1.The Materialistic Interpretation of History.-- Marx holds that in the main all the phenomena of human society have their origin in material conditions, and these he takes to be embodied in economic systems.Political constitutions, laws, religions, philosophies--all these he regards as, in their broad outlines, expressions of the economic regime in the society that gives rise to them.It would be unfair to represent him as maintaining that the conscious economic motive is the only one of importance; it is rather that economics molds character and opinion, and is thus the prime source of much that appears in consciousness to have no connection with them.He applies his doctrine in particular to tworevolutions, one in the past, the other in the future.The revolution in the past is that of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, which finds its expression, according to him, particularly in the French Revolution.The one in the future is the revolution of the wage- earners, or proletariat, against the bourgeoisie, which is to establish the Socialist Commonwealth.The whole movement of history is viewed by him as necessary, as the effect of material causes operating upon human beings.He does not so much advocate the Socialist revolution as predict it.He holds, it is true, that it will be beneficent, but he is much more concerned to prove that it must inevitably come.The same sense of necessity is visible in his exposition of the evils of the capitalist system.He does not blame capitalists for the cruelties of which he shows them to have been guilty; he merely points out that they are under an inherent necessity to behave cruelly so long as private ownership of land and capital continues.But their tyranny will not last forever, for it generates the forces that must in the end overthrow it.
2.The Law of the Concentration of Capital.-- Marx pointed out that capitalist undertakings tend to grow larger and larger.He foresaw the substitution of trusts for free competition, and predicted that the number of capitalist enterprises must diminish as the magnitude of single enterprises increased.He supposed that this process must involve a diminution, not only in the number of businesses, but also in the number of capitalists.Indeed, he usually spoke as though each business were owned by a single man.Accordingly, he expected that men would be continually driven from the ranks of the capitalists into those of the proletariat, and that the capitalists, in the course of time, would grow numerically weaker and weaker.He applied this principle not only to industry but also to agriculture.He expected to find the landowners growing fewer and fewer while their estates grew larger and larger.This process was to make more and more glaring the evils and injustices of the capitalist system, and to stimulate more and more the forces of opposition.
3.The Class War.--Marx conceives the wage- earner and the capitalist in a sharp antithesis.He imagines that every man is, or must soon become, wholly the one or wholly the other.The wage- earner, who possesses nothing, is exploited by the capitalists, who possess everything.As thecapitalist system works itself out and its nature becomes more clear, the opposition of bourgeoisie and proletariat becomes more and more marked.The two classes, since they have antagonistic interests, are forced into a class war which generates within the capitalist regime internal forces of disruption.The working men learn gradually to combine against their exploiters, first locally, then nationally, and at last internationally.When they have learned to combine internationally they must be victorious.They will then decree that all land and capital shall be owned in common; exploitation will cease; the tyranny of the owners of wealth will no longer be possible; there will no longer be any division of society into classes, and all men will be free.
All these ideas are already contained in the ``Communist Manifesto,'' a work of the most amazing vigor and force, setting forth with terse compression the titanic forces of the world, their epic battle, and the inevitable consummation.This work is of such importance in the development of Socialism and gives such an admirable statement of the doctrines set forth at greater length and with more pedantry in ``Capital,'' that its salient passages must be known by anyone who wishes to understand the hold which Marxian Socialism has acquired over the intellect and imagination of a large proportion of working-class leaders.
``A spectre is haunting Europe,'' it begins, ``the spectre of Communism.All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre--Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its re-actionary adversaries?''
The existence of a class war is nothing new: ``The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.'' In these struggles the fight ``each time ended, either in a revolutionary re- constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.''
