III. The "Communist manifesto" and the scientific spirit

• • Prefaces
  • I. Introduction
  • II. Robert Owen and the Utopian Spirit
  • III. The "Communist manifesto" and the scientific spirit
  • IV. The materialistic conception of history
  • V. Capitalism and the law of concentration
  • VI. The class struggle theory
  • VII. Karl marx and the economics of socialism
  • VIII. Outlines of socialist economic theory
  • IX. Outlines of the socialist state
  • X. The means of realization

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I

The Communist Manifesto has been called the birth-cry of the modern scientific Socialist movement. When it was written, at the end of 1847, little remained of those great movements which in the early part of the century had inspired millions with high hopes of social regeneration and rekindled the beacon fires of faith in the world. The Saint-Simonians had, as an organized body, disappeared; the Fourierists were a dwindling sect, discouraged by the failure of the one great trial of their system, the famous Brook Farm experiment, in the United States; the Owenite movement had never recovered from the failures of the experiments at New Harmony and elsewhere, and had lost much of its identity through the multiplicity of interests embraced in Owen's later propaganda. Chartism and Trade Unionism on the one hand, and the Coöperative Societies on the other, had, between them, absorbed most of the vital elements of the Owenite movement.

There was a multitude of what Engels calls "social quacks," but the really great social movements, Owenism in England, and Fourierism in France, were utterly demoralized and rapidly dwindling away. One thing only served to keep the flame of hope alive—"the crude, rough-hewn, purely instinctive sort of Communism" of the workers. This Communism of the working class differed very essentially from the Socialism of Fourier and Owen. It was Utopian, being based, like all Utopian movements, upon abstract ideas. It differed from Fourierism and Owenism, however, in that instead of a universal appeal based upon Brotherhood, Justice, Order, and Economy, its appeal was, primarily, to the laborer. Its basis was the crude class doctrine of "the rights of Labor." The laborer was appealed to as one suffering from oppression and injustice. It was, therefore, distinctly a class movement, and its class-consciousness was sufficiently developed to keep its leaders from wasting their lives in abortive appeals to the master class. The leading exponents of this Communism of the workers were Wilhelm Weitling, in Germany, and Étienne Cabet, in France.

Weitling was a man of the people. He was born in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1808, the illegitimate child of a humble woman and her soldier lover. He became a tailor, and, as was the custom in Germany at that time, traveled extensively during his apprenticeship. In 1838 his first important work, "The World As It Is, and As It Might Be," appeared, published in Paris by a secret revolutionary society consisting of German workingmen of the "Young Germany" movement. In this work Weitling first expounded at length his communistic theories. It is claimed that his conversion to Communism was the result of the chance placing of a Fourierist paper upon the table of a Berlin coffeehouse, by Albert Brisbane, the brilliant friend and disciple of Fourier, his first exponent in the English language. This may well be true, for, as we shall see, Weitling's views are mainly based upon those of the great French Utopist. In 1842 Weitling published his best-known work, the book upon which his literary fame chiefly rests, "The Guaranties of Harmony and Freedom." This work at once attracted wide attention, and gave Weitling a foremost place among the writers of the time in the affections of the educated workers. It was an elaboration of the theories contained in his earlier book. Morris Hillquit thus describes Weitling's philosophy and method:—

"In his social philosophy, Weitling may be said to have been the connecting link between primitive and modern Socialism. In the main, he is still a Utopian, and his writings betray the unmistakable influence of the early French Socialists. In common with all Utopians, he bases his philosophy exclusively upon moral grounds. Misery and poverty are to him but the results of human malice, and his cry is for 'eternal justice' and for the 'absolute liberty and equality of all mankind.' In his criticism of the existing order, he leans closely on Fourier, from whom he also borrowed the division of labor into three classes of the Necessary, Useful, and Attractive, and the plan of organization of 'attractive industry.'

"His ideal of the future state of society reminds us of the Saint-Simonian government of scientists. The administration of affairs of the entire globe is to be in the hands of the three greatest authorities on 'philosophical medicine,' physics, and mechanics, who are to be reënforced by a number of subordinate committees. His state of the future is a highly centralized government, and is described by the author with the customary details. Where Weitling, to some extent, approaches the conception of modern Socialism, is in his recognition of class distinctions between employer and employee. This distinction never amounted to a conscious indorsement of the modern Socialist doctrine of the 'class struggle,' but his views on the antagonism between the 'poor' and the 'wealthy' came quite close to it. He was a firm believer in labor organizations as a factor in developing the administrative abilities of the working class; the creation of an independent labor party was one of his pet schemes, and his appeals were principally addressed to the workingmen."

Weitling visited the United States in 1846, a group of German exiles, identified with the Free Soil movement, having invited him to become the editor of a magazine, the Volkstribun, devoted to the principles of the movement. By the time he reached America, however, the magazine had suspended publication. He stayed little more than a year, hastening back to the fatherland to share in the revolutionary activities of 1848. He returned to America again in 1849, after the failure of the "glorious revolution," and for many years thereafter was an active and tireless propagandist. He died in Brooklyn in 1871.

Étienne Cabet was, in many ways, a very different type of man from Weitling, but their ideas were not so dissimilar. Cabet, born in Dijon, France, in 1788, was the son of a fairly prosperous cooper, and received a good university education. He studied both medicine and law, adopting the profession of the latter and early achieving marked success in its practice. He took a leading part in the Revolution of 1830 as a member of the "Committee of Insurrection," and upon the accession of Louis Philippe was "rewarded" by being made Attorney-General for Corsica. There is no doubt that the government desired to remove Cabet from the political life of Paris, quite as much as to reward him for his services during the Revolution; his strong radicalism, combined with his sturdy independence of character, being rightly regarded as dangerous to Louis Philippe's régime. His reward, therefore, took the form of practical banishment. The wily advisers of Louis Philippe used the gloved hand. But the best-laid schemes of mice and courtiers "gang aft agley." Cabet, in Corsica, joined the radical anti-administration forces, and became a thorn in the side of the government. Removed from office, he returned to Paris, whereupon the citizens of Dijon, his native town, elected him as their deputy to the lower chamber in 1834. Here he continued his opposition to the administration, and was at last tried on a charge of lèse majesté, and given the option of choosing between two years' imprisonment and five years' exile.

Cabet chose exile, and took up his residence in England, where he fell under the influence of Owen's agitation and became a convert to his Socialistic views. During this time of exile, too, he became acquainted with the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More and was fascinated by it. The idea of writing a similar work of fiction to propagate his Socialist belief impressed itself upon his mind, and he wrote "a philosophical and social romance," entitled "Voyage to Icaria," which was published soon after his return to Paris, in 1839. In this novel Cabet follows closely the method of More, and describes "Icaria" as "a Promised Land, an Eden, an Elysium, a new terrestrial Paradise." The plot of the book is simple in the extreme, and its literary merit is not very great. The writer represents that he met, in London, a nobleman, Lord William Carisdall, who, having by chance heard of Icaria and the wonderful and strange customs and form of government of its inhabitants, visited the country. Lord William kept a diary in which he described all that he saw in this wonderland. This record, we are told, the traveler had permitted to be published through the medium of his friend, and under his editorial supervision. The first part of the book contains an attractive account of the coöperative system of the Icarians, their communistic government, equality of the sexes, and high standard of morality. The second part is devoted to an account of the history of Icaria, prior to and succeeding the revolution of 1782, when the great national hero, Icar, established Communism.

The book created a tremendous furore in France. It appealed strongly to the discontented masses, and it is said that by 1847 Cabet had no less than four hundred thousand adherents among the workers of France. The numerical strength of revolutionary movements is almost invariably greatly exaggerated, however, and it is not likely that the figures cited are exceptional in this regard. It is possible, cum grano salis, to accept the figures only by remembering that a very infinitesimal proportion of these were adherents in the sense of being ready to follow Cabet's leadership, as subsequent events showed. When the clamor rose for a practical test of the theories set forth so alluringly, Cabet visited Robert Owen in England and sought advice as to the best site for such an experiment. Owen recommended Texas, then recently admitted into the union of states and anxious for settlers. Cabet accepted Owen's advice and called for volunteers to form the "advance guard" of settlers, the number responding being pitifully, almost ludicrously, small. Still, the effect of the book was very great, and it served to fire the flagging zeal of those workers for social regeneration whose hearts must otherwise have become deadly sick from long-deferred hopes.

The confluence of these two streams of Communist propaganda represented by Weitling and Cabet constituted the real Communist "movement" of 1840-1847. Its organized expression was the Communist League, a secret organization with its headquarters in London. The League was formed in Paris by German refugees and traveling workmen, and seems to have been an offspring of Mazzini's "Young Europe" agitation of 1834. At different times it bore the names, "League of the Just," "League of the Righteous," and, finally, "Communist League." For many years it remained a mere conspiratory society, exclusively German, and existed mainly for the purpose of fostering the "Young Germany" ideas. Later it became an International Alliance with societies in many parts of Europe.

In 1847 Karl Marx was residing in Brussels. During a prior residence in Paris he had come into close association with the leaders of the League there, and had agreed to form a similar society in Brussels. Engels was in Paris in 1847, and it was probably due to his activities that the Paris League officially invited both him and Marx to join the international organization, promising that a congress should be convened in London at an early date. We may, in view of the after career of Engels as the politician of the movement, surmise so much. Be that how it may, the invitation, with its promise to call a congress in London, was extended and accepted. The reason for the step, the object of the proposed congress, is quite clear. Marx himself has placed it beyond dispute. During his stay in Paris he and Engels had discussed the position of the League with some of its leaders, and he had, later, criticised it in the most merciless manner in some of his pamphlets. Marx desired a revolutionary working class political party with a definite aim and policy. Those leaders of the League who agreed with him in this were the prime movers for the congress, which was held in London, in November, 1847.

At the congress, Marx and Engels presented their views at great length, and outlined the principles and policy which their famous pamphlet later made familiar. Perhaps it was due to the very convincing manner in which they argued that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of that class itself, that there was some opposition to them, on the part of a few delegates, on the ground that they were "Intellectuals" and not members of the proletariat, a criticism which pursued them all through their lives. Their views found general favor, however, as might be expected from such an inchoate mass of men, revolutionaries to the core, and waiting only for effective leadership. A resolution was adopted requesting Marx and Engels to prepare "a complete theoretical and working programme" for the League. This they did. It took the form of the Communist Manifesto, published in the early part of January, 1848.

II

The authors of the Manifesto were men of great intellectual gifts. Either of them alone must have won fame; together, they won immortality. Their lives, from the date of their first meeting in Paris, in 1844, to the death of Marx, almost forty years later, are inseparably interwoven. The friendship of Damon and Pythias was not more remarkable.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on the fifth day of May, 1818, at Treves, the oldest town in Germany, dating back to Roman times. His parents were both people of remarkable character. His mother—née Pressburg—was the descendant of Hungarian Jews who in the sixteenth century had settled in Holland. Many of her ancestors had been rabbis. Marx was passionately devoted to his mother, always speaking of her with reverent admiration. On his father's side, also, Marx boasted of a long line of rabbinical ancestors, and it has been suggested that he owed to this rabbinical ancestry some of his marvelous gift of luminous exposition. The true family name was Mordechia, but that was abandoned by his grandfather, who took the name of Marx, which the grandson was destined to make famous. The father of Karl was a lawyer of some prominence and considerable learning, and a man of great force of character. In 1824, the boy Karl being then six years old, he renounced the Jewish religion and embraced Christianity, all the members of the family being baptized and received into the Church.

There is a familiar legend that this act was the result of compulsion, being taken in response to an official for God's sake, but for my own," she explained when asked about it.

At the earnest behest of his father, Marx studied law at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. But "to please himself" he studied history and philosophy, winning great distinction in these branches of learning. He graduated in 1841, as a Doctor of Philosophy, with an essay on the philosophy of Epicurus, and it was his purpose to settle at Bonn as a professor of philosophy. The plan was abandoned, partly because he had already discovered that his bent was toward political activity, and partly because the Prussian government had made scholastic independence impossible, thus destroying the attractiveness of an academic career. Accordingly, Marx accepted the editorship of a democratic paper, the Rhenish Gazette, in which he waged bitter, relentless war upon the government. Time after time the censors interfered, but Marx was too brilliant a polemicist, even thus early in his career, and far too subtle for the censors. Finally, at the request of his managers, who hoped thus to avoid being compelled to suspend the publication, Marx retired from the editorship. This did not serve to save the paper, however, and it was suppressed by the government in March, 1843.

Soon after this Marx went to Paris, with his young bride of a few months, Jenny von Westphalen, the playmate of his childhood. The Von Westphalens were of the nobility, and a brother of Mrs. Marx afterward became a Prussian Minister of State. The elder Von Westphalen was half Scotch, related, on his maternal side, to the Argyles. He was a lineal descendant of the Duke of Argyle who was beheaded in the reign of James II. His daughter tells an amusing story of how Marx, many years later, having to pawn some of his wife's heirlooms, especially some heavy, antique silver spoons which bore the Argyle crest and motto, "Truth is my maxim," narrowly escaped arrest on suspicion of having robbed the Argyles! To Paris, then, Marx went, and there met, among others, Heinrich Heine, many of whose poems he suggested, Arnold Ruge, the poet, P. J. Proudhon, and Michael Bakunin, the Anarchist philosopher, and, above all, the man destined to be his very alter ego, Friedrich Engels, with whom he had already had some correspondence.

The attainments of Engels have been somewhat overshadowed by those of his friend. Born at Barmen, in the province of the Rhine, November 28, 1820, he was educated in the gymnasium of that city, and after serving his period of military service, from 1837 to 1841, was sent, in the early part of 1842, to Manchester, England, to look after a cotton-spinning business of which his father was principal owner. Here he seems to have at once begun a thorough investigation of social and industrial conditions, the results of which are contained in a book, "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844," which remains to this day a classic presentation of the social and industrial life of the period. From the very first, already predisposed, as we know, he sympathized with the views of the Chartists and the Owenite Socialists. He became friendly with the Chartist leaders, notably with Feargus O'Connor, to whose paper, the Northern Star, he became a contributor. He also became friendly with Robert Owen, and wrote for his New Moral World. His linguistic abilities were very great; it is said that he had thoroughly mastered no less than ten languages—a gift which helped him immensely in his literary and political associations with Marx.

When the two men met for the first time, in 1844, they were drawn together by an irresistible impulse. They were kindred spirits. Marx had gone to Paris mainly for the purpose of studying the Socialist movement of the time. During his editorship of the Rhenish Gazette several articles had appeared on the subject, and he had refused to attack the Socialists in any manner. He had gone to Paris with a considerable reputation already established as a leader of radical thought, and at once sought out the Saint-Simonians, under whose influence he was led to declare himself definitely a Socialist. At first this seems difficult to explain, so wide is the chasm which yawns between the "New Christianity" of Saint-Simon and the materialism of Marx. There seems to be no bond of sympathy between the religious mysticism of the French dreamer and the scientific thought of the German economist and philosopher.

Marx has been described as being "rigidly mathematical," and the picture of the man one gets from his writings is that of a cold, unemotional philosopher, dealing only with facts and caring nothing for idealism. But the real Marx was a very different sort of man. His life was itself a splendid example of noble idealism, and underlying all his materialism there was a great religious spirit, using the word "religious" in its noblest and best sense, quite independent of dogmatic theology. All his life he was a deep student of Dante, the Divine Comedy being his constant companion, so that he knew it almost completely by heart. Some of his attacks upon Christianity are very bitter, and have been much quoted against Socialism, but they are not one whit more bitter than the superb thunderbolts of invective which the ancient Hebrew prophets hurled against an unfaithful Church and priesthood. For the most part, they are attacks upon religious hypocrisy rather than upon Christianity. Marx was, of course, an agnostic, even an atheist, but he was full of sympathy with the underlying ethical principles of all the great religions. Always tolerant of the religious opinions of others, he had nothing but scorn and contempt for the blatant dogmatic atheism of his time, and vigorously opposed committing the Socialist movement to atheism as part of its programme. In short, he was a man of fine spiritual instincts, splendidly religious in his irreligion.

This spiritual side of Marx must be considered if we would understand the man. It is not necessary, however, to ascribe the influence of Saint-Simonian thought upon him to a predisposing spiritual temperament. Marx, with his usual penetration, saw in Saint-Simonism the hidden germ of a great truth, the embryo of a profound social theory. Saint-Simon, as we have seen, had vaguely indicated the two ideas which were afterward to be cardinal doctrines of the Marx-Engels Manifesto—the antagonism of classes, and the economic foundation of political institutions. Not only so, but Saint-Simon's grasp of political questions, instanced by his advocacy, in 1815, of a triple alliance between England, France, and Germany, appealed to Marx, and impressed him alike by its fine perspicacity and its splendid courage. Engels, in whom, as stated, the working-class spirit of Chartism and the ideals of Owenism were blended, found in Marx a twin spirit. They were, indeed,—

"Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one."

III

The Communist Manifesto is the first declaration of an International Workingmen's Party. Its fine peroration is a call to the workers to transcend the petty divisions of nationalism and sectarianism: "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!" These concluding phrases of the Manifesto have become the shibboleths of millions. They are repeated with fervor by the disinherited workers of all the lands. Even in China, lately so rudely awakened from the slumbering peace of the centuries, they are voiced by an ever increasing army of voices. No sentences ever coined in the mint of human speech have held such magic power over such large numbers of men and women of so many diverse races and creeds. As a literary production, the Manifesto bears the unmistakable stamp of genius.

But it is not as literature that we are to consider the historic document. Its importance for us lies, not in its form, but in its fundamental principle. And the fundamental principle, the essence or soul of the declaration, is contained in this pregnant summary by Engels:—

"In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch, that consequently the whole history of mankind (since primitive tribal society holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes."

Thus Engels summarizes the philosophy—as apart from the proposals of immediate measures to constitute the political programme of the party—of the Manifesto; the basis upon which the whole superstructure of modern, scientific Socialist theory rests. This is the materialistic, or economic, conception of history which distinguishes scientific Socialism from all the Utopian Socialisms which preceded it. Socialism is henceforth a theory of social evolution, not a scheme of world-building; a spirit, not a thing. Thus, twelve years before the appearance of "The Origin of Species," nearly twenty years after the death of Lamarck, the authors of the Communist Manifesto formulated a great theory of social evolution as the basis of the mightiest proletarian movement in history. Socialism had become a science instead of a dream.

IV

Naturally, in view of its historic rôle, the joint authorship of the Manifesto has been much discussed. What was the respective share of each of its creators? What did Marx contribute, and what Engels? It may be, as Liebknecht says, an idle question, but it is a perfectly natural one. The pamphlet itself does not assist us. There are no internal signs pointing now to the hand of the one, now to the hand of the other. We may hazard a guess that most of the programme of ameliorative measures was the work of Engels, and perhaps the final section. It was the work of Engels throughout his life to deal with present social and political problems in the light of the fundamental theories to the systematization and elucidation of which Marx was devoted.

Beyond this mere conjecture, we have the word of Engels with regard to the basal principle which he has summarized in the passage already quoted. "The Manifesto being our joint production," he says, "I consider myself bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus belongs to Marx.... This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology, we, both of us, had been gradually approaching for some years before 1845. How far I had progressed toward it is best shown by my 'Condition of the Working Class in England.' But when I again met Marx at Brussels, in spring, 1845, he had it ready worked out, and put it before me in terms almost as clear as those in which I have stated it here."

Engels has lifted the veil thus far, but the rest is hidden. Perhaps it is well that it should be; well that no man should be able to say which passages came from the mind of Marx and which from the mind of Engels. In life they were inseparable, and so they must be in the Valhalla of history. The greatest political pamphlet of all time must forever bear, with equal honor, the names of both. Their noble friendship unites them even beyond the tomb.

"Twin Titans! Whom defeat ne'er bowed, Scarce breathing from the fray, Again they sound the war cry loud, Again is riven Labor's shroud, And life breathed in the clay. Their work? Look round—see Freedom proud And confident to-day."