People :
Author : Otto Rühle
Text :
Second and Third Volumes
In the first volume of Capital, which ends with a prophetic glimpse through the gates of the coming social order, Marx disclosed the economic fundamentals of contemporary society.
He solved the problem of the origin of profit. He had not solved that problem after the manner of the petty-bourgeois defenders of capitalism, who use science for the justification and safeguarding of selfish interests, and look upon profit as something which rightly accrues to the capitalist in return for services rendered. Nor did he answer it after the manner of the utopian socialists, to whom the capitalist system had seemed to be the outcome of human baseness, and who had denounced profit as being derived from theft and cheating. Marx dealt with the matter in a new way, one peculiar to himself. For him, the purchase of the commodity, labor power, by the capitalist was a legitimate exchange of values; the creation of surplus value by surplus labor was the logical consequence of an objective system; and the appropriation of this surplus value by the capitalists followed as a matter of course in accordance with the internal laws regulating a class society. Pursuing this train of scientific reasoning, he was inspired by it neither with love for capitalism, as were the bourgeois economists, nor with hatred for capitalism, as were the utopists. He merely drew the inference, clearly and coldly, that for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man a fundamental change in the system was essential. To him, such a change seemed to be an inevitable consequence of the laws of historical evolution. He expected the completion of this evolution to be effected by the working class, growing conscious of its situation as a class, and trained to pursue its aims as a class.
The first volume of Capital examines and analyzes capitalism within the field of the process of production. That process goes on in the workshop or other place where work is carried on. The worker comes to the workshop as bearer of the commodity, labor power. He receives a wage, and begins to produce. Commodities proceed out of his hands. We cannot tell, simply from looking at these structures of iron, wood, earthenware, leather, etc., to what extent they represent newly created values, and at what point in them the process of expanding value has begun. We know, however, that surplus value is included in their value; that, freshly made and still damp with the sweat of the worker who has made them, they have hidden away within them a wealth which lives only for the capitalist. This unearned surplus value accruing to the capitalist will become profit, will assume the money form, and will, as jingling coins, find its way into the pocket of the beneficiary. But the transformation of surplus value into cash cannot take place in the workshop. For that a change of venue is requisite. Surplus value does not become profit until the commodity is sold, and therefore it can only become profit in the market, in the shop, or on the exchange.
Thither we are taken in the second volume of Capital, which discusses the process of the circulation of capital in three sections, respectively entitled: “The Metamorphoses of Capital and their Cycles”; “The Turn-Over of Capital”; “The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital.”
In the market, the fetishistic power of commodities affects the capitalist differently from in the workshop. Whereas production is characterized by the discipline of an artificially constructed order, in the market the most perplexing anarchy prevails. There, commodities escape from the hands of their creator, engage in the maddest dance. They assume prices according to fancies of their own; make journeys; change owners; collect themselves into heaps, or scatter themselves to all the winds of heaven; store themselves away in warehouses, to rot there sometimes and thus fail to achieve their purpose; or speed from person to person, from town to town, to be consumed in the predestined way. Forming a fantastic world of their own, they lead therein an autocratic life, independent of the will of the producer.
If a man is not to lose his senses amid such a riot, and if, above all, he is not to lose his money, he must learn how to take his bearings in this process of the circulation of commodities. He must be able as a capitalist to find a buyer for his wares at the proper time; must provide himself at the proper time with the raw materials needed for the production of more commodities; must supply himself with adequate funds for the hiring of workers; and, in the eternal circulation of commodities and money, must never miss an opportunity, never allow himself to be got the better of by his competitors. In a realm where time and place are perpetually uncertain, he must be always on the watch to do the right thing at the right time and in the right place. He must forecast the needs of the market, must estimate the purchasing power of the consumers, must calculate the extent of demand. There is no guide book he can consult, for the economics of the market are anarchical. The market is a city without a plan. Nevertheless, the individual capitalist must work according to plan, unless he is to go down in the struggle. He cannot come to an understanding with others, for he must not disclose his intentions, his business secrets, to his rivals. Nevertheless, he must conduct himself as if he were acting on the basis of an understanding with his rivals, as if he and they were solidarized in the interests of the capitalist economy. It is not within his power to establish order in the chaos. Yet, under pain of destruction, he must see to it that everything shall “click,” that no failure in the market shall rob him of what he has gained in the workshop. For the profit created as surplus value in the workshop does not come to life until the market is reached and the commodity is sold. Only in the market does that which hitherto has been a mere abstract calculation, become a concrete gain. Only in the market is a man repaid for being a capitalist, for engaging in capitalist enterprise.
The business awaiting the capitalist in the market is difficult, laborious, and risky. It demands from him the utmost efficiency and perspicacity, great resourcefulness, marked sagacity. He must have fine hearing and a thick skin; must be simultaneously cautious and venturesome, a swashbuckler and a calculator, careless and careful. He must develop all the qualities of an experienced man of business.
None the less, the individual, however talented he may be, remains exposed to the uncalculable vicissitudes of the market. Consequently, large-scale collective safeguarding must replace small-scale individual safeguarding. The capitalists, who are independent of one another, and indeed hostile to one another, have to combine in the one matter which for them is of central importance—in the matter of money. They engage in mutual aid by establishing banks; help one another out by the joint provision of credit; amalgamate their individual interests into a unity by measures conceived in the general capitalist interest.
Thenceforward the main process of circulation can be better subjected to examination in all its phases. In a sense, the chaotic interplay of phenomena and movements is regulated to this extent, that the basic pillars of the capitalist economy (the continuance of commodity production, the creation of surplus value, the supply of subsistence to the working class, and the enrichment of the bourgeoisie) are secured. Thus a primary provision is made for progressive accumulation, for the evolution of capitalism into mightier and ever mightier forms, and for the perpetuation of the system.
Of course the multiplicity of the processes of capitalism as a whole involves a like multiplicity of the functions which have to be performed, and of the forces requisite for their performance. The category of capitalists loses its earlier simplicity. The capitalist, nowadays, is not only a producer of commodities; he is also a seller of commodities, a middleman, a merchant, a banker, a landowner, a purveyor of raw materials. He appears in many shapes. Now, as from the first, in so far as he is a producer of commodities he is a producer of surplus value. But, as economic life has grown more complicated, he has delegated his functions to various persons. They all take part, in one way or another, in the production of commodities, the exploitation of the wage workers, the sale of commodities, the provision of capital, the continuance of the capitalist process, and the origination of profit. They all help to ensure that capital shall make profit. They present their respective claims, demand their appropriate shares in the spoil. They insist upon being satisfied. Profit has to be divided among a pack of hungry wolves.
But what share in the spoils is this or that individual to get? How is it to be measured? Who decides? How is the distribution so regulated that no one shall go short? The answer is that the world of commodities regulates these things for itself. The mechanism of the capitalist system is so contrived that, out of the interplay of its forces, factors, and trends, the satisfaction of all the before-mentioned claims spontaneously ensues. The settlement occurs without plan or set scheme, without rules and regulations, simply as the effect of the immanent logic of commodities, and the immanent justice of their exchange, which themselves formulate the principle in accordance wherewith each gets his share.
It is here that the fetishistic character of commodities manifests its supreme triumph, and it is to this matter that Marx devotes the third volume of Capital.
There he finds the answer to a riddle over which the professional economists had previously puzzled their heads in vain. He unravels the mystery of the fact that the capitals invested in different branches of production, although they “work” under the most widely varying conditions, nevertheless, at any particular time and within the boundaries of any particular country, secure much the same gains, produce an average rate of profit. This average rate of profit arises because the differences between the profits cancel one another when the commodities are being sold in the market. The minus which results when certain kinds of commodities are sold at less than their value is compensated by the plus when certain other kinds of commodities are sold above their value. Thus there arises an average in which all variations are leveled. The individual capitalist does not pouch the profit made by him in individual production, but only the proportional share that accrues to him out of the general spoil. “As far as profit is concerned, the various capitalists play the part of mere shareholders in a joint-stock company, whose shares in the profit are a percentage allotted proportionally to their holdings; and thus these shares differ from capitalist to capitalist only in proportion to the amount of the capital which each has invested in the joint undertaking.” As if endowed with magical powers, as if dominated by elemental forces, the world of commodities regulates its affairs in accordance with its own will and in pursuance of its own laws, regulates the course of the processes and the balancing of the profits in a way that is independent of individual intelligence and with a certainty which is far beyond the power of human functioning. Only the firmament of heaven, where the stars move on their courses for all eternity independent of the human will, offers a parallel to the mystery of the capitalist economy.
But just as the science of astronomy has disclosed the working of the heavens, has described the paths of the stars, has learned how to predict cosmic catastrophes, and has thus revealed to us the secrets of the firmament, so Marx has thrown light upon the darkness of economic happenings, has discovered the laws of the world of commodities, has disclosed the mechanisms of the winning of profits, and has thereby resolved the mysterious predestination of man to wealth or poverty into the calculable consequences of a mutable system. He has shown that interest, land-rent, revenues of all kinds, every form of capitalist gain, are essentially nothing more than profit under a masquerade.
Of the three volumes of Capital, the first is the most straightforward, the most compact, the most impressive, and the most important. Though it be true that the second volume supplements the analysis of capitalism in ways that are of very great significance, and though it be true that from the scientific standpoint the third volume must be regarded as the completion of the Marxian criticism of political economy, it is unquestionable that the main features of Marx’s scientific achievement are contained in the first volume.
It answers the two central problems with which socialism and the labor movement are concerned: the origin of surplus value; and the socialization of the process of production. Only when we have learned how surplus value originates, can we scientifically explain how the proletariat is exploited. Only when we have understood the socialization of the labor process, can we scientifically demonstrate the fundamentals of the socialist revolution. The solution of the former problem reveals to the worker the nature of the capitalist present; the solution of the second problem discloses to him the way to the socialist future.
Therewith the main need of the labor movement, as far as theory is concerned, has been satisfied. Regarded from the outlook of the class struggle, these two problems are of more primary and more basic importance than any others, however interesting and noteworthy others may be in respect of detail.
That explains why in socialist circles, among the intellectuals and the leaders as well as among the rank and file, a knowledge of Marx’s Capital is usually confined to the first volume. This first volume is continually being discussed, has been popularized, is utilized day by day for propaganda purposes; the second and third volumes gather dust on the shelves of libraries. Bernard Shaw, the semi-socialist Fabian, was right when he made fun of Hyndman, the thoroughgoing socialist, because the latter, though he was acquainted only with the first volume of Capital, claimed the title of thoroughgoing Marxist. Nevertheless, Hyndman was likewise right when he pleaded in excuse that the whole labor movement, its greatest leaders not excepted, knew nothing of the third volume of Capital, and yet carried on the class struggle in the Marxian sense. In actual fact, a knowledge of the first volume was fully adequate for that phase of the class struggle which now lies behind us.
But with every step we take beyond this phase, the second and third volumes gain in importance. The visage of Marxism changes as the times change. As against the vulgar Marxist of the old school, who bases his theoretical trend exclusively upon the first volume of Capital and upon a crudely mechanistic historical materialism, the modern Marxist, recognizing that Marxism is like all else subject to evolution, is often tempted to echo Marx by saying: “For my part, I am not a Marxist!”
The Evening and the End
Fate grudged Marx the privilege of sending the second and third volumes of Capital to the press. Death struck the pen from his hand. His great design of producing a standard treatise on economics remained unfulfilled. Engels, his executor in scientific matters, saw to it that at least Capital should be finished. Taking over the editorship of the manuscripts left by Marx, he prepared them for the press, publishing the second volume of Capital in 1885, and the third volume in 1894. From 1870 onwards, the friendship between Marx and Engels was yet further cemented by proximity of residence. Engels had retired from his position in the firm of Ermen and Engels, had left Manchester, and had settled down in London. Under date November 29, 1868, he wrote to Marx: “1. How much money will you need to pay all your debts, so that you can make a clean start? 2. Can you get along with £350 a year for your ordinary needs (excluding extraordinary expenditure upon illness and other unforeseen happenings); get along so that you will not need to run into debt any more? If that sum will not suffice, let me know just what you will require. All this on the assumption that the old debts are first of all paid off. My negotiations with Gottfried Ermen have taken such a turn that he wishes to buy me out when my contract expires on June 30th; that is to say he offers me a sum of money if I pledge myself not to start a competitive business within the next five years, and allow him to carry on the firm. That is the very point to which I wished to bring him. ... The sum he offers me will enable me to pay you £350 a year for the next five or six years, certainly, and in special circumstances a little more.” Marx answered by return of post: “I am quite overcome by your extreme kindness. My wife and I have gone into the figures together, and we find that the amount of the debts is much larger than I had supposed, £210 (of which about £75 are for the pawnshop and interest).” On July 1, 1869, Engels, with an hurrah, said farewell to “sweet commerce,” became a “free man,” made a “clean sweep” of Marx’s debts, and a year later removed to London, settling down close to Marx.
In the Marx household, meanwhile, there had been many changes. Suitors had come for the two elder daughters, Jenny and Laura. In August 1866, Marx had written to Engels: “Since yesterday, Laura is half pledged to Monsieur Lafargue, my creole medical student. She has been treating him much like the others, but the emotional excesses characteristic of creoles, a certain fear on her part that the young man (he is twenty-five years old) would do himself a hurt, and so on, perhaps some predilection for him, cold as ever in Laura’s case (he is a handsome, intelligent, and vigorously developed fellow), have led, more or less, to a compromise. The young man attached himself to me at the outset, but soon transferred the attraction from the old man to the daughter. Economically speaking, he is moderately well off, being the only child of a sometime planter. He has been sent down from Paris University for two years on account of the Liége Congress, but intends to pass his examination in Strasburg.” Marx asked for precise particulars as to the property question from the would-be son-in-law’s parents, and, when these particulars proved satisfactory, categorically declared that “there must be no question of a marriage” until young Lafargue had passed all his examinations. “Yesterday I told our creole that unless he can calm his manners down to the English standard, Laura will unceremoniously dismiss him. He must make this perfectly clear to himself, or the whole thing will be broken off. He is a thoroughly good fellow, but a spoiled child, and too much a child of nature.” Lafargue passed his examination, and married his Laura. Having settled down to practice in Paris, he took part in the struggles of the Commune, became a refugee when the Commune was suppressed, and returned to London. He abandoned his medical career on the ground that this “could not be carried on without quackery,” and started in business as a photographer, at which he made barely enough to live upon.
Jenny, too, had a wooer. This was Charles Longuet, editor of a periodical run by the socialist students of Paris. He was sent to London in 1866 as a delegate of the French section of the International, which was in opposition to the General Council. Shortly afterwards, Longuet became a member of the General Council. During the Paris Commune, he was editor of the official organ of the Commune, and a member of the Council of the Commune. In 1873, he married Jenny, and eventually went back with her to Paris.
Of the three daughters, the only one now left at home was Tussy, or Eleanor. She was courted by Lissagaray, the historian of the Commune, who in 1871 had taken refuge in London; but Marx disapproved of the would-be son-in-law. Subsequently Tussy entered into a free union with Edward Aveling, was very unhappy with him, and after a time committed suicide. Bernard Shaw took Aveling as the model for Dubedat in The Doctor’s Dilemma.
Many years later, Laura Lafargue and her husband committed suicide in Paris, to escape the disagreeables of old age. Jean Longuet, a son of Charles Longuet, leader of the left wing of the French social democracy, is the only living descendant of Marx who plays an active part in public life.
When the household had been reduced by the marriages of Jenny and Laura, Marx removed to 41 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill. Here he spent the closing years of his life, which were “a slow death.” From 1873 onwards, he suffered terribly from headache, which often unfitted him for work. His long-standing liver trouble had also recurred. Engels summoned his old friend and doctor Gumpert from Manchester, and Gumpert ordered a cure in Karlsbad. With Engels’ financial help, Marx was able to visit Karlsbad in 1874, 1875, and 1876, and derived much benefit. In 1877, he took a course of the waters at Neuenahr. The liver trouble was now better, but chronic stomach disorder, in association with headache, sleeplessness, nervous exhaustion, and incapacity for work, were ailments that defied medical skill. A stay at the seaside brought no more than temporary improvement. His health grew worse from year to year.
There is good ground for the supposition that his unsatisfactory general condition was as much dependent upon psychical as upon physical causes. His illness was characterized by profound depression, both bodily and mental. The collapse of the International had seemed to him tantamount to a failure of his life work, although his reason told him that the breakup of the organization had been the outcome of objective necessities, just as its foundation had been. Furthermore, he had hoped that Capital would have a signal success, and the reality lagged far behind his expectations. The book was to have proved a lever which would lift the world out of its old rut; but the world went rolling along in that rut just as before, and as if the book had never been written. For years, Capital was ignored; and when “these tactics were no longer accordant with the conditions of the time,” it was mauled uncomprehendingly by “the mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economics.” Even such a man as Freiligrath could find nothing better to say than that “on the Rhine many merchants and factory owners will display great enthusiasm for the book.” In view of such widespread lack of understanding, it was a poor consolation to Marx to find “one reader who really understood Capital,” Joseph Dietzgen, a man of proletarian origin, making his livelihood in Russia as a tanner.
There were additional reasons for Marx’s depression. In Germany a vigorous social-democratic movement had developed; but it went its own way, fought its battles and formulated its tasks, without troubling to ask his advice, and without expecting his sanction for its evolution. True, Liebknecht kept up a regular correspondence with Marx and Engels, asking counsel and help upon difficult political problems, and paying due respect to the oracle in London. But Liebknecht was not the German party, which in important matters was apt to disregard his wishes, and to follow its own bent. Thus it came to pass that Liebknecht often incurred Marx’s wrath. In letters exchanged between Marx and Engels we find much angry and even contemptuous criticism of him and his doings. For these differences and disharmonies there was a deep-seated cause. Marx, who had now been living in England for several decades, had lost touch with Germany, and no longer possessed an intimate understanding of the peculiarities of the German situation. He saw everything German in a distorted perspective, with the inevitable result that many of his judgments were erroneous, and much of the advice he tendered from London was injudicious or impracticable. These discrepancies became conspicuous when the Lassallists and the Eisenachers, weary of perpetual wrangling, and yielding to the pressure of circumstances, came together at Gotha in 1875, and founded the united Social Democratic Party. Marx strenuously opposed this step, subjected the program of unification to a fiercely destructive criticism, and, in a letter to Liebknecht, tried to give the course of events the turn he desired. Liebknecht did the best thing he could when he kept the letter in his pocket; but Marx was affronted, felt himself shut out and robbed of his influence, was wounded in his most sensitive spot, his vanity.
His relations with the French socialists were no happier. Not even his sons-in-law would march in accordance with his orders, although the orders were sent often enough. Though they remained cordial in private relations, they took the liberty of going their own way. “Longuet is the last Proudhonist,” writes Marx to Engels in 1882; “and Lafargue is the last Bakuninist! To the devil with them both!”
Most painful of all to Marx was the state of affairs in England. He had lived and worked there for thirty years, but not a single grain of the seed he had cast upon this ground had sprouted. There was, indeed, a labor movement, but it took no notice of Marx or his teaching. Personal relations with the leaders of the movement had been broken off; with acrimony, as a rule. Nowhere was Marx held so completely at arms’ length as here.
The sense of being forsaken, the spiritual isolation, made his illness more and more intolerable; and, on the other hand, the progressive deterioration in his bodily condition made his mood more and more irritable. After 1878, Marx was no longer able to do any useful scientific work. He could not finish anything. His self-confidence had been shattered.
At about this time, Frau Marx began to fall ill. Her life had been a hard one, and now the end was coming, slowly and terribly, from cancer. Making a last heroic effort, she fulfilled a long felt wish in the summer of 1881, by going to Paris to visit her daughters there. When she returned, Marx was laid up with bronchitis and pleurisy. Tussy and Lenchen Demuth had devoted themselves to the care of the invalid, and had had the pleasure of seeing him on his feet once more. Writing to a friend, Tussy says: “Mother was in bed in the big front room, and Mohr in the back room. These two, whose lives had been so closely intertwined, could no longer be together. Mohr got over his illness. I shall never forget the morning when he felt strong enough to go into mother’s room. It was as if they had been quite young again—she a loving girl and he a loving youth, entering upon life together, instead of an old man ravaged by illness, and a dying old woman, taking leave of one another for ever.”
Frau Marx died on December 2, 1881. When Engels entered the house, he said: “Mohr is dead too.” How true this was was shown by the rapid ebb which now set in in Marx’s forces. Writing to Sorge in December, Marx said: “I have come out of the last illness doubly crippled, morally by the death of my wife, physically because it has left a thickening of the diaphragm and great irritability of the bronchial tubes.” Engels did everything in his power to promote a cure. Under medical orders Marx visited the Isle of Wight. Then, in March and April 1882, he went to Algiers, where the weather was unkind, being rainy and cold. May he spent in Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo. In June and July, he was with his daughter Jenny at Argenteuil near Paris; and he stayed during August with Laura at Vevey on the Lake of Geneva. In the end of September he got back to London, obviously much better, and in the mood for work. To avoid the London fogs, he went again to the Isle of Wight, but here once more the weather was unfavorable, and brought about a bad relapse.
On January 12, 1883, Marx’s favorite daughter Jenny, Madame Longuet, died suddenly. This was an overwhelming blow, and his own condition promptly grew worse, so that he was dangerously ill when he returned to London. The end came on March 14th. Writing to Sorge, late on the following evening, Engels said: “For the last six weeks, every morning as I turned the corner into the street, I was in terror lest I should see the blinds down. Yesterday afternoon (the afternoon was the best time to visit him) when I arrived at 2:30 I found every one in tears, for it seemed that the end was at hand. I asked what had happened, and tried to make them look at the hopeful side. He had only had a slight hemorrhage, but there had been a grave collapse. Our good old Lenchen, who has looked after him as assiduously as any mother ever cared for a sick child, went upstairs, and came back to tell me that he was in a doze, but I might go up. I found him lying there, asleep indeed, but in the sleep from which there is no waking. He was pulseless and had ceased to breathe. During the two minutes of Lenchen’s absence he had quietly and painlessly passed away.” Already the day before, Engels had written to Liebknecht: “I find it almost impossible to realize that this man of genius has ceased to fertilize the proletarian movement of two worlds with his mighty thoughts. What we all of us are, we are through him; what the contemporary movement is, it is thanks to his activity in the fields of theory and practice. Without him, we should still be wandering in a maze of confusion.”
On March 17th, Marx was buried in Highgate cemetery. The funeral was a simple affair, the only persons present being Engels, Lessner, Liebknecht, Longuet, Lafargue, and one or two other friends. Engels delivered a funeral oration, which may be given at full length, for it contains an admirable summary of Marx’s life work.
“On March 14th, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest of living thinkers ceased to think. He had been left alone for barely two minutes; but when we entered his room we found that, seated in his chair, he had quietly gone to sleep—for ever.
“The loss which his death has inflicted upon the fighting proletariat in Europe and America, and upon the science of history, is immeasurable. The gaps that will be made by the death of this titan will soon be felt.
“Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history. He discovered the simple fact (heretofore hidden beneath ideological excrescences) that human beings must have food and drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like. This implies that the production of the immediately requisite material means of subsistence, and therewith the extant economic developmental phase of a nation or an epoch, constitute the foundation upon which the State institutions, the legal outlooks, the artistic and even the religious ideas, of those concerned, have been built up. It implies that these latter must be explained out of the former, whereas usually the former have been explained as issuing from the latter.
“Nor was this all. Marx likewise discovered the special law of motion proper to the contemporary capitalist method of production and to the bourgeois society which that method of production has brought into being. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light here, whereas all previous investigators (socialist critics no less than bourgeois economists) had been groping in the dark.
“Two such discoveries might suffice for one man’s lifetime. Fortunate is he who is privileged to make even one discovery so outstanding. But in every field he studied (the fields were many, and the studies were exhaustive), Marx made independent discoveries—even in mathematics.
“I have pictured the man of science. But the man of science was still only half the man. For Marx, science was a motive force of history, was a revolutionary force. Whilst he took a pure delight in a purely theoretical discovery, in one which had not and perhaps never would have a practical application, he experienced a joy of a very different kind when he was concerned with a discovery which would forthwith exert a revolutionary influence on industry, on historical evolution in general. For instance, he paid close attention to the advances of electrical science, and, of late years, to the discoveries of Marcel Deprez.
“For, before all else, Marx was a revolutionist. To collaborate in one way or another in the overthrow of capitalist society and of the State institutions created by that society; to collaborate in the freeing of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to inspire with a consciousness of its needs, with a knowledge of the conditions requisite for its emancipation—this was his true mission in life. Fighting was his natural element. Few men ever fought with so much passion, tenacity, and success. His work on the ‘Rheinische Zeitung’ in 1842, on the Parisian ‘Vorwärts’ in 1844, on the ‘Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung’ in 1847, on the ‘Neue Rheinische Zeitung’ in 1848 and 1849, on the ‘New York Tribune’ from 1852 to 1861; a great number of pamphlets; multifarious activities in Paris, Brussels, and London; finally, as crown of his labors, the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association: there you have his record. Had Marx done nothing but found the International, that was an achievement of which he might well have been proud.
“Because he was an active revolutionist, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. He was shown the door by various governments, republican as well as absolute. Bourgeois, ultra-democrats as well as conservatives, vied with one another in spreading libels about him. He brushed these aside like cobwebs, ignored them, only troubled to answer them when he positively had to. Yet he has gone down to his death honored, loved, and mourned by millions of revolutionary workers all over the world, in Europe and Asia as far eastward as the Siberian mines, and in America as far westward as California. I can boldly assert that, while he may still have many adversaries, he has now hardly one personal enemy.
“His name and his works will live on through the centuries.”
The inscription on the tomb reads as follows:
From : Marxists.org.
Chronology :
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