Part 2

In order to understand this more distinctly, and to visualise it, let us consider an egg. It is something positive, but it contains a germ, which, awakening to life, gradually consumes (i.e., negatives) the contents of the egg. This negation is, however, no mere destruction and annihilation; on the contrary, it results in the germ developing into a living thing. The negation being complete, the chick breaks through the egg shell. This represents the negation of the negation, whereby there has arisen something organically higher than an egg.

This mode of procedure in human thinking and in the operations of nature and history Hegel called the dialectical method, or the dialectical process. It is evident that the dialectic is at the same time a method of investigation and a philosophy. Hegel outlines his dialectic in the following words:

"The only thing which is required for scientific progress, an elementary principle for the understanding of which one should really strive, is the recognition of the logical principle that the negative is just as much a positive, or that the contradictory does not resolve into nothing, into an abstract nothingness, but actually only into the negation of a special content.... In so far as the resultant, the negation, is a definite negation, it has a content. It is a new conception, but a higher and richer conception than the preceding one; for it has been enriched by the negation or antithesis of this; it therefore contains it and more than contains it, being indeed the synthetic unity of itself and its contrary. In this way the system of concepts has to be formed--and is to be perfected by a continual and purely intellectual process which is independent of outside influences."--(Hegel, "Science of Logic" (German), Bk. I., Introduction.)

The dialectical process completes itself not only by gradual transitions, but also by leaps. Hegel remarks:

"It has been said that there are no sudden leaps in nature, and it is a common notion that things have their origin through gradual increase or decrease. But there is also such a thing as sudden transformation from quantity into quality. For example, water does not become gradually hard on cooling, becoming first pulpy and ultimately attaining the rigidity of ice, but turns hard at once. If the temperature be lowered to a certain degree, the water is suddenly changed into ice, i.e., the quantity--the number of degrees of temperature--is transformed into quality--a change in the nature of the thing."--("Logic" (German), Pt. 1, Sec. 1, p. 464, Ed. 1841.)

Marx handled this method with unsurpassed mastery; with its aid he formulated the laws of the evolution of Socialism. In his earliest works, "The Holy Family" (1844) and the "Poverty of Philosophy" (1847), written when he was formulating his materialist conception of history, as also in his "Capital," it is with the dialectic of Hegel that he investigates these laws.

"Proletariat and Riches (later Marx would have said Capital) are antitheses. As such they constitute a whole; both are manifestations of the world of private property. The question to be considered is the specific position which both occupy in the antithesis. To describe them as two sides of a whole is not a sufficient explanation. Private property as private property, as riches, is compelled to preserve its own existence, and along with it that of its antithesis, the Proletariat. Private property satisfied in itself is the positive side of the antithesis. The Proletariat, on the other hand, is obliged, as Proletariat, to abolish itself, and along with it private property, its conditioned antithesis, which makes it the Proletariat. It is a negative side of the antithesis, the internal source of unrest, the disintegrated and disintegrating Proletariat.... Within the antithesis, therefore, the owner of private property is the conservative, and the proletarian is the destructive party. From the former proceeds the action of maintaining the antithesis, from the latter the action of destroying it. From the point of view of its national, economic movement, private property is, of course, continually being driven towards its own dissolution, but only by an unconscious development which is independent of it, and which exists against its will, and is limited by the nature of things; only, that is, by creating the Proletariat as proletariat, poverty conscious of its own physical and spiritual poverty, and demoralised humanity conscious of its own demoralisation and consequently striving against it.

"The Proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property by the creation of the Proletariat suspends over itself, just as it fulfils the judgment which wage-labour suspends over itself in creating alien riches and its own condemnation. If the Proletariat triumphs, it does not thereby become the absolute side of society, for it triumphs only by abolishing itself and its opposite. In this way both the Proletariat and its conditioned opposite, private property, are done away with."[2]

The dialectical method is again described in a few sentences on pages 420-421 of the third volume of "Capital" (German), where we read: "In so far as the labour process operates merely between man and nature, its simple elements are common to every form of its social development. But any given historical form of this process further develops its material foundations and its social forms. When it has attained a certain degree of maturity the given historical form is cast off and makes room for a higher one. That the moment of such a crisis has arrived is shown as soon as there is a deepening and widening of the contradiction and antithesis between the conditions of distribution, and consequently also the existing historical form of the conditions of production corresponding to them, on the one hand, and the forces of production, productive capacity, and the state of evolution of its agents, on the other. There then arises a conflict between the material development of production and its corresponding social form."

But the Hegelian dialectic appears most strikingly in the famous twenty-fourth chapter (sec. 7) of the first volume of "Capital" (German), where the evolution of capitalism from small middle-class ownership through all phases up to the Socialist revolution is comprehensively outlined in bold strokes: "The capitalist method of appropriation, which springs from the capitalist method of production, and therefore capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual private property based on one's own labour. But capitalist production begets with the inevitableness of a natural process its own negation. It is the negation of the negation." Here we have the three stages: the thesis--private property; the antithesis--capitalism; the synthesis--common ownership.

Of critical social writers outside Germany it was Proudhon, in particular, who, in his works "What is Property?" and "Economic Contradictions, or the Philosophy of Poverty" (1840, 1846), attempted to use the Hegelian dialectic. The fact that he gave his chief book the title "Economic Contradictions" shows that Proudhon was largely preoccupied with Hegel. Nevertheless, he did not get below the surface; he used the Hegelian formulæ quite mechanically, and lacked the conception of an immanent process of development (the forward-impelling force within the social organism).

If we look at the dialectical method as here presented, Hegel might be taken for a materialist thinker. Such a notion would be erroneous. For Hegel is an idealist: the origin and essence of the process of growth is to be sought, according to him, not in material forces, but in the logical idea, reason, the universal spirit, the absolute, or--in its religious expression--God. Before He created the world He is to be regarded as an Idea, containing within itself all forms of being, which it develops dialectically. The idea creates for itself a material embodiment; it first expresses itself in the objects of inorganic nature; then in plants, organisms wherein life awakens; then in animals, in which the Idea attains to the twilight of reason; finally, in men, where reason rises into mind and achieves self-consciousness and freedom. As self-conscious mind it expresses itself in the history of peoples, in religion, art and philosophy, in human institutions, in the family and in law, until it realises itself in the State as its latest and highest object.

According to Hegel, then, the universal Idea develops into Godhead in proportion as the material world rises from the inorganic to the organic, and, finally, to man. In the mental part of man, the Idea arrives at self-consciousness and freedom and becomes God. In his cosmology, Hegel is a direct descendant of the German mystics, Sebastion Franck and Jacob Boehme. He was in a much higher degree German than any of the German philosophers since Leibnitz.

The strangest thing, however, is that Germanism, Protestantism, and the Prussian State appeared to Hegel as the highest expression of the universal mind. Particularly the Prussian State as it existed before March, 1848, with its repudiation of all middle-class reforms and liberalism (of any kind), and its basis of strong governmental force.

There is little purpose in trying to acquire a logical conception of Hegelian cosmology. It is not only idealist, but, as we said, mystical; it is as inconceivable to human reason as the biblical; it is irrational, and lies beyond the sphere of reason. Making the universe arise out of pure reason, out of the logical idea, developing through the dialectical process with a consciousness of freedom, it yet concludes in unreason and an obstinate determinism. In Liberalism Hegel saw only a simple negation, a purely destructive factor, which disintegrates the State and resolves it into individuals, thus depriving it of all cohesion and organising strength. He blamed Parliamentarism for demanding "that everything should take place through their (the individuals) expressed power and consent. The will of the many overturns the Ministry, and what was the Opposition now takes control, but, so far as it is the Government, the latter finds the many against it. Thus agitation and unrest continue. This collision, this knot, this problem, is what confronts history, a problem which it must resolve at some future time." One would have thought that it was precisely Parliamentarism, with its unrest and agitation, its antitheses and antagonisms, which would have had a special attraction for Hegel, but nevertheless he turned aside from it. How is this to be explained?

Hegel's relation to the Prussian State is to be accounted for by his strong patriotic sentiments. His disposition inclined him strongly to nationalism in politics. In his early manhood he witnessed the complete dissolution of the German Empire, and deeply bewailed the wretchedness of German conditions. He wrote: "Germany is no longer a State; even the wars which Germany waged have not ended in a particularly honourable manner for her. Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine have been torn away. The Peace of Westphalia has often been alluded to as Germany's Palladium, although by it the complete dismemberment of Germany has only been established more thoroughly than before. The Germans have been grateful to Richelieu, who destroyed their power." On the other hand, the achievements of Prussia in the Seven Years' War, and in the War of Liberation against the French, awoke in him the hope that it was this State which could save Germany. To this thought he gave eloquent and enthusiastic expression in his address at the opening of his Berlin lectures in October, 1818, and also in his lecture on Frederick the Great. Hegel therefore rejected everything which seemed to him to spell a weakening of the Prussia State power. The dialectician was overcome by national feelings.

However, Hegel's place in the history of thought rests, not on his explanations of the creation of the world, nor on his German nationalist politics, but upon the dialectical method. In exploring, by means of this method, the wide expanse of human knowledge, he scattered an astonishing abundance of materialistic and strictly scientific observations and suggestions, and inspired his pupils and readers with a living conception of history, of the development of mankind to self-consciousness and freedom, thus rendering them capable of pushing their studies further, and emancipating themselves from all mysticism. As an example of the materialist tendency of his philosophy, the following references will serve. His "Philosophy of History" contains a whole chapter upon the geographical foundations of universal history. In this chapter he expresses himself--quite contrary to his deification of the State--as follows: "A real State and a real central government only arise when the distinction of classes is already given, when Riches and Poverty have become very great, and such conditions have arisen that a great multitude can no longer satisfy their needs in the way to which they have been accustomed." Or take his explanation of the founding of colonies by the Greeks.

"This projecting of colonies, particularly in the period after the Trojan War until Cyrus, is here a peculiar phenomenon, which may thus be explained: in the individual towns the people had the governing power in their hands, in that they decided the affairs of State in the last resort. In consequence of the long peace, population and development greatly increased, and quickly brought about the accumulation of great riches, which is always accompanied by the phenomenon of great distress and poverty. Industry, in our sense, did not exist at that time, and the land was speedily monopolised. Nevertheless, a section of the poorer classes would not allow themselves to be depressed to the poverty line, for each man felt himself to be a free citizen. The sole resource, therefore, was colonisation."

Or even the following passage, which conceives the philosophical system merely as the result and reflection of the accomplished facts of existence, and therefore rejects all painting of Utopias: "Besides, philosophy comes always too late to say a word as to how the world ought to be. As an idea of the universe, it only arises in the period after reality has completed its formative process and attained its final shape. What this conception teaches is necessarily demonstrated by history, namely, that the ideal appears over against the real only after the consummation of reality, that the ideal reconstructs the same world, comprehended in the substance of reality, in the form of an intellectual realm. A form of life has become old when philosophy paints its grey on grey, and with grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only recognised. The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the falling twilight."--Preface to the "Philosophy of Law."

No materialist could have said this better: the owl--the symbol of wisdom--only begins her flight in the evening, after the busy activities of the world are over. Thus we have first the universe, and then thought; first existence, and then consciousness.

Hegel himself was therefore an example of his own teaching that contradictory elements are to be found side by side. His mind contained both idealism and realism, but he did not bring them by a process of reasoning to the point of acute contradiction in order to reach a higher plane of thought. And as he regarded it as the task of philosophy to recognise the principle of things, and to follow it out systematically and logically throughout the whole vast domain of reality, and as further, owing to his mystical bent, he asserted the idea to be the ultimate reality, he remained a consistent Idealist.

The Conservatism of Hegel, who was the philosophical representative of the Prussian State, was, however, sadly incompatible with the awakening consciousness of the German middle class, which, in spite of its economic weakness, aspired to a freer State constitution, and greater liberty of action. These aspirations were already somewhat more strongly developed in the larger towns and industrial centres of Prussia and the other German States. The Young Hegelians[3] championed this middle-class awakening in the philosophical sphere, just as "Young Germany" (Heine, Boerne, etc.) did in the province of literature.

Just at the time when Marx was still at the university the Young Hegelians took up the fight against the conservative section of Hegel's disciples and the Christian Romanticism of Prussia. The antagonism between the old and the new school made itself felt both in religious philosophy and political literature, but both tendencies were seldom combined in the same persons. David Strauss subjected the Gospels to a candid criticism; Feuerbach investigated the nature of Christianity and of religion generally, and in this department inverted Hegel's Idealism to Materialism; Bruno Bauer trained his heavy historical and philosophical artillery on the traditional dogmas concerning the rise of Christianity. Politically, however, they remained at the stage of the freedom of the individual: that is, they were merely moderate Liberals. Nevertheless, there were also less prominent Young Hegelians who were at that time in the Liberal left wing as regards their political opinions, such as Arnold Ruge.

None of the Young Hegelians had, however, used the dialectical method to develop still further the teaching of the Master. Karl Marx, the youngest of the Hegelians, first brought it to a higher stage in social science. He was no longer known to Hegel, who might otherwise have died with a more contented or perhaps even still more perturbed mind. Heinrich Heine, who belonged to the Hegelians in the thirties and forties, relates the following anecdote, which if not true yet excellently illustrates the extraordinary difficulties of the Master's doctrines:--

As Hegel lay dying, his disciples, who had gathered round him, seeing the furrows deepen on the Master's care-worn countenance, inquired the cause of his grief, and tried to comfort him by reminding him of the large number of admiring disciples and followers he would leave behind. Breathing with difficulty, he replied: "None of my disciples has understood me; only Michelet has understood me, and," he added with a sigh, "even he has misunderstood me."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In one of the later chapters the reader will find the series of contradictions discovered by Marx in the evolution of capitalism. Sec. IV., "Outlines of the Economic Doctrine." Chapter 8, "Economic Contradictions."

[2] Marx, in "The Holy Family" (1844), reprinted by Mehring in the "Collected Works or Literary Remains of Marx and Engels," vol. II., p. 132.

[3] After the death of Hegel differences of opinion arose among his disciples, chiefly with respect to his doctrines of the Deity, immortality and the personality of Christ. One section, the so-called "Right Wing," inclined to orthodoxy on these questions. In opposition to them stood the "Young Hegelians," the progressive "Left Wing." To this section belonged Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and Strauss, author of the "Life of Jesus."

The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx

I.

PARENTS AND FRIENDS.

I. MARX'S APPRENTICESHIP.

Karl Heinrich Marx first saw the light of day in Treves on May 5, 1818. His father, an enlightened, fine feeling, and philanthropic Jew, was a Jurist who had slowly risen from the humble circumstances of a German Rabbi family and acquired a respectable practice, but who never learnt the art of making money. His mother was a Dutchwoman, and came of a Rabbi family called Pressburg, which, as the name indicates, had emigrated from Pressburg, in Hungary, to Holland, in the seventeenth century. She spoke German very imperfectly. Marx has handed on to us one of her sayings, "If Karl made a lot of Capital, instead of writing a lot about Capital, it would have been much better." The Marxes had several children, of whom Karl alone showed special mental gifts.

In the year 1824 the family embraced Christianity. The baptism of Jews was at that time no longer a rarity. The enlightenment of the last half of the eighteenth century had undermined the dogmatic beliefs of many cultured Jews, and the succeeding period of German Christian Romanticism brought a strengthening and idealising of Christianity and of national feeling, from which, for practical just as much as for spiritual reasons, the Jews who had renounced their own religion could not escape. They were completely assimilated, felt and thought like the rest of their Christian and German fellow-citizens. Marx's father felt himself to be a good Prussian, and once recommended his son to compose an ode, in the grand style, on Napoleon's downfall and Prussia's victory. Karl did not, in truth, follow his father's advice, but from that time of Christian enthusiasm and German patriotic sentiment until his life's end, there remained with him an anti-Jewish prejudice; the Jew was generally to him either a usurer or a cadger.

Karl was sent to the grammar school in his native town, leaving with a highly creditable record. The school was, however, not the only place where he developed his mind. During his school years he used to frequent the house of the Government Privy Councillor, L. von Westphalen, a highly cultured Prussian official, whose favourite poets were Homer and Shakespeare, and who followed attentively the intellectual tendencies of his time. Although he had already reached advanced age, he liked to converse with the precocious youth, and to influence his mental growth. Marx honoured him as a fatherly friend "who welcomes every progressive movement with the enthusiasm and sober judgment of a lover of truth, and who is a living proof that Idealism is no imagination, but the truth."--(Dedication of Marx's doctor thesis.)

After quitting the public school, Marx went to the University of Bonn, in order to study jurisprudence, according to his father's wishes. After a year of the merry life of a student, he removed in the autumn of 1836 to Berlin University, the centre of culture and truth, as Hegel had called it in his Inaugural Lecture (1818). Before his departure for Berlin, he had become secretly engaged to Jenny Von Westphalen, the daughter of his fatherly friend, a woman distinguished alike for beauty, culture, and strength of character.

II. STUDENT.

In Berlin, Marx threw himself into the study of Philosophy, Jurisprudence, History, Geography, Literature, the History of Art, etc. He had a Faust-like thirst for truth, and his appetite for work was insatiable; in these matters only superlatives can be used to describe, Marx. In one of his poems dating, from this period, he says of himself:

"Ne'er can I perform in calmness What has seized my soul with might, But must strive and struggle onward In a ceaseless, restless flight.

All divine, enhancing graces Would I make of life a part; Penetrate the realms of science, Grasp the joys of Song and Art."