THE CHINA MAIL, APRIL 23, 1937.
Karl Marx Personifies A doctrine Moving Toward a Test
A
A Name That
CENTURY ago the University
of Berlin enrolled among its new students an angular 18-year- old boy from Trier in the Rhine- land, whose father, an advocate and. minor official, wished him to be- come a lawyer,
The family was
Rings Through
The
World
one had travelled the
In Ger-
somehow answered questions that millions were asking.
T
* 靠
NO-DAY more than half a cen- tury after the death of Marx it seem that his doctrine The logical road from bread-and- armies, fighting vague campaigns would Jewish, with a line of rabbis on butter to "scientific" socialism had in the misty hinterland.
is nearing a decisive test not only both sides; but a few years earlier
therefore. been blazed, though no many, Italy, Austria, Hungary and in Russia but throughout the Wes- the father, never much
or later, pro- concerned
whole dis- several other countries opposition tern world. Sooner with dogmatic religion, had found
tance. Karl Marx, still ignoran to the Marxian doctrines was it. bably during this generation, it is it convenient to make а formal
of his destiny, was in fact getting self to become a fiercely defended reasonable to look for: (1) a Com- profession of
munist victory; (2) a Fascist vic- Protestant Chris-
ready to carry some highly re
creed and a basis for dictatorships.
tory, which will crush communism, tianity. He was a liberal-minded
volutionary ideas along that road. Even so, the socialism of Marx
for a bourgeois, an individualist who did not think race or creed highly im- modern socialism.
He was getting ready to found left its mark on its enemies. The perhaps forever, certainly
long time to come; of (3) a com- word "Nazi" is simply a contrac-
under promise,
democratic and portant. No doubt he expected
tion for the German words for "Na-
liberal principles, which will modi- his son to follow in his footsteps,
tional Socialist." One can trace the
fy the capitalist system without influence of Marxian ideas in that There was, in short, no reason to
introducing collectivism. HE time was ripe for it and other dictatorships, even of suppose that the name
Rousseau and Voltaire had though they have been distorted to: In the United States, Great Bri̟- Marx, inscribed on the university register a hundred years ago, would blasted away the ideas which had a point where Marx himself would tain, Canada, Australia, New Zea- ever set the world by the ears, as supported the lingering feudal sys- no longer admit his parental rela- land; and the Scandinavian coun-
har tionship to them.
tries the third solution unquestion- it has done. He had the earmarks tem; the French Revolution
"rights of man"; The real life of Marx was what ably has a good chance of success. of scholar and a philosopher, not exalted the those of a revolutionary. He was Napoleon had smashed the feudal went on inside his head. Nothing Nor is it impossible that the col- reading Hegel, that great master of abstract and often incomprehen- sible thought, five years dead in the flesh but destined to live a century
at least in the spirit.
Hegel had a notion
Karl
which he
By R. L. Duffus
lapse of the German and Italian dictatorships and a gradual modi- fication of the rigidity of Russian communism will produce a world civilisation which will have great variety in detail, but something like the old unity in basic principles.
In any case Marx will have left
described as thesis, antithesis and machinery of Europe in the process that happened to him as journalist, synthesis: a given idea would bring of making himself a dictator; bu revolutionary, exile, friend, family his mark on history. Even though about a reaction, or antithesis, masses of men, women and children man, would now be remembered if his dogma does not finally prevail, destructive to it; this would be released from the semi-slavery of he had not managed to extract from in whole or in very large part,, the followed by a positive new idea, or the farm and the small village were books and from the convolutions struggle which now centres synthesis, replacing the old idea. being mercilessly overworked and of his own brain a statement of it must have a part in shaping the Bare, dry bones, indeed-but Marx underpaid by the owners of the doctrines armoured with fact that future. put life it in the Communist Mani- swiftly multiplying factories. festo.
*
In Barmen, in the Rhine province of Germany, a young man named Friedrich Engels, son of a well-to- Then, Hegel had seemed to say do textile manufacturer, reached that such things as liberty, justice the age of 16 in 1836. Engels was and truth had a real independent already a rebel, though he was not existence-that is, that they came yet certain which direction his into men's minds because they al- rebelliousness was to take. Across ready existed in a kind of vacuum the high wall of caste he was aware up in the sky somewhere., Karl of the sufferings of the mill Marx was asking himself whether workers. His father had mills in this interpretation of the mighty Manchester, and Engels was to Hegel was correct. It seemed, as witness the excesses of early people were looking at it at that English industrialism, too. time, to make individuals into
Marx and Engels were not to be- rather small potatoes. It was
1844. Then being used to prop up the autocratic come friends until
they were to form а life-long Prussian State the "State" being
alliance; Engels the cool, clear one of those lovely, mystic
thinker and lucid writer, with Marx abstractions which some good
reflected Hegelians could see
the profound philosopher and pain- in
staking scholar; Engels the even the grubbiest, stupidest and greediest of governments. Karl practical man of affairs, with Marx Marx was beginning to ask himself the improvident; Engels, who us- whether it wouldn't be better to ually had money and was generous turn Hegel around and to say that with it, with Marx, who rarely knew where the next month's rent was coming from.
men invented such abstractions, as liberty, justice and truth in order to feel nobler about things they.. were doing or wanted to do.
of
If you had asked Karl Marx at Engels was to make the ideas this period what he thought of the Marx effective. He was to make class struggle" or the "materialis- the name of Marx a slogan, a ban- tic conception of history" he would ner, a source of bitter controversy have looked blank. They were not which might split the world into in his mind, They were not hostile camps. Russia's millions precisely
and in anybody's mind. were to march to the farms David Hume, the Scottish philoso- factories, as well as to the bar- under pher and historian, had edged to racks and encampments ward them more than half a century Marxism flaga. Spain was to be earlier when he argued that men's ravaged by a frightful civil war in ideas arise out of their personal which Marxianism was an issue. experiences. The English econ- Socialist parties were to function omist Ricardo had contended, a in France, England and the Scan- little later, that the bread-and-but- dinavian countries to some ex- States. ter portions of men's experiences tent even in the United. were the most important ones.
China was-to have its Communist
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