by Andreas Peglau

 

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Questionable foresight

Wikipedia tells us that there is no „precise, uniform and conclusive definition of the term“ natural law and that this word is used „in natural sciences and scientific theory to describe the regularity of natural phenomena that is independent of place and time and based on natural constants“. Because of the latter characteristics, natural laws allowed „observable events to be explained and predicted“.[1] However, many of the predictions made by Marx and Engels did not come true, especially with regard to political upheavals.

The 1848 manifesto stated that the „German bourgeois revolution […] can only be the immediate prelude to a proletarian revolution“.[2] In the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in January 1849, Marx announced in his „Contents of the Year 1849“: „Revolutionary uprising of the French working class, world war.“[3] A few months later, Engels reported in the same newspaper: „A few more days, then, and […] the Magyar [= Hungarian] revolution will be over, and the second German revolution will have begun in the most magnificent way.“[4] In 1850, both informed their comrades-in-arms: „The revolution […] is imminent,“[5] „cannot be long in coming.“[6] Engels‘ assessment of the situation in 1854 was: „From Manchester to Rome, from Paris to Warsaw and Pest“,[7] the revolution was „omnipresent, raising its head and awakening from slumber“.[8] Marx announced in 1863, „We will soon have a revolution“, „we are obviously heading for a revolution – something I have never doubted since 1850.“[9]

Although they expressed their expectations less frequently and less enthusiastically in later years, Marx, seemingly undeterred by the aforementioned and other failed predictions,[10] claimed in the first volume of Capital that „with the mass of employed workers […] their resistance“ would grow and that the „inevitable conquest of political power by the working class“ would occur.[11] „With the steadily decreasing number of capital magnates,“ resistance would grow:

„The mass of misery, oppression, servitude, degeneration, exploitation, but also the indignation of the ever-growing working class, trained, united and organised by the very mechanism of the capitalist production process.[12] […] The centralisation of the means of production and the socialisation of labour reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist shell. It is blown apart. The hour of capitalist private property strikes. The expropriators are expropriated.“[13]

„Capitalist production“ generates „its own negation with the necessity of a natural process“.[14] In 1880, thirteen years later, Engels also believed that in the „trusts“ that were emerging at the time as a result of monopoly formation, „exploitation would become so blatant that it would have to collapse. No people would tolerate production managed by trusts,[15] such blatant exploitation of the whole by a small band of coupon clippers“.[16]

However, this is still or once again the case for most peoples today – and in a much more acute form. In 2017, the eight richest men in the world owned „more capital than the poorer half of the world’s population“; „99 per cent“ of people suffered „massive disadvantages“ as a result.[17] In Germany in 2020, one per cent of adults owned 35 per cent of the total wealth. During – and as a result of – the coronavirus „pandemic“[18] , ten of the world’s richest men doubled their wealth since 2020.[19] At least in the „West,“ the elite coup touted as the „Great Reset“ and „New Green Deal,“ including the planned disempowerment and impoverishment of the populations, as well as the surge in arms production since the Ukraine crisis, are likely to have further advanced the concentration of capital.

According to Marx and Engels, the socialist revolution is therefore long overdue, even globally. But it is not in sight.

What actually followed the deaths of Marx and Engels were, among other things, two world wars, fascism, „real socialism“ complete with Stalinism, a capitalist „West“ where workers achieved greater prosperity despite the concentration of capital, and then the collapse of the socialist world system in favour of almost global neoliberalisation. And now, currently, the majority of the world is fighting for multipolarity and against the US-led „West“ – a struggle primarily between states with capitalist economies, but one that nevertheless has its justification on the non-Western side.

Little of this can be reconciled with Marx’s predictions or explained in „Marxist“ terms, nor can the socio-economic constitution of today’s China.[20] The philosopher Volker Riedel sums it up:

„First of all, Marx made serious historical misjudgements with regard to the transition from capitalism to socialism. He overestimated the viability of the capitalist mode of production as well as the potential of the socialist mode, failing to foresee reformism in the labour movement or to take into account the momentum of bureaucratic apparatuses. In addition, he […] incorrectly predicted the course of the proletarian revolution […].“[21]

It is not only the quality of the predictions that casts doubt on the natural laws assumed by Marx and Engels.

 

Limited view of the past

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels proclaimed: „The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.“[22] When Engels republished this work 40 years later, new ethnological knowledge had become available, which Marx and he had examined.[23] Engels now added a succinct footnote to the sentence from the Manifesto: „That is to say, strictly speaking, the history handed down in writing“[24] – which perhaps meant: as long as there are written records, class struggles are reflected in them.

In the preface to this new publication, Engels narrowed it down further: since the demise of what he assumed to be primitive communism,[25] „the history of mankind […] has been a history of class struggles“.[26] In doing so, he also admitted that for the vast majority of human history – even according to the knowledge available at the time – class struggle, the driving force to which Marx and he attached such great importance, could not be used to justify social change.

The sequence of social formations, which they derived from the presumed course of economic development, was also built on shaky ground.
In draft letters written in 1881, Marx argued that a „primitive social formation“ was followed by formations based on „private property“, first „slavery“, then „serfdom“, and finally feudalism.[27] Engels described his similar view in his 1884 work The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Agreeing with the ethnologist Lewis Morgan, he assumed that the earliest epochs were „savagery“ and „barbarism“.[28] According to this view, the „three great forms of servitude“ arose, „as characteristic of the three great epochs of civilisation“: „Slavery is the first, peculiar to the ancient world, form of exploitation; it is followed by serfdom in the Middle Ages and wage labour in modern times.“[29]
Both Marx and Engels not only contradicted their own statements here.[30] They also ignored research findings known to them, including those on early Egyptian and South American cultures.[31]

Their classification thus remained limited to „Western-style societies.“ The oldest advanced civilisations „of the global South and East, with their sometimes significantly weaker private property rights“ and the lesser importance of slavery, were „quasi excluded by definition from belonging to […] ‚civilisation‘.“[32]

Science journalist Martin Kuckenburg has devoted a four-volume study to these connections. He sums up: Ultimately, Marx and Engels remained stuck in the Eurocentric prejudices typical of their time about societies with partly „persisting collectivist structures and their significantly different […] path of development“.[33]

 

Wishful thinking

Another objection seems even more significant to me: natural laws are and were usually understood as relationships independent of humans. But how could there ever be social, political and economic processes that are independent of humans – as their agents![34] All these social, political and economic phenomena only take place because and as long as humans exist.[35]

Let us take another look at how Marx and Engels justified their hopes for change in the passages just quoted. Against capitalism, which was supposedly becoming increasingly unbearable, the growing working class would offer more and more resistance and become increasingly indignant – especially since the „mechanism of the capitalist production process“ trained, united and organised the workers. Surely no people would tolerate such blatant exploitation by such a small group as that which capital concentration would bring about. So this was largely a matter of psychological processes, emotions and motivations, and the actions that arose from them. And now, once again, Marx and Engels were paying the price for dismissing this area so superficially. For, as already described, their predictions in this regard were wishful thinking.

One could counter this by saying that Marx and Engels wanted above all to analyse economic relationships and could not tackle everything at once. True! But the fact that they nevertheless made unqualified statements about psychological processes ran counter to their claim to be conducting empirical science and led them astray in the passages mentioned.[36]

And, to repeat: they did not need to do so. For they could draw on previous work known to them. I will mention just two striking examples.

 

*

 

Continue reading in Part 8: From Immanuel Kant to child labour

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Sources of the entire text (mostly in German).

German version of part 7.

 

 

Notes

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturgesetz. Similarly: Sandkühler 2021, p. 1728.

[2] Marx/Engels 1972b, p. 493. In other respects, too, they assessed the situation there (ibid., pp. 473f.) as partly unrealistic: „It is now clear that the bourgeoisie is incapable of remaining the ruling class of society any longer and of imposing the conditions of life of its class on society as the ruling law. It is incapable of ruling because it is incapable of securing the existence of its slaves even within their slavery, because it is forced to let them sink into a position where it must feed them instead of being fed by them. Society can no longer live under it, i.e., its life is no longer compatible with society. […] With the development of large-scale industry, the very basis on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates its products is being swept away from under its feet. It produces above all its own gravedigger. Its downfall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.“ Steinfeld (2017, pp. 33–47) points out that the proletariat to which Marx and Engels addressed themselves was only just emerging in 1848: „The ‚Manifesto‘ seeks to conjure up a historical subject that hardly exists yet, with the possible exception of England and Paris“ (ibid., p. 40). At that time, „perhaps a thousand people in Europe, perhaps a few more“ called themselves „communists,“ including some scholars such as Marx and Engels, who were „driven from one exile to the next“ (ibid., p. 36). Even the „League of Communists“ for which the Manifesto had been written dissolved after four years. The „spectre of communism“ (Marx/Engels 1972b, p. 461) haunting Europe in 1848 was thus far weaker than the Manifesto suggested. In The German Ideology,  they had already anticipated „millions of proletarians or communists“ in 1845/46 (Marx/Engels 2017, p. 58). Pagel (2020, p. 403) states: At that time, the proletariat  remained „completely untouched“ by „communist agitation“.

[3] Marx 1959, p. 150.

[4] Engels 1961, p. 474.

[5] Marx/Engels 1960a, p. 245.

[6] Marx/Engels 1960b, p. 312.

[7] District of present-day Budapest.

[8] Engels 1977a, p. 8.

[9] Marx/Engels 1974, p. 333, 641.

[10] See the lists in Löw, pp. 331–336 and: https://marx-forum.de/marx-lexikon/lexikon_ij/irrtum.html.

[11] Marx 2021, pp. 350, 512.

[12] How this „mechanism“, which above all had an alienating and even murderous effect, was suddenly supposed to achieve such constructive results remained Marx’s secret. He himself had also pointed out that „increased exploitation […] and an increase in the standard of living of the working class“ were by no means mutually exclusive (Heinrich 2021, p. 119).

[13] Marx 2021, p. 790f. Last sentence: Those who previously stole the workers‘ labour power are now themselves being expropriated.

[14] Ibid., p. 791.

[15] Engels 1973, p. 221. As late as 1890, Engels wrote to Marx’s daughter Laura: „20 February 1890 is the day the German revolution began. It may take a few more years before we experience a decisive crisis, and it is not impossible that we will suffer a temporary and serious defeat. But the old stability is gone forever“ (Marx/Engels 1967b, p. 359). In 1892, he remained confident: „Of course, the next revolution, which is being prepared in Germany with unparalleled persistence and consistency, will come in its own time, let’s say between 1898 and 1904“ (Marx/Engels 1979, p. 545).

[16] Synonym for capitalists who make profits without any effort of their own, i.e. the group to which Engels himself belonged from 1869 onwards.

[17] See https://taz.de/Neue-Studie-zur-Verteilung-von-Reichtum/!5371707/.

[18] Peglau 2020a.

[19] Oxfam 2022. By 2023, „the richest one per cent of the world’s population had pocketed around two-thirds of global wealth growth since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.“ In Germany, „of the wealth growth generated in Germany in 2020 and 2021, […] 81 per cent to the richest one per cent of the population“ (https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/news/zahlen-veroeffentlicht-konzerne-und-milliardaere-bereichern-sich-an-den-krisen-li.307327).

[20] Elsner 2020; Peglau 2021.

[21] Riedel 2004, p. 108.

[22] Marx/Engels 1959, p. 462.

[23] In his final years, Marx studied ethnological literature intensively, but did not publish anything on the subject. Excerpts have been preserved (Marx 1976c; see also Krader 1973, Conversano 2018, p. 9f.), which Engels later used.

[24] Marx/Engels 1959, p. 462.

[25] Here he speaks of „the primitive gentile order with its common ownership of land“ (Engels 1977b, p. 581). In 1884, he had described this order as „a wonderful constitution in all its childishness and simplicity […]. Without soldiers, gendarmes and police, without nobility, kings, governors, prefects or judges, without prisons, without trials, everything runs its course in an orderly manner. All quarrels and disputes are decided by the community of those concerned. […] the household is communal and communist, the land is tribal property, only the small gardens are temporarily assigned to the households […]. There can be no poor or needy […] All are equal and free – even the women“ (Engels 1975b, p. 95f.; cf. Marx/Engels 1968, p. 427; Marx 1983a, p. 911). Whether such a stage of human development actually existed universally can never be proven beyond doubt due to a lack of relevant archaeological finds (Röder/Hummel/Kunz 2001, p. 396). However, it appears that several egalitarian urban social structures functioned for more than a thousand years over the last 10,000 years (Graeber/Wengrow 2022, p. 236, 245ff.).

[26] Engels 1977b, p. 581.

[27] Marx 1973b, p. 404.

[28] Engels 1975b, pp. 30–35. „Savagery – period of predominant appropriation of ready-made natural products […]. Barbarism – period of the acquisition of animal husbandry and agriculture, the learning of methods for increased production of natural products through human activity. Civilisation – period of learning the further processing of natural products, actual industry and art“ (ibid. p. 35).

[29] Ibid., p. 170.

[30] See Marx/Engels 1963, p. 284; Marx 1971a, p. 9; Engels 1962a, pp. 164f.; Kuckenburg 2023, pp. 26–31.

[31] Ibid., pp. 48–105.

[32] Ibid., p. 104.

[33] Ibid., p. 105. Tedesco (2022) points out that some contemporary historians also criticise the „weaknesses“ of the „traditional Marxist“ view of history, such as its Eurocentricity, and are „developing a new frame of reference for interpreting pre-capitalist societies […]“. He cites Perry Anderson, Jairus Banaji, John Haldon and Chris Wickham as representatives of this view.

[34] Hiebel (2017, p. 152) apparently sees it the same way, but again attempts to „rescue“ Marx in the same way as before: „I think one must see ‚law‘ […] as a metaphor. ‚Law‘ as a scientifically based term for natural laws cannot really be used for historical and social phenomena.“

[35] As early as 1890, the economist Conrad Schmidt put his finger on this sore point. He wrote to Engels that Marx’s theory could only be upheld if it could be proven that non-materialistic processes could also be explained in economic terms. According to the publicist Paul Kampfmeyer in a 1932 obituary (p. 902f.), Schmidt was reluctant „to describe Marx’s view of history as materialistic. In truth, it is an economic worldview.“ I also find apt what journalist Klaus Weinert (2013) wrote: „When people talk about ‚laws‘ or ’natural laws‘ in economics, extreme caution is always required. Economics is not a natural science. And there are no laws in economics as there are in physics. Gravity cannot be overturned by a parliamentary decision anywhere in the world, but the austerity measures for southern Europe or the Hartz IV laws could be changed.“ The latter „laws“ only work „as long as people agree on a certain system.“

[36] Lange (1955, p. 44) writes: „Marx does not claim that historical events and institutions, especially religion, science, ethical and philosophical ideas and the like, can be reduced to economic motives; rather, he attempts only to explain the economic conditions for their formation and transformation.“ While I agree with the first statement, I cannot confirm the self-restraint implied at the end. Marx does not deny that there are other influencing factors besides the economic ones he researched, but he considers them to be comparatively unimportant; I have not been able to discover any integration, subordination, let alone subordination to a larger whole.