The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 14, 1932, Page 5

WHEN THE IDEA PENE- TRATES THE MASSES, 114th ANNIVERSARY OF IT BECOMES POWER — MARX lorker THE BIRTH OF Party U. S. A. KARL MARX (Section of the Communist International) NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 14, 1932 (in Two Sections—Section Two) RKEas’ Al FATHER Lanse Friedrich Engels’ Speech ai } Funeral of Karl Marx the On March i4th, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the great- est of living thinkers ceased to think. He had been left alone for barely two minutes; but when we entered his room we found that, seated in his chair, he had quietly gone to sleep—forever. The loss which his death has in- flicted upon the fighting proletariat in Europe and America, and upon the science of history, is immeas- urable. The gaps that will be made by the death of this titan will soon be felt. Just as Darwin discovered the law | of evolution in organic nature, so{ Marx discovered the law of evolu- tion in human history. He discov- ered the simple fact (heretofore hidden beneath ideological excres- cences) that human beings must have food and drink, clothing and | Shelter, first of all, before they can | interest themselves in __ politics, science, art, religion, and the like. This implies that the production of the immediately requisite material }means of subsistence, and there- with the existent economic develop- mental phase of a nation epoch, constitute the foundation | upon which the State institutions, the legal outlooks, the artistic and | even the religious ideas of those concerned have been built up. It! implies that these latter must be explained out of the former, where_ as usually the former have been explained as issuing from the latter. Nor was this ail. Marx likewise discovered the special law of motion | proper to the contemporary capital- ist method of production and to they bourgeois society which that meth- | od of production has brought into | | | being. The discovery of surplus | | value suddenly threw light here, | whereas all previous investigators | (socialist critics no less than bour- | | geoigs economists) had been groping | jin the dark. ; Two such discoveries might suf- fice for one man’s lifetime. Fortu- nate is he who is privileged to make even one discovery so outstanding. But in every field he studied (the elds were many, and the studies were exhaustive), Marx made inde- pendent discoveries—even in mathe- matics. I have pictured the man of science. But the man of science was still only half the man. For | yn Marx, science .was a motive force es | Of Histoty, was a revolutionary force. 2S Wlities Yin Saeko ee Allah ev a | eS LINN TLL I I . BEFORE ALL ELSE, MARX | WAS A REVOLUTIONIST }mission in life. QF. ON} 2 which had not and perhaps never would have a practical application, he experienced a joy of a very dif- fesent kind when he was concerned | with a discovery which would forth- with exert a revolutionary influence on industry, on historical evolution in general. For instance, he paid close attention to the advances of electrical science, and, of late years, to the discoveries of Marcel Deprez. For, before all else, Marx was a revolutionist. ‘To collaborate in one way or another in the overthrow of ! capitalist society and of the State institutions created by that society; to collaborate in the freeing of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to inspire with a conscious- ness of its needs, with a knowledge |of the conditions requisite for its emancipation —this was his true Fighting was his natural element. Few men ever fought with so much passion, tena- city, and suecess. His work on the “Rheinische Zeitung” in 1842, on the Parisian “Vorwaerts” in 1844, on the “Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung” in 1847, on the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” in 1848 and 1849, on the “New York Tribune” from 1852 to | 1861; a great number of pamphlets; The Communists -- Most Resolute | ‘Working-Class Section of the The Communists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sec- tarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement. The Communists are distin- guished from ‘the other work- ing class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the differ- ent countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they al- ways and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every. country, that section which pishes forward all rr or multifarious activities in Paris, Brussels and London; finally, as! crown of his labors, the foundation | }of the International Workingmen’s | Association: there you have his record. Had Marx done nothing} but found the International, there was an achievement of which he might well have been proud. Because he was an active revol@- tionist, Marx was the most hated and the most calumniated man of his time. He was shown the door by| various governments, republican as | well as absolute. ~ Bourgeois, ultra- democrats as well as conservatives, vied with one another in spreading libels about him. He brushed these aside like cobwebs, ignored them, only troubled to answer them when he positively had to. Yet he has gone down to his death honored, jloved and mourned by millions of | revolutionary workers all over the world, in Europe and Asia as far eastward as the Siberian mines, and in America as far westward as/| California. I can boldly assert that, | while he may still have many ad- | versaries, he has now hardly one personal enemy. His name and his works will live on through the centuries, { others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proie- tariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement You are horrified at our in- tending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is al- ready done away with for nine- tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the neces- sary condition for whose exis- tence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society. In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away : with your property. Precisély. so; that is just what we intend. From The Communist Manifesto,