Marx/Engels Biographical Archive - Marxists

Karl Marx Biography his momentary success surrounded him. The philistine who considers his Napoleon III to be the greatest man of the century and is unable himself how this miraculous genius suddenly comes to be making bloomer after bloomer and one political error after the other -- that same philistine can consult the aforementioned work of Marx for his edification. Although during his whole stay in London Marx chose not to thrust himself to the fore, he was forced by Karl Vogt, after the Italian campaign of 1859, to enter into a polemic, which was brought to an end with Marx's Herr Vogt (London, 1860). At about the same time his study of political economy bore its first fruit: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Part One, Berlin, 1859. This instalment contains only the theory of money presented from completely new aspects. The continuation was some time in coming, since the author discovered so much new material in the meantime that he considered it necessary to undertake further studies. At last, in 1867, there appeared in Hamburg: Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I. This work contains the results of studies to which a whole life was devoted. It is the political economy of the working class, reduced to its scientific formulation. This work is concerned not with rabble-rousing phrasemongering, but with strictly scientific deductions. Whatever one's attitude to socialism, one will at any rate have to acknowledge that in this work it is presented for the first time in a scientific manner, and that it was precisely Germany that accomplished this. Anyone still wishing to do battle with socialism, will have to deal with Marx, and if he succeeds in that then he really does not need to mention the dei minorum gentium." ["Gods of a lesser stock;" meaning, celebrities of lesser stature.] But there is another point of view from which Marx's book is of interest. It is the first work in which the actual relations existing between capital and labour, in their classical form such as they have reached in England, are described in their entirety and in a clear and graphic fashion. The parliamentary inquiries provided ample material for this, spanning a period of almost forty years and practically unknown even in England, material dealing with the conditions of the workers in almost every branch of industry women's anti children's work, night work, etc.; all this is here made available for the first time. Then there is the history of factory legislation in England which, from its modest beginnings with the first acts of 1802, has now reached the point of limiting working hours in nearly all manufacturing or cottage industries to 60 hours per week for women and young people under the age of 18, and to 39 hours per week for children under 13. From this point of view the book is of the greatest interest for every industrialist. For many years Marx has been the "best-maligned" of the German writers, and no one will deny that he was unflinching in his retaliation and that all the blows he aimed struck home with a vengeance. But polemics, which he "dealt in" so much, was basically only a means of self-defence for him. In the final analysis his real interest lay with his science, which he has studied and reflected on for twenty-five years with unrivalled conscientiousness, a conscientiousness which has prevented him from presenting his findings to the public in a systematic form until they satisfied him as to their form and content, until he was convinced that he had left no book unread, no objection unconsidered, and that he had examined every point from all its aspects. Original thinkers are very rare in this age of epigones; if, however, a man is not only an original thinker but also disposes over learning unequalled in his subject, then he deserves to be doubly acknowledged. As one would expect, in addition to his studies Marx is busy with the workers' movement; he is one of the founders of the International Working Men's Association, which has been the centre of so much 1869.htm (3 of 4) [26/08/2000 00:19:52]

Karl Marx Biography attention recently and has already shown in more than one place in Europe that it is a force to be reckoned with. We believe that we are not mistaken in saying that in this, at least as far as the workers' movement is concerned, epoch-making organisation the German element -- thanks precisely to Marx -holds the influential position which is its due. Marx/Engels Biographical Archive 1869.htm (4 of 4) [26/08/2000 00:19:52]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma Encyclopedia of Marxism People Ma MacDonald, James Ramsay (1866-1937) Born at Lossiemouth, England, he became well known as a propagandist of socialist ideas and in 1893, together with Keir Hardie, founded the Independent Labour Party of which he remained a member until 1930. He became an MP in 1906 and leader of the Labour Party in 1911 but resigned in 1914 on account of a short-lived pacifism. In 1922 he became leader of the opposition and in 1924 Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of the first Labour government which depended upon Liberal support for a working majority. His policy both at home and abroad was one of liberal capitalism, combining re-armament with a rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The election of 1924 put him out of office but he returned to power in 1929. He responded to the capitalist crisis of 1931 by leading a minority on the right-wing into a coalition with the Conservatives on the basis of economic policies which meant the impoverishment of the working class. Prime Minister of this 'National' government until 1935; became Lord President under Baldwin until his death. Mach, Ernst (1838-1916) Austrian physicist and philosopher who established important principles of optics, mechanics, and wave dynamics and who supported the view that all knowledge is a conceptual organisation of the data of sensory experience. Mach is widely regarded as the leader of the extreme subjectivist school of positivism of the late nineteenth century, but even Einstein acknowledged a debt to Mach for his persistent exposure of the unstated assumptions of physical science. In retrospect however, all would agree that Mach’s positivism was naive and overly subjectivist. Mach was the main target of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism. Mach was educated at home until the age of 14, and entered the University of Vienna at the age of 17, received his PhD in physics at the age of 22 and was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Graz in 1864. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm (1 of 11) [26/08/2000 00:20:07]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma The mid-1860s marks the beginning of the “Second Positivism”. Positivism was already the dominant philosophical current in Europe and around this time, with Ernst Mach very much at the forefront, the centre stage of philosophical struggle moved to analysis of the physiological mechanisms of sensation in order to resolve the age-old problems of perception and the nature and validity of knowledge. (See the essay Perception Under the Microscope.) Mach's interests had already begun to turn to the psychology and physiology of sensation, although he continued to conduct physical research throughout his career. In 1867 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Experimental Physics at the Charles University in Prague, where he remained till 1895, studying how the mind is able to sense movement and acceleration, the measurement of sound waves, wave propagation and supersonics (thus, the “Mach Number”). In Analysis of the Sensations (1886), Mach held that the sole content of knowledge is sensation and material entities can be understood only in terms of the sensations present in their observation. Mach rejected as invalid, on this basis, concepts such as absolute time and space. This led to Mach's most renowned principle, that inertia is the manifestation of the interaction between a body and all the other bodies in the universe. Mach returned to the University of Vienna as Professor of Inductive Philosophy in 1895, but he suffered a stroke two years later and retired from active research in 1901, when he was appointed to the Austrian parliament. He continued to lecture and write in retirement, publishing Knowledge and Error in 1905 and an autobiography in 1910. Further Reading: Analysis of Sensations. Maclean, John (1879-1923) Born at Pollokshaws near Glasgow, the son of dispossessed peasants. His father, a potter, died of silicosis in 1887. Maclean worked his way through the education system, eventually obtaining an MA at Glasgow University while working as a schoolteacher. Joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1902 and became one of its leading propagandists in Scotland. Opposed the growing chauvinism of the SDF leadership as early as 1910; on the outbreak of war in 1914 he asserted that it was necessary to "develop a 'class patriotism', refusing to murder one another for a sordid world capitalism.' In opposition to Hyndman and the war, he set up the newspaper Vanguard which declared in its first issue that the war 'shows that the day of social pottering or reform is past'. Imprisoned for expressing these views in 1915, 1916 and 1918. A brilliant propagandist, he convinced many workers of the correctness of Marxist principles but was unable to intervene effectively in the enormous class battles on Clydeside during the war or to turn the syndicalist prejudices of the shop stewards in a political direction. His courageous struggle against the war achieved international recognition and in 1918 he was made honorary Soviet consul in Glasgow. However he refused to support the Third (Communist) International or to join the Communist Party but instead turned to Scottish nationalism, establishing in 1922 an abortive Scottish Workers' Republican Party. Further Reading: John Maclean Internet Archive Makhno, Nestor (1884-1934) Leader of small groups of peasants who fought Ukranian White armies and German occupation forces during the Russian civil war. He refused to integrate his forces into the Red Army and eventually his forces were broken by http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm (2 of 11) [26/08/2000 00:20:07]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma the Soviet government. Malon, Bénoit (1841-93) French Socialist, one of the founders and theoreticians of reformism. In 1865 a member of the First International. In 1871 a member of the Commune; after its fall he fled to Switzerland. He combated Marxism and stood for an eclectic theory of "integral socialism." Malthus, Thomas (1766-1834) English economist who became famous through his book, Essay on Population. He there developed the idea that population increases faster than the means of sustenence. This assertion is contradicted by facts. Engels in a letter to Danielson remarks that the opposite is the case — the means of sustenence must exist before population can grow. Marx called Malthus' pamphlet "a libel on the human race." But in spite of all the facts, the Malthusian law of population, in one form or another, still remains part of the permanent stock of bourgeois economics. Malthus was an apologist for captialism and advocated a misanthropic theory of population. Malvy, Louis (1875-1949) French Radical Socialist, was minister of the interior from 1914-17, when he was charged with negligence and exiled for five years, to Spain. In 1924 he was reelected to the Chamber of Deputies. Manilov A character in Gogol's Dead Souls, who had a very fertile imagination and loved to talk; a prattling self-complacent dreamer. Mann, Tom (1856-1941) Secretary of the British ILP, and leader of the famous 'dockers tanner' strike in Australia, which ended in victory after receiving a huge donation from Australian unionists. Mann came to Melbourne in 1903, and conducted a series of lectures on 'social problems'. He acted as a stimulus for the formation of the Victorian Socialist Party. Under his mentorship, the VSP grew to 2,000 members by 1907 when it initiated the OBU project. While advocating revolutionary socialism it, still remained inside the ALP. Mann was invited to Broken Hill, and won the craft unionists to the policy of industrial unionism. Mann later became disillusioned with the policy of 'pushing labor to the left'. On his return to Britain, took a pacifist position on the war; became a founding member of the British Communist Party in 1920. Leader of Red International of Labour Unions through which http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm (3 of 11) [26/08/2000 00:20:07]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma the CP maintained its united front with Jock Garden's group. Mao Tse Tung (1893 - 1976) The son of a peasant farmer, Mao Tse-tung was born in the village of Shao Shan, Hunan province in China. At age 27, Mao attended the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai, in July 1921. Two years later he was elected to the Central Committee of the party at the Third Congress. From 1931 to 1934, Mao helped established the Chinese Soviet Republic in SE China, and was elected as the chairman. Starting in October 1934, "The Long March" began — a retreat from the SE to NW China. In 1937, Japan opened a full war of aggression against China, which gave the Chinese Communist Party cause to unite with the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang. After defeating the Japanese, in an ensuing civil war the Communists defeated the Kuomintang, and established the People's Republic of China, in October 1949. Mao served as Chairman of the Chinese People's Republic until after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, in 1959. Still chariman of the Communist Party, in May 1966 Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution with a directive denouncing "people like Khrushchev nestling beside us." In August 1966, Mao wrote a big poster entitled "Bombard the Headquarters." Served as Party chairman until his death in 1976. Marcuse, Herbert (1898-1979) German-born U.S. political philosopher whose combination of Marxism and Freudian psychology was popular for a time among student radicals in the late 1960s. Having become a member of the Social Democratic Party while a student at the University of Freiburg, Marcuse http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm (4 of 11) [26/08/2000 00:20:07]

was a co-founder of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. He fled to Geneva in 1933 when Hitler came to power, then went to the United States in 1934, where he taught at Columbia University and became a US citizen in 1940. His Reason & Revolution, written in 1941, made an important contribution to the understanding of Hegel and his influence on Marx. An intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army during World War II, he headed the Central European Section of the Office of Intelligence Research after the war. He returned to teaching in 1951 at Columbia and Harvard, Brandeis University (1954-65), and the University of California at San Diego (1965-76), where after retirei8fter s ho

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma he was a member of the Royal Commission on Labour. Marshall's magnum opus, Principles of Economics (1890), was his most important contribution to economic literature. It was distinguished by the introduction of a number of new concepts, such as elasticity of demand, consumer's surplus, quasi-rent, and the representative firm, all of which played a major role in the subsequent development of economics. His Industry and Trade (1919) was a study of industrial organisation; Money, Credit and Commerce was published in 1923. Writing at a time when the economic world was deeply divided on the theory of value, Marshall succeeded, largely by introducing the element of time as a factor in analysis, in reconciling the classical cost-of-production principle with the marginal-utility principle formulated by William Jevons and the Austrian school. Marshall is often considered to have been in the line of descent of the great English economists - Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and J.S. Mill. Martinov, Alexander (1865-1935) Right-wing Menshevik before 1917 and for a few years after the revolution an opponent of the Soviet government. Strong advocate of the two stage theory: that fully capitalistic government needed to run its course in Russia before Socialism was possible. He joined the Communist Party in 1923, and became an opponent of the Left Opposition. He was a chief architect of the Stalinist theories used to justify subordinating the workers to the "progressive" bourgeoisie, including the concept of the "bloc of four classes." Martov, Tsederbaum, Yuli Osipovich (1873-1923) Menshevik leader. Until 1903 (at the time of the split in the Russian Socialist Democractic Labour Party), closely associated with Lenin. (editted with Lenin Iskra) A Centrist during WWI, in 1920 left Russia. Marx Family: Marx, Caroline (1824-1847): Karl Marx's sister. Marx, Edgar (Musch) (1847-1855): Karl and Jenny Marx's son who died of tuberculosis. Marx, Eduard (3824-1837): Karl Marx's brother. Marx, Eleanor (Tussy) (1855-1898):Karl Marx's youngest daughter. Tussy was a precocious youngster who showed an early interest in politics including writing to major political figures around the world as a child. Eleanor and her two sisters grew up with their father's story-telling and immersed in literature. Tussy began a life-long love of books and theater. She would later translate several works of literature as well as become a stage actress. Once engaged to Prosper Lissagary, she met Edward Aveling in 1883 and they would live together in common law for the reminder of her life. They became members of the Democratic Federation led by Henry Hyndman in the early 1880s. Tussy wrote in the draft of the program that the needed change in society will be a revolution. "The two classes at present existing will be replaced by a single class consisting of the whole of the healthy and sane members of the community, possessing all the means of production and distribution in common.". The Democratic Federation, later renamed the Social Democratic Federation broke up in 1884 over personality problems and the issue of internationalism. The Avelings and William Morris formed the Socialist League which published a monthly paper called Commonweal. In this vehicle Tussy wrote several articles and reviews on women's and other issues as well as a pamphlet entitled The Woman Question. In 1886 Tussy toured in the U.S. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm (6 of 11) [26/08/2000 00:20:07]

Encyclopedia of Marxism: Ma along with Wilhelm Liebknecht fundraising for the German Social Democratic Party and in support of the Haymarket affair. Along with continuing work translating literature and acting, she became very involved in organizing, writing, record-keeping and speaking for militant trade union such as the Gasworkers, and the Dockers Union and their struggles. In 1889 she was a delegate in Paris for the founding of the Second International. Later in her life, Tussy became very involved in organizing the part of her father's papers left to her after the death of Engels, as well as continuing her own work. During a period of depression in 1889, she commit suicide at the age of 43. For some of her translations and editing work, see the Eleanor Marx section. Marx, Franziska (1851-1852):Karl and Jenny Marx's daughter, died in infancy. Marx, Heinrich (1777-1838):Lawyer in Trier, Karl Marx's father. Marx, Heinrich Guido (Foxchen) (1849-1850):Karl and Jenny Marx's son, died in infancy. Marx, Henriette (1787-1863):Karl Marx's mother. Marx, Henriette (1820-1856): Karl Marx's sister. Marx, Hermann (1819-1842):Karl Marx's brother. Marx, Laura (1845-l9ll):(see also Lafargue, Laura) Karl and Jenny Marx's daughter who married Paul Lafargue. Marx, Louise (1821-1893):Karl Marx's sister, wife of Johann Carel Juta. Marx, Sophie (181-1883): Karl Marx's sister, wife of Wilhelm Robert Schmalhausen. Marx, Jenny von Westphalen (1814-1881) Karl Marx's wife. See also the Jenny von Westphalen section in the Women and Marxism page. Marx, Jenny (Jennychen) (1844-1883) (Also Longuet, Jenny) Karl and Jenny Marx's eldest daughter, married to Charles Longuet. In 1870 she took action in the Irish struggles by publishing in a French paper revelations of the treatment of the Irish political prisoners by the English bourgeoisie; by this means she forced the Gladstone government to conduct an investigation into the question. She wrote under the name of ".J. Williams." See also the Jenny Longuet section in the Women and Marxism page. Marx, Karl (1818-1883) "And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production [See: Historical Materialism] (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless socie

KARL MARX by Frederick Engels Short bio based on Engels' version written at the end of July 1868 for the German literary newspaper Die Gartenlaube -- whose editors decided against using it.