Well, who was Karl Marx or who is Karl Marx, for he seems to live on with his ideas? Yet such bitterly conflicting opinions about Karl Marx, why? So we'll meet and talk with some people who knew Karl Marx or might have known him. (Introductions to individuals role-playing people living during the period)

A memorial to Karl Marx buried in exile in London. A more significant memorial to the power of his ideas was the appearance only 17 years after his death of a new underground newspaper in Russia, Iskra--the spark--December 1900. Editor: Lenin. Policy: Marxist. Motto: "Out of the spark will come a conflagration."

In the hands of Lenin, Marx's ideas did spark a conflagration and Marxism came to power in Russia in 1917. The flames of that revolution spread. Today, little more than 50 years after that first conflagration in Russia, one third (now about 20 per cent) of the world is ruled under the banner of Marxism.

It was the swiftest and most widespread growth of power the world has ever seen and all in the name of the doctrines of Karl Marx. What is the power of these doctrines? How did it happen?

Karl Heinrich Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, a small town in Germany, the son of a prosperous lawyer who had great hopes for his boy's success in that middle-class society. Young Marx attended university in Bonn and Berlin, getting into some student scrapes, drunkenness, and dueling.

As a student, Marx naturally came under the influence of the fashionable ideas of the German philosopher, Hegel, who developed the concept of dialectics, the synthesis of a new idea from the struggle of opposed old ideas. A concept that was to greatly influence Marx.

"You are talking of a historical figure. I think you should speak also of the man." Jenny Marx, born Baroness VonDesparlin: "Karl and I were married after a 7-year courtship. I was 4 years older than him, you know. He was a great man. A strange man. Did you know he once wrote poetry?"

He has his dark moments, but he wrote poems of love, too. We have a difficult life--hard and poor, very poor. But it is not without moments of happiness.

While still a student, Marx abandoned in turn his studies of law, poetry, and academic philosophy. He said, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it!" At 24, Marx had found his goal.

What was this world that Marx was determined to change? The Victorian period was a time of great new forces. Science was transforming man's understanding of his world. It was also questioning his origins and the very roots of his faith. Industrialization with its machines was changing the way men worked and lived. The new middle class, the bourgeoisie, had destroyed the absolute power of the kings. Their loyalty was no longer to their rulers but to their nations and to industrial expansion.

In their clubs, they said, "Where there is muck, there is brass--dirt makes money." It was a confident, prosperous time--but not for the workers. For them, the Industrial Revolution often brought a life that was more brutal and poor than before. There was fertile ground for revolutionary political theories among the cruelly exploited workers.

"Dr. Thomas Lee, Medical Officer of Health, Manchester: my investigations show that the average age of death of the middle and upper-classes in Manchester is 38. The average age of death of the laboring class is 17. On the average, then, the middle and upper classes live more than twice as long as the laboring class."

"George Cooper millhand--- I just finished my shift - a machine tender up at mill. Jenny is up there now and Humans--all except little Billy. He's only five. We all jump to it when the whistle blows. How long do the young ones work, George? Same as me--14 hours."

(Owner) " Cut the workday to 12 hours? You must be mad. It's in those last two hours that I make my profit; and if I don't make a profit, there won't be any jobs for them. You can't tamper with the system." (This is classical liberalism.)

(George Cooper) "And now I hear they are laying them off next week, the bleeders. And the rent is behind. It's no use. It was better for us all before those damned machines."

Industrialization fascinated Marx. He was one of the first to recognize the significance of the machine age. He studied the Industrial Revolution in England as a scientist would and developed a theory of history that was to change the world. In the same way that Darwin's laws of evolution dictate man's biological development, says Marx, so scientific laws dictate man's historical development.

Marx's theory was as revolutionary and influential as Darwin's and essentially as simple. Individual man has been concerned mainly with his own livelihood, said Marx. He does not shape history nor is history determined by chance rather it is subject to laws--the laws of economics. The realities of economics have produced our philosophers and scientists, our geniuses, our proudest accomplishments. Political leaders arise from the realities of economics, which color every aspect of our lives and our beliefs.

All the things in which man glories are born of economics. All of our achievements, our history are dictated by the way man produces and divides wealth. The basic law of history is the conflict between the exploiters and the exploited. Marx called this the "class struggle." Always the exploited finally overthrow their exploiters and a new society is born. But always a new class of exploiters develops to exact their tribute from those below them.

The long reign of the feudal aristocracy was opposed by the bourgeoisie, the new class that finally came to control the trading and manufacturing towns, which grew up in the middle ages. The bourgeoisie sparked the Industrial Revolution and the new capitalism, which exploited the workers. Marx also, in turn, believed that capitalism was essential for without capitalism, industrialization would have been impossible.

But the confident bourgeoisie will not retain their wealth--they are doomed to be overthrown. By whom? The new working class: the proletariat. Why? Marx's law says that the capitalist can only pay his workers just enough to keep them alive. These laws also say that the poverty of the proletariat must get worse and worse. There is no escape from this cycle. Because of these and other inherent weaknesses, capitalism will begin to fall apart. When the historical process is complete, but not until then, the class-conscious proletariat will overthrow its oppressors, the bourgeoisie, in a final revolution. Then, says Marx, socialism will inevitably replace capitalism. Everything will be run on behalf of the workers--the dictatorship of the proletariat. Under benevolent State ownership, there will be plenty for everyone.

Finally, said Marx, the elements of control--even the State itself, no longer needed--will whither away and socialism will give away to the final system--to communism. Marx did not describe his ideal state in any detail. That was in the future. Marxism is not really about Socialism or Communism. Its chief concern is industrialization.

Marx's theories had great appeal. They dealt with that looming fact, industrialization. They appealed for human freedom and justice.

Friedrich Engels, German born and resident in England: I am a capitalist myself or rather half of me is. Partner in a textile mill in Manchester. Though most of my profits go to the cause of Communism, partner with Karl Marx. Sometimes it's even difficult for me to know what he wrote and what I wrote, but he is the genius. I was meant to play second fiddle.

"Michael Bakunin ---Nobleman and Revolutionary Anarchist): Bills, bills, bills. We must smash the military bureaucratic, smash the State. Anything that limits personal liberty is evil! Any violent disruption of authority is good!"

Friedrich: "No - not your sort of blind destruction. Now science must....".

Bakunin: "Fine, we'll scientifically destroy the State. We'll get rid of law, order, property, and authority...."

Friedrich "Get rid of property, yes, but anarchism is an emotion not an ideology. Emotion is dust in the eyes. You will achieve nothing without a doctrine. Nothing but noise and excitement. There must be a revolution--a bloody revolution. Yes. But it will only succeed if it is based on doctrine--our doctrine."

Bloody revolutions came and they swept Europe in 1848. They were popular uprisings or outbursts of nationalist feelings, without clear political aim--without doctrine, but they seized the imaginations of young people everywhere.

A hundred thousand took to the streets - viva la France! viva la France! Overnight the barricades went up. We drove off the king's troops, and we marched. Viva la republic!

Marx made it clear that his ideas played no part in these revolutions but in Belgium, where he was then living, he did take personal action.

Jenny Marx: "Karl had just inherited six thousand gold francs, the only large sum of money we ever had. He gave five thousand francs to buy arms for the Belgium workers, and he taught them revolutionary tactics. The secret police found him out, and we were both jailed and exiled again. Finally there was no place left for us to go but London, and here we have stayed."

The revolutions of 1848 disintegrated into confusion, failure, and renewed oppression. But, for the defeated, Marx had a stirring message: the Communist Manifesto. The Communist Manifesto was not a factor in the 1848 revolutions, it was a bomb with a delayed fuse that, in time, would shake the whole world. Like Marx's basic doctrine, the Manifesto backed social change with scientific analysis. That appealed to 19^th century reformers with their strong belief in scientific methods. It was also a cry for action. That appealed to revolutionaries.

The Manifesto is to Marx's full doctrines, somewhat like a national anthem to a country. It swept his ideas to millions of waiting minds. "Let the ruling class tremble at the Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of all lands unite."

But Marx did not see that already the Manifesto was outdated. Capitalism was changing. New wealth, created by industrialization, was radically altering society. Said Engels, "In only 100 years, the bourgeoisie has created greater productive forces than have all the preceding generations together. Fight on bravely, then, gentlemen of capital. Your factories and your trade must lay the foundation for the liberation of the proletariat. Your reward shall be a brief time of rule, but remember the hangman's foot is on the threshold."

The hangman did not come. As the workers' lot improved in England, Marxism did not become a serious force there. In European countries even Marxists began to seek their goals through negotiations with employers and by political action rather than by revolution.

(An older George Cooper) "Thinks are looking up. There will be no more grinding of the edges of the poor. No thanks to the owners--it's the union. I'm shop steward now, ya know. Them muckety mucks are now listening for a change…ten-hour day and a thicker wage packet. A fair days work for a fair days pay, that's what I always say."

In most of Europe, Marxism was not taking hold. There was, though, one great nation where the ground for revolution remained fertile--Russia. Russia in most ways was still a feudal country of peasants and aristocratic landlords ruled by the Tsar of all the Russians. But Russia was restless with a strong tradition of anarchy and terrorism that had been ruthlessly suppressed. Lenin, armed with the doctrines of Marx, revived the hopes of Russian revolutionaries. Without him, Marxism might have failed or been softened, as in Europe.

To the teachings of Marx, Lenin added the Russian revolutionary fire and love of conspiracy. According to Marx's doctrines, tsarist Russia was not ready for the final revolution. Capitalism was at an early stage, industrialization was primitive. Revolution must wait, said many Marxists. But Russia was a vulnerable country. World War I exposed that vulnerability. Fifty years earlier a Russian revolutionary had made a prediction: what is needed to make Russia fall into fragments? Not much. Two or three military defeats, some peasant uprisings, an open revolt of the Capital."

The German army supplied the military defeats. The guns of a mutinous Russian fleet supplied the open revolt.

In 1917, Russia did fall into fragments. The tsarist state vanished and into the vacuum, taking a huge non-Marxist gamble, moved Lenin and his radical party, the Bolsheviks. Lenin had many rivals to power in the confusion that followed but with ruthless skill and determination, he triumphed. Friedrich Engels could have predicted it. "The Communists have the advantage of clearly understanding the line of advance, the conditions, and the ultimate results of the movement."

To Lenin, the line of march was clear: modernize, industrialize, and build a strong central state. Copy the capitalist. To do that, Lenin soon stamped out the democratic and anarchist elements among the revolutionaries.

(Communist Bureaucrat) "The Moscow head of the Extraordinary commission to Combat Counter-revolutionism and Sabotage"reported an incident yesterday in a tavern where a criticism was made of the Bolsheviks. Members who were present were forced to shoot seven of these hooligans and this brings to 6,300 official executions this year. As Comrade Lenin says, "great problems in the life of nations are decided are decided by force."

Gunner 1^st Class formerly of Cruiser Aurora: "Our guns help make the revolution, and that is a fact. Do you know that Comrade Lenin called us the pride and beauty of the revolution. That was four years ago November and now I rot here and most of my comrades slaughtered by the red army. I'm sure that Comrade Lenin cannot know." What happened? Can you tell us? "We were stationed at the base at Kronstat. We demonstrated and made demands. They called in mutiny." What did you seek? "Little enough. We sought freedom of action for all political parties of the land. We sought freedom for the peasants to do what they like with their land. We sought equal food rations for everybody. We sought the end of special privilege for the Bolsheviks."

(Communist Bureaucrat) "The Communist Party said things which the working class does not understand completely today but which they will understand tomorrow."

The Communist officials set about to make Russia into a 20^th century centralized, industrialized state. Trying to do in a few years what had taken Western Europe almost 100 years. To a large extent, they succeeded but Karl Marx would not have recognized in the drabness of the human values…the Marxist socialist nation he envisioned.

(Bakunin) "Dictatorship of the proletariat, directing the masses like chickens running in the field, how could Marx fail to see that it would defray all these people's hopes?"

Marxism, wherever it has taken hold, has meant material progress sometimes, but always at the cost of personal freedom and human values--the reverse of what Marx foresaw. Yet, his ideas seem still to be attractive to many today--especially in underdeveloped nations struggling out of poverty. "Our people must own their own land, own their own factories, own their own mines."

Latin American Marxist and fighter for freedom: "You have seen my country? What did you see? Did you see the slums in the plantations? What do you offer? Birth control and handouts for happy peasants."

In nations where Marxism is deeply rooted or in those where it is only beginning, the theories of Karl Marx seem always to bring with them both promise and tragedy and the same bedeviling arguments about the man and his ideas that have always been there.

"History is on our side. Marx is a visionary." "A Marxists state would consist of slavery within an interminable war with God." "Why am I still in prison; what happened to our revolution?"