as leaders in the new-born working-class movement, in endeav-
ouring to organize the " proletariat " for the winning of control
over industry and over the machinery of Society. The Grand
National Consolidated Trades Union, in which Owenite ideas
played so large a part, was organized by men who were aiming
not merely at the protection of the working class in face of
the adverse conditions created by the new factory system, but
at a definite transformation of the industrial order and the
winning of control over industry for the " productive classes."
This aim was even more clearly defined in the other great
" Owenite " union of the period, the Builder's Union, and its
abortive plan of 1833 for the formation of a Grand National Gild
of Builders. The Chartist movement, which was largely in-
fluenced by Owenite and Socialist ideas, was definitely aiming at
the conquest of political power by the organized working class
with a view to social transformation.
Socialism in Great Britain thus came into existence as: (i) a challenge to the orthodox economic theories of Ricardo and other writers; and (2) an attempt to win power in Society for the organized working class. It was, however, left for later thinkers, and above all for Karl Marx (1818-83), to take up where they had been dropped by the original English pioneers both the anti- capitalist economic teachings and the endeavour to build up the working-class movement into a constructive force aiming at the transformation of the social order. The Socialism of Karl Marx is frequently- contrasted with the Socialism of previous thinkers as being " scientific," whereas their Socialism was " Utopian." But, in fact, Marx's Socialism was very largely based upon that of the earlier thinkers and working-class leaders, although he for the first time formulated into a definite system the views and the policy which they had only suggested and sought after.
All modern Socialism, even that of the schools which repudiate or at least profess no allegiance to Marx, has been profoundly influenced by him. This applies even to those schools of Anar- chist Communists and French and Italian Syndicalists who seem to have least in common with Marxian teaching; for, even in their case, many Marxian ideas have blended with the ideas which they have derived from other Socialist and (fttasi-Socialist thinkers, such as P. J. Proudhon; and, although they have in- terpreted the Marxian teaching differently, a great deal of it has found its way into their systems and policies.
Marx's first important contribution to Socialist thinking, The Communist Manifesto (1847), which was drafted jointly by him and Friedrich Engels, is generally recognized as the starting point of the modern Socialist movement. His Das Kapital, of which the first volume was published in 1867, is the working-out into a system of the most vital ideas originally presented in The Communist Manifesto. These works have, of course, been trans- lated into practically all European languages, and their ideas have generally passed into the common stock of European Social- ist thought. This has hitherto been true of Great Britain in a less degree than of any other important industrial country; but even English Socialism began in the 'eighties on an essentially Marxian foundation, and, although Marx fell into disfavour with British Socialists in the 'nineties and in the earlier years of the present century, there has recently been an important revival of the study of his works among the more radical section of the British working-class movement. In other countries the or- ganized Socialist movement is in practically all cases definitely Marxian, and bases its thinking and its propaganda throughout on Marxian terminology and Marxian ideas. Thus we find that, as divergent currents have again and again appeared in European Socialism, the name of Marx and his fundamental conceptions have been invoked, for the purpose of justifying widely divergent policies and conceptions. During the past few years, for example, a great pamphleteering controversy has been proceeding between Nikolai Lenin on the one side and Karl Kautsky on the other, representing two very different tendencies in European Socialism. Each of these writers bases his conten- tions on an almost theological reverence for the words of Marx, and seeks to justify his position by copious quotations from Marx's books and manifestos.
In the criticism which has been directed against Marx by or- thodox economists in many countries, attention has been paid mainly to his theory of value, and only in a considerably less degree to his theory of history. This is unfortunate; for there is no doubt that the theory of value has played a quite secondary part to the so-called " materialist conception of history " in the influence which Marx's teaching has exercised on the modern working-class movement. The theory of value, as it was pre- sented by Marx, and his attempt to build a theoretical economic system on the idea of labour as the source of value and exploi- tation as consisting in the appropriation by a privileged class, the owners of the means of production, of the surplus value created by labour, was mainly a criticism and inversion, to suit Socialist ends, of the current economics of Marx's own day. Like Thompson and the earlier English economists to whom he owed so much, Marx took the Ricardian theory of value and drew from it conclusions by no means acceptable to orthodox economic theorists. Undoubtedly his ideas of " surplus value," and ex- ploitation resulting from the individual appropriation of " sur- plus value," played an important part in creating the sense of injustice and oppression among the workers; but by themselves they would never have sufficed to give Marx his dominant posi- tion as the theorist of modern Socialism.
This position depends far more on his theory of history, the effect of which was to give to those members of the working class who encountered his teaching the sense of possessing a mis- sion and of having on their side the great world forces of social transformation. Interpreting historical changes as the result of the operation of economic forces, Marx insisted that to each stage in the evolution of the means of production there corresponds an evolution in the forms of political society and in the class struc- ture of society. The industrial system of the i9th century, he claimed, had called into existence a new social class, the property- less, wage-earning "proletariat"; for, although there had been capitalists and wage-earners in earlier stages of social evolution, the economic structure of Society had not before been based upon the dominance of the capitalists as a class. Nor had the " proletariat " been called into existence as a class, confronting the possessing capitalists throughout the industrial system in all the countries of the world which had reached the capitalist phase. The next stage in social evolution, according to Marx, would be the rise to power of the " proletariat," and, just as the capitalists had risen to power and displaced or absorbed the privileged classes with which social authority had previously rested, so the " proletariat " under the system of large-scale indus- try would improve its organization and increase its strength until it was able to do battle with, and to overthrow, the capital- ist class. In expounding this theory of "economic determinism" or the " materialist conception of history," Marx made a number of prophecies concerning the actual future of capitalist indus- trialism which have not thus far been at all completely verified. The progressive elimination of the small capitalist, the aggrega- tion of the control of capital into fewer and fewer hands, the progressive " misery " of the " proletariat," which Marx prophe- sied, are forecasts in which truth and falsehood are intertwined. But these prophecies concerning the actual course of events are in no sense vital to his central idea, which is that of the gradual rise to power of the " proletariat " or working class, and the con- quest by it of economic authority, resulting necessarily in the transformation of the political structure of Society and in the abolition of social classes.
It is easy to see that this doctrine was bound to exercise a strong fascination over the minds of those men and women of the working classes who were brought into contact with it. Whereas, without some such theory they were conscious only of the enormous strength of the forces to which they were subject, and of their manifest weakness as almost property-less wage- earners, living in constant insecurity, at the mercy of trade fluctuations which resulted periodically in widespread unemploy- ment, Marx gave them the sense of fulfilling an historic mission, and of having on their side a world-force far more powerful than the huge economic and political strength which seemed to be in
