Karl Marx

This is Lenin’s article which expounded on Marx’s life, career and on his Marxist theory which was written in November 1914 and published in the 7th edition of the Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary, Vol. 28 (with deletions due to censure) in 1915. The preface is included in the Karl Marx published by “Priboi Publishers” Moscow in 1918. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 26 of the second revised edition of the Complete Works of Lenin.

At the beginning of the 20th century, revisionism developed rampantly in the international arena. Influenced by the revisionist thoughts for a long time, the international workers’ movement was shaken politically, disorganized and fell into ideological confusion. Consequently, with the outbreak of the World War I in July 1914, most leaders of the parties of the belligerent countries belonging to the Socialist Party and the Second International had betrayed Marxism and socialism. They sided with bourgeoisie of their countries and became social chauvinists. Thus the Second International collapsed. In order to expose and criticize the distortion and betrayal of Marxism by revisionism, publicize Marxism to the proletariat and the broader revolutionary masses, and prepare for the upcoming socialist revolution, Lenin studied and summarized Marx and Engels’ theories and their revolutionary practices. He also wrote many articles to promote Marxism. During this time, “Granat Brothers”, a well-known Russian Publisher, invited him to write an entry about Marx for Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary.

Lenin gladly accepted this offer and started writing in the spring of 1914. He had to stop the writing for a while because he was busy with the work of the Party and editing of the Pravda and due to the outbreak of the World War I. It was not until September 1914 when he moved to Bern, Switzerland, that he resumed writing and finished the manuscript of this article in early November. This entry outlines Marx’s activities, major theories and revolutionary strategies as a scholar and revolutionary.

(1) Marx’s biography. After graduating from high school, Marx entered the universities of Bonn and Berlin successively. He was an idealist of Hegel at that time. Inspired and influenced by Feuerbach’s materialism, he began to turn to materialists. In 1842 Marx began to write articles for Rheinische Zeitung. In October 1842, he became editor-in-chief of Rheinische Zeitung. This job prompted him to start studying political economics. Rheinische Zeitung was banned by the government because of its revolutionary and democratic tendencies. Marx was forced to resign in 1843 and went to Paris in autumn of this year to write the German-French Yearbook. Marx’s works published in this magazine marked his complete transition from idealism to materialism and from revolutionary democracy to communism. In September 1844, Engels came to Paris and met Marx. They became the closest friends. Together, they participated in the activities by the revolutionary groups in Paris, and created revolutionary theories and strategies. In the spring of 1847, Marx and Engels joined the “Communist Alliance” and were entrusted by the Alliance to draft The Communist Manifesto, marking the birth of Marxism. During the revolution of 1848, Marx returned to Cologne and founded a newspaper called the Neue Rheinis che Zeitung. He was expelled from Germany after the failure of the revolution. He then moved to London via Paris. During his exile in London, Marx was mainly devoted to the study of political economy and published of A Critique of Political Economy and the first Vol. Capital. In the late 1850s and 1860s, when the democratic movement throughout Europe revived. Marx again joined the revolutionary activities. On September 28, 1864, Marx led the establishment of the International Working Men’s Association—the First International in London. He became the spiritual and actual leader of this Association, drafted the “Inaugural Address of International Working Men’s Association”, which declared a systematic and a unified proletarian struggle strategy for the working class in every country. In 1871, after the failure of the Paris Commune, which Marx actively supported, he published his famous work The Civil War in France. The intense practical workload in the First International and his intense theoretical research activity completely damaged Marx’s health and made him unable to finish the writing of the Capital.

On March 14, 1883, Marx died and was buried in the Highgate Cemetery in London.

Marx’s basic theories. Lenin pointed out that Marxism is the system of Marx’s viewpoints and theories. It is the inheritance and development of 19th century German classical philosophy, British classical political economics and French socialism. Marx’s views are extremely thorough and rigorous. These views together constitute modern materialism and modern scientific socialism, which are the theory and guiding principle of the workers’ movements.

(A) Dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Lenin pointed out that unlike Hegel’s “God-creating” theory which turned thinking or idea into reality, Marx’s theory explained consciousness with existence and established materialistic world view which puts material first and consciousness second. It was through Feuerbach that he resolutely broke away from Hegel’s idealism and moved towards materialism. However, Marx did not simply inherit Feuerbach’s materialism, but recognized the main shortcomings of all old materialism, including Feuerbach, namely, mechanical, non-historical, non-dialectical, and abstract provisions on the “nature of human”; he accepted and developed Hegel’s dialectics, the greatest achievement of German classical philosophy, and put it on the basis of materialism. Hegel’s dialectics and Feuerbach’s materialism were critically reformed through materialism and dialectics respectively. Marxist dialectical materialism and materialist dialectics were thus founded. Marx applied materialism to every aspect.

He applied materialism to manifold social phenomena, explained social consciousness based on social existence, revealed that the state of material production is the root of all thoughts, and the contradiction between the productive forces and the production relations, economic foundation and superstructure is the basic law of human social development. In this way, he discovered and created historical materialism and eliminated the major defects of past historical theories. In the preface of Critique of Political Economy, Marx made a complete statement on the basic principles of historical materialism: the way of production of material life restricts social life, political life and spiritual life. It is not consciousness that determines existence, on the contrary, it is people’s social existence that determines people’s consciousness. When material productive forces of a society develop to a certain stage, it conflicts with the existing relations of production in which they have been moving, thus hindering the development of productive forces. This means the era of social revolution is coming. Therefore, social changes must be explained from the contradictions of material life and the existing contradictions between social productive forces and production relations.

(B) Class struggle. Lenin pointed out that the theory of class struggle is a guiding clue provided by Marxism to explore the law of class society development. Based on Marx’s analysis of different status, living and development conditions of each class in modern bourgeois society, he revealed that social life is full of numerous and complicated contradictions and struggles. Therefore, since the dissolution of the primitive commune, the history of all societies is the history of class struggle, and all class struggles are political struggles. Lenin argued that the theory of class struggle in The Manifesto of the Communist Party is a brilliant and profound model provided by Marx to study history from a materialist point of view and analyze the position of each class and even each group or stratum within a class. It shows that the class analysis method is the fundamental method to study the complicated society and its development laws. Therefore, the theory of class struggle, philosophical materialism, dialectics and materialist conception of history together constitute Marx’s “complete world view”.

(C) Marx’s economic theory. Lenin mainly introduced the core of Marxism, namely economic theory, including value theory, surplus value theory, capital accumulation and its historical trend, average profit rate theory and land rent theory. Lenin argued it was the most profound, comprehensive and detailed proof and application of Marx’s theory. In the capitalist society, commodity production takes a dominant position, so Marx started with the analysis of commodities and revealed that commodities have use value and value. The duality of labor embodied in commodities, that is, concrete labor and abstract labor determine the two factors of commodities; the value is determined by the necessary labor time of the society and reflects the social production relations covered by the outer shell of things. Currency is the highest product of exchange and commodity production development. When commodity production develops to a certain stage, currency is converted into capital. Marx revealed the simple formula of commodity circulation W (commodity)—G (currency)—W (commodity) and the general formula of capital G—W—G.

The former sells for buying (obtaining commodity) while the latter buys for selling (bringing profit). In capitalist turnover, the “appreciation” of the original value of money is called surplus value, but it does not come from commodity circulation. There are two ways to produce surplus value: the production of absolute surplus value and relative surplus value. The value that brings surplus value is capital. There are two historical prerequisites to generate capital: a certain amount of money and the “proletarian” workers or the labor force as a commodity. Capital in the production process has two parts: constant capital spent on production and variable capital spent on labor. The former can only transfer value to finished products, while the latter increases in the process of labor to create surplus value. Variable capital or surplus labor is the source of surplus value. In order to indicate the degree of exploitation of labor by capital, surplus value should not be compared with all capital, but only with variable capital. Marx called this rate as the “rate of surplus value”. Converting part of surplus value into capital and putting it into new production is capital accumulation. Lenin pointed out that Marx’s capital accumulation theory was extremely important and novel. It provided us with the key to understand the cyclical outbreak of capitalist overproduction crisis. Capital accumulation expanded the scale of capital and raised the level of socialization of production. However, it accelerated the exclusion of workers by machines, resulting in polarization between the rich and the poor and “overpopulation” in the capitalist society, exacerbating the basic contradictions in the capitalist society.

The historical trend of capitalist accumulation was that the concentration of means of production and the socialization of labor become incompatible with their capitalist shell. This shell was going to be “blown up”, the private ownership was going to die, and the despoiler was going to be despoiled. Lenin also introduced Marx’s analysis of reproduction of total social capital in Vol. 2 of Capital and his solution on the average profit rate based on the law of value in Vol. 3 of Capital. Marx first analyzed the source of surplus value, then followed the clue that surplus value is divided into profit, interest and rent. In this way, he discovered that profit rate is the ratio of surplus value to all capital invested in the enterprise, and the average profit rate is the ratio of the total surplus value of the whole society to the total capital prepaid by the society. Different production departments have different profit rates due to different organic composition of capital. However, the competition between capital facilitates capital to be transferred freely from departments with low profit margins to that with high profit margins. As a result, the profit margins among different departments tend to be equalized, forming an average profit margin. For the whole society, the total value of all commodities is consistent with the total price of commodities. However, due to the influence of competition, commodities are sold not according to their value but according to the production price equal to the cost of capital plus the average profit in each enterprise and each production department. According to the law of value, Marx fully explained the well-known and indisputable fact that price leaves value and that the profit rate becomes average profit. When profits are converted into average profits, their essence is still surplus value. For those individual industrial capitalists engaged in different departments of industry, the total surplus value is divided among them through the equalization of profit rate, i.e. average profit. For the proletariat, they face the rule and exploitation of the entire bourgeoisie. Marx argued that the equalization of profit rate does not mean absolute average profit rate. Possibility is not ruled out that individual capitalists may still obtain excess profits. Marx also predicted that as labor productivity increases, the average profit rate tends to decrease. When Marx discussed usury capital, commercial capital and monetary capital in the Vol. 3 of the Capital, he analyzed in detail this trend and many situations that blocks or offsets this trend. Here, Lenin mainly introduced Marx’s theory of land rent. Taking the typical agricultural land rent as an example, Marx divided it into two basic forms—differential land rent and absolute land rent according to its conditions and reasons. Differential land rent appears due of monopoly of limited land. With limited land area, in order to meet the social demand for agricultural products, the social production price of agricultural products must depend on the production cost of inferior land and the cost of inferior transportation to the market. The difference between this production price and that of the superior land (or under superior conditions) leads to differential rent.

Marx criticized David Ricardo and other western economists for their erroneous views that differential land rent arises from natural differences in land. He pointed out that this is to blame the defects, limitations and contradictions of capitalism on nature. Differences in natural conditions are only the natural basis for differential land rent. Absolute land rent originates from the monopoly of land ownership. No matter the land is superior or inferior, land rent must be paid. Monopoly of private land ownership hinders the free flow of capital and lowers the organic composition of agricultural products. As a result, some products with higher individual profit margins do not participate in social profit margin equalization. This may keep their prices higher than average. This monopoly price leads to absolute land rent, which is part of the surplus value created by agricultural workers. Through the analysis of capitalist land rent, Marx explained that under the capitalist system, “the exploitation of peasants and of the industrial proletariat are only different in form. The exploiter is the same: capital”. Capitalism in agriculture, like in industry, completely transforms the production process at the expense of “sacrifice by the producers”. Marx thus further reveals the historical limitations of capitalist production.

(D) Scientific socialism. Lenin pointed out: the judgement that the capitalist society will definitely be transformed into a socialist society was drawn by Marx entirely from historical materialism and the laws of economic movement in the modern society. Socialization of production, the growth of capitalist monopoly organizations and the increase of the financial capital in scale and in strength constitute the main material basis for the inevitable arrival of socialism. Higher degree of production socialization will inevitably lead to a sharp contradiction with the capitalist system of possession of means of production, and will facilitate fierce struggles between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This will make the “despoiler be despoiled” and transform private ownership of means of production into social ownership. The highest form of proletarian struggle is political struggle. The ultimate goal is to seize political power and establish proletarian dictatorship. The proletariats are the gravedigger of capitalism. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialist construction should be strengthened to pave way for the elimination of classes and state and for the transition to a classless society.

(3) Strategies for proletarian class struggle.

Lenin pointed out that Marx, throughout his life, paid close attention to the strategy of proletarian struggle in addition to theoretical discussion. Marx objectively analyzed certain stages of social development, the interrelation between various classes in the society and the interrelation between this society and others in strict accordance with his dialectical materialist world view. He has found the correct strategy: during the period of political depression or turtle development, or the so-called “peaceful” development period, the proletariat should develop the consciousness, strength and fighting capacity of the advanced classes to prepare for revolution. Marx proposed in Poverty of Philosophy that it was more necessary for workers to maintain their alliance in the struggle than to maintain wages. All elements of the future battle were gathering and developing. This was the guiding principle and strategy of the economic struggle and the trade union movement. It also included the strategy that economic struggle must be transformed into political struggle. The basic strategy of Marxist political struggle was that: not only to fight for short goals and interests, but also to fight for the maximum programme, that is, to combine the maximum and the minimum programme. Marx also focused on combining legal struggles with the underground struggles, as well as integrating flexibility and firmness in struggle. In the Second Franco-Prussian Declaration on the Franco-Prussian War issued by First International on September 9, 1870, Marx warned the French proletariat to avoid untimely uprising. However, when the 1871 uprising took place, Marx rejoiced and expressed his support. Lenin pointed out that from Marx’s dialectical materialist point of view, in this situation, the failure of the revolutionary action would do less harm to the proletarian struggle in terms of both process and result than giving up and dropping without fighting, because dropping without fighting would demoralize the proletariat and weaken its fighting capacity.

This article systematically summarizes and generalizes the whole theory of Marxism, provides a brief introduction for readers to better learn the extensive and profound theoretical system of Marxism, and plays a great role in spreading scientific theories of Marxism. This article clarifies the essential characteristics of Marxism. It shows that Marx’s modern materialism and modern scientific socialism are extremely thorough and rigorous scientific world views. These views provide theoretical and programmatic guidance for the workers’ movements in all countries to follow the correct direction and path.