economic power can be correctly defined as 
 the basic element of social might. Consequently, if a class seeks 
 to rise to political domination, seeks to capture the governmental 
 institutions of a nation, in short, seeks to attain control of society, 
 it must first predicate its ambitions and demands upon a solid 
 structure of organized economic power. Demands and move- 
 ments not so fortified are in the outset doomed to ignominious 
 failure and defeat. This deduction applies particularly to the 
 struggle of the proletariat against the exploiting class. 
 
 In our investigation we have clearly defined the seat of the 
 capitalists' economic power, and, therefore, fully appreciate the 
 significance and source of the political and social influence exer- 
 cised by this class in society. We know that the title of private 
 ownership in the means of production, vested in the capitalist 
 class, is at the bottom of it all. In the face of such a powerful 
 force, what form of economic power can the working class or- 
 ganize with which to be able to overcome and obliterate the 
 property prerogatives of Capitalism? 
 
 We are fully aware that all ruling classes in the past have 
 based or established their social supremacy upon some form of 
 ownership, i. e., upon some property prerogative. The patricians 
 of Rome considered birth and the possession of land, cattle and 
 a multitude of slaves a fitting recommendation to rule ; the feudal 
 lord pivoted his era of the mailed fist upon the absolute control 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 111 
 
 of the land ; and the capitalist is in undisputed possession of the 
 ship of state, by virtue of his absolute control over all the agencies 
 of production in society. The working class, mustering its forces 
 to give battle to the advocates and upholders of the present sys- 
 tem, finds itself the only class in the long chain of social develop- 
 ment that seeks to acquire the economic and political supremacy 
 in society without possessing or attempting to fortify this 
 supremacy with some property prerogative. 
 
 The working class being toolless and stripped of every vestige 
 of property can not organize its economic forces along the lines 
 of ownership. The economic power of the proletariat rests not, 
 as it is and has been the case with all parasitic ruling classes, in 
 the power of ownership, but in the power of production : not in its 
 problematical indispensability as a possessing class, but in its 
 actual indispensability as a producing class. The physical and 
 intellectual productive faculties of the working class form the 
 groundwork of present day society and symbolize the pulsating 
 blood of our social organism. Consequently, these faculties organ- 
 ized on a class-conscious basis and in line with the dictates of 
 economic development ; in other words, these physical and intel- 
 lectual productive forces of the workers organized in the interest 
 of the proletariat represent and form the structure of working 
 class economic power. As can be readily seen, the seat of working 
 class power, different from that of previous ruling classes, does 
 not rest in the usurpation and possession of rights and property 
 respectively, but in the consciousness of the proletariat's indis- 
 pensability as a productive agent — in the consciousness of being 
 the working class. This class-consciousness of the ivorkers is the 
 generator of the economic power of the proletariat. Recognizing 
 the economic indispensability of the workers in the process of 
 production, and thereby appreciating the role played by the pro- 
 letariat in the maintenance of society, it is now a simple matter 
 for the class-conscious worker to translate these conceptions into 
 proper forms of organization. 
 
112 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Production being the origin of and maintaining element in 
 social life; production also being solely carried on by the wor- 
 kers; furthermore, exploitation or the appropriation of surplus 
 value also taking place at the point of production ; and, again, the 
 point of production being also the seat of the capitalists' economic 
 power, it logically follows that the class organization of the work- 
 ers will first marshal and organize its forces at this point. The 
 organization of the workers along class-conscious lines at the 
 point of production is synonymous to rearing and developing the 
 economic power in the proletariat. Consequently, this power in- 
 creases as the class-consciousness increases amongst the workers, 
 and their economic and political organizations will grow in the 
 same proportion. 
 
 To sum up: The economic power of. the worker rests not in 
 some form of ownership or property prerogative, as is the case 
 with the capitalists, but in the recognition of his status as a wor- 
 ker, in the recognition of his economic worth or indispensability — ■ 
 in his class-consciousness. In order to assert itself effectively, this 
 class-consciousness must take on certain organized forms on the 
 industrial as well as political field, i. e., must express itself in 
 accord with the requirements of capitalist development in par- 
 ticular and social evolution in general. This phase of the problem 
 will be dealt with in the second part of this article. 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 113 
 
 II. 
 
 IN the first part of this article a detailed examination of the 
 social and economic position or status of the two principal 
 classes in present society was made. This investigation, we 
 believe, has revealed to us clearly the economic functions per- 
 formed by the different social classes; thereby also exposing 
 the sources or seat of their respective social power. We can at 
 least venture to assert that it has brought home the so im- 
 portant truism that all political or social influence exercised 
 by a social category in a particular historic period is but a 
 reflex of its economic influence or might, i. e., that political 
 power or governmental control does not conquer and cement 
 the industrial supremacy and hegemony for a class, but, on the 
 contrary, that the industrial supremacy of a class is also bound 
 to ultimately insure political power and governmental domina- 
 tion to it. The proper recognition of this fact by the prole- 
 tariat — a fact which can be amply substantiated by historic 
 and sociological examples — will eventually compel this class 
 to organize and conduct its struggle against Capitalism ac- 
 cordingly. This further implies that the proper appreciation 
 of this fundamental proposition will henceforth actuate the 
 class-conscious workers to concentrate their energies upon the 
 organization of their economic power; and this attempt will 
 again animate them to seek to establish the original source of 
 this potential force in the working-class. 
 
 In our last article we emphasized that the economic power 
 of the workers did not rest in some form of ownership or 
 property prerogative, as is and was the case with all previous 
 ruling classes, but in the recognition of their proletarian status, 
 in the recognition of their economic worth or indispensability 
 — in their class-consciousness. From this deduction it follows 
 
114 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 that the economic and social influence or power of the prole- 
 tariat is not, as it has been so often erroneously asserted, to 
 be found in the form or particular function of an organization, 
 but in its spirit and theoretical composition. Not the form or 
 particular functions will affect and determine the principles of 
 an organization, but the principles will determine the form and 
 functions. Therefore, it cannot be too emphatically under- 
 scored that the power of the proletariat does not in the last 
 analysis rest in the form or structure, but the spirit of an 
 organization. Consequently, when certain Socialists attribute 
 revolutionary vitality and creative power to Industrial Union- 
 ism as Industrial Unionism without qualifying it with the word 
 Socialist, then they commit precisely the same error which 
 certain pure and simple politicians fall into, when they 
 seek to "organize the masses into a large political party" 
 and in their anxiety for success forget and ignore en- 
 tirely the Socialist character of the organization. Primarily, 
 it is not the question whether the workers are organized 
 on the economic field along craft or industrial lines, because 
 we have both forms of organization in existence now 
 (see Germany and America for classical examples) ; neither, 
 whether the workers engage in independent politics, such 
 politics having been carried on for years by so-called 
 liberal reform movements and alleged "Socialist" parties; 
 but whether the economic and political activity is a Socialist 
 activity; whether the industrial union is a class-con- 
 scious union; and whether the Socialist political party is a 
 truly working-class organization. The yardstick with which 
 to establish the status of a workers' organization has been 
 provided in our previous article, and is to be found in the 
 organization's conception of Capitalism and the consequent 
 interpretation of the class struggle resulting therefrom. To 
 a revolutionary Socialist only such an organization is con- 
 sidered class-conscious which affirms unequivocally the inabil- 
 
f 
 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 115 
 
 ity of the workers to improve their economic and social 
 conditions under Capitalism permanently and calls upon the 
 workers to marshal their forces on the economic as well as 
 political field under the banner of not palliation or reform, but 
 revolution. Organizations, therefore, that devote their main 
 efforts to the palliation of effects and the propagation of 
 reforms, even if "ultimately" affirming and "demanding" 
 Socialism, can not be considered class-conscious organizations, 
 and are in reality a greater obstacle to the formation of a 
 genuine proletarian army of the revolution than all the 
 chicanery, economic despotism and social and cultural prerog- 
 atives of the capitalist class combined. Class-conscious 
 Socialist action can only be the product of a scientific concep- 
 tion of capitalist production, of a Marxian interpretation of 
 economic and social phenomena, and can, in consequence, 
 have only a certain meaning to the working-class. Therefore 
 it can not mean one thing to one worker and something else 
 to another. It will also be admitted that certain scientific 
 premises and a scientific mode of investigation furnish 
 certain deductions, which again will prescribe or determine a 
 definite mode of action. The mode of action or tactics of a 
 class-conscious movement, as it can be readily gleaned from 
 the preceding, are, therefore, not the fruit of "expediency" or 
 chance, but the product of theoretical clarity and scientific 
 perception. Such being the case, the tactical department of 
 the Socialist movement is, consequently, inseparably con- 
 nected with the theoretical system of Socialism, being in 
 reality a component part of this system. Therefore, tactical 
 clarity and efficiency in a Socialist movement can only flow 
 from theoretical clarity; a soundness in scientific conscious- 
 ness and profundity being the father to class-consciousness, and 
 class-consciousness again giving birth to effective class action — 
 the dynamo of class movements. 
 
 Having established the original source of working-class 
 
116 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 power, and knowing that it rests in the consciousness of the 
 worker appertaining to his economic indispensability, it is now 
 quite a simple proposition to formulate a tactical program for 
 the organization of this industrial might. Before we proceed 
 with this task, it is, however, imperative to re-state in short 
 the objective or the aim of the proletarian struggle. This 
 objective, as emphasized before, is determined first by the 
 Socialist analysis of capitalist production and secondly by the 
 proper appreciation with the aid of Materialistic Conception 
 of History of the historic role allotted to the working-class in 
 the period of evolution. From the application of Historical 
 Materialism and Marxian Economics to social development in 
 general and Capitalism in particular, we are compelled to con- 
 clude that the basic cause of the workers' misery and the 
 original source of all class demarcations existing in present 
 society, and the innumerable effects resulting therefrom are 
 to be found in the capitalist or private ownership of the 
 socially produced and operated instruments of wealth pro- 
 duction ; and that, in consequence, as long as the fundamental 
 antithesis between social production and individual appropria- 
 tion continues to exist the multifarious other economic and 
 political contradictions would naturally continue to thrive. 
 The immediate and ultimate objective of the Socialist move- 
 ment must, therefore, concentrate and organize around the 
 demand for the abolition of private ownership in the socially 
 necessary instruments of production (including all land), i. e., 
 must marshal its forces for the shattering of the commodity 
 status in labor-power and the inauguration of the Industrial 
 Republic. Consequently, at this late date of capitalist de- 
 velopment, in this period of social turmoil and full-fledged 
 Capitalism, the only demand worthy of unstinted working- 
 class support is the one which demands the unconditional 
 surrender of the capitalist class — the Socialist Commonwealth, 
 nothing less nor more. With this demand as the only imme- 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 117 
 
 diate and ultimate aim to struggle for, with the social revolu- 
 tion as the objective before it, the Socialist movement can not 
 fail to be a truly revolutionary movement, and must by ne- 
 cessity formulate tactics just as revolutionary as the aim that 
 gave birth to them. 
 
 We have seen from the foregoing that the economic power 
 of the workers slumbers in their class-consciousness; further- 
 more, that this class-consciousness can only be effectively 
 aroused and reared in the proletarians with the aid of Socialist 
 education predicated upon a Socialist or revolutionary 
 objective. Therefore, all so-called "Socialist propaganda" and 
 activity not based upon such an aim, or advancing it as the 
 "ultimate demand", and advocating as "immediate demands" 
 an endless string of palliatives or reforms, can not be con- 
 sidered as Socialist activity, and the adherents and votes 
 obtained through such a propaganda can not be considered 
 class-conscious adherents or votes. The Socialist aim must, 
 in consequence, be jealously guarded and kept intact by the 
 Socialist movement and can not be sacrificed to the aspirations 
 of political quacks or charlatans. The question what organic 
 form is this economic power, this proletarian class-conscious- 
 ness, to take on in its battle against the economic power of the 
 capitalist class is now in order, and will be taken up in as 
 detailed a form as the limited space at our disposal permits. 
 
 As an introduction to this phase of Constructive Socialism 
 we desire to affirm the necessity of utilizing both wings, of 
 practising political as well as industrial action in the con- 
 duction of the class war. Admitting the imperativeness of 
 both, it now remains to establish the function of each and 
 their relative importance in preparing for and carrying out the 
 act of emancipation. 
 
 We will first examine the function played by politics in the 
 class struggle. It is now generally recognized that the existence 
 
118 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 of a political struggle presupposes the existence of an economic 
 struggle: i. e., that political differences and antagonisms have 
 their origin in economic differences, etc. Therefore, every polit- 
 ical struggle is fundamentally an economic struggle; and the 
 eradication of the industrial struggle of the classes spells, conse- 
 quently, the eradication of politics. The existence of political 
 parties and a political life in general is based upon the existence 
 of classes, which again have their roots in the peculiar property 
 prerogatives inherent in the economic system of a particular 
 historical period. With the disappearance of economic classes 
 social and political classes will also disappear. Therefore, as 
 stated before, the abolition of all property prerogatives in eco- 
 nomic life by the Socialist workers also implies the abolition of 
 all political differences and the automatic ceasing of the political 
 struggle. The political struggle, as carried on by the class- 
 conscious workers and pursuing but one objective, can, therefore, 
 be utilized and exploited by the proletariat for only one purpose, 
 namely to abolish Capitalism. By using the political arm in this 
 manner, the political victory of the workers will naturally be 
 synonymous with the abolition of politics — the abolition of 
 classes. Thus the political struggle is engaged in by the workers 
 to carry on revolutionary Socialist propaganda. This struggle 
 has, however, purely a destructive function, because a general 
 political victory of Socialism spells the downfall of political gov- 
 ernment and the advent of the Industrial Republic, a society 
 without classes and political antagonisms. The possibility of such 
 a decisive Socialist victory, however, presupposes the existence 
 of certain industrial organizations of the proletariat necessary, 
 lirst, to impart power to the political demand and, second, to 
 perform the act of socialization. And this leads us to the func- 
 tion played by industrial action in the class struggle. 
 
 We know that the economic power of the workers rests in the 
 consciousness of their economic indispensability as productive 
 agents. To organize this economic indispensability at the point 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 119 
 
 of production along class-conscious lines and in accord with the 
 dictates of modern economic evolution is, as already stated be- 
 fore, therefore, an urgent requirement of the hour and on par 
 with generating and accumulating proletarian economic vitality. 
 Class-conscious Socialist organization at the point of production, 
 that is in the industries, however, is essential for a twofold reason 
 and must be accomplished in a definite way. 
 
 In the first place such an organization or Socialist Industrial 
 Union is an organized expression of proletarian class-conscious- 
 ness in a certain industry. This organized expression announces to 
 society that the productive facilities of this particular industry are 
 not only socially operated, but also in the control of Socialist 
 workers, who are only waiting for the signal to supplement social 
 production with social ownership. Of course the form of such 
 an organization must also be in accord with the requirements of 
 economic evolution; and being the product of class-conscious 
 workers is bound to be in line with a scientific conception of capi- 
 talist production. Such a conception clearly shows the insuffi- 
 ciency and antiquatedness of the craft form of unionism, a form 
 absolutely out of joint with the highly centralized character of 
 capitalist industry. The Historical Materialist, and every scien- 
 tific Socialist is a Historical Materialist, constructs and adapts his 
 organization to meet the demands of social requirements. He 
 studies economic and social conditions with a view of employing 
 the knowledge gained therefrom to improve the position of the 
 working-class in its fight for emancipation. Therefore, when the 
 Historical Materialist emphasizes the necessity of organizing the 
 workers along the lines of Socialist Industrial Unionism his plea 
 is pivoted upon certain sound perceptions. The reason for the 
 class character of every form of proletarian organization has been 
 sufficiently underscored and need not be dwelled upon any more. 
 What must now be shown is the necessity for this particular form 
 of unionism : the necessity for Industrial Unionism. 
 
 Industrial Unionism, like all previous forms of economic or- 
 
120 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ganization which preceded it, is but a product of the particular 
 character of the industries from which it emanated. The com- 
 plex and centralized form of production, which gave birth to In- 
 dustrial Unionism, can again on the one hand be attributed to the 
 concentration of wealth into ever fewer hands, and on the other 
 to an ever increasing social character of the machines or instru- 
 ments of production. The competitive struggle with its process 
 of elimination, and the discoveries and inventions on tl.2 field of 
 mechanical and economic evolution are responsible for the highly 
 corporate and at times monopolistic character of industries, and 
 have given the death blow to small production and also every form 
 of craft organization bound up therewith. Industrial Unionism is, 
 therefore, but a reflex of industrialized (understand highly cen- 
 tralized) capitalist production, and as such only an obedient ser- 
 vant of economic evolution. Therefore, to expect proletarian 
 class-consciousness to assume any other form of organic ex- 
 pression on the industrial field than that of Industrial Unionism 
 would be to expect the impossible to be possible, or the sharp 
 observers to be blind. 
 
 The Socialist Industrial Union, as the organized expression of 
 proletarian economic indispensability on the industrial field, ful- 
 fills two functions in the present struggle. Aside fom waging the 
 every-day struggle of the workers against exploitation, a struggle 
 that is waged distinctly with the view of abolishing exploitation, 
 and which is, similar to the Socialist political struggle, purely de- 
 structive, the Socialist Industrial Union also performs a con- 
 structive function of great importance. This constructive func- 
 tion consists in organizing the productive faculties of the workers, 
 not only in line with the requirements of highly socialized capi- 
 talist production, but also in line with the requirements of So- 
 cialist production in the making. It is an axiom of Historical 
 Materialism that the shell of every new society develops within 
 the womb of the old. We also know that the social elements in 
 capitalist production symbolize the formative stages of a new 
 
THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 121 
 
 economic order. However, a class-conscious organization along 
 the lines of highly centralized social production, and truly mani- 
 festing the economic power of the workers, does more than give 
 social expression to these formative stages — it really symbolizes 
 the future structure of the Industrial Republic in the process of 
 formation. Therefore, in the same proportion as the Socialist 
 Industrial Union movement develops, in just that degree does the 
 economic and political power of the capitalist class diminish, and 
 the economic and political power of the workers increase. The 
 growth of the Socialist Industrial Union Movement signifies the 
 ever quicker approaching destruction of capitalist production on 
 the one hand, and the ever more efficient organization of Socialist 
 production on the other. Upon the economic power vested within 
 the Socialist Industrial Union, historical evolution has, conse- 
 quently, conferred two duties : the first, to stand as the organized 
 economic might behind the revolutionary objective of the prole- 
 tariat — to serve as the buckler and sword of the social revolu- 
 tion; the second, to insure and organize the fruits of the revo- 
 lution — to take and hold the industries in the interest of the 
 Industrial Republic. In the first capacity, it serves as the agent 
 and executor of the Socialist political party, and in the second 
 it functions as the organized productive administration of the 
 Industrial Republic. 
 
 In concluding we wish again to emphasize that the economic 
 and social might of the proletariat does not rest in a certain form 
 of economic organisation, as for instance Industrial Unionism; 
 furthermore, that the structural or organic phases can never im- 
 part power to an organization; but that this economic might is 
 lodged in the class-consciousness of the workers; however, that 
 this class-consciousness can only be derived from a Socialist con- 
 ception of Capitalism, which again imparts to the workers the Con- 
 structive Elements of Socialism, clearly outlining the functions 
 of revolutionary Socialist political action and Socialist Industrial 
 LTnionism. In consequence, a worker can be an Industrial 
 
122 THE CONSTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Unionist without being a Socialist, but not a Socialist without 
 being an Industrial Unionist. Industrial Unionism to be effec- 
 tive and to have the historic significance accorded to it above 
 must, therefore, be squarely planted upon Socialist principles 
 and be vitalized by the dynamic forces of class-consciousness. 
 
 The advocacy of uncompromising Socialist principles is, in 
 consequence, a fundamental demand for all Socialist agitation. 
 Such Socialist propaganda can revolve around only one demand 
 --Socialism, fighting and repudiating all other agitation and prin- 
 ciples as reactionary or capitalistic. 
 
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