Nineteenth Century Thought (6 page)

I use here a metaphor to raise a few
questions about the nineteenth century England and also to put forward later a
few impressions about it. What does the 'face' of the nineteenth century tell?
Let us
visualise
it in some detail. Is it not a face
with a smile and tremendous self- assurance, a face that suggests overall
prosperity, stability and peace? At least, that is what the term 'Victorianism'
stands for- not just a cluster of well-integrated principles but a whole
climate and mood of England in the reign of Queen Victoria. The very name of
the great queen denoted 'victory' over dissentions within the country and weak
indigenous states in the world outside Europe. To some extent, owing to their
'underdeveloped' economies and social systems, these societies crumbled under
their own weight. The highly motivated English power took advantage of this
situation and added to its achievements
control of numerous
countries inhabiting different parts of the globe. The gradual increase in the
English global power brought that smile on the face of the nineteenth century.

There is little doubt that the
enhancement in English supremacy across the world owed a good deal to what is
known as the Industrial Revolution. The phenomenon introduced an era of great
upheavals, turning upside down a life-structure that had endured centuries of
definitive changes in human existence since the renaissance. We have discussed
it in some detail earlier. Here, we take note of the state of a progressive
economy, developing trade and a rise in the demand of intellectual and cultural
products. The last two should not surprise us unnecessarily. The rest of the
world around the middle of the nineteenth century looked up to England for
modern scientific ideas and radical aesthetic visions. This was the time when
societies outside Europe were becoming increasingly self-conscious about their
own situation through a meaningful confrontation with new methods of enquiry.
They were face to face with new administrators who
endeavoured
to found modern institutions of policy-making, education, social welfare and
philanthropy. The other side of the coin was that these became eventually the
very areas through which the economy, jobs for the middle class and a sense of
superiority and influence expanded in England.

Victorianism, however, could not for long
ignore the contradictions of the age. Rather, it carried on its back the burdens
of prosperity and radicalism. As the English society moved in its development
towards the close of the nineteenth century, it found itself integrating
closely with imperialism. One can imagine some lines of forced composure and
equanimity in that smiling face I have talked of earlier. One does not know at
what exact point it happens, but around the
eighteen-nineties
writers and poets in England exhibit an altogether different kind of orientation
from the one they had worked with till the recent past. In the new 'dawn,' they
reflect not merely doubt and self-doubt but a whole array of internal workings
of the human mind. Fiction and poetry move from thereon towards difficult
symbols, unexplained images and mysterious happenings on the edges of
existence. Quietly but clearly, Victorianism gives way to Modernism in which
psychology, circular time and fragmentary perception would hold sway. The question
is whether this was a movement forward from the nineteenth century concerns of
equality,
radical protest and
rebuilding of structures
along socialist lines.

Karl Marx, born in 1818 in Germany,
stood all his life for the cause of the downtrodden and underprivileged and was
aware that a radical change in the social structure was the only way to ensure
real equality in society. One of the most important thinkers of Europe in the
nineteenth century, Marx freed the Hegelian dialectic from what he considered
the stranglehold of idealism (idea-centered conception of history) and gave it
a firm realistic footing. He gave the name historical materialism to his theory
by which he meant an approach based on concrete examination of life-processes
in the context of history. For him, historical materialism was an ever-evolving
theoretical phenomenon. A great admirer of the French novelist Balzac, Marx
used the term 'realism' to underscore a vision that derived strength from
objective appraisal of social developments.

Marx's chief contribution to social
thought was in the realm of production which he found exploitative since
class-based. He unraveled the basic contradiction between the social nature of
production and the individual control of the fruits of that production.
 
In simple language, this meant the
controlling existence of a group of people (capitalists) in society who
forcibly and violently snatched the social produce. Through this contradiction
between capitalism and society, Marx sought to project the concrete possibility
of a world constituting only one class - the workers. According to him, the
productive group called workers or proletariat was a new class of men and women
in history entirely human in quality-just, dignified and advanced. He set out
to prove a close examination of the nineteenth century capitalism, a venture
that continued till his death in 1880, that the proletariat went beyond race,
gender, colour and nationality for the simple reason that its prime importance
lay in
labour
, the social endeavour that naturally united
the whole humanity. These conclusions were the outcome of painstaking research
carried on by Marx in the arena of production processes. His study of facts,
details and processes of modern industrial production is at once convincing and
open-ended. No one has been able to surpass till today the intellectual stamina
of Marx and his application of dialectics to organization and distribution of
manmade wealth.
 
His analyses of
long-ranging social trends, political happenings and philosophical paradigms
have been immensely influential in the twentieth century, to the extent that
more than half of the world today swears by his name. Today's movements of
socialism, feminism, anti-colonialism and democracy owe substantially to Marx's
thought.

Some of the important books written
by Marx are
The Communist
Manifesto
(1848),
The Civil r in
France, The Eighteenth
Brumaire
of Louis Bonaparte
and
Das Capital.

Fredrich
Engels was born in Germany in 1820. He came under the sway of the democratic
nationalist writers of the Young German movement quite early in life and moved
gradually towards the radical materialist position.

Engels's association with Karl Marx
whom he first met around 1843 is a most profound example of intellectual
companionship in a period marked by great social upheavals in Europe. The two
were life-long friends together engaged in the pursuit of examining and
interpreting socio-historical issues of the time.

After Marx's death in 1883, Engels
took up the task of completing the former's unfinished work on the Second and
Third Volumes of
Das Capital.
Before this, he also managed his father's
factory in Manchester, England, for a number of years.

Important works of Engels include
The
Holy Family, The Condition of the Working Class, Anti-
Duhring
and
Dialectics of Nature.
He actively participated in the forming of
the Second International in the last years of his life and became the most shining
star of socialism after Karl Marx. Engels died in 1895 in London.

The
 
first
 
work
 
undertaken
  
for
 
the
 
solution
 
of
 
the
 
question
 
that troubled me, was a critical revision of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Law’
¹
;
the introduction to that work appeared in the
Deutsch-
Franzosischen
Jahrbucher
,
 
published
 
in Paris in
 
1844. I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal
 
relations
 
as well
 
as
 
forms
 
of state could neither
 
be
 
understood
 
by
 
themselves
²
,
 
nor
 
explained
 
by
 
the
 
so called
 
general
 
progress
 
of
 
the
 
human
 
mind
³
,
 
but
 
that
 
they
 
are rooted
 
in the material
 
conditions of life, which
 
are summed up by Hegel
 
after
 
the
 
fashion
 
of
 
the
 
English
 
and
 
French
 
of
 
the
 
18
^th
century
 
under
 
the
 
name
 
"civil society"
⁴
;
the anatomy
 
of that
 
civil society is to be sought in
political
 
economy.
⁵
The study
of the latter which I had taken up in Paris, I continued at Brussels whither I
emigrated on account of an order of expulsion issued by Mr. Guizot.

ANNOTATIONS

* One of the most celebrated passages
from Marx. Its range and possibilities of application are indeed mind-boggling.
See the distance it covers in history through epochs and recognizes the
diversity of human activity capable of enlightening the thinking individual.
Thus, the passage requires longish annotations.

                   
I.
           
Mode of Production: The Basis of Social Life

1.
        
'Philosophy of Law':
Here,
the quotation marks indicate Marx's criticism of the word 'philosophy.' The
German philosopher Hegel considers philosophy to be the sole intellectual point
of reference behind things. For Marx, however, things can only be explained as rooted
in the 'material conditions of life,' not philosophically.

2.
        
By themselves:
In
themselves. This again signifies Marx's rejection of the way things are
ordinarily defined. According to Marx, legal relations, too, have a reference
to something outside themselves.

3.
        
General progress of the human
mind:
There is deep irony here at the expense of
'philosophers' who preoccupy themselves solely with the human mind. Marx raises
the question: What does the general progress mean and how can we grasp it
philosophically?

4.
        
'Civil society:
Again,
the expression is within quotes. Marx suggests that Hegel only thought of those
city-centered educated people whose parameters were largely traditional. At the
most, the said members of 'civil society' were interested in ordinary dealings of
life, going beyond the day-to-day happenings in politics, education and ethics.

5.
        
Political economy:
This
is in place of economics.' Marx draws the word out of the realm of purity (pure
economics or, simply 'economics' and gives it the adjective 'political.'

The general conclusion at which I
arrived and which, once reached, continued to serve as the leading thread in my
studies, may be briefly summed up as follows: In the social production
⁶
which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable
and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum
total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society
⁷
-the real foundation, on which rise legal and political
superstructures 8 and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. 9 The mode of production in material life determines the general
character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary,
   
their
   
social
   
existence
   
determines
   
their consciousness. As a certain stage of
their development, the material forces of production in society come in
conflict with the existing relations of production,
¹⁰
or-what is
but a legal expression for the same thing-with the property relations within
which they had been at work before.

ANNOTATIONS

6.
      
Social
production:
 
'Social'
is used deliberately to emphasize that production is invariably social.

7.
      
The
sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure
of society:
This is Marx's definition of the base. Thus, 'economic
structure' is not a simple expression or thought-category. Instead, it is the
sum
total
of the relations of production relations between the haves and the
have-noes.

8.
      
Superstructures:
This
is in relation to the economic structure, or just structure. In Marx' view,
superstructures correspond to the base. For instance, legal and political
superstructures (law and politics) correspond to or follow the base, meaning
thereby that they are largely replicas of the base. Under capitalism, both law
and politics adhere to the principles of the capitalist base.

9.
      
Definite
forms of social consciousness:
 
Consider
'forms.' Also, think about 'social' and see whether consciousness is individual
or social. Can we say that there can be a feudal consciousness, capitalist
consciousness as well as a socialist consciousness? In what manner would they
be different? Thus, we would be able to make sense of social existence.

10.
   
The
material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing
relations of production:
This is the core point in Marx's
thought. Marx observed specific stages in history- there was a stage, for
example, when 'material forces' demanded capitalist relations of free give and
take, while relations of production continued to impose on.

From forms of development of the
forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the
period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the
entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.
 
In considering such transformations the
distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the
economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of
natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or
philosophic-in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict
¹¹
and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual
is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period
of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness
¹²
must rather be explained from the contradictions of material
life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and
the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the
productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new
higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of
their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.

ANNOTATIONS

society
notions of feudal
bondage and hierarchy. According to Marx, this was the stage when 'conflict'
arose. Another word used by Marx for 'conflict' is 'contradiction.' What does
'capitalist contradiction' mean?

11.
  
Ideological
forms in which men become conscious of this conflict:
See
the long sentence of which this is a part. The reference is to various
superstructures which are termed 'ideological forms.' From these, let us pick
up 'aesthetic form.' Isn't it interesting that literature (aesthetic form) is
called an ideological form? Do we, while reading literature, become conscious
of the said conflict (the conflict in capitalism, for instance, between forces
of production and relations of production)? How? The process in which this
occurs must be highly complex.

12.
 
This
consciousness:
Here, we go back to the point raised above
(n.3 and 4) with respect to 'progress of human mind' Also pause at 'a period of
transformation' and 'its own consciousness.' In the context of the paragraph in
Marx, we cannot know a period by its own consciousness since that would be
idealistic. In fact, says Marx, we should understand and explain a given
consciousness with reference to 'the contradictions of material life.' Apply
this to one of the literary works such as
Hard Times
by Dickens and see
the way in which Dickens's own consciousness can be explained from the
contradictions of material life in mid-nineteenth century.

Therefore, mankind ·always takes up
only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely,
we will always find that the problem itself arises only when
¹³
the
material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in
the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the
ancient, the feudal, and the modem bourgeois methods of production as so many
epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations
of production 14 are the last antagonistic form
¹⁵
of the social
process of production-antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism,
but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in
society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of
bourgeois society
¹⁶
create the material conditions for the solution
of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing
chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

-Marx,
Critique of Political
Economy
(1859).

ANNOTATIONS

13.
  
The
problem itself arises only when:
The problem is linked up
with the conditions of life -it is the latter that cause and present a problem.
At the same time, a problem is a concrete challenge before society since its
roots are there in the society itself Here, Marx's activist stance is
unmistakable. The sentence "Therefore, mankind ... in the process of
formation" is a good example of Marx's dialectical logic. Analyze the
structure of the sentence with a view to seeing Marx's logic.

14.
  
Methods
of production:
Marx uses this expression to mean 'modes
of production.' According to him, in the known history, there have been only
four clearly identifiable methods (modes) of production: "the Asiatic, the
ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois methods of production.'' Aware of
the problems of range, Marx uses tentative expressions, such as 'in broad
outlines,' 'we can designate' and 'as so many.'

15.
  
Antagonistic
form:
According to Marx, conflicts are of two forms-
antagonistic and non-antagonistic. Of these, the first is connected with social
production - the conflict in social productions being resolvable only through
revolution, since forces of production cannot be stopped or streamlined by the
existing relations of production. Isn't Marx implying that a conflict outside
social production (e.g. in a superstructure such as legal or philosophical) is
non-antagonistic and peaceful?