Who was Kar

Scan page 9

KARL MARX was born into a middie-class family in Trier, west prussia, in 1818. Going to university, he was soon drawn into the radical democratic po Germany was at the time divided into many kingdoms and principalities; the most powerful was Prussia, whose territories were mainly in eastern Germany but also included parts of the Rhineland in the west, and was ruled on highly bureaucratic and militarist monarchie system. The working class was small, but Marx was impressed by an uprising of the weavers in Silesia (east Prussia) in 1844, and influenced by his contacts with radical workers in Paris where he went in 1843-4. In Paris he also met Frederick Engels.

He became a communist. At the time, as Engels wrote later, 'socialist' meant utopian or social quack, "in both cases, people who stood outside the labour movement and who looked for support rather to the 'educated' class. es. The section of the working class, however, which demanded a radical reconstruction of society, convinced that mere political revolutions. were not enough, then called itself Communist... And since we were very decidedly of the opinion as early as then that 'the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself', we could have no hesitations as to which Marx was banished from Paris in 1845, and went to Brussels, where he continued discussions and activity with the communist groups of the time and also, with Engels, worked out his theoretical ideas. In spring 1847 Marx and Engels joined the Communist League - an international (mainly Germar French) organisation of the Babeuf/Blanqui stamp. Within it, they fought against conspiratorial, sectarian socialism; for it, Marx wrote the Communist Marx took an active part in the revolutions of 1848, mainly in Cologne (west Prussia); on the basis of that activity, and his analysis of the 1848 events in France, Marx further developed his political views in writings such He was banished from Germany in 1849, and went into exile in London. First he tried to reorganise and reorient the Communist League, but soon By 1857-9 he had developed the main ideas of his great work, 'Capital: A Critique of Political Economy', and written a rough draft.

He returned to practical activity from 1864, when the International Working Men's Association - the First International — was initiated by English and French trade unionists. The International drew in all the scattered socialist sects of the time - Proudhonists and Blanquists in France, anarchists (followers of Mikhail Bakunin) in Spain and Italy, Owenites in Britain, etc. - as well as not-very-radical British trade unionists. Marx fought to educate and organise the movement on the basis of class politics. In this period also he finished In 1871 the defeat of France in war with Prussia led to the workers seizing power in Paris for nine months. For the First International Marx wrote a rousing defence of the Commune: "Working men's Paris, with its Commune, will be for ever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society" — but the International collapsed under the pressure of the official witch-hunt that The last ten years of Marx's life were dogged by ill-health, and he was unable to finish 'Capital'. (Five further volumes were prepared for publication from his drafts after his death, by Engels and Karl Kautsky). He died in 1883. It was after his death that mass Marxist workers' parties developed in Europe, along with the rapid extension of large-scale capitalist industry.

WHAT TO READ: David Ryazanov's book, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels', is short, readable, not expensive, and vivid. Ryazanov was the Bolshevik party's main expert on Marx's life and work, and the book is based on classes Franz Mehring's 'Karl Marx' iș the other classic biography. Mehring was a close comrade of Rosa Luxemburg in the left wing of the German Social Democratic Party and the internationalist opposition to World War 1, and two chapters are contributed by Luxemburg. The main drawback of Mehring's book is its price (£7.95), but many libraries have copies.

David McLellan's Karl Marx' is written not by a revolutionary but by a professor. It is however clear and competent: it has the advantage over Ryazanov and Mehring that it deals with some of Marx's writings that were Of Marx's own writings - 'Capital' volume 1 is by no means as difficult as is often said, though chapter 1 is not easy. Wage Labour and Capital' and 'Wages Price and Profit' are short summaries of his main economic ideas. The Communist Manifesto and "The Poverty of Philosophy' (where Marx explained his basic outlook and method, in a polemic against Proudhon written in 1846) are also especially important. 'Anti-Duhring', by Engels, is a summary of the whole theory; 'Socialism Utopian and Scientific' is an excerpt from tion of the 'social republic' and a new 'division of labour' from the terrified bourgeoisie.

The provisional government was granted the famous three months period of grace for complying with these demands; and for three months the workers starved and waited, while the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie secretly armed themselves and prepared to crush the workers. The period of grace ended with the memorable June massacre in which the ideal of a 'social republic' , attainable at will at any time, was drowned in the blood of the Parisian proletariat. The revolution of 1848 did not institute the reign of social equality, but rather the political domination of the bourgeoisie and an unforeseen growth of capitalist exploitation under the Second Empire. bourgeois econømics, but its birth cost the mother's life. In Marxist theory, economics found its perfection, but also its end as a science. What will follow -apart from the elaboration of Marxist theory in details - is only the metamorphosis of this theory into action, i.e. the struggle of the international proletariat for the institution of the socialist economic order: The consummation of economics as a science constitutes a world-historic task: its application in organising a planful world economy. The last chapter of economics will be the social revolution of the world proletariat.

The special bond between economics and the modern working class is shown to be a reciprocal relation. If, on the one hand, the science of economics, as it was perfected by Marx, is, more than any other science, the indispensable basis of proletarian enlightenment, then, on the other hand, the class conscious proGlossary BABEUF (1760-97): LEADER OF THE Conspiracy of Equals, which in 1795-6 attempted to organise an uprising to introduce a communist society in France. He based himself on the aspirations to equality proclaimed by the French Revolution, and its inability to realise them. He was arrested and guillotined before the uprising could take place.. itics of the day.

BLANQUI (1805-81): a continuator of Babeuf who in the course of his long revolutionary career moved closer to the class-struggle socialism of Marx. Scorned utopian schemes; looked to class struggle and political action (the term "dictatorship of the proletariat' conies from Blanquism); but still tended to see the conspiratorial organisation of an armed uprising as central to winning socialism.

SAINT-SIMON (1760-1825): coined the idea of socialism involving the transition from the government of people to the administration of things and the organisation of production, i.e. the abolition of repressive state authority.

But he identified the working class as including both workers and employers — as against of the two names we should choose". the parasitic aristocrats.

FOURIER (1772-1837): advocated socialist communities, in which work would become attractive rather than oppressive. The first to argue that "in any given society the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation"

Manifesto (1848).

OWEN (1771-1858): advocated worker cooperatives and 'labour money' to ensure fair exchange. Stressed, like Saint-Simon, that economic circumstances determine views, habits as "The 18th Brumaire' (1852). and character. Marx commented on this view that it 'forgets that it is men that change cirneeds educating. Hence, this doctrine neces- cumstances and. that the educator himsel decided to concentrate on his theoretical work. sarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society"

Owen spent time trying to persuade aristocrats and princes to sponsor his socialist communities.

WEITLING (1808-71): preached a sort of Christian socialism, but advocated revolution.

Tended to look to the unemployed and semiproletarians rather than the working cłass proper. and published 'Capital' volume 1 (1867). PROUDHON (1809-65): advocated a society of worker cooperatives linked by 'fair exchange' (and without a state). Very influential among radical French workers in his time.

LOUIS BLANC (1811-82): also advocated following the crushing of the Paris workers. cooperatives, but looked to constitutional action and government measures to introduce them.

QUESNAY, BOISGUILLEBERT, ADAM SMITH, RICARDO: early bourgeois economists.

LASSALLE (1825-64): founder of the German workers' movement. Marx was at one time friendly with him, but later clashed with him politically.

The did for Bolshevik party members. 1848: In this year, revolutions- aiming mainly for democracy and national liberation or unity — swept continental Europe. They were from one angle a reassertion of the ideals of the French Revolution against the reactionary settlement imposed on Europe after the final defeat of France at Waterloo. But the working class also came forward with its specific demands - especially in Paris, where on June 23-26 1848 workers demanding the right to not published until the 1930s. work clashed violently with the republican government that had only in February ousted the monarchy of Louis Philippe.

Louis Philippe's was called the 'bourgeois monarchy' ', in contrast to the Bourbon regime that it had replaced in 1830, because of its close links with big bankers and industrialists.

The Second Empire was the name given to the rule of Louis Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon), who overthrew the republican 'Anti-Duhring' published separately as a pamphlet. government in 1852.