14.4 Marxism

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working men of all countries, unite!

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848

The Industrial Revolution: Some Background

The Industrial Revolution that began in British textile mills in the mid-18th century and gradually spread to other parts of Europe brought unparalleled changes in overall economic, social, and political conditions. As nations industrialized, factory production began to replace agriculture as the basis of social wealth. The old traditions of hand labor and individual craftsmanship were replaced by machines tended by unskilled factory laborers. In the first industrialized nations (Britain, France, the United States, Prussia and the northern German states), the middle class became the new captains of industry, owning and managing industrial production. The industrialization of agriculture produced huge food surpluses, leading to rapid population growth. Once-small villages and mill towns mushroomed into huge overcrowded cities as displaced farmer laborers sought the easy wealth of factory work. The philosophical basis of the new industrial economies was that of capitalist free enterprise in which the "laws" of supply and demand and of unregulated competition became the foundations of the emerging industrial economy. With industry providing the basis for their new and vast wealth, the European middle classes pressured traditional monarchist governments for constitutional changes giving them the vote and a more significant voice in the legislative process. The epoch of revolutionary unrest that began in France in 1789 and lasted until well into the mid-19^th Century was initiated by middle class resentment of the traditional monopoly of power and privilege held by the crown, nobility, and church. By the 1870s the middle class had achieved the political ascendancy that would enable it to shape the laws, institutions, and values of industrial society. Industrialization not only made the middle class the dominant socioeconomic force in Europe, it also created another new class with its own set of identifying characteristics – the industrial working class.

The new working class consisted largely of the laborers who worked in the factories, mills, mines, and built the railroads. As wages were based on what employers chose to pay their employees, workers lived in poverty in the crowded and unsanitary slums of the new industrial cities. Because factory labor did not require learning special skills, it was possible for children of both sexes to do industrial work. Needing the money their children could earn as laborers, working class parents saw value in large families and sent their children to the mills and mines as early as five or six years old. Initially, unrestricted free enterprise was the guiding principle regulating industry. The average work day was 14 to 16 hours, for children as well as adults. The work week was six days. Factory conditions were usually unsanitary and dangerous. For a person who began work in the mills as a child of six, his or her productive life would be over by the time one reached twenty. For such children there was no possibility of any formal education. Often young workers were crippled, deafened, or deformed by their years in the mills. Unlike today, there were no laws regulating the maximum length of work days, minimum age for workers nor the safety of working or living conditions. Because the middle classes controlled the parliaments that made the laws, workers were forbidden to form unions or strike for higher wages or improved working conditions. Under unrestricted free enterprise, the middle class seemed destined to profit from new and ever expanding riches while the working class seemed doomed to poverty, illiteracy, and deprivation.

Could capitalist free enterprise ever be made to benefit the workers who made its success possible? Eighteenth and 19th Century economic philosophers were mixed in their response. The Scottish economist Adam Smith maintained that all economic activity was based on the universal natural laws of supply and demand and of competition. If governments abandoned their mercantilist policies and took a complete laissez-faire (hands off) approach to the economy, the result would be unlimited production of the best quality goods at the best price by the most efficient means. All of humanity would benefit. Yet, one group of economic philosophers – those called the "dismal scientists," such as Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo – reasoned that the unimpeded operation of the natural laws of economics meant that the working class would continue to grow in size and become increasingly poorer. In contrast, later liberal philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, argued that all - both middle class and workers - could benefit from reforms that ensured the "greatest good for the greatest number." Capitalism could be reformed and still remain based on free enterprise. Such reforms should include the representation of all classes in the political process brought about by extending all the right to vote to all without wealth or property qualifications. Good government and laws beneficial to the interests of all classes would be dependent upon mandatory and universal public education. The middle class, they maintained, had the both power and responsibility to reform and regulate capitalism for the benefit of all. In addition to this philosophical response to industrialization, writers and social critics such as Britain's Charles Dickens called public attention to the abuses of the capitalist system by describing the horrors of poverty and hopelessness of life in the slums of the great industrial cities.

Gradually and hesitantly, governments in Western Europe began to respond by passing laws expanding the right to vote and regulating economic activity. Such legislation included the regulation of working hours for women and children but not much more. While encouraging, 19th century efforts at economic reform remained modest at best and largely unfulfilled. To many, something seemed terribly wrong. Capitalism's promise of profit and wealth caused middle class governments to resist significant efforts to regulate free enterprise. The rich seemed to be getting richer. The poor seemed to be getting poorer.

Communism: The Marxist Response to Industrialization

In response to the conditions of industrial capitalism, there developed a new economic theory called socialism. Believing the capitalist system to be fundamentally unjust and unwilling to reform itself, socialists called for a fundamental economic change. Socialism can be defined as follows:

A theory or system of social organization wherein the ownership of the means of production, distribution, capital, and land is held by the community as a whole and for the welfare of all; in other words, the public ownership of the means of production, etc. (Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production, etc.)

Socialists, in effect, believed that the wealth produced by laborers by right belonged to those laborers and only through state-control of all economic activity could a just distribution of wealth be possible. Socialists generally sought a moderate approach to rectifying the wrongs of capitalism. As we have seen, the “utopian socialist” response included the founding of experimental egalitarian communities whose members attempted to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Late in the 19^th Century, socialists would form political parties with programs of economic reconstruction and reform. Whatever methods they chose, all socialists believed that capitalism would never willingly reform itself. Because of this, more extremist socialists saw socialism as possible only through a working class revolution. These revolutionary socialists followed the theories of Karl Marx and called themselves communists.

More radical than socialism, communism can be defined as follows:

Communism is the theory or system whereby the achievement of socialist goals and objectives is the inevitable outcome of the historical process and is brought about through revolutionary means under a "temporary" dictatorship of the proletariat.

Born in the German Rhineland, Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) was a journalist, economic historian, and theorist. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. At Berlin he was attracted to the work of Georg F. Hegel whose interpretation of history would become an essential foundation of Marx’s own theory of history. In 1843 Marx married Jenny Westphalen and over the years the couple would have four daughters and two sons. Tragically, both sons and a daughter would die during childhood. As Marx had no steady source of income, his family frequently experienced poverty and was often dependent upon friends (especially Engels) for financial support. They often were on the move as Marx’s seemingly revolutionary writings alarmed authorities and compelled Marx to move from one city – and country – to another before finally settling in London in 1849.Marx saw the conditions of industrial capitalism as grossly unfair to the working class. It was the labor of the working class that produced the wealth of society, yet the workers lived and worked under conditions of devastating poverty because the capitalists, who owned the industries, took the profits for themselves. On the basis of his theory of economic history based on intensive investigation of the capitalist system, Marx concluded that capitalism was doomed to inevitable destruction. Through a revolution the working class would seize control of the means of production and create a classless society wherein no one's labor would be exploited for the benefit of another. Because he believed his interpretation of history was founded in natural law, Marx's view of communism is often called “scientific socialism.”

In 1844, while in Paris, Marx met Friedrich Engels and the two established a lasting friendship that would see them collaborate in both thought and writing. The son of a wealthy German textile producer, Engels (1820 – 1893) had been sent to England to learn the textile business and manage a mill owned by his father’s company in Manchester. Reacting to the conditions of the working class in Britain, Engels had become attracted to socialist theory. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Classes in England, a book revealing his observations about industrialization. Engels’ practical understanding of the actual conditions of industrial production complemented Marx’s theoretical understanding of economic history.

In early 1848 Marx and Engels published a small pamphlet called The Communist Manifesto. This little book, discussed below, is regarded as the theoretical basis of communism. The Communist Manifesto predicts an inevitable working class revolution that would overthrow the existing social order and establish communism. Coincidentally, 1848 would see a wave of revolutionary unrest spread through Europe convincing Marx that he was correct. The revolutions were suppressed, and Marx was exiled from Prussia because of his radical writings. Marx spent the rest of his life in London, where he continued to do research and develop his theories. In 1867 he published the first volume of his massive indictment of the capitalist system, Das Kapital (Capital). This work is regarded as the "classic" presentation of Marxist theory. Marx's association with Engels continued throughout his life and, after his death, Engels edited Marx's notes into later editions of Das Kapital.

In his later years Marx was involved in the founding of the First International Workingman's Association, an international association of radical working class parties. This First International sought to encourage working class consciousness with the goal of hastening the inevitable revolution that would transform society into a communist commonwealth. It failed largely because its leadership was ineffective and divided. Marx died in 1883 alone and in poverty. He is buried in a London cemetery.

The Fundamentals of Marxism

Marx saw the free enterprise system of capitalism as a great social evil. Capitalism had, he observed, created a new European ruling class, the bourgeoisie, that through industrialization and expansion of commerce, was exploiting the proletariat,[1] the industrial working class, for profit.

Workers were being forced to live on low wages in unhealthy and crowded urban slums while working long hours under poor conditions. Marx's research led him to conclude that the bourgeoisie would never bring about reforms to improve the quality of life for the men, women, and children of the ever-growing proletariat. Marx saw the social institutions of mid-19th Century Europe – government, laws, values, education, and religious teachings as the means whereby the capitalist bourgeoisie assured its continued domination over the proletariat.

Marx's Theory of History

As a student of history at the University of Berlin, Marx saw history as following a pattern in which three laws were operative. First, history, he believed, followed a law of economic determinism. Economic conditions determined the character of all other human institutions: government, law, values, religion, etc. The features of the "superstructure" of society (the kind of government, its laws, its ethical and moral values, its religious teachings, etc.) were reflective of the "substructure" of society (what kind of economic base it had - nomadic, agricultural, commercial, or industrial).

Secondly, Marx argued that history showed itself to be a series of class struggles. Historical changes in the nature of society had always been the result of conflict between the class that controlled the wealth (the ancient Roman patricians or medieval nobility, for example) and the class that produced the wealth (Roman slaves or medieval serfs). Out of this conflict would emerge a new economic order marking the beginning of a new stage of the historical process. Thus it was that the French Revolution marked the end of the land-owning nobility's control of society and the emergence of the bourgeoisie as the new ruling class. The conflict would continue in a new economic setting, that of industrial capitalism, and the proletariat, as the class that produced the wealth, would present the new challenge to the existing social order.

This view of history as a process of continuing conflict and change is known as the dialectical process and came from the theory of history developed by the German historian and philosopher Georg F. Hegel (1770 - 1831), who had taught at the University of Berlin. Hegel saw three features of this conflict, the first of which was the thesis or the existing order of society. The antithesis was the opposing challenge to the existing order. The synthesis was the new and better condition arising from the conflict of thesis with antithesis.

Marx took the idea of the Hegelian dialectic and applied it to economic determinism and class conflict. Looking at his own times Marx saw the thesis as the capitalist bourgeoisie. The antithesis was the industrial proletariat. The synthesis would be communism. This brings us to the third law in Marx's view of history.

Communism would be the inevitable outcome of the historical process. The capitalist system, by its very nature, would cause its own destruction. As industrial capitalism continued to grow, it would never permit the worker to receive the reward of his labor. Taking his cue from Ricardo, Marx, in Das Kapital, wrote of an “Iron Law of Wages” that perpetuated working class poverty and denied the worker his right to “surplus value.” “Surplus value” was the value a worker’s labor gave to the product produced. In industrial production, Marx wrote, the capitalist “expropriated” (stole) the “surplus value” as profit and shared only a small part of it with the worker as wages. Wages would never be greater than what would sustain the worker’s basic subsistence. The result would be increasing proletarian dissatisfaction. As big industry could out-produce and undersell its smaller competitors, the lower middle class would be “pauperized,” that is, driven out of business and into the ranks of the growing proletariat.

Capitalist industry would also produce more goods than it could sell, resulting in periodic crises of overproduction forcing industry to cut back production and lay off workers in order to stay in business. These periods of economic depression would force even more workers into poverty and desperation. The repeating business cycle of expansion and recession would be characterized by ever more severe depressions and further polarization (division) of society into a very small but extremely wealthy body of capitalists controlling the state and a huge mass of restless proletarians. The inevitable outcome of this situation would be the overthrow of the capitalist system by a massive proletarian revolution.

The proletariat, in seizing control of society, will overthrow the bourgeois state and abolish the capitalist economic system. In its place a new social order based on socialism will be established. As the proletariat will seek to establish the economic, social, and legal equality of all under communism, there will no longer be any class distinctions and the dialectical process of history will end. The resulting communist commonwealth would make the universal human condition one of unparalleled justice, harmony, and material wealth wherein all would selflessly contribute their talents, abilities, and energies to the total wellbeing of a classless humanity.

Marx outlined the course of the proletarian revolution in The Communist Manifesto. The first step would be "to raise the proletariat to the position of the ruling class, to win the battle of democracy." The proletariat must, therefore, first seize control of the government.

Once secure in power it must "wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie." That is, deprive the bourgeoisie of its property and capital.

Next, it must "centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state," meaning the new proletarian government must assume control over all private property: land, business, and industry. Private property had historically been the means whereby one class exploited another. Its abolition was essential to creating a just society.

Finally, the proletarian government must "increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible." It must make the economy as productive as possible through rapid continued industrialization. Only through industrialization could the benefits of modern science and technology be made available to all on an equal basis.

Where would the leadership of this proletarian revolution come from? Marx's writings are very vague on this point. Presumably it would come from those who understood the injustice of the capitalist system, the economic determinist view of society, the dialectical process of history and its continuing movement towards its inevitable outcome in the communist revolution. In any case, this communist leadership would act as a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in destroying the capitalist system and guiding the proletariat to the achievement of communism. As this communist government would be functioning in the best interests of all people, it would be the most democratic of all political movements. Once the new classless society was in place and the means of production, distribution, and capital were working for the benefit of all, this dictatorship of the proletariat would no longer have political purpose and would "wither away."

Marx saw the future proletarian revolution as international in scope. As the conditions of industrial capitalism would spread throughout the world, the conditions of the bourgeoisie and proletariat would become universal. The proletariat, he stated, had no country. It was a condition of servitude to the capitalist exploiter.

Where would the communist revolution first begin? As history was the controlling process, the revolution would begin in a country with a highly developed industrial base, the bourgeoisie in control of the state power, and a large exploited proletariat. On the basis of his observation of the economic conditions of his own times, Marx concluded that these conditions existed most obviously in Germany. The great international proletarian revolution would begin in Germany and spread to other industrialized countries.

History shows, however, that a revolutionary political movement based on the communist philosophy would come to power in Russia in 1917. Marx would never have thought communism as possible in an autocratic and agricultural country such as 19th century Russia. That it did was the work of Vladimir Ilych Lenin, who applied Marxist theory to conditions in Russia and produced the world's first communist state, the Soviet Union.

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Illustrations are from Wikipedia sources.

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Sources for Marxism

Brinton, Crane et al. A History of Civilization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960.

Cunliffe, Marcus. The Age of Expansion 1848 –1917. Springfield, MA: Merriam, 1974.

Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers. New York: Time, 1962.

Knapton, Ernest and Thomas Derry. Europe 1815 – 1914. New York: Scribners, 1965.

Langer, Walter et al. Western Civilization. New York : Harper and Row, 1968.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto (with an Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor).

New York: Penguin, 1979.

McLellan, David. Karl Marx: His Life and Thought. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe. New York: Norton, 1996.

Palmer, Robert R. et al A History of the Modern World. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.

[1] The term Proletariat comes from the Latin, proles – the term used to identify that class of ancient Romans who were so poor that they sold their children into slavery.