Q. What sense was Marx the child of his times?
Ans. Karl Marx was successful because he caught the temper of his times. "Marx knew" writes Neill in the 'Makers of Modern Mind', "that he must speak the language of the country if he wanted to successful, if he wanted to be heard, he must use the magic words of the science, he must be realistic and hard; he must consider struggle and violence as inevitable; he must be a thorough materialist; he must be the Darwin of social sciences, if he wanted to command the respect of Europe".
During the 19th century, evolution in one form or other was in the air. It was found in Hegelian philosophy and in Darwin's science. Marx was, therefore, in swing with the age when he used it to explain all human history and all social arrangements. With Hegel and Darwin, Marx adopted a dynamic and evolutionary explanation of the phenomena he dealt with in contrast to the former static views.
It was a materialistic age and Marx was only stating his dogmatic and thorough going materialism. Marxian materialism does not, however, deny the existence of non-material things but it does make them the rflection of material realities.
Realism was also in the air in that age. A ruthless realism was there which preached to those who were physically and morally strong that they were duty-bound to bring down their competitors. Marx explained it as a class struggle, a term which 19th century intellectuals were ready to accept without question. Thus Marx spoke the language of his times and accepted uncritically many assmptions of the age.
The principal ingredients of Marx's system have been undoubtedly Hegelian philosophy and British classical economics. Lenin added a third source also. From Hegel Marx obtained the Dialectic. Hegel was an idealist, of course, who insisted that the ultimate realities moving through history are ideas, that material things are only manifestation of basic reality- the ideas. Hegel differed from earlier idealists in holding that ideas are not static, that they are in a state of logical development.
Marx rejected Hegelian idealism before he was 25. But he always adhered to the Dialectic as giving the true evolutionary explanation of social development. It was only necessary for him to stand Hegel on his feet and show ttat it were not ideas but things that were the ultimate realities in the world.
The contribution of English economists To Marxism was analytical and stressed Marx's individuality. Whereas, Hegel made him a system-builder, England made him an analytic critic of the capitalistic system. Marx got more than actual facts from his English connections. he also accepted the laws propounded by Adam Smith, Ricardo and Mill, laws which he was to modify later.
From Malthus, he obtained the notion of struggle for survival which he converted from a struggle among individuals to a struggle among classes. From Ricardo he obtained the labour theory of value from which he naturally deduced his surplus theory of value. From the classical economists he obtained the practice of looking upon economic activity in a highly abstract fashion. According to Neill, Marx's proletariat in the last analysis is nothing more than Ricardo's economic men with dirty hands.
Marx lived in a world where the word Socialism was already known. It was associated, however, with the uptopian schemes of such good-hearted men as Robert Owen in England and Saint Simon and Fourier in France. All these men had exposed the terrible social results of the Industrial Revolution: (1) Poverty and starvation for the workers, (2) Diseases and cattle-like breeding of workers in the cities, and (3) Hopeless misery and dark despair in all workers' hearts. For these the utopian socialists had prepared their remedies. Such schemes had been tried by 1848 and they had failed. Their failure seemed to be due chiefly to the method by which they were put into practice. All this had a profound influence on Marx.
Thus by 1848, when Marx was 30 year old, he had determined to be a scientific prophet of the proletariat, and had obtained all the constituent elements of his doctrine. From Germany he had obtained Hegel's doctrine which he claimed to have placed upon its feet, to serve his revolutionary ends. From the English he obtained the abstract science of economics. From the French socialists and from the observation of the revolution of 1848, he obtained the notion of a class-war. In all three countries he observed the atheism, the evolutionism and the scientism which were in the air. Thus by 1848 Marx had become a true cosmopolitan and by these reasons he was qualified to be the prophet of a revolution that preferred to ignore nationalities and concentrate on classes.
