Rise of Socialist Ideas upto Marx

Rise of Socialist Ideas up to Marx

Socialism emerged as a direct response to the inequities of industrial capitalism, evolving from early revolutionary conspiracies through the utopian communities of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, before Karl Marx recast it as a “scientific” theory of history. This article traces that evolution — the core ideas of socialism, its early and utopian phase, and the towering contribution of Marx — a key theme in the UPSC History Optional syllabus on the rise of ideologies in modern Europe.

What Is Socialism?

• Socialism is a social, economic, and political doctrine calling for public, rather than private, ownership or control of property and natural resources.
  • It is characterised by social ownership and/or social control of the means of production, and co-operative management of the economy, as well as a political theory and movement aiming at establishing such a system.
  • “Social ownership” may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, state ownership, citizen ownership of equity, or any combination of these.
• According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation, but in cooperation with one another.
  • Everything people produce is, in some sense, a social product, and everyone who contributes to producing a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole should therefore own, or at least control, property for the benefit of all its members.
  • This conviction places socialism in opposition to capitalism, which is based on private ownership of the means of production and allows individual choices in a free market to determine how goods and services are distributed, resting on the principle of production for profit and the accumulation of capital.
• The socialist movement was also a response and reaction to the evils of the Industrial Revolution, which was based on industrial capitalism (the evils of the Industrial Revolution are discussed in the chapter on the Industrial Revolution).
  • During the Industrial Revolution, Bourgeois (middle-class) rule superseded the domination of absolute monarchies and the aristocracy of the old regime. As new governments were established, legislation restricting business enterprise was abolished, and little was done to improve workers’ conditions.
  • Socialism was, therefore, the Proletariat’s (workers’) answer to the restrictions imposed on them by middle-class rule.

Criticism of Capitalism

• Socialists complain that capitalism necessarily leads to unfair and exploitative concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of the relative few who emerge victorious from free-market competition — who then use their wealth and power to reinforce their dominance in society.
  • Because such people are rich, they may choose where and how to live, and their choices in turn limit the options of the poor. As a result, terms such as individual freedom and equality of opportunity may be meaningful for capitalists, but ring hollow for working people, who must do the capitalists’ bidding to survive.
  • As socialists see it, true freedom and true equality require social control of the resources that form the basis of prosperity in any society.
• A common socialist criticism is that making money, or the accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the satisfaction of demand.
  • The fundamental criterion for economic activity under capitalism is the accumulation of capital for reinvestment in production; this spurs the development of new, non-productive industries that don’t produce use-value and exist only to keep the accumulation process afloat — such as the spread of the financial industry, contributing to the formation of economic bubbles.
  • It is argued that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities requiring costly corrective regulatory measures. For example, excessive disparities in income distribution lead to social instability and require costly corrective measures such as redistributive taxation — which incurs heavy administrative costs, weakens the incentive to work, invites dishonesty, and increases the likelihood of tax evasion, while reducing the overall efficiency of the market economy.

Elements of Socialism

• Anti-capitalism
• Anti-private property and anti-private enterprise
• Anti-competition
• Fraternity and a focus on cooperation, as a substitute for competition
• A focus on society rather than the individual — standing for the higher interest of society over individual interest, for collectivism rather than individualism
• Social equality given primacy
• Common/public ownership or social control
• Association with some form of class politics, generally representing the interests of the working class
• Need, rather than merit or work, as the basis for distributing material benefits (the slogan popularised by Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”)

Criticism of Socialism

• Socialism recognises only one aspect of equality — distribution based on need — while ignoring the other aspect, equal opportunity for everyone.
  • There will always be people who do not wish to work, yet take a share of what others produce, creating passivity and undermining work culture, and thereby reducing individual incentives to work.
  • Critics argue that in any society where everyone holds equal wealth, there can be no material incentive to work, since one receives no reward for work well done.
• Economic liberals view private enterprise, private ownership of the means of production, and market exchange as central to conceptions of freedom and liberty, and argue that socialism impedes technological progress by stifling competition.
• The more even distribution of wealth through nationalisation of the means of production, as advocated by certain socialists, cannot be achieved without a loss of political, economic, and human rights.
  • To achieve control over production and the distribution of wealth, such socialists must acquire significant powers of coercion; it is argued that the road to socialism leads society toward totalitarianism, since the absence of voluntary economic activity makes it too easy for repressive political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers.
• Critics also argue that socialist systems based on economic planning are unfeasible, since they lack the information needed to perform economic calculations in the first place — owing to the absence of price signals and a free-price system required for rational economic calculation.
• Socialism aims at replacing the capitalist system of economic organisation with one in which the interests of the wage-earning class are safeguarded through some form of collective ownership.
  • But how is the transference from private to common ownership to be effected — through political methods, direct action such as strikes and sabotage, or violence and revolution? And who is to own the means of production — the state, or an organised group of labourers?
  • This lack of clarity is itself one of the criticisms of socialism, and is why there exist so many varieties of socialism.

Early Socialism

• The origins of socialism as a political movement lie in the French Revolution of 1789 and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas.
  • The French Revolution was preceded and influenced by the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Social Contract famously began: “Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains.” (Rousseau’s connection to socialism is explained further in the separate chapter on Rousseau.)
• During the French Revolution, all sorts of socialist ideas for reconstructing society were born.
  • But the Revolution, while it ended the autocratic rule of the French monarchy, did not usher in an era of equality in economic, social, and political life. The wide gap between the Revolution’s aims and the actual conditions in France afterward created serious discontent, leading to an attempt to overthrow the existing government with a view to building a society based on socialist ideas.
  • This attempt became known as Babeuf’s Conspiracy, or the Conspiracy of Equals, being the work of Babeuf, who had himself participated in the Revolution.

Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals

• Babeuf, the “Father of Socialism,” advocated the compulsory nationalisation of wealth, social equality, equality of results, and the abolition of private property.
  • According to him, nature gave everyone an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods, and in a true society, there is no room for either rich or poor.
  • He popularised his ideas through his own newspapers and popular songs; his newspaper, The Tribune of the People, was best known for its advocacy for the poor and its calls for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France.
• He organised a secret society called the Society of the Equals, which planned an uprising — the Conspiracy of the Equals, in May 1796 — to overthrow the Directory and replace it with an egalitarian government based on socialist ideas.
  • The government, however, learned of the plan, and Babeuf was executed for his role in the conspiracy.
• While Rousseau is credited with influencing socialist thought, it was Babeuf, and his Conspiracy of Equals, who is credited with providing a model for the left-wing and communist movements of the 19th century, exercising an important influence on the growth of the socialist movement.
• In Britain, Thomas Paine proposed a detailed plan, in Agrarian Justice, to tax property owners to fund the needs of the poor, while Charles Hall wrote The Effects of Civilization on the People in European States, denouncing capitalism’s effects on the poor of his time.

Utopian Socialism

• Utopian socialism is a label used to describe the first currents of modern socialist thought (pre-Marxist socialist thought), exemplified mainly by the work of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen — the name given to socialist aspiration in the era prior to the development of industrial capitalism.
  • The term “Utopian socialism” was introduced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848), referring to all socialist ideas that simply presented a vision and distant goal of an ethically just society as “utopian.”

Characteristics of Utopian Socialism

• Often described as presenting visions for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies.
• Utopian socialists believed it was possible to work within, and reform, capitalist society.
  • They emphasised the gradual transformation of society, most notably through the foundation of small, utopian communities, and did not believe class struggle or political revolution was necessary for socialism to emerge.
  • They believed people of all classes could voluntarily adopt their plan for society if presented convincingly, and that their form of cooperative socialism could be established among like-minded people within existing society.
• They envisioned a society free from exploitation of any kind, in which all would contribute their best and share in the fruits of their labour.
  • Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and Charles Fourier were the most famous utopian socialists.

Saint-Simon (1760–1825)

• One of the first utopian socialists was the French aristocrat Saint-Simon, born in 1760 in Paris.
  • He believed history moves through a series of stages, each marked by a particular arrangement of social classes and a set of dominant beliefs — thus, feudalism, with its landed nobility and monotheistic religion, was giving way to industrialism, a complex form of society characterised by reliance on science, reason, and the division of labour.
  • In such circumstances, he argued, it makes sense to place the economic arrangements of society in the hands of its most knowledgeable and productive members, so they may direct economic production for the benefit of all.
• His ideas:
  • He did not call for public ownership of productive property, but did advocate public control of property through central planning, in which scientists, industrialists, and engineers would anticipate social needs and direct society’s energies to meet them — a system he considered more efficient than capitalism.
  • He stood for the cooperation of labour and capital so that the best result could be obtained, and did not advocate class war — capitalism was still in its infancy in his time, and he did not notice the antagonism, jealousy, and hatred between the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
  • He aimed at a better “organisation” of society from a moral and physical point of view, but did not stand for equality of remuneration — this was to depend on the capacity and occupation of the worker.
  • According to him, the state was manager of the instruments of labour, guided by the principle of merit, and he advocated the distribution of wealth by the state.

Charles Fourier (1772–1837)

• Owen and Fourier both relied on private initiative to build model communities based on cooperation, which they hoped would become widely copied examples for the reconstruction of society.
• Charles Fourier, a French socialist who began his career as a clerk to a small merchant, was shocked upon seeing thousands of tons of rice thrown into the sea because it could not be sold at a profitable price.
  • He supported the cooperative movement in France, denouncing the economic, social, political, and moral disorders from which society suffered — poverty, war, and the injustices of private property rights, among others.
  • According to him, modern society breeds selfishness, deception, and other evils because institutions such as the competitive market confine people to repetitive labour or a limited role in life, frustrating the human need for variety. By setting people against one another in competition for profit, the market frustrates the desire for harmony — which, he believed, could only exist if people lived in units large enough to allow all passions to operate freely.
• Fourier accordingly envisioned a form of society more in keeping with human needs and desires: the “phalanstery” — a largely self-sufficient community of about 1,600 people, organised according to the principle of “attractive labour,” which holds that people will work voluntarily and happily if their work engages their talents and interests.
  • Since all tasks become tiresome eventually, each member of the phalanstery would have several occupations, moving between them as interest waxed and waned. There was to be no government at all (he had a tendency toward anarchism).
  • Fourier left room for private investment in his utopian community, but every member was to share in ownership, and inequality of wealth, though permitted, was to be limited.
• He had no money to launch such ventures himself, as Owen did, and kept waiting for a benefactor who would fund the idea’s implementation — but no one came.
  • Fourierism manifested itself by the mid-19th century, when hundreds of communes (phalansteries) were founded on Fourierist principles in France, North America, Mexico, South America, Algeria, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere.
  • Fourier inspired the founding of the communist community La Réunion, near present-day Dallas, Texas, along with several other communities in the United States.
  • He had largely ignored the French Revolution.

Robert Owen (1771–1858)

• Robert Owen, the father of British socialism, was himself an industrialist.
  • Owen first attracted attention operating textile mills in Scotland, which were both highly profitable and, by the standards of the day, remarkably humane: child labour and corporal punishment were abolished, and villagers were provided decent homes, schools, evening classes, free healthcare, and affordable food. He paid high wages to labourers while still making substantial profit.
• He set out his ideas in his book, A New View of Society (1813), and favoured unemployment relief through cooperative villages, presenting these views in his Report to the Committee for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor (1817), which was rejected by the parliamentary committee.
• Owen’s fundamental belief was that human nature is not fixed but formed: if people are selfish, depraved, or vicious, it is because social conditions have made them so. Change the conditions, he argued, and people will change; teach them to live and work together in harmony, and they will do so.
  • Thus, Owen set out in 1825 to establish a model of social organisation, New Harmony, on land he purchased in the U.S. state of Indiana — intended as a self-sufficient, cooperative community with commonly owned property.
• This enterprise failed because of:
  • Mismanagement.
  • Undisciplined individualism and anarchism.
  • His militant anti-church rationalism, as he denounced the hypocrisy of organised religion and lost his former influence as a result.
  • He lost 80% of his private fortune due to this failure.
• After New Harmony’s failure, Owen turned his attention to other efforts to promote social cooperation, particularly trade unions and cooperative businesses.
  • His name remains closely connected with the steps toward real progress in England’s social reform movements, and with all legislation in the interest of the working classes.

Other Socialist Thinkers

Other socialists in France began to agitate and organise in the 1830s and ’40s, including Louis Blanc, Louis-Auguste Blanqui, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Louis Blanc

• Blanc, author of The Organization of Labour (1839), promoted a scheme of state-financed but worker-controlled “social workshops” that would guarantee work for everyone and lead gradually to a socialist society.
  • In his work, he argued that without political power, labourers would be unable to improve their conditions; he therefore sought to sweep away the Bourgeois government of France and organise government on socialist lines (he played a leading role in every uprising in Paris from 1830 to 1871).
  • According to Blanc, what proletarians need is the instruments of labour, and it is the government’s function to supply these.
• Louis Blanc advocated “social workshops,” which workers themselves would own and run with the financial assistance of the state, sharing in the profit — eliminating private competition and ensuring cooperative production and distribution.
  • He believed the government would withdraw its support and supervision once the workshops were on their feet, hoping that as workshops gradually spread throughout France, socialistic enterprise would replace private enterprise, private profits would vanish, and labour would emerge as the only class left in society — achieving a classless society.
  • As Blanc put it: “If we were to define our conception of the State, our answer would be that the State is the banker of the poor. The government would finance and supervise the purchase of productive equipment and the formation of workshops.”
  • He favoured the “Right to Work” — the right of every man to have work found for him by the state.
• Much of Blanc’s socialism was characteristically utopian, particularly his reliance on workers to arrange their own communal living. The real novelty of his plan lay in the role he assigned to the state, marking a step from philanthropy toward politics — an advance on utopian socialism.
  • Saint-Simon, with his stress on “organisation,” presumably meant to give government a larger role; his follower, Louis Blanc, developed Saint-Simon’s vaguely formulated principle of “organisation” into a doctrine of state intervention to achieve utopian ends.

Blanqui

• Blanqui, by contrast, was a revolutionary who spent more than 33 years in prison for his insurrectionary activities.
  • He argued that socialism cannot be achieved without the conquest of state power, and that this conquest must be the work of a small group of conspirators. Once in power, the revolutionaries would form a temporary dictatorship that would confiscate the property of the wealthy and establish state control of major industries.

Proudhon

• In What Is Property? (1840), Proudhon memorably declared: “Property is theft!”
  • In contrast to a society dominated by capitalists and absentee landlords, Proudhon’s ideal was a society in which everyone had an equal claim — either alone or as part of a small cooperative — to possess and use land and other resources as needed to make a living.
  • Such a society would operate on the principle of mutualism, whereby individuals and groups would exchange products on the basis of mutually satisfactory contracts, ideally without any interference from the state — for Proudhon was an anarchist, who regarded the state as an essentially coercive institution.
  • Yet his anarchism did not prevent him from urging Napoleon III to make free bank credit available to workers for establishing mutualist cooperatives — a proposal the emperor declined.

Note on Anarchism: Anarchism is a political philosophy advocating stateless societies, often defined as self-governed, voluntary institutions. It holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful.

Mikhail Bakunin

• Called the father of modern anarchism, Bakunin was a libertarian socialist, holding that workers should directly manage the means of production through their own productive associations.
  • He envisioned “equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor.”

Criticism of Utopian Socialism

• Later socialists and critics viewed “utopian socialism” as not grounded in the actual material conditions of existing society, and therefore impractical and ineffective.
  • Many socialists became disillusioned with the viability of the utopian approach, emphasising instead direct political action.
• Utopian socialism was criticised for offering visions of an imaginary or futuristic ideal, egalitarian society, but without the scientific analysis of social evolution that Marx’s scientific socialism provided — turning socialism from a utopia into a science, developed in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the Critique of Political Economy, and Das Kapital.
  • Utopian socialism failed because it failed to correctly analyse the forces and impulses that govern human nature and shape its environment. Marx removed this defect, declaring that the fundamental impulse of human life is economic, and that the course of history has always been determined by economic factors — giving socialism a new philosophy and direction.
• While utopian socialists believed it possible to work within or reform capitalist society, Marx confronted the question of the economic and political power of the capitalist class, expressed in their ownership of the means of producing wealth.
  • As Marx and Engels saw it, utopian socialists failed to recognise why socialism arose in the particular historical context it did — as a response to the new social contradictions of a new mode of production, namely capitalism.
  • As Marx himself put it: “…no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular, historic phases in the development of production; that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the Proletariat; that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
  • Whereas utopian socialists deduced philosophical outlines of a new, more perfect social order and sought to impose these through propaganda and experiment, Marx located the possibility of transformation within economics itself. With his discovery of the materialist conception of history, and the process of the expropriation of surplus value under capitalism, socialism was placed on a new footing.

Influence of Early Socialism

• Although the efforts of early socialists failed, they left a lasting influence.
  • They focused public attention on the appalling evils of the existing industrial system, and set in motion opposition to the theory of laissez-faire and individualism.
  • The Chartist Movement in England was a result of their ideas. In France, the socialism of Louis Blanc was a powerful factor in organising working men against the Bourgeois government of Louis Philippe.
• Though pre-Marxist socialist thought was not organised or scientifically explained in the manner Marx would later achieve, and utopian socialists could not provide a scientific approach to social problems — their vision remaining utopian rather than realised — utopian socialism nonetheless gave a start on which Marxism and later socialism built.

Karl Marx (1818–1883)

• Karl Marx was born at Trier in 1818; his father was a lawyer of Jewish extraction. Marx had to leave Germany because of his revolutionary activities and spent the rest of his life in exile in London, where he died in 1883.
  • Marx and his longtime friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels were both associated with Berlin University, the greatest academic centre among the German states, greatly influenced by the ideas of Hegel, who had taught there.

Marxian Socialism: In Contrast to Utopian Socialism

• Despite their imagination and dedication to the cause of the workers, none of the early socialists met with the full approval of Karl Marx.
  • Marx and Engels were largely responsible for attaching the label “utopian” — intended derogatorily — to Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen, whose “fantastic pictures of future society” they contrasted with their own “scientific” approach to socialism.
• While utopian socialists believed it was possible to work within or reform capitalist society, Marx confronted the question of the economic and political power of the capitalist class, expressed in their ownership of the means of producing wealth (factories, banks, commerce — in a word, “Capital”).
  • According to Marx, the path to socialism proceeds not through the establishment of model communities setting examples of harmonious cooperation, but through the clash of social classes. To him, all earlier socialistic theories were vague and unscientific, since they ignored the immutable laws determining the course of history.
• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” Marx proclaimed in the Communist Manifesto — a scientific understanding of history that shows these struggles will culminate in the triumph of the working class and the establishment of socialism.
  • Marx and his followers proclaimed that their socialism alone was scientific, as opposed to the romantic doctrines of the utopians — a new brand of socialism concerned primarily with disclosing the nature of social and historical development.
  • Utopian socialism failed because it failed to correctly analyse the forces and impulses governing human nature and its environment; Marx removed this defect, giving socialism a new philosophy and direction that had previously been little more than a protest against injustice.

Works and Theories of Marx

Marx constructed a philosophy of “Scientific Socialism,” developed principally in the following works:

The Communist Manifesto (1848)

• Marx and Engels were associated with the Communist League, whose objective was the end of capitalism, the creation of a new society, and the promotion of the unity of labour.
  • Marx and Engels were associated with the League’s London office, and its London branch entrusted them with preparing a manifesto that became one of the principal programmatic statements of European socialist and communist parties in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• It opens with a dramatic announcement: “A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism.”
  • And it closes with a stirring and confident appeal: “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite.”
• A fifty-page document, initially written in German and later translated into many languages, it is divided into four parts:
  • First part — deals with the history of social revolution: the first section, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” elucidates the materialist conception of history — that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” — surveying history from feudalism down to 19th-century capitalism, which was destined to be overthrown and replaced by a workers’ society.
  • Second part — deals with the doctrine of the Communist Party. The second section, “Proletarians and Communists,” opens by stating the relationship of conscious communists to the rest of the working class: the communist party will not oppose other working-class parties, but, unlike them, will express the general will and defend the common interests of the world’s proletariat as a whole, independent of nationality. The section closes with a set of short-term demands to transition from capitalism to a proletarian society — the so-called “ten planks”:
    1. Abolition of private property and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
    2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
    3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
    4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
    5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, through a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
    6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.
    7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; bringing waste lands into cultivation, and improving the soil generally, in accordance with a common plan.
    8. Equal liability of all to labour.
    9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; the gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, through a more equitable distribution of population across the country.
    10. Free education for all children in public schools; abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form; combination of education with industrial production.
  • Third part — deals with the criticism of Utopian Socialism: the section “Socialist and Communist Literature” distinguishes communism from other socialist doctrines then prevalent.
  • Fourth part — the tactics of communists in the face of opposition.

The Critique of Political Economy (1859)

• Contains an analysis of capitalism.

Das Kapital (3 volumes: 1867, 1885, 1894)

• Marx expounded his theory of the capitalist system — its dynamism and its tendencies toward self-destruction — describing his purpose as to lay bare “the economic law of motion of modern society.”
  • It can be considered an elaboration of the doctrines of the Communist Manifesto, and is regarded as the “Bible of Socialism.” The second and third volumes were published after Marx’s death, edited by his collaborator, Friedrich Engels.

Theory of Surplus Value

• Much of Das Kapital spells out Marx’s concept of the “surplus value” of labour and its consequences for capitalism.
  • All wealth is the product of labour; hence, workmen have a right to the whole produce of labour. Within the capitalist system, however, labour was a mere commodity that could gain only subsistence wages.
  • The workman has to work longer and harder than the wages he receives, and the surplus above what he actually receives is the source of the capitalist’s income — hence, capitalists appropriate the surplus value created by workers, systematically exploiting labour under capitalism.

The Suicidal Tendency of Capitalism

• Capitalism is inherently unstable, since labour cannot be permanently reconciled to exploitation.
  • Marx maintained that the revolution by which socialism would be achieved was ordained by the logic of capitalism itself, as capitalists’ competition for profit led them to dig their own graves (the revolutionary’s role, such as Marx’s own, being confined to that of a “midwife” — speeding the inevitable).
  • Capitalism’s inevitable tendency is the progressive concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the big capitalists swallowing up the little ones. The result would be to swell the numbers of the proletariat, so that society would come to be composed of only two classes, sharply differentiated by increasing wealth and increasing misery.
• Under the pressure of depressions, recessions, and competition for jobs, workers will become conscious that they form a class — the proletariat — oppressed and exploited by their class enemy, the bourgeoisie.
  • The only logical outcome of this state is revolution, in which the many (proletarians) will dispossess the few (capitalists). Armed with this awareness, proletarians will overthrow the bourgeoisie in a series of spontaneous uprisings, seizing control of factories, mines, railroads, and other means of production, until they gain control of the government and convert it into a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
  • Consequently, the capitalist system collapses, and the working class inherits economic and political power, inaugurating the communist state.

Basic Tenets of Marxian Socialism

Dialectic Materialism

• A conflict between two opposite material conditions: the conditions of Capital and Labour (the dialectic is elaborated further below).

Theory of Class Struggle

• The interests of two opposite classes are never harmonised, producing class struggle throughout history:
  • In ancient times: master vs. slave.
  • In medieval times: landlords vs. serfs.
  • In modern times: Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat.
• History as a record of class war: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
  • Those who control the means of production dominate society, fashioning laws and institutions to perpetuate their social and political power — giving rise to the division of society into the “haves” and “have-nots.” It is from this division into two antagonistic sections that class war arises.
  • Present-day society has evolved gradually out of many past class struggles; history is simply the record of how one class has gained wealth and political power, only to be overthrown and succeeded by another.
• The Industrial Revolution destroyed the power and political influence of the old aristocracy, magnifying that of the bourgeois, middle-class capitalists — but also created a class of wretched wage-earners, the proletariat, mercilessly exploited by the capitalists.
  • Hence, severe conflict between the two is inevitable — the last and final struggle, leading to a terrible revolution that would establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Historical Materialism

• Marx’s theory, which he called “historical materialism” or the “materialist conception of history,” is based on Hegel’s claim that history occurs through a dialectic, or clash, of opposing forces.
• Marx’s analysis of history rests on:
  • Means of production — things such as land, natural resources, and technology, necessary for producing material goods.
  • Social relations of production — the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production.
  • Mode of production — Marx observed that within any given society, the mode of production changes over time, and that European societies had progressed from a feudal to a capitalist mode of production.
• Marx considered socio-economic conflict the driving force of human history, designating four stages in the development of relations of production:
  • Primitive Communism: as in cooperative tribal societies.
  • Slave Society: a development from tribal society to the city-state, where aristocracy is born.
  • Feudalism: aristocrats form the ruling class; merchants evolve into capitalists.
  • Capitalism: capitalists form the ruling class, creating and employing the proletariat.
• Marx considered the capitalist class the most revolutionary in history, since it constantly revolutionised the means of production.
  • He believed the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production, and that this mismatch is a major source of social disruption and conflict.
• Under capitalism, people sell their labour-power when they accept compensation for work performed in a given period, receiving money in return that allows them to survive.
  • Those who must sell their labour power to live are “proletarians.” The person who buys labour power — generally someone who owns the land and technology needed to produce — is a “capitalist” or “bourgeois.”
  • Capitalism would lead to the empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariat. Marx believed peaceful negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive, well-organised, and violent revolution was required.
  • Finally, he theorised that maintaining the socialist system required establishing and maintaining a proletarian dictatorship.
• Hence, in his analysis of the movement of history, Marx predicted the breakdown of capitalism and the eventual establishment of a communist society, in which class-based human conflict would be overcome, and the means of production held in common ownership for the common good.

Economic Determinism (Economic Interpretation of History)

• Related to historical materialism, economic determinism theory holds that economic forces determine, shape, and define all political, social, cultural, intellectual, and technological aspects of a civilisation.
  • The fundamental impulse of human life is economic, and the course of history has always been determined by economic factors, to which all other (social, political, etc.) factors are subordinate.
  • The economic relations of society — the relations under which humans gather the means of livelihood, establishing systems of production, exchange, and distribution to meet material necessities — create the path for social progress.
• Determinism refers to the theory that all events are determined by previously existing causes, and that human actions and choices are entirely conditioned by external factors. Economic determinism, then, holds that human affairs are shaped entirely by economic factors.

Theory of Revolution

• Marx held that revolution is necessary to play a role in social change — revolutions would lead to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, finally culminating in Communism, the final phase of socialism.
• According to Marx, there are two revolutions:
  • First Revolution: the bourgeois revolution against the feudal order, in which the feudal order is destroyed and a new order — the Bourgeois, or Capitalist, order — is created. Marx considered the French Revolution an instance of this kind of revolution.
  • Second Revolution: the revolution by the proletariat against the Bourgeois order, whose destruction creates a new order — the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This second revolution is a socialist revolution, creating a socialist phase.

Marxian Communism: The Final Phase

• Communism, the last phase, would see no “Error of Production.”
  • Marx held that as civilisation grows, one class establishes control over production and its related processes, forcing the other class to provide labour — giving rise to two opposing material conditions. Marx called this the “Error of Production.”
  • The Error of Production gives rise to these two material conditions, which drive the dialectic — the dialectic continues operating as long as the Error of Production, and hence class struggle, exists.
• With the end of the Error of Production, there would be no dialectic in operation, no class, and no class conflict — class itself would wither away, allowing spontaneous harmony and self-realisation.
  • The system of commodity production would be replaced by production for use, geared to the satisfaction of genuine human needs (rather than for profit, as under capitalism), allowing humans to shape their own destinies and realise their full potential. According to Marx, “the free development of each is the pre-condition for the free development of all.”
  • With no Error of Production, and production geared to genuine human needs, production would exist in plenty, so that each would provide according to their ability, and each would receive according to their need — in contrast to the earlier phase, where each received according to work.
• Criticism of this phase: Need is limitless; ability goes unrewarded; and there would need to be a change in human nature itself (capitalism, it is argued, makes human nature competitive, greedy, and aggressive).
• Gradually, the state would also vanish, giving rise to a stateless society, once a classless society is established — Marx defined the state as the organised power of one class, so with no class, there is no state.
  • Sentiments such as religion and nationalism would also automatically disappear, since, according to Marx, these are all forms of false consciousness, and not reality; as this false consciousness vanishes, national boundaries would vanish too, ending conflict and war.
  • According to critics, Marx was, in this sense, “the greatest Utopian,” given the high level of idealism in his thought.

Theory of Alienation

• This theory describes a process whereby, under capitalism, labour is reduced to a mere commodity, and work becomes a depersonalised activity — the worker and the activity become separated, as he performs the work only because of exploitation, with no hope or enthusiasm.
  • Labour under capitalism is alienated from the product of labour, and from the process of labour — though involved in the process, the worker is not truly invested in it.
  • Workers are alienated from fellow workers, being so badly exploited that they become separated from their co-workers, and are alienated from themselves as creative, social beings.
  • Marx held that alienated labour cannot achieve self-realisation.

Capitalism: Both Progressive and Exploitative

• For Marx, capitalism is both a progressive force in history and an exploitative system that alienates capitalists and workers alike from their true humanity.
  • It is progressive because it has made possible the industrial transformation of the world, thereby unleashing the productive power to free everyone from necessity.
  • Yet it is exploitative in that it condemns proletarians, who own nothing but their labour power, while enabling capitalists to reap the profits — a volatile situation whose inevitable result will be a war that ends all class divisions.

International Character of Marx’s Socialism

• Marx appealed to working men of all countries, holding that the labourers of one country have far more in common with the labourers of other countries than with the capitalists of their own.
  • To promote this unified interest of labourers, he took a leading part in organising “The International Workingmen’s Association,” which met in London in 1864, and became known as the First International.

Marx’s Views on Freedom

• Freedom, for Marx, is largely a matter of overcoming necessity.
  • Necessity compels people to labour in order to survive, and only those free from this compulsion can develop their talents and potential — which is why, throughout history, freedom has usually been restricted to members of the ruling class, who use their control of land and other means of production to exploit the labour of the poor and subservient.
  • The masters in slaveholding societies, the landowning aristocracy in feudal times, and the bourgeoisie who control wealth in capitalist societies have all enjoyed various degrees of freedom, but always at the expense of the slaves, serfs, and industrial workers — the proletarians — who provided the necessary labour.

Marx’s Views on Religion

• Religion offers an escape from reality, taking the pain away from the struggle of life under capitalism.
  • It acts as one good thing that makes life worth living, but also subdues humans, leaving them weak against the whims of the state and the Bourgeoisie who control religion — in effect, a bourgeois strategy to exploit, drawing people away from suffering in order to exploit them more.
• Economic hardship under capitalism prevents most people from achieving comfort and true happiness; religion distorts this reality, encouraging people to work hard, endure suffering, and passively accept their condition.
  • Religion provides false hope that true happiness can only be attained in a heavenly afterlife — encouraging acceptance of one’s earthly condition rather than revolt — offering solace, but keeping people in a world of illusion, and encouraging acceptance of the status quo for the promise of a bright afterlife, thereby keeping people subjugated.
  • Religion offers a form of consolation in the imagination of a utopia, which incentivises people to do good, functioning as a tool in the hands of the dominant classes to keep the lower classes in their place — an escape from the hardship of capitalist society.
  • In Marx’s famous formulation: religion is the opium of the masses.

Marx’s Views on the State

• The state is the organised power of one class to dominate the other; in modern society, this organised power is the power of the Bourgeoisie.
  • Under communism, the state and government itself will eventually wither away, as people gradually lose the selfish attitudes inculcated by private ownership of the means of production.
  • Freed from necessity and exploitation, people would finally live in a true community, giving each individual the means to cultivate their gifts in all directions — so that, eventually, in the phase of communism, there would be a stateless and classless society.

Some Qualifications in Marx’s Official Doctrine

• Though the theories discussed above formed Marx’s official doctrine, in his writings and political activities, he added several qualifications.
  • He acknowledged, for example, that socialism might supplant capitalism peacefully in England, the United States, and other countries where the proletariat was gaining the franchise.
  • He also said it might be possible for a semi-feudal country such as Russia to become socialist without first passing through capitalist industrialism.

Influences on Marx’s Theory

• According to Engels, the basic elements of Marx’s theory are found in German philosophy, French socialism, and British economics. Of these, German philosophy was surely the formative influence on his thinking.

Marxian Communism as the Offspring of German Hegelianism

• Born in the German Rhineland, Marx was a philosophy student at the University of Berlin, when the idealism of G.W.F. Hegel dominated German philosophy.
  • Hegel was a German thinker and teacher at the University of Berlin, and a follower of the German thinker Kant. He presented the idea of human progress on the basis of his famous theory of Dialectics, giving Marx the ideas of dialectic and human progress.

The Hegelian Dialectic

• Hegel’s view of historical change can be understood through the Hegelian dialectic — a framework for guiding thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead to a predetermined solution.
  • Hegel maintained that history is the story of the unfolding, or realisation, of “spirit” — a process requiring struggle, agony, and the overcoming of obstacles to attain self-knowledge. Individuals and nations proceed through the clash of opposing ideas and interests toward greater self-awareness and an appreciation of freedom.
  • Slavery, for example, was long taken for granted as a natural and acceptable practice, but the slave’s struggle to be recognised as a person was bringing an end to slavery, as master and slave came to recognise their common humanity — liberating themselves from a false sense of the master’s superiority.
• The Hegelian dialectic is characterised as a three-step process:
  • The thesis: an intellectual proposition, or established order of life.
  • The antithesis: simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition, or a challenge to the established order of life.
  • The synthesis: resolves the conflict between thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths and forming a “new thesis,” starting the process over — a new, better order through the combination of both thesis and antithesis.
  • This later synthesis, in turn, breaks down by becoming conventional and unproductive, and so itself becomes a new thesis, locked in conflict with a new antithesis — the conflict begins again, and the process of dialectics produces another synthesis, again a move toward progress, and the process continues.
• Hegelian formula: Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis.
  • Examples: the “thesis” of the French Revolution caused the creation of its “antithesis” — the Reign of Terror that followed — eventually resulting in a “synthesis”: the constitutional state of free citizens.
    • Progressive + Conservative = Consensus.
    • Capitalism + Communism = a new world order, in the form of institutions such as the UN and global governance.
  • Marx followed this dialectic but modified it.

Marxian Dialectical Materialism

• Marx’s view of history, which he called “dialectical materialism,” can be considered an offspring of the Hegelian dialectic, but in modified form, with different underlying reasoning.
  • Like Hegel, Marx understood history as the story of human labour and struggle. However, whereas for Hegel history was the story of spirit’s self-realisation through human conflict, for Marx it was the story of struggles between classes over material or economic interests and resources — in place of Hegel’s philosophical idealism, Marx developed a materialist, or economic, theory of history.
  • Marxian dialectical materialism sees the dialectical process driven forward not by abstract forces, as Hegel held, but by solid material conditions, particularly economic factors.
  • While Hegel’s description of history rests on the idea that new ideas cause us to change how we live (our thoughts change, and the world changes in response), Marx’s description holds that when new economic relationships change how we live, we develop new ideas (the world changes, and our thoughts change in response).

Marxian Communism as the Offspring of French Socialism

• The French philosopher Rousseau is considered a forebear of socialism — his egalitarian views on society, and his position as one of the first thinkers to attack the institution of private property, influenced Marxian Communism.
  • Early French socialism was born in the form of utopian socialism, through philosophers like Charles Fourier and Saint-Simon. Although these French socialist ideas lacked much support and were not grounded in a scientific theory like Marxism, they gave a start on which many other socialist ideas, including Marxian Communism, were later built.
• Saint-Simon’s ideas influenced Marx in two ways: his belief that change is inevitable and essential — from which Marx’s idea of revolution derived — and his idea of a clash between classes, which fed into Marx’s idea of class struggle.
• Louis Blanc’s idea — “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work” — was borrowed by Marx and modified in communism into: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Influence of Classical Economists

• From classical economists such as Adam Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, Marx obtained the idea of examining economic activity in a highly abstract fashion, helping him develop an analytical critique of the capitalist system.
  • Marx also drew on Adam Smith’s Labour Theory of Value, which argues that the economic value of goods or services is determined by the total amount of socially necessary labour required to produce them, rather than by the use or pleasure their owner derives from them.
  • From Ricardo’s Law of Wages (the theory that real wages always tend toward the minimum), Marx concluded that capitalism would never permit labour to receive just wages.
  • The classical economists thus gave Marx the tools to present his socialist interpretation in economic terms.

Contribution of Marx / Legacy of Marxian Socialism

• Marx gave a new orientation to socialism, as already discussed.
  • He made socialism into a movement, rather than merely an ideology — playing an instrumental role in establishing the International Working Men’s Association in 1864, commonly known as the First International, whose objective was to promote the unity of labourers worldwide.
• Marxist ideas became the major ideological force behind the Russian Revolution of 1917 under Lenin.
  • Marxist ideas inspired the rise of communism in China, and the Chinese communist revolution under Mao.
  • Marxist ideas emerged as a major ideological force in Europe, promoting revolutionary sentiment more broadly.

Other Forms of Socialism

Anarchism

• The most radical form of socialism. Originally, the anarchists were affiliated with the communists, but were expelled in 1869 at the fourth Congress of the First International.
  • The Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin held that religion, capitalism, and the state are all forms of oppression that must be smashed if people are ever to be free.
• Anarchists preached the destruction of existing governments, standing for a theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government, with harmony obtained not through submission to law or obedience to authority, but through free agreements concluded between various groups.
  • They were not definite about how such a state of society could be brought about, or maintained afterward, though they were quite definite in their criticism of existing forms of government.
• As a communist, Bakunin shared Marx’s vision of a classless, stateless community in which the means of production would be under community control; as an anarchist, however, he vehemently rejected Marx’s claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a necessary step on the way to communism.
  • Bakunin argued that the dictatorship of the proletariat threatened to become even more oppressive than the bourgeois state, which at least had a militant and organised working class to check its growth.
  • After the Paris Commune (1871), Bakunin characterised Marx’s ideas as authoritarian, arguing that if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would end up as bad as the ruling class they had fought against.

Fabian Socialism

• Marxian socialism was distinctively revolutionary, preaching the inevitability of class war — but not all socialists were willing to go that far.
  • An influential group sponsoring what is called “Evolutionary Socialism,” a milder and markedly centralist version of socialism, was the Fabian Society in England, so called because its members admired the tactics of the Roman general Fabius Cunctator, known for delaying tactics that avoided pitched battles and gradually wore down opposition forces.
• Organised in 1884, the society aimed at the reorganisation of society through the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, vesting them in the community for the common benefit.
  • Instead of revolution, the Fabians favoured “gradualism” as the path to socialism. Mostly middle-class intellectuals, they believed persuasion and education were more likely to lead to socialism, however gradually, than violent class warfare.
  • Unlike Marx, Fabians did not attack capital as stolen funds of labour, admitting that the capitalist had a useful part to play in society.
• Rather than forming their own political party, the Fabians aimed at gaining influence within existing parties, eventually exercising considerable influence within Britain’s Labour Party.

Syndicalism

• Positioned near anarchism on the decentralist side of socialism, syndicalism was inspired in part by Proudhon’s ideas, developing at the end of the 19th century out of the French trade-union movement (syndicat being the French word for trade union).
  • It was based on trade-union organisation, with workers’ control and “direct action” as its hallmarks. Its aim was to replace capitalism and the state with a loose federation of local workers’ groups, to be brought about through direct action — especially a general strike of workers that would bring down the government by bringing the economy to a halt.
• Syndicalism accepted the Marxian theory of inevitable struggle between capital and labour, proposing the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, and providing for producer control — giving workers charge of the economic and political affairs of the state.
  • If workers owned and controlled the industry in which they worked, they would have a greater personal interest in the plant’s conduct, and enjoy greater freedom than that offered by the capitalist system.
  • Syndicalists distrusted both the state, which they regarded as an agent of capitalism, and political parties, which they thought incapable of achieving radical change.

Guild Socialism

• Related to syndicalism, but closer to Fabianism in its reformist tactics, Guild Socialism attracted a modest following in the first two decades of the 20th century.
  • Inspired by the medieval guild — an association of craftsmen who determined their own working conditions and activities — it advocated the establishment of self-government in industry by workers; the public ownership of industries, organised into guilds under the democratic control of their trade unions; and the abolition of the wage system.
• The role of the state was left less clear: some guild socialists envisioned it as a coordinator of the guilds’ activities, while others held that its functions should be limited to protection or policing.
  • In general, guild socialists were less inclined to invest power in the state than their Fabian counterparts.

France vs. Britain: Comparative Fertility for Socialist Ideas

France was more fertile than Britain in producing new socialist theories and movements, though these bore less concrete results in France than in Britain.

• In the late 18th century, owing to reasons such as the shortcomings of the Industrial Revolution and prevailing inequality, socialist ideas were spreading in both Britain and France — yet France proved more fertile ground for new socialist theories and movements.
  • France had always been ahead of Britain in the realm of ideas since the age of Enlightenment; the famous philosopher-thinkers of that era — Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire — belonged to France. Similarly, early socialist ideas also first arrived in France, in the form of Utopian Socialism.
• Many consider the origin of socialism as a political movement to lie in the French Revolution of 1789. The Revolution did not directly produce the 19th-century ideologies of socialism or communism, but it did provide the intellectual and social environment in which these ideologies, and their spokesmen, could flourish.
  • The Revolution was preceded and influenced by the works of Rousseau, whose Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality are said to contain the seeds of socialism — French philosophers thus prepared fertile ground for many theories, including socialist ones.
  • It was François Babeuf, and his Conspiracy of Equals, who is credited with providing a model for socialist movements of the 19th century. His newspaper, The Tribune of the People, was best known for its advocacy for the poor and its calls for a popular revolt against the Directory, the government of France. He was a leading advocate for democracy, the abolition of private property, and the equality of results; Babeuf was executed for his role in the Conspiracy of the Equals.
• France produced several famous early socialists — Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and Louis Blanc — each offering different paths to socialism:
  • Saint-Simon preached: “from each according to his capacity, to each according to his work.” His primary objective was to guarantee equal opportunity rather than economic equality; he did not call for public ownership of productive property, but did advocate public control of property through central planning, holding that the state should assume control of production and distribution, and extend loans to communities working on a cooperative basis.
  • Fourier envisioned a form of society more in keeping with human needs and desires: the “phalanstery,” a largely self-sufficient community of about 1,600 people, organised on the principle of “attractive labour,” which holds that people will work voluntarily and happily if their work engages their talents and interests.
  • Other socialists in France began to agitate and organise in the 1830s and ’40s, including Louis Blanc, Louis-Auguste Blanqui, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
    • Louis Blanc, author of The Organization of Labour (1839), promoted a scheme of state-financed but worker-controlled “social workshops” that would guarantee work for everyone and lead gradually to a socialist society.
    • Proudhon opposed all forms of government, and is often regarded as the founding father of anarchism. Like other socialists, he opposed private property rights, but unlike Saint-Simon, he believed in actual economic equality.
• It was the result of these ideas that the Revolution of 1848 in France carried a strong socialistic flavour alongside republicanism. Continuing this tradition, the establishment of the Paris Commune in 1871 — a radical socialist and revolutionary government, though it collapsed after two months — was an important event in the progress of socialistic ideas.
  • French society reflected a huge class divide between feudal lords, the bourgeoisie, and workers, in comparison with British society — making it unsurprising that France proved more fertile ground for new socialist ideas.

Why Socialist Movements Bore Less Concrete Results in France than in Britain

• France was a politically unstable country, marred by frequent revolutions, so socialist ideas could not be transformed into stable political institutions.
  • Britain, by contrast, had a long-term democratic tradition, and British society was liberal, providing a variety of voices the opportunity to be heard. Britain incorporated workers’ grievances into its democratic tradition — for example, the Reform Act of 1867 accepted several of workers’ demands.
  • The influence of the bourgeoisie in Britain, though higher, was much more liberal than the aristocratic dominance prevailing in France.
• French leaders were strongly opposed to any socialist movement, and were ready to crush it — as they did following the establishment of the Paris Commune in 1871.
  • The condition of British workers was better than that of French workers, so British workers did not move toward violent revolution; rather, they accepted the model of Fabian socialism — gradual transformation toward socialism without class struggle. The more violent nature of French socialism, by contrast, was easier for the state to suppress.
• The Industrial Revolution brought social evils such as child labour, long working hours, poor living and working conditions, overcrowding in cities, and the spread of disease — but steps taken to solve these problems were far more visible in Britain than in France, owing to Britain’s democratic parliamentary tradition.
  • This tradition led to the enactment of social legislation such as the Factory Acts of 1833 and 1844, the Mines and Collieries Act (1842), the Ten Hours Act (1847), the Public Health Act (1848), and the Education Act (1880), among others — measures that both controlled any tendency toward violent socialist revolution and, at the same time, delivered many of the practical benefits of socialism.