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March 17, 2018 - No. 10
Supplement
135th
Anniversary of the
Death of Karl Marx
Revolutionaries
Take Up Marxism
As a
Guide to Action
PDF
Karl Marx addressing the founding meeting of the International
Workingmen's Association in London, September 28, 1864.
• Speech at
the Graveside of Karl Marx
- Frederick Engels, Highgate Cemetery, London, March
17, 1883 -
• The Three Sources and Three
Component Parts of Marxism
- V.I. Lenin -
135th Anniversary of the Death of Karl
Marx
Revolutionaries Take Up Marxism
As a Guide to Action
Mankind is shorter by a
head, and that the
greatest head of our time. The movement of the proletariat goes
on, but gone is the central point to which Frenchmen, Russians,
Americans and Germans spontaneously turned at decisive moments to
receive always that clear indisputable counsel which only genius
and consummate knowledge of the situation could give. Local
lights and small talents, if not the humbugs, obtain a free hand.
The final victory remains certain, but the detours, the temporary
and local deviations -- unavoidable as is -- will grow more than
ever. Well, we must see it through; what else are we here for?
And we are far from losing courage because of it. -- Frederick
Engels, March 15, 1883 [1]
 Many changes have taken place
since the life-long friend and
close collaborator of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, wrote those
words on March 15, 1883, one day after Marx passed away. And
despite all the twists and turns the working class has gone
through since then in its struggle for empowerment, the life and
work of Karl Marx remain a "central point" to which all communist
revolutionaries and all those who aspire for a new society must
turn. Today, as was the case 135 years ago, only Marxism can
provide the kind of "clear indispensable counsel which only
genius and consummate knowledge of the situation could give."
Turning to Marxism means paying attention to the concrete
analysis of the concrete conditions, to ensure that the "central
point" of the contemporary world is established around which
everybody else can rally and unite.
Today, even though there is one International Communist
and
Workers' Movement, there is no one central point as existed at
the time of the First International established by Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels on September 28, 1864, at which time the
authority of Marxism was established, or later at the time of the
Third International, established by V.I. Lenin on March 2, 1919,
when the authority of Leninism prevailed. The lack of one central
point today is consistent with the state of affairs which
prevails as a result of the retreat of revolution where communist
parties the world over have their own central points. While this
reflects the existence of different tendencies within this
movement, it also underscores the need to elaborate Contemporary
Marxist-Leninist Thought as the central point which develops and
becomes profound only in the course of practice.
Painting of Karl Marx in discussion with workers.
In this regard, the greatest achievement of Karl Marx
was to
be a revolutionist who could not carry on his activities without
revolutionizing social science. Social science was a body of
knowledge scattered into various sections and claimed as the
property of this or that individual or sect. With his two
discoveries of the general law of motion of nature and society,
the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, and the
specific law of motion of capitalist society, the theory of
surplus value, Karl Marx revolutionized social science as the
body of knowledge of all those in whose interest it will be to
organize proletarian socialist revolution. Revolutionized social
science could no longer be merely the domain of some philosophers
or ivory tower intellectuals. It became the preserve of those who
would revolutionize society.
These achievements of Karl Marx, who remained a
revolutionist
in all fields, served as a guide to action for V.I. Lenin who
further revolutionized social science, confirming what Marx had
predicted, that without revolutionary theory there can be no
revolutionary movement. This issue which posed itself at the time
Karl Marx carried out his work, and after him V.I. Lenin,
continues to pose itself today. All those who wish to be
revolutionists have to follow Marxism as a guide in their
practice.
On the occasion of the 135th anniversary of the death
of Karl
Marx, TML Weekly repeats what Engels wrote on March 15,
1883: "The final victory remains certain, but the detours, the
temporary and local deviations -- unavoidable as is -- will grow
more than ever. Well, we must see it through; what else are we
here for? And we are far from losing courage because of it."
Note
1. Marx and Engels, Selected
Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p.
361.
Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx
- Frederick Engels, Highgate Cemetery,
London,
March 17, 1883 -
 On the 14th of March, at a
quarter to three in the
afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had
been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back
we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but forever.
An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the
militant
proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in
the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the
departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself
felt.
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of
organic
nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human
history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of
ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter
and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art,
religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate
material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of
economic development attained by a given people or during a given
epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the
legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the
people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which
they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had
hitherto been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special
law of
motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production
and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has
created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on
the problem, in trying to solve which all previous
investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist
critics, had been groping in the dark.
Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime.
Happy
the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery.
But in every single field which Marx investigated -- and he
investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in
every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent
discoveries.
 Such was the man of science.
But this was not even half
the
man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary
force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new
discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application
perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he
experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved
immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical
development in general. For example, he followed closely the
development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity
and recently those of Marcel Deprez.
For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real
mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the
overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions
which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation
of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make
conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the
conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he
fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could
rival. His work on the first Rheinische
Zeitung
(1842), the Paris
Vorwärts (1844), the Deutsche
Brüsseler
Zeitung (1847), the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and
in addition to these, a host of militant pamphlets, work in
organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally,
crowning all, the formation of the great International Working
Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its
founder might well have been proud even if he had done nothing
else.
And, consequently, Marx was the best hated and most
calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and
republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, both
conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in
heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it
were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity
compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by
millions of revolutionary fellow workers -- from the mines of
Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and
I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents he
had hardly one personal enemy.
His name will endure through the ages, and so also will
his
work!
Unveiling of monument to Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, London,
England in 1956.
The Three Sources and Three Component
Parts of Marxism
- V.I. Lenin -
Marx and Engels at Rheinische Zeitung
printing house in Cologne
(Painting by E. Chapiro)
Throughout the civilised world the teachings of Marx
evoke
the utmost hostility and hatred of all bourgeois science (both
official and liberal), which regards Marxism as a kind of
"pernicious sect." And no other attitude is to be expected, for
there can be no "impartial" social science in a society based on
class struggle. In one way or another, all official and
liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has
declared relentless war on that slavery. To expect science to be
impartial in a wage-slave society is as foolishly naïve as to
expect impartiality from manufacturers on the question of whether
workers' wages ought not to be increased by decreasing the
profits of capital.
But this is not all. The history of philosophy and the
history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is
nothing resembling "sectarianism" in Marxism, in the sense of its
being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away
from the high road of the development of world
civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already
raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as
the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of
the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and
socialism.
The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true.
It is
comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral
world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition,
reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the
legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the
nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English
political economy and French socialism.
It is these three sources of Marxism, which are also
its
component parts that we shall outline in brief.
I
The philosophy of Marxism is materialism.
Throughout
the
modern
history
of
Europe,
and
especially
at
the
end of the eighteenth century in France, where a resolute
struggle was conducted against every kind of medieval rubbish,
against serfdom in institutions and ideas, materialism has proved
to be the only philosophy that is consistent, true to all the
teachings of natural science and hostile to superstition, cant
and so forth. The enemies of democracy have, therefore, always
exerted all their efforts to "refute," undermine and defame
materialism, and have advocated various forms of philosophical
idealism, which always, in one way or another, amounts to the
defence or support of religion.
Marx and Engels defended philosophical materialism in
the
most determined manner and repeatedly explained how profoundly
erroneous is every deviation from this basis. Their views are
most clearly and fully expounded in the works of Engels, Ludwig
Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy and Anti-Dühring, which, like the Communist
Manifesto, are handbooks for every
class-conscious worker.
But Marx did not stop at eighteenth-century
materialism: he
developed philosophy to a higher level; he enriched it with the
achievements of German classical philosophy, especially of
Hegel's system, which in its turn had led to the materialism of
Feuerbach. The main achievement was dialectics, i.e., the
doctrine of development in its fullest, deepest and most
comprehensive form, the doctrine of the relativity of the human
knowledge that provides us with a reflection of eternally
developing matter. The latest discoveries of natural science --
radium, electrons, the transmutation of elements -- have been a
remarkable confirmation of Marx's dialectical materialism despite
the teachings of the bourgeois philosophers with their "new"
reversions to old and decadent idealism.
Marx deepened and developed philosophical materialism
to the
full, and extended the cognition of nature to include the
cognition of human society. His historical materialism
was a great achievement in scientific thinking. The chaos and
arbitrariness that had previously reigned in views on history and
politics were replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious
scientific theory, which shows how, in consequence of the growth
of productive forces, out of one system of social life another
and higher system develops -- how capitalism, for instance, grows
out of feudalism.
Just as man's knowledge reflects nature (i.e.,
developing
matter), which exists independently of him, so man's social
knowledge (i.e., his various views and doctrines --
philosophical, religious, political and so forth) reflects the
economic system of society. Political institutions are a
superstructure on the economic foundation. We see, for example,
that the various political forms of the modern European states
serve to strengthen the domination of the bourgeoisie over the
proletariat.
Marx's philosophy is a consummate philosophical
materialism
that has provided mankind, and especially the working class, with
powerful instruments of knowledge.
II
Having recognised that the economic system is
the
foundation on which the political superstructure is erected, Marx
devoted his greatest attention to the study of this economic
system. Marx's principal work, Capital, is devoted to a
study of the economic system of modern, i.e., capitalist,
society.
Classical political economy, before Marx, evolved in
England,
the most developed of the capitalist countries. Adam Smith and
David Ricardo, by their investigations of the economic system,
laid the foundations of the labour theory of value. Marx
continued their work; he provided a proof of the theory and
developed it consistently. He showed that the value of every
commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary
labour time spent on its production.
Where the bourgeois economists saw a relation between
things
(the exchange of one commodity for another) Marx revealed a relation
between
people. The exchange of commodities
expresses the connection between individual producers through the
market. Money signifies that the connection is becoming
closer and closer, inseparably uniting the entire economic life
of the individual producers into one whole. Capital
signifies a further development of this connection: man's
labour-power becomes a commodity. The wage-worker sells his
labour-power to the owner of land, factories and instruments of
labour. The worker spends one part of the day covering the cost
of maintaining himself and his family (wages), while the other
part of the day he works without remuneration, creating for the
capitalist surplus-value, the source of profit, the
source of the wealth of the capitalist class.
The doctrine of surplus-value is the corner-stone of
Marx's
economic theory.
Capital, created by the labour of the worker, crushes
the
worker, ruining small proprietors and creating an army of
unemployed. In industry, the victory of large-scale production is
immediately apparent, but the same phenomenon is also to be
observed in agriculture, where the superiority of large-scale
capitalist agriculture is enhanced, the use of machinery
increases and the peasant economy, trapped by money-capital,
declines and falls into ruin under the burden of its backward
technique. The decline of small-scale production assumes
different forms in agriculture, but the decline itself is an
indisputable fact.
By destroying small-scale production, capital leads to
an
increase in productivity of labour and to the creation of a
monopoly position for the associations of big capitalists.
Production itself becomes more and more social -- hundreds of
thousands and millions of workers become bound together in a
regular economic organism -- but the product of this collective
labour is appropriated by a handful of capitalists. Anarchy of
production, crises, the furious chase after markets and the
insecurity of existence of the mass of the population are
intensified.
By increasing the dependence of the workers on capital,
the
capitalist system creates the great power of united labour.
Marx traced the development of capitalism from
embryonic
commodity economy, from simple exchange, to its highest forms, to
large-scale production.
And the experience of all capitalist countries, old and
new,
year by year demonstrates clearly the truth of this Marxian
doctrine to increasing numbers of workers.
Capitalism has triumphed all over the world, but this
triumph
is only the prelude to the triumph of labour over capital.
III
When feudalism was overthrown and "free"
capitalist
society
appeared
in
the
world,
it
at
once
became
apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and
exploitation of the working people. Various socialist doctrines
immediately emerged as a reflection of and protest against this
oppression. Early socialism, however, was utopian
socialism. It criticised capitalist society, it condemned and
damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it had visions of a
better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the
immorality of exploitation.
But utopian socialism could not indicate the real
solution.
It could not explain the real nature of wage-slavery under
capitalism, it could not reveal the laws of capitalist
development, or show what social force is capable of
becoming the creator of a new society.
Meanwhile, the stormy revolutions which everywhere in
Europe,
and especially in France, accompanied the fall of feudalism, of
serfdom, more and more clearly revealed the struggle of
classes as the basis and the driving force of all
development.
Not a single victory of political freedom over the
feudal
class was won except against desperate resistance. Not a single
capitalist country evolved on a more or less free and democratic
basis except by a life-and-death struggle between the various
classes of capitalist society.
The genius of Marx lies in his having been the first to
deduce from this the lesson world history teaches and to apply
that lesson consistently. The deduction he made is the doctrine
of the class struggle.
People always have been the foolish victims of
deception and
self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they
have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or
other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases,
declarations and promises. Champions of reforms and improvements
will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until
they realise that every old institution, however barbarous and
rotten it may appear to be, is kept going by the forces of
certain ruling classes. And there is only one way of
smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in
the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can -- and,
owing to their social position, must -- constitute the
power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and
to enlighten and organise those forces for the struggle.
Marx's philosophical materialism alone has shown the
proletariat the way out of the spiritual slavery in which all
oppressed classes have hitherto languished. Marx's economic
theory alone has explained the true position of the proletariat
in the general system of capitalism.
Independent organisations of the proletariat are
multiplying
all over the world, from America to Japan and from Sweden to
South Africa. The proletariat is becoming enlightened and
educated by waging its class struggle; it is ridding itself of
the prejudices of bourgeois society; it is rallying its ranks
ever more closely and is learning to gauge the measure of its
successes; it is steeling its forces and is growing
irresistibly.
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