Marx, KARL, the founder of international socialism, was born at Trèves, 5th May 1818. His father was a lawyer in that town, and the young Marx was sent to the universities of Bonn and Berlin to study with a view to the same profession; but he seems really to have devoted his time to history and philosophy. He was apparently a disciple of Hegel, and he had for a time the intention to settle at Bonn as a lecturer on philosophy. Marx, however, soon gave up the idea of following an academic career, and in 1842 undertook the editorship of the democratic organ, the Rhenish Gazette. His experience on the journal convinced him that his economic knowledge required enlarging; and after his marriage he proceeded in 1843 to Paris, the headquarters of revolutionary economics. In the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher he began that course of literary activity which, varied by agitation, constituted the work of his life. Expelled from France in 1845, he settled in Brussels, where amongst other productions he wrote his attack on Proudhon's Philosophie de la Misère, entitled Misère de la Philosophie. But his chief work at Brussels was the reorganising, along with Fr. Engels, of the Communist League, for which he wrote the famous Manifesto (see INTERNATIONAL). In 1848 Marx took an active part in the revolutionary movement on the Rhine, and after its failure finally settled in London in 1849. Here at the British Museum he acquired his marvellous knowledge of economic literature and of the economic development of modern Europe. The early fruits of his labour appeared in a work, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859), the theories of which were, however, carried forward into the first volume of his Kapital (1867). Before that year Marx had, in 1864, resumed his work as agitator. He had the foremost part in founding and directing the International, and after the death of Lassalle he won practical control of the social-democratic movement in Germany. He died in London, 14th March 1883.
Marx's works leave us in no doubt that he was a man of extraordinary knowledge, which he handled with masterly skill. To one who has taken the pains to understand his terminology his style is lucid and powerful, though also sometimes tedious owing to the minuteness of his exposition; and the march of thought is varied by humour, unsparing invective, and flashes of light from the most unexpected quarters. Since the beginning of literature few books have been written like the first volume of Marx's Kapital. It is premature to offer any definitive judgment on his work as revolutionary thinker and agitator, because that is still very far from completion. There need, however, be no hesitation in saying that he, incomparably more than any other man, has influenced the labour movement all over the civilised world; his theories have in a thousand ways already penetrated the different strata of society, even the highest, but most of all the working-classes. It may also be safely said that his views can have any hope of realisation only after very extensive modification. In many respects his analysis of the economic development of modern society has been justified by subsequent events, but in many also it has been falsified; and it could be shown that he has left out of account some of the decisive factors in social development.
As he tells us in the preface to the Kapital, the final aim of his great work is to reveal the economic law that moves modern society. The social development of modern times depends on capital; the cardinal fact in modern history is the rise, culmination, and final catastrophe of capitalism. But the full development of capital and of the class representing it involves the rise of socialism and of the proletariat. The great work of Marx, therefore, gives us an historical analysis of capital and by implication a forecast of socialism.
The development of capitalism depends on the appropriation and accumulation of surplus value; we cannot understand the nature of capitalism without understanding surplus value. With the analysis of value, therefore, the great work of Marx begins. The wealth of modern society, in which the capitalistic method of production prevails, appears as an enormous collection of commodities, which are exchanged one against another in the utmost variety of ways. But they have one common characteristic: they are products of human labour. The value of all the commodities that circulate in the world-market is constituted by human labour, and measured in human labour-time; not this or that individual labour, but the average labour of the community, under the normal social conditions of production, with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour.
But labour cannot be carried on without the means of labour, which are land and capital. Taking England as the classic example of the fully-developed capitalism, Marx shows that since medieval times the course of historic evolution has tended to render the instruments of labour the monopoly of a special class. It is clear that the rise of such a class has had as complement the rise of another class who are destitute of the means of production, but who being free may sell their labour at the wage it can obtain in the market. They accordingly sell their labour for a wage, which represents the average subsistence necessary for themselves and the children required to continue the supply of labour. Their labour, however, when utilised by the capitalist produces a value greater than their wage. This is the surplus value of Karl Marx. The growth of capitalism depends on the appropriation and accumulation of this surplus value; and the history of modern society is a history of the antagonism of the two classes concerned—of the capitalist class, who absorb surplus value, and of the proletariat, who produce it.
The progress of the conflict leads to many remarkable results. On the one hand the great capitalist goes on destroying the smaller, until the wealth of the world is concentrated in the hands of a few colossal capitalists. On the other hand the development of the capitalistic system causes degradation, demoralisation, misery, and pauperism among the labouring classes, but it at the same time organises them in industrial armies; above all it raises them to a clear consciousness of their class position. In this way the process goes on in obedience to its own inherent laws, wealth accumulating at one pole of society and wretchedness at the other. Capitalism is at last ruined by an excess of the sustenance on which it grew—viz. surplus value. When things have become intolerable, the organised proletariat take the initia- tive, and seizing possession of the means of production carry on the economic process for the good of all. Government—which has always hitherto been an arrangement for keeping the producing classes in subjection—will simply become a control of productive processes.
As understood by Marx, socialism does not propound utopian schemes, nor even does it seek particularly to offer programmes of social reform. The great aim of his teaching is to understand a process of historical transformation which proceeds before our eyes; scientific socialism is simply a conscious participation in this process. Agitation and revolutionary action can be effective only in so far as they comprehend and co-operate with the inevitable tendencies of social evolution. The change contemplated by socialism is an economic revolution brought about in accordance with the natural laws of historic evolution. We must also remember that Marx regards the economic factor as cardinal and decisive in history. Law and politics, religion and philosophy, are all moulded and controlled by the prevailing economic conditions. With this view of Marx is naturally associated his materialistic conception of history. 'According to Hegel, the thought-process, which he transforms into an independent subject under the name idea, is the creator of the real, which forms only its external manifestation. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material transformed and translated in the human brain.' In short, the system of Marx is an evolutionary and revolutionary socialism, based on a materialistic conception of the world and of human history. He seeks to change the economic basis of society, and thereby to change the whole structure, but only by a conscious participation in, and willing co-operation with, historic tendencies, which in themselves are inevitable.
In his later and mature productions so far as published Marx has not given any definite forecast of the form likely to be assumed by the new society, and indeed has expressly disavowed any wish to provide a recipe for social betterment. The responsibility for a development in detail like that made by Schäffle in his Quintessenz des Sozialismus rests entirely with the author of that work. As already indicated, Marx's great aim is to elucidate an historical process which is inevitable, to make it clear to the consciousness of the class most profoundly interested—the proletariat, and as far as possible to shorten and alleviate the pangs of travail of the new era, which in any case will come to the birth when its time is fulfilled. Thus regarded, the life and work of Marx have a notable unity and reach and fixity of purpose. All that he did and wrote as scientific economist on the one hand and as agitator on the other, though at first sight inconsistent, is really formed and animated by the one idea.
The leading works of Marx have been mentioned in the foregoing article; a 3d edition of his Kapital, vol. i., appeared in 1883; vol. ii. was published under the editorship of Fr. Engels in 1885. Most recent economic works have something to say about Marx; see also studies by Gross (Leip. 1885) and Adler (Tübingen, 1887), and The Student's Marx by Dr Aveling (1892).