IN the later half of the 18th century, another development was also proceeding on the heels of the French revolution. England, which was ahead of France in economic development, just as France was ahead in social and political sphere, was consolidating its hold on the continent of Asia. The Asian countries were competitors of Europe in trade, economic and political development. But they were soon transformed into colonies and bases for loot, plunder and accumulation of wealth by the western bourgeoisie.

This contradiction was die contradiction of a new system — the system of capitalism. It was based on the accumulation and circulation of capital; on the principle of turning all material and spiritual resources of the world into fixed or moving forms of 'money'. Capitalism introduced a new set of 'impersonal' production and social relations Expressed in terms of 'capital' and 'labour', this relation was fundamentally different from the master-serf relation that characterised the earlier feudal era.

The growth of capitalism was thus revolutionary, it dissolved everything, all existing ties based on emotion and spirituality and brought before the human race the naked material facts and laws of existence.

But bourgeois society began losing its progressive dynamism after the revolutions of 1848 in Europe. These upheavals, coming one after the other, were initially attempts to carry forward the incomplete agenda of the French revolution and usher in a liberal, democratic and just society.

But during their course, it became evident that this agenda could no longer be completed under the leadership of the bourgeoisie. What it needed was the leading role of the working classes. But their empowerment would have gone against the logic of capitalism — a system then exposing itself, more and more, as symbolising the exploitation of labour, rather than the exploitation of nature and material resources which was its hallmark during the earlier dynamic and entrepreneurial phase.

Hence, it was logical for capitalism to turn its back on the ideals of the French revolution. A historic compromise was effected with the old aristocracy, particularly with its values and ideals. Old values and norms were revived where they were dead and a phase of reaction set in. Right after the 1848 revolutions, die progressive phase of colonialism, where even its loot depended on the expansion of local internal market and encouragement to local entrepreneurial tendencies in the colonies, also ended. European colonial powers, faced with a series of insurrections and political challenges in India, China and Persia in the 1850s, halted their steps when the reforms which they engendered began unleashing revolutionary, anti-colonial  impulses.

Marxism was a product of these historic conditions prevailing in Europe, Asia and the wider world. The individuals responsible for its genesis, Marx and Engels belonged to the ranks of the bourgeois intelligentsia of Europe and were part of the revolutionary impulses of 1848. They represented its Left wing which began veering towards a new mode of justice and democracy when the uprisings of die working classes became common. They noted that a new class — the industrial proletariat was coming to the fore on the heels of the historic betrayal by the bourgeoisie.

Marx and Engels brought to a logical conclusion the line of thinking that had emerged in the bourgeois schools of English political economy, German philosophy and French socialism. English political economy had begun by stating that it is labour, and not natural resources like land that determine the value of products. Marx and Engels put forward the question: if labour determines value, then the value of a product ought to come from the amount of labour put into it. But if this is true what is the source of die capitalist's profit? And why does not labour exercise full control over its product.?

Likewise, German philosophy projected history as a movement, as a constant struggle between opposites, as 'Dialectics'. But it stopped its movement in the first half of the 19th century projecting the bourgeois-Prussian state as the most perfect state. But didn't this conclusion go against its own thesis of perpetual movement?

In a similar vein, French socialism raised the issue of an egalitarian society. But it stopped short of handing the capitalist system over to the workers. It failed to answer the question: would not there be further development transcending the categories of worker and capitalist?