Karl Marx
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He then concludes with a sentence that became canonical but has to be read carefully:
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
This was a clear and radical repudiation of the whole tradition of German idealist philosophy from Kant to Hegel, although a caveat has to be added: in many references to this statement it is quoted as if what Marx said was: “it is existence that determines consciousness,” suggesting that it is existence as such—physical, material—that determines consciousness. But Marx was not a crude materialist, and that is not what he wrote. What he did write was that it is “social existence that determines consciousness.” This includes a person’s social position and relations to other persons: whether he or she is a worker or a property owner or a peasant. It is these social relations, and not merely material aspects, that determine the individual’s consciousness; the social conditions of a worker, obviously, would have a different impact on consciousness from those of a peasant. It is for this reason that calling Marx’s theory “historical materialism” takes into account his dialectical analysis of concrete social conditions, and does not limit itself merely to crass material elements in the physical world.
In a short description of historical developments, which transcends the rather dichotomic statements of The Communist Manifesto, Marx suggests that historical changes occur when there arise tensions between the economic structures of a given social order and its ideological superstructure. This is a much more nuanced and sophisticated approach to history than the simplistic—though highly powerful—opening statement of the Manifesto that “all history is the history of class struggles.” In a further deviation from the polarization theories of the Manifesto, which describes capitalist society as characterized by a binary opposition between bourgeois and proletarians, Marx nevertheless clearly realizes the significance of landowning also in modern capitalist society, and planned to devote one of the six major sections of his study to it.
The preface also reflects Marx’s internalization of the lessons of the failure of the 1848 revolutions. He does not say it explicitly, but the implication is obvious—in 1848 capitalist society was not yet developed enough to be overthrown and replaced by another mode of production.
No social order is ever destroyed before all its productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
And so as not to be misunderstood, he adds to this an admonition against utopian attempts to bring the End of Times prematurely, though this is couched in a beautiful, optimist language:
Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the challenge arises only when the material conditions for the solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.
He then reiterates his long-held view that “the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution to its antagonisms.” Hence the critical importance of understanding the inner mechanisms of capitalist society and monitoring its internal contradictions: this after all is the reason why Marx devoted his scholarly efforts to writing Das Kapital. This also explains his ferocious opposition to the radical insurrectionist views of the post-1848 remnants of the League of Communists and his later ambivalence toward the Paris Commune in 1871. In the 1860s this radical—though careful—strategy also determined the way he cooperated with the founders of the International Workingmen’s Association and tried to steer its course.
THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN’S ASSOCIATION
The relative European stability of the late 1850s and early 1860s eventually reflected itself in the way the small radical groups in various countries—and their exiles, mainly in England—were rethinking their strategy. France was settling into the quasi-imperial conservatism of Napoleon III, Germany and Italy were moving, through a series of short local wars, toward unification, and Britain was able to overcome the Chartist challenge by its gradual evolution into a parliamentary democracy. Further industrial development constantly enlarged the working class, and defensive measures by the powers-that-be tried to mitigate the life conditions of workers so as to prevent radical outbursts. Prohibitions on union organizations were slowly being lifted, and some of the pre-1848 radical socialist leaders shifted to less revolutionary modes of activity. The success of Lassalle’s movement in the German lands showed that violent revolution might not be the only path open to the growing numbers of industrial workers to achieve social and political aims.
It was in this atmosphere that the International Workingmen’s Association was founded in London in 1864. What was later to be called the First International grew out of meetings and rallies of international support for the failed Polish insurrection against Russian rule in 1863. These events brought together for the first time working-class activists from France and Britain, and out of these international contacts grew the idea of establishing some sort of coordinating body. In later socialist and communist historiography this was presented as the founding of an international revolutionary organization, with Marx at its center: it was nothing of the sort.
The initiative came from Owenites and remnants of the Chartist movement in Britain, and followers of Joseph Proudhon and Auguste Blanqui in France. The founding meeting took place at St. Martin’s Hall in London on 18th September 1864, with the participation of representatives of British, French, German, Italian, Polish, Swiss, and Russian radical groups. The opening address was given by Professor Edward Spencer Beesly, who taught history at University College London. Fiery speeches against capitalism were made, but because of the heterogeneous composition of the founders—from supporters of the cooperative movement to anarchists and political revolutionaries—it was clear that the association would have to find a way to navigate among these tendencies and function basically as a coordinating correspondence society. An executive committee was elected, later to be called the General Council, and it elected an English shoemaker, George Odger, as its chairman. Later the council appointed a subcommittee to draft its program and rules.
Marx had no role in the founding of the IWA. He was invited to the founding meeting at St. Martin’s Hall as a respected German émigré scholar, mainly through the initiative of some of his Chartist acquaintances. As he reported later to Engels in Manchester, he “sat as a mute figure on the platform,” while the German refugee and tailor George Eccarius, a former member of the League of Communists, spoke on behalf of the London German Workers’ Educational Association.
Yet this marginality was to change, when Marx was appointed by the General Council to the subcommittee tasked with drafting the IWA founding documents. The subcommittee held a number of meetings, some of them in Marx’s house in Hampstead, and on 1st November adopted, with some changes, the drafts of both the formal inaugural address and the general rules proposed by Marx, preferring them to a number of other draft proposals offered by British and Italian members of the subcommittee.
The Inaugural Address of the General Council of the IWA, as well as its General Rules, were indeed drafted by Marx, but they were institutional documents of the IWA, not his personal writings: like The Communist Manifesto, they of course reflected Marx’s views, but like every document drafted by a committee, they had to take into account the positions of other members, and in the IWA’s case get the approval of the General Council. It was only later, in publications of the German SPD after Marx’s death, and of course in the Soviet editions of Marx’s writings, that these documents were presented as his personal writings and became part of the Marxist canon. Their status as institutional documents, not just Marx’s own personal views, should not be overlooked.
This comes out very clearly in the Inaugural Address, which the General Council published as an
official document in English and German, and was later published also in Italian and Russian.
The address starts with a typical Marxian description of the worsening life conditions of the industrial proletariat between 1848 and 1864. Contrary to the claims of bourgeois economists and politicians that economic development would alleviate the conditions of the proletariat, the address provided statistical data, based on Marx’s own economic research later appearing in Das Kapital, that this was not the case: pauperization and polarization did continue, and the capitalist economy cannot solve its structural problems. As is Marx’s method, much of the data come from parliamentary and other official publications.
Yet in a nod to those members of the IWA, mainly Proudhon and his followers, who focused on syndicalist trade union activity and the Owenite cooperative movement, the address mentioned two developments it called positive: the introduction in Britain of the Ten Hours Bill, which for the first time went beyond the free market model that opposed any state interference in employer-worker relations, and, second, the widening scope of the cooperative movement in Britain, which also limited the unbridled power of the market mechanisms of supply and demand.
At the same time, the address insisted that these developments, encouraging though they were, could not substitute for what it called, in clearly Marxian language, “the conquest of political power” by the proletariat. This aim, it argued, was now accepted by the workers and carried out in the “simultaneous revival of working-class parties in England, France, Germany and Italy.” The aim of the IWA is to coordinate these efforts and encourage international cooperation between working-class parties. Given the federative nature of the IWA, which would be underlined in the General Rules, no overall policy recommendation was given, but it emphasized that without political activity, further labor laws would never be enacted. Recalling the founding background of the IWA in international solidarity with the Polish insurgents, the address—not surprisingly—ends with a scathing critique of the “barbarous” policies of Russia in both Poland and the Caucasus and calls for the development of a policy based on solidarity among the nations. A reference is also made to the raging American Civil War and the “infamous crusade for the perpetuation of slavery.” It is a radical document, but it is careful not to call for a violent revolution.
The General Rules are a clear corollary of the address. The aim of the IWA is described as establishing “a central medium of communication and coordination between working-class societies”; it underscores the federative structure of the IWA, explicitly stating in rule number 11 that despite “the perpetual bond of fraternal cooperation” between the various member societies, all groups joining “will preserve their existent organizations intact.” The aim of the IWA is defined as “the emancipation of working classes,” as part of a movement to put an end to “servitude in all its forms and to all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence.”
This struggle, the rules maintain, is not local or national, but international, and that was the reason for the establishment of the IWA. In rule 7 it states that its aim will be achieved only by the organization of the proletariat as “a political party dedicated to insuring the victory of the social revolution as its ultimate aim—the abolition of all classes.” The clear focus is on political organization: trade union activities and the establishing of cooperatives are important, but will not suffice.
Most of the rules deal with organizational issues: regular annual congresses, membership conditions, the role of the General Council and its procedures. The main function of the General Council is to exchange and disseminate information, and its operational decisions have to be approved by each member organization. Council activities have to conform to the law prevailing in each country; it is clear that the rules try to navigate carefully between the IWA’s transformative goals (“social revolution”) and not getting involved in illegal revolutionary activities, which could bring about new oppressive policies and lead once again to an 1848-like defeat. For good measure the rules also insist that all member organizations—and individual members—have to accept the principles of “truth, justice, and morality … in their conduct towards all men, without regard to color, creed, or nationality.” This moralistic stipulation was obviously inserted at the insistence of members other than Marx. A few days later in November, the General Council instructed Marx to congratulate Abraham Lincoln on its behalf on his reelection as president of the United States.
The role of Marx in the IWA is significant but ambivalent: despite what later social democrats and communists maintained, he was neither its founder nor its leader, though as a member of the General Council he played a significant role in its history—mainly in crafting its documents, not necessarily in its decisions on political activity. That had to do with his unique position—undoubtedly the foremost socialist intellectual and scholar, but having no organized political movement behind him.
As a member of the General Council of the IWA, with its seat in London, Marx took part in all of its deliberations. As its corresponding secretary, he had a crucial role in establishing and maintaining the international network the IWA provided for various radical and democratic groups across Europe. With strong personalities like Giuseppe Mazzini and Mikhail Bakunin involved in its activities, it was unavoidable that internal disagreements reflected not only policy differences but also personal agendas stemming from the different goals, some of them nationalist in their origin, transcending issues of proletarian solidarity. The IWA supported the aims of the Irish national movement and identified Russia as the major enemy of all progressive forces in Europe. Being responsible for its international contacts, Marx signed many of its statements in his correspondence with various groups, but they were the outcome of institutional decisions of the IWA, not always identical with his own views, as can be seen from the records of the General Council’s meetings. Disagreements over the pro-Bismarckian policies of the ADAV after Lassalle’s death, as well as links between the French member groups of the IWA with Napoleon III’s government, figure prominently in deliberations of the General Council. The built-in tension between the guaranteed autonomy of all member organizations and the wish of the General Council (usually supported by Marx) to project some centralized authoritative voice consumed much of the discussions and correspondence.
That Marx could not travel openly to the Continent because of his past record meant that he was unable to attend the IWA’s founding congress in Geneva in 1866, as well as the subsequent congresses in Lausanne (1867), Brussels (1868), and Basel (1869). The only congress he did attend was in 1872, in The Hague, which—as we shall see—after the disaster of the Paris Commune practically led to the dismantling of the IWA when it decided to move its headquarters to the United States. Marx’s absence from the congresses obviously kept him away from much of the decision-making process—and internal disagreements—characterizing the IWA’s activities. Nevertheless, his involvement in its endeavors over several years was his most sustained direct participation in a working-class organization, and it left a voluminous paper trail due to his function as the association’s corresponding secretary. Yet it has to be emphasized again and again that, contrary to later legend, Marx was not the towering leader of what was eventually celebrated as the first working-class international organization, with its historical role that became canonized by the name of the First International. Unlike the Second International, which represented massive socialist movements and parties in the years 1886–1914, the IWA was, for all its historical significance, a marginal organization made up of small and not very influential groups. At the time, it had little political impact, whereas the Second International became a major player in European politics.
DAS KAPITAL, VOLUME 1
Marx never finished his major economic study. His difficult life conditions obviously contributed to this failure, and his need to provide for years almost weekly reports to the New York Daily Tribune clearly interfered with his ability to concent
rate on what he thought would be his magnum opus. But there is no doubt that there were also theoretical obstacles, not the least of them being how to reconcile his revolutionary ideology with attempting to write what should at the same time be a scholarly study that would not be brushed aside as just another political pamphlet. Engels was well aware of these difficulties, and in their correspondence he tried to push Marx to concentrate on his theoretical studies: much of the generous financial support he provided for years was aimed at this goal, so as to free Marx from hack work. Occasionally he even chided Marx, which must have been slightly upsetting; in a letter of February 1860 he gently asked: “What will it help us … if even the first volume of your book will not be ready for publication when we shall be surprised by events?” Marx did not respond to this taunt.
From Marx’s voluminous drafts it becomes clear that he did not give up his ambition to write a comprehensive work, of which Das Kapital would be just the first of six volumes; this would be followed by volumes on landed property, wage labor, the state, foreign trade, and the world market. This was of course an impossible mission, and during his lifetime Marx was unable to follow up the publication of Das Kapital, volume 1. Some of Marx’s manuscript notes were published later by Engels as volumes 2 and 3.
Volume 1 was published in Hamburg under the title Das Kapital—Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, and in choosing this title Marx clearly indicated the audience to which he was aiming. Like the earlier Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859, this was not an exhortative call for a proletarian revolution but an attempt to reach a wider educated audience and instill into the scholarly and public discourse an internal, dialectical critique of modern capitalism. The book has to be judged as such, and this shift from a propagandistic revolutionary call aimed at political activists added of course to some of the intrinsic difficulties Marx had in finding the right calibration for his extensive study.