Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

of economic analysis, and used them to draw very different conclusions. Ricardo had made a distinction between use-value and exchange-value. The exchange-value of an object was something separate from its price and consisted of the amount of labour embodied in the objects of production, though Ricardo thought that the price in fact tended to approximate to the exchange-value. Thus - in contradistinction to later analyses - the value of an object was determined by the circumstances of production rather than those of demand. Marx took over these concepts, but, in his attempt to show that capitalism was not static but a historically relative system of class exploitation, supplemented Ricardo's views by introducing the idea of surplus-value. Surplus-value was defined as the difference between the value of the products of labour and the cost of producing that labour-power, i.e. the labourer's subsistence; for the exchange-value of labour-power was equal to the amount of labour necessary to reproduce that labour-power and this was normally much lower than the exchange-value of the products of that labour-power.

The theoretical part of Volume One divides very easily into three sections. The first section is a rewriting of the Critique of Political Economy of 1859 and analyses commodities, in the sense of external objects that satisfy human needs, and their value. Marx established two sorts of value - use value, or the utility of something, and exchange value which was determined by the amount of labour incorporated in the object. Labour was also of a twofold nature according to whether it created use values or exchange values. Since 'the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all,'192 and the only thing they shared was labour, then labour must be the source of value. But since evidently some people worked faster or more skilfully than others, this labour must be a sort of average 'socially necessary' labour time. There followed a difficult section on the form of value and the first chapter ended with an account of commodities as exchange values which he described as the 'fetishism of commodities' in a passage that recalls the account of alienation in the 'Paris Manuscripts' and (even more) the Note on James Mill. 'In order', said Marx here, 'to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men's hands."95

The section ended with a chapter on exchange and an account of money as the means for the circulation of commodities, the material expression for their values and the universal measure of value.

The second section is a small one on the transformation of money

3i8 K A R L M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

into capital. Before the capitalist era people had sold commodities for money in order to buy more commodities. In the capitalist era, instead of selling to buy, people had bought to sell dearer: they had bought commodities with their money in order, by means of those commodities, to increase their money.

In the third section Marx introduced his key notion of surplus value, the idea that Engels characterised as Marx's principal 'discovery' in economics.194 Marx made a distinction between constant capital which was 'that part of capital which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and instruments of labour, and does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value' and variable capital. Of this Marx said: 'That part of capital, represented by labour power, does, in the process of production, undergo an

be more or less according to the circumstances.'195 This variation was the rate of surplus value around which the struggle between workers and capitalists centred. T h e essential point was that the capitalist got the worker to work longer than was merely sufficient to embody in his product the value of his labour power: if the labour power of the worker (roughly what it cost to keep him alive and fit) was £3 a day and the worker could embody £3 of value in the product on which he was working in eight hours; then, if he worked ten hours, the last two hours would

During the second period of the labour-process, that in which his labour is no longer necessary labour, the workman, it is true, labours, expends labour-power; but his labour being no longer necessary labour, he creates no value for himself. He creates surplus-value which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of a creation out of nothing. This portion of the working-day, I name surplus labour-time, and to the labour expended during that time, I give the name of surplus-labour. It is every bit as important, for a correct understanding of surplus-value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of surplus labour-time, as nothing but materialised surplus-labour, as it is, for a proper comprehension of value, to conceive it as a mere congelation of so many hours of labour, as nothing but materialised labour. The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the

T h us surplus value could only arise from variable capital, not from constant capital, as labour alone created value. Put very simply, Marx's reason for thinking that the rate of profit would decrease was that, with the introduction of machinery, labour time would become less and thus yield less surplus value. Of course, machinery would increase production and colonial markets would absorb some of the surplus, but these were only palliatives and an eventual crisis was inevitable.

These first nine chapters were complemented by a masterly historical account of the genesis of capitalism which illustrates better than any other writing Marx's approach and method. Marx particularly made pioneering use of official statistical information that came to be available from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards. A reader who finds the beginning of Capital too arid would do well to follow Marx's advice to Mrs Kugelmann1 97 and begin by reading the chapters on 'The Working Day', 'Machinery and Modern Industry' and 'Capitalist Accumulation'. In the chapter on 'The Working Day', Marx described in detail the 'physical and mental degradation'198 forced on men, women and children by working long hours in unhealthy conditions and related the bitter struggle to gain some relief by legal limits on the number of hours worked and the passing of factory acts. Although, Marx concluded, it might seem as though the capitalist and worker exchanged contracts in a free market, the bargain was, in fact, one-sided:

The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no 'free agent' that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not loose its hold on him 'so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited'. For 'protection' against 'the serpent of their agonies', the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death. In place of the pompous catalogue of the 'inalienable rights of man' comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear 'when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins'.199

Marx continued his indictment of capitalism in the chapter on 'Machinery and Modern Industry', describing the crippling effect of machinery on workers and the environmental effects of capitalist exploitation of agriculture.200 Summing up his conclusions, however, Marx showed that his view of technological progress under capitalism was not wholly negative:

We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of Modern Industry, and the social character inherent in its

capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands his means of subsistence, and, by suppressing his detail-function, to make him superfluous. We have seen, too, how this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstrosity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working-class, in the most reckless squandering of labour-power, and in the devastation caused by a social anarchy which turns every economical progress into a social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly destructive action of a natural law that meets with resistance at all points, Modern Industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequendy the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of today, crippled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers.201

Volume One ended with a long section on 'Capitalist Accumulation' - the finest chapter in the book. The capitalist, being a prey to 'a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation and the desire for enjoyment', was forced to create an 'industrial reserve army' or vast pool of temporarily unemployed workers to serve the fluctuations of the market. Marx synthesised his analyses in the thundering denunciation:

We saw, when analysing the production of relative surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labourprocess to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform

his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.202

This judgement was supported by a series of detailed studies, moving yet objective, on the condition of the British working classes over the previous twenty years, the British agricultural proletariat, and the misery of Ireland. The book was rounded off with the following famous passage:

Along with the constandy diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.205

The subsequent two volumes, being only in draft form, have none of the polished verve of Volume One. There was, however, a long chapter entitled 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production' that Marx seems to have intended to put at the end of Volume One but left out at the last minute.204 In this chapter Marx discussed how capitalist production reproduced the relationship of capitalist to worker in the total process. There are particularly interesting comments on the alienation involved in the relationship of capitalist to worker205 and on the tendency of capitalism to 'reduce as much as possible the number of those working for a wage' in the production sphere and increase the number of workers in purely service industries.206

investigated what happened outside the factory when the capitalist came to sell his products for cash. In Volume Two Marx traced the circular movement of sale, profit and the ploughing back of resources for the next cycle of production and the complex factors underlying economic crises. This volume is far less interesting, due to its technical, theoretical nature.

The first part of Volume Three appears to be in a more or less final draft, but thereafter the book tails off without any final conclusion. It begins with a discussion of the conversion of surplus value into profit and thus the relationship between values and prices. Many people on reading Volume One had asked how it came about that, if values were measured by socially necessary labour, they should be so very different from market prices. The only answer that Marx provided to this problem was to assert that value was 'the centre of gravity around which prices fluctuate and around which their rise and fall tends to an equilibrium'.207 He continued: 'No matter what may be the way in which prices are regulated, the result always is the following: the law of value dominates the movement of prices, since a reduction or increase of the labour-time required for production causes the prices of production to fall or to rise.'208 Marx then enunciated in more detail than in Volume One the falling tendency of the rate of profit which forms the centrepiece of the third volume. This law is expressed most succinctly by Marx as follows:

. . . it is the nature of the capitalist mode of production, and a logical necessity of its development, to give expression to the average rate of surplus-value by a felling rate of average profit. Since the mass of the employed living labour is continually on the decline compared to the mass of materialised labour incorporated in productively consumed means of production, it follows that that portion of living labour, which is unpaid and represents surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the volume and value of the invested total capital. Seeing that the proportion of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must fall continuously.209

Marx then went further into the nature of economic crises which he traced to the basic contradiction between the necessity of a capitalist economy to expand its production without taking into account the level of consumption that alone could make it feasible:

The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the purpose of production; that production is only production for capital and not vice versa, the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society

of producers. The limits within which the preservation or self-expan- sion of the value of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperisation of the great mass of producers can alone move - these limits come continually into conflict with the methods of production employed by capital for its purposes, which drive towards unlimited extension of production as an end in itself, towards unconditional development of the social productivity of labour. The means - unconditional development of the productive forces of society - comes continually into conflict with the limited purpose, the self-expansion of the existing capital.-'10

The conclusion was:

The last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces in such a way that only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit.2"

Marx then dealt with the factors that could slow down the fall in profits - principally increased production and foreign trade - and attempted to show that they can only be short-term palliatives. There followed two sections on interest-bearing capital and ground rent and the volume ended with the dramatically incomplete section on classes.

Even today, Capital, particularly Volume One, remains a masterpiece. Its historical analyses present an effectively damning picture of at least one aspect of nineteenth-century England composed with an attention to detail and a superb style that make it a permanent contribution both to history and to literature. Nor have its theoretical presuppositions or long-term predictions been 'disproved' - if only because they are not susceptible of ultimate refutation: the labour theory of value is not a 'scientific' theory21-' but a theory to be judged by the insights that it gives into the workings of the capitalist system. And Marx's famous predictions are only based on his abstract 'model' of capitalist society, a model capable <>l almost infinite variation in given circumstances and, like all models, it must be assessed by its fruitfulness.2"

Capital did not immediately have the success that it later enjoyed. It was eagerly received in Marx's small circle and even his old allies Feuerliach and Ruge passed favourable comments on it. But there were disturbingly few reviews in Germany and most of them were hostile, though Engels' future adversary Diihring wrote favourably. Engels himself was the most assiduous review writer and managed to place seven, each carelully tailored to the nature of the paper in which it appeared. Kugelmann aIso acted as a very effective Public Relations Officer in Germany. Engels tried hard to get some publicity in England but the only result was a

small notice in the Saturday Review of January 1868 which said: 'The author's views may be as pernicious as we conceive them to be, but there can be no question as to the plausibility of his logic, the vigour of his rhetoric, and the charm with which he invests the driest problems of political economy.' The general attitude of Marx's trade union colleagues was summed up by Peter Fox who, on being sent a copy by Marx, replied that he felt like a man who had been given an elephant and did not know what to do with it. The reception was indeed disappointing and Jenny wrote to Kugelmann: 'You can believe me that seldom has a book been written under more difficult circumstances, and I could write a secret history that would uncover an infinite amount of worry, trouble and anxiety. If the workers had an inkling of the sacrifice that was necessary to complete this work, written only for them and in their interest, they would perhaps show a bit more interest.'214 But it took four long years before the 1000 copies were sold.

V I . L I F E I N M O D E N A V I L L A S

Although the double inheritance of 1864 undoubtedly gave Marx the relative security that enabled him to finish Volume One of Capital, it had by no means been the final solution. In April 1864 the Marxes moved to a considerably larger house in Maitland Park Road, a few hundred yards south of Grafton Terrace, where they remained for the next eleven years. To Jenny in her memoirs 1 Modena Villas (the postal address was changed to 1 Maitland Park Road in 1868) was 'a very attractive and healthy dwelling which we fitted out very comfortably and relatively smartly... .

A new, sunnily placed, friendly house with airy light rooms.'215 Indeed,

later it seemed to her to be 'a veritable palace and, to my mind, far too large and expensive a house'.216 It was one of two detached houses at the

entrance to the Park with a flower garden in front, a well-stocked conservatory and plenty of space for their two dogs, three cats and two birds. Each of the girls had her own room and Marx himself had a fine study overlooking the Park, the room in which Marx wrote Volume One of Capital and which served as a focal point for the First International. Paul Lafargue has left the following description of Marx's study:

It was on the first floor, flooded by light from a broad window that looked out on to the park. Opposite the window and on either side of the fireplace the walls were lined with bookcases filled with books and stacked up to the ceiling with newspapers and manuscripts. Opposite the fireplace on one side of the window were two tables piled up with papers, books and newspapers; in the middle of the room, well in the

light, stood a small, plain desk (three foot by two) and a wooden armchair; between the armchair and the bookcase, opposite the window, was a leather sofa on which Marx used to lie down for a rest from time to time. On the mantelpiece were more books, cigars, matches, tobacco boxes, paperweights and photographs of Marx's daughters and wife, Wilhelm Wolff and Frederick Engels.217

The books were arranged according to their contents, not their size, and were full of pages with corners turned down, marginal comments and underlinings. 'They are my slaves', Marx would say, 'and they must serve me as I will.'218 Two features of the study that were added later were gifts from his friend and admirer, Dr Kugelmann. One was a bust of Zeus of ()tricoli which had arrived - to the great consternation of the household

while the Christmas pudding was being prepared at the end of 1867; the other was a piece of tapestry that Leibniz (for whom Marx had a great admiration) had had in his study.

The money spent on furnishings (together with the repayment of debts) amounted to £500, its rent and rates were almost double those of Grafton Terrace, and, in general, it was a house whose inhabitants would be expected to have an income of around £500 p.a. - which is, in fact, about the sum of money that Marx did get through annually.219 In addition Marx and the girls took three weeks' holiday at Ramsgate and Jenny had a fortnight by herself at Brighton. In October, the girls - who before had had to decline invitations as they had no money to return the hospitality - gave a ball for fifty of their friends. The financial situation was not helped by the arrival, in May 1865, of Edgar von Westphalen. 1 le had just returned from America where - paradoxically - he had fought lor the South in the Civil War. Despite his hypochondriac tendencies, he had an enormous appetite and even the amused tolerance of Marx, who described him as 'an egoist, but a kind natured one',220 grew more and more strained during the six months of Edgar's stay.

A few months after the move, and in spite of his having made £400 by speculating in American funds,221 Marx was obliged to write to Engels yet another begging letter:

It is duly crushing, to remain dependent for half one's life. The one thought that sustains me here is that we two are executing a combined task in which I give my time to the theoretical and party political side of the business. Of course I live too expensively for my circumstances and moreover we have lived better this year than ever. But that is the one means by which the children, apart from all that they have suffered and for which they have been recompensed at least for a short time, can make connections and relationships that can assure them a future. I believe that you yourself will be of the opinion that, even looked at

commercially, a purely proletarian set-up would be unsuitable here, however fine it might have been when my wife and I were alone or when the children were young.222

hopes were momentarily raised by the death of an aunt in Frankfurt but the result was only a meagre £12. The family was soon threatened with eviction and Marx had to get small loans from acquaintances 'as in the worst refugee period'.223 The situation was made even worse by the necessity of keeping up appearances in front of Paul Lafargue, who was then paying court to Laura. Marx once again expressed a desire to go bankrupt - but instead ordered champagne and gymnastic lessons for

Laura on the doctor's advice. During 1867 Marx recognised that Engels had given him 'an enormous sum of money'224 but claimed that its effect was negated by his previous debts which amounted to £200. The next year, on his fiftieth birthday, he bitterly recalled his mother's words, 'if only Karl had made Capital, instead of just writing about it'.225 Things were so bad that Marx seriously considered moving to Geneva. The poverty was all the more glaring as Marx had become a respected figure in the neighbourhood, culminating in his election to the prestigious sinecure of Constable of the vestry of St Pancras. Marx would not accept the office, agreeing with one of his neighbours that 'I should tell them that I was a foreigner and that they should kiss me on the arse.'226

In November 1868 the financial situation became intolerable and

Engels asked Marx to let him know firstly how much he needed to clear all his debts and secondly whether he could live thereafter on £350 p.a.

(Engels himself enjoyed an income from i860 onwards of never less than

£noo.)227 Marx described himself as 'quite knocked down', asked Jenny to calculate their total debts and discovered that they were 'much larger' than he had imagined.228 Engels let himself be bought out of Ermen and Engels earlier than he had anticipated and left the firm - to his immense jubilation and the popping of champagne corks - on 1 July 1869. Three weeks later, however, Marx noticed that Jenny was still not managing with the weekly allowance that he gave her. On pressing her about it, 'the stupidity of women emerged. In the list of debts that she had drawn up for you, she had suppressed about £75 which she was now trying to pay off little by little from the house allowance. When I asked why, she replied that she was frightened to come out with the vast total. Women plainly always need to be controlled!'229 Engels accepted this with good grace and Marx's financial troubles were, at last, finished. It has been