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HEINRICH KARL MARX (1818-1883)

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Originally appearing in Volume V17, Page 814 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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HEINRICH KARL See also:

MARX (1818-1883)  , See also:German socialist, and See also:head of the See also:International Working Men's Association, was See also:born on the 5th of May 1818 in Treves (Rhenish See also:Prussia) . His See also:father, a Jewish lawyer, in 1824 went over to See also:Christianity, and he and his whole See also:family were baptized as See also:Christian Protestants . The son went to the high See also:grammar school at Treves, and from 1835 to the See also:universities of See also:Bonn and See also:Berlin . He studied first See also:law, then See also:history and See also:philosophy, and in 1841 took the degree of See also:doctor of philosophy . In Berlin he had See also:close intimacy with the most prominent representatives of the See also:young Hegelians—the See also:brothers See also:Bruno and See also:Edgar See also:Bauer and their circle, the so-called " Freien." He at first intended to See also:settle as a lecturer at Bonn University, but his See also:Radical views made a university career out of the question, and he accepted See also:work on a Radical See also:paper, the Rheinische Zeitung, which expounded the ideas of the most advanced See also:section of the Rhenish Radical bourgeoisie . In See also:October 1842 he became one of the editors of this paper, which, however, after an incessant struggle with See also:press censors, was suppressed in the beginning of 1843 . In the summer of this See also:year See also:Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of a high See also:government See also:official . Through her See also:mother Jenny von Westphalen was a lineal descendant of the See also:earl of Argyle, who was beheaded under See also:James II . She was a most faithful See also:companion to Marx during all the vicissitudes of his career, and died on the and of See also:December 1881; he outliving her only fifteen months . Already in the Rheinische Zeitung some socialist voices had been audible, couched in a somewhat philosophical See also:strain . Marx, though not accepting these views, refused to criticize them until he had studied the question thoroughly . For this purpose he went in the autumn of 1843 to See also:Paris, where the socialist See also:movement was then at its intellectual See also:zenith, and where he, together with See also:Arnold Huge, the well-known See also:literary See also:leader of Radical Hegelianism, was to edit a See also:review, the See also:Deutsch franzosische Jahrbiicher, of which, however, only one number appeared .

It contained two articles by Marx—a See also:

criticism of Bruno Bauer's treatment of the Jewish question, and an introduction to a criticism of See also:Hegel's philosophy of the law . The first concluded that the social emancipation of the See also:Jews could only be achieved together with the emancipation of society from Judaism, i.e. commercialism . The second declared that in See also:Germany no partial See also:political emancipation was possible; there was now only one class from which a real and reckless fight against authority was to be expected—namely, the proletariate . But the proletariate could not emancipate itself except by breaking all the chains, by dissolving the whole constituted society, by recreating See also:man as a member of the human society in the See also:place of established states and classes . " Then the See also:day of German resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallican 'See also:cock." Both articles thus relegated the See also:solution of the questions then prominent in Germany to the See also:advent of See also:socialism, and so far resembled in principle other socialist publications of the See also:time . But the way of reasoning was different, and the final words of the last quoted See also:sentence pointed to a political revolution, to begin in See also:France as soon as the See also:industrial See also:evolution had created a sufficiently strong proletariate . In contradistinction to most of the socialists of the day, Marx laid stress upon the political struggle as the See also:lever of social emancipation . In some letters which formed See also:part of a See also:correspondence between Marx, See also:Ruge, See also:Ludwig See also:Feuerbach, and Mikhail See also:Bakunin, published as an introduction to the review, this opposition of Marx to socialistic " dogmatism " was enunciated in a still more pronounced See also:form: " Nothing prevents us," he said, " from combining our criticism with the criticism of politics, from participating in politics, and consequently in real struggles . We will not, then, oppose the See also:world like doctrinarians with a new principle: here is truth, kneel down here ! We expose new principles to the world out of the principles of the world itself . We See also:don't tell it: ` Give up your struggles, they are rubbish, we will show you the true See also:war-cry.' We explain to it only the real See also:object for which it struggles, and consciousness is a thing it must acquire even if it See also:objects to it." In Paris Marx met See also:FRIEDRICH ENGELS (1820-1895), from whom the Deutsch-franzosische Jahrbitcher had two articles—a See also:power-fully written outline of a criticism of political See also:economy, and a See also:letter on See also:Carlyle's Past and See also:Present . Engels, the son of a wealthy See also:cotton-spinner, was born in 182o at See also:Barmen .

Although destined by his father for a commercial career, he attended a classical school, and during his See also:

apprenticeship and whilst undergoing in Berlin his one year's military service, he had given up part of his See also:free See also:hours to philosophical studies . In Berlin he had frequented the society of the " Freien," and had written letters to the Rheinische Zeitung . In 1842 he had gone to See also:England, his father's See also:firm having a factory near See also:Manchester, and had entered into connexion with the Owenite and Chartist movements, as well as with German communists . He contributed to See also:Owen's New Moral World and to the Chartist See also:Northern See also:Star, gave up much of his abstract speculative reasoning for a more positivist conception of things, and took to economic studies . Now, in See also:September 1844, on a See also:short stay in Paris, he visited Marx, and the two found that in regard to all theoretical points there was perfect agreement between them . From that visit See also:dates the close friendship and uninterrupted collaboration and See also:exchange of ideas which lasted during their lives, so that even some of Marx's subsequent See also:works, which he published under his own name, are more or less also the work of Engels . The first result of their collaboration was the See also:book See also:Die heilige Familie See also:oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer and Konsorten, a scathing exposition of the perverseness of the high-See also:sounding speculative radicalism of Bauer and the other Berlin " Freie." By aid of an See also:analysis, which, though not free from exaggeration and a certain diffuseness, hears testimony to the See also:great learning of Marx and the vigorous discerning See also:faculty of both the authors, it is shown that the supposed See also:superior criticism—the " See also:critical criticism " of the Bauer school, based upon the See also:doctrine of a "self-conscious" See also:idea, represented by or incarnated in the critic—was in fact inferior to the older Hegelian See also:idealism . The socialist and working-class movements in Great See also:Britain, France and Germany are defended against the superior criticism of the " See also:holy " Bauer family . In Paris, where he had very intimate intercourse with Heinrich See also:Heine, who always speaks of him with the greatest respect, and some of whose poems were suggested by Marx, the latter contributed to a Radical See also:magazine, the Vorwarts; but in consequence of a See also:request by the Prussian government, nearly the whole See also:staff of the magazine soon got orders to leave France . Marx now went to See also:Brussels, where he shortly afterwards was joined by Engels . In Brussels he published his second great work, La Misere de la pliilosophie, a See also:sharp rejoinder to the Philosophie de la misere ou contradictions economiqu?s of J . P .

See also:

Proudhon . In this he deals with Proudhon, whom in the former work he haddefended against the Bauers, not less severely than with the latter . It is shown that in many points Proudhon is inferior to both the See also:middle-class economists and the socialists, that his somewhat noisily proclaimed discoveries in regard to political economy were made See also:long before by See also:English socialists, and that his See also:main remedies, the " constitution of the labour-value " and the See also:establishment of exchange bazaars, were but a repetition of what English socialists had already worked out much more thoroughly and more consistently . Altogether the book shows remarkable knowledge of political economy . In See also:justice to Proudhon, it must be added that it is more often his mode of speaking than the thought underlying the attacked sentences that is See also:hit by Marx's criticism . In Brussels Marx and Engels also wrote a number of essays, wherein they criticized the German literary representatives of that See also:kind of socialism and philosophic radicalism which was mainly influenced by the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, and deduced its theorems or postulates from speculations on the " nature of man." They mockingly nicknamed this kind of socialism " German or True Socialism," and ridiculed the idea that by disregarding See also:historical and class distinctions a conception of society and socialism superior to that of the English and See also:French workers and theorists could be obtained . Some of these essays were published at the time, two or three, curiously enough, by one of the attacked writers in his own magazine; one, a criticism of Feuerbach himself, was in a modified form published by Engels in 1885, but others have remained in See also:manuscript . They were at first intended for publication in two volumes as a criticism of See also:post-Hegelian German philosophy, but the Revolution of 1848 postponed for a time all See also:interest in theoretical discussions . In Brussels Marx and Engels came into still closer contact with the socialist working-class movement . They founded a German workers' society, acquired a See also:local German weekly, the Brusseller deutsche Zeitung, and finally joined a communistic society of German workers, the " See also:League of the Just," a See also:secret society which had its main branches in See also:London, Paris, Brussels and several Swiss towns . For this league, which till then had adhered to the rough-and-ready See also:communism of the gifted German workman Wilhelm Weitling, but which now called itself " League of the Communists," and gave up its leanings towards See also:conspiracy and became an educational and propagandistic See also:body, Marx and Engels at the end of 1847 wrote their famous pamphlet, See also:Manifest der Kommunisten . It was a concise exposition of the history of the working-class movement in See also:modern society according to their views, to which was added a critical survey of the existing socialist and communist literature, and an explanation of the attitude of the Communists towards the advanced opposition parties in the different countries .

Scarcely was the manifesto printed when, in See also:

February 1848, the Revolution See also:broke out in France, and " the crowing of the Gallican cock" gave the See also:signal for an upheaval in Germany such as Marx had prophesied . After a short stay in France, Marx and Engels went to See also:Cologne in May 1848, and there with some See also:friends they founded the Neue rheinische Zeitung, with the sub-See also:title " An See also:Organ of See also:Democracy," a political daily paper on a large See also:scale, of which Marx was the See also:chief editor . They took a frankly revolutionary attitude, and directed their criticism to a great extent against the middle-class democratic parties, who, by evading all decisive issues, delayed the achievement of the upheaval . When in See also:November 1848 the See also:king of Prussia dissolved the See also:National See also:Assembly, Marx and his friends advocated the non-See also:payment of taxes and the organization of armed resistance . Then the See also:state of See also:siege was declared in Cologne, the Neue rheinische Zeitung was suspended, and Marx was put on trial for high See also:treason . He was unanimously acquitted by a middle-class See also:jury, but in May 1849 he was expelled from Prussian territory . He went to Paris, but was soon given the See also:option of either leaving France or settling at a small provincial place . He preferred the former, and went to England . He settled in London, and remained there for the See also:rest of his See also:life . At first he tried to reorganize the Communist League; but soon a conflict broke out in its ranks, and after some of its members had been tried in Germany and condemned for high treason, Marx, who had done everything to See also:save the accused, dissolved the Communist League altogether . Nor was a literary enterprise, a review, also called the Neue rheinische Zeitung, more successful; only six See also:numbers of it were issued . It contained, however, some very remarkable contributions; and a See also:series of articles on the career of the French Revolution of 1848, which first appeared there, was in 1895 published by Engels in book form under the title of Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich von 1848 " by Karl Marx." Carlyle's Latter Day See also:Pamphlets, published at that time, met with a very vehement criticism in the Neue rheinische Zeitung .

The endeavours of Ernest See also:

Jones and others to revive the Chartist movement were heartily supported by Marx, who contributed to several of the Chartist See also:journals of the See also:Period, mostly, if not wholly, without getting or asking payment . He lived at this time in great See also:financial straits, occupied a few small rooms in See also:Dean See also:Street, Soho, and all his See also:children then born died very young . At length he was invited to write letters for the New See also:York See also:Tribune, whose staff consisted of advanced democrats and socialists of the Fourierist school . For these letters he was paid at the See also:rate of a See also:guinea each . Part of them, dealing with the Eastern Question and the See also:Crimean War, were republished in 1897 (London, Sonnenschein) . Some were even at the time reprinted in pamphlet form . The co-operation of Marx, who was determinedly See also:anti-See also:Russian, since See also:Russia was the leading reactionary power in See also:Europe, was obtained by See also:David See also:Urquhart and his followers . A number of Marx's articles were issued as pamphlets by the Urquhartite committees, and Marx wrote a series of articles on the See also:diplomatic history of the 18th See also:century for the Urquhartite Free Press (See also:Sheffield and London, 1856-1857) . When in 18J9 the Franco-See also:Austrian War about See also:Italy broke out, Marx denounced it as a Franco-Russian intrigue, directed against Germany on the one See also:hand and the revolutionary movement in France on the other . He opposed those democrats who sup-ported a war which in their eyes aimed at the See also:independence of the See also:Italian nation and promised to weaken See also:Austria, whose superiority in Germany was the hindrance to German unity . Violent derogatory remarks directed against him by the well-known naturalist Karl See also:Vogt gave occasion to a not less violent rejoinder, Herr Vogt, a book full of interesting material for the student of modern history . Marx's contention, that Vogt acted as an See also:agent of the Bonapartist clique, seems to have been well founded, whilst it must be an open question how far Vogt acted from dishonourable motives .

The discussions raised by the war also resulted in a great estrangement between Marx and See also:

Ferdinand See also:Lassalle . Lassalle had taken a similar view of the war to that advocated by Vogt, and fought tooth and See also:nail for it in letters to Marx . In the same year, 1859, Marx published as a first result of his renewed economic studies the book Zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie . It was the first part of a much larger work planned to See also:cover the whole ground of political economy . But Marx found that the arrangement of his materials did not fully See also:answer his purpose, and that many details had still to be worked out . He consequently altered the whole See also:plan and sat down to rewrite the book, of which in 1867 he published the first See also:volume under the title Das Kapital . In the meantime, in 1864, the International Working Men's Association was founded in London, and Marx became in fact though not in name, the head of its See also:general See also:council . All its addresses and proclamations were penned by him and explained in lectures to the members of the council . The first years of the International went smoothly enough . Marx was then at his best . He displayed in the International a political sagacity and See also:toleration which compare most favourably with the spirit of some of the publications of the Communist League . He was more of its teacher than an agitator, and his expositions of such subjects as See also:education, See also:trade unions, the working day, and co-operation were highly instructive .

He did not See also:

hurry on extreme resolutions, but put his proposals in such a form that they could be adopted by even the more backward sections, and yet contained no concessions to reactionary tendencies . But this See also:condition of things was not permitted to go on . The anarchistagitation of Bakunin, the Franco-German War, and the Paris See also:Commune created a state of things before which the International succumbed . Passions and prejudices ran so high that it proved impossible to maintain any sort of centralized federation . At the See also:congress of the See also:Hague, September 1872, the general council was removed from London to New York . But this was only a makeshift, and in See also:July 1876 the rest of the old International was formally dissolved at a See also:conference held in See also:Philadelphia . That its spirit had not passed away was shown by subsequent international congresses, and by the growth and See also:character of socialist labour parties in different countries . They have mostly founded their programmes on the basis of its principles, but are not always in their details quite in accordance with Marx's views . Thus the See also:programme which the German socialist party accepted at its congress in 1875 was very severely criticized by Marx . This criticism, reprinted in 1891 in the review Die neue Zeit, is of great importance for the analysis of Marx's conception of socialism . The See also:dissolution of the International gave Marx an opportunity of returning to his scientific work . He did not, however, succeed in See also:publishing further volumes of Das Kapital .

In See also:

order to make it—and especially the part dealing with See also:property in See also:land—as See also:complete as possible, he took up, as Engels tells us, a number of new studies, but repeated illness interrupted his researches, and on the 14th of See also:March 1883 he passed quietly away . From the See also:manuscripts he See also:left Engels compiled a second and a third volume of Das Kapital by judiciously and elaborately using complete and incomplete chapters, rough copies and excerpts, which Marx had at different times written down . Much of the copy used dates back to the 'sixties, i.e. represents the work as at first conceived by Marx, so that, e.g., the See also:matter published as the third volume was in the main written much earlier than the matter which was used for compiling the second volume . The same applies to the See also:fourth volume . Although the work thus comprises the four volumes promised in the See also:preface to the book; it can only in a very restricted sense be regarded as complete . In substance and demonstration it must be regarded as a torso . And it is perhaps not quite accidental that it should be so . Marx, if he had lived longer and had enjoyed better See also:health, would have given the world a much greater amount of scientific work of high value than is now the See also:case . But it seems doubtful whether he would have brought Das Kapital, his main work, to a satisfactory conclusion . Das Kapital proposes to show up historically and critically the whole mechanism of capitalist economy . The first volume deals with the processes of producing See also:capital, the second with the circulation of capital, the third with the movements of capital as a whole, whilst the fourth gives the history of the theories concerning capital . Capital is, according to Marx, the means of appropriating surplus-value as distinguished from ground See also:rent (rent on every kind of terrestrial property, such as land, mines, See also:rivers, &c., based upon the monopolist nature of such property) .

Surplus-value is created in the See also:

process of See also:production only, it is this part of the value of the newly created product which is not given to the workman as a return—the wage—of the labour-force he expended in working . If at first taken by the employer, it is in the different phases of economic intercourse split up into the profit of industrial enterprise, commercial or merchants' profit, interest and ground rent . The value of every commodity consists in the labour expended on it, and is measured according to the time occupied by the labour employed on its production . Labour in itself has no value, being only the measure of value, but the labour-force of the workman has a value, the value of the means required to maintain the worker in normal conditions of social existence . Thus, in distinction to other commodities, in the determination of the value of labour-force, besides the purely economical, a moral and historical See also:element enter . If to-day the worker receives a wage which covers the See also:bare necessaries of life, he is underpaid—he does not receive the real value of his labour-force . For the value of any commodity is determined by its socially necessary See also:costs of production (or in this case, See also:maintenance) . " Socially necessary " means, further, that no more labour is embodied in a commodity than is required by applying labour-force, tools, &c., of See also:average or normal efficiency, and that the commodity is produced in such quantity as is required to meet the effective demand for it . As this generally cannot be known in advance, the See also:market value of a commodity only gravitates See also:round its (abstract) value . But in the long run an equalization takes place, and for his further deductions Marx assumes that commodities exchange according to their value . That part of an industrial capital which is employed for installations, See also:machines, raw and See also:auxiliary materials, is called by Marx See also:constant capital, for the value of it or of its See also:wear and See also:tear reappears in equal proportions in the value of the new product . It is other-See also:wise with labour .

The new value of the product must by See also:

necessity be always higher than the value of the employed labour-force . Hence the capital employed in buying labour-force, i.e. in See also:wages, is called variable capital . It is the tendency of capitalist production to reduce the amount spent in wages and to increase the amount invested in machines, &c . For with natural and social, legal and other limitations of the working day, and the opposition to unlimited reduction of wages, it is not possible otherwise to cheapen production and See also:beat competition . According to the proportion of constant to variable capital, Marx distinguishes capitals of lowest average and highest See also:composition, the highest composition being that where proportionately the least amount of variable (wages) capital is employed . The ratio of the wages which workmen receive to the surplus-value which they produce Marx calls the rate of surplus-value; that of the surplus-value produced to the whole capital employed is the rate of profit . It is evident, then, that at the same time the rate of surplus-value can increase and the rate of profit decrease, and this in fact is the case . There is a continuous tendency of the rates of profit to decrease, and only by some counteracting forces is their decrease temporarily interrupted, protracted, or even sometimes reversed . Besides, by competition and movement of capitals the rates of profit in the different branches of trade are pressed towards an equalization in the shape of an average rate of profits . This average rate or profits, added to the actual cost See also:price of a given commodity, constitutes its price of production, and it is this price of production which appears to the empirical mind of the business man as the value of the commodity . The real law of value, on the contrary, disappears from the See also:surface in a society where, as to-day, commodities are bought and sold against See also:money and not exchanged against other commodities . Nevertheless, according to Marx, it is also to-day this law of value (" labour-value ") which in the last resort rules the prices and profits .

The tendency to cheapen production by increasing the relative proportion of constant capital—the fixed capital of the classical economist plus that portion of the circulating capital which consists of raw and auxiliary materials, &c.—leads to a continuous increase in the See also:

size of private enterprises, to their growing concentration . It is the larger enterprise that beats and swallows the smaller . The number of dependent workmen—" proletarians "—is thus continually growing, whilst employment; only periodically keeps See also:pace With their number . Capital alternately attracts and repels work-men, and creates a constant surplus-See also:population of workmen—a reserve-See also:army for its requirements—which See also:helps to See also:lower wages and to keep the whole class in economic dependency . A decreasing number of capitalists usurp and monopolize all the benefits of industrial progress, whilst the See also:mass of misery, of oppression, of See also:servitude, of depravation, and of exploitation increases . But at the same time the working class continuously grows in numbers, and is disciplined, See also:united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist mode of production . The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of the mode of production reach a point where they will become incompatible with their capitalist integument . Then the knell of capitalist private property will have been See also:rung . Those who used to expropriate will be expropriated . Individual property will again be established based upon co-operation and See also:common ownership of the See also:earth and the means of production produced by labour . These are the See also:principal outlines of Das Kapital . Its purely economic deductions are dominated throughout by the theory of surplus-value .

Its leading sociological principle is the materialist conception of history . This theory is in Das Kapital only laid down by implication, but it has been more connectedly explained in the preface of Zur Kritik and several works of Engels . According to it the material basis of life, the manner in which life and its requirements are produced, determines in the last instance the social ideas and institutions of the time or historical See also:

epoch, so that fundamental changes in the former produce in the long run also fundamental changes in the latter . A set of social institutions answer to a given mode of production, and periods where the institutions no longer answer to the mode of production are periods of social revolution, which go on until sufficient See also:adjustment has taken place . The main subjective forces of the struggle between the old order and the new are the classes into which society is divided after the dissolution of the communistic or semi-communistic tribes and the creation of states . And as long as society is divided into classes a class war will persist, sometimes in a more latent or disguised, sometimes in a more open or acute form, according to circumstances . In advanced capitalist society the classes between whom the decisive war takes place are the capitalist owners of the means of production and the non-propertied or wage-earning workers, the " proletariate." But the proletariate cannot free itself without freeing all other oppressed classes, and thus its victory means the end of exploitation and political repression altogether . Consequently the state as a repressive power will die out, and a free association will take its place . Almost from the first Das Kapital and the publications of Marx and Engels connected with it have been subjected to all kinds of criticisms . The originality of its leading ideas has been disputed, the ideas themselves have been declared to be false or only partially true, and consequently leading to wrong conclusions; and it has been said of many of Marx's statements that they are incorrect, and thatmany of the See also:statistics upon which he bases his deductions do not prove what he wants them to prove . In regard to the first point, it must be conceded that the disjecta membra of Marx's value theory and of his materialist conception of history are already to be found in the writings of former socialists and sociologists . It may even be said that just those points of the Marxist doctrine which have become popular are in a very small degree the produce of Marx's See also:genius, and that what really belongs to Marx, the methodical See also:conjunction and elaboration of these points, as well as the finer deductions See also:drawn from their application, are generally ignored .

But this is an experience repeated over and over again in the history of deductive sciences, and is quite irrelevant for the question of Marx's place in the history of socialism and social See also:

science . It must further be admitted that in several places the statistical See also:evidence upon which Marx bases his deductions is insufficient or inconclusive . Moreover—and this is one of the most damaging admissions—it repeatedly happens that he points out all the phenomena connected with a certain question, but afterwards ignores some of them and proceeds as if they did not exist . Thus, e.g., he speaks at the end of the first volume, where he sketches the historical tendency of capitalist See also:accumulation, of the decreasing number of magnates of capital as of an established fact . But all statistics show that the number of capitalists does not decrease, but increase; and in other places in Das Kapital this fact is indeed fully admitted, and even accentuated . Marx was, as the third volume shows, also quite aware that limited liability companies See also:play an important part in the See also:distribution of See also:wealth . But he leaves this See also:factor, too, quite out of sight, and confuses the concentration of private enterprises with the centralization of fortunes and capitals . By these and other omissions, quite apart from developments he could not well foresee, he announces a coming evolution which is very unlikely to take place in the way described . In this and in other features of his work a See also:dualism reveals itself which is also often observable in his actions in life—the alternating predominance of the spirit of the See also:scholar and the spirit of the radical revolutionary . Marx originally entitled his great social work Criticism of Political Economy, and this is still the sub-title of Das Kapital . But the conception of critic or criticize has with Marx a very pronounced meaning . He uses them mostly as identical with fundamentally opposing .

Much as he had mocked the " critical criticism " of the Bauers, he is in this respect yet of their breed and relapses into their habits . He retained in principle the Hegelian dialectical method, of which he said that in order to be rationally employed it must be " turned upside down," i.e. put upon a materialist basis . But as a matter of fact he has in many respects contravened against this See also:

prescription . Strict materialist dialectics cannot conclude much beyond actual facts . Dialectical See also:materialism is revolutionary in the sense that it recognizes no finality, but otherwise it is necessarily positivist in the general meaning of that See also:term . But Marx's opposition to modern society was fundamental and revolutionary, answering to that of the proletarian to the See also:bourgeois . And here we come to the main and fatal See also:contradiction of his work . He wanted to proceed, and to a very great extent did proceed, scientifically . Nothing was to be deduced from preconceived ideas; from the observed evolutionary See also:laws and forces of modern society alone were conclusions to be drawn . And yet the final conclusion of the work, as already noted, is a preconceived idea; it is the announcement of a state of society logically opposed to the given one . Imperceptibly the dialectical movement of ideas is substituted for the dialectical movement of facts, and the real movement of facts is only considered so far as is compatible with the former . Science is violated in the service of See also:speculation .

Phoenix-squares

The picture given at the end of the first volume answers to a conception arrived at by speculative socialism in the 'forties . True, Marx calls this See also:

chapter " the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation," and " tendency " does not necessarily mean realization in every detail . But on the whole the See also: