The chief works on the martyrologies are those of Rosweyde, who in 1613 published at Antwerp the martyrology of Ado (also edition of Giorgi, Rome, 1745); of Sollerius, to whom we owe a learned edition of Usuard (Acta sanctorum Junii, vols. vi. and vii.); and of Fiorentini, who published in 1688 an annotated edition of theMartyrology of St Jerome. The critical edition of the latter by J. B. de Rossi and Mgr. L. Duchesne, was published in 1894, in vol. ii. of theActa sanctorum Novembris. The historical martyrologies taken as a whole have been studied by Dom Quentin (1908). There are also numerous editions of calendars or martyrologies of less universal interest, and commentaries upon them. Mention ought to be made of the famous calendar of Naples, commented on by Mazocchi (Naples, 1744) and Sabbatini (Naples, 1744).See C. de Smedt,Introductio generalis ad historiam ecclesiasticam(Gandavi, 1876), pp. 127-156; H. Matagne and V. de Buck in De Backer,Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, 2nd ed., vol. iii. pp. 369-387; De Rossi-Duchesne,Les Sources du martyrologe hiéronymien(Rome, 1885); H. Achelis,Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert(Berlin, 1900); H. Delehaye, “Le Témoignage des martyrologes,” inAnalecta bollandiana, xxvi. 78-99 (1907); H. Quentin,Les Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge(Paris, 1908).
The chief works on the martyrologies are those of Rosweyde, who in 1613 published at Antwerp the martyrology of Ado (also edition of Giorgi, Rome, 1745); of Sollerius, to whom we owe a learned edition of Usuard (Acta sanctorum Junii, vols. vi. and vii.); and of Fiorentini, who published in 1688 an annotated edition of theMartyrology of St Jerome. The critical edition of the latter by J. B. de Rossi and Mgr. L. Duchesne, was published in 1894, in vol. ii. of theActa sanctorum Novembris. The historical martyrologies taken as a whole have been studied by Dom Quentin (1908). There are also numerous editions of calendars or martyrologies of less universal interest, and commentaries upon them. Mention ought to be made of the famous calendar of Naples, commented on by Mazocchi (Naples, 1744) and Sabbatini (Naples, 1744).
See C. de Smedt,Introductio generalis ad historiam ecclesiasticam(Gandavi, 1876), pp. 127-156; H. Matagne and V. de Buck in De Backer,Bibliothèque des écrivains de la Compagnie de Jésus, 2nd ed., vol. iii. pp. 369-387; De Rossi-Duchesne,Les Sources du martyrologe hiéronymien(Rome, 1885); H. Achelis,Die Martyrologien, ihre Geschichte und ihr Wert(Berlin, 1900); H. Delehaye, “Le Témoignage des martyrologes,” inAnalecta bollandiana, xxvi. 78-99 (1907); H. Quentin,Les Martyrologes historiques du moyen âge(Paris, 1908).
(H. De.)
MARULLUS, MICHAEL TARCHANIOTA(d. 1500), Greek scholar, poet, and soldier, was born at Constantinople. In 1453, when the Turks captured Constantinople, he was taken to Ancona in Italy, where he became the friend and pupil of J. J. Pontanus, with whom his name is associated by Ariosto (Orl. Fur.xxxvii. 8). He received his education at Florence, where he obtained the patronage of Lorenzo de’ Medici. He was the author of epigrams andhymni naturales, in which he happily imitated Lucretius. He took no part in the work of translation, then the favourite exercise of scholars, but he was understood to be planning some great work when he was drowned, on the 10th of April 1500, in the river Cecina near Volterra. He was a bitter enemy of Politian, whose successful rival he had been in the affections of the beautiful and learned Alessandra Scala. He is remembered chiefly for the brilliant emendations on Lucretius which he left unpublished; these were used for the Juntine edition (Munro’sLucretius, Introduction).
The hymns, some of the epigrams, and a fragment,De Principum institutione, were reprinted in Paris by C. M. Sathas inDocuments inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, vol. vii. (1888).
The hymns, some of the epigrams, and a fragment,De Principum institutione, were reprinted in Paris by C. M. Sathas inDocuments inédits relatifs à l’histoire de la Grèce au moyen âge, vol. vii. (1888).
MARUM, MARTIN VAN(1750-1837), Dutch man of science, was born on the 20th of March 1750 at Groningen, where he graduated in medicine and philosophy. He began to practise medicine at Haarlem, but devoted himself mainly to lecturing on physical subjects. He became secretary of the scientific society of that city, and under his management the society was advanced to the position of one of the most noted in Europe. He was also entrusted with the care of the collection left to Haarlem by P. Teyler van der Hulst (1702-1778). His name is not associated with any discovery of the first order, but his researches (especially in connexion with electricity) were remarkable for their number and variety. He died at Haarlem on the 26th of December 1837.
MARUTS,in Hindu mythology, storm-gods. Their numbers vary in the different scriptures, usually thrice seven or thrice sixty. In the Vedas they are called the sons of Rudra. They are the companions of Indra, and associated with him in the wielding of thunderbolts, sometimes as his equals, sometimes as his servants. They are armed with golden weapons and lightnings. They split drought (Vritra) and bring rain, and cause earthquakes. Various myths surround their birth. A derivative word, Maruti or Maroti, is the popular name throughout the Deccan for Hanuman (q.v.).
MARVELL, ANDREW(1621-1678), English poet and satirist, son of Andrew Marvell and his wife Anne Pease, was born at the rectory house, Winestead, in the Holderness division of Yorkshire, on the 31st of March 1621. In 1624 his father exchanged the living of Winestead for the mastership of Hull grammar school. He also became lecturer at Holy Trinity Church andmaster of the Charterhouse in the same town. Thomas Fuller (Worthies of England, ed. 1811, i. 165) describes him as “a most excellent preacher.” The younger Marvell was educated at Hull grammar school until his thirteenth year, when he matriculated on the 14th of December 1633 (according to a doubtful statement in Wood’sAthen. oxon.) at Trinity College, Cambridge. It is related by his early biographer, Thomas Cooke, that he was induced by some Jesuit priests to leave the university. After some months he was discovered by his father in a bookseller’s shop in London, and returned to Cambridge.1He contributed two poems to theMusa cantabrigiensisin 1637, and in the following year he received a scholarship at Trinity College, and took his B.A. degree in 1639. His father was drowned in 1640 while crossing the Humber in company with the daughter of a Mrs Skinner, almost certainly connected with the Cyriack Skinner to whom two of Milton’s sonnets are addressed. It is said that Mrs Skinner adopted Marvell and provided for him at her death. The Conclusion Book of Trinity College, Cambridge, registers the decision (Sept. 24, 1641) that he with others should be excluded from further advantages from the college either because they were married, or did not attend their “days” or “acts.” He travelled for four years on the Continent, visiting Holland, France, Italy and Spain. In Rome he met Richard Flecknoe, whom he satirized in the amusing verses on “Flecnoe, an English priest at Rome.”
Although Marvell ranks as a great Puritan poet his sympathies were at first with Charles I., and in the lines on “Tom May’s Death” he found no words too strong to express his scorn for the historian of the Long Parliament. He himself was no partisan, but had a passion for law and order. He acquiesced, accordingly, in the strong rule of Cromwell, but in his famous “Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” (1650)2he inserts a tribute to the courage and dignity of Charles I., which forms the best-known section of the poem. In 1650 he became tutor to Lord Fairfax’s daughter Mary, afterwards duchess of Buckingham, then in her twelfth year. During his life with the Fairfaxes at Nunappleton, Yorkshire, he wrote the poems “Upon the Hill and Grove at Billborow” and “On Appleton House.” Doubtless the other poems on country life, and his exquisite “garden poetry” may be referred to this period. “Clorinda and Damon” and “The Nymph complaining for the Death of her Faun” are good examples of the beauty and simplicity of much of this early verse. But he had affinities with John Donne and the metaphysical poets, and could be obscure on occasion.
Marvell was acquainted with Milton probably through their common friends, the Skinners, and in February 1653 Milton sent him with a letter to the lord president of the council, John Bradshaw, recommending him as “a man of singular desert for the state to make use of,” and suggesting his appointment as assistant to himself in his duties as foreign secretary. The appointment was, however, given at the time to Philip Meadows, and Marvell became tutor to Cromwell’s ward, William Dutton. In 1653 he was established with his pupil at Eton in the house of John Oxenbridge, then a fellow of the college, but formerly a minister in the Bermudas. No doubt the well-known verses, “Bermudas,” were inspired by intercourse with the Oxenbridges. At Eton he enjoyed the society of John Hales, then living in retirement. He was employed by Milton in 1654 to convey to Bradshaw a copy of theDefensio secunda, and the letter to Milton in which he describes the reception of the gift is preserved. When the secretaryship again fell vacant in 1657 Marvell was appointed, and retained the appointment until the accession of Charles II. During this period he wrote many political poems, all of them displaying admiration for Cromwell. His “Poem upon the Death of his late Highness the Lord Protector” has been unfavourably compared to Edmund Waller’s “Panegyric,” but Marvell’s poem is inspired with affection.
Marvell’s connexion with Hull hadbeenstrengthened by the marriages of his sisters with persons of local importance, and in January 1659 he was elected to represent the borough in parliament. He was re-elected in 1660, again in 1661, and continued to represent the town until his death. According to Milton’s nephew, Edward Phillips, the poet owed his safety at the Restoration largely to the efforts of Marvell, who “made a considerable party for him” in the House of Commons. From 1663 to 1665 he acted as secretary to Charles Howard, 1st earl of Carlisle, on his difficult and unsuccessful embassy to Muscovy, Sweden, and Denmark; and this is the only official post he filled during the reign of Charles. With the exception of this absence, for which he had leave from his constituents, and of shorter intervals of travel on private business which took him to Holland, Marvell was constant in his parliamentary attendance to the day of his death. He seldom spoke in the House, but his parliamentary influence is established by other evidence. He was an excellent man of affairs, and looked after the special interests of the port of Hull. He was a member of the corporation of Trinity House, both in London and Hull, and became a younger warden of the London Trinity House. His correspondence with his constituents, from 1660 to 1678, some 400 letters in all, printed by Dr Grosart (Complete Works, vol. ii.), forms a source of information all the more valuable because by a resolution passed at the Restoration the publication of the proceedings of the House without leave was forbidden. He made it a point of duty to write at each post—that is, every two or three days—both on local interests and on all matters of public interest. The discreet reserve of these letters, natural at a time when the post office was a favourite source of information to the government, contrasts curiously with the freedom of the few private letters which state opinions as well as facts. Marvell’s constituents, in their turn, were not unmindful of their member. He makes frequent references to their presents, usually of Hull ale and of salmon, and he regularly drew from them the wages of a member, six-and-eightpence a day during session.
The development of Marvell’s political opinions may be traced in the satirical verse he published during the reign of Charles II., and in his private letters. With all his admiration for Cromwell he had retained his sympathies with the royal house, and had loyally accepted the Restoration. In 1667 the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames, and Marvell expressed his wrath at the gross mismanagement of public affairs in “Last Instructions to a Painter,” a satire which was published as a broadside and of course remained anonymous. Edmund Waller had published in 1665 a gratulatory poem on the duke of York’s victory in that year over the Dutch as “Instructions to a Painter for the drawing up and posture of his Majesty’s forces at sea....” A similar form was adopted in Sir John Denham’s four satirical “Directions to a Painter,” and Marvell writes on the same model. His indignation was well grounded, but he had no scruples in the choice of the weapons he employed in his warfare against the corruption of the court, which he paints even blacker than do contemporary memoir writers; and his satire often descends to the level of the lampoon. The most inexcusable of his scandalous verses are perhaps those on the duchess of York. In the same year he attacked Lord Clarendon, evidently hoping that with the removal of the “betrayer of England and Flanders” matters would improve. But in 1672 when he wrote his “Poem on the Statue in the Stocks-Market” he had no illusions left about Charles, whom he describes as too often “purchased and sold,” though he concludes with “Yet we’d rather have him than his bigoted brother.” “An Historical Poem,” “Advice to a Painter,” and “Britannia and Raleigh” urge the same advice in grave language. In the last-named poem, probably written early in 1674, Raleigh pleads that “’tis god-like good to save a fallen king,” but Britannia has at length decided that the tyrant cannot be divided from the Stuart, and proposes to reform the stateon the republican model of Venice. These and other equally bold satires were probably handed round in MS., or secretly printed, and it was not until after the Revolution that they were collected with those of other writers inPoems on Affairs of State(3 pts., 1689; 4 pts., 1703-1707). Marvell’s controversial prose writings are wittier than his verse satires, and are free from the scurrility which defaces the “Last Instructions to a Painter.” A short and brilliant example of his irony is “His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament” (printed inGrosart, ii. 431 seq.), in which Charles is made to take the house into the friendliest confidence on his domestic affairs.
Marvell was among the masters of Jonathan Swift, who, in the “Apology” prefixed to theTale of a Tub, wrote that his answer to Samuel Parker could be still read with pleasure, although the pamphlets that provoked it were long since forgotten. Parker had written aDiscourse of Ecclesiastical Politye(1670) and other polemics against Dissenters, to which Marvell replied inThe Rehearsal Transposed(2 pts., 1672 and 1673). The book contains some passages of dignified eloquence, and some coarse vituperation, but the prevailing tone is that of grave and ironical banter of Parker as “Mr Bayes.” Parker was attacked, says Bishop Burnet (Hist. of His Own Time, ed. 1823, i. 451), “by the liveliest droll of the age, who writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and entertaining a conduct, that, from the king down to the tradesman, his books were read with great pleasure.” He certainly humbled Parker, but whether this effect extended, as Burnet asserts, to the whole party, is doubtful. Parker had intimated that Milton had a share in the first part of Marvell’s reply. This Marvell emphatically denied (Grosart, iii. 498). He points out that Parker had, like Milton, profited by the royal clemency, and that he had first met him at Milton’s house. He takes the opportunity to praise Milton’s “great learning and sharpness of wit,” and to the second edition ofParadise Lost(1674) he contributed some verses of just and eloquent praise.
HisMr Smirke, or the Divine in Mode ...(1676) was a defence of Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, against the criticisms of Dr Francis Turner, master of St John’s College, Cambridge. A far more important work wasAn Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England, more particularly from the Long Prorogation of Parliament ...(1677). This pamphlet was written in the same outspoken tone as the verse satires, and brought against the court the indictment of nursing designs to establish absolute monarchy and the Roman Catholic religion at the same time. A reward was offered for the author, whose identity was evidently suspected, and it is said that Marvell was in danger of assassination. He died on the 16th of August 1678 in consequence of an overdose of an opiate taken during an attack of ague. He was buried in the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, London. Joint administration of his estate was granted to one of his creditors, and to his widow, Mary Marvell, of whom we have no previous mention.
As a humorist, and as a great “parliament man,” no name is of more interest to a student of the reign of Charles II. than that of Marvell. He had friends among the republican thinkers of the times. Aubrey says that he was intimate with James Harrington, the author ofOceana, and he was probably a member of the “Rota” club. In the heyday of political infamy, he, a needy man, obliged to accept wages from his constituents, kept his political virtue unspotted, and he stood throughout his career as the champion of moderate and tolerant measures. There is a story that his old schoolfellow, Danby, was sent by the king to offer the incorruptible poet a place at court and a gift of £1000, which Marvell refused with the words: “I live here to serve my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one.” When self-indulgence was the ordinary habit of town life, Marvell was a temperate man. His personal appearance is described by John Aubrey: “He was of a middling stature, pretty strong set, roundish faced, cherry cheeked, hazel eyed, brown haired. In his conversation he was modest and of very few words.” (“Lives of Eminent Persons,” printed inLetters ... in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 1813).
Among Marvell’s works is also aDefence of John Howe on God’s Prescience ...(1678), and among the spurious works fathered on him are:A Seasonable Argument ... for a new Parliament(1677),A Seasonable Question and a Useful Answer ...(1676),A Letter from a Parliament Man ...(1675), and a translation ofSuetonius(1672). Marvell’s satires were no doubt first printed as broadsides, but very few are still extant in that form. Such of his poems as were printed during his lifetime appeared in collections of other men’s works. The earliest edition of his non-political verse isMiscellaneous Poems(1681), edited by his wife, Mary Marvell. The political satires were printed asA Collection of Poems on Affairs of State, by A—— M——l, Esq. and other Eminent Wits(1689), with second and third parts in the same year. The works of Andrew Marvell contained in these two publications were also edited by Thomas Cooke (2 vols., 1726), who added some letters. Cooke’s edition was reprinted by Thomas Davies in 1772. Marvell’s next editor was Captain Thompson of Hull, who was connected with the poet’s family, and made further additions from a commonplace book since lost. Other editions followed, but were superseded by Dr A. B. Grosart’s laborious work, which, in spite of many defects of style, remains indispensable to the student.The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P.(4 vols., 1872-1875) forms part of his “Fuller Worthies Library.” See also the admirable edition of thePoems and Satires of Andrew Marvell ...(2 vols., 1892) in the “Muses’ Library,” where a full bibliography of his works and of the commentaries on them is provided; alsoThe Poems and some Satires of Andrew Marvell(ed. Edward Wright, 1904), andAndrew Marvell(1905), by Augustine Birrell in the “English Men of Letters” series.
Among Marvell’s works is also aDefence of John Howe on God’s Prescience ...(1678), and among the spurious works fathered on him are:A Seasonable Argument ... for a new Parliament(1677),A Seasonable Question and a Useful Answer ...(1676),A Letter from a Parliament Man ...(1675), and a translation ofSuetonius(1672). Marvell’s satires were no doubt first printed as broadsides, but very few are still extant in that form. Such of his poems as were printed during his lifetime appeared in collections of other men’s works. The earliest edition of his non-political verse isMiscellaneous Poems(1681), edited by his wife, Mary Marvell. The political satires were printed asA Collection of Poems on Affairs of State, by A—— M——l, Esq. and other Eminent Wits(1689), with second and third parts in the same year. The works of Andrew Marvell contained in these two publications were also edited by Thomas Cooke (2 vols., 1726), who added some letters. Cooke’s edition was reprinted by Thomas Davies in 1772. Marvell’s next editor was Captain Thompson of Hull, who was connected with the poet’s family, and made further additions from a commonplace book since lost. Other editions followed, but were superseded by Dr A. B. Grosart’s laborious work, which, in spite of many defects of style, remains indispensable to the student.The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P.(4 vols., 1872-1875) forms part of his “Fuller Worthies Library.” See also the admirable edition of thePoems and Satires of Andrew Marvell ...(2 vols., 1892) in the “Muses’ Library,” where a full bibliography of his works and of the commentaries on them is provided; alsoThe Poems and some Satires of Andrew Marvell(ed. Edward Wright, 1904), andAndrew Marvell(1905), by Augustine Birrell in the “English Men of Letters” series.
1There is an allusion to this escapade addressed by another anxious parent to the elder Marvell in the Hull Corporation Records (No. 498) [see Grosart, i. xxviii.]. The document is without address or signature, but the identification seems safe.2This poem has been highly praised by Goldwin Smith (T. H. Ward’sEnglish Poets, ii. 383 (1880)). It was first printed, so far as we know, in 1776, and the only external testimony to Marvell’s authorship is the statement of Captain Thompson, who had included many poems by other writers in his edition of Marvell, that this ode was in poet’s own handwriting. The internal evidence in favour of Marvell may, however, be accepted as conclusive.
1There is an allusion to this escapade addressed by another anxious parent to the elder Marvell in the Hull Corporation Records (No. 498) [see Grosart, i. xxviii.]. The document is without address or signature, but the identification seems safe.
2This poem has been highly praised by Goldwin Smith (T. H. Ward’sEnglish Poets, ii. 383 (1880)). It was first printed, so far as we know, in 1776, and the only external testimony to Marvell’s authorship is the statement of Captain Thompson, who had included many poems by other writers in his edition of Marvell, that this ode was in poet’s own handwriting. The internal evidence in favour of Marvell may, however, be accepted as conclusive.
MARX, HEINRICH KARL(1818-1883), German socialist, and head of the International Working Men’s Association, was born on the 5th of May 1818 in Trèves (Rhenish Prussia). His father, a Jewish lawyer, in 1824 went over to Christianity, and he and his whole family were baptized as Christian Protestants. The son went to the high grammar school at Trèves, and from 1835 to the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He studied first law, then history and philosophy, and in 1841 took the degree of doctor of philosophy. In Berlin he had close intimacy with the most prominent representatives of the young Hegelians—the brothers Bruno and Edgar Bauer and their circle, the so-called “Freien.” He at first intended to settle as a lecturer at Bonn University, but his Radical views made a university career out of the question, and he accepted work on a Radical paper, theRheinische Zeitung, which expounded the ideas of the most advanced section of the Rhenish Radicalbourgeoisie. In October 1842 he became one of the editors of this paper, which, however, after an incessant struggle with press censors, was suppressed in the beginning of 1843. In the summer of this year Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of a high government official. Through her mother Jenny von Westphalen was a lineal descendant of the earl of Argyle, who was beheaded under James II. She was a most faithful companion to Marx during all the vicissitudes of his career, and died on the 2nd of December 1881; he outliving her only fifteen months.
Already in theRheinische Zeitungsome socialist voices had been audible, couched in a somewhat philosophical strain. Marx, though not accepting these views, refused to criticize them until he had studied the question thoroughly. For this purpose he went in the autumn of 1843 to Paris, where the socialist movement was then at its intellectual zenith, and where he, together with Arnold Ruge, the well-known literary leader of Radical Hegelianism, was to edit a review, theDeutsch-französische Jahrbücher, of which, however, only one number appeared. It contained two articles by Marx—a criticism of Bruno Bauer’s treatment of the Jewish question, and an introduction to a criticism of Hegel’s philosophy of the law. The first concluded that the social emancipation of the Jews could only be achieved together with the emancipation of society from Judaism,i.e.commercialism. The second declared that in Germany no partial political emancipation was possible; there was now only one class from which a real and reckless fight against authority was to be expected—namely, the proletariate. But the proletariate could not emancipate itself except by breaking all the chains, by dissolving the whole constituted society, by recreating man as a member of the human society in the place of established states and classes. “Then the day of German resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallican cock.” Botharticles thus relegated the solution of the questions then prominent in Germany to the advent of socialism, and so far resembled in principle other socialist publications of the time. But the way of reasoning was different, and the final words of the last quoted sentence pointed to a political revolution, to begin in France as soon as the industrial evolution had created a sufficiently strong proletariate. In contradistinction to most of the socialists of the day, Marx laid stress upon the political struggle as the lever of social emancipation. In some letters which formed part of a correspondence between Marx, Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Mikhail Bakunin, published as an introduction to the review, this opposition of Marx to socialistic “dogmatism” was enunciated in a still more pronounced form: “Nothing prevents us,” he said, “from combining our criticism with the criticism of politics, from participating in politics, and consequently in real struggles. We will not, then, oppose the world like doctrinarians with a new principle: here is truth, kneel down here! We expose new principles to the world out of the principles of the world itself. We don’t tell it: ‘Give up your struggles, they are rubbish, we will show you the true war-cry.’ We explain to it only the real object for which it struggles, and consciousness is a thing it must acquire even if it objects to it.”
In Paris Marx metFriedrich Engels(1820-1895), from whom theDeutsch-französische Jahrbücherhad two articles—a powerfully written outline of a criticism of political economy, and a letter on Carlyle’sPast and Present. Engels, the son of a wealthy cotton-spinner, was born in 1820 at Barmen. Although destined by his father for a commercial career, he attended a classical school, and during his apprenticeship and whilst undergoing in Berlin his one year’s military service, he had given up part of his free hours to philosophical studies. In Berlin he had frequented the society of the “Freien,” and had written letters to theRheinische Zeitung. In 1842 he had gone to England, his father’s firm having a factory near Manchester, and had entered into connexion with the Owenite and Chartist movements, as well as with German communists. He contributed to Owen’sNew Moral World and to the ChartistNorthern Star, gave up much of his abstract speculative reasoning for a more positivist conception of things, and took to economic studies. Now, in September 1844, on a short stay in Paris, he visited Marx, and the two found that in regard to all theoretical points there was perfect agreement between them. From that visit dates the close friendship and uninterrupted collaboration and exchange of ideas which lasted during their lives, so that even some of Marx’s subsequent works, which he published under his own name, are more or less also the work of Engels. The first result of their collaboration was the bookDie heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten, a scathing exposition of the perverseness of the high-sounding speculative radicalism of Bauer and the other Berlin “Freie.” By aid of an analysis, which, though not free from exaggeration and a certain diffuseness, bears testimony to the great learning of Marx and the vigorous discerning faculty of both the authors, it is shown that the supposed superior criticism—the “critical criticism” of the Bauer school, based upon the doctrine of a “self-conscious” idea, represented by or incarnated in the critic—was in fact inferior to the older Hegelian idealism. The socialist and working-class movements in Great Britain, France and Germany are defended against the superior criticism of the “holy” Bauer family.
In Paris, where he had very intimate intercourse with Heinrich Heine, who always speaks of him with the greatest respect, and some of whose poems were suggested by Marx, the latter contributed to a Radical magazine, theVorwärts; but in consequence of a request by the Prussian government, nearly the whole staff of the magazine soon got orders to leave France. Marx now went to Brussels, where he shortly afterwards was joined by Engels. In Brussels he published his second great work,La Misère de la philosophie, a sharp rejoinder to thePhilosophie de la misère ou contradictions économiquesof J. P. Proudhon. In this he deals with Proudhon, whom in the former work he had defended against the Bauers, not less severely than with the latter. It is shown that in many points Proudhon is inferior to both the middle-class economists and the socialists, that his somewhat noisily proclaimed discoveries in regard to political economy were made long before by English socialists, and that his main remedies, the “constitution of the labour-value” and the establishment of exchange bazaars, were but a repetition of what English socialists had already worked out much more thoroughly and more consistently. Altogether the book shows remarkable knowledge of political economy. In justice to Proudhon, it must be added that it is more often his mode of speaking than the thought underlying the attacked sentences that is hit by Marx’s criticism. In Brussels Marx and Engels also wrote a number of essays, wherein they criticized the German literary representatives of that kind of socialism and philosophic radicalism which was mainly influenced by the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, and deduced its theorems or postulates from speculations on the “nature of man.” They mockingly nicknamed this kind of socialism “German or True Socialism,” and ridiculed the idea that by disregarding historical and class distinctions a conception of society and socialism superior to that of the English and French workers and theorists could be obtained. Some of these essays were published at the time, two or three, curiously enough, by one of the attacked writers in his own magazine; one, a criticism of Feuerbach himself, was in a modified form published by Engels in 1885, but others have remained in manuscript. They were at first intended for publication in two volumes as a criticism of post-Hegelian German philosophy, but the Revolution of 1848 postponed for a time all interest in theoretical discussions.
In Brussels Marx and Engels came into still closer contact with the socialist working-class movement. They founded a German workers’ society, acquired a local German weekly, theBrüsseller deutsche Zeitung, and finally joined a communistic society of German workers, the “League of the Just,” a secret society which had its main branches in London, Paris, Brussels and several Swiss towns. For this league, which till then had adhered to the rough-and-ready communism of the gifted German workman Wilhelm Weitling, but which now called itself “League of the Communists,” and gave up its leanings towards conspiracy and became an educational and propagandistic body, Marx and Engels at the end of 1847 wrote their famous pamphlet,Manifest der Kommunisten. It was a concise exposition of the history of the working-class movement in modern society according to their views, to which was added a critical survey of the existing socialist and communist literature, and an explanation of the attitude of the Communists towards the advanced opposition parties in the different countries. Scarcely was the manifesto printed when, in February 1848, the Revolution broke out in France, and “the crowing of the Gallican cock” gave the signal for an upheaval in Germany such as Marx had prophesied. After a short stay in France, Marx and Engels went to Cologne in May 1848, and there with some friends they founded theNeue rheinische Zeitung, with the sub-title “An Organ of Democracy,” a political daily paper on a large scale, of which Marx was the chief editor. They took a frankly revolutionary attitude, and directed their criticism to a great extent against the middle-class democratic parties, who, by evading all decisive issues, delayed the achievement of the upheaval. When in November 1848 the king of Prussia dissolved the National Assembly, Marx and his friends advocated the non-payment of taxes and the organization of armed resistance. Then the state of siege was declared in Cologne, theNeue rheinische Zeitungwas suspended, and Marx was put on trial for high treason. He was unanimously acquitted by a middle-class jury, but in May 1849 he was expelled from Prussian territory. He went to Paris, but was soon given the option of either leaving France or settling at a small provincial place. He preferred the former, and went to England. He settled in London, and remained there for the rest of his life.
At first he tried to reorganize the Communist League; but soon a conflict broke out in its ranks, and after some of its members had been tried in Germany and condemned for hightreason, Marx, who had done everything to save the accused, dissolved the Communist League altogether. Nor was a literary enterprise, a review, also called theNeue rheinische Zeitung, more successful; only six numbers of it were issued. It contained, however, some very remarkable contributions; and a series of articles on the career of the French Revolution of 1848, which first appeared there, was in 1895 published by Engels in book form under the title ofDie Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich von 1848”by Karl Marx.” Carlyle’sLatter Day Pamphlets, published at that time, met with a very vehement criticism in theNeue rheinische Zeitung. The endeavours of Ernest Jones and others to revive the Chartist movement were heartily supported by Marx, who contributed to several of the Chartist journals of the period, mostly, if not wholly, without getting or asking payment. He lived at this time in great financial straits, occupied a few small rooms in Dean Street, Soho, and all his children then born died very young. At length he was invited to write letters for theNew York Tribune, whose staff consisted of advanced democrats and socialists of the Fourierist school. For these letters he was paid at the rate of a guinea each. Part of them, dealing with the Eastern Question and the Crimean War, were republished in 1897 (London, Sonnenschein). Some were even at the time reprinted in pamphlet form. The co-operation of Marx, who was determinedly anti-Russian, since Russia was the leading reactionary power in Europe, was obtained by David Urquhart and his followers. A number of Marx’s articles were issued as pamphlets by the Urquhartite committees, and Marx wrote a series of articles on the diplomatic history of the 18th century for the UrquhartiteFree Press(Sheffield and London, 1856-1857). When in 1859 the Franco-Austrian War about Italy broke out, Marx denounced it as a Franco-Russian intrigue, directed against Germany on the one hand and the revolutionary movement in France on the other. He opposed those democrats who supported a war which in their eyes aimed at the independence of the Italian nation and promised to weaken Austria, whose superiority in Germany was the hindrance to German unity. Violent derogatory remarks directed against him by the well-known naturalist Karl Vogt gave occasion to a not less violent rejoinder,Herr Vogt, a book full of interesting material for the student of modern history. Marx’s contention, that Vogt acted as an agent of the Bonapartist clique, seems to have been well founded, whilst it must be an open question how far Vogt acted from dishonourable motives. The discussions raised by the war also resulted in a great estrangement between Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle had taken a similar view of the war to that advocated by Vogt, and fought tooth and nail for it in letters to Marx. In the same year, 1859, Marx published as a first result of his renewed economic studies the bookZur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. It was the first part of a much larger work planned to cover the whole ground of political economy. But Marx found that the arrangement of his materials did not fully answer his purpose, and that many details had still to be worked out. He consequently altered the whole plan and sat down to rewrite the book, of which in 1867 he published the first volume under the titleDas Kapital.
In the meantime, in 1864, the International Working Men’s Association was founded in London, and Marx became in fact though not in name, the head of its general council. All its addresses and proclamations were penned by him and explained in lectures to the members of the council. The first years of the International went smoothly enough. Marx was then at his best. He displayed in the International a political sagacity and toleration which compare most favourably with the spirit of some of the publications of the Communist League. He was more of its teacher than an agitator, and his expositions of such subjects as education, trade unions, the working day, and co-operation were highly instructive. He did not hurry on extreme resolutions, but put his proposals in such a form that they could be adopted by even the more backward sections, and yet contained no concessions to reactionary tendencies. But this condition of things was not permitted to go on. The anarchist agitation of Bakunin, the Franco-German War, and the Paris Commune created a state of things before which the International succumbed. Passions and prejudices ran so high that it proved impossible to maintain any sort of centralized federation. At the congress of the Hague, September 1872, the general council was removed from London to New York. But this was only a makeshift, and in July 1876 the rest of the old International was formally dissolved at a conference held in Philadelphia. That its spirit had not passed away was shown by subsequent international congresses, and by the growth and character of socialist labour parties in different countries. They have mostly founded their programmes on the basis of its principles, but are not always in their details quite in accordance with Marx’s views. Thus the programme which the German socialist party accepted at its congress in 1875 was very severely criticized by Marx. This criticism, reprinted in 1891 in the reviewDie neue Zeit, is of great importance for the analysis of Marx’s conception of socialism.
The dissolution of the International gave Marx an opportunity of returning to his scientific work. He did not, however, succeed in publishing further volumes ofDas Kapital. In order to make it—and especially the part dealing with property in land—as complete as possible, he took up, as Engels tells us, a number of new studies, but repeated illness interrupted his researches, and on the 14th of March 1883 he passed quietly away.
From the manuscripts he left Engels compiled a second and a third volume ofDas Kapitalby judiciously and elaborately using complete and incomplete chapters, rough copies and excerpts, which Marx had at different times written down. Much of the copy used dates back to the ’sixties,i.e.represents the work as at first conceived by Marx, so that,e.g., the matter published as the third volume was in the main written much earlier than the matter which was used for compiling the second volume. The same applies to the fourth volume. Although the work thus comprises the four volumes promised in the preface to the book, it can only in a very restricted sense be regarded as complete. In substance and demonstration it must be regarded as a torso. And it is perhaps not quite accidental that it should be so. Marx, if he had lived longer and had enjoyed better health, would have given the world a much greater amount of scientific work of high value than is now the case. But it seems doubtful whether he would have broughtDas Kapital, his main work, to a satisfactory conclusion.Das Kapitalproposes to show up historically and critically the whole mechanism of capitalist economy. The first volume deals with the processes of producing capital, the second with the circulation of capital, the third with the movements of capital as a whole, whilst the fourth gives the history of the theories concerning capital. Capital is, according to Marx, the means of appropriatingsurplus-valueas distinguished from ground rent (rent on every kind of terrestrial property, such as land, mines, rivers, &c., based upon the monopolist nature of such property). Surplus-value is created in the process of production only, it is this part of the value of the newly created product which is not given to the workman as a return—thewage—of the labour-force he expended in working. If at first taken by the employer, it is in the different phases of economic intercourse split up into the profit of industrial enterprise, commercial or merchants’ profit, interest and ground rent. The value of every commodity consists in the labour expended on it, and is measured according to the time occupied by the labour employed on its production. Labour in itself has no value, being only the measure of value, but the labour-force of the workman has a value, the value of the means required to maintain the worker in normal conditions of social existence. Thus, in distinction to other commodities, in the determination of the value of labour-force, besides the purely economical, amoralandhistoricalelement enter. If to-day the worker receives a wage which covers the bare necessaries of life, he is underpaid—he does not receive the real value of his labour-force. For the value of any commodity is determined by its socially necessary costs of production (or in this case, maintenance). “Socially necessary” means, further, that no more labour is embodied in a commodity than is required by applying labour-force, tools, &c., of average or normal efficiency, and that the commodity is produced in such quantity as is required to meet the effective demand for it. As this generally cannot be known in advance, the market value of a commodity only gravitates round its (abstract) value. But in the long run an equalization takes place, and for his further deductions Marx assumes that commodities exchange according to their value.That part of an industrial capital which is employed for installations, machines, raw and auxiliary materials, is called by Marxconstant capital, for the value of it or of its wear and tear reappears in equal proportions in the value of the new product. It is otherwise with labour. The new value of the product must by necessitybe always higher than the value of the employed labour-force. Hence the capital employed in buying labour-force,i.e.in wages, is calledvariable capital. It is the tendency of capitalist production to reduce the amount spent in wages and to increase the amount invested in machines, &c. For with natural and social, legal and other limitations of the working day, and the opposition to unlimited reduction of wages, it is not possible otherwise to cheapen production and beat competition. According to the proportion of constant to variable capital, Marx distinguishes capitals oflowest averageandhighest composition, the highest composition being that where proportionately the least amount of variable (wages) capital is employed.The ratio of the wages which workmen receive to the surplus-value which they produce Marx calls therate of surplus-value; that of the surplus-value produced to the whole capital employed is therate of profit. It is evident, then, that at the same time the rate of surplus-value can increase and the rate of profit decrease, and this in fact is the case. There is a continuous tendency of the rates of profit to decrease, and only by some counteracting forces is their decrease temporarily interrupted, protracted, or even sometimes reversed. Besides, by competition and movement of capitals the rates of profit in the different branches of trade are pressed towards anequalizationin the shape of anaverage rate of profits. This average rateofprofits, added to the actual cost price of a given commodity, constitutes itsprice of production, and it is this price of production which appears to the empirical mind of the business man as the value of the commodity. The real law of value, on the contrary, disappears from the surface in a society where, as to-day, commodities are bought and sold against money and not exchanged against other commodities. Nevertheless, according to Marx, it is also to-day this law of value (“labour-value”) which in the last resort rules the prices and profits.The tendency to cheapen production by increasing the relative proportion of constant capital—the fixed capital of the classical economist plus that portion of the circulating capital which consists of raw and auxiliary materials, &c.—leads to a continuous increase in the size of private enterprises, to their growing concentration. It is the larger enterprise that beats and swallows the smaller. The number of dependent workmen—“proletarians”—is thus continually growing, whilst employment only periodically keeps pace with their number. Capital alternately attracts and repels workmen, and creates a constant surplus-population of workmen—areserve-armyfor its requirements—which helps to lower wages and to keep the whole class in economic dependency. A decreasing number of capitalists usurp and monopolize all the benefits of industrial progress, whilst the mass of misery, of oppression, of servitude, of depravation, and of exploitation increases. But at the same time the working class continuously grows in numbers, and is disciplined, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist mode of production. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of the mode of production reach a point where they will become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Then the knell of capitalist private property will have been rung. Those who used to expropriate will be expropriated. Individual property will again be established based upon co-operation and common ownership of the earth and the means of production produced by labour.These are the principal outlines ofDas Kapital. Its purely economic deductions are dominated throughout by thetheory of surplus-value. Its leading sociological principle is thematerialist conception of history. This theory is inDas Kapitalonly laid down by implication, but it has been more connectedly explained in the preface ofZur Kritikand several works of Engels. According to it the material basis of life, the manner in which life and its requirements are produced, determines in the last instance the social ideas and institutions of the time or historical epoch, so that fundamental changes in the former produce in the long run also fundamental changes in the latter. A set of social institutions answer to a given mode of production, and periods where the institutions no longer answer to the mode of production are periods of social revolution, which go on until sufficient adjustment has taken place. The mainsubjectiveforces of the struggle between the old order and the new arethe classesinto which society is divided after the dissolution of the communistic or semi-communistic tribes and the creation of states. And as long as society is divided into classes a class war will persist, sometimes in a more latent or disguised, sometimes in a more open or acute form, according to circumstances. In advanced capitalist society the classes between whom the decisive war takes place are the capitalist owners of the means of production and the non-propertied or wage-earning workers, the “proletariate.” But the proletariate cannot free itself without freeing all other oppressed classes, and thus its victory means the end of exploitation and political repression altogether. Consequently the state as a repressive power will die out, and a free association will take its place.Almost from the firstDas Kapitaland the publications of Marx and Engels connected with it have been subjected to all kinds of criticisms. The originality of its leading ideas has been disputed, the ideas themselves have been declared to be false or only partially true, and consequently leading to wrong conclusions; and it has been said of many of Marx’s statements that they are incorrect, and that many of the statistics upon which he bases his deductions do not prove what he wants them to prove. In regard to the first point, it must be conceded that thedisjecta membraof Marx’s value theory and of his materialist conception of history are already to be found in the writings of former socialists and sociologists. It may even be said that just those points of the Marxist doctrine which have become popular are in a very small degree the produce of Marx’s genius, and that what really belongs to Marx, the methodical conjunction and elaboration of these points, as well as the finer deductions drawn from their application, are generally ignored. But this is an experience repeated over and over again in the history of deductive sciences, and is quite irrelevant for the question of Marx’s place in the history of socialism and social science.It must further be admitted that in several places the statistical evidence upon which Marx bases his deductions is insufficient or inconclusive. Moreover—and this is one of the most damaging admissions—it repeatedly happens that he points out all the phenomena connected with a certain question, but afterwards ignores some of them and proceeds as if they did not exist. Thus,e.g., he speaks at the end of the first volume, where he sketches the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation, of the decreasing number of magnates of capital as of an established fact. But all statistics show that the number of capitalists does not decrease, but increase; and in other places inDas Kapitalthis fact is indeed fully admitted, and even accentuated. Marx was, as the third volume shows, also quite aware that limited liability companies play an important part in the distribution of wealth. But he leaves this factor, too, quite out of sight, and confuses the concentration of private enterprises with the centralization of fortunes and capitals. By these and other omissions, quite apart from developments he could not well foresee, he announces a coming evolution which is very unlikely to take place in the way described.In this and in other features of his work adualismreveals itself which is also often observable in his actions in life—the alternating predominance of the spirit of the scholar and the spirit of the radical revolutionary. Marx originally entitled his great social workCriticism of Political Economy, and this is still the sub-title ofDas Kapital. But the conception ofcriticorcriticizehas with Marx a very pronounced meaning. He uses them mostly as identical with fundamentally opposing. Much as he had mocked the “critical criticism” of the Bauers, he is in this respect yet of their breed and relapses into their habits. He retained in principle the Hegelian dialectical method, of which he said that in order to be rationally employed it must be “turned upside down,”i.e.put upon a materialist basis. But as a matter of fact he has in many respects contravened against this prescription. Strict materialist dialectics cannot conclude much beyond actual facts. Dialectical materialism is revolutionary in the sense that it recognizes no finality, but otherwise it is necessarily positivist in the general meaning of that term. But Marx’s opposition to modern society was fundamental and revolutionary, answering to that of the proletarian to thebourgeois. And here we come to the main and fatal contradiction of his work. He wanted to proceed, and to a very great extent did proceed, scientifically. Nothing was to be deduced from preconceived ideas; from the observed evolutionary laws and forces of modern society alone were conclusions to be drawn. And yet the final conclusion of the work, as already noted, is a preconceived idea; it is the announcement of a state of society logically opposed to the given one. Imperceptibly the dialectical movement ofideasis substituted for the dialectical movement of facts, and the real movement of facts is only considered so far as is compatible with the former. Science is violated in the service of speculation. The picture given at the end of the first volume answers to a conception arrived at by speculative socialism in the ’forties. True, Marx calls this chapter “the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation,” and “tendency” does not necessarily mean realization in every detail. But on the whole the language used there is much too absolute to allow of the interpretation that Marx only wanted to give a speculative picture of the goal to which capitalist accumulation would lead if unhampered by socialist counteraction. The epithet “historical” indicates rather that the passage in question was meant to give in the main the true outline of the forthcoming social revolution. We are led to this conclusion also by the fact that, in language which is not in the least conditional, it is there said that the change of capitalist property into social property will mean “only the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.” In short, the principal reason for the undeniable contradictions inDas Kapitalis to be found in the fact that where Marx has to do with details or subordinate subjects he mostly notices the important changes which actual evolution had brought about since the time of his first socialist writings, and thus himself states how far their presuppositions have been corrected by facts. But when he comes to general conclusions, he adheres in the main to the original propositions based upon the old uncorrected presuppositions. Besides, the complex character of modern society is greatly under-estimated, so that,e.g., such important features as the influence of the changes of traffic and aggregation on modern life are scarcely considered at all; and industrial and political problems are viewed only from the aspect of class antagonism, and never under their administrative aspect. With regard to the theory of surplus-value and its foundation, the theory of labour-value, so much may besafely said that, its premisses accepted, it is most ingeniously and most consistently worked out. And since its principal contention is in any case so far true that the wage-earning workers as a whole produce more than they receive, the theory has the great merit of demonstrating in an admirably lucid way the relations between wages and surplus-produce and the growth and movements of capital. But the theory of labour-value as the determining factor of the exchange or market value of commodities can with justification be disputed, and is surely not more true than those theories of value based on social demand or utility. Marx himself, in placing in the third volume what he calls thelaw of valuein the background and setting out the formation of the “price of production” as the empirical determinator of prices in modern society, justifies those who look upon the conception of labour-value as an abstract formula which does not apply to individual exchanges of commodities at all, but which only serves to show an imagined typical example of what in reality to-day is only true with regard to the production of the whole of social wealth. Thus understood, the conception of labour-value is quite unobjectionable, but it loses much of the significance attributed to it by most of the disciples of Marx and occasionally by Marx himself. It is a means of analysing and exemplifying surplus labour, but quite inconclusive as to the proof of the surplus value, or as an indication of the degree of the exploitation of the workers. This becomes the more apparent the more the reader advances in the second and third volumes ofDas Kapital, where commercial capital, money capital and ground rent are dealt with. Though full of fine observations and deductions, they form, from a revolutionary standpoint, an anti-climax to the first volume. It is difficult to see how, after all that is explained there on the functions of the classes that stand between industrial employers and workers, Marx could have returned to those sweeping conclusions with which the first volume ends.The great scientific achievement of Marx lies, then, not in these conclusions, but in thedetailsand yet more in themethodandprinciplesof his investigations in hisphilosophy of history. Here he has, as is now generally admitted, broken new ground and opened new ways and new outlooks. Nobody before him had so clearly shown the rôle of the productive agencies in historical evolution; nobody so masterfully exhibited their great determining influence on the forms and ideologies of social organisms. The passages and chapters dealing with this subject form, notwithstanding occasional exaggerations, the crowning parts of his works. If he has been justly compared with Darwin, it is in these respects that he ranks with that great genius, not through his value theory, ingenious though it be. With the great theorist of biological transformation he had also in common the indefatigable way in which he made painstaking studies of the minutest details connected with his researches. In the same year as Darwin’s epoch-making work on the origin of species there appeared also Marx’s workZur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, where he explains in concise sentences in the preface that philosophy of history which has for the theory of the transformation or evolution of social organisms the same significance that the argument of Darwin had for the theory of the transformation of biological organisms.Bibliography.—The main writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are as follow (we give only the titles of the original works and of their English translations): (1) Of Karl Marx alone:La Misère de la philosophie, réponse à la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon(Paris, 1847; new ed., 1892; English ed.,The Poverty of Philosophy, London, 1900);Lohnarbeit und Kapital, pamphlet, written 1848 (new ed., Berlin, 1891); English ed.,Wage, Labour and Capital(London, 1900);Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, 1848 to 1850(Berlin, 1895);Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte(New York, 1852; 3rd ed., Hamburg, 1889; Eng. ed., New York, 1889);Enthüllungen über den Kölner Kommunistenprozess(Basel, 1852; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1885); “European Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions” (reprints from theNew York Tribune, 1851-1852; London, 1897); “The Eastern Question” (reprints from theNew York Tribune, 1853-1856; London, 1898);Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie(Berlin, 1859; new ed., Stuttgart, 1897);Herr Vogt(London, 1860);Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association(London, 1864);Value, Price and Profit(written 1865, published London, 1898);Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie(3 vols., Hamburg, 1867, 1885 and 1895; Eng. ed. of 1st vol., 1886);The Civil War in France, 1871(London, 1871; new ed., 1894);L’Alliance de la démocratie socialiste(London, 1873); articles printed or reprinted inRheinische Zeitung(1842-1843),Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher(Paris, 1844),Das westphälische Dampfboot(Bielefeld und Paderborn, 1845-1848),Der Gesellschaftsspiegel(Elberfeld, 1846),Deutsche brüsseler Zeitung(Brussels, 1847),Neue rheinische Zeitung(daily, Cologne, 1848-1849; monthly, Hamburg, 1850),The People(London, 1852-1858),The New York Tribune(New York, 1853-1860),The Free Press(Sheffield and London, 1856-1857),Das Volk(London, 1859),Der Vorbote(Geneva, 1866-1875),Der Volkstaat(Leipzig, 1869-1876),Die Neue Zeit(Stuttgart, 1883, sqq.);Sozialistische Monatshefte(Berlin, 1895, sqq.). (2) Of Friedrich Engels alone:Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England(Leipzig, 1845; new ed., Stuttgart, 1892; Eng. ed., London, 1892);Zur Wohnungsfrage(Leipzig, 1873-1874; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1887);Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft(Leipzig, 1877; 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1894). Three chapters of the first-named are published in English under the title Socialism,Utopian and Scientific(London, 1892).Der Ursprung des Eigenthums, der Familie und des Staates(Zürich and Stuttgart, 1885 and 1892);Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie(Stuttgart, 1886). Introductions to most of the posthumous works of K. Marx and articles in the same periodicals as Marx. (3) Of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels together:Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik(Frankfurt, 1845);Manifest der kommunistischen Partei(London, 1848; Eng. ed., 1848 and 1888). (4) With regard to Marx generally, his theory and his school, see J. Stammhammer,Bibliographie desSozialismusund Kommunismus(Jena, 1893); and Th. G. Masaryk,Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus(Vienna, 1899). Much biographical and bibliographical information on Marx and Engels is to be found in Dr Franz Mehring,Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie(Stuttgart, 1897-1898), and in the collection, edited also by Dr Fr. Mehring,Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle(Stuttgart, 1902). Of the criticisms of Marx’s economics, one of the most comprehensive is E. von Boehm-Bawerk’sKarl Marx and the Close of his System(London, 1898). Marx’s historic theory is, apart from Masaryk, very exhaustively analysed by R. Stammler inWirthschaft und Recht(Leipzig, 1896).
From the manuscripts he left Engels compiled a second and a third volume ofDas Kapitalby judiciously and elaborately using complete and incomplete chapters, rough copies and excerpts, which Marx had at different times written down. Much of the copy used dates back to the ’sixties,i.e.represents the work as at first conceived by Marx, so that,e.g., the matter published as the third volume was in the main written much earlier than the matter which was used for compiling the second volume. The same applies to the fourth volume. Although the work thus comprises the four volumes promised in the preface to the book, it can only in a very restricted sense be regarded as complete. In substance and demonstration it must be regarded as a torso. And it is perhaps not quite accidental that it should be so. Marx, if he had lived longer and had enjoyed better health, would have given the world a much greater amount of scientific work of high value than is now the case. But it seems doubtful whether he would have broughtDas Kapital, his main work, to a satisfactory conclusion.
Das Kapitalproposes to show up historically and critically the whole mechanism of capitalist economy. The first volume deals with the processes of producing capital, the second with the circulation of capital, the third with the movements of capital as a whole, whilst the fourth gives the history of the theories concerning capital. Capital is, according to Marx, the means of appropriatingsurplus-valueas distinguished from ground rent (rent on every kind of terrestrial property, such as land, mines, rivers, &c., based upon the monopolist nature of such property). Surplus-value is created in the process of production only, it is this part of the value of the newly created product which is not given to the workman as a return—thewage—of the labour-force he expended in working. If at first taken by the employer, it is in the different phases of economic intercourse split up into the profit of industrial enterprise, commercial or merchants’ profit, interest and ground rent. The value of every commodity consists in the labour expended on it, and is measured according to the time occupied by the labour employed on its production. Labour in itself has no value, being only the measure of value, but the labour-force of the workman has a value, the value of the means required to maintain the worker in normal conditions of social existence. Thus, in distinction to other commodities, in the determination of the value of labour-force, besides the purely economical, amoralandhistoricalelement enter. If to-day the worker receives a wage which covers the bare necessaries of life, he is underpaid—he does not receive the real value of his labour-force. For the value of any commodity is determined by its socially necessary costs of production (or in this case, maintenance). “Socially necessary” means, further, that no more labour is embodied in a commodity than is required by applying labour-force, tools, &c., of average or normal efficiency, and that the commodity is produced in such quantity as is required to meet the effective demand for it. As this generally cannot be known in advance, the market value of a commodity only gravitates round its (abstract) value. But in the long run an equalization takes place, and for his further deductions Marx assumes that commodities exchange according to their value.
That part of an industrial capital which is employed for installations, machines, raw and auxiliary materials, is called by Marxconstant capital, for the value of it or of its wear and tear reappears in equal proportions in the value of the new product. It is otherwise with labour. The new value of the product must by necessitybe always higher than the value of the employed labour-force. Hence the capital employed in buying labour-force,i.e.in wages, is calledvariable capital. It is the tendency of capitalist production to reduce the amount spent in wages and to increase the amount invested in machines, &c. For with natural and social, legal and other limitations of the working day, and the opposition to unlimited reduction of wages, it is not possible otherwise to cheapen production and beat competition. According to the proportion of constant to variable capital, Marx distinguishes capitals oflowest averageandhighest composition, the highest composition being that where proportionately the least amount of variable (wages) capital is employed.
The ratio of the wages which workmen receive to the surplus-value which they produce Marx calls therate of surplus-value; that of the surplus-value produced to the whole capital employed is therate of profit. It is evident, then, that at the same time the rate of surplus-value can increase and the rate of profit decrease, and this in fact is the case. There is a continuous tendency of the rates of profit to decrease, and only by some counteracting forces is their decrease temporarily interrupted, protracted, or even sometimes reversed. Besides, by competition and movement of capitals the rates of profit in the different branches of trade are pressed towards anequalizationin the shape of anaverage rate of profits. This average rateofprofits, added to the actual cost price of a given commodity, constitutes itsprice of production, and it is this price of production which appears to the empirical mind of the business man as the value of the commodity. The real law of value, on the contrary, disappears from the surface in a society where, as to-day, commodities are bought and sold against money and not exchanged against other commodities. Nevertheless, according to Marx, it is also to-day this law of value (“labour-value”) which in the last resort rules the prices and profits.
The tendency to cheapen production by increasing the relative proportion of constant capital—the fixed capital of the classical economist plus that portion of the circulating capital which consists of raw and auxiliary materials, &c.—leads to a continuous increase in the size of private enterprises, to their growing concentration. It is the larger enterprise that beats and swallows the smaller. The number of dependent workmen—“proletarians”—is thus continually growing, whilst employment only periodically keeps pace with their number. Capital alternately attracts and repels workmen, and creates a constant surplus-population of workmen—areserve-armyfor its requirements—which helps to lower wages and to keep the whole class in economic dependency. A decreasing number of capitalists usurp and monopolize all the benefits of industrial progress, whilst the mass of misery, of oppression, of servitude, of depravation, and of exploitation increases. But at the same time the working class continuously grows in numbers, and is disciplined, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist mode of production. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of the mode of production reach a point where they will become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Then the knell of capitalist private property will have been rung. Those who used to expropriate will be expropriated. Individual property will again be established based upon co-operation and common ownership of the earth and the means of production produced by labour.
These are the principal outlines ofDas Kapital. Its purely economic deductions are dominated throughout by thetheory of surplus-value. Its leading sociological principle is thematerialist conception of history. This theory is inDas Kapitalonly laid down by implication, but it has been more connectedly explained in the preface ofZur Kritikand several works of Engels. According to it the material basis of life, the manner in which life and its requirements are produced, determines in the last instance the social ideas and institutions of the time or historical epoch, so that fundamental changes in the former produce in the long run also fundamental changes in the latter. A set of social institutions answer to a given mode of production, and periods where the institutions no longer answer to the mode of production are periods of social revolution, which go on until sufficient adjustment has taken place. The mainsubjectiveforces of the struggle between the old order and the new arethe classesinto which society is divided after the dissolution of the communistic or semi-communistic tribes and the creation of states. And as long as society is divided into classes a class war will persist, sometimes in a more latent or disguised, sometimes in a more open or acute form, according to circumstances. In advanced capitalist society the classes between whom the decisive war takes place are the capitalist owners of the means of production and the non-propertied or wage-earning workers, the “proletariate.” But the proletariate cannot free itself without freeing all other oppressed classes, and thus its victory means the end of exploitation and political repression altogether. Consequently the state as a repressive power will die out, and a free association will take its place.
Almost from the firstDas Kapitaland the publications of Marx and Engels connected with it have been subjected to all kinds of criticisms. The originality of its leading ideas has been disputed, the ideas themselves have been declared to be false or only partially true, and consequently leading to wrong conclusions; and it has been said of many of Marx’s statements that they are incorrect, and that many of the statistics upon which he bases his deductions do not prove what he wants them to prove. In regard to the first point, it must be conceded that thedisjecta membraof Marx’s value theory and of his materialist conception of history are already to be found in the writings of former socialists and sociologists. It may even be said that just those points of the Marxist doctrine which have become popular are in a very small degree the produce of Marx’s genius, and that what really belongs to Marx, the methodical conjunction and elaboration of these points, as well as the finer deductions drawn from their application, are generally ignored. But this is an experience repeated over and over again in the history of deductive sciences, and is quite irrelevant for the question of Marx’s place in the history of socialism and social science.
It must further be admitted that in several places the statistical evidence upon which Marx bases his deductions is insufficient or inconclusive. Moreover—and this is one of the most damaging admissions—it repeatedly happens that he points out all the phenomena connected with a certain question, but afterwards ignores some of them and proceeds as if they did not exist. Thus,e.g., he speaks at the end of the first volume, where he sketches the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation, of the decreasing number of magnates of capital as of an established fact. But all statistics show that the number of capitalists does not decrease, but increase; and in other places inDas Kapitalthis fact is indeed fully admitted, and even accentuated. Marx was, as the third volume shows, also quite aware that limited liability companies play an important part in the distribution of wealth. But he leaves this factor, too, quite out of sight, and confuses the concentration of private enterprises with the centralization of fortunes and capitals. By these and other omissions, quite apart from developments he could not well foresee, he announces a coming evolution which is very unlikely to take place in the way described.
In this and in other features of his work adualismreveals itself which is also often observable in his actions in life—the alternating predominance of the spirit of the scholar and the spirit of the radical revolutionary. Marx originally entitled his great social workCriticism of Political Economy, and this is still the sub-title ofDas Kapital. But the conception ofcriticorcriticizehas with Marx a very pronounced meaning. He uses them mostly as identical with fundamentally opposing. Much as he had mocked the “critical criticism” of the Bauers, he is in this respect yet of their breed and relapses into their habits. He retained in principle the Hegelian dialectical method, of which he said that in order to be rationally employed it must be “turned upside down,”i.e.put upon a materialist basis. But as a matter of fact he has in many respects contravened against this prescription. Strict materialist dialectics cannot conclude much beyond actual facts. Dialectical materialism is revolutionary in the sense that it recognizes no finality, but otherwise it is necessarily positivist in the general meaning of that term. But Marx’s opposition to modern society was fundamental and revolutionary, answering to that of the proletarian to thebourgeois. And here we come to the main and fatal contradiction of his work. He wanted to proceed, and to a very great extent did proceed, scientifically. Nothing was to be deduced from preconceived ideas; from the observed evolutionary laws and forces of modern society alone were conclusions to be drawn. And yet the final conclusion of the work, as already noted, is a preconceived idea; it is the announcement of a state of society logically opposed to the given one. Imperceptibly the dialectical movement ofideasis substituted for the dialectical movement of facts, and the real movement of facts is only considered so far as is compatible with the former. Science is violated in the service of speculation. The picture given at the end of the first volume answers to a conception arrived at by speculative socialism in the ’forties. True, Marx calls this chapter “the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation,” and “tendency” does not necessarily mean realization in every detail. But on the whole the language used there is much too absolute to allow of the interpretation that Marx only wanted to give a speculative picture of the goal to which capitalist accumulation would lead if unhampered by socialist counteraction. The epithet “historical” indicates rather that the passage in question was meant to give in the main the true outline of the forthcoming social revolution. We are led to this conclusion also by the fact that, in language which is not in the least conditional, it is there said that the change of capitalist property into social property will mean “only the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.” In short, the principal reason for the undeniable contradictions inDas Kapitalis to be found in the fact that where Marx has to do with details or subordinate subjects he mostly notices the important changes which actual evolution had brought about since the time of his first socialist writings, and thus himself states how far their presuppositions have been corrected by facts. But when he comes to general conclusions, he adheres in the main to the original propositions based upon the old uncorrected presuppositions. Besides, the complex character of modern society is greatly under-estimated, so that,e.g., such important features as the influence of the changes of traffic and aggregation on modern life are scarcely considered at all; and industrial and political problems are viewed only from the aspect of class antagonism, and never under their administrative aspect. With regard to the theory of surplus-value and its foundation, the theory of labour-value, so much may besafely said that, its premisses accepted, it is most ingeniously and most consistently worked out. And since its principal contention is in any case so far true that the wage-earning workers as a whole produce more than they receive, the theory has the great merit of demonstrating in an admirably lucid way the relations between wages and surplus-produce and the growth and movements of capital. But the theory of labour-value as the determining factor of the exchange or market value of commodities can with justification be disputed, and is surely not more true than those theories of value based on social demand or utility. Marx himself, in placing in the third volume what he calls thelaw of valuein the background and setting out the formation of the “price of production” as the empirical determinator of prices in modern society, justifies those who look upon the conception of labour-value as an abstract formula which does not apply to individual exchanges of commodities at all, but which only serves to show an imagined typical example of what in reality to-day is only true with regard to the production of the whole of social wealth. Thus understood, the conception of labour-value is quite unobjectionable, but it loses much of the significance attributed to it by most of the disciples of Marx and occasionally by Marx himself. It is a means of analysing and exemplifying surplus labour, but quite inconclusive as to the proof of the surplus value, or as an indication of the degree of the exploitation of the workers. This becomes the more apparent the more the reader advances in the second and third volumes ofDas Kapital, where commercial capital, money capital and ground rent are dealt with. Though full of fine observations and deductions, they form, from a revolutionary standpoint, an anti-climax to the first volume. It is difficult to see how, after all that is explained there on the functions of the classes that stand between industrial employers and workers, Marx could have returned to those sweeping conclusions with which the first volume ends.
The great scientific achievement of Marx lies, then, not in these conclusions, but in thedetailsand yet more in themethodandprinciplesof his investigations in hisphilosophy of history. Here he has, as is now generally admitted, broken new ground and opened new ways and new outlooks. Nobody before him had so clearly shown the rôle of the productive agencies in historical evolution; nobody so masterfully exhibited their great determining influence on the forms and ideologies of social organisms. The passages and chapters dealing with this subject form, notwithstanding occasional exaggerations, the crowning parts of his works. If he has been justly compared with Darwin, it is in these respects that he ranks with that great genius, not through his value theory, ingenious though it be. With the great theorist of biological transformation he had also in common the indefatigable way in which he made painstaking studies of the minutest details connected with his researches. In the same year as Darwin’s epoch-making work on the origin of species there appeared also Marx’s workZur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, where he explains in concise sentences in the preface that philosophy of history which has for the theory of the transformation or evolution of social organisms the same significance that the argument of Darwin had for the theory of the transformation of biological organisms.
Bibliography.—The main writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are as follow (we give only the titles of the original works and of their English translations): (1) Of Karl Marx alone:La Misère de la philosophie, réponse à la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon(Paris, 1847; new ed., 1892; English ed.,The Poverty of Philosophy, London, 1900);Lohnarbeit und Kapital, pamphlet, written 1848 (new ed., Berlin, 1891); English ed.,Wage, Labour and Capital(London, 1900);Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, 1848 to 1850(Berlin, 1895);Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte(New York, 1852; 3rd ed., Hamburg, 1889; Eng. ed., New York, 1889);Enthüllungen über den Kölner Kommunistenprozess(Basel, 1852; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1885); “European Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions” (reprints from theNew York Tribune, 1851-1852; London, 1897); “The Eastern Question” (reprints from theNew York Tribune, 1853-1856; London, 1898);Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie(Berlin, 1859; new ed., Stuttgart, 1897);Herr Vogt(London, 1860);Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association(London, 1864);Value, Price and Profit(written 1865, published London, 1898);Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie(3 vols., Hamburg, 1867, 1885 and 1895; Eng. ed. of 1st vol., 1886);The Civil War in France, 1871(London, 1871; new ed., 1894);L’Alliance de la démocratie socialiste(London, 1873); articles printed or reprinted inRheinische Zeitung(1842-1843),Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher(Paris, 1844),Das westphälische Dampfboot(Bielefeld und Paderborn, 1845-1848),Der Gesellschaftsspiegel(Elberfeld, 1846),Deutsche brüsseler Zeitung(Brussels, 1847),Neue rheinische Zeitung(daily, Cologne, 1848-1849; monthly, Hamburg, 1850),The People(London, 1852-1858),The New York Tribune(New York, 1853-1860),The Free Press(Sheffield and London, 1856-1857),Das Volk(London, 1859),Der Vorbote(Geneva, 1866-1875),Der Volkstaat(Leipzig, 1869-1876),Die Neue Zeit(Stuttgart, 1883, sqq.);Sozialistische Monatshefte(Berlin, 1895, sqq.). (2) Of Friedrich Engels alone:Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England(Leipzig, 1845; new ed., Stuttgart, 1892; Eng. ed., London, 1892);Zur Wohnungsfrage(Leipzig, 1873-1874; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1887);Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft(Leipzig, 1877; 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1894). Three chapters of the first-named are published in English under the title Socialism,Utopian and Scientific(London, 1892).Der Ursprung des Eigenthums, der Familie und des Staates(Zürich and Stuttgart, 1885 and 1892);Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie(Stuttgart, 1886). Introductions to most of the posthumous works of K. Marx and articles in the same periodicals as Marx. (3) Of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels together:Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik(Frankfurt, 1845);Manifest der kommunistischen Partei(London, 1848; Eng. ed., 1848 and 1888). (4) With regard to Marx generally, his theory and his school, see J. Stammhammer,Bibliographie desSozialismusund Kommunismus(Jena, 1893); and Th. G. Masaryk,Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus(Vienna, 1899). Much biographical and bibliographical information on Marx and Engels is to be found in Dr Franz Mehring,Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie(Stuttgart, 1897-1898), and in the collection, edited also by Dr Fr. Mehring,Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle(Stuttgart, 1902). Of the criticisms of Marx’s economics, one of the most comprehensive is E. von Boehm-Bawerk’sKarl Marx and the Close of his System(London, 1898). Marx’s historic theory is, apart from Masaryk, very exhaustively analysed by R. Stammler inWirthschaft und Recht(Leipzig, 1896).