When in 1859 the Franco-Austrian War about Italy broke out, Marx denounced it as a Franco-Russian intrigue, directed against Germany on the one hand and the revolutionary movement in France on the other. He opposed those democrats who supported a war which in their eyes aimed at the independence of the Italian nation and promised to weaken Austria, whose superiority in Ger many was the hindrance to German unity. Violent derogatory remarks directed against him by the well-known nationalist Karl Vogt gave occasion to a not less violent rejoinder, Herr Vogt, a book full of interesting material for the student of modern history. Marx's contention, that Vogt acted as an agent of the Bonapartist clique, seems to have been well founded, whilst it must be an open question how far Vogt acted from dishonourable motives. The dis cussions raised by the war also resulted in a great estrangement between Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassalle had taken a simi lar view of the war to that advocated by Vogt, and fought tooth and nail for it in letters to Marx.
In the same year, 1859, Marx published as a' first result of his renewed economic studies the book Zur Kritik der politischen okonomie. It was the first part of a much larger work planned to cover the whole ground of political economy. But Marx found that the arrangement of his materials did not fully answer his purpose, and that many details had still to be worked out. He consequently altered the whole plan and sat down to rewrite the book, of which in 1867 he published the first volume under the title Das Kapital.
But this condition of things was not permitted to go on. The anarchist agitation of Bakunin, the Franco-German War, and the Paris Commune created a state of things before which the Inter national succumbed. Passions and prejudices ran so high that it proved impossible to maintain any sort of centralized federation. At the congress of The Hague, Sept. 1872, the general council was removed from London to New York. But this was only a make shift, and in July 1876 the remains of the old International were formally dissolved at a conference held in Philadelphia. That its spirit had not passed away was shown by subsequent international congresses, and by the growth and character of socialist labour parties in different countries. They have mostly founded their programmes on the basis of its principles, but are not always in their details quite in accordance with Marx's views. Thus the
programme which the German socialist party accepted at its con gress in 1875 was very severely criticized by Marx. This criticism, reprinted in 1891 in the review Die neue Zeit, is of great impor tance for the analysis of Marx's conception of socialism.
The dissolution of the International gave Marx opportunity of returning to his scientific work. He did not, however, succeed in publishing further volumes of Das Kapital. In order to make it —and especially the part dealing with property in land—as complete as possible, he took up, as Engels tells us, a 'number of new studies, but repeated illness interrupted his researches, and on March 14, 1883, he passed quietly away. He lies buried in Highgate cemetery.
Of his six children only three girls grew up: Jenny, who married Charles Longuet ; Laura, who married Paul Lafargue; and Elea nor, who lived for many years an unhappy life with Edward Aveling. (E. BN.) Marxist Theory.—The starting point of Marx's theory of Socialism is his doctrine of the class struggle. This provides the clue to the two doctrines chiefly associated with his name—the materialist conception of history and the theory of surplus value. The former of these, though it underlies all his thinking, is nowhere systematically expounded in his books. The latter is the main theme of his chief work, Das Kapital.
Marx's materialist conception of history has been often mis understood. It is far from being merely the doctrine that eco nomic forces are predominant in the direction of social affairs, though this is involved in it. Still less is it the doctrine that individual men act only from material motives, and this is not even involved in it at all. Marx's theory must be confounded neither with the views of writers like Buckle on the effect of physical environment on the course of history, nor with the utilitarian doctrines of Bentham and his followers. In essence, Marx contended that there exist, in any society, certain material "forces of production" and a certain knowledge of their use in man's service. These form the "conditions of production," and for their employment there is required an arrangement of the powers of society, implying a certain relationship among the members, and the establishment and maintenance of appropriate social institutions. If, for example, at a particular stage of development the "forces of production" are to be fully ex ploited, certain forms of private property must be recognized and secured, and certain members of society endowed with authority both over the material means of production and over the other members, who must accept the subordinate role assigned to them by the dictates of economic circumstance. This recognition and this authority imply and require a power able to enforce them ; and this power is found in the State, which takes its special form from the character of the economic institutions it exists in order to uphold. Political and social institutions are thus dependent upon and derive their special forms from the underlying economic circumstances of the society in which they exist. Political power is a derivative power, depending for its validity and survival on its correspondence with the needs forced on men by the conditions of production.