Engels and Marx in the 1840s
The
"hungry forties", when a large part of the
Irish peasantry
starved to
death and the condition of the English workers was also miserable, had a
strong effect on the ideas about society of people of many different
political persuasions.
In 1848
two separate publications sought to provide a theoretical and scientific
explanation of class:
One was the first edition of Principles of Political Economy
- With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy by
John Stuart Mill,
which included an article on
On the Probable Futurity of
the Labouring
Classes
originally drafted by Mill's colleague Harriet Taylor.
The
other was The Communist Manifesto, the
first drafts of which
were written
by Friedrich Engels, and
the final version
written by his colleague Karl
Marx.
In the 1840s, Engels and Marx concluded independently that the social order
they were living in was doomed.
They were both German scholars who lived most of
their lives in England. Marx came here as a political refugee in 1849, but
Engels arrived in 1842
"at almost the worst period of.. the most
catastrophic economic slump of the 19th century.." (Hobsbawm 1969 p.14)
Engels was the son of a leading Prussian cotton manufacturer. Having served
for a year as an officer in the Guards, his father sent him to work in the
office of Erman and Engels in Manchester. On the way Engels and Marx
met briefly for the first time - but did not like one another.
Manchester. A hundred years ago, Engels wrote, the country around
Manchester was chiefly swamp, now it is
"the most densely populated strip
of country in England" (Engels 1845 p.75).
Something very dramatic was
happening here - for Manchester was the centre of the world's first
industrial revolution.
Intellectually and in person, Engels began to explore what was going on. He
found that Manchester was the centre of something else. It was:
"the seat of the most powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the
place which numbers most socialists. The more the factory system has taken
possession of a branch of industry, the more the working men employed in
it participate in the labour movement." (Engels 1845 p.266).
In the meantime, Marx was having a hard time in his first job. From 1842 to
1843 he was editor of a radical Rhineland newspaper called the
Rheinische Zeitung.
"I found myself embarrassed at first when I had to take part in
discussions concerning so-called material interests" (Marx 1859)
His education had been in law, philosophy and history, especially Hegel's
view of them, but to write about the issues of the day he found he needed
economics.
Another problem was socialism. Marx was editing articles about French
socialism and communism but
"had to admit at once...that my previous studies did not allow me to
hazard an independent judgement as to the merits of the French schools."
(Marx 1859)
In 1844 Marx lost his job as an editor and went to Paris to edit a journal
and study economics and socialism. It was from his study of French politics
and socialism that Marx reached the conclusion that the bourgeois order was
doomed. Engels was to show him that he could reach the same conclusion from
political economy and from what was happening to the English working class.
In Paris Marx received an article from Engels that he described as a work
of genius. It was called Outlines of a Critique of Political
Economy. Engels and Marx met again in Paris in September 1844 They
talked for several days, and it is here that their life long friendship and
collaboration dates from.
In Manchester Engels had gathered the materials for a book The
Conditions of the Working Class in England, which he wrote after
his return to Germany and published, in German, in 1845. The book begins
with a description of the industrial revolution in Britain. (Despite the
title it discusses Ireland and Scotland as well as England.) This
revolution, he says, has brought into being a new class of people: the
industrial workers or proletariat. (Engels 1845 p.37)
Industrialization, he says, was the result of competition. This force,
identified by Adam Smith as the root cause of economic growth, was creating
wealth for the rich, but, Engels argued, it was making the lives of the
working classes a misery. Competition had destroyed the independent
producers in the countryside and had driven them into the towns to seek
work. Here they lived in insanitary conditions and were prey to appalling
diseases. They worked long hours in factories using dangerous machinery.
Their children received no worthwhile education, and when they were
unemployed, sick or too old to work their only recourse was the Malthusian
Poor Law. (Engels 1845 p.108-120)
But, because they were brought together there was the possibility of
collective action. The workers came into contact with Owenite socialist and
Chartist
ideas and waves of revolutionary activity were sweeping the
country. (Engels 1845 pp 239-266)
In 1842, the year that Engels arrived, English workers, striking for the
Charter,
roamed the Midlands and North of England setting light to rich
men's houses and pulling out the plugs of factory boilers.
Capitalism, Engels argued, was subject to periodic crises, and one of these
would be the occasion for the working class wresting power from the
capitalists and establishing a communist society.
"The wrath of the whole working class.. against the rich, by whom they are
systematically plundered and mercilessly left to their fate...before too
long a time goes by.. must break out into a Revolution in comparison with
which the French revolution.. will prove to have been child's play".
(Engels 1845 p.53)
This revolution would not be "mindless", however. The English workers had
set up a network of institutes and established their own newspapers for
their own education.
"And in how great a measure the English proletariat
has succeeded in attaining independent education" Engels says "is shown
especially by the fact that the epoch-making products of modern
philosophical, political and poetical literature are read by working men
almost exclusively" (Engels 1845 p.265)
One of the examples he gives refers to the work of Benthamite socialists
like Thompson and
Wheeler
"The two great practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin,
are.. almost exclusively the property of the proletariat; for though
Bentham has a school with the Radical bourgeoisie, it is only the
proletariat and the Socialists who have succeeded in developing his
teachings a step forward." (Engels 1845 p.266)
It was only a short step from this conclusion to a belief that, in the
imminent course of industrial history, the proletariat would adopt
communism. Marx had arrived independently at the same conclusion. Engels
and Marx believed passionately that scientific theory could transform the
world if it was linked to the struggles of the working class. This was part
of their theory that (according to Engels) Marx was the first to develop.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is, to change it."
Marx wrote in his Theses on Feuerbach. (Marx, March 1845, point 11).
In
The Communist Manifesto.
Marx and
Engels described communism as a "spectre haunting Europe".
They linked
together the widespread popular disturbances of the late 1840s with the
idea that the seizure of political power by the workers would lead to the
replacement of competitive capitalism by collective ownership and
cooperation.
This revolutionary overthrow of capitalism did not take place in the middle
of the 19th century as Marx and Engels had anticipated. In fact, in France,
a dictator (Napoleon 3rd) was elected by the people in a popular election!
Disappointed, but not defeated, Marx turned his attention to the economic
analysis of the foundations of capitalism, and out of this developed his
monumental work: Das Kapital (Capital).
Marx's economics
Economics for Marx and Engels was not just economics: it was the
explanation for everything.
In the Preface to
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
(1859) Marx explained how in the late 1840s he reached a "general
conclusion" which "once reached, continued to serve as the leading thread
in my studies". This is how he describes his conclusion:
"In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite
relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these
relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of
their material powers of production."
"The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic
structure of society - the real foundations, on which rise legal and
political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness." Marx 1859
In diagrammatic form, he is arguing that society can be divided into an
economic base and a superstructure.