Why did Marx and Engels believe that history was on their side?
Why did Marx and Engels believe that history was on their side?
To answer this question as to why Marx and Engels believed that history was on their side, a number of components need to be discussed. A deterministic theory of historical materialism for example human history driven by technological and economic development, passing inevitably through various stages to capitalism, socialism, then communism. All of these aspects are characterised at every stage except the first and last ones by class struggle which is implied in the Communist Manifesto, must be analysed in order to give a critical analysis of Marx and Engels political ideologies.
Marxism or communism is the theory of 'scientific socialism', developed by Karl Marx and Freiedrich Engels. This socio-economic and ultimately political theory was based on the philosophy of Hegel, French revolutionary ideas and study of the British Industrial Revolution. Marxism is the theory of class struggle. Marx and Engels, in "The Communist Manifesto", explain how the capitalist bourgeoisie had simplified the feudal class system by causing society to split up into "two great hostile camps." A quotation from "The Communist Manifesto" will show what Marx saw as the barrier to freedom in the Modern State:
"In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it [capitalism] has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." (Marx and Engels, Pg. 82)
Marx considered the essential genius of capitalism was that it had the ability to combine the accumulation of capital with an incessant stream of technological innovations. Technological advances were central in Karl Marx's analysis. In Marx technological advance is an essential element of the competition among firms. Under the force of competition, firms are inexorably driven to adopt new technologies that substitute capital for labour. The result for Marx was as much rising unemployment as it was raising productivity. One can see here the origins of the modern dispute about the effects of automation. By and large, technological advance seems not to have caused widespread unemployment. But the issue is repressed in most modern growth theory, which simply assumes full employment. For a variety of reasons, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the interest of economists in economic growth diminished. 1
While there are important exceptions, it is fair to say that strong interest in technical change and economic growth only returned to economics after World War II. In the basic Marxism schema, capitalists invested in a constant quest for profit. But investment booms led to wage increases and product market gluts, precipitating crisis in which the capitalists profit plummeted. To restore and augment their profits, the capitalists developed and introduced on a massive scale new labour saving technologies and cultivated new product and territorial markets. The labour-saving investments led a 'reserve army of the unemployed' whose competition with workers still holding jobs kept wages down. But the cycles of rising investment followed by crisis followed by further investment were seen by Marx as growing ever more violent, leading ultimately to revolution by the poverty stricken workers and a dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx erred in his expectation that cynical but rising unemployment would prevent workers from sharing through higher real incomes the increased productive potential flowing from technological innovation and the accumulation of capital.
Schumpeter was strongly influenced by Marx, at least in his insistence that technological innovation and industrial competition are closely intertwined. Schumpeter has had the greatest influence on contemporary analysis is his 1943 volume, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, where he presented his arguments.
The first is that technological change and economic growth involve disequilibrium in a fundamental way. Technological advance, and competition in industries where technological advance is important, proceeds through a process of "creative destruction." Schumpeter's second important contribution was to call attention to the relationship between industrial structure and technological advance. In particular, he called ...
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Schumpeter was strongly influenced by Marx, at least in his insistence that technological innovation and industrial competition are closely intertwined. Schumpeter has had the greatest influence on contemporary analysis is his 1943 volume, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, where he presented his arguments.
The first is that technological change and economic growth involve disequilibrium in a fundamental way. Technological advance, and competition in industries where technological advance is important, proceeds through a process of "creative destruction." Schumpeter's second important contribution was to call attention to the relationship between industrial structure and technological advance. In particular, he called attention to the fact that, while innovation was a central form of competition in many industries, the structure of those industries never was "perfectly competitive" in the sense articulated in standard macroeconomic theory textbooks. The second of these themes spawned a large stream of empirical research exploring the relationships between economic structure and technological advance. As the proletariat became more and more misused and as it grew in size, the wealth of the world would be aggregated in increasingly fewer hands. In a revolution the lower class would rise up and throw out the remaining bourgeois and create economic equality for all the people.
This idea was put forward in Communist Manifesto, the most famous of Marx and Engels writing, where the workers of the world are exploited by their employers in the bourgeois, that they receive only a minute of portion of the profit made from the sales of their goods, and that their families suffer mainly because of the workings of capitalism. 2
A period of dictatorship by the proletariat would be necessary to establish order, but afterwards the state would slowly cease to exist as only one equal class would exist, thereby eliminating the need for a state to regulate things. Once the state ceased to exist in any meaningful form, pure communism would be in place, fostering an age of co-operation and socio-economic equality for the first time in human history. Private property would cease to exist and the workers would break their metaphorical chains no longer bound to anyone.
The significance of Marx's opinions on inequalities and stratification is that he believes that, as well as capital being in the hands of the bourgeoisie, so is the power. As Hall and Gieben make clear the state can never act in the interest of the "common good". It is not an impartial arbitrator. Marx saw the state as an extension of "civil society" and the state simply deepened the inequalities that existed. The main point is that the state works exclusively for the interests of a certain elitist group - in capitalist society that group is the bourgeoisie. (Hall and Gieben, Page 113). That is the main backbone of Marx's argument, that, in Capitalist Society, the state works with the bourgeoisie and aids and exaggerates its exploitative relationship with the proletariat.
According to Marx and Engels, the capitalist class not only controls the means of production but also attempts to control the beliefs of the people are, according to the document, merely myths propagated to serve the interests of capitalism. A true market system, according to the authors, occurs when certain items are produced for consumption by the general population. The more people want a certain item, the more of those items are produced. If supply cannot meet the demand, prices will rise. Of course, if prices go too high, fewer people will purchase the items, which can result in an unwanted surplus of goods. The same situation will occur if prices remain stagnant, but more items have been produced than consumer demand requires. Both of these instances should eventually lead to lower prices, but Marx and Engels conceive that since the capitalists control supply and demand, prices fluctuate only according to their own self-interests. 3
The communist manifesto denounced capitalism for a variety of reasons but the most obvious of those reasons is that denouncing capitalism in turn promotes socialism, and that was at the core of Marx and Engels' objectives. The state has never carried on the nationalising of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demanded, nor will it ever go further than that. The state will not cease to be a capitalist institution until the proletariat, the working class, has become the ruling class; not until then will it become possible to turn it into a co-operative commonwealth.
The young Marx came increasingly to believe that no society, which was divided into exploiting employer and exploited worker could ever achieve full democracy. So long as the capitalists held the bulk of economic power in society, they would continue to dominate political life. Unlike the utopian socialists, Marx insisted that socialism had to represent a higher stage of democracy than anything yet seen. He opposed all socialist and communist views that involved a curtailing of democracy. As he wrote in 1847 in a pamphlet outlining the views of a socialist grouping he was involved in:
We are not among those communists who are out to destroy personal liberty, who wish to turn the world into one huge barrack or into a gigantic workhouse. There certainly are some communists who, with an easy conscience, refuse to countenance personal liberty and would like to shuffle it out of the world because they consider that it is a hindrance to complete harmony. But we have no desire to exchange freedom for equality. We are convinced that in no social order will freedom be assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.
Marx was the first major socialist thinker to make the principle of self-emancipation--the principle that socialism could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class--a fundamental aspect of the socialist project. As he wrote in the statement of aims of the First International Workingmen's Association, 'The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves.'
Unlike the conspiratorial communists, Marx insisted that there was a majority force in society that would bring socialism into being. He argued that the modern working class of wage-labourers was organised in such a way that they would be pushed, in the course of struggle, towards socialist objectives. Through his study of English economics, Marx came to see that capitalism had created, for the first time in human history, an oppressed class that worked collectively in large workplaces. If this class was to liberate itself, he pointed out, it could only do so in common. If it was to reorganise the economic basis of society, it could only do so in a collective fashion. If the factories, mines, mills and offices were to be brought under the control of those who worked them, this could be achieved only through the coordinated action of thousands upon thousands of working people.
Such a democratic and collective society would have to be based upon the fullest possible political democracy. Marx made this point clear from his earliest writings. But it was only with the workers' revolution in Paris in 1871, the revolution that established the short-lived Paris Commune, that Marx came to see some of the forms that a workers' state, workers' democracy, would take. The Paris Commune, Marx wrote was 'essentially a working class government ... the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour'. Economic emancipation, the elimination of class divisions and private ownership of the means of producing wealth, could only take place under the direct and democratic rule of the working class through its own state.
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to a final stage of socialism in which all class differences would disappear (Payne 421). They declared that the course of history was discovered by the clash of opposing forces (Payne 421). These forces were rooted in the economic system and the ownership of property (Payne 421). The struggle between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat would end when the socialists started a revolution and attained a full communistic government. Communist revolutions occurred throughout as a result of this ideology. Most notably, Russia and China became communist states replacing long-standing monarchies. However, communism did not developed as Marx and Engels predicted. Instead, most communist countries develop into totalitarian regimes, with a small, elite class of people running everything.4
Marx came to believe a communist society would eventually take the place of the dismal state of capitalism. Communist would become a stark contrast to capitalism and become the ally and answer to the working class problems. Communism had its interests only in the working class as a whole, making the working class not dependent on the capitalist. Marx considered socialism (or communism) to be a society, which would overcome the basic shortcomings of capitalism: exploitation and the alienation of labour. The alienation of labour under capitalism according to Marx has its origin in the dual determination of man: as a part of the economic and natural structure and as a part or the socio-economic structure. What Marx said was that the synthesis of Capitalism is Communism, which is the ultimate economic and political system. So Marx believed that Communism is going to be the end of the world in terms of governments and economic systems.
In Communism there is no formal government. Everyone lives in a Commune, which is essentially a small community. Everyone is treated equal; from pay to housing and food. There are some problems with Communism. One is that Communism is sometimes considered a Utopian government. This means that Communism can be considered too perfect; to the point that it cannot be reached because of the requirement put upon people. Two more complaints deal with the revolution to come. One of the complaints is that there are no concrete plans on how to bring about the revolution. Marx said that there must be one, but he never says how to go about it. The other is the violence required for the revolution. Marx emphasized how in order for the revolution to work it must completely sweep all traces of Capitalism from the face of the earth, at any cost. This all leads to a certain fanaticism among Communists. They all firmly believe in their ideals and are willing to go to any length for it. It can be compared to a religion; something Communists hate since they detest religions.
For Marx history is linear, it is heading towards an end goal. This end goal in which the means of production are socialized is called communism. It reaches this goal only through advancement through other economic orders, that is, through other exploitative systems of production. No means of production, no steam engine or machine, is going to lead to this transition, it is the proletariat who will by their revolution put an end to all exploitative systems of production. Given the analysis of Marx and Engels ideologies, it is prevalent that history was on their side through the evolution of their ideas. From the history of technological and economic developments passing through the changes of capitalism, socialism then finally communism, it is clear how they believed history was on their side as this was the society they believed in and people would live in a class less state.
Bibliography
. Alex Callinicos The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx Bookmarks, London 1996.
2. Eric Hobsbawm's Introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of Karl Marx and Federick Engels, The Communist Manifesto: A Modern Edition (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 1-29.
3. Shlomo Avinieri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge University Press, 1968).
4. John M. Maguire, Marx's Theory of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1978). Chap 2 "Perspectives on Revolution: Marx's Position on the Eve of 1848," pp. 28-47.
5. Alan Gilbert, Marx's Politics: Communists and Citizens (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981). Chap. VIII "The Communist Manifesto and Marx's Strategies," pp. 125-35.
6. Hacker, Andrew. Political Theory: Philosophy, Ideology, Science. The
Macmillian Company; New York: 1961.
7. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto' (1848), in eds.
8. Thomas, Paul. Karl Marx and the Anarchists. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
9. Tucker, D.F.B. Marxism and Individualism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1980.
Alex Callinicos The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx Bookmarks, London 1996
2 Thomas, Paul. Karl Marx and the Anarchists. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
3 Alan Gilbert, Marx's Politics: Communists and Citizens (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1981). Chap. VIII "The Communist Manifesto and Marx's Strategies," pp. 125-35.
4 John M. Maguire, Marx's Theory of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1978). Chap 2 "Perspectives on Revolution: Marx's Position on the Eve of 1848," pp. 28-47.
Word count 2,345 Maya Lal
