Karl Marx

by Shlomo Avineri

  This also reflects Marx’s post-1848 conviction that the eventual socialist transformation of society will not necessarily come about through a violent revolution but will be an outcome of the inevitable internal changes brought about by the tension inherent in the very development of capitalism itself.

  What Marx was attacking was the very foundation of the leading ideas of the Adam Smithian free market ideology, and hence most of his criticism is aimed at the conceptual mechanisms underlying industrial capitalism. As a consequence, the book is a difficult read, and in his introduction Marx admitted to the density of his argument. To use contemporary language: Marx was aiming at deconstructing the conceptual grid through which capitalist society was presenting itself, and by insisting on the term “political economy,” he was arguing that what was being presented as objective, eternal and scientific economic laws was nothing else than a human, social construct, determined by the agency of human development as evident in a concrete historical situation.

  The titles of the various chapters attest to this: Commodities, Exchange, Transformation of Money into Capital, Surplus Value, and so on. In the first chapter, on commodities (which Marx acknowledged was the most abstract and theoretical part of his work), he insists on its multifaceted nature by pointing out the difference between use value and exchange value; he later goes on to analyze the commodification of human labor inherent in the capitalist mode of production and the way surplus value is the rock on which capitalist profit is based. All of these arguments have been made by Marx in some of his earlier writings, both published as well as left in manuscript form.

  His core argument is repeatedly stated: despite the harmonistic “hidden hand” claim of classical economics, it is the inherent tensions and contradictions of capitalism that make it progressively unable to sustain itself through self-correcting mechanisms. Moreover, by presenting the forms of exchange as anchored in quasi-natural, deterministically formulated laws, capitalism abstracts from the basic fact that its mode of production is an outcome of human, historical development. By claiming this, classical economic theory is depriving humanity of its control over its actions: commodities are not objective natural phenomena, but human artifacts.

  Yet beyond the purely economic analysis, Das Kapital (as well as the preparatory notes eventually published as Grundrisse) continues to echo some of Marx’s earlier philosophical writings, though the arguments are presented in a more economically oriented language.

  This relates primarily to the way Marx now addresses the issue of alienation, which has figured so prominently in his earlier writings. Given the fact that the term “alienation” had been used by other Young Hegelians in connection with spiritual themes and became sometimes identified with mere religious and psychological phenomena, Marx was careful to distinguish himself from these generalized and undifferentiated assertions and refrained from using the term in later writings; but he returns to this phenomenon in a different language. What was philosophically postulated in the EPM of 1844 is verified here and vindicated by an analysis of political economy in the discussion of commodities. A commodity, Marx argues, “is in the first place an object outside of us”; but on closer inspection, it appears as the objectified expression of subjectivity—of human labor. It is in this context that Marx develops his theory of the “Fetishism of Commodities,” which is trying to express in economic terms the meaning of alienation.

  In a lengthy paragraph, Marx argues that “a commodity is a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character. … In the same way the light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself.” This, to Marx, is analogous to the mysteries of religion.

  In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life and entering into relations both with one another and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the product of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labor …

  Human artifacts are then, according to Marx, presented by classical political economy as ruled by eternal laws to which human beings are subservient, while in truth they are merely an expression of human activity and therefore depend on human agency as part of human autonomy as producers. This deconstruction of the objective nature of commodities and economic laws is at the root of Marx’s critique of the capitalist mode of production: it is not a law of nature, but open to human will and agency.

  Recognizing this, and acting upon this recognition, will later be cited by Marx as opening the way to different paths of development in different capitalist societies, despite their similar stages of development. In a significant but somehow neglected passage in Das Kapital, Marx argues that in England there is a distinct possibility for the working class to reach power peacefully, not only because of the extension of the suffrage, but also due to various aspects of factory and social legislation, adding that “for this reason … I have given so large a space in this volume to history, details, and the results of English factory legislation.” He also mentions the impact of the educational factory system introduced by Robert Owen’s philanthropic experiments that show “the germs of the education of the future … that would combine productive labor with instruction and gymnastics … as the only method of producing fully developed human beings”—clearly echoing measure 10 of the Ten Regulations envisaged in The Communist Manifesto. The role of religious groups advocating ameliorating working conditions in factories is also pointed out.

  Despite his reluctance to dabble in what to him would always appear as utopian fantasies as to how a future communist society would look, Marx does provide some suggestions about it even in a study obviously devoted to the working of the capitalist mode of production. These appear in some of his draft notes, which Engels published later, after Marx’s death, as volume 3 of Das Kapital. Insisting as he always did that the transition to socialism—whether violent or peaceful—would have to go through a number of stages, Marx adds:

  In fact that realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases … and thus lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. … The realm of physical necessity expands as a result of man’s wants, but at the same time the forces of production also increase. Freedom in this field can consist in socialist man as the associated producers rationally regulating their interchange with Nature; bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind force of Nature, and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to, and worthy of, their human nature.

  To Marx socialism is inextricably bound with Homo faber’s transformation of nature and controlling it, not the other way round.

  It is obvious that for generations Das Kapital was much more referred to—and attacked—than read in its entirety. Yet it gave the working-class movement a canonical text that presented the socialist case in a learned and theoretical way, beyond mere rhetoric and propaganda. It is doubtful that many people joined the socialist—or later communist—movement because they had read Das Kapital or could follow its arguments; but it helped make Marx’s thought part of the public discourse of modern societies. It never supersedes such powerful texts as The Communist Manifesto, but it granted, especially to intellectuals who joined the socialist movements and styled themselves Marxists, a theoretical foundation for their critique of capitalism.

  The publication of the first volume of Das Kapital also took place at a relatively propitious time, as it coincided with the slow but steady growth in many European countries of working-class parties that started playing a role in the political discourse of their respective societies. Within a few years, a number of translations would appear: somewhat surprisingly cleared by czarist censorship, a Russian translation was published in St. Petersburg in 1872, and a Fr
ench version in 1872–75, supervised by Marx himself; following Marx’s death, an Italian edition appeared in 1886 and an English one in 1887. All of this helped make Marx’s name and reputation known, albeit modestly, beyond the narrow confines of the working-class movement, and it certainly did extricate him from his relative obscurity, even among people who never read the book or could really follow its arguments.

  DARWIN—AND PROMOTING DAS KAPITAL

  The analogy between Marx and Darwin had been made frequently, and it happens to be one of the few issues on which such disparate interpreters of Marx as Karl Kautsky and V. I. Lenin seemed to agree. The almost canonical comparison comes from the funeral oration Engels gave at Marx’s grave on 17th March 1883:

  Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.

  Engels repeated this analogy in his introduction to the English edition of The Communist Manifesto published in 1888, and the former companion of Marx’s daughter Eleanor, Eduard Aveling, himself a biologist, reinforced it in his brochure Charles Darwin and Karl Marx—A Comparison in 1897. It then became a subject of numerous publications, among both Marxists and anti-Marxists: Marxists clung to it for the scientific legitimacy it apparently gave to Marx’s thought, and anti-Marxists viewed it as a corroboration of the ungodly alliance between Darwinian evolutionists and socialist revolutionaries.

  Yet Marx’s own views on Darwin were much more ambiguous, and the correspondence between Marx and Engels shows very different approaches to Darwin. The analogy itself has a complex and even amusing origin connected with Marx’s attempts to promote Das Kapital.

  When volume 1 of Das Kapital was published in Hamburg in 1867, Marx was virtually unknown in Germany outside the small circle of pre- and post-1848 radical groups; with a short exception during 1848–49, he had not lived in Germany for a quarter century. Marx and Engels devoted considerable efforts to have reviews of the book published, and during 1867–68 Engels himself published nine reviews of Das Kapital, some under his own name, some under the name “F. Oswald” as well as other pseudonyms. Their aim was to present the book as a serious economic study, not a mere revolutionary screed. One of these reviews had an unusual background.

  From the Marx-Engels correspondence it appears that an editor of a liberal south German newspaper, Der Beobachter, published in Stuttgart, contacted Engels with a request for a review. It seems that the editor did not know much about Dr. Marx, and heard that a German industrialist from Manchester had been writing reviews of the book and hence approached him with a request for a review article for his paper. Marx found out that the editor was a great admirer of Darwin and viewed his theory of biological “survival of the fittest” as legitimating a free-for-all market competition. Marx saw this as a wonderful opportunity to insert a favorable review of his book in a mainstream bourgeois German newspaper and advised Engels accordingly.

  In a lengthy letter to Engels on 7th December 1867, Marx suggested how to present his book to a middle-class German audience. Much of this is written tongue in cheek, and reflects how eager Marx was to have his book reach a wider audience. Knowing that south German liberals were nationalists and anti-Prussian, Marx started by suggesting that Engels might present “Dr. Marx” and his work as “honoring the German spirit and therefore written by a Prussian living in exile and not in Prussia … since Prussia now represents the Russian, not the German, spirit.” After this bow to German nationalism, Marx recommended that Engels write that one could disagree with the author’s political “tendencies” while still agreeing with his “positive” scholarly analysis.

  Aware of the Darwinist inclinations of the newspaper’s editor, Marx proposed that Engels claim that the author,

  in showing that from an economic point of view, present society is pregnant with a higher form, he proves from a social perspective the same gradual process of change proved by Darwin in the natural sciences. This is implied in the liberal theory of progress. It is the author’s achievement in pointing out a hidden progress even when it is accompanied by immediate terrible consequences linked to modern economic conditions. In this the author, perhaps against his own will, puts an end to all professional socialism, that is utopianism …

  Marx concluded his letter by saying that “this is a way to fool the Swabian philistine editor, and despite the fact that this swinish newspaper is small, it is the oracle of all federalists in Germany, and has also readers abroad.”

  Engels was happy to accept Marx’s suggestions, and wrote a review that appeared in Der Beobachter three weeks later, on 27th December 1867. It follows Marx’s concept, and more than thirty lines are lifted verbatim from Marx’s letter, including the statement that one should make a distinction between the author’s political tendencies and the positive methodology of his economic analysis. The reference to Darwin is explicit, though the denigration of “all socialists” is toned down a bit:

  Insofar as Marx tries to prove that from an economic point of view, present society is pregnant with a higher social form, he tries to transfer to the social sphere as a law the same universal process of change whose existence has been proved by Darwin in the natural science. … One has to point to Marx’s achievements, since in contrast to other socialists, he points out progress even when it is immediately accompanied by terrible consequences. … In this, the author provided, probably against his own will, the strongest arguments against all professional socialists. …

  One can see how far Marx and Engels were ready to go (and how desperate) to get attention to what Marx justly saw as his major contribution to economic thought—Das Kapital.

  This is how Marx’s quite sophisticated jeu d’esprit—which he obviously enjoyed enormously—became the cornerstone of Engels’s funeral statement, which became almost an epitaph. Whether Engels remembered the origins of the analogy when he made it, this time seriously, more than fifteen years later, is an open question. What is not in question is that Marx’s own views on Darwin were, however, quite different.

  Engels, with his general inclination toward the natural sciences, occasionally praised Darwin in his letters to Marx, yet Marx was much more skeptical. When Engels repeated his admiration for Darwin’s scientific method, Marx, on at least one occasion, maintained that ultimately Darwin saw in nature only a reflection of the brutal competitive characters of bourgeois society. In a letter he wrote to Engels on 18th June 1862, he put it bluntly:

  Darwin, whom I have looked up again, amuses me when he says he is applying Malthusian theory also to plants and animals. … It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening up of new markets, “inventions” and the Malthusian “struggle for existence.” It is Hobbes’s bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all], and one is reminded of Hegel’s Phenomenology, where civil society [bürgerliche Gesellschaft] is described as a “spiritual animal kingdom,” while in Darwin the animal kingdom figures as civil society.

  Far from seeing the theory of evolution as a serious scientific account, Marx considered it merely a mirror image of Darwin’s own capitalist English society. A harsher verdict can hardly be imagined.

  This is not the only instance where Marx compared Darwin’s theory to an ideological reflection of bourgeois capitalist society. In a letter of 5th December 1868 to Ludwig Kugelmann, one of his correspondents in Germany, Marx criticized the biologist Ludwig Büchner, who praised Darwin and Darwinism, castigating him for making faulty analogies between biological and social development. This did not prevent Büchner from publishing a brochure in 1894 titled Darwinismus und Sozialismus, which was translated into many languages and helped to propagate the analogy between Darwin and Marx.

  Marx repeated this criticism in another letter to Kugelmann, on 27th June 1870, this time against another German natural scientist, Friedrich Albert Lange, who published a book on social history “from a Darwinist perspective.” Marx ca
lled it a rehash of old Malthusian ideas, characterizing the work as “blown-up, arrogant, quasi-scientific and lazy thinking.”

  There is a further twist to all this, which is sometimes misinterpreted in the light of Engels’s funeral oration. At one time Marx considered dedicating Das Kapital to Darwin, and contacted him in this connection. This was obviously not because he admired his theories, but precisely because Darwin was an example of how capitalist reality was impacting scientific research. Darwin declined the honor—not, as some observers maintained, because he did not want to be associated with a revolutionary like Marx, but because he saw through the irony, if not sarcasm, of Marx’s request.

  Because of its catchy appeal, Engels’s analogy between Marx and Darwin gained authoritative status. Its origin in a literary publicity joke is almost totally unknown, as are Marx’s own devastatingly critical remarks about Darwin. This may not be the only case where funeral encomia distort historical memory.

  8

  The Paris Commune and the Gotha Program: Debacle and Hope

  THE PUBLICATION of Das Kapital as well as his role in the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association, responsible for much of its international correspondence, gave Marx a measure of public standing in London and abroad. The IWA became a vehicle for developing working-class solidarity across national boundaries, and although it never gave up its radical goals, it was clear that it was aiming at a gradual but fundamental transformation of society based on the growing power of working-class parties.