July 27, 2025 • 10 mins
This captivating essay by Harold Laski, a renowned figure in the British socialist movement, offers an in-depth examination of Karl Marxs life and philosophy. Born in Manchester in 1893, Laski was an influential member of the Fabian Society and the Socialist League faction of the Labour Party. As a professor at the London School of Economics, he mentored numerous politicians, including leaders of post-war Asia and Africas independence movements, and Ralph Milliband, father of the current Labour Party leader, Ed Milliband. Laskis political views, which encompassed democratic socialism, revolutionary Marxism, and Zionism, were sophisticated and multifaceted. This compelling 1922 essay provides a critical and scholarly analysis of Marxs work and life. - Summary by Phil Benson (adapted from Wikipedia)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part three of Karl Marx, an essay by Harold J. Laski.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Three. The
controversy with prudence was the natural prelude to the communist manifesto.
It had been evident to Marx for several years before
eighteen forty eight that Europe was on the verge of revolt.
(00:24):
England was passing through a period of intense agitation, Socialism
was growing in Germany by leaps and bounds, and the
lyrical falsifications of Lamartine seemed to the Paris workmen infinitely
preferable to the mediocre corruption of Guizo and Luis Philippe.
Marx indeed did not see that the political situation was
(00:45):
far too complex to admit of an interpretation in uniform
terms democratic nationalism like that of Mazzini, individualist republicanism like
that of Ledru Roland, such hostility to dynamic oppression as
Cossotha embodied state socialism as typified by Louis Blanc. The
forces of upheaval were too various and incompatible to admit
(01:07):
of any continuous co operation. Bitterly as the worker might
resent the consequences of industrialism he had not yet reached
the stage where the seizure of political power for economic
ends seemed to him the one ideal worthy of attainment,
and he was to no small degree still attracted by
the kind of unrealistic thinking of which Robert Owen was
(01:29):
so prolific, the sense that the difficulties of the time
might be evaded by extra political organization. Marks realized that
this attitude was definitely unconstructive. The seizure of the state
was to him the starting point of successful effort, and
when Frederick William the Fourth summoned the United Assembly in
(01:49):
February eighteen forty seven, he was not unnatural for him
to assume that the hour for action was at hand.
From the outset of his life in Brussels, Marks had
mingled with the German socialist residents. There he had come
into contact with the League of the Just, an organization
of German workers with branches and the chief European towns.
(02:12):
This society, founded in eighteen thirty six, had in eighteen
forty moved its headquarters to London, probably to escape the
unwelcome attentions of the political police. The attention of the
London group had been drawn to Marks by the members
in Paris and Brussels. The London branch commissioned enquiries to
be made about him, and when the first Congress of
(02:34):
the League was held in London at the summer of
eighteen forty seven, Engels and Wilhelm Wulf, the latter through
Engels a disciple of Marx, were present as its deliberations.
Engels has spent the year in efforts at revolutionary propaganda
in Paris and the Rhineland, and it is probably due
in the main to him that the League of the
(02:54):
Just was transformed into the Communist League. The ground was
thus prepared for Mark, who appeared at the second Congress,
also in London in December eighteen forty seven. Engels had
already conferred with him as to the ground to be
taken there, and he had sent Marks the outline of
a program to be offered to the Congress for acceptance.
(03:16):
Engels outline contains the substance of the famous manifesto, but
it lacks the ringing challenge and firm grasp of its successor.
At the Congress, Marks and Engels were commissioned to draw
up a program. They were prepared for the effort, and
the German edition of the Communist Manifesto appeared a few
days before the outbreak of the Paris Revolution. It is
(03:39):
not easy to overestimate the significance of the Manifesto. He
gave direction and a philosophy to what had been before
little more than an in Cowit protest against injustice. It
began the long process of welding together the scattered groups
of the disinherited into an organized and influential party. It
(03:59):
freed so socialism from its earlier situation of a doctrine
cherished by conspirators in defiance of government, and gave to
it at once a purpose and a historic background. It
almost created a proletarian consciousness by giving and for the
first time to the workers, at once a high sense
of their historic mission and a realization of the dignity
(04:21):
implicit in their task. It destroyed as a stroke both
the belief that socialism could triumph without long preparation and
the hope that any form of economic organization was possible
save that which was implicit in the facts of the time.
It insisted upon no natural rights. He did not lay
down any metaphysic. It was, on the contrary, a careful
(04:44):
and critical historic survey of the institutional process regarded as
a whole. To insist upon its epoch making character is
not to regard it as an original or definitive document,
or to suggest that it is free from inconsistencies. It
owes much clearly to Consideran's Manifested Their Democratis, which was
(05:06):
published four years before footnote, but considerent. Though his picture
of the economic situation is like that of Marx, rejects
revolutionary communism, and of footnote. There have been utopian socialisms
in despite of Marx, and we are doubtless not at
the end of them. The belief in natural rights revives
(05:27):
with every age of discontent, and it would be possible
to prove that the idea of natural rights is necessarily
implicit in the juridical structure of socialism, nor is its
treatment of the middle class at all adequate. At one point,
it is subject to a vituperation so scathing and relentless
as to make it seem the nurse of all social evil.
(05:48):
At another, its great historic achievements are exalted beyond all praise.
Its immediate program of action is borrowed in almost every
particular from those earlier socialists who are so unsparingly condemned.
Nor can Marx his claim that he substituted a critical
insight into the facts, progress, and general results of the
(06:09):
actual social movement for the systems of his predecessors be
entirely accepted. For after all, it is not the least
merit of Fourier in Saint Simon that they are described
with not less sober accuracy than that of Marx the
economic conditions of their time. Even the use of the
class war as the Keita history was brilliantly anticipated in
(06:30):
the Genevan Letters of Saint Simon. Yet the general superiority
of the Manifesto to previous socialist writing is incontestable. It contains,
broadly speaking, four definite groups of ideas. Beginning with a
history of the growth of the middle class, it recounts
its victory over feudal privilege, its emergence into the full
(06:52):
development of capitalistic enterprise, and its necessary result in a
revolutionary proletariat. A second section deals with the philosophic interpretation
of this history. It argues that the doctrine of the
class struggle the necessary and inevitable conflict between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, with the consequent revolutionary role that is
(07:13):
assigned to the latter. Are the plain deductions to be drawn.
Ways and means are then discussed, the main object of
which is to bring within the ambit of state control
the whole economic life of the people. There then follows
a criticism of previous socialist literature, of which it must
be said that, forcible and eloquent as it is, much
(07:34):
of it is inaccurate, and the whole unfair. No description
can do justice to the brilliant figure of the whole.
Every phrase of it is a challenge, and much of
it has the same moving passion that distinguishes the exordium
of the social contract or. In a very different type
of polemic, the parol d'un quiont of Laminaee. It is
(07:55):
the book of men who have viewed the whole process
of history from an eminence and discovered them therein an
inescapable lesson. It is at once an epilogue and a prophecy,
an epilogue to the deception from which the workers suffered
in the Revolution of seventeen eighty nine, and a prophecy
of the land of promise they may still hope to enter.
A movement that could produce a challenge so profound came
(08:18):
hardly less to fulfill than to destroy. It had hardly
appeared before the revolution broke out in Paris, and Marx,
as a precautionary measure, was banished from Brussels by the
Belgian government. Tyranny has banished you, wrote the French provisional government.
But a free France opens her gates to you. Marx
(08:40):
proceeded to Paris, but remained there only a short time.
Germany was already seething with revolt, and the natural vantage
ground for him was obviously the Rhine Land, Gathering about
him the members of the Communist League. Marx went to Cologne,
where the editorship of the revolutionary paper The Nouer Rhinish
a Zetung was entrusted to him. Brief as was its life,
(09:03):
its substance was not merely brilliant, but of great significance
as an indication of the Marxian tactic. Engels and Wilhelm
Wulf were its chief contributors, and Freiligrath and LaSalle sent
poems and essays. Marring has published a selection of the
chief articles of Marx in this paper, dominantly They insist
(09:24):
upon three ideas, the disarming of the bourgeoisie, the erection
of a revolutionary terror to abridge and concentrate the hideous
death agonies of society, and the creation of a revolutionary army.
There is no room in Marx's thought, save perhaps as
an ultimate for any democratic system. Revolution opposes counter revolution,
(09:46):
and a reign of terror is the path to triumph.
Liberty is dismissed as a purely bourgeois ideal which impedes
proletarian advance to its goal. The idea of a general
upheaval Russia Lin king Hana with France, Berlin uniting with
Vienna is emphasized, though it should be added that Marx
had no full realization either of the difficulties the revolution
(10:09):
would encounter or the speediness of its destruction. The paper
hardly lived were a year when troubles with the censorship
put an end to its existence. Marx left Cologne and
returned to Paris, but only to witness the bloody suppression
of the Days of June, banished by the French government
in July eighteen forty nine to a remote corner of Brittany.
(10:31):
He decided to move to London, thither he went with
his family, and he remained in England with one or
two brief intervals, for the rest of his life. End
of Part three
Part three of Karl Marx, an essay by Harold J. Laski.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Three. The
controversy with prudence was the natural prelude to the communist manifesto.
It had been evident to Marx for several years before
eighteen forty eight that Europe was on the verge of revolt.
(00:24):
England was passing through a period of intense agitation, Socialism
was growing in Germany by leaps and bounds, and the
lyrical falsifications of Lamartine seemed to the Paris workmen infinitely
preferable to the mediocre corruption of Guizo and Luis Philippe.
Marx indeed did not see that the political situation was
(00:45):
far too complex to admit of an interpretation in uniform
terms democratic nationalism like that of Mazzini, individualist republicanism like
that of Ledru Roland, such hostility to dynamic oppression as
Cossotha embodied state socialism as typified by Louis Blanc. The
forces of upheaval were too various and incompatible to admit
(01:07):
of any continuous co operation. Bitterly as the worker might
resent the consequences of industrialism he had not yet reached
the stage where the seizure of political power for economic
ends seemed to him the one ideal worthy of attainment,
and he was to no small degree still attracted by
the kind of unrealistic thinking of which Robert Owen was
(01:29):
so prolific, the sense that the difficulties of the time
might be evaded by extra political organization. Marks realized that
this attitude was definitely unconstructive. The seizure of the state
was to him the starting point of successful effort, and
when Frederick William the Fourth summoned the United Assembly in
(01:49):
February eighteen forty seven, he was not unnatural for him
to assume that the hour for action was at hand.
From the outset of his life in Brussels, Marks had
mingled with the German socialist residents. There he had come
into contact with the League of the Just, an organization
of German workers with branches and the chief European towns.
(02:12):
This society, founded in eighteen thirty six, had in eighteen
forty moved its headquarters to London, probably to escape the
unwelcome attentions of the political police. The attention of the
London group had been drawn to Marks by the members
in Paris and Brussels. The London branch commissioned enquiries to
be made about him, and when the first Congress of
(02:34):
the League was held in London at the summer of
eighteen forty seven, Engels and Wilhelm Wulf, the latter through
Engels a disciple of Marx, were present as its deliberations.
Engels has spent the year in efforts at revolutionary propaganda
in Paris and the Rhineland, and it is probably due
in the main to him that the League of the
(02:54):
Just was transformed into the Communist League. The ground was
thus prepared for Mark, who appeared at the second Congress,
also in London in December eighteen forty seven. Engels had
already conferred with him as to the ground to be
taken there, and he had sent Marks the outline of
a program to be offered to the Congress for acceptance.
(03:16):
Engels outline contains the substance of the famous manifesto, but
it lacks the ringing challenge and firm grasp of its successor.
At the Congress, Marks and Engels were commissioned to draw
up a program. They were prepared for the effort, and
the German edition of the Communist Manifesto appeared a few
days before the outbreak of the Paris Revolution. It is
(03:39):
not easy to overestimate the significance of the Manifesto. He
gave direction and a philosophy to what had been before
little more than an in Cowit protest against injustice. It
began the long process of welding together the scattered groups
of the disinherited into an organized and influential party. It
(03:59):
freed so socialism from its earlier situation of a doctrine
cherished by conspirators in defiance of government, and gave to
it at once a purpose and a historic background. It
almost created a proletarian consciousness by giving and for the
first time to the workers, at once a high sense
of their historic mission and a realization of the dignity
(04:21):
implicit in their task. It destroyed as a stroke both
the belief that socialism could triumph without long preparation and
the hope that any form of economic organization was possible
save that which was implicit in the facts of the time.
It insisted upon no natural rights. He did not lay
down any metaphysic. It was, on the contrary, a careful
(04:44):
and critical historic survey of the institutional process regarded as
a whole. To insist upon its epoch making character is
not to regard it as an original or definitive document,
or to suggest that it is free from inconsistencies. It
owes much clearly to Consideran's Manifested Their Democratis, which was
(05:06):
published four years before footnote, but considerent. Though his picture
of the economic situation is like that of Marx, rejects
revolutionary communism, and of footnote. There have been utopian socialisms
in despite of Marx, and we are doubtless not at
the end of them. The belief in natural rights revives
(05:27):
with every age of discontent, and it would be possible
to prove that the idea of natural rights is necessarily
implicit in the juridical structure of socialism, nor is its
treatment of the middle class at all adequate. At one point,
it is subject to a vituperation so scathing and relentless
as to make it seem the nurse of all social evil.
(05:48):
At another, its great historic achievements are exalted beyond all praise.
Its immediate program of action is borrowed in almost every
particular from those earlier socialists who are so unsparingly condemned.
Nor can Marx his claim that he substituted a critical
insight into the facts, progress, and general results of the
(06:09):
actual social movement for the systems of his predecessors be
entirely accepted. For after all, it is not the least
merit of Fourier in Saint Simon that they are described
with not less sober accuracy than that of Marx the
economic conditions of their time. Even the use of the
class war as the Keita history was brilliantly anticipated in
(06:30):
the Genevan Letters of Saint Simon. Yet the general superiority
of the Manifesto to previous socialist writing is incontestable. It contains,
broadly speaking, four definite groups of ideas. Beginning with a
history of the growth of the middle class, it recounts
its victory over feudal privilege, its emergence into the full
(06:52):
development of capitalistic enterprise, and its necessary result in a
revolutionary proletariat. A second section deals with the philosophic interpretation
of this history. It argues that the doctrine of the
class struggle the necessary and inevitable conflict between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, with the consequent revolutionary role that is
(07:13):
assigned to the latter. Are the plain deductions to be drawn.
Ways and means are then discussed, the main object of
which is to bring within the ambit of state control
the whole economic life of the people. There then follows
a criticism of previous socialist literature, of which it must
be said that, forcible and eloquent as it is, much
(07:34):
of it is inaccurate, and the whole unfair. No description
can do justice to the brilliant figure of the whole.
Every phrase of it is a challenge, and much of
it has the same moving passion that distinguishes the exordium
of the social contract or. In a very different type
of polemic, the parol d'un quiont of Laminaee. It is
(07:55):
the book of men who have viewed the whole process
of history from an eminence and discovered them therein an
inescapable lesson. It is at once an epilogue and a prophecy,
an epilogue to the deception from which the workers suffered
in the Revolution of seventeen eighty nine, and a prophecy
of the land of promise they may still hope to enter.
A movement that could produce a challenge so profound came
(08:18):
hardly less to fulfill than to destroy. It had hardly
appeared before the revolution broke out in Paris, and Marx,
as a precautionary measure, was banished from Brussels by the
Belgian government. Tyranny has banished you, wrote the French provisional government.
But a free France opens her gates to you. Marx
(08:40):
proceeded to Paris, but remained there only a short time.
Germany was already seething with revolt, and the natural vantage
ground for him was obviously the Rhine Land, Gathering about
him the members of the Communist League. Marx went to Cologne,
where the editorship of the revolutionary paper The Nouer Rhinish
a Zetung was entrusted to him. Brief as was its life,
(09:03):
its substance was not merely brilliant, but of great significance
as an indication of the Marxian tactic. Engels and Wilhelm
Wulf were its chief contributors, and Freiligrath and LaSalle sent
poems and essays. Marring has published a selection of the
chief articles of Marx in this paper, dominantly They insist
(09:24):
upon three ideas, the disarming of the bourgeoisie, the erection
of a revolutionary terror to abridge and concentrate the hideous
death agonies of society, and the creation of a revolutionary army.
There is no room in Marx's thought, save perhaps as
an ultimate for any democratic system. Revolution opposes counter revolution,
(09:46):
and a reign of terror is the path to triumph.
Liberty is dismissed as a purely bourgeois ideal which impedes
proletarian advance to its goal. The idea of a general
upheaval Russia Lin king Hana with France, Berlin uniting with
Vienna is emphasized, though it should be added that Marx
had no full realization either of the difficulties the revolution
(10:09):
would encounter or the speediness of its destruction. The paper
hardly lived were a year when troubles with the censorship
put an end to its existence. Marx left Cologne and
returned to Paris, but only to witness the bloody suppression
of the Days of June, banished by the French government
in July eighteen forty nine to a remote corner of Brittany.
(10:31):
He decided to move to London, thither he went with
his family, and he remained in England with one or
two brief intervals, for the rest of his life. End
of Part three
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