Keir Hardie

“ This is how Marx answers the question:—
The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. In the succeeding paragraphs he goes on to show that what distinguishes, them from others is that understanding, as they do, the true inwardness of the working-class movement, they are able to give it guidance and direction. ”

“ At length the English-speaking world is in possession of a life of Karl Marx worthy of the man. Mr. John Spargo has placed not only the Socialist movement, but also the world of letters, under a debt of gratitude to him by his masterly and scholarly work. [1] The many-sidedness of Marx’s character, the almost world-wide range of his activities, and the efforts of his opponents to belittle, obscure, and misrepresent the man and his work, all combined to make the writing of his life a task of no ordinary magnitude. ”

“ When the property-less working class has made all capitalistic property public property, then classes will have disappeared, since that which now divides a community into classes, the private ownership of property, will have disappeared. ”

“ He made it clear that Socialism had not been "discovered" or "invented" as a patent cure for all the ills of humanity. Marx explained Socialism as being the working of a natural law, just as a scientist might have done in any sphere of science. ”

“ Marx in "Das Kapital" did for the working class exactly what Adam Smith did for Free Trade and for the commercial and capitalist class in the "Wealth of Nations," viz., make clear the working theory by which their business should be conducted. Mr. Spargo says elsewhere that with the publication of the Communist Manifesto Socialism became "a theory of Social evolution, not a scheme of world building; a spirit, not a thing.... Socialism had become a science not a dream." This is finely put and contains a truth which critics of the Labour Party have yet to learn. ”

“ THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE.THE MAN AND HIS MESSAGE. Marx's real title to greatness, and certainly his greatest claim upon the gratitude of the working class, rests upon his discovery, for such it practically was, of the truth that history is but the record of class struggles, and that these are always the inevitable outcome of the economic system of the time resisting a change which its own workings has made inevitable. ”

“ Marx had, by this time, broken with the past in regard to both religion and politics, and had already entered upon that career which was destined to so mightily influence the course of history, and which will continue to be felt so long as the race endures. After their marriage the young couple lived for a time in Paris, where he was on terms of familiar intercourse with most of the brilliant group of Humanists and Utopian dreamers whose names subsequently became famous in the Valhalla of revolutionary fame. ”

“ With each succeeding class struggle the bounds of human freedom have been enlarged until with the advent of the Capitalist system of wealth production we have society, in the main, divided into two great antagonistic classes—the owners of property and the producers of property. Thus, with the organisation of the enfranchised working class into a definite organisation of their own, industrial and political, the final stage of the struggle for the freedom of the race has been entered upon. ”

“ That Marx supplied the same explanation of human progress in civilisation and towards freedom, which Darwin subsequently did of the evolution of animal and plant life towards the stage of perfection now attained. The existence of a ruling class is only a proof of a successful revolutionary struggle waged by that class some former period of its history. ”

“ But his abiding thought was that freedom could only come by the gradual evolution. of a properly-equipped working-class party, taught class consciousness by actual experience gained in the struggle with Capitalism, and by changes in the ownership of capitalist property forced on society by the workings of the capitalist system itself. ”

“ There were now three children in the Marx family. They had entered Cologne practically penniless, they left it absolutely so. Marx fled to Paris in May, but an abortive rising on June 13 following restored the reactionaries to power, and Marx had again to flee for safety. He made for London, which, but for an occasional holiday, was now to be his home for the rest of his life. The years which followed were years of toil, suffering, hunger, and privation. The record of those weary years is one of almost unrelieved tragedy. ”

“ THE DAYS OF UTOPIANISM.THE DAYS OF UTOPIANISM. The Socialism of these days—and it surprises one to note how much there was of it—was mainly of the dreamy Utopian order. Men had certain "natural rights" which were only possible under a system wherein all would be free and equal. ”

“ Marx had gone from the bedroom to the study, they said, where, seated in his armchair, he seemed half asleep. Engels went to the study at once and found his old friend, not half asleep, but fully and for ever, with a smile upon his lips. Karl Marx was dead." === THE MAN AND HIS METHODS. ===
The last quarter of the Eighteenth, and the first half of the Nineteenth Century were stirring times. Revolution, grim and bloody, stalked abroad all over Europe. Feudalism was in its death-throes. ”

“ Spargo proceeds with his task he brings before us men and their ideas and actions in such a vivid way that we seem to be living through it all, and to be able to visualise the men who have hitherto been shadows or names only. ”

“ In fact, one is driven to one of two conclusions concerning these critics: either they have never read any standard work on Socialism, or having read it they have not understood. Judging by their sayings and doings no other conclusion seems possible. === IS SOCIALISM A REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT? ”

“ Thousands of hunger-maddened unemployed operatives marched through the streets of Glasgow, sacking shops, and singing Chartist songs, and shouting "Bread or Revolution!" The troops were called out, and several persons shot down in the streets. ”

“ On that day it had been arranged that a monster petition, signed by 5,700,000 persons, should be presented to the House of Commons, and that it should be accompanied by 100,000 armed men to see that it was received. ”