Karl Marx
German political philosopher and economist (1818–1883)
Also known as: Marx, Marxist
Karl Marx (1818–1883), German political philosopher and co-author with Friedrich Engels of The Communist Manifesto (1848), is the figure Quigley most frequently engages as a rival theoretical framework to his own. Quigley treats him both as the intellectual taproot of Leninism and the Soviet project, and as one of the philosophers of history whose dialectical-historicist scheme he positions himself against.
Class struggle and the proletariat
Quigley's compact statement of Marx's central thesis runs as follows: "about 1850" Marx "formed his ideas of an inevitable class struggle in which the group of owners would become fewer and fewer and richer and richer while the mass of workers became poorer and poorer but more and more numerous, until finally the mass would rise up" and expropriate the owners (T&H 56). The Communist Manifesto, with its "ominous sentence, 'A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism'" (T&H 389), is treated as the foundational text of the international socialist movement. Quigley distinguishes between the "strict followers of Karl Marx [who] came to be known as Communists" and the "more moderate" Social Democrats who revised the framework for changing conditions (T&H 390). The Marxist line entered Russian intellectual life in the 1880s and 1890s — the autocracy itself, Quigley notes, "lifted the censorship to allow Marxist theory to circulate, in the belief that it would alleviate terrorist pressure" (T&H 105).
Quigley's critique
Quigley's substantive disagreement with Marx is methodological. In Evolution of Civilizations he distances himself from any "ideologic dialectic culminating in the present or immediate future in a homeostatic condition" — "he saw Hegel and Marx as presumptuous, in error, and outside the Western tradition" in this respect (EoC 10–11). In the lectures the verdict is direct: "I have nothing against Marx, except that his theories do not explain what happened, and this, to me, is a fatal defect" (Lectures 40). In The Anglo-American Establishment Quigley makes the point politically: "The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic incentives, and their imperialism was motivated not at all by the desire to preserve or extend capitalism" (AAE 110). The Milner Group's appeasement, by contrast, was driven in part by "the Marxist threat to the British economic system, and the Milner Group was not wedded nearly as closely to that system as Chamberlain and his friends" (AAE 247) — a class-political reading of British inter-war diplomacy that subordinates Marx's framework to a more network-specific analysis.
Cited in
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 56 Quigley
Karl Marx, about 1850, formed his ideas of an inevitable class struggle in which the group of owners would become fewer and fewer and richer and richer while the mass of workers became poorer and poorer.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 389 Quigley
The publication in 1848 of The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This work, which began with the ominous sentence, 'A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism.'
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 390 Quigley
The strict followers of Karl Marx came to be known as Communists, while the more moderate [were called Social Democrats].
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 10 Quigley
He saw Hegel and Marx as presumptuous, in error, and outside the Western tradition in their analysis of history as an ideologic dialectic culminating in the present or immediate future in a homeostatic condition.
- quigley-lectures · p. 40 Quigley
I have nothing against Marx, except that his theories do not explain what happened, and this, to me, is a fatal defect.
- anglo-american-establishment · p. 110 Quigley
The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic incentives.