The principle of communism is not new. Some primitive societies practiced a limited brand of communism in that the whole tribe lived in common and shared property, food, and housing. But modern-day communism, known as the “science of Marxism-Leninism,” is just a little over a century old.

This kind of communism is also known as “scientific socialism” to distinguish it from “Utopian socialism,” which, according to the Marxists, is unplanned and does not operate on “laws” of society. “Utopian,” or early, socialism predated Marx; and its exponents, such as Robert Owen, believed in making society socialist by peaceful means. Many of these men were visionaries, hence the word “Utopian.”

A few years before the American Civil War “scientific socialism” stemmed from the mind of an egotistical, crabby, stubborn man who from student days showed no interest in productive labor to support his family and who used to pawn his overcoat in the middle of winter to buy a few loaves of bread. This man was born in Germany, became an exile in France and Belgium, later lived and wrote in England. From his extensive writings he is known as the “originator” of communism and is today regarded with the greatest respect by communists everywhere. His name was Karl Marx.

Marx was born in Trier, Germany, in May, 1818, the son of a prosperous German lawyer. He was an intelligent child, but temperamental. At school his marks were superior, and his capacity for work, a trait that was to continue all through life, tremendous. But he did not make friends easily, perhaps because of self-pride. He made arrogant remarks and wrote satirical verse. He was a “smart” young man, but already vain, bitter, and rebellious.

Strangely, his heart held an inner love for a home-town girl, Jenny von Westphalen, a devotion to remain bright despite the utter squalor, poverty, and despair that lay ahead. Jenny, four years older than Karl, was the daughter of a government official in Trier. She was beautiful, charming, and of a socially high rank, much higher than that of the Marx family. She, too, was desperately in love, but she feared to tell her parents. What would they think—the daughter of Privy Councillor Ludwig von Westphalen marrying Karl Marx?

Young Karl was obsessed. He wrote feverish love letters and poetry. “... a new world has opened for me,” he wrote his father in 1837, “the world of love ... art is not as beautiful as Jenny.”

The time for marriage, however, was still distant. Karl was away at school. Then, after graduation, he did not have a job and did not seem to care to find one—another lifelong trait. He preferred to dabble in atheism, socialism, and polemics. After seven long years Jenny was still waiting, but finally, on June 12, 1843, they were married.

Marx had hoped to teach but drifted into journalism. He wrote acidly, pouring ridicule on everything and everybody with whom he disagreed. Strongly influenced by the teachings of Ludwig Feuerbach, a German philosopher who preached materialism, Marx had become an atheist and called for war against religion, a war that was to become the cornerstone of communist philosophy. In 1842 he became editor of a new left-wing paper, the Cologne Rheinische Zeitung, and immediately launched into bitter tirades against the Prussian government. As expected, the authorities took action, the paper was suppressed, and Marx, a short time later, went to France. Finally, in 1849, with his family, he went to England, where he was destined to remain until his death in 1883.

Marx was a man with few friends. But one friend, Friedrich Engels, a fellow German whom he first met in 1842, was to become his intellectual comrade, his financial support, his faithful champion. Engels, a vivid contrast to the morose and crotchety Marx, was gay, mannerly, from a wealthy family, and interested in having a good time. He too was an atheist and a revolutionary, a fact that deeply offended his father, a leading textile manufacturer and churchman. He would provide money for school, the elder Engels said, but none for revolutionary activities. Conflict was inevitable. “If it were not for my mother ... whom I really love,” young Engels wrote, “it would never occur to me to make even the smallest concession to my fanatical and despotic father.”

Marx and Engels were close friends for some forty years. Engels, most appropriately, can be called the “collaborator” of Marx. He had an encyclopedic memory and his far-flung interests and knowledge of industrial techniques supplied Marx with important information. He also wrote independently and, in some instances, under Marx’s name (For a list of writings by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, see pages 333-337.) Together they conceived and formulated the doctrine of communism. They were the parents of “scientific socialism.”

Engels spent much of his time in Manchester, England, tending to his father’s business, while Marx lived in London. Engels was tall and thin, blue-eyed, two years younger than Marx, and a lover of horses and women. He lived for years with one girl without marriage and then, upon her death, with her sister. He finally consented to marry the latter on her deathbed.

Marx, in contrast, lived in squalor. He was often sick; he suffered from boils, headaches, and rheumatism. Jenny’s health began to give way. Her seventh child was born dead. She became wretchedly nervous, irritable, and upset. “Daily, my wife tells me she wishes she were lying in the grave with the children,” Marx wrote in 1862. “And truly I cannot blame her....”

Marx did not have a regular job but depended on pittances, especially from Engels. He lived from pawnshop to pawnshop. It is a bitter irony of history, indeed, that the founder of communism should be literally kept alive by a wealthy industrialist, and that a “capitalist’s” son, turned communist, should become the second “father” of this revolutionary movement.

The great classics of communism, such as Das Kapital (Capital), were “hacked out” amid the most trying conditions. For a period the Marx family lived in two furnished rooms on Dean Street, Soho (London). Listen to this description translated from an article by Gustav Mayer:

Money was always short. Little Franziska died before her first birthday. There was no money for the funeral. A pittance was obtained from a neighbor which, as Jenny says, “... paid for the small coffin in which my poor child now sleeps in peace.” Marx sometimes couldn’t go out of the house: his overcoats were pawned. His wife was sick, but he couldn’t call a doctor. There was no money for medicine. “For a week or more I have kept my family alive feeding them bread and potatoes, and it is questionable whether or not I will be able to scare any up today.” Another time he complained, “... the children are without clothes or shoes in which they can leave the house.”

But Marx was stubborn. He kept plugging away, writing, reading, denouncing “capitalist” poverty, and letting his family starve. No wonder a remark, attributed to his mother, was made that instead of writing about capital it would have been better if Karl had made some. The main source of help was money from Engels, from a relative, or from writings. The “only piece of good news we have,” Marx wrote to Engels on February 27, 1852, “is from my ministerial sister-in-law [wife of the Minister of Westphalia], namely, the news about the illness of my wife’s indestructible uncle. If the brute dies now, I will be out of this mess.” Marx, in scornfully referring to his wife’s uncle as “indestructible,” meant the fellow simply would not die. On March 2, 1852, Engels replied, “My congratulations on the news of the old ... inheritance-obstructor’s illness and I hope that the catastrophe will finally take place.”

If the mind of Marx was perverted and biased, it was at the same time sharp and keen. He was a deep student of history, philosophy, and economics. Sitting in his dingy apartment or in the British Museum, this German-born social theorist surveyed the world. In his arrogant pride he thought he could recast it on his own terms; through his writings and his revolutionary organizations he undertook to do so.

“The Moor,” as his children called him because of his coal-black hair and eyes, developed as his first line of attack an atheistic view of the world. He joined two very old ideas: (1) That everything in the universe, whether a blade of grass, a human being, or society itself, is constantly changing and at the same time is in conflict. This is called dialectics. (2) That God doesn’t exist and the world is composed only of “living” matter. Hence, man is walking dust, without spark or image of his divine Creator. This idea is called materialism; hence, dialectical materialism. (For a fuller definition of this and other communist terms, see the Glossary.)

This concept was to undergird the whole communist “world outlook.” Human society, as well as the physical universe, Marx said, is affected by this outlook. The principles have universal application. Noncommunist thinkers, as well as human experience, have punctured many holes in the thesis; but to communists it applies with the same certainty as does the law of gravity.

Constant and bitter struggle is not bad, Marx said, because it achieves progress. In fact, he viewed the whole recorded history of the world as a story of class struggle. Mankind, he said, has always been divided into classes: groups of people who have special interests, ideals, and ways of doing things. These classes, he added, have been struggling from the very beginning of time, and still are.

Marx explained this struggle by means of a special formula, commonly called the thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic, which he distorted from the philosophy of the famous German philosopher, G. W. F. Hegel. Here is how it works for communists:

Start, for example, Marx said, with a certain economic class (a thesis). This class is the dominant power in society, controlling the means of production, the way houses are built, the kind of clothes worn, and so forth. Soon an opposing class arises (an antithesis) which seeks to overthrow the first class. It has different ideals, motives, and ambitions. What happens? A fight occurs and soon a new class (synthesis) emerges which, according to Marx, incorporates only the best of both old classes. (Why some of the bad does not seep in, too, Marx does not explain.)

Then the process starts all over again. This is history, for as Marx held, historical materialism was nothing more than applying the concept of dialectical materialism to society. The new class (synthesis) is now dominant and thus becomes, in turn, a new thesis. It directs how to build houses, who gains wealth, etc., but, following Marx’s ideas, another opposition class arises (a new antithesis). They struggle, a new synthesis is obtained, and again the world is off on a new cycle.

These ideas obviously are distorted and theoretical. But to understand modern-day communism, it is essential to grasp the underlying theory. False as it is, this theory is the spark that kindles the communist flame

This class struggle, in Marx’s reasoning, always produced a higher stage of civilization. First, years ago, came slavery. The slave-owning class, as expected, developed its own “antithesis” (meaning its rivals, who wanted to abolish slavery). A struggle ensued and feudalism developed, representing the best of both opponents. But feudal society, then the dominant class, was attacked by its own “antithesis,” forces within its body which opposed its ideas. For hundreds of years this struggle continued, issuing forth finally in a new “synthesis” (capitalism), again representing the best features of both rivals.

When Marx wrote, history was still in the capitalist stage, but he said it could not remain there. It must (there was no alternative) move on to communism. The capitalist class had already developed its own “antithesis,” which Marx identified as the “proletariat” (the working class), which was striving to overthrow the old system.

Communism, Marx proclaimed, represented the new “synthesis” of the capitalist-proletariat struggle and the apex of all history. At this point, said Marx, conflict would now cease, although, again, he does not say why. This new world would be the “perfect” and “final” society: stateless, classless, godless, where all property used in production would be held in common, and human activities would conform to the principle “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

Marx, with shrewd cunning, applied these concepts to the society of his day. He aimed this appeal to catch everyone who was greedy, ambitious, discontented, or downtrodden. Also, since the Industrial Revolution had led to some very real social abuses, the doctrines of Marx appealed to many sincere idealists and reformers who were impatient with slower and more gradual methods of improvement. The class struggle, Marx said, was now in progress between the “capitalists,” who owned the tools of production, such as factories, railroads, mines, and the “proletariat,” or people employed by the capitalists—the wage earners, the “propertyless,” the “exploited.”

When Marx wrote, capitalists were the dominant class. According to his interpretation, they set economic levels, what wages could be paid, what standards of living the workers could have, what social customs would prevail. They were the greedy “exploiters,” wanting more and more profits. But, said Marx, according to his “law,” capitalists were digging their own graves. The very rise of capitalism, Marx emphasized, called into existence its conqueror, the proletariat. The higher the state of capitalism, as then rising in France and England, the greater the number of workers required to tend the mills, mines, and shops; hence, the larger the proletariat would become. Wealth would accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, the masses would become increasingly poor. Thus, conflict between the two classes was inevitable.

Already, Marx said, this conflict was in progress, as witnessed by European strikes, lockouts, and revolutions. The proletariat was striking against its oppressors, and the result of the struggle would be communism. The working class was destined to win. That was the “law.” This was the way Marx viewed history and how he distorted events and situations to support his thesis, which followers were later to call a “science.” This “science” has long since been disproved by man’s experience and the record of events and situations in the free world.

In this struggle between the capitalist class and the proletariat, what is the role of the Communist Party? The Party, said Marx, was to be the vanguard of the proletariat. Most workers are stupid, uneducated in Marxism, and duped by capitalists. They could never start a revolution by themselves. They need guidance, the job of the Communist Party. Communists are wide awake, intelligent, and, most important of all, “learned” in Marxism. They know the “laws” of revolution, the “mysteries” of the development of society. Their task: to be the “general staff” of the revolution.

What about force and violence? Must they be used? Marx emphasized that capitalist society, most naturally, would not voluntarily turn over its factories, banks, and money to the workers. Moreover, it would probably organize a “counter-revolution”—which means defending itself. Hence, under the leadership of the Communist Party, the workers must, if necessary, be prepared to use force, that is, violent revolution. If the capitalists submit peacefully, good; if they resist, slaughter them.

But this is not all. After power is seized, opposition will remain which must be stamped out, utterly, completely, mercilessly. Again, this is a job that cannot be left to an untrained, untaught proletariat. It is a job, according to Marxist thought, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, conceived as a transitional stage between actual revolution and the arrival of the highest and final form of communism.

Who would direct the dictatorship? The Communist Party, of course. And what would it do? It would serve as a steam-roller, liquidating through sheer force all “capitalist” elements. Then, and only then, could new “socialist” construction begin. The dictatorships in Russia and the satellite countries with their secret police, slave labor camps, and mass regimentation are living examples of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” in action.

These were, and are, vicious principles, destined to shake civilization to its roots. In 1848, Marx, in collaboration with Engels, prepared the platform of the Communist League, a revolutionary organization which included a large number of German exiles. This was the famous Communist Manifesto, the first sweeping blueprint of communist aims. The language is violent, the threats dire. “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism,” it starts off, and ends by calling for a violent overthrow of existing society. “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.... Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

Well-intentioned and goodhearted men, Marx said, cannot be depended on to improve society. They are dabblers and botchers who make things worse. Mere social reforms strengthen capitalism, prolong “exploitation,” and keep the corpse alive. Tear capitalism down, completely. Use force and violence. Set up a communist government!

To the very end of his life Marx remained a ruthless fighter. Invective, anger, and abuse were his weapons. He defiantly defended his position against all comers. He bitterly denounced all who dared disagree with him, such as Ferdinand Lassalle, the German Socialist leader, and Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian anarchist. He fought wordy battles that lasted for years. Always, by skill or skulduggery, he tried to impose his point of view. If he found that impossible, he worked furiously to destroy his opponent.

In 1864 Marx was involved in founding the First International, a motley group of “radicals,” “have-nots,” “socialists,” and “anarchists.” A number of congresses were held, but little was accomplished. Finally, in 1872, after many feuds and quarrels in which Marx was deeply involved, he succeeded in having the group’s headquarters transferred from London to New York, then considered a remote outpost. This was a move made out of spite, Marx preferring to see the organization die rather than fall into the hands of his enemies. In 1876, at a congress in Philadelphia, it was dissolved. The First International’s chief legacy to the cause of world communism lay in giving international structure, for the first time, to communist ideas.

Here is another irony of communism. This man who attacked the domination of the capitalists showed his own dominating nature again and again. In theory, he was “for” the common man and wanted to correct the ills of society. In practice, his fanatical intolerance and overbearing ego made him a tyrant, an autocrat, a dictator.

Marx’s character helped shape the whole philosophy of communism and, as we shall see, forged a hideous instrument of power for those who were to follow him.