safely said that, its premisses accepted, it is most ingeniously and
most consistently worked out. And since its principal contention
is in any case so far true that the wage-earning workers as a whole
produce more than they receive, the theory has the great merit
of demonstrating in an admirably lucid way the relations between
wages and surplus-produce and the growth and movements of capital.
But the theory of labour-value as the determining factor of the
exchange or market value of commodities can with justification be
disputed, and is surely not more true than those theories of value
based on social demand or utility. Marx himself, in placing in the
third volume what he calls the law of value in the background and
setting out the formation of the “price of production” as the
empirical determinator of prices in modern society, justifies those who
look upon the conception of labour-value as an abstract formula
which does not apply to individual exchanges of commodities at
all, but which only serves to show an imagined typical example
of what in reality to-day is only true with regard to the production
of the whole of social wealth. Thus understood, the conception of
labour-value is quite unobjectionable, but it loses much of the significance
attributed to it by most of the disciples of Marx and occasionally
by Marx himself. It is a means of analysing and exemplifying surplus
labour, but quite inconclusive as to the proof of the surplus
value, or as an indication of the degree of the exploitation of the
workers. This becomes the more apparent the more the reader
advances in the second and third volumes of Das Kapital, where
commercial capital, money capital and ground rent are dealt with.
Though full of fine observations and deductions, they form, from a
revolutionary standpoint, an anti-climax to the first volume. It is
difficult to see how, after all that is explained there on the functions
of the classes that stand between industrial employers and workers,
Marx could have returned to those sweeping conclusions with which
the first volume ends.
The great scientific achievement of Marx lies, then, not in these conclusions, but in the details and yet more in the method and principles of his investigations in his philosophy of history. Here he has, as is now generally admitted, broken new ground and opened new ways and new outlooks. Nobody before him had so clearly shown the rôle of the productive agencies in historical evolution; nobody so masterfully exhibited their great determining influence on the forms and ideologies of social organisms. The passages and chapters dealing with this subject form, notwithstanding occasional exaggerations, the crowning parts of his works. If he has been justly compared with Darwin, it is in these respects that he ranks with that great genius, not through his value theory, ingenious though it be. With the great theorist of biological transformation he had also in common the indefatigable way in which he made painstaking studies of the minutest details connected with his researches. In the same year as Darwin’s epoch-making work on the origin of species there appeared also Marx’s work Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, where he explains in concise sentences in the preface that philosophy of history which has for the theory of the transformation or evolution of social organisms the same significance that the argument of Darwin had for the theory of the transformation of biological organisms.
Bibliography.—The main writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are as follow (we give only the titles of the original works and of their English translations): (1) Of Karl Marx alone: La Misère de la philosophie, réponse à la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon (Paris, 1847; new ed., 1892; English ed., The Poverty of Philosophy, London, 1900); Lohnarbeit und Kapital, pamphlet, written 1848 (new ed., Berlin, 1891); English ed., Wage, Labour and Capital (London, 1900); Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, 1848 to 1850 (Berlin, 1895); Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte (New York, 1852; 3rd ed., Hamburg, 1889; Eng. ed., New York, 1889); Enthüllungen über den Kölner Kommunistenprozess (Basel, 1852; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1885); “European Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions” (reprints from the New York Tribune, 1851–1852; London, 1897); “The Eastern Question” (reprints from the New York Tribune, 1853–1856; London, 1898); Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin, 1859; new ed., Stuttgart, 1897); Herr Vogt (London, 1860); Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association (London, 1864); Value, Price and Profit (written 1865, published London, 1898); Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (3 vols., Hamburg, 1867, 1885 and 1895; Eng. ed. of 1st vol., 1886); The Civil War in France, 1871 (London, 1871; new ed., 1894); L’Alliance de la démocratie socialiste (London, 1873); articles printed or reprinted in Rheinische Zeitung (1842–1843), Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (Paris, 1844), Das westphälische Dampfboot (Bielefeld und Paderborn, 1845–1848), Der Gesellschaftsspiegel (Elberfeld, 1846), Deutsche brüsseler Zeitung (Brussels, 1847), Neue rheinische Zeitung (daily, Cologne, 1848–1849; monthly, Hamburg, 1850), The People (London, 1852–1858), The New York Tribune (New York, 1853–1860), The Free Press (Sheffield and London, 1856–1857), Das Volk (London, 1859), Der Vorbote (Geneva, 1866–1875), Der Volkstaat (Leipzig, 1869–1876), Die Neue Zeit (Stuttgart, 1883, sqq.); Sozialistische Monatshefte (Berlin, 1895, sqq.). (2) Of Friedrich Engels alone: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England (Leipzig, 1845; new ed., Stuttgart, 1892; Eng. ed., London, 1892); Zur Wohnungsfrage (Leipzig, 1873–1874; new ed., Zürich-Berlin, 1887); Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (Leipzig, 1877; 3rd ed., Stuttgart, 1894). Three chapters of the first-named are published in English under the title Socialism, Utopian and Scientific (London, 1892). Der Ursprung des Eigenthums, der Familie und des Staates (Zürich and Stuttgart, 1885 and 1892); Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Stuttgart, 1886). Introductions to most of the posthumous works of K. Marx and articles in the same periodicals as Marx. (3) Of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels together: Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik (Frankfurt, 1845); Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (London, 1848; Eng. ed., 1848 and 1888). (4) With regard to Marx generally, his theory and his school, see J. Stammhammer, Bibliographie des Sozialismus und Kommunismus (Jena, 1893); and Th. G. Masaryk, Die philosophischen und soziologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus (Vienna, 1899). Much biographical and bibliographical information on Marx and Engels is to be found in Dr Franz Mehring, Geschichte der deutschen Sozialdemokratie (Stuttgart, 1897–1898), and in the collection, edited also by Dr Fr. Mehring, Aus dem literarischen Nachlass von Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels und Ferdinand Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1902). Of the criticisms of Marx’s economics, one of the most comprehensive is E. von Boehm-Bawerk’s Karl Marx and the Close of his System (London, 1898). Marx’s historic theory is, apart from Masaryk, very exhaustively analysed by R. Stammler in Wirthschaft und Recht (Leipzig, 1896). (E. Bn.)
MARY[1] (Μαρία, Μαριάμ), the mother of Jesus. At the time when the gospel history begins, she had her home in Galilee, at the village of Nazareth. Of her parentage nothing is recorded in any extant historical document of the 1st century, for the genealogy in Luke iii. (cf. i. 27) is manifestly that of Joseph. In early life she became the wife of Joseph (q.v.) and the mother of Jesus Christ; that she afterwards had other children is a natural inference from Matt. i. 25, which the evangelists, who frequently allude to “the brethren of the Lord,” are at no pains to obviate. The few incidents mentioned in Scripture regarding her show that she followed our Lord to the very close of His earthly career with unfailing motherliness, but the “Magnificat” assigned to her in Luke i. is the only passage which would distinctly imply on her part a high prophetic appreciation of His divine mission. It is however doubtful whether Luke really intended to assign this hymn to Mary or to Elizabeth (cf. especially Niceta of Remesiana by A. E. Burn, Cambridge, 1905; Harnack’s “Das Magnificat der Elizabeth” in the Sitzungsberichte of the Berlin Academy for 1900, and Burkitt’s “Who spoke the Magnificat?” in the Journal of Theological Studies, Jan. 1906). The original text of Luke probably mentioned no name in introducing the Magnificat; scribes supplied the ambiguity by inserting, some Mary, others Elizabeth. It is doubtful which represents the intention of the writer: there is perhaps more to be said for the view that he meant to assign the Magnificat to Elizabeth. Mary was present at the Crucifixion, where she was commended by Jesus to the care of the apostle John (John xix. 26, 27), Joseph having apparently died before this time. Mary is mentioned in Acts i. 14 as having been among those who continued in prayer along with the apostles at Jerusalem during the interval between the Ascension and Pentecost. There is no allusion in the New Testament to the time or place of her death.
The subsequent growth of ecclesiastical tradition and belief regarding Mary will be traced most conveniently under the separate heads of (1) her perpetual virginity, (2) her absolute sinlessness, (3) her peculiar relation to the Godhead, which specially fits her for successful intercession on behalf of mankind.
Her Perpetual Virginity.—This doctrine was, to say the least, of no importance in the eyes of the evangelists, and so far as extant writings go there is no evidence of its having been anywhere taught within the pale of the Catholic Church of the first three centuries. On the contrary, to Tertullian the fact of
- ↑ The name (Heb. מִרְיָם), that of the sister of Moses and Aaron, is of uncertain etymology; many interpretations have been suggested, including Stella maris (“star of the sea”), which, though it has attained considerable currency through Jerome (the Onomasticon), may be at once dismissed. It seems to have been very common among the Jews in New Testament times: besides the subject of the present notice there are mentioned (1) “Mary (the wife) of Clopas,” who was perhaps the mother of James “the little” (ὁ μικρός) and of Joses; (2) Mary Magdalene, i.e. of Magdala; (3) Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus; (4) Mary, the mother of Mark; and (5) Mary, an otherwise unknown benefactress of the apostle Paul (Rom. xvi. 6).
