CHAPTER XIII. KARL MARX AND THE LATEST SOCIALISTIC THEORY. KARL MARX is a star of first magnitude among the constellations of modern Socialism, but, in some respects, resembles Byron's "melancholy star:" Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays; The warmth of enthusiasm which characterises most social idealists is wanting in Marx. He exhibits but little feeling, except it be the bitterness of indignation and disgust at existing social conditions and the attempts made for their justification. When dwelling on these, his pen, indeed, is often "dipped in the poison of polemical acidity," but, generally speaking, his style is bald and dispassionate. However, if there is an absence of emotional sentimen talism, there is a great deal of hard thinking and plain speaking in the writings of Karl Marx. He gives us a clear exposition of social evils following in the wake of our modern industry, founded on facts and figures, and mainly drawn from official reports and parliamentary inquiries. Declamatory phrases and sweeping assertions are carefully avoided, and Marx's statements, if not always taking in the whole truth, are, at least, trustworthy as far as they go, and though he presents us exclusively with the dismal × side of contemporary social life, he cannot be accused of wilful misrepresentation. As he is clear in his statement of facts, so, too, Marx is rigidly logical in his deductions from the first principles of political economy, which he accepts from the old masters. Thus, for example, from their dogma that labour is the source of all values, Marx arrives, in pushing the argument founded on it to the farthest extremity, at the conclusion that all appropriation of wealth on the part of those who do not work must be malappropriation. So, again, he endeavours to lay down, with almost mathematical precision, the theory that the growth of capital is entirely due to the insufficient remuneration of labour; that the difference between the value of work done, and the amount of wages paid, is the profit fraudulently obtained by the Q 人 capitalist at the expense of the labourer. Marx accordingly arrives at the conclusion that all the produce of man's work ought to be divided among the workers of society, and looks forward with equanimity to the abolition of the class of capitalists in the course of a revolution which shall sweep away our present social system in favour of Communistic institutions. Unfeeling in his theories, and unflinching in drawing his conclusions, Marx may be called a socialist Cato, whose motto is, "Society must be T destroyed." In one of his manifestoes he acknowledges, “Our objects can only be attained by a violent subversion of the social order." Social reforms he regards as a mere farce, and the efforts of trades-unions to bring about a satisfactory adjustment of the claims of capital and labour he calls treason. What he wants is not reconciliation of conflicting interests, but war to the knife against capitalism, which is to end in the triumph of labour. To bring this about, he appeals to the united effort of all the workmen throughout the civilised world. "We must appeal to force," he says, in the congress of the Internationalists at the Hague, "to establish the rule of the labourers." There is a remarkable contrast between the character and aims of the two most prominent leaders of modern Socialism; the genial, warmhearted, boisterous agitator, Ferdinand Lassalle, and the cold, sullen, and almost insensible theoriser, Karl Marx. The former is a patriotic nationalist, and a believer in State Socialism; the latter a cosmopolitan internationalist, and a believer in the most abstract form of universal Communism. Centralisation of State-power to bring about social changes in favour of the labourer is the ideal of Lassalle. Decentralisation and a network of independent communes all over the world, or, at least, a confederacy of European republics, form the Utopian vision of the latter. If Marx surpasses Lassalle in his breadth of view, taking in the whole social world at a glance, whereas the latter confines himself to the task of regenerating his own country, Lassalle, in the warmth of his human enthusiasm, glowing impulsiveness, and generous impetuosity, compares very favourably with Marx, who is "ever calculating, absorbed in subtilties, cold and reserved, drawing his life-breath, as it were, in the icy regions of an abstract cosmopolitanism." Lassalle inspires personal interest, Karl Marx claims distant regard. But it is important to make his personal acquaintance now, before we enter upon his theory. Marx was born in Trêves, in 1818, the son of a barrister-at-law, and was married to a sister of a reactionary Minister of State; and thus he belonged by birth and marriage to that small band of "middleclass dreamers and theorists" who of late years have become the most bitter opponents of the bourgeoisie with which they are connected. He received his academical education at Bonn and Berlin, where he studied law and philosophy with a view to qualify himself for a State appointment at one of the Universities. But circumstances or the bent of character drew him away from this course. He came to be a contributor, and presently sole editor, of the Rheinische Zeitung (" Rhenish News"), which in its radical tendencies represented the rising social democracy of Germany before 1848. Such were the bold attacks levelled in this paper against the reactionary measures of the Government, that a special Royal Censor had to be sent from Berlin to revise its columns, and when this proved fruitless its publication was stopped altogether by order of authority in 1843. The political struggles and economic controversies of the day led Marx to the study of social questions, and he went actually to Paris for this purpose. One of the results of these studies was a critique of Proudhon's "Philosophy of Misery," |