Nineteenth Century Thought by Anand Prakash Read Free Book Online

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.
     

From A READER IN MARXIST PHILOSOPHY
I.     Mode
of Production: The Basis of Social Life*
     

A. The Law of Social Development
    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.'