KARL MARX

    The article on Karl Marx now appearing in a separate printing was written by me in 1913 (as far as I can remember) for the Granat Encyclopaedia. A rather detailed bibliography of literature on Marx, mostly foreign, was appended at the end of the article. This has been omitted in the present edition. The editors of the Encyclopaedia, on their part, cut out, for censorship reasons, the end of the article on Marx, namely, the section in which his revolutionary tactics were explained. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to reproduce that end here, because the rough draft remained in my papers somewhere -- in Cracow or in Switzerland. I only remember that in that concluding part of the article I quoted, among other things, the passage from Marx's letter to Engels of April 16, I856, in which he wrote: "The whole thing in Germany will depend on the possibility to back the proletarian revolutlon by some second edition of the Peasant War. Then everything will be splendid." That is what our Mensheviks, who have now sunk to utter betrayal of socialism and to

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desertion to the side of the bourgeoisie, failed to understand in 1905 and after.

N. Lenin

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    From 1844-45, when his views took shape, Marx was a materialist, in particular a follower of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose weak sides he even later considered to consist exclusively in the fact that his materialism was not consistent

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and comprehensive enough. Marx regarded the historic and "epoch-making" importance of Feuerbach to be that he had resolutely broken away from Hegelian idealism and had proclaimed materialism, which already "in the eighteenth century, especially in France, had been a struggle not only against the existing political institutions and against . . . religion and theology, but also . . . against all metaphysics" (in the sense of "intoxicated speculation" as distinct from "sober philosophy"). (The Holy Family, in the Literarischer Nachlass.) "To Hegel . . ." wrote Marx, "the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos (the creator, the maker) of the real world. . . . With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." (Capital, Vol. I, Afterword to the Second Edition.) In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (which Marx read in the manuscript): "The unity of the world does not consist in its being. . . . The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved . . . by a long and tedious development of philosophy and natural science. . . ." "Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be. . . . But if the . . . question is raised what thought and consciousness really are and where they come from, it becomes apparent that they are products of the human brain and that man himself is a product of nature, which has developed in and along with its environment; hence it is self-evident that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of nature, do not

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contradict the rest of nature's interconnections but are in correspondence with them." "Hegel was an idealist, that is to say, the thoughts within his mind were to him not the more or less abstract images (Abbilder, reflections; Engels sometimes speaks of "imprints") of real things and processes, but, on the contrary, things and their development were to him only the images made real of the 'Idea' existing somewhere or other already before the world existed." In his Ludwig Feuerbach -- in which he expounds his and Marx's views on Feuerbach's philosophy, and which he sent to the press after re-reading an old manuscript written by Marx and himself in 1844-45 on Hegel, Feuerbach and the materialist conception of history -- Frederick Engels writes: "The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking to being . . . the relation of spirit to nature . . . which is primary, spirit or nature. . . . The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other . . . comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism." Any other use of the concepts of (philosophical) idealism and materialism leads only to confusion. Marx decidedly rejected not only idealism, always connected in one way or another with religion, but also the views, especially widespread in our day, of Hume and Kant, agnosticism, criticism, positivism in their various forms, regarding such a philosophy as a "reactionary" concession to idealism and at best a "shamefaced way of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world." On this question, see, in addition to the above-mentioned works of Engels and

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Marx, a letter of Marx to Engels dated December 12, 1868, in which Marx, referring to an utterance of the well-known naturalist Thomas Huxley that was "more materialistic" than usual, and to his recognition that "as long as we actually observe and think, we cannot possibly get away from materialism," reproaches him for leaving a "loophole" for agnosticism, for Humism. It is especially important to note Marx's view on the relation between freedom and necessity: "Freedom is the appreciation of necessity. 'Necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood'" (Engels, Anti-Dühring). This means the recognition of objective law in nature and of the dialectical transformation of necessity into freedom (in the same manner as the transformation of the unknown, but knowable, "thing-in-itself" into the "thing for-us," of the "essence of things" into "phenomena"). Marx and Engels considered the fundamental shortcomings of the "old" materialism, including the materialism of Feuerbach (and still more of the "vulgar" materialism of Büchner, Vogt and Moleschott), to be: (I) that this materialism was "pre dominantly mechanical," failing to take account of the latest developments of chemistry and biology (in our day it would be necessary to add: and of the electrical theory of matter); (2) that the old materialism was non-historical, non-dialectical (metaphysical, in the sense of anti-dialectical), and did not adhere consistently and comprehensively to the standpoint of development; (3) that it regarded the "human essence" abstractly and not as the "complex" of all (concretely defined historical) "social relations," and therefore only "interpreted" the world, whereas the point is to "change" it; that is to say, it did not understand the importance of "revolutionary, practical activity."

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    Hegelian dialectics, as the most comprehensive, the most rich in content, and the most profound doctrine of development, was regarded by Marx and Engels as the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They considered every other formulation of the principle of development, of evolution, one-sided and poor in content, and distorting and mutilating the real course of development (which often proceeds by leaps, catastrophes and revolutions) in nature and in society. "Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics" (from the destruction of idealism, including Hegelianism) "and apply it in tbe materialist conception of nature. . . . Nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich" (this was written before the discovery of radium, electrons, the transmutation of elements, etc.!) "and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical."

    "The great basic thought," Engels writes, "that the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away . . . this great fundamental thought has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary consciousness that in this generality it is now scarcely ever contradicted. But to acknowledge this fundamental thought in words and to apply it in reality in detail to each domain of investigation are two different things." "For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute,

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sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendency from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain." Thus, according to Marx, dialectics is "the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought."

    This revolutionary side of Hegel's philosophy was adopted and developed by Marx. Dialectical materialism "no longer needs any philosophy standing above the other sciences." Of former philosophy there remains "the science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics." And dialectics, as understood by Marx, and in conformity with Hegel, includes what is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, which, too, must regard its subject matter historically, studying and generalizing the origin and development of knowledge, the transition from non-knowledge to knowledge.

    Nowadays, the idea of development, of evolution, has penetrated the social consciousness almost in its entirety, but by different ways, not by way of the Hegelian philosophy. But as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel, this idea is far more comprehensive, far richer in content than the current idea of evolution. A development that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis ("negation of negation"), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- "breaks in continuity"; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies

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    Having realized the inconsistency, incompleteness, and one-sidedness of the old materialism, Marx became convinced of the necessity of "bringing the science of society . . . into harmony with the materialist foundation, and of reconstructing it thereupon." Since materialism in general explains consciousness as the outcome of being, and not conversely, materialism as applied to the social life of mankind has to explain social consciousness as the outcome of social being. "Technology," writes Marx (Capital, Vol. I), "discloses man's mode of dealing with nature, the immediate process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them." In the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx gives an integral formulation of the fundamental principles of materialism as applied to human society and its history, in the following words:

    "In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent

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of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.

    "The sum-total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is but a legal expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

    "Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what ! he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of produc-

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tion. . . . In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society." (Cf. Marx's brief formulation in a letter to Engels dated July 7, 1866: "Our theory that the organization of labour is determined by the means of production.")

    The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomena, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without investigating what produced these motives, without grasping the objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations, and without discerning the roots of these relations in the degree of development of material production; in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with the accuracy of the natural sciences the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. Pre-Marxist "sociology" and historiography at best provided an accumulation of raw facts, collected sporadically, and a depiction of certain sides of the historical process. By examining the whole complex of opposing tendencies, by reducing them to precisely definable conditions of life and production of the various classes of society, by discarding subjectivism and arbitrariness in the choice of various "leading" ideas or in their interpretation, and by disclosing that all ideas and all the various tendencies, without exception, have their roots in the condition of the material forces of production, Marxism pointed the way to an all-embracing

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    That in any given society the strivings of some of its members conflict with the strivings of others, that social life is full of contradictions, that history discloses a struggle between nations and societies as well as within nations and societies, and, in addition, an alternation of periods of revolution and reaction, peace and war, stagnation and rapid progress or decline -- are facts that are generally known. Marxism provided the clue which enables us to discover the laws governing his seeming labyrinth and chaos, namely, the theory of the class struggle. Only a study of the whole complex of strivings of all the members of a given society or group of societies can lead to a scientific definition of the result of these strivings. And the source of the conflicting strivings lies in the difference in the position and mode of life of the classes into which each society is divided. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles," wrote Marx in the Communist Manifesto (except

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the history of the primitive community -- Engels added subsequently). "Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. . . . The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." Ever since the Great French Revolution European history has very clearly revealed in a number of countries this real undersurface of events, the struggle of classes. And the Restoration period in France already produced a number of historians (Thierry, Guizot, Mignet, Thiers) who, generalizing from events, were forced to recognize that the class struggle was the key to all French history. And the modern era -- the era of the complete victory of the bourgeoisie, representative institutions, wide (if not universal) suffrage, a cheap, popular daily press, etc., the era of powerful and ever-expanding unions of workers and unions of employers, etc., has revealed even more manifestly (though sometimes in a very one-sided, "peaceful," "constitutional" form) that the class struggle is the mainspring of events. The following passage from Marx's Communist Manifesto will show us what Marx required of social

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science in respect to an objective analysis of the position of each class in modern society in connection with an analysis of the conditions of development of each class: "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie to-day, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shop keeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat." In a number of historical works (see Bibliography), Marx has given us brilliant and profound examples of materialist historiography, of an analysis of the position of each individual class, and sometimes of various groups or strata within a class, showing plainly why and how "every class struggle is a political struggle." The above-quoted passage is an iliustration of what a complex network of social relations and transitional stages between one class and another, from the past to the future, Marx analyzes in order to determine the resultant of historical development.

    The most profound, comprehensive and detailed confirmation and application of Marx's theory is his economic doctrine.

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    A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satisfies a human want; in the second place, it is a thing that can be exchanged for another thing. The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. Exchange-value (or simply, value) presents itself first of all as the ratio, the proportion, in which a certain number of use-values of one sort are exchanged for a certain number of use-values of another sort. Daily experience shows us that millions upon millions of such exchanges are constantly equating with one another every kind

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of use-value, even the most diverse and incomparable. Now, what is there in common between these various things, things constantly equated one with another in a definite system of social relations? What is common to them is that they are products of labour. In exchanging products people equate to one another the most diverse kinds of labour. The production of commodities is a system of social relations in which the individual producers create diverse products (the social division of labour), and in which all the products are equated to one another in exchange. Consequently, what is common to all commodities is not the concrete labour of a definite branch of production, not labour of one particular kind, but abstract human labour -- human labour in general. All the labour power of a given soclety, as represented in the sum-total of values of all commodities, is one and the same human labour power: millions and millions of acts of exchange prove this. And, consequently, each particular commodity represents only a certain share of the socially necessary labour time. The magnitude of value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour, or by the labour time that is socially necessary for the production of the given commodity, of the given use-value. "Whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it." As one of the earlier economists said, value is a relation between two persons; only he ought to have added: a relation disguised as a reIation between things. We can understand what value is only when we consider it from the standpoint of the system of social relations of production of one particular historical formation of society, relations, moreover, which

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manifest themselves in the mass phenomenon of exchange, a phenomenon which repeats itself millions upon millions of times. "As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time." Having made a detailed analysis of the twofold character of the labour incorporated in commodities, Marx goes on to analyze the forms of value and money. Marx's main task here is to study the genesis of the money form of value, to study the historical process of development of exchange, from single and casual acts of exchange ("elementary or accidental form of value," in which a given quantity of one commodity is exchanged for a given quantity of another) to the universal form of value, in which a number of different commodities are exchanged for one and the same particular commodity, and to the money form of value, when gold becomes this particular commodity, the universal equivalent. Being the highest product of the development of exchange and commodity production, money masks and conceals the social character of all individual producers who are united by the market. Marx anallyzes in very great detail the various functions of money; and it is essential to note here in particular (as generally in the opening chapters of Capital ), that the abstract and seemingly at times purely deductive mode of exposition in reality reproduces a gigantic collection of factual material on the history of the development of exchange and commodity production. "If we consider money, its existence implies a definite stage in the exchange of commodities. The particular functions of money which it performs, either as the mere equivalent of commodities, or as means of circulation, or means of payment, as hoard or as universal money, point, according to the extent and relative preponderance of the one function

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    At a certain stage in the development of commodity production money becomes transformed into capital. The formula of commodity circulation was C -- M -- C (commodity -- money -- commodity), i.e., the sale of one commodity for the purpose of buying another. The general formula of capital, on the contrary, is M -- C -- M, i.e., purchase for the purpose of selling (at a profit). The increase over the original value of the money put into circulation Marx calls surplus value. The fact of this "growth" of money in capitalist circulation is well known. It is this "growth" which transforms money into capital, as a special, historically defined, social relation of production. Surplus value cannot arise out of commodity circulation, for the latter knows only the exchange of equivalents; it cannot arise out of an addition to price, for the mutual losses and gains of buyers and sellers would equalize one another, whereas what we have here is not an individual phenomenon but a mass, average, social phenomenon. In order to derive surplus value? the owner of money "must . . . find . . . in the market a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value" -- a commodity whose process of consumption is at the same time a process of creation of value. And such a commodity exists. It is human labour power. Its consumption is labour, and labour creates value. The owner of money buys labour power at its value, which, like the value of every other commodity, is determined by the socially necessary labour time requisite for its production (i.e., the cost of maintaining the worker and his family). Having bought labour power, the owner of money is entitled to use it, that is, to set it to work for the whole day -- twelve hours, let us suppose. Yet, in the course of six hours ("necessary" labour time) the labourer creates product sufficient to cover the cost of his own maintenance; and in the course of the next six hours ("surplus" labour time), he creates "surplus" product, or surplus value, for which the capitalist does not pay. In capital, therefore, from the standpoint of the process of production, two parts must be distinguished: constant capital, expended on means of production (machinery, tools, raw materials, etc.), the value of which, without any change, is transferred (all at once or part by part) to the finished product; and variable capital, expended on labour power. The value of this latter capital is not invariable, but grows in the labour process, creating surplus value. Therefore, to express the degree of exploitation of labour power by capital, surplus value must be compared not with the whole capital but only with the variable capital. Thus in the example given, the rate of surplus value, as Marx calls this ratio, will be 6:6, i.e., 100 per cent.

    The historical prerequisites for the genesis of capital were, firstly, the accumulation of a certain sum of money in the hands of individuals and a relatively high level of development of commodity production in general, and, secondly, the existence of a labourer who is "free" in a double sense: free from all constraint or restriction on the sale of his labour power, and free from the land and all means of production in general, a free and unattached labourer, a "proletarian," who cannot subsist except by the sale of his labour power.

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    There are two principal methods by which surplus value can be increased: by lengthening the working day ("absolute surplus value"), and by shortemng the necessary working day ("relative surplus value"). Analyzing the first method, Marx gives a most impressive picture of the struggle of the working class to shorten the working day and of governmental interference to lengthen the working day (from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth century) and to shorten the working day (factory legislation of the nineteenth century). Since the appearance of Capital, the history of the working-class movement in all civilized countries of the world has provided a wealth of new facts amplifying this picture.

    Analyzing the production of relative surplus value, Marx investigates the three main historlcal stages by which capitalism has increased the productivity of labour:" 1) simple co-operation, 2) division of labour and manufacture; 3) machinery and large-scale industry. How profoundly Marx has here revealed the basic and typical features of capitalist development is incidentally shown by the fact that investigations into the handicraft industries of Russia furnish abundant material illustrating the first two of the mentioned stages. And the revolutionizing effect of large-scale machine industry, described by Marx in 1867, has been revealed in a number of "new" countries (Russia, Japan, etc.) in the course of the half-century that has since elapsed.

    To continue. New and important in the highest degree is Marx's analysis of the accumulation of capital, i.e., the transformation of a part of surplus value into capital, its use, not for satisfying the personal needs or whims of the capitalist, but for new production. Marx revealed the mistake of all the earlier classical political economists (from Adam

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Smith on) who assumed that the entire surplus value which is transformed into capitai goes to form variable capital. (In actual fact, it is divided into means of production and variable capital. Of tremendous importance to the process of development of capitalism and its transformation into socialism is the more rapid growth of the constant capital share (of the total capital) as compared with the variable capital share.

    The accumulation of capital, by accelerating the supplanting of workers by machinery and creating wealth at one pole and poverty at the other, also gives rise to what is called the "reserve army of labour," to the "relative surplus" of workers, or "capitalist overpopulation," which assumes the most diverse forms and enables capital to expand production at an extremely fast rate. This, in conjunction with credit facilities and the accumulation of capital in means of production, incidentally furnishes the clue to the crises of over production that occur periodically in capitalist countries -- at first at an average of every ten years, and later at more lengthy and less dehnite intervals. From the accumulation of capital under capitalism must be distinguished what is know as primitive accumulation: the forcible divorcement of the worker from the means of production the driving of the peasants from the land, the stealing of communal land, the system of colonies and national debts, protective tariffs, and the like. "Primitive accumulation" creates the "free" proletarian at one pole, and the owner of money, the capitalist, at the other.

    The "historical tendency of capitalist accumulation" is described by Marx in the following famous words: "The expropriation of the immediate producers was accomplished with merciless Vandalism, and under the stimulus of passions

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the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious. Self-earned private property" (of the peasant and handicraftsman), "that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent labouring individual with the conditions of his labour, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labour of others. . . . That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production

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and socialization of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated." (Capital, Vol. I.)

    New and important in the highest degree, further, is the analysis Marx gives in the second volume of Capital of the reproduction of the aggregate social capital. Here, too, Marx deals not with an individual phenomenon but with a mass phenomenon; not with a fractional part of the economy of society but with this economy as a whole. Correcting the mistake of the classical economists mentioned above, Marx divides the entire social production into two big sections: I) production of means of production, and II) production of articles of consumption, and examines in detail, with arithmetical examples, the circulation of the aggregate social capital -- both in the case of reproduction in its former dimensions and in the case of accumulation. The third volume of Capital solves the problem of the formation of the average rate of profit on the basis of the law of value. The immense advance in economic science made by Marx consists in the fact that he conducts his analysis from the standpoint of mass economic phenomena, of the social economy as a whole, and not from the standpoint of individual cases or of the external, superficial aspects of competition, to which vulgar political economy and the modern "theory of marginal utility" are frequently limited. Marx first analyzes the origin of surplus value, and then goes on to consider its division into profit, interest, and ground rent. Profit is the ratio between the surplus value and the total capital invested in an undertaking. Capital with a "high organic composition" (i.e., with a preponderance of constant capital over

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variable capital exceeding the social average) yields a lower than average rate of profit; capital with a "low organic composition" yields a higher than average rate of profit. The competition of capitals, and the freedom with which they transfer from one branch to another equate the rate of profit to the average in both cases. The sum-total of the values of all the commodities in a given society coincides with the sum-total of prices of the commodities; but, owing to competition, in individual undertakings and branches of production commodities are sold not at their values but at the prices of production (or production prices), which are equal to the expended capital plus the average profit.

    In this way the well-known and indisputable fact of the divergence between prices and values and of the equalization of profits is fully explained by Marx on the basis of the law of value; for the sum-total of values of all commodities coincides with the sum-total of prices. However, the equation of (social) value to (individual) prices does not take place simply and directly, but in a very complex way. It is quite natural that in a society of separate producers of commodities, who are united only by the market, law can reveal itself only as an average, social, mass law, when individual deviations to one side or the other mutually compensate one another.

    An increase in the productivity of labour implies a more rapid growth of constant capital as compared with variable capital. And since surplus value is a function of variable capital alone, it is obvious that the rate of profit (the ratio of surplus value to the whole capitai; and not to its variable part alone) tends to fall. Marx makes a detailed analysis of this tendency and of a number of circumstances that conceal or counteract it. Without pausing to give an account of

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the extremely interesting sections of the third volume of Capital devoted to usurer's capital, commercial capital and money capital, we pass to the most important section, the theory of ground rent. Owing to the fact that the land area is limited and, in capitalist countries, is all occupied by individual private owners, the price of production of agricultural products is determined by the cost of production not on average soil, but on the worst soil, not under average conditions, but under the worst conditions of delivery of produce to the market. The difference between this price and the price of production on better soil (or under better conditions) constitutes differential rent. Analyzing this in detail, and showing how it arises out of the difference in fertility of different plots of land and the difference in the amount of capital invested in land, Marx fully exposed (see also Theories of Surplus Value, in which the criticism of Rodbertus deserves particular attention) the error of Ricardo, who considered that differential rent is derived only when there is a successive transition from better land to worse. On the contrary, there may be inverse transitions, land may pass from one category into others (owing to advances in agricultural technique, the growth of towns, and so on), and the notorious "law of diminishing returns" is a profound error which charges nature with the defects, limitations and contradictions of captalism. Further, the equalization of profit in all branches of industry and national economy in general presupposes complete freedom of competition and the free flow of capital from one branch to another. But the private ownership of land creates monopoly, which hinders this free flow. Owing to this monopoly, the products of agriculture, which is distinguished by a lower organic composition of capital, and, consequently, by an

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    From the foregoing it is evident that Marx deduces the inevitability of the transformation of capitalist society into socialist society wholly and exclusively from the economic law of motion of contemporary society. The socialization of labour, which is advancing ever more rapidly in thousands of forms, and which has manifested itself very strikingly during the half-century that has elapsed since the death of Marx in the growth of large-scale production, capitalist cartels, syndicates and trusts, as well as in the gigantic increase in the dimensions and power of finance capital, forms the chief material foundation for the inevitable coming of socialism. The intellectual and moral driving force and the physical executant of this transformation is the proletariat, which is trained by capitalism itself. The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, which manifests itself in various and, as to its content, increasingly multifarious forms, inevitably becomes a political struggle aiming at the conquest of political power by the proletariat ("the dictatorship of the proletariat"). The socialization of production is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society, to the "expropriation of the expropriators." This conversion

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will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour. Capitalism finally snaps the bond between agriculture and industry; but at the same time, in its highest development it prepares new elements of this bond, of a union between industry and agriculture based on the conscious application of science and the combination of collective labour, and on a redistribution of the human population (putting an end at one and the same time to rural remoteness, isolation and barbarism, and to the unnatural concentration of vast masses of people in big cities). A new form of family, new conditions in the status of women and in the upbringing of the younger generation are being prepared by the highest forms of modern capitalism: female and child labour and the break-up of the patriarchal family by capitalism inevitably assume the most terrible, disastrous, and repulsive forms in modern society. Nevertheless "modern industry, by assigning as it does an important part in the socially organized process of production, outside the domestic sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of the relations between the sexes. It is, of course, just as absurd to hold the Teutonic-Christian form of the family to be absolute and final as it would be to apply that character to the ancient Roman, the ancient Greek, or the Eastern forms which, moreover, taken together form a series in historic development. Moreover, it is obvious that the fact of the collective working group being composed of individuals of both sexes and all ages, must necessarily, under suitable conditions, become a source of humane development; although in its spontaneously developed, brutal, capitalistic

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form, where the labourer exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the labourer, that fact is a pestiferous source of corruption and slavery." (Capital, Vol. I, end of Chap. 15.) In the factory system is to be found "the germ of the education of the future, an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of social production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings." (Ibid.) Marx's socialism puts the question of nationality and of the state on the same historical footing, not only in the sense of explaining the past but also in the sense of a fearless forecast of the future and of bold practical action for its achievement. Natitons are an inevitable product, an inevitable form in the bourgeois epoch of social development. The working class could not grow strong, could not become mature and take shape without "constituting itself within the nation," without being "national" ("though not in the bourgeois sense of the word"). But the development of capitalism more and more breaks down national barrers, destroys national seclusion, substitutes class antagonisms for national antagonisms. It is, therefore, perfectly true that in the developed capitalist countries "the workingmen have no country" and that "united action" by the workers, of the civilized countries at least, "is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat" (Communist Manifesto). The state, which is organized violence, inevitably came into being at a definite stage in the development of society, when society had split into irreconcilable classes, and when it could not exist without an "authority" ostensibly standing above society and to a certain degree separate from society. Arising out of class contradictions,

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the state becomes "the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. Thus, the state of antiquity was above all the state of the slave-owners for the purpose of holding down the slaves, as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage labour by capital." (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, a work in which the writer expounds his own and Marx's views.) Even the freest and most progressive form of the bourgeois state, the democratic republic, in no way removes this fact, but merely changes its form (connection between the government and the stock exchange, corruption -- direct and indirect -- of the officialdom and the press, etc.). Socialism, by leading to the abolition of classes, will thereby lead to the abolition of the state. "The first act," writes Engels in Anti-Dühring, "in which the state realIy comes forward as the representative of society as a whole -- the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not 'abolished,' it withers away." "The society that will organize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning

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wheel and the bronze axe." (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.)

    Having as early as 1844-45 examined one of the chief defects of the earlier materialism, namely, its inability to understand the conditions or appreciate the importance of practical revolutionary activity, Marx, along with his theoretical work, all his life devoted unrelaxed attention to the tactical problems of the class struggle of the proletariat. An Immense amount of material bearing on this is contained in all the works of Marx and particularly in the four volumes of his correspondence with Engels, published in 1913. This material is still far from having been assembled, collected, studied and examined. We shall therefore have to confine ourselves here to the most general and brief remarks, emphasizing that Marx justly considered that without this side materialism was incomplete, one-sided, and lifeless. Marx defined the fundamental task of proletarian tactics in strict conformity with all the postulates of his materialist-dialectical conception. Only an objective consideration of the sum-total of

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    No complete collection of Marx's works and letters has yet been published. More of Marx's works have been translated into Russian than into any other language. The following enumeration of Marx's writings is arranged chronologically. In 1841 Marx wrote his dissertation on Epicurus's philosophy. (It was included in the Literarischer Nachlass, of which more will be said later.) In this dissertation, Marx still stood completely on the idealist-Hegelian viewpoint. To the year 1842 belong Marx's articles in the Rheinische Zeitung (Cologne), among them a criticism of the free-press debate in the Sixth Rhenish Diet, an article on the laws concerning the stealing of timber, another in defence of liberating politics from theology, etc. (partly included in the Literarischer Nachlass). Here we observe signs of Marx's transition from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. In 1844, under the editorship of Marx and Arnold Ruge, there appeared in Paris the Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher, in which this transition was finally consummated. Among Marx's articles published in that magazine, the most noteworthy are "Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right, Introduction" (published both in the Literarischer Nachlass and as a separate

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pamphlet) and "On the Jewish Question" (likewise in the Literarischer Nachlass, and issued as a pamphlet by the Znaniye Publishers in their Cheap Library, No. 210). In 1845, Marx and Engels jointly published a pamphlet in Frankfort-on-Main, entitled The Holy Family, Against Bruno Bauer and Co. (included in the Literarischer Nachlass; two Russian editions as pamphlets: one by Novy Golos in St. Petersburg, 1906, the other by Vestnik Znaniya, St. Petersburg, 1907). To the spring of 1845 belong Marx's theses on Feuerbach (published as an appendix to Frederick Engels's pamphlet entitled Ludwig Feuerbach; a Russian translation exists). In 1845-47 Marx wrote a number of articles (most of which have not been collected, republished, or translated into Russian) in the papers Vorwärts!, Paris; Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung (1847); Westphälisches Dampfboot (Bielefeld, 1845-48); and Gesellschafts spiegel (Elberfeld, 1846). In 1847 Marx wrote his fundamental work against Proudhon, The Poverty of Philosophy, a reply to Proudhon's work "The Philosophy of Poverty ". The book was published in Brussels and Paris (there have been three Russian editions by Novy Mir, one by G. Lvovich, one by Alexeyeva, and one by Prosveshcheniye, all in 1905 and 1906). In 1848 there was published in Brussels the Speech on Free Trade (Russian translation exists), then in London, in collaboration with Frederick Engels, the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party, translated into nearly all the European languages and into a number of other languages (about eight Russian translations, 1905-06; these editions, by Molot, Kolokol, Alexeyeva, etc., most of which have been confiscated, appeared under various titles: Communist Manifesto, On Communism, Social Classes and Communism, Capitalism and Communism, Philosophy of History; a complete and the most accurate translation of this as well as

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of other works of Marx will be found in the editions of the Emancipation of Labour group issued abroad). From June 1, 1848, to May 19, 1849, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was published in Cologne with Marx as the actual editor-in-chief. His numerous articles published in that paper, which to this very day remains the best and unsurpassed organ of the revolutionary proletariat, have not been fully collected and reprinted. The most important of them were included in the Literarischer Nachlass. Wage-Labour and Capital, published in that paper, has been repeatedly issued as a pamphlet (four Russian editions by Kozman, Molot, Myagkov, and Lvovich, 1905-06); also from the same paper The Liberals at the Helm (published by Znaniye Publishers in their Cheap Library, No. 272, St. Petersburg, 1906). In 1849 Marx published in Cologne Two Political Trials (two speeches in his own defence delivered by Marx, who was acquitted by the jury, when facing trial on the charge of having violated the press law and having called for armed resistance against the government. Russian translations available in five editions brought out in 1905 and 1906 by Alexeyeva, Molot, Myagkov, Znaniye and Novy Mir ). In 1850 Marx published in Hamburg six issues of the magazine Neue Rheinische Zeitung; the most important articles published in that magazine were later included in the Literarischer Nachlass. Especially note worthy are Marx's articles republished by Engels in 1895 in a pamphlet entitled Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 (Russian translations, published by M. Malykh "Library", No. 59-60; also in the Collection of Historical Works, translated by Bazarov and Stepanov and published by Skirmunt, St. Petersburg, 1906; also in Thoughts and Views of the 20th Century, St. Petersburg, 1912). In 1852 there was published in New York Marx's pamphlet, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Russian translation in the collections just mentioned). In the

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articles have not been collected, and only a few of them were reprinted in the Neue Zeit, as was also the case with Marx's numerous letters. The same is true about Marx's articles from Das Volk (London, 1859) concerning the diplomatic history of the Italian War of 1859. In 1859 Marx's work, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, appeared in Berlin (Russian translations: Moscow, 1896, edited by Manuilov; St. Petersburg, 1907, translated by Rumyantsev). In 1860 a pamphlet by Marx entitled Herr Vogt appeared in London.

    In 1864 the Address of the International Workingmen's Association, written by Marx, appeared in London (there is a Russian translation). Marx was the author of numerous manifestoes, addresses and resolutions of the General Council of the International. This material is far from having been analysed or even collected. The first approach to this work is Gustav Jaeckh's book, The International (in Russian translation: St. Petersburg, 1906, Znaniye Publishers), where, among others, several of Marx's letters and draft resolutions are printed. Among the documents of the International that were written by Marx is the Address of the General Council concerning the Paris Commune which appeared in 1871 in London as a separate pamphlet under the title The Civil War in France (Russian translations: one edited by Lenin, Molot Publishers, and others). To the 1862-74 period belongs the correspondence of Marx with a member of the International, Kugelmann (two Russian translations: one by A. Goikhbarg, the other edited by Lenin). In 1867 Marx's main work, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I, appeared in Hamburg. The second and third volumes were published by Engels in 1885 and 1894, after the death of Marx. The Russian translations: Vol. I, in five editions (two in a translation by Danielson, 1872 and 1898; two in a translation by E. A. Gurvich and L. M. Zak, edited by Struve, 1st ed. -- 1899,

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2nd ed. -- 1905; another edited by Bazarov and Stepanov). Volumes 2 and 3 appeared in a translation by Danielson (less satisfactory) and in another under the editorship of Bazarov and Stepanov (the better). In 1876 Marx participated in the writing of Engels's Anti-Dühring (Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft ); he went over the manuscript of the whole work and wrote an entire chapter dealing with the history of political economy.

    After Marx's death, the following works of his were published: Critique of the Gotha Programme (Russian translation, St. Petersburg, 1906, and in German in the Neue Zeit, 1890-91, No. 18); Wages, Price and Profit (a lecture delivered on June 26, 1865; Neue Zeit, XVI, 1897-98; Russian translations brought out by Molot, 1906, and Lvovich, 1905); Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle, three volumes, Stuttgart, 1902 (Russian translation, edited by Axelrod and others, two volumes, St. Petersburg, 1908; Vol. I also edited by E. Gurvich, Moscow, 1907. Lassalle's letters to Marx, published separately, are included in the Literarischer Nachlass); Letters from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and Others to F. A. Sorge and Others (two Russian editions: one edited by Axelrod and another, with a preface by Lenin, published by Dauge); Theories of Surplus Value, three volumes in four parts, Stuttgart, 1905-10, representing the manuscript of the fourth volume of Capital and published by Kautsky (only the first volume translated into Russian, in three editions: St. Petersburg, 1906, edited by Plekhanov; Kiev, 1906, edited by Plekhanov, and Kiev, 1907, edited by Tuchapsky). In 1913 four large volumes of the Marx-Engels Correspondence appeared in Stuttgart, with 1,386 letters written during the period from September 1844 to January 10, 1883, and offering a mass of material that is highly valuable for the study of Marx's biography

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and views. In 1917, two volumes of Marx's and Engels's articles of 1852-62 appeared (in German). This list of Marx's works must be concluded with a remark that many of Marx's shorter articles and letters published, for the most part, in the Neue Zeit, Vorwärts, and other Social-Democratic periodicals in the German language, have not been enumerated here. Neither, undoubtedly, is the list of Russian translations of Marx's works complete especially with reference to pamphlets that appeared in 1905-06.

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those by Karl Schurz in the Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1906, No. 12; those by M. Kovalevsky in the Vestnik Yevropy, 1909, No. 6, etc. On the question of the philosophy of Marxism and of historical materialism the best exposition is given by G. V. Plekhanov in his works: For Twenty Years, St. Petersburg, 1909, 3rd ed.; From Defence to Attack, St. Petersburg, 1909; Fundamental Problems of Marxism, St. Petersburg, 1908; Critique of Our Critics, St. Petersburg, 1906; On the Question of Developing a Monistic Conception of History, St. Petersburg, 1908; and others. Antonio Labriola, Essay on tbe Materialist View of History, St. Petersburg, 1898; also his Historical Materialism and Philosophy, St. Petersburg, 1906; Franz Mehring, On Historical Materialism (two editions, by Prosveshcheniye and Molot ), St. Petersburg, 1906, and The Lessing Legend, St. Petersburg, 1908 (Znaniye ); see also Charles Andler (non-Marxist), The Communist Manifesto. History, Introduction, Comments, St. Petersburg, 1906. See also Historical Materialism, St. Petersburg, 1908, a collection of articles by Engels, Kautsky, Lafargue, and many others; L. Axelrod, Philosophical Sketches. A Reply to Philosophic Critics of Historical Materialism, St. Petersburg, 1906. A special defence of Dietzgen's unsuccessful deviations from Marxism is contained in E. Untermann's book, Die logischen Mängel des engeren Marxismus, München, 1909,[1] 753 pages (a large but none too serious work). Hugo Riekes's "Die philosophische Wurzel des Marxismus", in the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 62. Jahrgang, 1906, 3. Heft, S. 407-32,[2] is an interesting piece of work of an opponent of the Marxist views showing their philosophical unity from the point of view of materialism. Benno Erdmann's "Die philosophischen

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by the censor), later reprinted in V. Ilyin's For Twelve Years, St. Petersburg, 1908. Other Narodnik works: V. V., Our Lines of Policy, St. Petersburg, 1892, and From the Seventies to the Twentieth Century, St. Petersburg, 1907; Nikolai-on, Outline of Our Post-Reform Social Economy, St. Petersburg, 1893; V. Chernov, Marxism and the Agrarian Problem, St. Petersburg, 1906, and Philosophical and Sociological Sketches, St. Petersburg, 1907.

    Besides the Narodniks, let us note further the following: N. Kareyev, Old and New Sketches on Historical Materialism, St. Petersburg, 1896, 2nd edition in 1913 under the title Critique of Economic Materialism; Masaryk, Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of Marxism, Moscow, 1900; Croce, Historical Materialism and Marxist Economies, St. Petersburg, 1902.

    In order correctly to evaluate Marx's views, it is necessary to be acquainted with the works of his closest fellow-thinker and collaborator, Frederick Engels. It is impossible to understand Marxism and to propound it fully without taking into account all the works of Engels.

    For a critique of Marx from the point of view of anarchism, see V. Cherkezov, The Doctrines of Marxism, two parts, St. Petersburg, 1905; V. Tucker, Instead of a Book, Moscow, 1907; and the syndicalist Sorel, Social Studies of Modern Economy, Moscow, 1908.

Written in July-November 1914 First published in 1915 in the Granat Encyclopedia, Seventh Edition, Vol. 28, over the signature of V. Ilyin

Printed according to     the manuscript,         checked against the text of the pamphlet of 1918

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