§ Chapter 01: Preliminaries
§ The Historical Setting
¶At intervals of a century, the European revolution in Holland, England, and France blew up the gates and opened a way for capitalist development.
¶The feudal system, based on a feudalist economy and on serfdom, stabilized by patriarchal despotism, hereditary dependence, and enslavement of the conscience, collapsed before the onslaught of the new economic power.
¶Money conquered land. The postulates of freedom triumphed over the traditions of slavery. Day dawned over western Europe.
¶The rising bourgeois class entered into possession of new fields. Starting from Holland, it created a colonial power whose gigantic proportions were rivalled only by the vastness of the wealth which colonial enterprise brought back to the mother country. Starting from England, which it transformed into the factory of the world, the bourgeoisie made that country supreme over all the markets of the world and all the sources of raw materials. Setting out from France, the bourgeoisie pressed the greatest of all military powers into its service, the better to safeguard the social successes of its emancipation. In its craving for activity, it shrank from no difficulties. Boldly it wrestled with the most difficult problems, and its soaring ambition winged it towards the most distant goals. In a frenzy of achievement, the bourgeois class fulfilled its destiny.
¶First of all came the fulfilment of its economic destiny. By way of
manufactures and the mercantile system, the relations of production
developed into the system of large-scale industry. The political
revolution was followed by a technical revolution. The traditional
methods of work were transformed. The secrets of nature were disclosed,
her forces were brought under control, and the natural laws of
production were made serviceable to man. In 1764, Hargreaves invented
the spinning jenny; in 1769, Arkwright invented the warp-loom; and in
1779 came Crompton’s invention of the mule. In 1781, Watt improved the
old steam-pump in a way which made it applicable as a source of power
for machinery. In 1787, Cartwright revolutionized the textile industry
by the invention of the power-loom. There was also a revolution in the
spinning trade. Cotton made its way into Europe. Cotton! Cotton!
was the new watchword of capitalism. Factories grew out of the earth
like mushrooms. Armies of men, women, and children disappeared into the
factories. One mechanical invention followed on the heels of another. In
1802, the first steamboat made its way up the Firth of Clyde; in 1807,
the first passenger steamer navigated the Hudson; in 1819, the ocean was
first crossed by a steamship. From 1804 onwards, came the application of
Watt’s steam-engine to locomotive purposes, until in 1825 the first
railway was opened for traffic. Capitalism conquered space and time. In
1835, the electric telegraph began to come into use. Within a few
decades, the frontiers of the world had been marvellously expanded. The
fables of antiquity had been realized. The productivity of human labour
had been increased to an incredible extent. The bourgeoisie was
triumphant. It has executed works more marvellous than the building
of Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has
carried out expeditions surpassing by far the tribal migrations and the
crusades. … The subjugation of the forces of nature, the invention of
machinery, the application of chemistry to industry and agriculture,
steamships, railways, electric telegraphs, the clearing of whole
continents for cultivation, the making of navigable waterways, huge
populations springing up as if by magic out of the earth–what earlier
generations had the remotest inkling that such productive powers
slumbered within the womb of associated labour?
¶The bourgeoisie fulfilled its political destiny likewise. In France, it withstood the Bourbon reaction after the fall of the Napoleonic empire, and seized power in the July revolution of 1830. In England, during a century and a half, it was able to take advantage of all compromises and partial solutions, until at length, in 1832, with the passing of the Reform Bill, it became supreme. It dictated laws to the governments. Armies marched under its orders. To swell its profits, alliances were entered into and treaties signed, wars were waged and ended, proclamations were issued, and diplomatic notes were exchanged. In the end it had become supreme. Its political position was everywhere secure.
¶Finally, it had given new tints and new outlines to that ideology
which frames the picture of the world within the minds of men. It has
drowned pious zeal, chivalrous enthusiasm, and humdrum sentimentalism,
in the chill waters of selfish calculation. It has degraded personal
dignity to the level of exchange value; and in place of countless
dearly-bought chartered freedoms, it has set up one solitary
unscrupulous freedom–freedom of trade. … The bourgeoisie has robbed of
their haloes all occupations hitherto regarded with awe and veneration.
Doctor, lawyer, priest, poet, and scientist have become its wage
labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn the veil of sentiment from the
family relationship, which has become an affair of money and nothing
more.
Thus the bourgeoisie had given the world a new visage, had
furnished human life with a multitude of new aspects.
¶From the lofty altitude to which it had successfully fought its way, it looked down with pride and self-satisfaction upon the path up which it had victoriously climbed with such overwhelming speed.
§ Conditions in Germany
¶Down to the year 1800, the bourgeois class of Germany had taken scarcely any part in this triumphal march of capitalism.
¶Three hundred years earlier, capitalism had been ready and willing to effect a complete transformation in the economic life of Germany. The freight brought across the Mediterranean in Italian merchant ships was carried over the passes of the Alps in German caravans. The revolutionizing influences of the new capitalist developments had begun to make themselves felt in the blood and the brains of the Germans, whipping the peasants into revolt, involving the burghers in a conflict with the papacy and the Church, inciting the towns to rebellion. Then came the inroad of the Turks, and the discovery of the sea route to India. The overland roads were blocked, and for Italy and Germany the sources of capitalist life had been cut off. Capitalism, now restricted to the coasts of the Atlantic, flourished successively in Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, and France, transforming them all, completing its destructive and creative work. At length, after three hundred years, it resumed the same task in Germany, aided this time by British machinery and American cotton. Thereupon began a revolutionizing of production, a transformation of social conditions, a reshaping of the picture of the world in the minds of men.
¶On the lower Rhine, on the Ruhr, the Wupper, and the Sieg, in Thuringia, Saxony, Silesia, Wurtemberg, and Baden, a vigorous manufacturing industry sprang to life. The Continental System of Napoleon, which cut off the British from access to the German markets, served as a forcing-house for the growth of this industry. In Saxony, the number of spindles in the cotton mills increased within six years from 13,000 to 210,000. In the Rhine Province, mining, smelting, machine-making, and metallurgy advanced with giant strides. An import and export trade, considerable in view of German conditions, and extending to all parts of the world, thereupon developed. As if determined to make up for lost time, capitalism in Germany strode forward in seven-league boots. New branches of industry made their appearance. Towns grew apace. Intercourse with the great centres of the world market became ever livelier. Capital accumulated in vast masses. Everywhere was an upward movement, progress, success, the growth of power.
¶But the bourgeoisie is nothing without the proletariat. The bourgeoisie creates the proletariat by the very process of its own development. It must create the proletariat, because the proletariat creates surplus value, upon whose existence the existence of the bourgeoisie is grounded. The bourgeoisie cannot dispense with the proletariat unless it is willing to dispense with its own existence. The mutual dependence of these two classes is an inexorable necessity.
¶In Germany, as in England and France, the proletariat was recruited out of the masses of impoverished and landless peasants and of handicraftsmen and petty burghers whose means of livelihood had been cut off by the new developments. Those of the first generation were still comfortably provided for on the soil. Those of the second generation devoted part of their labour power to home industry. Those of the third generation thronged through the gates of the factories and became a wage proletariat. Forcibly assembled in the process of production, organized in militarist fashion, they were shamelessly exploited under the supervision of the manager, the stimulus of the master, and the whip of the foreman. Thenceforward their existence was nowhere the expression of any sort of human interest; it had an exclusively capitalist significance, that of one who produced commodities, created surplus value, served the purposes of the master class. The proletarian had himself become a commodity, having to sell himself day by day. He was a beast of burden; something even less than this, an instrument, a wheel in the machinery of exploitation, a dead thing. Impotent, in a spirit of dull resignation, he must accept his lot, under pain of starvation should he refuse. Hopeless, despairing, he submitted to an inevitable destiny. Casual outbreaks of disorder and tumult, like that of the Solingen cutlers in 1826, or that of the Crefeld silk weavers in 1828, had as their only result that the terrors of the criminal law were superadded to the pangs of hunger.
¶Where large-scale industry had not yet established itself, home industry was dominant. Especially was this so in Silesia, where manorial privileges favoured the industrial enslavement of the impoverished peasants; and in the Erzgebirge, where the sterility of the soil drove the hungry smallholders and cottars into the arms of the sweater. In the towns, however, the craft guilds, working cumbrously and with a narrow horizon, obstinately rejecting technical innovations, continued to supply their local customers after the traditional manner. Here, as in the countryside (where seventy-five per cent of the population was still engaged in rural dwarf industries), the social and intellectual atmosphere remained the oppressive one of the Middle Ages.
§ Utopian Socialists
§ Karl Marx
¶Karl Marx was not of proletarian origin, nor did he come from the ranks of the utopian socialists.
¶His career was not remarkable in respect of birth, class affiliations, environment, or education. It only began to become remarkable when his path as an individual led him into the great arena of the social movement.
¶Marx was born at Treves on May 5, 1818. For many generations, all his male forbears, both on the father’s side and on the mother’s, had been rabbis. Fanatical believers in heredity may infer from this that he had an inborn predilection for sophistry and logic-chopping. Without going so far, we may take note that his ancestors were men who must have systematically and successfully devoted themselves to intellectual pursuits, to the cultivation of keenness of the understanding. The descendant, when he became an intellectual, was walking in the footsteps of his forefathers.
¶His father, however, was not a rabbi, but a lawyer. Versed in the
writings both of Voltaire and of Leibniz, Hirschel Marx had absorbed
French culture as well as German; his mind was filled with the
traditions of the great French revolution no less than with those of the
imperial age of Germany. Politically, he was a Prussian patriot, but,
being a moderate
by temperament, he was content to play the part
of respectable man and good citizen. He was married to an excellent
housewife not overburdened with brains, who never learned to speak or
write German correctly.
¶When Karl was six years old, Hirschel Marx and his family became Protestants, Hirschel being baptized as Heinrich. A change of creed is usually determined by cogent reasons, especially when (as in the case of the Marx family) people are bound to the old faith by strong ancestral ties. It was not until after his mother’s death that Hirschel Marx became a Christian, and we have no definite information as to the causes of this decisive step. So much is certain, that in Rhineland a century ago the Jews were detested and shunned, and that to be a Jew was a serious handicap in a bourgeois career. It may be presumed, therefore, that the conversion of the elder Marx–a peace-loving man, always inclined to compromise–was the outcome, not only of the wish to free himself from what was regarded as a stigma by his Christian fellow citizens, but also of the resolve to facilitate his son’s entry into the domain of European culture.
¶In the absence of detailed information regarding the early childhood
of Karl Marx, we are left to conjecture as concerns the influence his
Jewish birth and upbringing must have had upon his mind. As soon as he
began to come into contact with the Gentile world, and was intelligent
enough to make comparisons, it was inevitable that he should feel his
Jewish origin to be a disadvantage, a shackle upon his aspirations. This
may have furnished the incentives for ambition, may account for the
vehemence of his determination to force his way upwards in the
intellectual world. In that case we must regard his exceptional ability,
his amazingly developed powers of association, his astonishing insight,
his remarkable faculty for exposition, and the breadth of his knowledge,
as tools perfected to the utmost in order that, helping him to fame and
standing, they might compensate for the drawbacks of his Hebraic
descent. We may further suppose that these early impressions gave a
primary twist to the development of the child’s character. Delighted
though the father was to note the lad’s splendid natural gifts,
he was made uneasy by the manifestation in Karl of trends towards
stubbornness and defiant harshness with which he himself had no sympathy
and which he found it difficult to understand. Little Karl learned very
easily, but made no friends; in after life he had never a word to say of
any of his schoolfellows. Intellectually, he achieved swift progress in
his class work, but his classmates made no appeal to his affections. His
mental energies were from the first concentrated upon study,
performance, success.
¶None the less, Marx, having entered the university at the age of
seventeen, fell ardently in love a year later with Jenny von Westphalen,
one of his sister’s companions. The two became engaged. Jenny was of
noble birth, daughter of a government official of high standing; she was
both clever and beautiful. We cannot but regard young Marx’s impetuous
and successful wooing as an act of conquest, as bravura, as
self-assertion on the part of a youth who at heart was dubious as to his
own prestige. Consider him as he stands on the threshold of life,
equipped with knowledge, supplied with documentary evidence of his
academic acquirements. Now the testing time has come; he must face the
great tasks of life. But he is not yet sure of himself, he lacks
confidence in his powers. The year at Bonn has been disappointing. He
has not fulfilled the expectations of his parents and his friends, who
had looked for a meteoric rise. His father has even urged a change of
plans, a diversion to the study of chemistry and physics. Discouraged,
he needs salient proof of his worth, his superiority. He finds what he
seeks when he wins the heart of the loveliest and most hotly courted
maiden of his circle. His father, alarmed to begin with, consents ere
long. Westphalen, too, is won over, and accepts the situation cordially.
Thus the young hothead overcomes all obstacles. He is filled with pride,
he overflows with self-confidence, now that he has compelled others to
recognize him as a man of mark, and has thus established his own
spiritual poise. Years afterwards, when revisiting his birthplace, he
wrote to his wife in terms of affectionate vanity: Almost every one I
meet asks me for news of
the prettiest girl in Treves,
for
tidings of the queen of the ballroom.
It cannot but tickle a man
to find that in the fancy of a whole township his wife is enshrined as
fairy princess.
§ Studies
¶In the autumn of 1836, Marx went to the University of Berlin. From
that centre of learning there radiated a powerful magnetic attraction,
drawing towards it the studious youth of all Germany. The names of
Hegel, Schleiermacher, Savigny, Gans, and Alexander von Humboldt had
made Berlin widely celebrated. In especial, the philosophy of Hegel
exercised a powerful influence upon contemporary minds. Marx chose
jurisprudence as a special topic of study, regarding it, however,
merely as a subordinate discipline compared with philosophy and
history.
Besides attending lectures, he devoted himself with the
utmost zeal to the most diversified domains of science and literature,
trying all things by turns. He read, made extracts, translated, studied
languages, wandered into solitary paths, listened to echoes from afar,
sought forgotten springs, clambered towards inaccessible peaks. In quiet
hours of leisure, he gave expression to his yearning for his beloved in
distant Rhineland by writing numerous verses, which must rather be
regarded as clumsy products of constructive industry and reflective
rhetoric than as manifestations of poetic talent.
¶Hitherto he had known the writings of Hegel only in broad outline. He
had read no more than fragments of the great idealist’s philosophy, and
its grotesque craggy melody
had seemed to him unpleasing.
Hegel was one for whom the mainspring of world happenings was not in
matter but in the idea; he was one who regarded the content of
experience and the rhythmical movement of history as products of the
law-abiding activity of the absolute world spirit; he was one for whom
thought and being were characterized by a metaphysical identity. Hegel
was a man with whom he, Marx, would have to measure swords, and he still
shrank from the immensity of the venture. More and more strenuously he
wrestled, after the manner of Faust, with himself, with traditional
philosophy, and with the monumental grandeur of the Hegelian system. In
a letter to his father–a letter penned with a feverish brain, and
characterized by ecstatic outbursts of feeling–we find evidence of his
mental condition at the time.
¶“Dear Father,
¶“Berlin, November 10, 1837.
¶“There are moments in life which are placed like boundary stones to mark the close of a period, but which at the same time definitely point in a new direction.
¶“At such a point of transition, we feel constrained to contemplate the past and the present with the eagle eye of thought, that we may become aware of our actual position. Indeed, universal history itself loves such a retrospect, and looks round and about, which often produces the semblance of a retrogression or an arrest of movement, when in reality the spirit of history has merely thrown herself back in an arm chair that she may collect her thoughts, may impregnate her mind with a knowledge of her own doings.
¶“In such moments, however, the individual grows lyrical, for every metamorphosis is to some extent a swansong, to some extent the overture of a great new poem, which in still blurred yet brilliant tints strives to attain harmony. But we should like to erect a memorial to that which has already been experienced, so that it may regain in sentiment the place which it has lost in the world of action; and where could we find a holier site than in the heart of a parent, the most clement of judges, the most ardent participator, the sun of love, whose fire warms the innermost centre of our endeavours! How could much that is objectionable, that is blameworthy, better find compensation and excuse, than when it becomes the manifestation of an essentially necessary condition; how [else], at any rate, could the often hostile play of chance, and the aberration of the spirit, escape the reproach of being due to an unkind heart?
¶“When, therefore, at the close of a year lived here, I now glance back upon what has passed therein, and in this way, my dear Father, answer your most affectionate letter from Ems, you will allow me to contemplate my circumstances, like life in general, as the expression of a mental activity which shapes itself in all directions, in science, art, private affairs.
¶“When I left you, a new world had just opened for me, the world of love–indeed to begin with a love that was frenzied in its yearnings and void of hope. Even the journey to Berlin, which would otherwise have delighted me in the extreme, would have incited me to the contemplation of nature, would have inflamed me with the joy of life, left me cold. Nay, it depressed me profoundly, for the rocks which I saw were no rougher, no harsher, than the sentiments of my mind; the great cities were not more animated than my blood; the groaning tables in the inns were not more overladen, the food they bore was not more indigestible, than were the contents of my own imagination; and, to conclude, art was not so beautiful as my Jenny.
¶“When I reached Berlin, I broke all existing ties, paid very few visits and those reluctantly, and sought to immerse myself in science and art.
¶“In my then state of mind, it was inevitable that lyrical poetry should be my first topic of interest, at any rate the most agreeable and most obvious; but, in accordance with my position, and my whole previous development, this was purely idealistic. An equally remote beyond, my love, became my heaven, my art. Everything real grows vague, and all that is vague lacks boundaries. Onslaughts on the present, broad and shapeless expressions of feeling, nothing natural, pure moonshine, the complete opposite of what is and what ought to be, rhetorical reflections instead of poetical thoughts; but perhaps, in addition, a certain warmth of sentiment and a struggle for impetus characterize all the poems of the first three volumes I sent to Jenny. The whole width of a longing which sees no frontiers, assumes multifarious forms, and finds
expansioninpoetizing.
¶“But poesy could only be, must only be, a casual companion. I had to study jurisprudence, and above all I felt an urge to wrestle with philosophy. The two were so closely interconnected, that I read Heineccius, Thibaut, and the sources, in schoolboy fashion more or less, quite uncritically, translating, for instance, the first two books of the Pandects into German; but I also tried, when studying law, to work out a philosophy of law. I prefixed, as introduction, some metaphysical propositions, and in this ill-starred opus carried on the discussion down to the topic of international law–a work of nearly three hundred pages.
¶“Most notably, here, I was greatly disturbed by the conflict between what actually is and what ought to be which is peculiar to idealism, and this gave rise to the following hopelessly inaccurate classification. First of all, what I graciously christened
metaphysics of law,that is to say, principles, reflections, determinative concepts, were severed from all actual law and from every actual form of law; as in the writings of Fichte, only in my case in a more modern and unsubstantial fashion. Furthermore, the unscientific form of mathematical dogmatism (wherein the subject wanders about the topic, argues hither and thither, while the topic itself is never formulated as something rich in content, something truly alive) was from the first a hindrance to the comprehension of the truth.
¶“The mathematician may construct a triangle and demonstrate its properties; but it remains a mere idea in space, and undergoes no further development. We must put one triangle beside another, then it assumes different positions, and these differences in what is essentially the same endow the triangle with different relations and truths. On the other hand, in the concrete expression of the living world of thought–as in law, the State, nature, philosophy as a whole–the object must be studied in its development; there must be no arbitrary classifications; the rationale of the thing itself must disclose itself in all its contradictoriness, and must find its unity in itself.
¶“As second part, there now followed the philosophy of law, this meaning, as I then saw the matter, the study of the development of ideas in positive Roman law, as if positive law in the development of its ideas (I do not mean in its purely final determinations) could be anything different from the configuration of the concept of law, which the first part ought to embrace!
¶“This part I had, over and above, divided into the formal and the material doctrine of law: the former being the pure form of the system in its succession and its interaction, the classification and the scope; the latter, on the other hand, the content, the condensation of the form in its content; such was to be the aim of my description. This was the outcome of an error which I share with Herr von Savigny, as I was to learn later when reading his learned work Right of Possession–but with this difference, that he speaks of formal determinative concepts as
finding the place which this or that doctrine occupies in the (supposititious) Roman system,and of material determinative concepts asthe doctrine of the positive which the Romans ascribe to a concept fixed in this way; whereas I have understood by form the necessary architectonic and the configurations of the concept, and by matter the necessary quality of these configurations. My mistake was that I believed one could and must develop apart from the other, with the result that I did not achieve any genuine form, but only constructed a desk with a number of drawers which I subsequently filled with sand.
¶“The concept is, really, the intermediary between form and content. In a philosophical disquisition on law, therefore, one must be shown as arising out of the other, for form can only be the continuation of content. Thus I arrived at a classification (for the subject lends itself readily to shallow classification); but the spirit of law and its truth had perished. All law was subdivided into covenanted and uncovenanted. I even ventured upon a classification of jus publicum (which has also been formally elaborated) in order to materialize the scheme better…
¶“But why should I fill pages with an account of things I have discarded? The whole is permeated with trichotomous classifications, penned with wearisome prolixity, the Roman notions being barbarously misused in order to force them into my system. Still, to some extent I gained an affection for my topic, and achieved a general survey of its subject matter.
¶“When I had reached the close of the discussion of material private right, I perceived the fallaciousness of the whole, which in its fundamental scheme borders on the Kantian, though differing wholly from Kant in matters of detail. Once more it had been made clear to me that I could get no farther on my way without philosophy. I was therefore again able, with a good conscience, to throw myself into the arms of philosophy, and I wrote a new metaphysical elementary system, but when it was finished I was again constrained to recognize its futility, and the futility of the whole of my previous endeavours.
¶“Meanwhile I had acquired the habit of making extracts from all the books I was reading; as from Lessing’s Laokoon, Solger’s Erwin, Winckelmann’s Kunstgeschichte, Luden’s Deutsche Geschichte, writing critical reflections in comment thereon. At the same time I translated Tacitus’ Germania, Ovid’s Tristium libri. I began the private study (with the aid of grammars) of English and Italian, but as yet have made no progress; I read Klein’s Kriminalrecht and his Annalen; and a mass of modern literature, though this latter only in passing.
¶“At the end of the session, I once more tried my hand at the dance of the muses and at the music of satire; and already in the last pages I sent you, idealism plays its part in the form of forced humour (Skorpion und Felix), and in an unsuccessful imaginative drama (Oulanem), until at length it utterly miscarries, and is changed into a purely formal art, for the most part without any stimulating objects, without any enthusiastic movement of ideas.
¶“Nevertheless these last poems are the only ones in which suddenly, as if by the wave of a magician’s wand (the experience was, to begin with, overwhelming), the realm of true poesy flashed open before me like a distant faery palace, and all my creations were shivered to fragments.
¶“During the first term, I sat up night after night engaged in these multifarious occupations; I went through many struggles, and experienced both objective and subjective perturbations; and in the end I found that my mind had not been greatly enriched, while I had neglected nature, art, and the world, and had alienated my friends. These reflections seemed to disorder my body, a doctor advised country air, and so for the first time I traversed the whole widespread town and went through the gate to Stralau. It never entered my mind that there from being an anemic youth I should ripen to a robustness of frame.
¶“A curtain had fallen, my holy of holies had been shattered, and new gods had to be found for the vacant shrine.
¶“Setting out from idealism (which, let me say in passing, I had compared to and nourished with that of Kant and that of Fichte), I proceeded to seek for the idea in the real itself. If in earlier days the gods had dwelt above the world, they had now become its centre.
¶“I had read fragments of the Hegelian philosophy, and had found its grotesque craggy melody unpleasing. I wished to dive into the ocean once again, but this time with the definite intention of discovering our mental nature to be just as determined, concrete, and firmly established as our bodily–no longer to practise the art of fence, but to bring pure pearls into the sunlight.
¶“I penned a dialogue of about twenty-four pages, entitled Cleanthus, or the Starting-Point and the Necessary Progress of Philosophy. Here, after a fashion, art and science, which had been wholly severed, were reunited; and now, a lusty vagrant, I set myself to the main task, a philosophico-dialectical discussion of the godhead, manifested as a concept per se, as religion, as nature, and as history. My last thesis was the beginning of the Hegelian system, and this work (for which I had more or less prepared myself with the aid of natural science, Schelling, and history, and which–since it was really designed to form a new logic–had been so [adverb illegible] written that even I myself can now scarcely make head or tail of it), this darling child of mine, nurtured in moonshine, bears me like a false-hearted siren into the clutches of the enemy.
¶“Overwhelmed with vexation, I was for several days quite unable to think. Like a lunatic I tore up and down the garden beside the Spree’s dirty water
which washes the soul and dilutes tea.I even went out shooting with my host; and then returned hotfoot to Berlin in the mind to embrace every loafer at the street corners. Thereafter I confined myself to positive studies: Savigny’s Right of Possession, Feuerbach and Grolmann’s work on criminal jurisprudence, Kramer’s De verborum significatione, Wenning-Ingenheim’s Pandektensystem and Mühlenbruch’s Doctrina pandectarum (which I am still reading), and finally some of Gauterbach’s works, books on civil law and especially on ecclesiastical law. As regards this last, I have read and made extracts from almost all the first part of Gratian, the Concordia discordantium canonum, with the appendix, Lancellotti’s Institutiones. Then I translated part of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, read the De augmentis scientiarum of the famous Baco of Verulam, and perused with much delight Reimarus’ book Von den Kunsttrieben der Tiere. Next I turned to German law, but mainly concerned myself with the capitulations of the Franconian kings, and the letters of the popes to them.
¶“From grief on account of Jenny’s illness and because of the futility of my lost labours, from intense vexation at having to make an idol of a view I detested, I fell sick, as, my dear Father, I have previously related. When I had recovered, I burned all my poems, my sketches for novels, etc., being under the illusion that I could henceforward refrain from anything of the kind–and indeed there is as yet no evidence to the contrary.
¶“While out of sorts, I had got to know Hegel from beginning to end, and most of his disciples likewise. Through the instrumentality of friends I made while in Stralau, I became a member of a Doctors’ Club, to which a number of instructors and Dr. Rudenberg (my most intimate friend in Berlin) belonged. In discussions here, many conflicting opinions were voiced, and I became more and more closely involved in the study of contemporary philosophy, from which I had thought to escape; but all tones were muted, a frenzy of irony had taken possession of me, as was natural enough after so many negations. The trouble of Jenny’s silence was superadded; and I could not rest until I had purchased modernity and achieved the standpoint of contemporary science by some poor productions, such as Der Besuch.
¶“If I have perhaps failed to explain this session clearly to you as a whole, and to recount all its details, if its nuances are left hazy, you will excuse me, dear Father, recognizing how eager I am to speak of the present.
¶
H. v. Chamisso has sent me a few insignificant lines, in which he informs me of hisMagic Warehouse of Good Cheese and Bad Literature.” I enclose Wigand’s letter; Schmidt has not answered yet. Meanwhile I have by no means abandoned the scheme, all the more seeing that the aesthetic notabilities of the Hegelian school have promised to co-operate, influenced thereto by Instructor Bauer, who is a big gun among them. Dr. Rudenberg will also lend a hand.regret that the Almanac can make no useof my contributions,having long since gone to press.I had to swallow my vexation. Wigand the bookseller has sent on my plan to Dr. Schmidt, manager of the
¶“As regards the question of an official career, I have recently made the acquaintance of an assistant judge, Schmidthänner by name, who advises me to enter upon this after passing the third of my law examinations. The plan smiles to me, since I really prefer jurisprudence to administrative science. This gentleman told me that from the Münster provincial court of appeal he and many others had in three years attained the position of assistant judge, which is easy enough (provided, of course, that one works hard), since in that part of the world the stages are not, as in Berlin and elsewhere, very strictly marked out. If, as assistant judge, one becomes doctor of laws, there are excellent chances of speedy appointment as professor extraordinary. This is what happened to H. Gärtner in Bonn, after he had written a mediocre book on provincial law-codes, his only other title to fame being that he proclaims himself a member of the Hegelian school of jurists. But dear Father, best of fathers, cannot I talk all this over with you face to face? Eduard’s illness, dear mother’s trouble, your own indisposition (I hope it is nothing serious), all combine to make me long to return home without delay. It is almost imperative that I should come. Indeed, I should already be with you, were I not in doubt as to your approval.
¶
Believe me, this is not a selfish wish (though I should be so happy to see Jenny again). I am driven by a thought which I cannot put into words. Actually, in many respects, it would be difficult for me to come; but, as my darling Jenny writes, these considerations all give way before sacred duties.I beg you, dear Father, whatever you may decide, not to show this letter (or at any rate this page of it) to mother. My sudden arrival might upset her.
¶“My letter to her was written long before Jenny’s dear letter came to hand, so I may unwittingly have written too much about unsuitable matters.
¶“In the hope that the clouds which hang over our family will gradually disperse; that I shall be permitted to share your sufferings and mingle my tears with yours, and, perhaps in direct touch with you, to show the profound affection, the immeasurable love, which I have not always been able to express as I should like; in the hope that you too, my fondly and eternally loved Father, bearing in mind how much my feelings have been storm-tost, will forgive me because my heart must often have seemed to you to have gone astray when the travail of my spirit was depriving it of the power of utterance; in the hope that you will soon be fully restored to health, that I shall he able to clasp you in my arms, and to tell you all that I feel,
¶“I remain always your loving son,
¶“KARL
¶“Forgive, dear Father, both the illegible handwriting and the defective style. It is nearly four in the morning; the candle has burned out and my eyes are clouded. Unrest has mastered me; I shall not be able to lay the spectres that haunt me, until I am in your dear presence.
¶
Please give my best love to my darling Jenny. I have already read her letter a dozen times, finding new charms in it each time. In every respect, style included, it is the most beautiful letter I can imagine a woman writing.
¶As we learn from the foregoing letter, Marx was revolting against formalism and the abstract speculations of the traditional idealist philosophy. This philosophy had isolated thought from the objective happenings of nature. The idea had been made the guiding authority, the animating principle, of the world process, and was regarded as something self-existent, apart from reality and the happenings of experience. Reality was nothing more than plastic stuff, material waiting to be kneaded, the clay in which reason became manifest.
¶Marx now set out to seek for the idea in the real itself,
endeavouring to evolve it from reality. But in this way, abandoning the
standpoint of the idealist philosophy, he was led (without wishing it,
and indeed against his will) straight to Hegel. That philosopher, though
an idealist, had transcended the opposition between thought and being,
resolving them into a unity. To him, the real was no longer a mere
object for reason to work upon, no longer passive clay waiting to be
animated by spirit. On the contrary, he regarded thought as a result of
the process of nature; he looked on the world of experience as the
living self-disclosure of the idea, as the positive elaboration of the
world spirit in an autonomous activity. From the vacuum of pure
abstraction, he had brought philosophical contemplation back to the
world of reality.
¶Thus far had Hegel gone, but no farther. For him, the conceptual unity of thought and being remained purely metaphysical. Against this, Marx’s whole nature rebelled. His interest was concentred in the real; he detested metaphysics, and he began to see that that was where Hegelian idealism could be given its quietus. The thought fascinated him. What an undertaking, to vanquish the titan of the intellectual world! What a triumph, could he be successful in the endeavour! Marx began the critical study of the environing world; began to examine the realities amid which he lived, that he might test the validity of the Hegelian system. His vision grew keener, and he girded up his loins for the task. More and more frequent, more and more cogent, became the times when he considered the possibility of unthroning Hegelianism. More and more attractive seemed the prospects of success. The goal was now clearly visioned; and with all the impetuosity, the industry, and the consistency that were characteristic of the man, he set forth to attain it.
§ The Young Hegelians
¶The origin of the Hegelian philosophy coincided with the rise of the
Prusso-German bourgeoisie. With the growth in economic strength of the
bourgeois class there ensued a social recognition of the bourgeois
members of society and an awakening self-consciousness of the
bourgeoisie. These changes secured representation and expression in
Hegel’s thought system. The classical proposition, all the real is
rational and all the rational is real,
was transmuted into the ideal
of a constitutional State which would be, so it seemed to the bourgeois,
the realization of the moral ideal, the absolutely rational.
¶Since then, almost two decades had elapsed. The reality of the
bourgeois State and the capitalist order had had an opportunity of
demonstrating itself in practice. As a result, idea and reality, reason
and being, showed themselves crudely opposed. Actual life did not
achieve the philosophical conjuring trick whereby, in the metaphysical
world, thought and being constituted a unity. The moral ideal
incorporated in the monarchical apex of the State conflicted more and
more with the vital and developmental needs of the compact mass of the
bourgeoisie, which now began to develop its own ideas in conflict with
the moral consciousness it proclaimed. The Prussian monarchy, although
it had raised Hegelianism to the status of an official philosophy, had
not been able to raise itself to the position of a real State in the
Hegelian sense. The ideal ought
of the utopian and socialist
demands, as voiced by Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen in a region outside
the realities of Prusso-German life, was setting itself up as a contrast
to the actualities of the political and social world.
¶But the first things to attract Marx’s attention were not these social contradictions and political contrasts. For him, who still felt most at home in the world of theories and systems, the discrepancies and discords which resulted from the application of Hegel’s fundamental ideas in the domain of psychology and philosophy were far more conspicuous. Moreover, in the atmosphere of the Doctors’ Club, a circle of Hegel’s disciples, his critical faculties were being sharpened in a way which made more and more clear to him that his path was diverging from that of Hegel, and that he must pursue an independent course of development.
¶Superadded was the influence of an ideological movement whose powerful waves of criticism and opposition began to break upon the shores of the world of religious life.
¶The July revolution in France (1830) had been followed in Germany likewise by a disturbance of the graveyard tranquillity established under Metternich’s regime. Here and there there had been students’ riots and abortive risings, but these disturbances had been put down with the strong hand. The press, which had become too outspoken, had been remuzzled; rebellious teachers and professors had been cudgelled into silence; the universities had been purged of liberalism and revolutionary doctrinairism. The Central Committee of Inquiry in Mayence, in its endeavours to maintain the State, had resumed the practice of persecuting demagogues. A meeting of the Prussian, Austrian, and Russian premiers in Teplitz, and another meeting of the monarchs of these three countries in Münchengrätz, had solemnly revived the inquisition of the Holy Alliance. A ministerial conference in Vienna had endorsed the decisions of the reactionary dictatorship.
¶In especial, the rulers had been at one in considering that the
insubordinate masses must once more be made humble and obedient–and that
to this end, in addition to dog-whip and dog-collar, the wholesome
narcotic of religion must be used in increasing doses. The Prussian
court, where, under the growing influence of Prince William, everything
was draped in the rags of mediaeval romanticism, aspired to the lead in
the training and utilization of a spiritual police. Here the
illuminates
and the pietists
had their headquarters. Here
the social question was being solved by means of devotional exercises,
psalm singing, and the circulation of unctuous tracts. Perfervid
generals, courtiers and State officials with their eyes turned
heavenward, and ranting ecclesiastical magnates, joined their voices in
a holy chorus for the salvation of the State. To counteract this pietist
plague, the intellectuals of the Hegelian school made their protest in
the form of an increasingly rationalist analysis of the Christian
legend.
¶In 1835, David Friedrich Strauss, a young Swabian, published his Life of Jesus. Voicing the outlook of the bourgeois enlightenment, he unsparingly stripped the gospels of their haloes, deprived them of the right to claim historical value. By strictly scientific methods of investigation, he showed that the Christian tradition was but myth or saga, was an epic deliberately composed in pious ecstasy by the early Christian community. This demonstration was effected under the very eyes of the intimidated faithful. The result was stupendous. The book marked an epoch in the critical study of religion.
¶It need hardly be said that Strauss’s book, and the whole group of
problems arising in connexion therewith, were eagerly discussed in the
Doctors’ Club. The members of this club (headmasters, men of letters,
instructors–Young Hegelians one and all) considered themselves the
vanguard of the new intellectuals, took delight in the philosophical
campaign against hypocrisy and romanticism, and sharpened their wits for
the fray. For them, it is true, the shot fired by Strauss was not yet
sufficiently well aimed, and did not prove mortal. Bruno Bauer, in
especial, an instructor at the University of Berlin and regarded as one
of the most brilliant of the Young Hegelians, entered the lists against
Strauss. The contest between the two,
as Engels wrote
subsequently in his Ludwig Feuerbach, was carried on in the
philosophical trappings of a contest between
self-consciousness
and substance.
The question whether the miracles recorded in the
gospels had found their way into Holy Writ as the outcome of an
unconscious exercise of the mythopoeic faculty in the early Christian
community, or whether they had been deliberately invented by the
evangelists, was, inflated into the question whether in universal
history substance
or self-consciousness
had been the
decisive factor. Then Stirner came along, the prophet of contemporary
anarchism, and outtopped sovereign self-consciousness
by his
sovereign individual.
¶For Bauer, this controversy became the fulcrum of his scientific work. He never let the subject drop, but carried on to keener and profounder issues the criticism of the gospels begun by Strauss. Whereas in 1841, in his Kritik der evangelische Geschichte, he voiced the opinion that the self-consciousness of the primary evangelist Mark, nourished at the sources of Greek, Graeco-Alexandrian, and Graeco-Roman literature, had found expression in the gospels–in 1843, in Das entdeckte Christentum (seized while in the press, and not until recently made available by republication) he carried this idea a stage further, to the extreme of antitheology and atheism. In a work published three decades later, Der Ursprung des Christentums aus dem Römischen Griechentum, he contended that not Jesus and Paul, but Seneca and Philo were the creators of primitive Christianity.
¶Among the Young Hegelians, these religious disputations and
philosophical passages of arms had another outcome; they led to the
foundation of the Hallische Jahrbücher,
which was planned to be a
rallying point for the new intellectuals. The founder of this annual,
Arnold Ruge (an instructor in Halle), although a revolutionist, was not
especially profound or trustworthy, nor yet a man of markedly
independent mind. No doubt, as a victim of the persecution directed
against the demagogues, he had had to spend six years in prison, but
this had not made his convictions firmer or his character more
consistent. None the less, he did invaluable service to the forward
movement, and promoted the liberation of people’s minds, by providing a
tribune. With the advance of the reaction, when all the professorial
chairs were packed with obscurantists, and when all periodicals
distasteful to the government were subjected to a rigid censorship and
plagued with orders of suppression, Ruge found it necessary to transfer
his headquarters from Halle to Dresden, and the Hallische
Jahrbücher
became the Deutsche Jahrbücher.
This implied, not
merely a change in place of publication and in title, but also an
intensification of tone and an improvement in the quality of the
collaborators. In particular Strauss, who had been a dominant figure of
the Hallische Jahrbücher,
was replaced by Bruno Bauer and Ludwig
Feuerbach.
§ Bauer and Feuerbach
¶Bruno Bauer, involved in a new feud with Hengstenberg, the leader of
Berlinese orthodoxy, had removed from Berlin to Bonn. He brought with
him thither a pledge from his protector, Altenberg, the minister of
public worship and education, to the effect that his instructorship in
Bonn should become a fixed professorship. But Altenberg died, and with
him disappeared the last relics of the Hegelian tradition. He was
succeeded by Eichhorn, a reactionary, entirely under the influence of
the pietists. This was an end of Bauer’s hopes of an academic career;
all the more since his collaboration in Ruge’s Jahrbücher,
and
the radical position he had assumed in theological questions, had not
tended to promote the number of his friends in the leading circles of
the university. Worst of all, there now appeared his Criticism of
the Gospel History of the Synoptics, which aroused a storm of
indignation. Bauer was dismissed from his instructorship, and the
freedom of teaching was curtailed at the universities.
¶Therewith Marx’s plans, too, came to naught. He had never seriously
considered the question of earning a livelihood, although his father had
frequently put him in mind of the need. In 1838, his father had died.
Now his concern for his mother, and his eagerness to be able to support
a wife, made it necessary for him to seek some remunerative occupation.
He had thought of following his friend Bauer to Bonn, in the hope of
getting an instructorship there, and perhaps of joining with Bauer in
the issue of a scientific periodical. He had not as yet, however, passed
his legal examinations, or taken his doctor’s degree. He was affected
with strong inhibitions against academic studies and examinations,
although Bauer was continually urging him forward. Do make an end of
your hesitations, of your dilatory attitude towards a piece of nonsense
and a pure farce like an examination,
Wrote Bauer to Marx. In the
end, Marx pulled himself together, wrote a thesis On the Difference
between the Democritean and the Epicurean Natural Philosophy, and
therewith, in April 1841, was in absentia
granted his doctor’s
degree by the University of Jena. But with the new turn of events, there
was no professorship for Bauer, nor any hope of an academic post for
Marx. Furthermore, in the stifling atmosphere of the reaction, there was
no chance of realizing the plans for a progressive periodical. Bauer
returned to Berlin, and devoted himself to collaboration in the
Deutsche Jahrbücher
now being published in Dresden.
¶But while Bauer, like Strauss, was trying to elucidate the origin of
Christianity, Feuerbach had gone a step further, throwing open for
discussion the very essence of Christianity. Ludwig Feuerbach, a son of
the great authority on criminal jurisprudence, Anselm Feuerbach, and a
pupil of Hegel, had had to abandon his position as instructor in
Erlangen, after the publication of revolutionary writings (which were
suppressed) had deprived him of any prospect of advance in his
university career. Living in rural seclusion, far from the busy world of
affairs, he devoted himself to philosophical study, moving continually
farther away from Hegel. In 1839, he published his Kritik der
Hegelschen Philosophie, in which he stripped Hegel’s absolute
spirit
bare of its trappings, showed it to be the departed spirit
of theology,
a metaphysical spook, a theology made over into
logic,
a rational mysticism.
If Hegel had taught that nature
was postulated by the idea, this was nothing more than a philosophical
dressing-up of the biblical contention that God had created the world.
The absolute spirit was in reality nothing other than the finite
subjective spirit of man, considered abstractly. If, according to Hegel,
the absolute spirit manifested itself in art, religion, and philosophy,
this could only mean that art, religion, and philosophy were the highest
and most absolute things in the human spirit. Ruthlessly he inverted the
Hegelian system. Nature and reality ceased to be manifestations
and degradations
of the idea. They became independent, became
entities having a worth of their own. Man moved forward into the front
of the picture, and was activated, although only in the religious
domain. Hitherto nothing more than an object, he became essentially a
subject. Materialism was raised to the throne.
¶This furnished Feuerbach with a platform for his philosophy of religion. From man he proceeded to the study of the interconnexions whose tissue presents itself as religion. According to him, man is independent of all philosophy. Man, the highest of beings, is the beginning, middle, and end of religion. Ideas are reflexions of nature; gods are merely creatures of the human imagination, idealist personifications of human qualities and feelings, projected into a heaven. Religion is the relation of feeling, the relation of hearts, between man and man; and the basis of all ethic is the relation between the ego and the tu.
¶Feuerbach’s Wesen des Christentums [Essence of
Christianity], in which these thoughts were first developed, was
published in 1841. It had the effect of an act of enfranchisement. The
spell of the Hegelian system had been broken. All contradictions seemed
to be solved. Out of the region of ideas, people had got back once more
to solid earth. Engels, to whom at this time Feuerbach was revealing
the true life of man,
wrote: One must oneself have experienced
the liberating influence of this book to gain any notion of what an
experience it was. Enthusiasm was universal. For the time, we were all
Feuerbachians.
Marx, likewise, greeted the new outlook with
enthusiasm. Who has annihilated the dialectic of concepts, the war of
the gods which the philosophers alone knew? Feuerbach. Who has put man
in place of the old lumber, and in place of the infinite consciousness
as well? Feuerbach, and no one else! Feuerbach, who completed and
criticized Hegel from a Hegelian standpoint, resolving the metaphysical
absolute spirit into the real man standing on the foundation of nature,
was the first to complete the criticism of religion–inasmuch as, at the
same time, he undertook a critique of Hegelian speculation, and thereby
sketched the great and masterly outlines of all metaphysics.
Thus
did Marx voice his enthusiastic approval.
§ Revolutionary Flight
¶The dethroning of the gods and the dissolution of the ties with a suprasensual world could not be restricted to the domains of religion and philosophy. Once authority had been challenged, dualism questioned, the rights of tradition contested, there could be no limit to the resulting effects. When the absolute monarch in heaven had been dethroned, the throne of the absolute king on earth tottered. When the sovereignty of the idea had been shown to be nothing more than an empty phrase, the nimbus of god-given governmental wisdom and statecraft paled. When it had been recognized that men had had the power to create gods, men were not likely to shrink in future from the thought that they were also capable (without sanction from above) of creating their own political and social conditions.
¶Thus it was that the Young Hegelians, whose activities had hitherto been confined to the battlefield of theory, became–though not of set purpose–active in the world of political practice. This was the outcome, not of political considerations, not of the formulation of definite aims, but merely of the logic of their own philosophical evolution.
¶The situation of the Prussian State sufficed to show that reason and
reality were not, as Hegel had taught, necessarily coincident. Since the
July revolution in France, the demands of reality had diverged more and
more conspicuously from the insight and wisdom of the government. In the
Hallische Jahrbücher,
Ruge had again and again pointed out that
the demand for a constitutional State had not as yet been complied with,
that the existence of the censorship betrayed a lack of confidence in
the spirit and in science, and that the reactionary revision of the
Towns’ Ordinance of 1808 implied treason to the Prussian mission. It
became more and more obvious that the unity of reason and reality could
only be achieved when the rational, which had not hitherto attained form
and life, had been purposively translated into reality by human
activity.
¶In the view of the Young Hegelians, this purposive activity would not
be a revolutionary transformation, but would be the expression of an
organic renewal from within. They considered that the process must take
its start where the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg had ended. Only
thus, by keeping step with historical reality and with progressive
ideas, could Prussia fulfil her mission in universal history, her
mission to complete the liberation of the human spirit that had been
begun by the Reformation and continued by the Enlightenment. To the
Young Hegelians it seemed beyond question that Prussia was predestined
by history to conduct the evolution of mankind to its climax. By birth,
education, and temperament, they were Prussian to the core; and,
belonging as they did to the cultured and possessing strata of society,
they were full of the self-satisfaction of an aspiring class. In an
address penned by Friedrich Köppen, for a festival in commemoration of
Frederick the Great, and dedicated to my friend Karl Heinrich Marx of
Treves,
we read, among other turgid outpourings of patriotic
enthusiasm: Prussia can never forget that it was cradled in the
cradle-days of the Enlightenment, and that it was led on to greatness by
the Hero of the Enlightenment. Heaven does not rest more securely upon
the shoulders of Atlas, than Prussia rests upon the seasonable
progressive development of the principles of Frederick the
Great.
¶The hopes for the establishment of a Prussian emporium of spiritual
freedom were no better fulfilled than were the dreams of a Prussian
constitution with a liberal monarch at the head. A transient alleviation
of the censorship, an alleviation which from the nature of things could
be nothing more than an expression of despotic caprice, did, indeed,
arouse ecstatic delight in the minds of the perennially unteachable
philistines; but the headache which speedily followed this brief
intoxication was a severe one. Marx had foreseen the coming of the
reaction, and had written on the topic for Ruge’s Jahrbücher.
In
this matter, he made a good start, for his first essay on public affairs
was forbidden by the censor. Since the Jahrbücher
had an offshoot
in Switzerland, Ruge had the article, together with some other victims
of the censorship, published as Anecdota philosophica by Julius
Fröbel of Zurich. It was entitled Bemerkungen über die neuste
preussische Censurinstruktion [Remarks on the latest Prussian
Censorship Order], and was described as being by a
Rhinelander.
¶Meanwhile, Marx had turned his attention towards another press organ,
which had been appearing in Cologne since January 1, 1842. It was called
the Rheinische Zeitung,
had been founded by a group of well-to-do
Rhenish merchants and entrepreneurs, and could be regarded rather as a
moderate governmental organ than as an opposition journal. Marx,
however, was brought into touch with the newspaper by the fact that some
active Young Hegelians (friends of the Young Hegelians in Berlin) were
on the editorial staff. For a time Marx had it in mind to settle in
Cologne, but in the end decided in favour of Bonn.
¶As contributor to the Rheinische Zeitung,
Marx for the first
time had an opportunity of sharpening the theoretical reasoning of
philosophy upon the whetstone of the practical realities of political
life. He set himself vigorously to the task, taking a firm stand on the
platform of contested opinions, and using his rapier with a master hand.
Thus it was that the Rheinische Zeitung
served as a door by which
he entered upon his brilliant journalistic and political career.
§ Rise of the Bourgeoisie
¶Thanks to the economic boom of the thirties, the Prussian bourgeoisie had greatly improved and stabilized its position as compared with a couple of decades earlier.
¶The application of steam-power to production had advanced rapidly. Under the stimulus of improved technique, manufacturing industry had flourished abundantly. New fields of enterprise had disclosed themselves. The utilization of coal and metallic ores had been greatly promoted by the development of railways. The growth of large-scale industry and commerce was leading to the growth of large towns. In certain industries, especially in metallurgy and cotton textiles, gigantic enterprises were being formed. The landed proprietors were emerging from their isolation, were shaking off the fetters of feudalism, and, as distillers and sugar growers, were adopting the more lucrative methods of capitalist production. The revolutionizing of production and distribution was transforming social life. Old traditions were being abandoned, outworn institutions were being scrapped, time-honoured opinions were being revised. The pulses of the bourgeoisie were tingling with the consciousness of power. The minds of members of the rising class were filled with self-confidence. There loomed upon the horizon the image of vigorous individuality, which brooks no restrictions, rebels against oppression, mocks at tutelage, refuses to bow beneath the yoke. This mood began to find expression in literature.
¶The heroes of classical literature, affrighted by the roughness and barbarity of everyday life, had fled, discouraged, withdrawing into a world of aesthetic illusion, where imagination reigned supreme, and where they could find compensation for the impotence from which they suffered in the real world. The longer the incubus of social slavery and political subjection continued, the more did the most sensitive and most creative among men feel at home in the realm of illusions. The region of ideas is a secure refuge for those who are threatened or maltreated by the realities of the world. The ageing Goethe, despite the universality and the cosmopolitan superiority of his genius, was unable to emerge from the classical domain of a sublimity remote from the actualities of life. But Klopstock, Lessing, and young Schiller were ready for the new world that was in course of formation; its coming struck sparks in their minds, and nourished revolutionary flames. Chamisso drew near to the domain of contemporary social reality. Platen, a bold St. George, fiercely attacked the dragon of reaction, corruption, and subjugation by force. Grabbe inveighed against the cramping particularism of German life with all the clamour and defiance of a titan.
¶In the thirties and forties, when from the crumbling walls of
reaction young green shoots and fresh rice were everywhere thrusting
heavenward, a bold, cheerful, self-confident swarm of singers and
apostles of freedom appeared in the forest of German poesy. Georg
Herwegh, the iron lark,
published his Gedichte eines
Lebendigen [A Live Man’s Poems], and in his triumphal campaign
through Germany, set the hearts of thousands aflame. Franz Dingelstedt,
in Lieder eines kosmopolitischen Nachtwächters [Songs of a
Cosmopolitan Night Watchman], unsparingly lashed the police, the clergy,
the ministers of State, and the whole pack of refined and
distinguished persons.
In the comedy entitled Die politische
Wochenstube [The Political Lying-in Room], Robert Prutz poured the
vials of his scorn and mockery on the German people as slaves, and on
the German princes as tyrants. Hoffmann von Fallersleben paid forfeit of
his official position and his means of livelihood for the political
sallies in his Unpolitische Lieder [Unpolitical Lays].
Ferdinand Freiligrath, whose exotic verses about deserts and lions had a
brilliant success, devoted his rhetorical powers to the service of the
awakening revolution. Gottfried Kinkel, Karl Beck, Moritz Hartmann,
Alfred Meissner, Kühne, Jung, and many others, singing enthusiastic
battle-songs and paeans on behalf of liberty, joined in the chorus of
Germany’s awakening after the night of the Middle Ages. From across the
frontiers, Heinrich Heine and Ludwig Börne, publishing a succession of
criticisms, polemics, and pamphlets, were indefatigable in their fierce
onslaughts on the Prussian reaction. They made merry over the blunders
of the police; they stigmatized the narrow-mindedness and the
obscurantism of the authorities; they pilloried the drowsy inactivity of
the philistines; and, filled with moral indignation, they depicted the
behaviour of the reactionary despotism in a way that made Europe rock
with laughter. Treading in Heine’s footsteps, but working independently
of him, were the champions of Young Germany, who took up arms against
the obsolete and the outworn, and fought on behalf of the new. Gutzkow,
Laube, Wienbarg, Mundt, and others had a fine flair for all that was
springing into life, and felt it their mission to collaborate in the
birth. They wrote about the historical conditions requisite for a
Prussian constitution, the principles of democracy, the unity of Germany
and its significance for the political and intellectual development of
the country, and so on; and although they were anything but
revolutionists, the very fact that they were so closely watched by the
Prussian police made them contribute nobly towards dispelling the
prevalent spirit of dull subserviency. The more suspiciously the
reaction supervised and persecuted every tendency towards free movement,
the more did even timid appeals acquire the significance of trumpet
blasts, of calls to arms, and of apotheoses of freedom.
¶The significance of these poetic revellies was underlined by the results of pioneer work in the scientific field. The capitalist method of production, in its need for the unsealing of nature’s treasure houses that commodity production might be intensified, had called natural science and technical acquisitions to its aid. Research was stimulated, experiments were encouraged, people’s senses were sharpened for the observation and discovery of natural processes which might be turned to account for the purposes of the new developments. In the laboratories, the workshops, and the lecture theatres, the secrets of a new world were being disclosed. Theodor Schwann discovered the cell as the basic element in the bodies of animals and plants. Justus Liebig enunciated new views on chemistry, founded a new theory of plant nutrition, and thus inaugurated a new epoch in agriculture. Johannes Müller created the foundations of modern physiology. In a series of mathematical, physical, and astronomical discoveries, Karl F. Gauss enlarged the boundaries of knowledge. Alexander von Humboldt, geographer and naturalist, gave people a new conception of the world by the record of his extensive travels, and did pioneer work in the fields of geology, mineralogy, zoology, botany, meteorology, and climatology. Robert Mayer formulated the mechanical theory of heat and enunciated the principle of the conservation of energy. The Siemens brothers, making numerous discoveries in the matter of the production of alcohol and of sugar, in electrotechnique, telegraphy, etc., laid the foundation of a number of new industries. A rebirth of society was in progress amid this general competition of active minds. Society, inasmuch as it would only pay heed to what was manifest to human senses and demonstrable by the methods of exact research, freed itself intellectually from dependence on all the old codes, and would now give credence only to the principles of a materialist philosophy, a philosophy with concrete aims. This materialism, an emphatic protest against theological and idealist outlooks, formed the soil on which Feuerbach’s trenchant criticism of religion was able to grow so vigorously.
¶In 1842, when Marx became one of the contributors to the
Rheinische Zeitung
of which he was soon to be editor-in-chief, it
was plain to him that in the general paean to liberty this newspaper
could only be one chord. But he was determined that it should be a chord
having a timbre of its own.
§ The Rheinische Zeitung
¶Frederick William III had promised to give the Prussian people a constitution. This promise had not been fulfilled. Consequently, the pledge given to the creditors of the State that every new loan should be sanctioned by the estates of the realm, could not be kept. For the sake of appearances, however, provincial diets were established, impotent bodies, vegetating under the shelter of secrecy, bodies in which the squirearchy continued to exercise its territorial despotism behind the mask of parliamentary procedure. Even the Rhenish diet, in respect of political initiative and status, was no better than the feudalist servants’ halls which sat eastward of the Elbe.
¶Frederick William IV, the heir of his father’s unfulfilled promise,
had summoned the Rhenish diet in 1841. Taking the minutes of the
proceedings as his text, Marx dealt pitilessly with this masquerade. In
a series of articles, he discussed the question of the freedom of the
press, which had not secured in the diet any advocate against the
malicious onslaughts of the authorities. Then he dealt with the matter
of the imprisonment of the Archbishop of Cologne, with the result that
his article was expunged by the censorship. Finally he referred to the
debates concerning a law to punish thefts of wood in the forests. This
last gave him hard nuts to crack, seeing that there was no provision
in Hegel’s ideological system
for the consideration of social
problems and material interests.
¶The articles on the freedom of the press were brilliantly written.
Ruge praised them highly, saying: We can congratulate ourselves upon
the appearance on the journalistic stage of one so highly instructed, so
talented, and with such a sovereign power of marshalling ideas upon a
topic where confusion is apt to prevail.
In this matter, Marx was in
his element. He was fully informed regarding the subject matter, and the
vigour of his writing could not fail to attract attention. But when it
came to the third of the before-mentioned topics, he was verging on the
limits of his extant abilities. Proceeding further, when he had to
discuss hunting rights, the prosecution of poachers, and the
difficulties of the small-farming system, with all the involved
questions of property relations, he felt that the task was beyond him;
he knew that he would not be able to cope with it until he had
undertaken a thorough study of political economy, and had faced up to
the problem of socialism. His training in philosophy and law had been
exhaustive, but this was of little use to him in the handling of
economic questions. His idealist outlook upon the State and society
involved him in hopeless perplexities when he had to choose a side where
the interests of bourgeoisie and proletariat diverge.
¶A further difficulty was that the Rheinische Zeitung
had to
take a definite line regarding problems and events which were interwoven
with the ideas of the French socialists or affected the interests of
Rhenish proletarians. The perusal of a book by Lorenz von Stein,
Geschichte der sozialistischen Bewegung in Frankreich [History
of the Socialist Movement in France], which was strongly adverse to the
outlooks of Saint-Simon and Fourier, had made Marx realize the necessity
of becoming well acquainted with this matter. A dispute with the
Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung
had forced upon him the unpleasant
necessity of openly admitting that he knew nothing about the theories of
French socialism and communism. The Augsburger
had reproached the
Rheinische Zeitung
for coquetting with communism. Marx had
rejoined that the Rheinische
did not concede even theoretical
validity to communist ideas in their present form,
and still less
did it desire their practical realization or regard such a realization
as possible. But, he said, the journal wished to subject these ideas to
exhaustive criticism. The real danger lay, not in any practical
endeavour, but in the theoretical carrying out of communist
ideas.
He went on: Practical attempts, even if made on a large
scale, can be answered with big guns as soon as they become dangerous;
but ideas which gain the victory over our intelligence and our feelings,
ideas to which reason has welded our conscience, these are chains which
we cannot break without breaking our hearts, these are demons which man
can only conquer by subjecting himself to them.
The emotionalism of
the words had its due effect; but Marx was only too well aware that
problems as serious as this could not be permanently shuffled out of the
world by declamation or by amateurish comment.
¶In the sequel, the problems of socialism and the revolution played a
part likewise in the differences that arose between Marx and his Berlin
friends. The Doctors’ Club had transformed itself into a Society of the
Free, which was being joined by literary men of various shades of
opinion. In these circles there was a mishmash of ideas, the high-flown
theories of cultured academicians being voiced side by side with the
more prosaic and straightforward schemes of Chartists, Owenists, and
Saint-Simonians–schemes which had been imported into Germany from
England and France. It was a crazy amalgam, for the doctrinairism of the
German schools could not mingle satisfactorily with the explosive
notions of foreign origin. Moreover, raw student zeal made a pretence of
being revolutionary efficiency, while crudeness and coarseness were
mistaken for manifestations of mental enfranchisement. Friedrich Engels,
son of a factory owner in Barmen, and at this time doing his year’s
military service as an artilleryman in the guards, found his way into
the Society of the Free, and played his part there wittily by composing
a Christian heroic poem Die frech bedräute, jedoch wunderbar
befreite Bibel oder Triumph des Glaubens [The impudently
threatened, but miraculously saved Bible, or the Triumph of Faith],
which mirrors in a fanciful way the intellectual world of these free
spirits.
¶The only consequence of the hubbub was the vexatious one that Marx
was overwhelmed with correspondence, and with proffered contributions,
from Berlin, scrawls weighty with plans for a world revolution but
empty of ideas, clumsily written, and tinged with a certain amount of
atheism and communism (which the writers have never studied).
He
would have nothing to do with all this. I insisted on the need for
less vague argument, pretentious phraseology, and self-satisfied
contemplation of one’s own image in the mirror; and upon the need for
more definiteness, more concern with concrete actualities, more accurate
knowledge of the matters in hand. I declared that I regarded it as
inappropriate, not to say immoral, to smuggle socialist and communist
dogmas–a new outlook on the world–into casual columns of dramatic
criticism; and I said that if communism was to be discussed it must be
discussed in a very different and far more thorough fashion.
If the
members of the Society of the Free thereupon rejoined that it was time
for the Rheinische Zeitung
to exchange halfhearted dallying for
earnest endeavour, this did not seem to Marx sufficient reason for doing
anything foolhardy; but it was made evident to him as a logical
necessity that he must devote himself to a thorough study of the problem
of socialism.
¶The censorship, apparently, wished to give him a push in this
direction. The Rheinische
was harried more and more as its
circulation increased, and as it gained prestige and influence. At
length, by a decision of the ministerial council in Berlin, adopted in
the king’s presence and perhaps at the king’s instigation, an order for
the suppression of the paper was issued on January 21, 1843.
¶The protests and petitions of the shareholders were of no avail. The
utmost the authorities would grant was a postponement of the suppression
until the end of the quarter. On March 17th, Marx retired from the
staff. Thereupon he breathed more freely, since for a long time, as he
wrote to Ruge, he had been weary of hypocrisy, stupidity, the rough
handling of authority, and our own smirking, bowing, scraping, and
quibbling.
¶The government had set him free.
What was the best use he
could make of this regained freedom? What could he do better than devote
himself wholeheartedly to the study of socialism?
§ Chapter 02: Clarification, Part 1
§ A New Platform
¶The enthusiasm with which Marx had devoted himself to his work on the
staff of the Rheinische Zeitung
had speedily evaporated. A mood
of depression and disillusionment had ensued. In the end, he had
withdrawn from the editorship with a sigh of relief. Yet there was no
obvious cause for his feelings.
¶He had wielded a vigorous pen, had given his best energies to his task, had done yeoman’s service to the opposition of the day, using all his knowledge and all his talents in the cause. His period of activity had been brief, but it had been brilliant and fruitful.
¶No doubt his wranglings with the censorship and with the publisher had been wearisome and dispiriting. But such occurrences were a necessary part of a journalist’s life in those days, and things were no worse in Cologne than elsewhere. Besides, what could these trifles matter to a born fighter? Marx had only been in harness for five months. Some champions have to endure worse troubles for decades, and even for a long lifetime. This was no reason for discouragement.
¶The root of the trouble lay elsewhere. Marx had sustained a
discomfiture in the dispute with the Augsburger Allgemeine
Zeitung.
As editor-in-chief of a great modern newspaper, he had had
no definite opinion and had been able to express no definite views
regarding a topical political matter of outstanding importance, the
ideas of the French socialists. Not an overwhelming misfortune, perhaps,
for who can know everything? But Marx had been shamed by the need to
avow his ignorance, and his activities had been damped down. He was a
man of masterful, not to say dictatorial temperament his vanity was
mortified, his sensitive vanity, which hid a subconscious feeling of
inadequacy. That was why he hastened to evacuate the field; no longer to
him a field of brilliant journalistic successes, but one in which he had
sustained a defeat.
¶Marx was greedy
for time and opportunity in which to undertake
enduring and profound studies
of the contentious matter. He
hurled himself into the new theatre of war, and sought a new platform.
Here he would redeem his losses! Not again should he have to renounce a
combat, not for a second time should he have to avow himself
incompetent. Perhaps in the rivalry for the mastery of the thought world
of socialism, he would one day outdo all competitors!
¶He had decided to go to Paris, where he could study socialism at the
source. He would join forces with Ruge, for whom the German censorship
was making the issue of the Jahrbücher
increasingly difficult.
They would publish in Paris. Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
he
enthusiastically exclaimed, that would be a notable principle, a
remarkable event, an undertaking to which one could devote oneself with
all one’s heart.
¶He married, and thus freed Jenny von Westphalen from a crossfire which had been going on for seven years, a crossfire of intrigue which her bigoted and blue-blooded relatives had been directing, in the hope of bringing about a rupture. The young couple spent a few months of honeymoon in the house of the elder Frau Marx, who had removed to Kreuznach after her husband’s death. In September, Ruge settled in Paris, whither Karl and Jenny Marx followed him in November.
¶Moses Hess, who had accompanied Ruge to Paris, gave the young men
their first introduction into the circle of French socialists. Sprung
from a family of prosperous Jewish manufacturers in Rhineland, Hess was
in a mood of vigorous protest against his father, and was filled with
ruminating unrest. A perpetual seeker after truth, he was trying to
scale all the heights and to plumb all the depths of our spiritual life.
He had taken a considerable part in the foundation of the Rheinische
Zeitung,
and in that connexion had made Marx’s acquaintance. He was
well informed concerning the philosophical development of Germany, the
economic development of England, and the political development of
France. Thus he was eminently fitted to play the part of interpreter
between the Young Hegelians, who had been led to the world of politics
and to socialism through the study of Feuerbach, and the French
socialists, who were to be guided to Hegel, and to the logical
insight
of the Germans, by way of their political experiences. Moses
Hess had been the first to draw his friend Engels’ attention to the
internal logical necessity thanks to which the Hegelian way of thinking
must inevitably culminate in communism. Now he made himself useful to
Ruge and to Marx by bringing them into touch with the representatives of
French socialism.
¶In truth, the result of his labours was nothing to boast of. No doubt
Ruge and Marx became personally acquainted with a number of prominent
socialists: Louis Blanc, Dézamy, Considérant, Leroux, Proudhon, and
others. One and all, however, they were of jealous disposition; or
disputatious, narrow-minded, lacking knowledge of German philosophy, and
with no inclination to weigh the pros and cons of any other theories or
systems than those with which they were already familiar. Thus there was
little scope in Paris for the establishment of a Gallo-German
alliance. Still less promising were the prospects of the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
When Marx wanted to realize the
programme of the new annual, wanted to make an end of the celestial
policy of the Middle Kingdom, and to replace it by the real science of
human affairs,
he found that he would have to depend exclusively
upon German collaborators.
¶Not until the end of February 1844 was it possible to issue the first
and second parts of the new Jahrbücher,
combined in a single
slender volume. The design had been to publish twelve parts in a year,
but this double part was all that ever went through the press.
¶From a business standpoint, the undertaking was stillborn. From the standpoint of socialist evolution, it was a bold onrush into a new world, a world whose first need was self-knowledge!
The Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher
¶Arnold Ruge opened the ball with a Plan of the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
¶He began by speaking of Prusso-German conditions, and the stifling atmosphere which the periodical had to breathe.
¶In Germany, hypocrisy seems invincible, as if science were
indifferent towards life; or, if not so, as if at least the heaven of
science were unattainable for the masses of mankind. In reasonable
circumstances, the kernel of science will become the property of all in
the form of practice, will be part of the universal consciousness. A
practical thought, however, a word that would fain move the world, is in
Germany a direct onslaught on everything that is regarded as sacred and
uplifted above the mob. German science, like the German State, is sacred
and respectable, not human and free; and it is regarded as treason to
both to make science the common property of mankind. Yet this act of
treason must now be committed.
¶To say truth, not now first committed, but only continued. Events in Germany had shown that philosophy had already become of political importance. “If, for the nonce, the German movement has taken refuge in a bookish world, which has seemingly, no concern with actual history and with the revolution in which we live, it will be our business to make an end of such hypocrisy and indifference, and deliberately to pursue political aims. We shall stake everything upon freedom. Indifferent learning does not exist for the philosopher. Philosophy is freedom, and wishes to create freedom. By freedom we mean genuinely human freedom, that is to say political freedom, not some sort of metaphysical blue vapour which a man can conjure up in his study, and even in a prison.
¶The purpose of the Jahrbücher
was to make known to the
general consciousness, in as pregnant a way as possible and in an
artistic manner, everything going on in the old world relating to the
great transformation.
The carrying out of this undertaking led to
France, which by its glorious revolution and the conquest of the rights
of man had fought its way to the acquisition of a cosmopolitan
mission
which applied to the whole world. A hatred for France was
always equivalent to a blind hostility for political liberty. In
Germany, we can appraise in every one his intelligence and his moral
enfranchisement when we know what opinion he holds regarding France. The
more cloudy a German’s intelligence, the more servile his way of
thinking, the more unjust and ignorant will be his opinion of France. He
will stigmatize as immorality the greatness and moral energy of a nation
which on its own behalf and that of Europe has conquered all the freedom
which the world now enjoys; he will say that the French are unfeeling
because they have made short work of his own favourite principle of
philistinism; and he will not admit that the godless French have any
conception of family happiness. One who in Germany understands the
French and recognizes their merits, is by that fact alone a cultured
man, a free spirit.
¶Germany is put to shame by the French. They study us, they respect
us, indeed they prize us and our transcendental science too highly; and
even if they are not yet acquainted with the mundane trend of the most
recent epoch, it will soon become plain that here for the first time
they are really on a common ground with us.
The interchange of their
cultures is the true bond of union between the two nations, and will
bring about the victory of freedom. We Germans have wasted a great
deal of time upon furbishing up our old ways in religion and politics.
While doing this, we have injured our eyesight, and have become
romanticists. None the less, we have thereby gained a sense of order,
and have acquired a faculty of logical insight which gives us a safe
guide in the metaphysical domain and in the imaginative world, whereas
here the French scud rudderless before the wind.
The Hegelian system
has done good service in this way, that it has freed us from arbitrary
fancies; and in like manner it will safeguard the French spirit from the
dangerous illusions and seductions of a genius that has taken the bit
between its teeth and of an unbridled fantasy.
Thanks to the freedom
of the press in France, it will be possible to demonstrate to all and
sundry that we in the womb of German obscurantism have become strong
enough to bear, of a sudden, the light of the world.
This is a new
epoch, in which there is occurring a fraternization of principles,
and in which the nations will be able to foregather.
¶The formal introduction is followed by an arranged correspondence
between Marx, Ruge, Feuerbach, and Bakunin. Marx is supposed to be
writing from Holland, and describes the shame inspired by conditions in
Prussia. The splendid cloak of liberalism has been dropped, and the
most repulsive despotism is exposed in all its nakedness to the eyes of
the whole world. This is also a revelation, though a perverted one. It
is a revelation of the truth, a revelation that certainly enables us to
learn the emptiness of our patriotism, the unnatural character of our
State system; a revelation which discloses our true visage. You smile at
me, and ask what is gained thereby. You say that shame cannot make a
revolution. I answer that shame is itself already a revolution. … If a
whole nation were really ashamed, the lion crouching for a spring would
refrain.
The comedy of despotism will necessarily lead to a
revolution, but the State is too serious a thing to be made into a
harlequinade. A ship manned by fools might drive before the wind for a
good long time; but it would drive onwards to its fate for the very
reason that the fools did not believe that such a fate was in store for
them. That fate is the impending revolution.
¶Ruge begins his reply with a quotation from Hölderlin, as a motto to
signify his profound depression. Do you expect a political
revolution? Do you think that we, the contemporaries of such Germans as
live today, can expect anything of the kind? My friend, the wish is
father to the thought … More courage is needed for despair than for
hope. But the courage of despair is a reasonable courage, and we have
reached a point when we can no longer delude ourselves.
Tearfully,
and at great length, he describes the impression produced upon him by
the despotic maxims
of the reaction, and by the eternal
submissiveness
of the ordinary Germans. Had we not better console
ourselves with the thought that these things are inevitable, that man is
not born to be free?
Marx had said that the ship of fools would not
escape its revolutionary destiny; but he had failed to add that this
revolution would only be the convalescence of the fools. Your image
does no more than lead us to the idea of destruction, but I will not
even concede you this destruction.
In profound resignation, he
concludes by saying: You may reproach me with being no better than
the others; you may challenge me to promote the coming of a new age with
the assistance of the new principle; you may ask me why I do not show
myself to be one of those authors whom a free century follows. You may
say as many bitter things as you please, but my withers will be unwrung.
Our nation has no future, so what is the use of summoning it to the
fray?
¶To this elegy,
to this funeral lay,
Marx rejoins that
he finds it utterly unpolitical. It is true that the old world
belongs to the philistine, but we must not regard him as a spectre
before which we flee in terror. We must face up to him boldly.
What
does this philistine look like? The philistine world is the political
world of lower animal life. … Centuries of barbarism have created and
evolved it, and now it exists as a consistent system, whose ruling
principle is the dehumanization of the world … The only idea of
despotism is contempt for man, the dehumanized man. … The principle of
monarchy in general is man despised, man despicable, man dehumanized. …
Where the monarchical principle is in the majority, human beings are in
the minority; where no one challenges the monarchical principle, there
are no men at all. … The philistine is the substance of the monarchy,
and the monarch is never anything more than the king of the philistines.
… Why should not such a man as the king of Prussia follow his caprices
unhesitatingly? So long as caprice stands its ground, caprice is in the
right. … I maintain that the king of Prussia will be a man of his time
for just so long as our perverted world is the real world.
Marx sets
forth how the king, in his own manner, had tried to effect a reform;
but the servants of the ancient despotism soon made an end of this
un-German activity.
Besides, the lord of all the farther Russians
had been made uneasy by the restless movement in the heads of the hither
Russians, and had insisted upon the restoration of the good old quiet
times. Such was the unsuccessful attempt to uplift the philistine
State upon its own foundation. … A brutal system can only be maintained
by brutality.
The extant methods of industry and commerce, property,
and the exploitation of man by man, would speedily lead to a rupture
within society, and under the old regime there could be no cure. From
our side, the old world must be brought fully into the daylight, and the
new world must be developed in a positive sense. The longer the time
that events leave for thoughtful humanity to reflect, and for suffering
humanity to collect its forces, the more finished, when born, will be
the product which the present bears in its womb.
¶The letters of Bakunin and Feuerbach are likewise full of
encouragement. This is not the moment for folding our arms, for
cowardly despair,
exclaims Bakunin. If such men as you no longer
believe in Germany’s future, no longer wish to work for the coming of
that future, who will believe, and who will act? We must scourge our
metaphysical arrogance, which does not make the world warm; we must
learn; we must work day and night that we may be able to live like men
with men, that we may be free and may make others free; we must (I
always come back to this) enter into possession of our time by entering
into possession of our own ideas.
Feuerbach writes in a similar
tone. Thereupon Ruge writes to Marx: It is true, Poland has been
destroyed, but Poland is not yet lost. … The
Jahrbücher
have been
destroyed, the Hegelian philosophy belongs to the past. Here in Paris we
will found an organ in which we can judge ourselves and the whole of
Germany with perfect freedom and with inexorable uprightness.
¶In his concluding epistle, Marx acclaims Ruge’s decision for action,
and sketches the programme of the new periodical: We shall not
dogmatically anticipate the coming world, but shall begin by discovering
the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto the
philosophers had had schemes for the solution of all riddles lying ready
in their desks, and the stupid exoteric world had merely to open its
mouth wide that the roast pigeons of absolute science might fly into its
mouth. Philosophy has been secularized, the most striking proof of this
being that the philosophical consciousness has itself rushed into the
fray, not only outwardly, but inwardly as well. … We are developing the
principles of the new world. We do not say to the world:
In conclusion, summarizing the trends and the aims of
the periodical, he writes: Cease your
struggles, which are foolish, for we will give you the true
battle-cry.
We merely show the world for what it is really fighting,
and the world must become self-conscious whether it will or no. … Our
motto must therefore be: Reform of the consciousness, not by dogmas,
but by analysis of the mystical consciousness, of the consciousness
which is not fully clarified, whether it be religious or
political.
To make the time fully understand its
struggles and its wishes.
Thus the flag was hoisted. Brief, alas,
was to be the period in which it fluttered in the breeze. The
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher
had very few readers. As a
business undertaking, it was unsuccessful. A great many of the copies
were intercepted when the attempt was made to smuggle them into Germany.
Through the instrumentality of Guizot, the Prussian government took
action against the editors. Meanwhile the editors were quarrelling. They
broke away from one another, moving in opposite directions, Ruge to the
right, Marx more and more to the left. Ruge, being unable to free his
mind from personal animus in a dispute about ideas, cherished a
grievance against Marx. As for Marx, he recked little henceforward of
Ruge’s personality, and devoted his attention to matters of greater
importance.
§ Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie
¶Rather less than a year elapsed between the suppression of the
Rheinische Zeitung
and the publication of the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
¶Marx had devoted this brief period to intensive culture of the soil of his own mind. He had made a giant stride forward in his development towards socialism.
¶He had criticized Hegel unsparingly, had advanced upon Feuerbach, and had adopted a position of his own towards the French socialists. He had put history upon the throne from which he had unseated religion. In his hands, secularized philosophy had become politics. His world was spinning on a new axis.
¶Positively amazing was the amount of scientific literature perused by
Marx in the summer and autumn of 1843. In his notebooks of this year we
find an enormous quantity of extracts from books on the history of
France (Schmidt, Wachsmuth, Chateaubriand, Lacretelle); England
(Lappenberg, Russell); Germany (Ranke); and the United States: also from
Möser’s Patriotische Phantasien, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and
Montesquieu. He had studied the history of political systems; had read
the economic works of Ricardo and McCulloch; and had even entertained
plans of writing a history of the Convention. In Paris, where he had
access to great libraries, he immersed himself in the relevant
literature. A precipitate from all these studies forms his Zur
Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie [Introduction to a Critique
of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right], which appeared in the first
section of the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
¶In this article, Marx, with the boldness of the man of genius, sketches the elements of his later system of thought. Daringly, and in letters of flame, he writes the watchwords of the manifesto of proletarian enfranchisement on the firmament of the epoch.
¶Setting out from Feuerbach, briefly and clearly summarizing the results of that philosopher’s criticism of religion, he makes history the fulcrum of future developments, and therewith comes to politics.
¶Man makes religion; religion does not make man. Religion, indeed,
is the self-consciousness and the self-feeling of the man who either has
not yet found himself, or else (having found himself) has lost himself
once more. But man is not an abstract being, squatting down somewhere
outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society. This
State, this society, produce religion, produce a perverted world
consciousness, because they are a perverted world. Religion is the
generalized theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compend, its logic
in a popular form. … The fight against religion is, therefore, a direct
campaign against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
¶Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a
heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It
is the opium of the people.
¶The people cannot be really happy until it has been deprived of
illusory happiness by the abolition of religion. The demand that the
people should shake itself free of illusion as to its own condition is
the demand that it should abandon a condition which needs
illusion.
¶Thus it is the mission of history, after the other-worldly truth
has disappeared, to establish the truth of this world. In the next
place, it is the mission of philosophy, having entered into the service
of history after the true nature of the reputed sainthood of human
self-estrangement has been disclosed, to disclose all the unsaintliness
of this self-estrangement. Thus the criticism of heaven is transformed
into a criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into a criticism of
law, the criticism of theology into a criticism of politics.
¶German history plumes itself upon a movement which no other nation
in the historical firmament has ever made before it, and which no other
nation will ever make after it. We have shared the restorations of the
modern nations without sharing their revolutions. We experienced a
restoration, first of all because other nations ventured a revolution,
and secondly because other nations had to suffer a counterrevolution;
the first was because our lords and masters were afraid, and the second
was because our lords and masters were not afraid. Led by our shepherds,
we found ourselves in the company of freedom only on the day of its
funeral.
¶It behoves us that the Germans should not be allowed a moment for
self-deception and resignation. Rather should the actual pressure be
intensified, so that the consciousness of pressure should be superadded,
the smart being increased by publication. … These petrified conditions
must be made to dance by having their own tune sung to them.
¶Just as in ancient days the nations knew their primal history in
the world of imagination, in mythology, so have we Germans experienced
our history of days to come in thoughts, in philosophy. We are the
contemporaries of the present in philosophy, without being its
contemporaries in history. German philosophy is the continuation of
German history in the world of the ideal.
¶That which, among more advanced nations, is a practical quarrel
with modern political conditions, is in Germany, where these conditions
have not even yet come into existence, a critical quarrel with the
philosophical mirroring of these conditions.
¶In the world of politics, the Germans have thought that which
other nations have done. Germany has been their theoretical conscience.
The abstractness and exaggeration of Germany’s thought has always kept
pace with the one-sidedness and the inadequacy of the realities of
German life.
¶The German people, therefore, must bring its dreamland history
into harmony with extant conditions, and must subject to criticism, not
only these extant conditions, but also their continuation in the
abstract world!
¶The weapon of criticism cannot replace the criticism of weapons.
Physical force must be overthrown by physical force; but theory, too,
becomes a physical force as soon as it takes possession of the
masses.
¶The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the
highest being for man; it ends, that is to say, with the categorical
imperative that all conditions must be revolutionized in which man is a
debased, an enslaved, an abandoned, a contemptible being. … A radical is
one who cuts at the roots of things. Now, for man, the root of things is
man himself.
¶A radical revolution, the general emancipation of mankind, is not
a utopian dream for Germany; what is utopian is the idea of a partial,
an exclusively political revolution, which would leave the pillars of
the house standing. Upon what does a partial, an exclusively political
revolution rest? Upon this, that a part of civil society emancipates
itself, and attains to general dominion; upon this, that a particular
class, from a position peculiar to itself, should undertake to effect
the general emancipation of society. That class can free the whole of
society, but only on the proviso that the whole of society is in the
position of that class.
¶Only in the name of the general rights of society is a particular
class entitled to claim universal dominion. Abundant revolutionary
energy and mental self-confidence will not be enough to enable it to
take this emancipatory position by storm, and thus to effect the
political utilization of all spheres of society in the interests of its
own sphere. If the revolution of a nation is to coincide with the
emancipation of a particular class of civil society, if one particular
estate is to be an estate tantamount to the whole of society, then,
conversely, all the defects of society must be concentrated in another
class, one particular estate must sustain the general attack, must be
the incorporation of the general restrictions; one particular social
sphere must be the scapegoat for all the sins of society, so that the
enfranchisement of this sphere will be equivalent to a universal
self-enfranchisement. If one estate is to be preeminently the estate of
liberation, then, conversely, another estate must manifestly be the
estate of subjugation.
¶What, then, are the practical possibilities of German
emancipation? Here is the answer. They are to be found in the formation
of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a
class of civil society; of an estate which is the dissolution of all
estates; of a sphere which is endowed with a universal character by the
universality of its sufferings; one which does not lay claim to any
particular rights, the reason being that it does not suffer any one
specific injustice, but suffers injustice unqualified; one which can no
longer put forward a historically grounded title, but only a general
human title; one which is not in any sort of one-sided opposition to the
consequences, but only in a general opposition to the presuppositions of
the German political system; and, finally, a sphere which cannot
emancipate itself, without emancipating itself from all the other
spheres of society–one which, in a word, has been completely deprived of
its human privileges, so that it can only regain itself by fully
regaining these human privileges. This dissolution of society as a
particular estate–is the proletariat.
¶If the proletariat heralds the dissolution of the world order as
hitherto extant, it is merely, thereby, expressing the mystery of its
own existence, for it is the actual dissolution of this previous world
order. If the proletariat demands the negation of private property, it
is only raising to the level of a principle of society that which
society has made the principle of the proletariat, that which is
incorporated in the proletariat as the negative result of history
without any cooperation on the part of the proletariat.
¶The only practically possible liberation of Germany is liberation
upon the standpoint of the theory which declares man to be the highest
being for man. … The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of
mankind.
¶Philosophy cannot be realized without the uprising of the
proletariat; and the proletariat cannot rise without the realization of
philosophy.
¶The foregoing extracts will give the reader a general idea of the thought process of the essay from which they are taken; but they serve very inadequately to convey the originality and momentum of the ideas, the elemental force of the logic, the compactness of the argumentation, and the creative imagery of the phrasing, which combine to make a masterpiece of this pioneer revolutionary document, and thanks to which its general conclusions form a brilliant prophecy of the proletarian revolution.
¶In later years, Marx summarized the contents of the article in the
following terms: My investigation culminated in the recognition that
legal and political forms are not comprehensible of themselves, nor yet
explicable in terms of the so-called evolution of the human mind, but
are rooted in the material conditions of life, whose totality Hegel,
following the example of English and French eighteenth-century writers,
subsumed under the name of
civil society
; and in the recognition
that the anatomy of civil society is to be sought for in political
economy.
¶With this recognition, Marx had laid the foundation stone and built in the corner stone of the monumental edifice of his future social theory.
§ The Jewish Question
¶Another of Marx’s contributions to the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher
dealt with the Jewish question. He took as his theme an
article on the same topic which had been contributed by Bruno Bauer to
the Deutsche Jahrbücher,
and had subsequently been published as a
pamphlet.
¶The Jewish question was a topical one. Those who then used the phrase, had in mind the political and civic liberation of the Jews from their exceptional position before the law, a position which was a relic of the Middle Ages. The reactionaries, naturally, had done nothing to bring about this emancipation. Nay more, they had deprived the Jews of certain advantages gained in Germany under the stimulus of French advocacy of the rights of man. In Prussia alone, says Mehring, there were no less than eighteen laws dealing with the Jews.
¶On the other hand, the Jews had themselves shown little inclination to come into close contact with the intellectual life of the German nation. Thanks to the conservatism of their Old Testament ideology, they could not but seem foreign bodies in the community during a period of growing enlightenment and emancipatory movement. In so far as they had become objects of political attention, it was because their most notable representatives (moneylenders who kept the princes and other feudal magnates in funds, farmers of the taxes, debasers of the currency, financiers of one kind and another) were regarded with detestation as being the secret and last but powerful props of the feudal system.
¶The general economic progress of the times was advantageous to Jews as well as Gentiles. Jews had become of economic importance, and in proportion to this development there was a tendency towards the growth of their civic and political importance. But whereas in the actual world they had already acquired a better position, their legal and ideological positions lagged behind. Such was the content of the Jewish question. Amid the chorus of the voices of the day, Jewish voices were raised ever more insistently in criticism of the injustices from which the Jews suffered. Thus Jews made common cause with liberals and even with revolutionists, turning the mental and moral sciences, and philosophy itself, to account in the struggle for Jewish emancipation. The Young Hegelians’ fierce attack on Christianity and religion brought grist, here, to the Jewish mill.
¶Bruno Bauer, like Feuerbach, had taken a definite line upon the Jewish question. But neither of these champions had freed the problem from its entanglement in the web of theological, religious, and philosophical criticism.
¶Marx tore the meshes of this speculative net in sunder, envisaged the question from a clear outlook, and discussed it upon the concrete basis of its secular determinants. What had been a theological problem became in his hands a mundane one.
¶Then he turned upon his old friend and opponent with the challenging technique of a fighter who is sure of his own ground. His training had been one which gave him enormous advantages over Bauer, and disclosed to him the weaknesses of his adversary. He was victor from the first thrust of his lance.
¶If the German Jews, he said, covet political, civic emancipation,
they must be told that the State cannot emancipate itself as long as it
is Christian, any more than the Jew can be emancipated so long as he
remains a Jew. Upon what title do you Jews ground your claim for
emancipation? On your religion? It is the mortal foe of the State
religion. As citizens? In Germany there are no citizens. As human
beings? You are not human beings, any more than those to whom you are
appealing.
¶In Bauer’s view, the Jew, if he wished to become free, must first become a Christian, and must then transcend Christianity with the aid of the Hegelian philosophy.
¶Things must go the other way about, said Marx. If, as Feuerbach had
proved, the existence of religion was the outcome of the existence of a
lack, and if the source of this lack were to be found in the nature of
the extant State, then it logically followed, not that it was incumbent
upon the Jews to rid themselves of their religious limitations
in
order that they might thereafter free themselves of their secular
limitations; but, conversely, that their religious limitations would
spontaneously disappear as soon they had freed themselves from their
secular limitations.
¶In this way the question of the relation of political emancipation to religion had become the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation.
¶The modern bourgeois State represents the result and the reservoir of
political emancipation. A man need not, because he is a citizen, cease
to be a Christian, a Jew, an adherent of one creed or another. As
citizen, he is a member of a species, but as Christian or Jew he is a
private individual. The State can free itself from a limitation
without the individual human being having really freed himself from that
limitation; the State can be a free State although the individual is not
yet a free man.
¶Marx goes on to say, in illustration of his argument, that the
religious question finds an analogy in the question of property.
Politically, the State abolishes private property when it abolishes the
property qualification for the exercise of the suffrage. After its own
manner, it abolishes distinctions of birth, standing, education, and
occupation, when it declares birth, standing, education, etc., to be
differences devoid of political significance, and when it allows every
member of the community to participate equally in the exercise of
popular sovereignty regardless of such distinctions. Yet at the same
time, property, education, standing, birth, and so on, remain intact as
concrete distinctions between private individuals. Indeed, the State
only exists on the proviso that these differences exist, and only
makes its universality valid in contrast with these elements of
itself.
¶Thus the individual human being leads a double life: one life
politically, in the State, as a member of the species; and another life
as a private individual in civil society. The conflict in which a man
is involved between his position as one who professes a particular
religion and as one endowed with citizenship in a State (wherein he is
related to his fellow-men inasmuch as he and they are all members of a
community), reduces itself to the secular cleavage between the political
State and civil society.
It is thus an outcome of the contradiction
between the State and its presuppositions; or, to put the matter yet
more simply, of the contradiction between general interest and private
interest. In the bourgeois State, this contradiction is illimitable; and
in that State, therefore, the Jewish question, as an expression of this
contradiction, can find no solution. If you Jews desire political
emancipation before you have emancipated yourselves humanly, the
halfheartedness and the contradiction do not exist only in you, for they
are also to be found in the nature and the category of political
emancipation. If you are yourselves entangled in this category, you
share in its general entanglement. If the State proselytizes, in so far
as it, although a State, assumes a Christian attitude towards the Jews,
so, likewise, does the Jew enter the field of politics when he, although
a Jew, demands civil rights.
¶But how should human emancipation be realized?
¶If the political revolution has reduced civic life into its
constituents without revolutionizing it, so that the egoistic individual
is the passive, unrevolutionized result of this process of dissolution,
is a constituent of the dissolved society–then human emancipation, or
the social revolution, will be characterized by the leading back of
the human world, of relations, to the human being himself.
¶Not until the concrete individual human being takes back into
himself the abstract citizen of the State, and, as an individual human
being, has become a member of the species in his empirical life, in his
individual work, in his individual relations; not until the human being
has recognized and organized his own forces as social forces, so that
social force is no longer severed from itself in the form of political
force not until then will human emancipation be completed.
¶The splendid conclusion of the argument therefore runs as follows. Man is for man the highest being, and as such–as individual and as member of the species rolled into one–has to mount the throne of human history.
¶The gods have been dethroned. Their existence has been shown to be the outcome of men’s attempts to find compensation for their own defects and weaknesses. Ideas are but reflexions of the soul’s anxiety.
¶Nor can matter, unaided, achieve anything. It needs man as fulfiller of its dynamic conformity to law, which finds expression as the necessity of interests.
¶The political revolution has cloven man in twain, into the member of the species, who leads an abstract life, and the private individual, who is a slave to his own egoism.
¶The member of the species belongs to the State, which is not (as Hegel thought) the realization of the moral idea, the manifestation of the absolutely rational, but only the framework for the anarchical conflict of individualities, the fight between individual interests. The private individual belongs to civil society, which makes him pay for his apparent freedom and independence by depriving him of his power to be a real human being.
¶Mankind will only be able to pursue its emancipatory ascent successfully, when it becomes competent to make every individual willing and able to bring his subjective scheme of life into harmony with the objective evolutionary scheme of society–when the private individual is wholly merged in the member of the species.
¶Only the objectively socialized and subjectively communalized human being will be able to effect the emancipation of mankind, thus becoming master of his own fate.
§ Friedrich Engels
¶In September 1844, Marx had an encounter which was to exercise a decisive influence upon his career.
¶He made the acquaintance of the man whose activities were thenceforward to be indissolubly associated with his own, so closely intertwined that the name of one can never be mentioned without calling up the name of the other.
¶This man was Friedrich Engels. On his way from Manchester to Barmen, he spent ten days in Paris, met Bakunin for the first time, and sought out Marx.
¶The two had corresponded before, and had even had a brief interview,
when Marx was still editor of the Rheinische Zeitung.
Engels had
contributed to the paper. Later he had sent from England two articles
for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
Die Lage
Englands [The Position of England], and Umrisse zu einer Kritik
der Nationalökonomie [Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy].
Now, at length, he and Karl Marx came into close contact.
¶Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen on November 28, 1820. His father was a well-to-do manufacturer, partner in the great textile firm of Ermen and Engels, which had a lucrative cotton-spinning enterprise in Manchester in addition to its German plants. Friedrich’s mother was a woman of culture, daughter of the headmaster of the high school in Hamm. She had eight children, of whom Friedrich was the eldest. He had had the advantages of a prosperous bourgeois upbringing, in a household governed by strict principles–but one where intellectual development was crippled by the restrictions of a Calvinistic pietism. Outside the immediate family circle, the life of a manufacturing town of the day, where the workers were badly housed, where proletarian misery in all its forms was rife, where alcoholism flourished, and where children were ruthlessly exploited, formed the environment of his early years, and supplied the leading impressions of his childhood.
¶Up to the age of fourteen, he attended the middle school at Barmen,
subsequently going to the high school in Elberfeld. He made good
progress in the natural sciences, and was especially distinguished by
his talent for languages. To his father, his character trends gave rise
to considerable anxiety, for as the years passed young Friedrich
manifested an unmistakable, if not unduly aggressive, attitude of
protest against the sanctimonious atmosphere of the home and against all
orthodox and conservative dogmatism. Quitting the Wuppertal when he was
eighteen, he went to Bremen, to enter as a mercantile pupil the business
house of one of his father’s friends. In his eagerness for knowledge, he
read all the books he could get hold of. At length, one day, Strauss’s
Life of Jesus fell into his hands, and a breach with orthodoxy
was the result. Although young Engels did not escape a period of
religious struggle, he pursued to their logical conclusion the new ideas
he had absorbed. In this way he was led to Hegel, whose writings were a
revelation to him. These colossal ideas,
he wrote to a friend,
exercised a formidable influence upon me.
¶Simultaneously, Engels discovered the existence of Young Germany, the
bold disrespect and swashbuckling onslaughts of the members of that
militant group arousing his enthusiasm. To this offshoot from pietist
circles, such exuberant tones were most alluring, and he tells us that
he could not sleep of nights because his head was filled with the
ideas of the century.
An additional step forward was taken when he
became acquainted with the writings of Börne, whose Paris
Letters made known to him the political conceptions of western
European radicalism. He got into personal touch with the leading spirits
of Young Germany. When his period of apprenticeship in Bremen was
finished, he travelled in Switzerland and Italy. Then came his year of
military service in Berlin, and, under an alias necessitated by his
position in the army, he entered the circle of the Young Hegelians. As
Dr. Oswald,
he played his part in the Doctors’ Club, the only
oasis in the intellectual desert of the Prussian capital prior to the
March revolution, joining in the attempts of the energetic but
unsystematic group of talented youths who were setting themselves to
solve the riddle of the universe. While this was going on, he was
attending lectures at the university, which had then entered upon a
reactionary phase.
¶Schelling, now well on in years, had been summoned to Berlin by the
reaction, and was to deliver a course of lectures on the philosophy of
revelation. The first of these lectures was a bitter disappointment to
Engels, being full of invectives over Hegel’s grave.
Engels,
enraged at this, was moved to action, and penned a fierce polemic,
published anonymously, entitled Schelling and the Revelation, a
Criticism of the Reaction’s Latest Onslaught upon the Freedom of
Philosophy. This had so striking a success that the authorship was
actually ascribed to Bakunin. From this time onwards Engels, equipped
with the reputation of being a philosophical and literary force, was
numbered with Bruno and Edgar Bauer, Köppen and Buhl, Stirner and Meyen,
Rutenberg and Jung, among the champions who rallied to the support of
Ruge and the Jahrbücher,
of Marx and the Rheinische
Zeitung.
Returning to Barmen by way of Cologne, when his year of
military service was finished, Engels met Moses Hess, who pointed out to
him the political implications of the Hegelian philosophy, and made him
acquainted with the ideas of the French socialists. Writing in 1843,
Hess said: Last year, when I was about to start for Paris, Engels
came to see me on his way from Berlin. We discussed the questions of the
day, and he, a revolutionist of the Year One, parted from me a convinced
communist. Thus did I spread devastation.
At the end of 1842, Engels
went to England.
¶In the model land of capitalism, his attention was primarily
attracted by economic developments and problems. No less interesting,
however, was the Chartist movement, the first of the great political
mass movements, which had begun in 1837, and in 1842 had attained its
climax in imposing strikes and self-sacrificing struggles. He met
Feargus O’Connor, the great Chartist leader, whose eloquence was able
from time to time to infuse new vigour into a movement that was already
decaying; and he wrote for the Northern Star,
the central organ
of the Chartists. He also became involved in Cobden’s Anti-Corn-Law
movement. Finally, he was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of
Robert Owen, whose long life had been devoted to the cause of utopian
socialism. He frequently attended the Owenite meetings held on Sundays
in the Manchester Hall of Science, but did not play an active part in
this movement, whose primitive, utopian, and obsolete character was at
once plain to him. Nevertheless, he contributed to Owen’s newspaper, the
New Moral World,
writing an article on the progress of social
reform on the Continent.
¶But the most important of the new relationships entered into by
Engels in the year 1843 was that he came into touch with the Communist
Workers’ Educational Society, which had been founded in London by
refugees from Paris in the year 1840. Three real men,
says
Engels, Schapper, Moll, and Bauer, were the leaders of this
organization. … In Manchester, it had been borne in on me that economic
phenomena, to which historians had hitherto ascribed little or no
importance, are unquestionably a decisive historical power in the modern
world; that they form the groundwork for the development of contemporary
class oppositions in the countries where such class oppositions have
been intensified by the growth of large-scale industry–especially in
England; that they also form the groundwork for the development of
political parties, of party struggles, and therewith of political
history as a whole. Marx had not only come to the same conclusion, but
had already, in the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
given
utterance to the generalization that the State does not condition
bourgeois society, but that, on the contrary, bourgeois society
conditions and rules the State; this meaning that political life and its
history are to be explained as the outcome of economic conditions and
their development, instead of the converse being true. When I visited
Marx in Paris during the summer of 1844, our complete agreement upon all
theoretical matters became manifest, and from that time onwards we
joined hands in our work.
¶The first outcome of Engels’ studies and observations in England was
the Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, which appeared
in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
and which Marx described
as a work of genius. In this essay we discern, glowing like tongues of
flame, the same thoughts as those which had flashed up in Marx’s mind as
the outcome of his analytical study of the French revolution and his
critical examination of French socialism.
§ Paris
¶To Engels, eager for knowledge, England had seemed a unique and well-stored repository of economic and commercial facts, demanding political appraisement. In like manner Marx discerned in Paris, in addition to a past of immense interest, a political present which was no less momentous, and was ripe for a revolutionary solution.
¶The July revolution had set up the bourgeois monarchy. Since then,
capital had enjoyed complete freedom of initiative, had had full
opportunity for the development of its impulses and instincts, for
expansion, for the practice of unlimited exploitation. Enrich
yourselves!
Guizot had exclaimed to the bankers, stockjobbers,
railway kings, mine-owners, contractors for State supplies, and
financial aristocrats. Taking him at his word, they had unhesitatingly
engaged in all possible methods of plunder, corruption, robbery on a
gigantic scale. But while the stock exchange was wallowing in money,
while vast fortunes were being made, while millionaires were being
conjured up out of the ground, the masses were sinking into an abyss of
poverty and despair.
¶The instinct of self-preservation, in conjunction with vestiges of the revolutionary tradition, drove them, if they were not to abandon themselves to utter hopelessness, to form combinations which, under the pressure of the police and the terrors of the law, could only be secret. Thus it was that great underground organizations had come into being one after another, and had spread an invisible network over the country. Paris was their nodal point. Bernard, Barbès, and Blanqui, were the most notable among the leaders. In the Friends of the People, the Champions of the Rights of Man, the Society of Families, and the Society of the Seasons, the opposition was kept alive, republicanism flourished, preparations were made for revolution, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was advocated. The accumulated energy was discharged from time to time in conspiracies and abortive risings.
¶In the underworld of the revolutionary movement there was a German
element at work. It consisted of intellectuals, petty bourgeois, manual
workers, and craftsmen, many of whom were enrolled in the Exiles’
League, founded in the year 1834, which issued a small periodical, the
Exile.
Although this league had not freed itself from utopian
ideas, it had made considerable advances in the theoretical field, its
members being familiar with the notions of the class struggle, the
concentration of capital, continually increasing proletarianization, the
need for a social revolution as well as a political one, and the theory
of national workshops. As far as practice was concerned, it was opposed
to the use of force. In 1836, the Federation of the Just came into
existence as an offshoot from the Exiles’ League. The two most noted
leaders of the parent body were the sometime instructor Schuster from
Göttingen and Venedey from Heidelberg. Among the leaders of the
Federation of the Just were Schapper, who had at one time been a student
of forestry in Nassau, Bauer, a bootmaker from Franconia, and Wilhelm
Weitling, a tailor from Magdeburg. The aims were those of the
coexistent secret societies in Paris. It was half a propaganda society,
half a conspiracy, Paris being regarded as the focus of revolutionary
action, although the preparation of occasional risings in Germany was
not excluded. Since, however, Paris was to be the main centre of action,
the federation was, in reality, little more than a German branch of the
French secret societies, and especially of the Society of the Seasons
led by Blanqui and Barbès. … The French took action on May 13, 1839. The
sections of the federation joined in the fray, and were thus involved in
the general defeat.
Schapper and Bauer, who had taken part in the
affair, and had spent a considerable time under arrest, had to leave
France, and removed to London, whither they transferred the central
committee of the Federation of the Just. Marx got into touch with those
of the members who remained in Paris, and they produced both on him and
on Engels a considerable impression.
Marx and Engels continued,
therefore, to keep an eye on the sometime members of the federation.
¶In the days when Marx was there, Paris was a great crucible full of
socialist and revolutionary ideas. There were relics of Saint-Simonism;
vestiges of Fourierism, cherished by Considérant; Christian socialism of
the Lamennais type; petty-bourgeois socialism such as was advocated by
Sismondi, Buret, Pecqueur, Leroux, Vidal, etc. In the early forties,
Étienne Cabet had reappeared in Paris, after making in England the
acquaintance of Thomas More’s Utopia and of the practical
activities of Robert Owen. Out of his impressions and experiences he had
woven his utopian romance Voyage en Icarie, which had attracted
widespread attention, and had led to a vigorous propaganda on behalf of
utopian socialism. Cabet professed a communist faith, which was adopted
by vast numbers of the workers. His Icarian Almanac sold to the
extent of 8000 copies in 1843 and of 10,000 copies in 1844. His paper
the Populaire
and his numerous pamphlets found their way into the
hands of an ever-widening circle of readers; but Dézamy, who in 1842 had
published his Code de la Communauté, in which he attacked
Fourier, Lamennais, and Cabet, and demanded that socialism should be
purged from religious admixture, had also a considerable number of
adherents.
¶Another movement, characteristically petty bourgeois, was associated with the names of Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, and Flocon. For them, the organization of labour and the right to work were the fulcra of their system, which was expounded in Louis Blanc’s book Organisation du travail published in 1842.
¶The kaleidoscopic picture of socialist ideas had assumed a dominant
tint since 1840, through the influence of J. P. Proudhon, a talented
compositor from Besançon, whose book Qu’est-ce que la pro
propriété? had speedily become famous. Marx thought highly of
Proudhon, whom he regarded as the embodiment of his own speculative
gifts. Even at a considerably later date, when the two men’s paths had
diverged, Marx described Proudhon’s book as epoch-making in its new
and bold way of saying everything
; and expressed himself as having
been enraptured by the vigorous musculature
of Proudhon’s style.
While staying in Paris, Marx took all possible opportunities of making
Proudhon acquainted with the Hegelian philosophy and with the means for
its critical supersession. During prolonged discussions, which often
lasted far into the night, I infected him (to his misfortune) with
Hegelianism, which his ignorance of the German language made it
impossible for him to study properly.
¶Whereas this acquaintanceship ended in an inevitable breach, the
friendship between Marx and Heinrich Heine established on both sides
strong feelings of mutual esteem. Heine, whose mere name was enough to
arouse a terrified commotion in the Prussian reactionaries he delighted
to stigmatize, was (if only because he was an enemy of the Prussian
reaction) a man after Marx’s own heart. Furthermore, a year earlier,
Heine had unreservedly avowed his support of communism. Writing under
date June 15, 1843, he said: The communists are the only party in
France that is worthy of respect. I might, indeed claim respect for the
vestiges of Saint-Simonism, whose champions still linger on under
strange devices, and also for the Fourierists, who are alive and
kicking; but these worthy persons are moved only by words, by the social
problem as a problem, by traditional ideas; they are not urged onward by
elemental necessity, they are not the predestined servants through whose
instrumentality the supreme world-will carries its titanic resolves into
effect. Sooner or later, the scattered family of Saint-Simon and the
whole general staff of the Fourierists will go over to the growing army
of communism, and, equipping crude necessity with the formative word,
will, as it were, play the part of the Fathers of the Church.
Thus
what brought Marx and Heine together, and made their union enduring, was
an inner conformity of ideas. The respect they inspired in one another,
as philosopher and as poet, could not fail to strengthen their alliance.
Marx urged Heine to devote himself to singing the sufferings of the
oppressed instead of the sufferings of passionate lovers, to exchange
the lyrical flute for the satirist’s scourge. The advice bore fruit, and
thenceforward Heine was indefatigable in his satires upon reaction,
sanctimoniousness, and philistinism.
¶Marx and Heine had common sympathies, not only because they were
fighters in the same cause, but also because they shared in the
afflictions of the persecution to which they were exposed. When leaving
Cologne, Marx had thought to escape from the spies by whom he was
surrounded, to break through the network of hostile machinations. But
here in Paris he was once more under the observation of men whose mode
of livelihood was, to say the least of it, ambiguous. Now Arnim, the
Prussian ambassador in Paris, reported to Berlin that, in the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
Heine had published base and
scandalous
Lobgesänge auf König Ludwig [Odes to King Louis
of Bavaria], while, in the same publication, Marx had openly advocated a
revolution in Germany. Thereupon the Prussian minister of police
arranged that Marx, Heine, and Bernays (the last-named had published,
also in the Jahrbücher,
the concluding minute of the Viennese
Ministerial Conference of 1834) were, in the event of their return to
Germany, to be promptly arrested on a charge of high treason and
lese-majesty.
¶In Paris there lived a man named Börnstein, at one time an actor, and
now picking up a livelihood as a theatrical agent and advertisement
tout. With the aid of funds supplied by Meyerbeer, kapellmeister to the
king of Prussia, and with the collaboration of Bornstedt, a provocative
agent in the service of the king of Prussia, he had founded a German
newspaper called Vorwärts.
In its first incarnation, as a
patriotic journal, this had no success. Changing its tone, it became
ultra-revolutionary, and the editor asked Marx and Heine to contribute
to its columns. Heine, who was in Hamburg upon a short visit to his
mother, wrote to Marx: People ascribe to me a more important
participation in
Vorwärts
than I can really boast of. To say
truth, the paper shows itself to be a master in the art of incitation,
and in the publication of compromising matter. I wonder what’s afoot.
Perhaps a web of perfidy is being spun in Paris!
¶Marx sent a few articles to Vorwärts.
Heine contributed, among
other things, the gruesome strophes of the Weberlied [Weavers’
Song]. Bernays, who was editor, being a young hothead, saw to it that
when this stimulating diet came to table there should be no lack of
pepper and salt. Thus the spy-directors in the Prussian government were
given the pretext of which they were in search, and were at length able
to complain to the French government on the ground that journalistic
attacks on Prussia emanating from Paris were increasing in impudence
and coarseness.
Guizot hesitated to take action, for he had no wish
to burn his fingers, and he knew that the suppression of the offending
periodical and the expulsion of Marx and Heine from Paris would be a
public scandal and would arouse heated expostulations. In the interplay
of intrigue and negotiation, Arnold Ruge (who had in the meanwhile been
completely estranged from Marx) played a remarkable part. He was the
Prussian
against whom the first of Marx’s unmistakably communist
articles, a contribution to Vorwärts,
was directed. In the end
Guizot was persuaded, by no less a man than Alexander von Humboldt, to
take measures against the offenders. Bernays was sentenced to two
months’ imprisonment and had to pay a fine of three hundred francs. On
January 11, 1845, it was decreed that Marx, Ruge, Bakunin, Börnstein,
and Bernays were to be expelled. Börnstein and Ruge, being able to pull
strings, secured the cancelling of the expulsion order as far as they
were concerned. The order did not cover Heine, for the authorities
feared that undesirable comment would be aroused if they were to proceed
to extremities against him. Marx removed to Brussels.
¶Paris had been hospitable to him for a season only. Though he must have quitted it with regret, after a year’s sojourn, he could console himself with the knowledge that while there he had gained riper insight, had gathered experience, and had equipped himself for the fray. From his visit to Paris dates his career as a socialist.
§ Die heilige Familie
¶When Marx and Engels met in Paris, one of the chief topics of conversation was the question how the criticism of the Hegelian philosophy could be most consistently and fruitfully given a political trend.
¶It occurred to them that an excellent plan would be to make an unsparing onslaught upon the extravagances of speculative idealism, especially in the form that doctrine had assumed in the hands of the brothers Bauer.
¶The friendship between Marx and Bruno Bauer had been broken off since
Marx, writing in the Rheinische Zeitung,
had issued an
unambiguous challenge to the Berliner Freien.
The personal
dispute between the two men had eventuated in increasingly marked
differences of opinion. Bruno Bauer was annoyed that Marx should have
developed independently, without his patronage and friendly assistance.
He looked askance at the activities of Marx in 1842, and at the
political legacy of the
Asked to collaborate in the Rheinische Zeitung
of blessed
memory.Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher,
he had ignored the invitation. On the other hand, in
conjunction with his brother Edgar, he had founded the Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung,
an organ which was to expose all the
halfheartedness and inflated phraseology of the liberalism and
radicalism of the year 1842.
He announced that the pretentious,
malicious, petty, envious
political criticism of the Rheinische
Zeitung
was to be replaced by free human criticism.
The new
journal was designed, not to join in the movement towards socialism
(which, he said, was only a helpless gesture of philosophical
incompetence); it was to inaugurate a return to pure philosophical
theory, to the idea of infinite self-consciousness.
¶Marx and Engels were not slow to accept the gage of battle. They decided to deliver thrust upon thrust, so promptly that their adversary would be unseated before he had time to recover. They were sturdy fighters, equipped with all the weapons of the intellect, full of power, courage, and lust for battle; and, now that they had joined hands for the fray, almost overbold. Their philosophical training had been identical, and they had shared an enthusiasm for Feuerbach; they had both of them passed on from philosophical radicalism into the field of practical politics, taking this step independently of one another, but both of them with the same logical consistency and the same inevitability. Now they were united by the same interest in the problem of socialism and communism, and by the same sense of responsibility towards the questions of the day. At the present juncture, they considered, the most important thing was to make a clean sweep of vestiges from earlier phases of development, to put an end to everything which barred advance or rendered it difficult to see the goal.
¶Taking as his text an article by Ruge about the rising of the
Silesian weavers in 1844, Marx, writing in Vorwärts,
had had a
controversy with Ruge, and therein had taken a notable step forward.
Renouncing State socialism, and declaring the State to be an
institution of society,
he had come to hold that the State was
subordinate to society. In view of his rejection of utopian socialism,
the socialism of those who hoped to attain their aims without
revolution, he arrived at the definition of revolution as a social
phenomenon, in so far as it effected the breakup of the old society, and
as a political phenomenon, in so far as it overthrew the old State
authority. A logical inference from this was that politics must be made
subordinate to socialism, that politics could only be a means, an
instrument, for the realization of socialism. Thus the path taken from
philosophical radicalism to politics led consistently to an end that lay
beyond politics. Marx’s frank recognition of socialism in his article
came as the appropriate climax of his previous recognition of
politics.
¶In view of his own rapid development, it was inevitable that Marx’s critical zeal should be whetted by the arrogantly reactionary attitude of Bauer, who was still content with the old wisdom of the professorial chairs. Engels, who was never backward when the call to arms sounded, was delighted. While still in Paris, he sat down to write what he had to say, providing matter for twenty or thirty printed pages. The remainder was written by Marx, the remainder of a volume of three hundred and fifty pages. It may be that the book was deliberately spun out to this length because volumes containing more than three hundred pages were immune from censorship; it may be, however, that there was no deliberate policy in the matter, and that Marx, enjoying the opportunity of letting himself go, had given no thought to limitations of space.
¶Engels was alarmed at first sight of the ponderous tome, published by
Rütten and Löning, in Frankfort-on-the-Main. He was still more startled
to find that, although he had contributed so small a share of the
contents, his name was given precedence of Marx’s on the title-page.
Most of all, however, he was aghast at the title. Marx had wanted to
call the book Kritik der kritischen Kritik [Criticism of
Critical Criticism], but the publisher had recommended, as more
incisive and more epigrammatic,
the title Die heilige
Familie [The Holy Family]. Kritik der kritischen Kritik
had remained as subtitle, with the addition of the words gegen Bruno
Bauer und Konsorten [against Bruno Bauer and his consorts]. Engels
wrote to Marx: The new title will certainly involve me in a family
rumpus with my pious parents, who are already much out of humour with
me; though of course you could not be expected to know this. … But
certainly the book is too big. The sovereign contempt with which we
profess to regard the
Literatur-Zeitung
is in sharp contrast with
the three hundred and fifty pages we devote to the criticism of that
periodical. Furthermore, most of the criticism of speculation and of
abstract matters will be incomprehensible to the general public, and
will not prove of interest to many. In other respects, however, the book
is brilliantly written, and makes one burst one’s sides with
laughing.
¶Engels was right. The book was too big, too heavy; it was neither
popular nor topical. No one had time or patience to read it until he
should reach the passages which would make him burst his sides with
laughing–and these, in truth, were only amusing to the connoisseur.
Worst of all, the Literatur-Zeitung
had gone the way of all flesh
long before the book appeared. Even as gravedigger, The Holy
Family came too late.
¶The significance of The Holy Family, therefore, does not depend so much upon the critical matter the book contains, upon criticism which is often intricate and wearisome, as upon the elaboration of profound thoughts, fundamental concepts, basic formulas, which were subsequently to be built into a splendid intellectual edifice destined to endure for centuries.
¶In especial, the vigorous aphorisms concerning the proletariat, concerning idea and mass, concerning the role of the active individual in the fulfilment of history, are as precious as finely cut and highly polished jewels.
¶Consider the following extracts regarding the proletariat.
¶Proletariat and wealth are opposites. As such, they form a whole.
They are two configurations of the world of private property. We are
concerned with the definite position which the two assume in the
contrast. It does not suffice to describe them as two aspects of one
whole.
¶Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to
maintain its own existence, and therewith the existence of its opposite,
the proletariat. It is the positive side of the contrast, private
property satisfied with itself. The proletariat, on the other hand, is
compelled as proletariat to abolish itself, and therewith to abolish
private property, the opposite that has determined its own existence,
that has made it into a proletariat. It is the negative side of the
contrast, its discontent with itself, private property dissolved and
dissolving itself. The possessing class and the class of the proletariat
represent an identical human self-alienation. But the former class feels
itself comfortable and assured in this self-alienation, recognizes the
alienation as its own power, and possesses in it the semblance of a
human existence; the latter feels itself annihilated in the alienation,
regards in it its own impotence, and perceives in it the reality of an
unhuman existence.
¶Beyond question, private property, in its economic movement,
advances towards its own dissolution, but only through a development of
an independent and unconscious character, which it undergoes without the
exercise of its own will, and impelled by the nature of things; only
inasmuch as it generates the proletariat as proletariat, creates poverty
that is conscious of its own mental and physical poverty, creates
dehumanization that is conscious of itself and therefore abolishes
itself. The proletariat fulfils the judgment which private property has
brought upon itself by the creation of the proletariat, just as it
fulfils the judgment which wage labour has brought upon itself by
creating the wealth of others and its own poverty. When the proletariat
is victorious, it has not thereby in any way become the absolute aspect
of society, for it is only victorious inasmuch as it abolishes itself
and its opposite. Then both the proletariat and its conditioning
opposite, private property, disappear.
¶When socialist writers ascribe this role in universal history to
the proletariat, they are far from doing so because they regard
proletarians as gods. It is very much the other way. Because, in the
fully developed proletariat, the withdrawal of all humanity, and even of
the semblance of humanity, has been practically completed; because, in
the living conditions of the proletariat, all the living conditions of
contemporary society are comprised in their unhuman climax; because, in
the proletariat, the human being has lost himself, but has gained
something more than the theoretical awareness of this loss, for he has
gained this in addition, that it has become an imperious necessity for
him to revolt against unhumanity–for all these reasons, the proletariat
can and must liberate itself. Yet it cannot liberate itself without
abolishing its own living conditions, without abolishing all the unhuman
living conditions of contemporary society, the conditions that comprise
the situation of the proletariat.
¶We are not concerned, therefore, with what this or that
proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, may regard as an aim.
What we are concerned with is, what the proletariat actually is; and
what the proletariat will, in accordance with the nature of its own
being, be historically compelled to do. Its goal and its historical
action are obvious, are irrevocably indicated, in the vital situation of
the proletariat, and also in the whole organization of contemporary
bourgeois society.
¶Now consider what is said about the questions, idea and mass:
¶Hegel’s interpretation of history is nothing other than the
speculative expression of the Christo-Germanic dogma of the opposition
between spirit and matter, between God and the world. This opposition
finds expression, according to Hegel, within history, within the human
world itself, in such a way that a small number of select individuals
stand contrasted as active spirit with the rest of mankind as a
spiritless mass, as matter.
¶Hegel’s interpretation of history presupposes an abstract or
absolute spirit, which evolves in such a way that mankind is only a mass
which bears it up unconsciously or consciously. Within empirical,
exoteric history, he therefore assumes that there is in progress a
speculative, esoteric history. The history of mankind is transformed
into the history of the abstract spirit of mankind, which, because it is
abstract, is something beyond real human beings.
¶Hegel is thus guilty of a twofold halfheartedness: first of all,
because he declares philosophy to be the existence of absolute spirit
and is at the same time careful to guard against declaring the real
philosophical individual to be absolute spirit; in the second place,
because he makes the absolute spirit, as absolute spirit, only the
semblance of history. For, inasmuch as the absolute spirit comes into
the philosopher’s consciousness as creative world spirit post festum,
his fabrication of history exists only in the consciousness, the
opinion, the idea of the philosopher only in the speculative
imagination.
¶Speculative philosophy, and the Hegelian philosophy in especial,
must translate all questions out of the form of the healthy human
understanding into the form of the speculative reason, and must
transform all real questions into speculative questions, before it can
answer them. After speculation had twisted my question in my mouth, and
had, like the catechism, thrust its own question into my mouth, it was
naturally able, like the catechism, to supply its own answers to all my
questions.
Just as, according to earlier theologians, plants
exist in order to be eaten by animals, and animals in order to be eaten
by human beings, so history exists as fodder in the theoretical field,
to serve as means for demonstration. Man is there that there may be
history, and history is there that there may be demonstration of truth.
In this critical and trivialized form recurs the speculative wisdom,
that man is there, and that history is there, that truth may become
self-conscious.
¶The
idea
has always made itself ridiculous in so far as it
has been detached from interest.
On the other hand it is easy to
understand that every widespread interest,
every interest
that is historically valid, diffuses itself, when it first appears on
the world stage, into the idea,
and thus greatly transcends its
concrete limits and coalesces with the general human interest. Illusion
constitutes what Fourier termed the tone
of every historical
epoch.
¶Speaking generally, mass is an indefinite object, which therefore
cannot perform a definite action, and cannot enter into a definite
relation. Mass, as object of critical criticism, has nothing in common
with real masses, which, for their part, form their massive oppositions
among themselves. Their mass is
made
by itself, as if an
investigator, instead of talking of definite classes, should contrast
class with itself.
¶As soon as man has been recognized as the essence, as the
foundation, of all human activities and conditions, criticism can only
discover new categories, and transform man himself, as it has just done,
into a category once more, and into the principle of a whole series of
categories, thus discovering the last way of retreat open to intimidated
and persecuted theological unhumanity. History does nothing;
has no
overwhelming wealth
; fights no battles.
Man, the real, living
man, does all things, owns, and fights. History
does not use man
as an instrument to fulfil its own purposes, as if it were a person
apart. History is nothing else than the activity of man pursuing his own
aims.
¶No great perspicacity is needed–setting out from the teachings of
materialism regarding the primitive goodness and the equal intellectual
endowments of men; regarding the omnipotence of experience, habit,
education, environing conditions over man; regarding the great
importance of industry, the right to enjoyment, etc., etc. to deduce the
necessary connexion of materialism with communism and socialism. If man
derives all his knowledge, and his perceptions, etc., from the world of
the senses and from experience in the world of the senses, it is our
business to order the empirical world in such a way that man shall have
truly human experiences in it, shall experience himself to be a human
being. If self-interest rightly understood is the basic principle of
morality, it behoves us to make sure that the private interest of the
individual shall coincide with the general human interest. If man is
unfree in the materialist sense (this meaning that he is free, not
through the negative power of avoiding this or that, but through the
positive power of fulfilling his own true individuality), it behoves us,
not to punish individual offences, but to destroy the antisocial foci of
crime, and to give every one social space for the manifestation of his
life activities. If man is formed by circumstances, we must make the
circumstances human. If man is social by nature, he can only develop his
true nature in society, and we must measure the power of his nature, not
by the power of the isolated individual, but by the power of
society.
¶With the publication of The Holy Family, Marx and Engels broke away entirely and on general principles from utopism and from the philanthropic tendencies of the utopists, which had long since become the mere ornamental trappings of bourgeois charity. What the utopists had never grasped, namely that socialism must be the outcome of a historical evolution, and that this evolution must be brought to pass by a self-conscious and independent movement on the part of the working class, secured lucid and cogent expression for the first time.
¶The young tree of historical materialism, though not yet fully cleared from encumbering tendrils of speculative philosophy, was already growing vigorously. Its foliage was spreading so lustily, that it could not fail ere long to occupy the leading place in the garden of the intellect.
§ Brussels
¶The expulsion from Paris and the removal to Brussels involved Marx in financial difficulties, from which, however, he was speedily extricated by the prompt and generous help of his new friend and companion-at-arms Friedrich Engels. From the first day of their friendship, Engels, self-sacrificing and loyal, was Marx’s chief pillar of support alike in mental and in material affairs.
¶Writing from Barmen under date February 22, 1845, Engels says:
After inquiring all over the place, I have at length learned your
address from Cologne, and immediately take up my pen to write to you. As
soon as the news of your expulsion arrived, I thought it expedient to
open a subscription without delay, so that the extra expense in which
you are involved could be shared by us all in communist fashion. The
whip-round met with a ready response. Still, I am not sure whether the
sum we have collected will suffice to give you a fresh start in
Brussels, so please take it as a matter of course that it will be the
greatest pleasure in the world to place at your disposal the fee I hope
shortly to receive for my English literary venture. I can get along
without the money just now, for my governor will have to keep me in
funds. We cannot allow the dogs to enjoy having involved you in
pecuniary embarrassment by their infamous behaviour.
¶Not long afterwards, Engels went to Brussels. Since meeting Marx in
Paris, he had been busily at work. He had brought back from England
materials concerning the development of capitalist production in that
country, concerning the forms and methods of exploitation, concerning
the conditions under which the British proletariat lived, concerning the
miseries caused by the ruthless employment of children, etc. From these
he had compiled a noteworthy book, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse
in England [The Condition of the Working Class in England].
Published at Leipzig in the summer of 1845, it attracted wide-spread
attention. It was designed as the first installment of an extensive work
upon the social history of England. He had also planned the issue of a
socialist monthly, in producing which Moses Hess, with whom he was again
in close touch, was to help him. On January 20, 1845, he wrote to Marx:
The latest news is that on April 1st Hess and I are going to publish
the first number of a new monthly,
In actual fact, publication was postponed until July 1st,
when the magazine appeared as an Gesellschaftsspiegel,
which
will deal with the social wretchedness of the day and with the bourgeois
regime.organ to represent the
non-possessing classes, and to throw light on the social conditions of
the present day.
It had a short life; but, just as Hess was the
first communist, so this monthly was the first consistent attempt to
establish a communist press, the first attempt to run a periodical in
which attention should be concentrated upon the criticism of economic
conditions. Engels, indeed, had little more to do with the matter, for
he was soon fully occupied in other plans, such as the issue of a German
library of the works of foreign socialist authors, the writing of a
critique of Friedrich List, etc. Furthermore, he had set the whole
Wuppertal buzzing by holding numerous meetings for the propaganda of
communism. Wonders have come to pass here in Elberfeld,
he wrote
to Marx. Yesterday, in the largest hall and the leading hotel of the
town, we held our third communist meeting. At the first the attendance
had been been 40, at the second it was 130, and at the third it was at
least 200. The whole of Elberfeld and Barmen, from the financial
aristocracy down to the shopkeepers, was represented every one except
the proletariat. Hess made a speech; some of Shelley’s poetry and prose
was read; also the article about the extant communist colonies in
Püttmann’s
Still, the movement was speedily suppressed. Engels was now
seriously at variance with his family, and was glad to seize the
opportunity of getting away to Brussels.Deutsches Bürgerbuch.
Afterwards discussion went on
till one in the morning. The movement has caught on. Every one is
talking about communism, and adherents flock to join us from day to
day.
¶He settled down in the Belgian capital for the next few months, living next door to Marx, and remaining in constant companionship with him. In the summer, the two men paid a visit to England, where they spent six weeks. Engels had some private affairs to attend to in Manchester, to arrange for the transport of his books, and to resume his collaboration on the staff of various periodicals. His main object, however, was that Marx should become personally acquainted with England, with British conditions, with English literature, and with the notable personalities of the British labour movement. This visit was of considerable value to Marx, who hunted up literature concerning the history of political economy and social theories, and got into touch with the leading Chartists.
¶Having returned to Brussels, Marx and Engels promptly set to work
once more. In the preface to The Holy Family they had
announced: This polemical work is a prelude to the independent
writings in which we (each of us, of course, on his own account) shall
expound our positive outlook, and therewith our positive attitude
towards the more recent philosophical and social doctrines.
They now
set themselves to fulfil this undertaking, their aim being to settle
accounts with the whole body of post-Hegelian philosophy. At the same
time they wished to explain their present position as contrasted with
their own earlier philosophical attitude.
¶Directly he came to Brussels, Engels became aware that Marx had
outstripped and abandoned the realist humanism
which he had still
advocated in the preface to The Holy Family. Marx, a man of
fiery spirit, hastened to slough one philosophical skin after another,
so that Engels, though of a more elastic and sympathetic disposition
than Marx, often found it hard to keep pace with his companion.
¶It had become clear to Marx that there was no possibility of
understanding historical reality without a knowledge of industry.
For him, philosophy was no longer the crown and sum of all human
knowledge, and it had therefore become superfluous. In especial he had
been led to this radicalism of insight and judgment by his criticism of
Feuerbach. By the time he had finished writing The Holy Family,
he had broken away altogether from Feuerbach.
¶In the last resort, Feuerbach could not come to terms with the
sensible world. Though he detested
the realm of abstractions, he
could not find his way out of it. His sensible world was an abstract
entity, a phenomenon that had existed from all eternity, unchanging. He
never understood that this sensible world is the outcome of an
interminable evolution, is the product of innumerable generations, each
of which stands on the shoulders of its predecessor. For him, likewise,
man was an abstract conception. He clings desperately to nature and
man,
wrote Engels, but for him nature and man are words, and
nothing more. He cannot tell us anything definite either about real
nature or about the real man.
The abstract man was the uttermost
thing philosophy could reach after turning away from the idea. It had,
indeed, replaced the idea by man, but at bottom had done nothing more
than substitute one abstraction for another. This was in accordance with
the very nature of philosophy; but when reaching abstract man,
philosophy had got no nearer to the world of reality. Philosophy, then,
must be abandoned, if the real man were to be reached. Now for Marx this
real man was man active, man at work, man engaged in the process of
production, man leading a social life, pushed forward and pulled onward
by interests, acting in history, and thus fulfilling evolution.
¶The discovery of man, of real, living man, of man making history, was the pioneer stride taken by Marx beyond Hegel, Bauer, and Feuerbach.
¶In one of Marx’s notebooks dating from this period, among extracts
and annotations in an almost illegible handwriting, have been found the
famous Theses on Feuerbach–a formidable boundary stone, as it
were, to indicate the enormous magnitude of the new discovery, and to
mark the advance in the development of Marx’s investigations. Engels has
described them as the splendid germ of a new outlook on the
universe.
¶Here are the theses.
¶“1. The main defect of all earlier materialism (Feuerbach’s included) is that the object, reality, the sensible, is conceived only under the form of the object or of contemplation, not as human sensory activity, not as practice, not subjectively. Hence, in opposition to materialism, the active side is developed abstractly from idealism, which naturally knows nothing of actual sensory activity as such. Feuerbach is in search of sensible objects, really distinguished from the objects of thought; but he does not grasp human activity itself as objective activity. Consequently, in the Essence of Christianity, he regards only theoretical behaviour as truly human, whereas practice is only conceived and fixed in its contaminated Jewish phenomenal form. Hence he does not understand the importance of revolutionary activity, of practical-critical activity.
¶“2. The question whether human thought has circumstantial truth, is not a theoretical but a practical question. In practice, a man must prove the truth of his thought, that is to say its reality and power, its mundaneness. The dispute concerning the reality or unreality of thought isolated from practice, is a purely scholastic problem.
¶“3. The materialist doctrine of the transformation of circumstances and education forgets that circumstances must be altered by men and that the educator must himself be educated. It therefore has to divide society into two parts, one of which is elevated above it.
¶“The coincidence of the changing of circumstances, and human activity or self-alteration, can only be grasped and rationally understood as revolutionary practice.
¶“4. Feuerbach sets out from the fact of religious self-alienation, and the duplication of the world into a religious world and a mundane one. His work consists in reducing the religious world to its mundane foundation. If the mundane foundation lifts itself above itself and establishes itself in an independent realm in the clouds, that is only to be explained as an outcome of the dismemberment and self-contradictoriness of this mundane foundation. The mundane foundation must, therefore, be understood as practically revolutionized both in itself and in its contradiction. Thus as soon as the earthly family has been revealed as the mystery of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated both theoretically and practically.
¶“5. Feuerbach, not content with abstract thinking, wants contemplation; but he does not conceive the sensible as practical sensory-human activity.
¶“6. Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the human essence. But the human essence is not an abstraction in reality, it is the totality of social relations.
¶“Feuerbach, who does not enter into the criticism of this real essence, is therefore compelled:
¶“(a) To ignore the historical process, to establish the religious sentiment per se, and to postulate an abstract isolated human individual.
¶“(b) The essence, therefore, can only be grasped as a species,
as an inward, dumb generality naturally uniting numerous
individuals.
¶“7. Feuerbach, therefore, does not see that the religious
sentiment
is itself a social product, and that the abstract
individual he analyses belongs to a determinate social form.
¶“8. All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which drive theory into the realm of mysticism, find their rational solution in human practice and in the understanding of this practice.
¶“9. The highest to which contemplative materialism attains (the materialism which does not grasp the sensible as practical activity), is the contemplation of isolated individuals and of bourgeois society.
¶“10. The standpoint of the old materialism is bourgeois society; the standpoint of the new materialism is human society or social humanity.
¶11. Philosophers have done nothing more than interpret the world
in various ways; our business is to change it.
¶These Theses on Feuerbach were penned only as a prelude for the great settlement of accounts between Marx and Engels, on the one hand, and Feuerbach, Bauer, Stirner, and all the post-Hegelian philosophers, on the other.
§ Chapter 03: Clarification, Part 2
§ German Ideology
¶As the outcome of nearly a year’s work (the year extending from
September 1845 to August 1846), Marx and Engels wrote two thick volumes
which were to be published under the title Die deutsche
Ideologie. A friend and admirer of Marx, the sometime Lieutenant
Weydemeyer, working in Westphalia as a geometrician, hoped that his
brother-in-law Lüning, the publisher of the Westfälisches
Dampfboot
in Bielefeld, would issue the new book. The manuscript was
sent to him, but the book never appeared, the reason being, as the
authors learned in due course, that changed circumstances made it
impossible to print it.
Nor could any other publisher be found.
We decided, therefore,
wrote Marx at a later date, to leave
our manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice–and did so all the
more willingly since we had attained our chief purpose,
self-understanding.
¶Self-understanding all along the line–this was the essential
characteristic of the book. It was to expose the sheep which regarded
themselves and were regarded as wolves
; it was to show how the
rodomontade of the expounders of philosophy served merely to reflect the
pitiful character of actual conditions in Germany
it was to make
known to all the world the process of putrefaction which had set in
in the absolute German spirit.
¶Such were the aims of its authors. But it did more than this. It freed Marx and Engels from the last vestiges of philosophical lumber with which, unwittingly, their thought was still burdened; led them beyond the criticism of philosophy, of politics, and of economics, to the criticism of the interpretation of history; and thus revealed to them a fact of overwhelming importance, that the motive force of history is not the idea, not criticism, but the revolution, man–revolutionary man.
¶The discovery of the real, active human being, of man engaged in the process of making history, as announced in the Theses on Feuerbach, is here followed up by the discovery of revolutionary man. Step by step, Marx the investigator had made his way to this result.
¶The first presupposition of all human history is, of course, the
existence of living human individuals. The first facts to investigate,
therefore, are the bodily organization of these individuals and the
resultant relation between these individuals and the rest of
nature.
¶All history-writing must set out from these natural foundations
and their modification in the course of history by the action of human
beings.
¶We may distinguish human beings from animals by consciousness, by
religion, by anything you please. They them selves begin to distinguish
themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their own means
of subsistence, a step which is necessitated by their bodily
organization. Inasmuch as human beings produce their own means of
subsistence, they indirectly produce their own material life.
¶The necessaries of life are, above all, food, drink, shelter,
clothing, and a few others. Hence the first historical act is the
production of the means for the satisfaction of these needs, the
production of material life itself, and this one historical fact is a
fundamental determinant of all history.
¶As individuals express their lives, so they are. Thus what they
are, coincides with what they produce; and not only with what they
produce, but with how they produce. Consequently, what individuals are,
depends upon the material conditions of production.
¶Determinate individuals, productively active in a determinate way,
therefore enter into determinate social and political relations.
¶Social classification and the State are continually proceeding out
of the life process of determinate individuals, not, however, of these
individuals as they may appear to themselves or others, but as they
really are; that is to say as they work, as they are engaged in material
production, as they are active under determinate material limitations,
presuppositions, and conditions which are independent of their
will.
¶The production of ideas, representations, consciousness, is,
primarily, directly interwoven into the material activity and the
material intercourse of human beings, is the language of actual life.
Representation, thought, the intellectual intercourse of human beings,
arise as the direct outcome of their material behaviour. The same thing
is true of mental production, as displayed in the language of the
politics, the laws, the morality, the religion, the metaphysics, etc.,
of a people. Human beings are the producers of their representations,
ideas, etc.; but the actual working human beings are determined by a
specific evolution of their productive powers and of the appropriate
method of intercourse in its furthest ramifications.
¶Consciousness can never be anything other than conscious being,
and the being of man is man’s true vital process.
¶In sharp contrast with German philosophy, which came down from
heaven to earth, here an ascent is made from earth to heaven. This means
that we do not set out from what men say, fancy, represent to
themselves, nor yet from man as said to be, thought to be, fancied to
be, represented to be, in order thence and by that path to reach man in
the flesh; we set out from real, active human beings, and from their
actual vital processes we demonstrate the development of the ideological
reflexes and echoes of this vital process. Even the phantasmagorias in
the human brain are necessary supplements of man’s material vital
process, of a process that is empirically demonstrable and is linked
with material presuppositions. Morality, religion, metaphysics, and
ideology in general, with their appropriate forms of consciousness, thus
forfeit the semblance of independence. They have no history, no
evolution, of their own. Human beings, developing material production
and material intercourse, and thus altering the real world that environs
them, alter therewith their own thought and the products of their
thought. Consciousness does not determine life, but life determines
consciousness.
¶This observation is not devoid of presuppositions. It sets out
from real presuppositions, and never for a moment abandons the ground of
the real. Its presuppositions are human beings, not in any fanciful
circumscription and fixation, but in their actual, empirical,
perceptible developmental process under specific conditions. As soon as
this active vital process has been demonstrated, history ceases to be a
collection of dead facts.
¶Once reality has been demonstrated, philosophy as an independent
discipline loses the medium of its existence.
¶Not criticism, but revolution, is the motive force of
history.
¶This conception of history shows that history does not end by
resolving itself into
self-consciousness
as the spirit of
spirit
; but that in history at every stage there exists a material
outcome, a sum of productive forces, a historically created relation to
nature and a historically created relation of individuals one to
another, which are handed down to each successive generation by its
predecessor; that there are in each stage of history a mass of
productive forces, capitals, and circumstances, which are indeed
modified by the new generation, but on the other hand prescribe to the
new generation its own vital conditions, and give to it a definite
development, a specific character–so that circumstances make men quite
as much as men make circumstances.
¶Finally we obtain the following results from the fully developed
conception of history. 1. In the development of the forces of production
a stage is reached at which productive forces and means of intercourse
are evolved which, under the extant conditions, only do harm; which are
no longer forces of production, but forces of destruction (machinery and
money). In association with this we find that a class is evolved which
has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages,
which is forced out of society into the most marked contrast to all
other classes; a class which forms the majority of all the members of
society, and one from which the consciousness of the necessity for a
thorough going revolution, the communist consciousness, proceeds–a
consciousness which, of course, can only arise in the other classes
thanks to the comprehension of the position of this particular class. 2.
The conditions within which determinate forces of production can be
applied, are the conditions of the dominion of a specific class of
society, of a class whose social power (arising out of ownership)
secures practical-idealist expression in the extant form of State, with
the consequence that every revolutionary struggle is directed against a
class which has up to that time been dominant. 3. In all revolutions
that have hitherto taken place, the kind of activity has remained
inviolate, so that there has never been anything more than a changed
distribution of this activity, with a new distribution of labour to
other persons; whereas the communist revolution is directed against the
kind of activity which has hitherto been exercised, and does away with
labour, and makes an end of class rule when it does away with classes,
the reason being that this revolution is brought about by the class
which no longer counts in society as a class, is not recognized as a
class, but is the expression of the dissolution of all classes,
nationalities, etc., within extant society. 4. For the widespread
generation of this communist consciousness, and for the carrying out of
the communist revolution, an extensive change in human beings is needed,
which can only occur in the course of a practical movement, in the
course of a revolution; so that the revolution is not only necessary
because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but is
also necessary because only in a revolution can the uprising class free
itself from the old yoke and become capable of founding a new
society.
¶For us, communism is not a condition of affairs which
ought
to be established, not an ideal
towards which reality has to
direct itself. When we speak of communism, we mean the actual movement
which makes an end of the present condition of affairs. The determinants
of this movement arise out of the extant presupposition.
¶The foregoing remarkable passages from the fragment of the work which
has been rescued, and which has been recently published for the first
time at Frankfort-on-the-Main in the opening volume of the
Marx-Engels Archiv,
give no more than an imperfect picture of the
mental energy with which the before-mentioned process of
self-understanding was carried through.
¶They contain an elementary formulation of the materialist interpretation of history, which was subsequently to be worked out as a complete method. Here and there, the actual wording of the extracts is identical with that of the later elaborated formulation.
§ True
Socialism
§ Dialectic
¶A close scrutiny of Marx’s intellectual labours down to this time shows that for years past, considered as a whole, they had been an uninterrupted onslaught on Hegel, sometimes direct and sometimes indirect.
¶This young man–endowed with a leonine strength and equipped with a lion’s claws, a giant fighting desperately to maintain and increase his own sense of self-esteem, discountenanced, shunned, and persecuted by society–dared to measure his forces against those of Hegel, that monumental figure, universally admired, overtopping all, venerated by the whole intellectual world.
¶Marx’s writings for years past, against Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach,
Stirner, the Young Hegelians, and the true
socialists, had, in
the last analysis, been shafts aimed at the Hegelian principle of the
absolute, at the Hegelian priority of the idea, at Hegel’s metaphysical
trend, at the aloofness from the world characteristic of Hegel’s way of
looking at things, at Hegel’s abstract man.
In a word, whatever
the ostensible target, Marx’s missiles had really been thrown at Hegel’s
head. It was under the stimulus of this profound antagonism that Marx
had been converted to materialism side by side with Feuerbach, had
attacked Hegel’s philosophy of right, had advanced from philosophy to
politics, had put man in place of the idea, had substituted the active
man for the abstract man, had replaced criticism by the revolution, and
had declared that the revolutionary proletariat would achieve the
fulfilment of historical evolution.
¶Throughout: Marx in conflict with Hegel, titan wrestling with titan.
¶But a work of such fundamental significance as Hegel’s system, a philosophy which had had so overwhelming an influence upon the mental outlook and the development of an entire nation, could not (as Engels phrased it) be thrust aside by ignoring it, nor yet overcome by running atilt against it.
¶It must be superseded
after its own kind, must be dealt with
in such a way that, whilst its form was annihilated by criticism, the
new content with which it had enriched thought would be preserved.”
¶This new content of the Hegelian system was the dialectical method.
¶When we contemplate things and phenomena, we may proceed by regarding them one by one, detached from their environment, in abstract isolation. At times this may be indispensable and useful. But, as a general method, it leads to unsatisfactory results. The most important characteristics elude us. In the world there is nothing isolated, there is nothing at rest, there is nothing to be found apart from all other things, there is no self-existent phenomenon. Everything is in a flux, dynamically mobile, interconnected by inseparable ties with the whole world of phenomena. By the law of becoming, which is realized in the totality of life, all being is resolved into eternal movement. This movement is change, is the passage from what has existed to a new condition. Hence it is logically indispensable to contemplate every thing, every phenomenon, in all its manifestations and all its interconnexions. The method which fulfils this demand is the dialectical method, and by that method the principle of evolution is scientifically justified.
¶Hegel had gone back to the method of dialectical thought which was in
use already among the ancients, and was advocated, above all, by
Heraclitus. Taking over from Fichte the three stages of thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis, he had replaced the principle of the old
logic Everything is identical with itself, nothing contradicts
itself,
by the new principle Nothing is identical with itself and
everything contradicts itself.
In accordance with this principle, he
conceived every notion as a necessary product of the interaction of two
antecedent notions, which, their oppositions having been fused into a
new unity, had both been subsumed in the higher notion. To notions,
concepts, or ideas, he ascribed a validity which was not eternal or
absolute, but merely transient and historical. According to
Hegel,
says Engels, the truth to be recognized by philosophy was
no longer a collection of ready-made dogmatic propositions which, once
discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay in the very
process of cognition, in the long historical evolution of science,
rising from lower to ever higher stages of knowledge, but never reaching
(by the discovery of a so-called absolute truth) the point beyond which
no advance would be possible, the point at which all we should have to
do would be to fold our arms and go on admiring the absolute truth that
had been won. … Every stage is necessary, that is to say justified for
the time and under the conditions out of which it arises; but it becomes
invalid and forfeits its justification under new and higher conditions
which gradually develop within its own womb; it has to give place to a
higher stage, which in its turn will decay and perish. … Thus this
dialectical philosophy does away with any thought of permanent, absolute
truth, and of absolutely final conditions for man-kind dependent on such
a truth. To the dialectical philosophy, nothing is final, absolute, or
sacred; everything is transient, subject to an uninterrupted process of
becoming and disappearing, of an unending ascent from the lower to the
higher-dialectic itself being no more than a reflexion of that process,
a reflexion within the thinking brain.
Hegel gave several
definitions of the term dialectic as he understood it. In his
Encyclopoedia he says that true dialectic is the inner and
progressive transition of one explanation into another, in course of
which it becomes manifest that the explanations of the understanding are
one-sided and narrowly limited, this meaning that each of them contains
its own negation. All this acquires its peculiar character in that it
does away with itself. In his Logic he describes the
dialectical developmental process brought about by the play of the
internal oppositions. He says that the forward movement begins with
abstract and simple concepts or categories, and passes into the next
concepts, which continually become richer and more concrete. At every
stage of the enlarged particular concept, the whole mass of its earlier
content resurges; and, in the course of the dialectical development,
none of this earlier content is lost, for, rather, all succeeding new
acquisitions are borne onward with the rest, so that the whole is an
enriched condensation. The climax is reached in the absolute idea. In
Hegel’s Science of Logic we read: The immediate, moving in
this negative direction, has been submerged in the other, but the other,
essentially, is not an empty negative, not nothing, as is assumed to be
the ordinary result of dialectic; it is the other of the first, the
negative of the immediate; thus it is determined as the mediate,
contains the determination of the first in itself. Thus the first is
preserved and maintained in the process of alteration.
¶Hegel was an idealist. He regarded the idea as the living soul of the
world, and in accordance with this it was natural that for him dialectic
should play its primary part in the realm of ideas. Only in that the
dialectically won concept alienated itself,
did it undergo
transformation into nature, where it experiences new development,
unconscious of itself, clothed as natural necessity, and at long last
returns to self-consciousness in man. Thenceforward, in the course of
history, this self-consciousness works itself up again from the raw,
until at length, in the Hegelian philosophy, the absolute idea comes to
itself fully once again. Thus, for Hegel, the dialectical development
which occurs in nature and history (that is to say the causal
interconnexion of the progressive movement from lower to higher, the
progressive movement which is continuous despite zigzags and momentary
reverses), is nothing but an enfeebled copy of the spontaneous movement
of the idea, that movement which has been going on from all eternity, no
one knows where, but in any case independent of the thinking human
brain.
(Engels.)
¶On first coming into contact with Hegelianism, Marx had recognized conceptual dialectic to be a speculative mystification, without, however, questioning or rejecting the dialectical method per se. When, subsequently, he was led to materialism by Feuerbach, he was able to free dialectic from its idealist trappings, and to translate the mirror-writing of abstraction into a readable, concrete formula. Then it was seen that reality is not a mere reflexion of ideas; but, conversely, that ideas are copies of reality, copies formed by a materialistic process. In this way the Hegelian conceptual dialectic, which had been standing on its head, was turned back on to its feet, and exhibited itself as a factual dialectic.
¶When, still later, Marx broke away from Feuerbach, he did so (as we know) because the materialism of the objective world of nature had for him been transformed into a materialism of social conditions which, dialectically regarded, present themselves as the outcome of processes. In so far as man acts on nature external to himself, in the course of this action he modifies his own nature. The production of the idea and of concepts takes place in close connexion with the material activities of men and with their material relations. Man’s being is the real process of his life. Cognition, therefore, can be nothing else than the cognition of this actual being. This being of man, a series of processes, was disclosed by Marx (when he developed philosophy into politics) to be the production of material life, to be a succession of struggles for power, struggles undertaken on behalf of interests. These interests, economic interests, relate to the domain of production, to the field of political economy. Now here it was plain that the struggles which arise in connexion with the production of the material necessaries of life, are carried on between classes which confront one another as hostile powers.
¶Marx was not the original discoverer of this. He found the notion
ready-made in English and French sociological literature, and beyond
question Engels must have directed his attention to some of these
sources. Since the establishment of large-scale industry,
writes
Engels in his essay Ludwig Feuerbach, that is to say at
least since the peace of 1815, it has been no secret in England that the
whole political struggle in that country turns upon the rival claims of
two classes, the aspirations of the landed aristocracy and the
bourgeoisie respectively to achieve dominion. In France, the same fact
became obvious when the Bourbons returned to power. The historians of
the Restoration period, Thierry, Guizot, Mignet, and Thiers, all
presented this idea to their readers as the key for the understanding of
French history since the Middle Ages. From 1830 onwards, both in England
and in France, it was recognized that the working class, the
proletariat, had become a third competitor in the struggle for power.
Conditions had been so greatly simplified that nothing but wilful
blindness could hide from the observer the struggle among these three
great classes, could prevent the recognition that the conflict of their
interests is the motive force of modern society. This is true, at any
rate, as regards the two most advanced countries.
¶In this conflict of interests, bourgeoisie and proletariat are related each to the other as thesis and antithesis. The dialectical process works itself out as a class struggle, which carries the movement on beyond the oppositions of the antithetical relation. A new society, socialist society, appears as a synthesis.
¶Thus Marx, investigating, drawing inferences, shaping things in his mind, welding link into link to form a chain, evolved the Feuerbachian materialism of nature into a materialism of society, transformed the abstract conceptual dialectic of Hegel into a concrete factual dialectic, saw the dialectical contradiction incorporated in classes, and recognized the dialectical process in the class struggle. In this way he was led to a new dialectic, a new conception or interpretation of history.
¶Nay more, he came to regard socialism as a logical upshot of historico-economic evolution, arising in virtue of an inherent law.
¶Engels made the same scientific discovery. He reached it as the
outcome of practical experience and direct observation in England. In
that country, the contradictions inherent in the capitalist method of
production, working themselves out in the form of social conflicts, had
been manifest to him in all their nudity. Already in the
Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher
he had incorporated the gist of
his observations and deductions upon these matters in two articles,
embodying entirely new outlooks.
¶This discovery sufficed to show that he was the predestined collaborator of Marx.
Misère de la Philosophie
¶According to Hegel, human beings are puppets, jerked hither and thither on the stage of life by the strings to which they are suspended–the strings of the idea.
¶Feuerbach describes them as real human beings, gives them flesh and blood, but they do not know how to set about their business.
¶In Marx’s hands they at length become independent actors, performing their own drama on their own stage. They experience history, and fulfil it, in actual practice. They are not in the leading strings of a higher will, are not subordinated to an idea outside themselves, are not guided by a consciousness existing apart from themselves and working towards its own preconceived ends. There is no prompter in the wings. They are independent beings; they act solely in accordance with the dictates of their own human interests.
¶These interests, in Marx’s view, are directed towards effecting man’s mastery over nature, towards safeguarding human existence, towards promoting the expansion of that existence by the development of the forces of production and of social relations. In a society divided into classes, the respective classes pursue their rival interests amid the vicissitudes of the class struggle. The aim of the proletarian class struggle is the establishment of a socialist society. The way thither is through revolution.
¶From year to year, in one book after another, and with increasing definiteness, Marx had been developing these ideas in all their convincing inexorability. The results of his process of self-clarification, at the outset no more than little tongues of flame in the thorny thicket of philosophical confusion, had gradually become a circle of lights, and had then taken the form of torches borne onwards in proletarian hands as a demonstration making its progress through an intimidated world. But this did not suffice our titan. Now a lighthouse was to be erected, shedding its beams far and wide over the whole extent of the globe; a conflagration was to be inaugurated, bringing society and civilization face to face with an inevitable destiny.
¶Marx’s next book, Misère de la philosophie (1847), penned and published in Brussels, achieved this end.
¶Misère de la philosophie [Poverty of Philosophy] was a
polemic in answer to Proudhon’s Système des contradictions
économiques, ou philosophie de la misère [System of Economic
Contradictions, or Philosophy of Poverty], which had appeared earlier in
the same year. The talks the two men had had in Paris had not brought
Proudhon over to Marx’s way of thinking, or at any rate Proudhon had not
followed Marx in the latter’s new thought-trend. In the preface to the
Poverty of Philosophy Marx writes banteringly: Monsieur
Proudhon enjoys the misfortune of being misunderstood in a peculiar way.
In France, he is excused for being a bad economist because he is
regarded as thoroughly well versed in German philosophy; in Germany, on
the other hand, he is excused for being a bad philosopher because he is
regarded as one of the most outstanding among French economists. Being
myself both German and economist, I feel it incumbent on me to lodge a
protest against this twofold error.
In a letter to Marx, Proudhon
had referred to his forthcoming volume and had said: I await the lash
of your criticism.
He was to receive a lashing unexampled in its
severity!
¶Marx scourged Proudhon with a criticism so remorseless, dismembered the philosopher of poverty with so unsparing a hand, roasted his victim so unmercifully, that there could no longer be any question of friendship between the pair. Some, even, who had little concern with the quarrel, were outraged that controversy should be conducted in such a tone. In earlier and subsequent disputes with more formidable opponents, with foemen more worthy of his steel, Marx was more lenient. On this occasion he excelled himself in cut and thrust, in sovereign contempt, in self-confident scorn for his adversary. The book was not so much a criticism as a liquidation. The enemy’s ship was positively blown out of the water.
¶There was something more, however, than an impressive public execution, for here a man of genius was engaged in the work of creation. When making a clearance of the remnants of speculative illusion, when revealing all the inconsistency of utopian romanticism, when pillorying the half-heartedness and obliquity and folly of economic quackery, he was clearing the ground on which science could erect the solid edifice of a new interpretation of history and a new theory of society.
¶In the Misère de la philosophie, Marx for the first time gives a concrete and comprehensive account of the materialist interpretation of history, which hitherto in his writings has been referred to only in passing, sketchily and allusively. Now he expresses his theory in unambiguous terms. He declares that economic production, and the social stratification which is its necessary outcome, form, in each historical epoch, the foundations of the political and ideological history of this epoch. The whole course of history down to our own times has been a history of class struggles. Today, these class struggles have reached a phase of development at which the exploited and oppressed class of the proletariat cannot effect its liberation from the bourgeoisie without a revolutionary transformation of society at large. Such, in broad outline, is the theory of historical materialism.
¶At a later date, Marx described the tenor of his book in the following terms: “I showed therein how little Proudhon had penetrated into the mystery of scientific dialectic; and how, on the other hand, he shared the illusions of speculative philosophy, inasmuch as, instead of regarding economic categories as the theoretical expressions of historical relations of production corresponding to a definite evolutionary phase of material production, he wandered off into the belief that they were pre-existent and everlasting ideas, and returned by this devious path to the outlook of bourgeois economics.
¶“I showed, further, that his acquaintance with the political
economy
which he was venturing to criticize was defective, worthy of
a schoolboy; and that he set out in company with the utopists in search
of a so-called science
which was to provide an a priori formula
for the solution of the social problem,
instead of creating the
science out of a critical knowledge of the historical movement–a
movement which itself produces the material conditions of emancipation.
In especial I showed how Proudhon continued to hold unclarified,
fallacious, and half-hearted views concerning the basis of the whole,
concerning exchange-value, mistaking the utopian interpretation of the
Ricardian theory of value for the foundation of a new science. As to his
general standpoint, I may sum up my judgment as follows:
¶Every economic relation has a good and a bad side; that is the
only matter in which Monsieur Proudhon does not slap his own face. He
considers that the good side is presented by the economists, and that
the bad side is brought into accusatory relief by the socialists. He
borrows from the economists the necessity of the eternal relations; he
borrows from the socialists the illusion that poverty is nothing more
than poverty (instead of recognizing in poverty the revolutionary and
destructive trend which will overthrow the old society). He agrees with
both parties, endeavouring to prop himself by the authority of science.
For him, science is reduced to the dwarfed stature of a scientific
formula; he is always on the hunt for formulas. Monsieur Proudhon,
therefore, plumes himself on having effectively criticized both
political economy and communism–although both are far above his head. He
stands below the economists because, as a philosopher possessed of a
magical formula, he believes himself competent to enter into purely
economic details; and he stands below the socialists because he has
neither sufficient courage nor yet sufficient insight (were it but
purely speculative insight) to lift himself above the bourgeois
horizon.
¶The first part of the book deals with use-value and exchange-value, constitutive value and synthetic value, labour time, money, and surplus labour; the second part discusses the division of labour and machinery, competition and monopoly, landed property and land-rent, strikes and working-class combination. The reader is amazed to find how perfectly Marx is already acquainted with the anatomy of bourgeois society. He has studied the whole body of the literature bearing on the question. He quotes Adam Smith and Ricardo, refers to Lauderdale, Sismondi, Storch, Atkinson, Hodgkin, Thompson, Edmonds, Bray, John Stuart Mill, Sadler, to Cooper the American, to the French writers Boisguilbert, Quesnay, Say, and Lemontey. He puts his finger on all Proudhon’s weak spots, discloses every one of the speculative entanglements, and makes merry over his adversary’s utopian confusions.
¶The following passages are of especial importance as regards the foundation and the formulation of the materialist interpretation of history.
¶A true philosopher, Monsieur Proudhon stands everything on its
head, and discerns in actual relations nothing more than the incarnation
of those principles, of those categories, which (as Monsieur Proudhon
the philosopher tells us) slumber in the womb of the
impersonal
reason of humanity.
Monsieur Proudhon, the economist, knows well
enough that human beings make cloth, linen, silk, under specific
productive relations. But what he has failed to grasp is that these
specific social relations are just as much products of human activity as
are cloth, linen, etc. The social relations are intimately
interconnected with the forces of production. With the acquisition of
new productive forces, men modify their method of production; and as
they modify the method of production, as they change the way in which
they make their livelihood, they simultaneously transform all the
relations of social life. The handmill produces a society with feudal
lords, the powermill produces a society with industrial capitalists. But
these same human beings, who create social relations in accordance with
the material relations of production, also create principles, ideas,
categories, in accordance with social relations. Thus these ideas, these
categories, are no more eternal than the relations they express. They
are historical, transitory products.
¶Let us assume, with Monsieur Proudhon, that real history, in its
temporal succession, is the historical succession in which ideas,
categories, principles, have manifested themselves. Each principle has
had its own century, in which it has revealed itself. For instance, the
principle of authority has had the eleventh century, just as the
principle of individualism has had the eighteenth. Logically, therefore,
the century belongs to the principle, not the principle to the century.
In other words, the principle makes history, history does not make the
principle. If we then ask, in the hope of saving principles as well as
history, why this principle has revealed itself in the eleventh century,
and that one in the eighteenth century, and neither the one nor the
other in some other century, we are necessarily compelled to enter into
details, and to inquire what the men of the eleventh and the eighteenth
century were like, what were their respective needs, their forces of
production, their method of production, the raw materials out of which
they produced, and what, finally, were the relations between man and
man, the relations proceeding out of all these conditions of existence.
Well now, to study all these questions, does not that mean to study the
actual mundane history of human beings in each century; to describe
these human beings as at one and the same time the authors of and the
actors in their own drama? But as soon as we come to regard human beings
as the actors in and the authors of their own history, we have, after a
detour, found our way back to the real starting-point, for we have
dropped the eternal principles whence we set out.
¶Providence, a providential aim, this is the high-sounding phrase
wherewith, nowadays, the course of history is to be explained. In
reality, the word or the phrase explains nothing, being at most a
rhetorical form, one of many ways in which the facts can be paraphrased.
It is a fact that landed property in Scotland has acquired enhanced
value thanks to the development of industry, because the development of
industry has opened new markets for wool. For the production of wool on
the large scale, ploughlands have had to be put under grass. To effect
this transformation, estates must be centralized, and small holdings
must be abolished. Thousands of smallholders must be driven from their
homes, must be replaced by a few shepherds who guard millions of sheep.
Thus the outcome of land ownership in Scotland is, through successive
transformations, that men are driven off the land by sheep. If you then
declare that it has been the providential aim of land ownership in
Scotland to have men driven off the land by sheep, you will have written
history as it appears to those who believe in providence.
¶Monsieur Proudhon knows no more of the Hegelian dialectic than its
manner of speech. His own dialectical method consists in a dogmatic
distinction between good and evil. Well, let us take Monsieur Proudhon
himself as category; let us study his good and his bad sides, his merits
and his defects. If, as compared with Hegel, he has the merit of
propounding problems which he proposes to solve for the benefit of
mankind, he has, on the other hand, the defect of utter sterility as
soon as he is concerned to call a new category into life by the activity
of dialectical procreation. What characterizes the dialectical movement
is the coexistence of two opposed aspects, the conflict between them,
and their issue in a new category. The exclusive attempt to eliminate
the bad side, cuts the dialectical movement in twain.
¶Economic conditions begin by transforming the masses of the
population into [manual wage] workers. The regime of capital has created
for this mass a common situation, joint interests. Thus this mass is
already a class confronting capital, though not yet aware of its own
position as a class. … The interests it defends, become class interests.
Now, a struggle of class against class is a political struggle.
¶The existence of an oppressed class is the vital condition of
every society based upon class oppositions. Consequently, the liberation
of the oppressed class necessarily involves the creation of a new
society. If the oppressed class is to be able to liberate itself, it
must have reached a stage at which the already acquired forces of
production and the extant social institutions can no longer continue to
exist side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest
productive force is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of
the revolutionary elements as a class presupposes the existence of all
the forces of production which can develop within the womb of the old
society.
¶Just as a necessary condition for the liberation of the third
estate, of the bourgeois estate, was the abolition of all estates and of
all orders, so the necessary condition for the liberation of the working
class is the abolition of all classes. In the course of its development,
the working class will replace the old bourgeois society by an
association which will exclude classes and their oppositions; and there
will no longer be any kind of political authority, properly speaking,
seeing that political authority is the official expression of the class
conflicts within bourgeois society. Pending this development, the
struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie is a struggle of class
against class, a struggle which, when it attains its highest expression,
is a complete revolution. Need we wonder that a society founded upon
class oppositions should culminate in crass contradiction, in the
collision of man with man, as ultimate outcome? It is an error to say
that the social movement excludes the political movement. There is no
political movement which is not a social movement at the same time. Not
until things are so ordered that there are no classes and no class
oppositions, will social evolutions cease to be political
revolutions.
¶The foregoing paragraphs read like a rough draft of the Communist Manifesto. There can be no question that the Misère de la philosophie was a preliminary sketch (and though preliminary, a ripe one) of that classical document which, six months later, in the sultry atmosphere of the days just before the revolution of 1848, was to fall as a gift from destiny into the lap of the unsuspecting proletariat.
§ Before March
¶If (as Marx considers) thoughts and ideas are reflexions of the realities of life, reflexions of practical experiences, then the thoughts and theories of Marx himself must have had a sub-stratum in the economic and political conditions of his day. His theories must be demonstrable as the materials of the world that environed Marx, when they had been transformed within the human head.
¶If we analyse the social situation, the economic life, and the political relations of the eighteen-forties, what picture do we get?
¶There were abundant indications that a revolution was imminent in
continental Europe. In France, the bourgeoisie had risen to power in
1830, but only the topmost stratum of the bourgeoisie, the financial
aristocracy. The members of this stratum had understood very well
how–with the aid of State loans, contracts for supplies to the
government, corruption, speculation, shady financial manoeuvres, etc.–to
turn their dominant position to account as a means of enrichment. The
July monarchy,
says Marx, was nothing but a joint-stock company
for the exploitation of the national wealth of France, the dividends
being shared out among ministers of State, the chambers, 240,000
electors, and their hangers-on. Louis Philippe was the director of the
company.
¶As time went on, however, industrial capital, favoured by the long series of discoveries in the fields of natural science and technique and by the extensive development of machinery, attained such proportions, that it began to bulk more imposingly than financial capital, and was able to aspire towards the control of the government. It began to regard itself as the leading element of the national economy and as the main pillar of the State, rose in revolt against the banking magnates and the lords of the stock exchange who would fain have kept it in tutelage while neglecting its interests, and demanded its share in legislative authority. Simultaneously with the voicing of these claims, there was heard, like a threatening echo, a murmur from the depths of the proletariat. Among the workers, innumerable groups, secret societies, and sects, led by a motley crowd of reformers, enthusiasts, apostles of universal happiness, and would-be shapers of the future, were in search of a way out of unutterable wretchedness towards a better, a more human existence.
¶Marx’s stay in Paris, his exhaustive study of socialist literature, his intercourse with notable representatives of utopian schools and systems, had led him into the centre of this fermenting and struggling world. It was, we must remember, not only a world of ideas and theories, but also, and above all, a world in which hecatombs of men were perishing of hunger and unregulated toil, in which sweat and tears poured down the faces of overworked women, in which the poverty of exploited children cried to heaven.
¶In Germany, too, the bourgeoisie, thanks to the enormous advance in
the forces of production, had taken on a new and powerful impetus during
the thirties and forties. Marx has given us a vigorous description of
the situation of the various classes of the population at that time:
The bourgeoisie was becoming aware of its own strength, and was
determined to break the chains wherewith feudal and bureaucratic
despotism had fettered its commercial enterprise, its industrial
capacity, its united activities as a class. Some of the landed gentry
had already devoted themselves to the production of commodities for the
market; this section had identical interests with the bourgeoisie, and
made common cause with it. The petty bourgeoisie was discontented,
grumbled at the burden of taxation, complained of the hindrances that
were imposed upon its business activities, but had no definite programme
of reforms that might safeguard its position in the State and in
society. The peasantry was weighed down, partly by the burdens of the
feudal system, and partly by the extortions of usurers and lawyers. The
urban workers were partners in the general discontent, were inspired
with an equal hatred for the government and for the great industrial
capitalists, and were being infected with socialist and communist ideas.
In a word, the opposition consisted of a heterogeneous mass, driven
onward by the most diversified interests, but led, more or less, by the
bourgeoisie. On the other hand, in Prussia, there was a government
lacking the support of public opinion, one from which part even of the
nobility had become disaffected, relying for its maintenance upon an
army and a bureaucracy which from day to day were increasingly
influenced by the ideas of the bourgeois opposition. Furthermore, it was
a government whose treasury was empty, and one which could not raise a
penny towards balancing the ever-increasing deficit without capitulating
to the bourgeois opposition.
¶Thus revolution was in the air, in Germany no less than in France.
The bourgeoisie was beginning to pay attention to the social problem and
to the question of the revolution. In the periodical press, there was an
increasing stream of articles upon labour, pauperism, the reform of
society, the harmfulness of competition and monopolies, free trade and
protection, socialism, and the like. After the weavers’ rising in the
Eulengebirge, even the Kölnische Zeitung
(a semi-official organ),
followed the example of the liberal journals, and opened a collection
for the benefit of the widows and children of the fallen rebels. Jung
wrote to Marx: Day after day, pauperism, socialism, and so on, a rag
here, a rag there–at length the German philistine comes to believe what
is thus buzzed in his ears without alarming him too much. In the end, he
would actually share out, if he were told every day for a few years it
was necessary.
Communist clubs and cliques were formed on all hands,
and these held meetings and engaged in discussions without asking
permission of the police. Writing to Marx from Barmen as early as 1844,
Engels said: You may turn whithersoever you please, you will stumble
over communists.
In an article for Owen’s New Moral World,
under date December 14, 1844, he announced that within the brief space
of a year a powerful socialist party had come into existence in Germany,
a middle-class affair for the nonce, but hoping soon to get into touch
with the working class. The frozen crust of reaction was beginning to
break up. March 1848, was near at hand.
¶Of course, this revolution could not, in the circumstances, be anything more than a bourgeois revolution, designed to liberate the forces of the capitalist economy, and to establish a form of State that would be appropriate to the needs and interests of the bourgeoisie. If the German bourgeoisie were not to lag behind its foreign competitors in the development of its productive forces and in the expansion of its field of economic activity, if it were not to forfeit its laboriously acquired access to the world market, it must win control over the State apparatus, and thus ensure its position in the world. For the German bourgeoisie, victory or defeat of the revolution signified advance or withdrawal in the immediate necessities of life and development.
¶Thanks to the study of history, and thanks to the insight into the determinism of the historical process which he had secured by means of the materialist interpretation of history, Marx had come to realize that the success of the bourgeois revolution would, while fulfilling the demands of the bourgeoisie, leave the hopes and claims of the masses unsatisfied. The nature of the epoch in which he was living was fully revealed to him he understood it, and he looked beyond it. His gaze ranged across the age that was to follow. Thinking in decades, reckoning in generations, he contemplated the bourgeois revolution in historical perspective as the threshold of the subsequent revolution, the proletarian revolution. Here and now, the social revolution would only be procreated, not yet born. Whereas the bourgeois looked to the imminent revolution to end his struggles and gratify his wishes, Marx knew that the revolutionary process then beginning would not close until the bourgeois system of society had been annihilated.
¶Nevertheless, Marx recognized that, as a matter of historical necessity, the bourgeois revolution must first be helped onward to victory. Only upon the trail broken by the bourgeoisie, could the proletariat advance along the course marked out for it by history. What had happened to the proletariat in England, France, and America, gave plain demonstration that the winning of political power by the bourgeoisie did not merely put new political weapons into the hands of the workers, but, permitting the workers to constitute themselves into a political party without any breach of the law, enabled them to occupy a far more favourable position on the political fighting front.
¶Marx, therefore, did everything in his power to assist the coming of
the bourgeois revolution. In Brussels, he got into touch with the
radicals of the town, took part in the foundation of the Democratic
League, became its vice-president, and, as delegate of the league, spoke
at the meeting held in London during 1847 in support of the Poles. He
also contributed to the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung,
a journal of
revolutionary trend, run by Bornstedt, sometime editor of the Paris
Vorwärts.
After a time, Marx and his adherents were able to get
the periodical entirely under their influence and to dictate its
position upon topical questions, such as those relating to protection
and free trade. In the columns of the Brüsseler,
he and Engels
carried on a vigorous campaign against Karl Heinzen, a revolutionary
phrasemonger who, having fled from Germany to escape a charge of
lese-majesty, was advocating a loudmouthed communism of his own
manufacture. Another campaign was directed against Hermann Wagener,
assistant judge in one of the ecclesiastical courts, who was
endeavouring in the Rheinischer Beobachter
to win adherents for a
hybrid doctrine halfway between State socialism and Christian socialism.
One example will suffice to show how Marx dealt with this adversary:
The social principles of Christianity have now had eighteen hundred
years for their development, and do not need any further development at
the hands of Prussian consistorial councillors. The social principles of
Christianity find justifications for the slavery of classical days,
extol mediaeval serfdom, and are ready in case of need to defend the
oppression of the proletariat–somewhat shamefacedly perhaps. The social
principles of Christianity preach the need for a dominant and an
oppressed class, expressing the pious hope that the former will deal
kindly with the latter. The social principles of Christianity declare
that all infamies will be spiritually compensated in heaven, the
assertion being made a justification for the continuance of these
infamies on earth. According to the social principles of Christianity,
all the misdeeds wrought by the oppressors on the oppressed, are either
a just punishment for original sin and other sins, or else are trials
which the Lord in his wisdom sends to afflict the redeemed. The social
principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement,
subjection, humility, in a word, all the qualities of the mob; whereas
for the proletariat, which does not wish to allow itself to be treated
as a mob, courage, self-esteem, pride, and independence, are far more
necessary than bread. The social principles of Christianity are
obsequious, but the proletariat is revolutionary.
Therewith Wagener
was put to silence for the time–to crop up again in due course as editor
of the Kreuzzeitung,
a pious periodical. Here, Bruno Bauer was
his right-hand man.
¶The most weighty and the most distressing of the conflicts Marx waged
in Brussels was the one with Wilhelm Weitling, the only distinguished
utopian socialist in Germany, a man of character and ability. A working
tailor from Magdeburg, he had as an apprentice in Paris absorbed the
ideas of Saint-Simon and Fourier. Subsequently, in Switzerland,
prosecuted as an ardent propagandist, he had endured a long term of
imprisonment. Then his book, Die Garantien der Harmonie und
Freiheit, had attracted widespread attention. Marx had been
enthusiastic about it, welcoming it as a brilliant literary
debut,
and predicting a happy future for the proletariat after so
excellent a start. But when Weitling turned up in Brussels, and joined
the Workers’ Educational Society there, it became apparent that his
development had proceeded no further, and that he had become infected
with inordinate vanity, with an undue sense of superiority. He was
continually talking about utopias and conspiracies, and imagined himself
a prey to the persecution of envious rivals. One day, when Marx insisted
upon the rejection of fanciful and overenthusiastic schemes for
universal happiness (passing by the name of communism), Welding
advocated the cause of the utopists, the dispute leading to an open
breach between him and Marx. Since the latter had an unhappy talent for
introducing personal animus into theoretical disputes, the relations
between the two men were poisoned henceforward, and they became
irreconcilable enemies.
¶Unconcerned whether he made friends or enemies, Marx, amid all the ferment and confusion of a troublous time, devoted himself relentlessly to clarifying the theory of the class struggle. With inexorable steadfastness, he continued to make this theory the centre of his thought process. He was the first to conceive of socialism as the outcome of an automatic evolution, was the first for whom the severance from utopism was a matter of principle. Moreover, he was the first to regard the proletarian masses as the fulfillers of the evolution to socialism. He was the first to look upon capitalism as an inevitable phase of development, as an economic and political fact which could not be argued out of the world or evaded by tactical manoevres. He, likewise, was the first who fully identified himself in his whole outlook with the social position of the proletariat, which he declared to be a daily and hourly class struggle. He attacked with the fierceness of an angry lion everything which threatened to obscure this clear line of advance, or tended to confuse the unambiguous consistency of the tactic of the class struggle.
¶The utopists, too, had their gaze fixed upon a socialist future, and fought on behalf of a social ideal. But their aim was to upbuild their social edifice as the top story of the feudalist building, either circumventing capitalism, or else attempting to come to an understanding with capitalism. What they announced as a doctrine of salvation, came from them as a gift from above, bestowed by a patron, and with a philanthropic gesture. They were animated by ethical impulses, or by sentimentalism; were moved by compassion, overwhelmed by pity, spurred on by hatred. It was inevitable that their socialism should remain a cloud castle, because they failed to understand the most elementary, the most essential feature of all society–reality. Also, because they failed to discern the inner causality of the historical process-dialectic. Also, to conclude, because they believed that it was possible to dispense with the living motive force of the movement leading to socialism–the class-conscious fighting proletariat.
¶Marx drew a sharp line between himself and these utopists. In daily combats, which were continually raising up against him new troops of foes, he went on demonstrating that his socialism was the only genuine, the only sound variety.
§ The Workers’ Educational Society
¶Through the activities of Marx and Engels, in the course of two or three years Brussels had become a centre of communist propaganda.
¶From the Belgian capital there issued to every quarter of the world strong and persistent currents of incitement, calls to arms, clarification, and influence. Here were centred countless threads of communication with all revolutionary foci; with representatives of the communist idea; with kindred movements in France, England, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland–though as yet these movements may have been based on other principles.
¶By means of an extensive correspondence with all persons who held modern ideas and were in any way worth considering from the standpoint of communism, new meshes were perpetually being woven in the network of relations. Engels, in repeated journeys to Paris, supplemented the information received from friends in that city, enrolled and trained new collaborators, helped to clarify the Babel-like confusion of utopism. The teachings of Saint-Simon and Fourier were obsolete, and lived on only as a tradition; but Cabet, Weitling, and Proudhon had taken the place of the two great utopists, and had as supporters a great number both of intellectuals and of manual workers. There were also confusionists like Karl Grün, conspirators like Mazzini, Christian socialists, and all kinds of sentimental reformers, each of them with a following of his own.
¶In this medley, Brussels had become a quiescent pole and a Mecca for a number of serious-minded persons who were interested in communism, wished to discuss important questions with Marx or Engels, needed their advice, desired enlightenment, or offered collaboration. From London had come, besides Wilhelm Weitling, Wilhelm Wolff, the Silesian, who soon became one of Marx’s most trusted adherents. From Switzerland came Sebastian Seiler; from Westphalia, Joseph Weydemeyer; from the Wuppertal, Kriege, on his way to America. Engels brought back with him from Paris the talented young compositor Stephan Born. A number of adherents were also found in Brussels: above all, Gigot, an employee in the public library; and Heilberg, who published a small working-class newspaper.
¶The general centre of this movement was formed by the Workers’
Educational Society, which had been founded in connexion with the
Democratic League. The meetings of the society were held on Wednesdays
and Saturdays, when questions of the day were discussed, lectures were
given, weekly reports were read, and so on. Writing of them to Herwegh,
Marx said: We debate matters in a thoroughly parliamentary fashion,
hold conversations, have songs, declamation, theatricals, etc. … If you
would only come over, you would find that even as regards direct
propaganda there is more to be done in little Belgium than in big
France.
One of the revolutionists who were assembled in Brussels had
little sympathy with the doings of the society–Bakunin. He and Marx had
already got into touch with one another in Paris. A Russian of Bakunin’s
circle had then described Marx in the following words: Marx is of a
type composed of energy, a strong will, and inviolable conviction; of a
very remarkable type, too, in externals. He has a thick crop of black
hair, hairy hands, an overcoat buttoned awry; but he looks like one
endowed with the right and the power of demanding respect, however he
may look and whatever he may do. His movements are awkward, yet bold and
self-confident. His manners conflict sharply with the ordinary
conventions of social life. He is proud, somewhat contemptuous, and his
harsh voice, with a metallic ring, is admirably suited to his
revolutionary opinions about persons and things.
¶Bakunin and Marx differed glaringly in their respective revolutionary
trends, and this soon led to disputes. He called me a sentimental
idealist,
said Bakunin later, and he was right; I called him
gloomy, unreliable, and vain, and I was right too.
We can readily
understand that this man who replied to a philosophical judgment by a
judgment of character, should have held aloof from the Workers’
Educational Society on personal rather than circumstantial grounds.
Writing from Brussels, Bakunin said: Marx is carrying on the same
sort of futile activities as of old, corrupting the workers by making
them argumentative. The same crazy theories and the same discontented
self-satisfaction.
¶Marx delivered some lectures at the Workers’ Educational Society. An epitome of these was subsequently published in the form of newspaper articles, and eventually secured wide publicity as a propaganda booklet. Under the title Lohnarbeit und Kapital [Wage Labour and Capital] it constituted the first of a series of fundamental writings in which Marx incorporated his criticism of political economy and gave the results of that criticism. It is especially noteworthy because it shows how Marx, feeling his way, learning, growing by slow degrees, at first finds incomplete solutions and gives lopsided demonstrations, but ultimately, after the lapse of a considerable time and after exhaustive studies, attains to finished results. In Wage Labour and Capital, for instance, it is especially the notion of the commodity labour power which discloses to us the slow growth of Marx’s economic ideas.
¶As Engels tells us in the preface, classical political economy adopted from industrial practice the current conception of the factory owner as one who buys and pays for the labour of his workers. This conception was perfectly adequate for business practice, for the factory owner’s book-keeping, and for his calculation of prices. But when thus naively transferred to political economy, it gave rise to extraordinary errors and generated confusion.
¶Economists discovered that the prices of all commodities, and among
them the price of the commodity they termed labour,
are
continually changing; that these prices rise and fall owing to the
influence of manifold circumstances, which often have no connexion with
the production of the commodity, so that prices seem as a rule to be
determined by pure chance. But as soon as economics became a science,
one of its first tasks was to search for the law hidden behind the
apparently casual changes in the price of commodities, the law which
must control what seemed to be chance movements. Economists wanted to
discover a fixed centre amid the vacillations of price; they set forth
from the prices of commodities in search of the regulative law of the
value of commodities which was to explain all perturbations of
price.
¶The classical economists then discovered that the value of a
commodity is determined by the labour contained in it, the labour
necessary for its production. The explanation contented them. But as
soon as they came to apply this determination of value to the commodity
labour itself, they found themselves involved in one contradiction after
another. How is the value of labour
determined? By the amount of
necessary labour contained in it. But how much labour is contained in
the labour of a worker for a day, a week, a month, a year? If labour is
the measure of all values, then we can only express the value of
labour
in labour. Yet we know absolutely nothing about the value of
an hour’s labour, when we know no more than this, that it is equal to an
hour’s labour. We have not got a hair’s-breadth nearer to our goal, but
are still gyrating in a circle.
¶The classical economists then tried another turning. They said:
The value of a commodity is equal to the cost of producing it.
But what is the cost of producing labour? To answer this question, the
economists had to strain their logic a little. Instead of studying the
cost of producing labour itself, which eluded inquiry, they investigated
the cost of producing the worker. This was discoverable. It corresponded
to the sum of the means of subsistence (or the money price of these)
necessary, on the average, to keep the worker fit for work and to
maintain him and his family.
¶Now an interesting fact came to light. The value of the labour which was paid to the worker as wages, was always considerably less than the value of the labour which the employer annexed as the product of labour. Either labour must have two values, a small value for the worker and a large value for the capitalist; or else the formula must be inadequate, or based upon false premises.
¶The classical economists could not solve the riddle. The last offshoot of classical economy, the school of Ricardo, came to grief mainly because of the insolubility of this contradiction. Classical political economy had wandered into a blind alley. The man who discovered how to get out of this blind alley was Karl Marx, and his first step towards the solution of the riddle was made in his lectures on Wage Labour and Capital.
¶This was an enormously important step on the way towards clarification. The man who had found trustworthy clues leading out of the chaos of philosophy, had formulated an intelligible social theory and expounded a new interpretation of history, was now continuing his labours as pioneer in the domain of political economy. In Wage Labour and Capital, just as in Poverty of Philosophy (the two books were written in the same year) Marx gave his first remarkable discoveries to the world.
§ Communist Manifesto
¶To the last period of Marx’s stay in Brussels belongs his relationship with the central committee of the Federation of the Just in London, a body which was already in touch with Engels.
¶In January, 1847, a member of this central committee, the watchmaker Moll, came to Brussels empowered to ask Marx and Engels to join the federation, which wanted, said Moll, to adopt their theoretical outlooks as its foundation. The federation was organizing a congress, at which those who held other views were either to be won over or to be cleared out. At this congress, too, the process of clarification was to be completed, and the distillate was to be formulated for propaganda purposes as a manifesto. Marx had no objection, for he had thought well of the Federation of the Just in his Paris days, and had seen no reason since to change his opinion.
¶The congress took place in London, in the summer of 1847. Marx, however, was unable to attend. In his place, Wilhelm Wolff went to London as representative of the Brussels comrades, and Engels travelled with him, as delegate from the Paris comrades. At the congress, new rules and regulations were drafted, and a new name was given to the organization, but no final decisions were reached, for no decisions could be valid until they had been submitted to the various local groups (communes) represented at the congress. A second congress was summoned for December of the same year.
¶At the end of November, Marx met Engels in Ostend and the two went together to London, primarily as commissioned by the Democratic League of Brussels to participate in the meeting which the Fraternal Democrats were to hold on November 29th in anniversary commemoration of the Polish revolution. At this meeting, Marx made a speech and handed in an address. Immediately after the meeting, in the same room (the headquarters of the Communist Workers’ Educational Society in Great Windmill Street), was opened the second congress of the Federation of the Just, now known as the Communist League. This congress lasted about ten days, and definitively repudiated the old doctrine of utopism. It disavowed conspiratorial tactics, inaugurated a new method of organization, and announced a new programme. Among the items of this programme were: the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the dominion of the proletariat, the abolition of a class society, and the introduction of an economic and social order without private property and without classes–all in accordance with Marx’s views. At the close, Marx and Engels were commissioned to draft a manifesto embodying the communist principles of the newly constructed revolutionary platform.
¶When he and Marx returned to Brussels, Engels set to work promptly, and wrote a draft in the form of a catechism, comprising five-and-twenty points, phrased in popular language, as basic constituents of the programme. Marx waited a while, and then decided upon a different method of presentation. Though he was guided to some extent by existing manifestos, which formed part of the stock in trade of every political group, every club, and every sect in those days, he compiled an imposing manifesto bearing the imprint of his outstanding genius, one thoroughly original in content and in its general train of thought. It was at one and the same time a historical demonstration, a critical analysis, a programme, and a prophecy. It was a masterpiece.
¶With a vividness and liveliness such as Marx had never achieved before and was never to achieve again, the manifesto describes the historical evolution of class society down to the rise of modern capitalism, down to the appearance of the bourgeoisie and the modern industrial proletariat. This was done at a time when capitalism was still struggling with all kinds of hindrances to its development; when the bourgeoisie was first beginning to establish itself as the ruling class; and when the proletariat, with faltering steps, was only just appearing on the political stage. Marx’s amazing talent for lifting himself above the narrow confines of his actual surroundings, and, as if from the zenith, looking down upon the course of evolution into a distant future, so that the law of the movement and its trend, the ensemble and the details, were equally plain to him–this marvellous faculty is here brilliantly displayed. He foresees all the struggles and defeats, all the stages and vacillations, all the dangers and victories, of this evolution. He watches the mechanism of the advance, numbers the steps of social ascent, feels the pulse of the bourgeoisie, hears the tread of the advancing proletariat, sees the victorious banner of the social revolution. Everything decades before the materialization of the facts, generations before their onset; everything, though seen almost as if in a vision, described with minute particularity and accurate conformability to the real. Eighty years have passed, now, since the Communist Manifesto was written, and it is as apposite, as true to life, as contemporary, as topical, as if it had been penned yesterday by a man intimately acquainted with our own day.
¶The Communist Manifesto sets out from the fact that we live in a class society which is a historical product. At the present time, bourgeoisie and proletariat confront one another as hostile classes. They condition one another’s existence, but their historical relation each to the other is a class struggle. From this Marx deduces the fundamental idea of the manifesto, that the liberation of the proletariat from poverty, enslavement, exploitation, and debasement, can be effected in no other way than by the overthrow of capitalism, the abolition of a class society and a class State, and the establishment of a communist order upon the foundation of communal ownership and a classless society. The significance and the aim of the proletarian revolution are to be found in the fulfilment of these tasks. That revolution will not be the outcome of an arbitrary resolve, for the bringing of it to pass is the historical mission of the working class.
¶It is essential to have the fundamental lines of this classical demonstration of scientific socialism in Marx’s own words.
¶The history of all human society, past and present, has been the
history of class struggles.
¶Modern bourgeois society, rising out of the ruins of feudal
society, did not make an end of class antagonisms. It merely set up new
classes in place of the old; new conditions of oppression; new
embodiments of struggle.
¶Our own age, the bourgeois age, is distinguished by this–that it
has simplified class antagonisms. More and more, society is splitting
into two great hostile camps, into two great and directly contraposed
classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.
¶“From the serfs of the Middle Ages, sprang the burgesses of the first towns; and from these burgesses, sprang the first elements of the bourgeoisie.
¶“The discovery of America and the circumnavigation of Africa opened up new fields to the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and the Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the multiplication of the means of exchange and of commodities in general, gave an unprecedented impetus to commerce, navigation, and manufacturing industry; thus fostering the growth of the revolutionary element in decaying feudal society.
¶“Hitherto industrial production had been carried on by the guilds that had grown up in feudal society; but this method could not cope with the increasing demand of the new markets.
¶“The expansion of the markets continued, for demand was perpetually increasing. Even manufacture was no longer able to cope with it. Then steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. Manufacture was replaced by modern large-scale industry; the place of the industrial middle class was taken by the industrial millionaires, the chiefs of fully equipped industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
¶Large-scale industry established the world market, for which the
discovery of America had paved the way. The result of the development of
the world market was an immeasurable growth of commerce, navigation, and
land communication. These changes reacted in their turn upon industry;
and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, and railways
expanded, so did the bourgeoisie develop, increasing its capitalized
resources, and forcing into the background all the classes that lingered
on as relics from the Middle Ages.
¶Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by
a corresponding political advance. … The modern State authority is
nothing more than a committee for the administration of the consolidated
affairs of the bourgeois class as a whole.
¶“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without incessantly revolutionizing the instruments of production; and, consequently, the relations of production; and, therefore, the totality of social relations. … That which characterizes the bourgeois epoch in contradistinction with all others is a continuous transformation of production, a perpetual disturbance of social conditions, everlasting insecurity and movement.
¶Urged onward by the need for an ever-expanding market, the
bourgeoisie invades every quarter of the globe. It occupies every
corner; forms settlements and sets up means of communication here,
there, and everywhere.
¶By rapidly improving the means of production and by enormously
facilitating communication, the bourgeoisie drags all the nations, even
the most barbarian, into the orbit of civilization. Cheap wares form the
heavy artillery with which it batters down Chinese walls, and compels
the most obstinate of barbarians to master their hatred of the
foreigner. It forces all the nations, under pain of extinction, to adopt
the capitalist method of production; it constrains them to accept what
is called civilization, to become bourgeois themselves. In short, it
creates a world after its own image.
¶More and ever more, the bourgeoisie puts an end to the
fractionalization of the means of production, of property, and of
population. It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of
production, and concentrated ownership into the hands of the few.
Political centralization has necessarily ensued. Independent or loosely
federated provinces, with disparate interests, laws, governments, and
customs tariffs, have been consolidated into a single nation, with one
government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one fiscal
frontier.
¶“But the time came, at a certain stage in the development of these means of production and communication, when the conditions under which the production and the exchange of goods were carried on in feudal society, when the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacture, when (in a word) feudal property relations, were no longer adequate for the productive forces as now developed. They hindered production instead of helping it. They had become fetters on production; they had to be broken; they were broken.
¶Their place was taken by free competition, in conjunction with a
social and political system appropriate to free competition–the economic
and political dominance of the bourgeois class.
¶A similar movement is going on under our very eyes. Bourgeois
conditions of production and communication; bourgeois property
relations; modern bourgeois society, which has conjured up such mighty
means of production and communication these are like a magician who is
no longer able to control the spirits his spells have summoned from the
nether world. For decades, the history of industry and commerce has been
nothing but the history of the rebellion of the modern forces of
production against the contemporary conditions of production, against
the property relations which are essential to the life and the supremacy
of the bourgeoisie. Enough to mention the commercial crises which, in
their periodic recurrence, become more and more menacing to the
existence of bourgeois society.
¶The weapons with which the bourgeoisie overthrew feudalism are now
being turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
¶“But the bourgeoisie has not only forged the weapons that will slay it; it has also engendered the men who will use these weapons–the modern workers, the proletarians.
¶In proportion as the bourgeoisie, that is to say capital, has
developed, in the same proportion has the proletariat developed the
modern working class. … These workers, who are forced to sell themselves
piecemeal, are a commodity like any other article of commerce, and are
consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition and to all
the fluctuations of the market.
¶Those who have hitherto belonged to the lower middle class–small
manufacturers, small traders, minor recipients of unearned income,
handicraftsmen, and peasants–slip down, one and all, into the
proletariat. They suffer this fate, partly because their petty capital
is insufficient for the needs of large-scale industry and perishes in
competition with the superior means of the great capitalists; and partly
because their specialized skill is rendered valueless owing to the
invention of new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is
recruited from all classes of the population.
¶“The proletariat passes through various stages of evolution, but its struggle against the bourgeoisie dates from its birth.
¶“To begin with, the workers fight individually; then the workers in a single factory make common cause; then the workers at one trade combine throughout a whole locality against the particular bourgeois who exploits them. Their attacks are levelled, not only against bourgeois conditions of production, but also against the actual instruments of production; they destroy the imported wares which compete with the products of their own labour, they break up machinery, they set factories ablaze, they strive to regain the lost position of the mediaeval worker.
¶“At this stage the workers form a disunited mass, scattered throughout the country, and severed into fragments by mutual competition. Such aggregation as occurs among them is not, so far, the outcome of their own inclination to unite, but is a consequence of the union of the bourgeoisie, which, for its own political purposes, must set the whole proletariat in motion, and can still do so at times. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their own enemies, but attack the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of the absolute monarchy, the landowners, the nonindustrial bourgeois, and the petty bourgeois. The whole historical movement is thus concentrated into the hands of the bourgeoisie; and every victory so gained is a bourgeois victory.
¶“As industry develops, the proletariat does not merely increase in numbers: it is compacted into larger masses; its strength grows; it is more aware of that strength. Within the proletariat, interests and conditions of life become ever more equalized; for machinery obliterates more and more the distinctions between the various crafts, and forces wages down almost everywhere to the same low level. As a result of increasing competition among the bourgeois themselves and of the consequent commercial crises, the workers’ wages fluctuate more and more. The steadily accelerating improvement in machinery makes their livelihood increasingly precarious; more and more the collisions between individual workers and individual bourgeois tend to assume the character of collisions between the respective classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form coalitions against the bourgeois, closing their ranks in order to maintain the rate of wages. They found durable associations which will be able to give them support whenever the struggle grows acute. Here and there this struggle takes the form of riots.
¶From time to time the workers are victorious, though their victory
is fleeting. The real fruit of their battles is not the immediate
success, but their own continually increasing unification. Unity is
furthered by the improvement in the means of communication which is
effected by large-scale industry and brings the workers of different
localities into closer contact. Nothing more is needed to centralize the
manifold local contests, which are all of the same type, into a national
contest, a class struggle. Every class struggle is a political
struggle.
¶This organization of the proletarians to form a class and
therewith to form a political party is perpetually being disintegrated
by competition among the workers themselves. Yet it is incessantly
reformed, becoming stronger, firmer, mightier. Profiting by dissensions
among the bourgeoisie, it compels legislative recognition of some of the
specifically working-class interests.
¶Finally, when the class war is about to be fought to a finish,
disintegration of the ruling class and the old order of society becomes
so active, so acute, that a small part of the ruling class breaks away
to make common cause with the revolutionary class. … Just as in former
days part of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now part of
the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat. Especially does this
happen in the case of some of the bourgeois ideologists, who have
achieved a theoretical understanding of the historical movement as a
whole.
¶“For the proletariat, nothing is left of the social conditions that prevailed in the old society. The proletarian has no property; his relationship to wife and children is utterly different from the family relationships of bourgeois life; modern industrial labour, the modern enslavement by capital … have despoiled him of his national characteristics. Law, morality, and religion have become for him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which bourgeois interests lurk in ambush.
¶“All classes that have hitherto won to power, have tried to safeguard their newly acquired position by subjecting society-at-large to the conditions by which they themselves gained their possessions. But the only way in which proletarians can get control of the productive forces of society is by making an end of their own previous method of acquisition, and there with of all the extant methods of acquisition. Proletarians have nothing of their own to safeguard; it is their business to destroy all pre-existent private proprietary securities and private proprietary safeguards.
¶All earlier movements have been movements of minorities or
movements in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is an
independent movement of the overwhelming majority in the interest of
that majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of extant society,
cannot raise itself, cannot stand erect upon its feet, without
disrupting the whole superstructure comprising the strata which make up
that society.
¶“The communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against extant social and political conditions.
¶“In all these movements, the communists bring the property question to the fore, regarding it as fundamental, no matter what phase of development it may happen to be in.
¶“Communists scorn to hide their views and aims. They openly declare that their purposes can only be achieved by the forcible overthrow of the whole extant social order. Let the ruling classes tremble at the prospect of a communist revolution. Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
¶Proletarians of all lands, unite!
¶In these terse and mighty paragraphs from the first, second, and fourth sections, the revolutionary soul of the Communist Manifesto is speaking to us.
¶If we ignore the third section, which, in its criticism of non-Marxian theories and movements, could naturally apply only to these down to the year 1847, the Communist Manifesto contains everything the proletariat needs in the matter of elementary information, of serious scientific preparation for the practical demands of the class struggle.
¶The concrete course of evolution–the development of the capitalist method of production, of the bourgeoisie, of the proletariat, of the modern class struggle, and of the socialist movement–has fully confirmed the accuracy of this abstract and anticipatory sketch of all the phases of that evolution.
¶Eighty years of active life have shown that the Communist Manifesto is no mere paper charter embodying a theoretical erudition out of touch with the world, but that it gives expression to the inexorable law of evolution, and that in it the very heart of history is pulsating.
§ Chapter 04: The Trial, Part 1
§ The Gallic Cock
¶Marx’s Introduction to a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of
Right, published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher
in
the year 1843, closed with the prophetic words: When all the internal
conditions have been fulfilled, the day of the German uprising will be
heralded by the crowing of the Gallic cock.
¶Towards the end of the forties, the internal conditions
had,
in the case of France, been so far fulfilled that the Gallic cock could,
by its crowing, give the signal for a revolution.
¶From 1845 onwards, the economic difficulties in which the French
workers and petty bourgeois were involved, had been continually
increasing. The potato disease and a failure of other crops had led to
scarcity and to a rise in the prices of the necessaries of life, ’and
the consequent hardships seemed to be intensified by the shameless way
in which the upper ten thousand were celebrating orgies of extravagance.
The general unrest was increased by a great industrial and commercial
crisis, beginning in England, and soon extending to the Continent.
Foreshadowed in the autumn of 1845 by the widespread failure of
railway speculators, postponed during the year 1846 by a number of
incidental factors (such as the imminence of the repeal of the Corn
Laws), it was finally inaugurated in 1847 by the bankruptcy of a number
of important mercantile houses in London, by the insolvency of the
agricultural banks, and by the closing down of factories in the English
industrial regions. … In Paris, an additional outcome of the industrial
crisis was that a number of manufacturers and wholesale traders, being
unable in existing circumstances to do any more business in foreign
markets, were forced back into the home market. They set up great
establishments of their own, and the competition of these ruined large
numbers of grocers and other shopkeepers. Hence there were many business
failures among this section of the Parisian bourgeoisie, and that
accounts for its revolutionary attitude in February.
(Marx.)
¶At this juncture, therefore, the bourgeoisie was keenly interested in effecting the overthrow of the financial aristocracy; but it dreaded the masses, whose support was needed to down the financiers. It knew how much underground work had been going on throughout the days of the bourgeois monarchy, for it had itself furthered many of these subterranean machinations. It was inclined to overestimate the strength and the political maturity of the working class, and was afraid lest, in the event of a revolutionary change of government, the reins might slip out of its hands. It therefore endeavoured, in the first instance, to bring about a change of government without calling in the aid of the masses.
¶It opened an electoral campaign in the hope of securing a
parliamentary majority. Since July 1847, it had held all over France a
number of noisy festivals of reform, public dinners where, between
courses, the chances of a dry revolution
were discussed. The
proletariat had no interest in this typically bourgeois way of carrying
on a political struggle. On the other hand, the government that was run
by the financial aristocracy, whose aim it necessarily was to counteract
the endeavours of the opposition, had a poor hand to play. Guizot and
the majority in the Chambers adopted an uncompromising attitude, and
bluntly refused to lower the property qualification, to increase the
number of parliamentary seats, and to inaugurate other reforms that were
demanded. This stubbornness fanned the flames of discontent. Louis
Philippe tried to arrest the spread of the conflagration by forming a
liberal ministry, but the endeavour came too late. In a trice, the fire
of revolution had burst through the roof, and the Gallic cock was
crowing its signal to an attentive world.
¶When the revolution broke out, Marx and Engels were taken by
surprise. From a distance, they had been unable to recognize the speed
and the intensity of recent developments, or to allow for the factors
which proved decisive at the last moment. Even in Paris, where Engels
had been on a visit in January 1848, the attitude of the workers in
general and that of the Communist League in particular was calculated to
encourage scepticism as to the possibilities of an upheaval. On January
14th, Engels wrote to Marx: The League is in a bad way here. Never
have I seen such general drowsiness, never have these fellows been so
hopelessly divided by petty jealousies. Weitlingery and Proudhonistery
are the final expression of these blockheads’ vital relations, and there
is nothing to be made of them. Some are typical Straubinger, elderly
journeymen; but others are budding petty bourgeois. A class which lives,
immigrant Irish fashion, by undercutting the French in the matter of
wages, is utterly hopeless. I shall make one more effort, but if that
fails I shall abandon this kind of propaganda.
Among the better
known leaders, only Flocon, a petty-bourgeois democrat, favoured the
communist cause; but even he was afraid that the open unfurling of the
communist banner would do more harm than good as far as the spread of
revolutionary ideas was concerned. When Engels returned to Brussels on
January 31st, he was greatly discouraged.
¶Three weeks later, the revolution began. There were street risings in Paris; the workers took the initiative, manned the barricades, held their own against a murderous fire for two days, overthrew the Guizot ministry, burned the throne in front of the July Column in the Place de la Bastille, and drove Louis Philippe and his ministers out of the country. On February 24th, a provisional government was appointed; and, under the pressure of the masses, though reluctantly, a republic was proclaimed. Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Flocon, and Albert (a working man), were among the members of the provisional government, which on March 1st summoned Marx to Paris in a letter signed by Flocon.
¶At the first news of the outbreak of the revolution, the central committee of the Communist League in London had hastened to transfer its powers to the Brussels group. But, as Engels tells us, the news of this decision only reached Brussels after a state of siege had been declared in that city, and when the soldiers were taking extreme measures to suppress meetings and check the activities of political organizations. Above all it was difficult for foreigners to assemble. Furthermore, for days Marx, Engels, and the rest of them, had been eager to set out for Paris. It was decided therefore to dissolve the central committee, and to entrust full powers to Marx, who was instructed to get a new committee together as soon as he reached Paris. Hardly had this resolution been passed, in Marx’s own dwelling, when the police made a raid, arrested him and his wife, kept them in the lock-up for the night, and deported them next day. They went at once to Paris.
¶In Paris, the revolution had roused to activity the whole general
staff of socialist sectarians and miracle workers. Louis Blanc was
endeavouring to secure the adoption of the red flag as national emblem,
and the establishment of national work-shops. Proudhon, while condemning
any idea of State-socialist experiments, was demanding the
organization of credit and speculation.
Bakunin was continually
advocating further risings, so that Caussidière, the barricade prefect,
exclaimed in despair: What a man! The first day, he is wonderful; the
second day, he ought to be shot!
Others who, though their heads were
stuffed full of theories and programmes, had no schemes for practical
application, clamoured for the help of the State in the realization of
the revolutionary idea. Yet others (as Leroux wrote to Cabet) were
inquiring how it might be possible to found a republic that would be
free from socialist taint. Meanwhile, in the first delirium of success,
trees of liberty were being jubilantly set up in the boulevards, while
everybody was singing the Marseillaise, joining in processions,
and letting off fireworks.
¶The foreign workers in Paris, thrown out of employment and hard put to it for a subsistence, gave ready ear to Herwegh’s foolish proposal that they should form themselves into legions to fight on behalf of liberty in their respective countries. The government adopted the scheme, even as it had accepted the plan of establishing national workshops. Just as, in the latter case, the authorities hoped that the failure of the workshops would discredit Louis Blanc with the masses; so, in the matter of the legions, they hoped that, by supplying funds to the legionaries, they would free Paris of a number of inconvenient foreigners at comparatively little cost. Herwegh’s inflammable temperament made him lay especial stress on the formation of a German legion. Once again (as after the publication of his Gedichte eines Lebendigen) he had become the hero of the hour, old and young flocked to him, took up arms, and clamoured for marching orders. Among the youngest of his volunteers was Wilhelm Liebknecht, now twenty-two years old. A member of the German Workers’ Society of Zurich, he had hastened to Paris to take part in the fighting.
¶Marx reached Paris on March 4th. As luck would have it, Engels was out of funds, and could not join his friend until March 25th. On March 6th, Marx already appeared in the political arena. At a huge meeting, he fell foul of Herwegh’s opera-bouffe scheme, subjecting it to a cold and biting critical analysis. To lead a legion to Germany would mean, he said, an invitation to the Prussian reactionaries to crush the revolution. The legions would not have an earthly chance against the armed forces of Prussia, Austria, and Russia. Heroism would be of no avail. If the legions did any service, it would only be to the French bourgeoisie, which would be freed from the nightmare caused by the presence of revolutionary elements from all over the world. In fact, the idea of founding the legions was the outcome of bourgeois inspiration; and Herwegh, in this matter, was only a catspaw of the bourgeoisie. Carried away by his zeal and by the impetus of his own arguments, Marx ignored the shouts of those who taunted him with cowardice and expressed their indignation at the lapse into demagogy to which he was always inclined at such moments. Nevertheless, the meeting could not withstand his obstinate insistence, and the prompt victory of the revolution in Vienna and Berlin made any thought of a revolutionary invasion of Germany and Austria out of date. None the less, Herwegh led a troop of workers to Germany. The little force was cut to pieces in the course of the Baden rising, thus showing the accuracy of Marx’s forecast.
¶In fulfilment of his commission, Marx set to work without delay at
the formation of a new central committee for the Communist League. It
consisted of Marx, Engels, Wolff, and the members of the London central
committee, who had also made their way to Paris. Thereupon, a manifesto
drafted by Marx was issued, comprising the Demands of the Communist
Party in Germany,
in seventeen points: a declaration that Germany
was a one and undivided republic; payment of parliamentary deputies; a
general arming of the population; nationalization of the royal and
seignorial estates, the railways, the canals, the steamships, the mines,
etc.; the taking over of mortgages by the State; a restriction of the
right of inheritance; the introduction of steeply graduated taxation of
incomes and the abolition of taxes levied upon the necessaries of life;
the establishment of national workshops; free education; etc. The focus
of political activity was a newly founded communist club, whose chief
aim it was, aided by Flocon, to send a number of German revolutionists
across the frontier, that they might foster the German revolution, lead
it, and gain political control of it. Wolff went to Breslau, Schapper to
Nassau, and Stephan Born to Berlin.
¶The upshot of this manoeuvre was, of course, to deprive the Parisian movement of its most capable and trustworthy members. The few that were left behind could not possibly cope with the multiplicity of tasks waiting to be performed, of problems that pressed for solution. With the best will in the world, those who remained could not do more than lay down general directives and formulate outlooks. As Engels puts it, from the moment when the causes which had made a secret society necessary ceased to be operative, the secret society ceased to have any significance.
¶While in France evolution was pursuing its inevitable course, while the revolution was working out its essential nature as a mere restratification within the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels had their gaze directed towards Rhineland, the seat of large-scale industry and the great bourgeoisie, the place where, as indicated in the Communist Manifesto, the revolution must assume its ripest form and bear its best fruit.
¶In the beginning of April, the two left Paris, and hastened to Germany.
§ The Neue Rheinische
Zeitung
¶The flames of the revolution, sweeping across South Germany and Austria, had also reached Prussia.
¶In Baden, Wurtemberg, and Bavaria, the revolution had singed the faces of countless bigwigs; in Vienna, the crumbling edifice of the Holy Alliance had gone up in smoke; in Berlin, a revolutionary storm had raged in March.
¶To begin with, Frederick William IV had imagined that the revolution would come to a respectful halt before reaching Prussia, and he had therefore seen no need for bestirring himself in the way of granting concessions and inaugurating civil liberties. He had summoned the United Diet in order that this body might vote him the money he needed–money which Rothschild refused to supply without the sanction of the estates. This, he thought, would be sufficient tribute to the spirit of the age.
¶The liberal and democratic bourgeois opposition had used brave words to begin with; but had beat a retreat on perceiving that in Paris, as the outcome of the February revolution, manual workers and socialists were sharing in the powers of government. Evolution, however, had continued its march, leaving the bourgeois opposition behind. Taking action in default of the bourgeoisie, workers and petty bourgeois had set free the forces of a new age.
¶The bourgeoisie contemplated this new development with alarm. Its gaze was anxiously fixed upon the threatening gestures with which the French proletariat, in the name of the revolution, was voicing its social demands. Especially alarming, especially damping to bourgeois revolutionary enthusiasm, was the fact that in France the very form of government which the bourgeoisie wished to set up in Germany had now been overthrown, and had been overthrown by men who appeared to be the enemies of property, order, religion, and all bourgeois political and social ideals. The bourgeoisie, terrified at the possibilities of the future, sought refuge in the arms of the nobility and the monarchy. The compromise that ensued, decided the fate of the German revolution.
¶It decided also the fate of the German republic. In the enthusiasm of the first successes in March, when bold illusions were rife, the radical leaders of the bourgeoisie had regarded as self-evident the establishment of a republic. This was to be the outcome of the revolution. The assertion roused an approving echo in the widest circles.
¶But when the fumes of intoxication had evaporated, when the
revolutionary honeymoon was waning, there was a change of scene. The
philistines demanded the close of the revolution
; the authorities
declared that tranquillity was the first of civil duties; the
bourgeoisie raised a clamour against foreigners
and disturbers
of the peace.
Revolution had become a crime; republic was tantamount
to robbery, murder, and a Russian invasion.
Jung, writing from
Cologne, had already told Marx about this change of mood; and when in
April Bakunin passed through Cologne, he noticed that the bourgeoisie
was despairingly rejecting the republic.
Dronke wrote from
Frankfort that any one who declared himself a communist was in danger of
being stoned. Marx and Engels, therefore, were under no illusions as to
the nature of the political atmosphere which awaited them in Germany.
Nevertheless they carried out their intention. In the circumstances
of the time,
wrote Engels later, we could have no doubt that the
decisive struggle had begun, that it must be fought to an issue during a
long revolutionary period, which would be marked by ups and downs, but
could end in no other way than in the ultimate victory of the
proletariat.
Engels went to Barmen, Marx to Cologne. Their design
was to revive the Rheinische Zeitung,
as an organ in which to fly
the banner of the revolution in the sense of the Communist
Manifesto. This notion harmonized with other democratic and
communist plans for the foundation of a great daily newspaper. It was
far from easy to overcome the obstacles which resulted from the
multiplicity of schemes. Even when these hindrances had been surmounted,
a supply of funds for the enterprise was hard to obtain. Bourgeois in
comfortable circumstances would not hear a word of any discussion of the
revolutionary problem, and kept their pockets tightly buttoned. Engels,
who still cherished vivid memories of the communist movement in the
Wuppertal, and had hoped great things from these enthusiasts of a few
years back, was greatly disheartened by the actualities he encountered.
The people here,
he wrote to Marx, shun any discussion of
social problems like the plague; they call it
agitation.
If a
single copy of our seventeen points were to be circulated here, our
chances would be utterly ruined. The bourgeois mood is really
contemptible. … I can’t get a stiver out of my governor. He actually
regards the Kölnische Zeitung
as a firebrand, and he would rather
shoot a thousand bullets at us than present us with a thousand
thalers.
¶In the end, however, it was possible to shark up the requisite number
of shareholders, so that the paper was founded, although upon a very
inadequate financial basis. On June 1, 1848, it began publication in
Cologne as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
The red flag of the
revolution was hoisted.
¶In addition to Marx and Engels, the staff consisted of the brothers
Wilhelm and Ferdinand Wolff, Ernst Dronke, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand
Freiligrath, and Heinrich Bürgers. Marx’s special topic was to be German
politics, but he also functioned as editor-in-chief, wielding his powers
with the sovereign confidence and clear-headedness of a highly gifted
dictator. In actual fact, he had no journalistic talent, wrote
laboriously, and took a long time over the composition of his articles,
touching them up again and again. The ease and fluency with which Engels
could at any time commit his thoughts to paper in a form ready for the
press, always aroused Marx’s envy and admiration. As a compensation,
however, he had a sure insight, which could not be troubled or diverted
by any stress of feeling; an imperturbable judgment, whatever the
confusions and vicissitudes of the hour; and an inviolable mastery of
the situation. Engels, of more accommodating temperament, one whose
comprehensive understanding and imaginative sympathies made him a born
journalist, being in addition a good linguist, kept the foreign press
under observation, and was especially interested in French and British
affairs. Freiligrath contributed impassioned lays of revolution and
freedom, whose tones resounded throughout Germany. The other members of
the staff fitted so harmoniously into the team that the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung,
from the first number to the last, gave an
impression of perfect unity. Thus in all respects it was a model
revolutionary newspaper.
¶But in June 1848, when the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
began
publication, the revolution was wholly lost as regards the proletariat,
and already half lost as regards the bourgeoisie. Those who had lacked
courage for the fight which might have saved the revolution, had now
anchored their hopes upon the right to talk, the right to turn
phrases-upon parliament. They were firmly convinced that German unity
and German liberties were to be established in a legal, orderly, and
moderate fashion, at Frankfort, in St. Paul’s Church. Any doubts on this
head were unpatriotic; any further talk of revolution and barricades was
criminal.
¶It may well be supposed that the burghers of the good city of Cologne
were aghast when they read the opening number of the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung.
Their lamblike piety was subjected to pitiless mockery;
their prudence was stigmatized as selfish cowardice; their political
hope, the National Assembly, was ridiculed as a talking shop,
and
as a council of old women.
Half the shareholders hastened to
withdraw their support; and there were fierce disputes in the democratic
party, whose organ the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
was supposed to
be.
¶But the editors were not to be intimidated, and could not be induced to modify their tone. In issue after issue, they continued their unmerciful onslaughts on the government, the National Assembly, the reaction, and the policy of compromise. Then came the June days in Paris. Whereas the French workers failed to grasp the significance of this blood bath, and whereas the German workers took practically no notice of it, Marx made it the occasion for a biting and incisive analysis of the civil war, which drew nearer and ever nearer in Germany likewise. Unreservedly espousing the cause of the June fighters, he wrote:
¶“The Executive Committee, the last official vestige of the February revolution, has vanished like a mist-wraith. Lamartine’s fireballs have transformed themselves into Cavaignac’s war-rockets.
¶“That fraternity of the two opposing classes (one of which exploits the other), this fraternity which in February was in-scribed in huge letters upon all the façades of Paris, upon all the prisons and all the barracks–its true and unsophisticated and prosaic expression is civil war, civil war in its most terrible form, the war between capital and labour. On the evening of June 25th, this fraternity was flaming from all the windows of Paris when the Paris of the bourgeoisie was illuminated while the Paris of the proletariat was burning and bleeding and lamenting.
¶Fraternity lasted just so long as the interests of the bourgeoisie
could fraternize with the interests of the proletariat.
“The
February revolution was a decorous revolution, a revolution made by
general acclaim, because the oppositions which in it exploded against
the monarchy were undeveloped, and slumbered harmoniously side by side;
because the social struggle which formed its real background had as yet
won only an airy existence, the existence of a phrase or a word. The
June revolution is an indecorous, a detestable revolution, because in it
substance has taken the place of phrase, because the establishment of
the republic disclosed the head of the monster when it removed the
sparkling guise of the crown.
¶“Order
was Guizot’s watchword. Order reigns in Warsaw,
said Sebastiani, the Guizotin, when the Poles were crushed by the
Russians. Order!
shouts Cavaignac, the brutal echo of the French
National Assembly and the republican bourgeoisie. Order!
rattles
his grape-shot, as it mows down the proletariat.
¶Not one of the countless revolutions made by the French
bourgeoisie since 1789 was an attack upon order, for they left untouched
the dominion of class, the slavery of the workers, bourgeois order–while
changing again and again the political form of this dominion and this
slavery. But June laid hands upon bourgeois order. Woe, therefore, to
June!
¶This article, appearing on June 29th, aroused intense indignation
among the members of the democratic party. Wrath flamed up against the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
and especially against Marx. The
Kreuzzeitung
demanded that the authorities should take action
against this Chimborazo impudence,
and the Ministry for Justice
instructed the public prosecutor to intervene.
¶Unaffrighted, the journal continued its campaign. Now the second half
of the shareholders cut off supplies, but the members of the editorial
staff renounced their salaries, that the paper might be able to carry
on. They drew their belts tighter. Marx sacrificed the remainder of his
little property. Stick to the guns!
was the defiant watchword.
The task of the democratic press, said these stalwarts, was to continue
fighting for the revolution side by side with the proletariat until
victory over the reaction had been achieved.
§ In the Democratic Party
¶While the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
under the aegis of the
democratic party, was forging the steel of the revolution, those members
of the Communist League who had found their way to Cologne were busily
at work. They felt that their revolutionary past made it necessary for
them to serve the revolutionary present, and to do so in the front rank.
Their activities were mainly devoted to organization and to oral
propaganda.
¶The Communist League was in poor case at the time when the revolution
broke out in Germany. Passing through Cologne on his way from Paris to
Breslau, Wilhelm Wolff reported that in Cologne the league was
vegetating.
From Berlin came tidings that the league was in a bad
way, that the group there had about twenty members, who hold
together, but without any sort of form.
In Breslau there was no
organization.
No less unsatisfactory were the reports from other
towns and provinces. Dronke was delighted when, on May 5th, he was able
to say that he had founded a commune in Coblenz, enrolling four members;
that in Frankfort he had won over two very efficient persons, with
hopes of others
; but he added that there was no prospect of setting
the league afoot in Hanau and Kassel; and that in Mainz, the condition
of the league was completely anarchical.
¶Thus the organization was like a ship which has sprung a leak, and in
which all hands must man the pumps. Schapper and Mall had joined Marx in
Cologne, and, with this city as headquarters, had begun to found
workers’ societies throughout Rhineland and Westphalia, hoping to
organize these important provinces successfully. They had a twofold aim:
to establish platforms for revolutionary activity; and to win readers
for the Rheinische.
In the Wuppertal, too, Engels was busied upon
similar work.
¶These doings could not fail to attract the attention of the authorities. Although there were eight thousand men stationed in Cologne, the government did not think the garrison large enough to maintain order. Trusty reinforcements were drafted into Rhineland from the eastern provinces. In view of the general lethargy, however, and of the widespread reluctance to take up arms, there could be no question of a local uprising on the Rhine. Marx and Engels were strongly opposed to hotheaded insurrectionism, which could only play into the enemy’s hands. None the less, since there was likelihood of a coup d’état, they did not hide their views as to what the people ought to do in that case.
¶The practical counterpart to these theoretical disquisitions was that
a great open-air meeting was held in Cologne, and that at this meeting
Heinrich Bürgers voiced the policy of the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung.
A resolution proposed by Engels and sent to the National
Assembly in Berlin demanded that that body, in the event of an attempt
to dissolve or suppress it, should do its duty by open resistance, even
if the authorities should attempt to stop its sittings by armed
force.
¶A second public meeting, even more largely attended, held in a field
near Wörringen-on-the-Rhine, gave expression to like sentiments. It was
a noteworthy demonstration in another respect, for it was attended by
Ferdinand Lassalle, a young man of twenty-three, as leader of a
delegation from Düsseldorf. In that town, Lassalle was an active member
of the democratic party. He had sent news items and articles to the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
and had in this way kept in close touch
with its editorial board. Now he saw Engels in the flesh for the first
time. Marx, who had forfeited his civil standing as a Prussian subject
and was in danger of deportation, was not present, although he had been
the moving spirit. He did not wish to give the authorities a
pretext.
¶Soon, however, there were disturbances, which gave occasion for the
military to intervene. Schapper, Moll, and Hermann Becker (a young
barrister, and in later days mayor of Cologne), were arrested. A state
of siege was declared, and the publication of the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung
was prohibited. Engels, Wilhelm Wolff, and Dronke, who had
been especially active in the movement, knew that if arrested they would
have to serve long terms of imprisonment, and they therefore kept out of
the way. Wolff went to the Palatinate. Engels hurried to Barmen to
destroy his correspondence there, and then, after a violent scene with
his father, fled with Dronke to Brussels. Here both men were arrested,
and were escorted over the French frontier. After a brief stay in Paris,
Engels went on to Switzerland.
¶Marx stayed in Cologne, and continued to publish the Neue
Rheinische
in defiance of the order of suppression, collaborating
with Lassalle, who had taken part in the Cologne congress of the
democratic party at which Marx was likewise one of the delegates. Their
aim was to induce the congress to adopt the revolutionary line advocated
by Marx. The latter’s aspect and demeanour on this occasion have been
described by Carl Schurz, then nineteen years of age, present at the
congress in the company of Gottfried Kinkel. Marx was then a man of
thirty, and was already the recognized chief of a socialist school. He
was sturdily built, with a broad forehead, raven-black hair, a huge
beard, and dark, sparkling eyes, so that he attracted general attention.
I had been told that he was a man of great erudition, and since I knew
very little of his social and economic discoveries and theories, I was
eager to hear the words of wisdom that would, I supposed, fall from the
lips of so celebrated a man. I was greatly disappointed. What Marx said
was (unquestionably) weighty, logical, and clear. But never have I seen
any one whose manner was more insufferably arrogant. He would not give a
moment’s consideration to any opinion that differed from his own. He
treated with open contempt every one who contradicted him. Arguments
that were not to his taste were answered, either by mordant sarcasms
upon the speaker’s lamentable ignorance, or else by casting suspicion
upon the motives of his adversary. I shall never forget the scornful
tone in which he uttered the word
bourgeois,
as if he were
spewing it out of his mouth; and he stigmatized as bourgeois,
by
which he meant to imply the embodiment of profound moral degradation,
every one who ventured to contradict him. It is not surprising that
Marx’s proposals were rejected; that those whose feelings he had wounded
by his offensive manner were inclined to vote in favour of everything
which ran counter to his wishes; and that, far from winning new
adherents, he repelled many who might have been inclined to support
him.
¶The portrait is unflattering, but may well have been fairly accurate, for it harmonizes with other personal descriptions of Marx. Two years later, Lieutenant Techow portrayed him in almost identical words.
¶There is no use blaming a man for his character. All we are entitled to infer from these descriptions is that Marx, despite his thirty years, his extensive achievements, and his reputation as a man of learning and a politician, was still what he had been in youth, one fighting to secure recognition, one doubtful as to his prestige. His arrogance, his self-conceit, his dogmatism and disputatiousness and irritability, must reveal themselves to every one who understands human nature as masks for a lack of self-confidence, under stress of which he was perpetually trying to avert the danger of exposure. He could not listen quietly to an opponent, because he was afraid that his opponent might get the better of him if allowed to continue. He had to shout down every hostile opinion because he was haunted by spectral doubts lest this opinion should gain adherents and leave him unsupported. He tried to discredit his adversaries because he hoped that personal onslaughts would shake the validity of opposing arguments. He could not tolerate rivals because he was perpetually tortured with the dread lest it should become apparent in one way or another that not he, but his rival, was the ablest of the able, the most efficient of the efficient, the most revolutionary of the revolutionists.
¶This domineering behaviour was animated by the unconscious conviction that he would be able to overawe the timid among his opponents. When he made fun of the opinions of others, he was trying to fortify the sense of his own superiority. When he crowned himself with anticipatory laurels, he did so in the belief that this would ensure his triumph, and entitle him to wear the laurel crown.
¶Only one person would Marx allow to express opinions–Engels. The sole reason for his tolerance in this quarter was that he could rely on being able to use Engels’ remarkable talents for his own purposes as a dictator, without Engels expecting any return, or thanks, or grant of equality. As long as a collaborator was a willing servant, he could work on the best of terms with Marx. But when this collaborator expressed an opinion of his own, or claimed the right to assert his own will against that of Marx, the fat was in the fire. Marx was a typical authoritarian.
¶These dictatorial ways of his were a perennial distress to every one who came within the spell of his fascinating personality. No one suffered more than Marx himself. He could not breathe freely except in situations where the load of ambition transformed into anxiety had been lifted, and where the sense of inferiority masquerading as superiority was in abeyance. When this happened, he was transformed. He became unpretentious, gentle, tender, cordial, self-sacrificing, and kind.
¶Such amiability, of course, could not suffice him for the performance of the colossal tasks to which his life had been devoted. One who was to work for the whole of mankind, to look forward through the centuries, and to win a world, must be a man whose flanks were incessantly bloodied by the spurs of a superhuman stimulus.
§ Collapse of the Revolution
¶Step by step, the counter-revolution had gained ground, and had gathered its forces. But the reactionaries still hesitated to strike the decisive blow. At length the happenings in Vienna showed them that they were strong enough to crush the revolution.
¶In the end of August, Marx had visited Vienna, to counsel the revolutionary members of the bourgeoisie, and to recruit the workers on behalf of a united front against the reaction. His attempts were unsuccessful, and the second congress of the democrats, held in Berlin, was of no avail. Vienna was left to its fate. In the October days, the soldiers got possession of the town, despite a vigorous defence. On November 9th, Robert Blum had to face a firing squad.
¶On the evening of this memorable day, the democrats of Cologne held a
great public meeting. While it was in progress, Marx entered the hall,
and read a telegram to those present: In accordance with the March
law, Robert Blum has been shot in Vienna.
A yell of wrath from the
assembly was the answer, a cry which echoed throughout Germany.
¶But the authorities in Berlin knew that bayonets are stronger than cries and tears. Leaving sentiment to the petty bourgeois and the workers, they relied on force. The dress rehearsal in Vienna was followed by the public performance, the coup d’état. The newly appointed Brandenburg ministry, which replaced the hesitant Pfuel ministry, suspended the constitution, dispersed the National Assembly, disarmed the militia, and declared a state of siege. No one moved a finger to resist. Never had a revolution a more pitiful end.
¶At the last moment, indeed, the National Assembly, just before dispersing under the pressure of Wrangel’s grenadier guards, had–as a protest against expulsion, and in lieu of genuine heroism–decided on a general refusal to pay taxes.
¶This was a thrust in the air, but the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
tried to turn it to account. It issued an appeal to all citizens, urging
them to organize against the authorities. Upon this instigation, the
democratic circle committee issued a proclamation drafted by Marx,
Schapper, and Schneider, advocating the preparation of armed resistance.
Any attempt to levy taxes was to be countered by every kind of
resistance
; further, the Landsturm must be organized everywhere to
repel the foe; impecunious persons were to be supplied with arms and
ammunition at the cost of the community, or by voluntary
contributions
; if the authorities should refuse to carry out the
decision of the National Assembly, committees of public safety were to
be nominated. Of course this proclamation was not worth the paper on
which it was printed. The cowardice of the members of the National
Assembly, their discouraging example, and their innumerable exhortations
on behalf of law and order, had had the due effect. The masses remained
incorrigibly obedient and respectful at a time when disobedience and
disrespect were their only hope. The upshot was that the
counter-revolution was successful all along the line.
¶The only concrete result of the activities of the Rhenish
revolutionists was that Lassalle was arrested in Düsseldorf; and that
Marx, as editor-in-chief of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
Engels
as his associate, and Korff as publisher of the paper, were prosecuted
for advocating armed resistance to the military and civil authorities.
On February 8, 1849, the case was heard before a Cologne jury. Marx made
a brilliant speech in defence. His first point was a protest against the
attempt to punish him under laws which the government had long since
torn up by its coup d’état. He went on to show how the belief that
society rests upon law, itself rests upon a legal fiction. In reality,
law rests on society, and the Code Napoleon becomes a scrap of paper as
soon as it ceases to correspond to social relations. To conclude, he
passionately advocated the right of the people to revolt when its
elected representatives have failed to carry out their mandates. If
the National Assembly does not fulfil its mandate, it has ceased to
exist. Then the people enters on the stage in its own person, and sets
to work with its own plenipotentiary powers. If the throne makes a
counter-revolution, the people has the right to answer with a
revolution.
This speech, which ranks in revolutionary literature as
a classical example of a speech for the defence, had a powerful effect.
The court, which two days earlier had acquitted Marx of a charge of
libel, acquitted him on the present count likewise. The foreman of the
jury, in the name of his colleagues, thanked the accused for his
interesting and instructive speech.
¶Three months later, Lassalle’s case came up for trial in Düsseldorf. Here, too, the accused was acquitted. Lassalle had prepared a speech for the defence, a speech which has also become famous. It had been printed in advance, and the judicial authorities, having got wind of the matter, decided to sit in camera. Consequently, Lassalle refrained from delivering the oration.
¶Invigorated by his trial, Marx continued his campaign in the Neue
Rheinische Zeitung.
During the six months of its existence, this
journal had done an immense amount of work, contributing in unexampled
fashion to the arousing and clarifying of people’s minds. Not content to
denounce the futility of the parliamentary proceedings in Berlin and
Frankfort, to criticize the Camphausen-Hansemann ministry unsparingly,
to make mock of the backwardness and cowardice of the petty bourgeoisie
in political matters, and to expose the reactionaries pitilessly as the
advocates of a policy of conciliation–the
Rheinische” had
advocated a revolutionary war against Russia, had ardently espoused the
cause of Poland, had supported the war to annex Schleswig-Holstein as a
national one, had protested against the truce of Malmö, had discussed
the Vienna affair, and had voiced its heartfelt sympathy with the
Hungarian revolution. Subsequently it had criticized Bakunin’s
democratic panslavism, had published Wilhelm Wolff’s articles on the
Silesian milliards, and had begun the publication of Marx’s Brussels
lectures on Wage Labour and Capital, in order to demonstrate
the economic conditions which form the material foundation of
contemporary class struggles and national wars.
¶There was one weak spot in the multifarious and extensive programme
of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
The paper gave very inadequate
information regarding the labour movement during the revolution. Not to
say that there was practically no revolutionary activity in the labour
movement at that time. No doubt, even in the large towns, the workers
were still undeveloped politically. They followed in the wake of the
liberal and democratic chatterers of the petty bourgeoisie, or were
hangers-on behind the crowd of half-hearted revolutionary spouters,
speculators, and confusionists–the scum which had risen to the top in
these troublous times. Still, there were plenty of workers prepared to
support the revolution. Writing to Marx from Berlin, Stephan Born said:
The proletariat is revolutionary through and through. Everywhere I am
organizing its dispersed forces into a concentrated strength. Here I am,
so to say, at the head of the labour movement. … In June will appear,
under my editorship, the first number of a labour journal,
Born did actually succeed in establishing a Das
Volk.
I know plenty of people, and have good hopes of success.Workers’ Brotherhood
of considerable size. This body inaugurated strikes, founded trade
unions and productive cooperatives, and made a fair amount of noise in
the world, so that its influence extended far beyond Berlin, to Leipzig,
to Dresden, and eastward of the Elbe.
¶The Neue Rheinische Zeitung
had restricted its campaign of
agitation to the left-wing bourgeois democracy, in the belief that room
for the development of a purely proletarian revolutionary programme
could only be secured by preliminary political struggles on the part of
bourgeois elements. It was thought that the strength of the workers was
not yet great enough to affect the issue. But the more the hopes based
upon these tactics were frustrated by the cowardice and treachery of the
bourgeoisie, the more was the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
forced into
the working-class camp. A movement in this latter direction became
absolutely essential after the decay of the democratic organization in
Rhineland, and after the complete failure of the democrats to cope with
the revolutionary situation.
¶On April 15, 1849, Marx, Wilhelm Wolff, Schapper, and Hermann Becker
announced their resignation from the democratic circle committee: We
consider that the extant organization of the democratic societies
includes so many heterogeneous elements that the adoption of appropriate
tactics is impossible. Our opinion is that there ought to be a closer
union with working-class societies, since these are comprised of
homogeneous elements.
¶Simultaneously the Cologne Workers’ Society seceded from the Union of
Rhenish Democratic Societies. The seceders’ plan was to summon all the
workers’ societies of the Rhine province to a congress, called for May
6th, and to enter into communication with the Workers’
Brotherhood,
which had summoned a congress of all the German
workers’ societies in Leipzig.
¶To provide an economic basis for this tactical move, in the middle of
April Marx set out on a tour in the hope of securing funds. The
Rheinische’s
finances were exhausted, Marx’s own property had
been all used up, and the shareholders had withdrawn their money. Thus
the position of the newspaper was desperate. Before Marx got back, a
mortal blow had been struck from another quarter, a blow directed
against both the journal and its editor-in-chief.
¶On May 18th, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
published the
following announcement: A little while ago, the local authorities
received instructions from Berlin to declare a state of siege once more
in Cologne. The intention was to use the powers of martial law for the
suppression of the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
but unexpected
difficulties were encountered. Thereupon His Majesty’s government
applied to the local magistrates, in order to achieve the same end by
means of arbitrary arrests. Here there was a check owing to the legal
scruples of the magistrates, just as there had twice been a check before
owing to the good sense of the Rhenish juries. The authorities,
therefore, had, as a last resource, to avail themselves of their police
powers. On May 16th, the following order was served upon our
editor-in-chief, Karl Marx: In its recent issues, the
Neue
Rheinische Zeitung
has published more and more definite incitations
to contempt of the existing government, to the forcible overthrow of
that government, and to the establishment of a socialist republic.
Consequently, the hospitality [!] which he has so scandalously abused is
withdrawn from the editor-in-chief, Dr. Karl Marx; and in as much as he
has not secured permission for further residence in these States, he is
instructed to quit them within twenty four hours. Should he fail to
comply with this demand voluntarily, he is to be forcibly
deported.
¶Thus it was that the last number of the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung
was published on May 19, 1849. It was printed in red ink,
and was headed by Freiligrath’s famous poem Not an Open Thrust in
Open Fight.
A sum of fifteen hundred thalers borrowed from a certain
Herr Henze, together with the money received from subscriptions, from
the sale of the presses, and so on, was devoted to the payment of the
newspaper’s liabilities to compositors, machinists, paper merchant,
bookkeepers, correspondents, and other members of the staff. Frau Marx
sold what remained of their possessions, including some old family
plate, and with their three little children she and her husband went
abroad to face a life of poverty.
¶All was lost!
§ Flight into Poverty
¶For Marx, Cologne had been the first stage in his revolutionary career.
¶The period of preparation and clarification which introduced him to political life, had been followed by a period of trial. His theoretical acquirements, his practical efficiency, his personal courage–all had been put to the test. The test had been successfully withstood.
¶He had followed the line of the revolutionary class struggle with pitiless clarity and unambiguity. He had faced and surmounted obstacles with skill, energy, and endurance. Undismayed, and at great personal cost, he had defied all dangers and inconveniences.
¶He had preferred an honourable defeat to laodicean compromise.
¶It was part of the man’s spiritual makeup that (willy-nilly, and unconsciously for the most part) his behaviour should have increased every difficulty, complicated every conflict, annihilated every possibility of peaceful understanding.
¶That was why he was now compelled to strain his forces to the uttermost, to make illimitable sacrifices for the cause, to attempt the incredible.
¶Only thus could he acquire the titanic intellectual stature and develop the unprecedented qualities needed for the work which he perceived to be his historic mission.
¶Beyond question, as a man and a champion, he had made good in Cologne.
¶Whether and to what extent the ideas embodied in the Communist Manifesto would prove practical politics, would be made manifest to inquirers of a later day. The settlement of this account, the drafting of this political inventory, was not a matter of immediate concern. What was of immediate concern was direct revolutionary action.
¶But when, immediately after his expulsion from Rhineland, Marx went
with Engels to Frankfort, it became obvious that the National Assembly
in Frankfort was not the place for such action. In this council of
German pusillanimity he found overwhelming confirmation of what he had
once written in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
: There is no lack
of good will, certainly; what is lacking is courage!
¶There was still a faint hope that in South Germany, where the struggle for a constitution had developed into a general insurrection, the cause of the revolution might still be saved. Marx and Engels hastened thither; but when they came to Mannheim and Karlsruhe, they found that the revolution there had got into the hands of a few philistines run mad, had taken the form of lynch law, and had already come to naught. In Karlsruhe, the petty bourgeois had chased the grand duke away and had seized power. Then, terrified at their own courage, they perpetrated one imbecility after another, and were only too pleased in the end when Lorenz Brentano, the pinch-beck dictator, reestablished law and order, and inculcated a renewed respect for authority. In the Palatinate there had been a mellower kind of revolution. There, wine had played a more important part than gunpowder, and the intoxication of liberty had found expression in bibulous exploits which were excused as manifestations of enthusiasm for the revolution.
¶Marx saw that there was nothing to be done here. His next thought was, Paris. In Kaiserslautern, he happened upon the deputy d’Ester of Cologne, a prominent member of the democratic central committee. D’Ester supplied him with a mandate to represent the democratic party in conversations with the social democratic Left of the French National Assembly in Paris. On his way thither, through Frankfort, he fell into the hands of the Hessian soldiery, who regarded him as one of the local insurrectionists. After two days’ arrest, however, he was set at liberty, and went hotfoot to Paris.
¶Engels had returned to Kaiserslautern, where he watched the vinous revolution for a while. When the Prussian forces arrived, he became adjutant to Lieutenant Willich, who was leading a troop of Palatine volunteers. But in the Palatinate the insurrection was speedily suppressed, just as it had been in Baden. Some of the rebels found their way into the casemates of the fortress of Rastatt, while others were lucky enough to escape across the Swiss frontier. Engels was one of those who reached neutral territory. In Berne, he met Stephan Born; and in Geneva he had his first encounter with Wilhelm Liebknecht. From Vevey he wrote to Marx. The latter had reached Paris safely. When he arrived there, with his family, he was penniless, and he found to his dismay that the French capital was in the full swing of reaction. The Legislative Assembly, which had met on May 28, 1849, was under the control of a monarchical majority. The bourgeois republicans had lost heavily at the polls, retaining no more than 50 seats out of 750. The left opposition, the social democrats, and the radical petty bourgeois, had 200 seats. They were known as the Mountain, and were regarded as the inheritors of the revolutionary tradition. It was with them that Marx was to get into touch.
¶Ledru-Rollin was the parliamentary leader of this fraction. His
followers comprised the stratum of shopkeepers, petty traders,
victuallers, and small masters, who had collapsed so ignominiously after
the February revolution. The large capitalists had speedily mopped up
their scanty possessions, their poor savings, and large numbers of them
had gone bankrupt. This had opened their eyes to the significance of the
June days, and they had gone over to the opposition. Wishing to regain
popularity, they had, under Ledru-Rollin’s leadership, made overtures to
the workers, joined in banquets of reconciliation, drafted a united
programme, set up electoral committees and appointed candidates–in a
word, they had entered into a formal alliance. As Marx put the matter,
the revolutionary point of the socialist demands of the proletariat
was blunted, and these demands were given a democratic gloss.
Conversely, in the case of the democratic demands of the petty
bourgeoisie, the purely political form was effaced, and they were made
to seem as socialistic as possible.
The political amalgam thus
constituted was given the name of social democracy
; and its
peculiar characteristics were manifested in parliament, inasmuch as
these social democrats demanded democratic and republican institutions,
not in order to abolish the two extremes of capital and wage labour, but
in order to combine them into a harmony. Their aim was to remodel
society democratically, to effect a social reform within the confines of
the petty-bourgeois system. An attack made by Ledru-Rollin on Louis
Bonaparte because the latter had infringed the liberties of an other
nation by his military invasion of Italy, gave occasion for widespread
demonstrations, which were suppressed by the army.
¶A fierce persecution of all liberal elements followed. Ledru-Rollin,
Louis Blanc, and others, fled to London. Nor was Marx allowed to stay in
Paris; and, being absolutely without funds, he had to leave his family
behind. In his wife’s diary, occurs the entry: We spent a month in
Paris, and then our visit was cut short. One morning a police sergeant
whose acquaintance we had already made came to inform us that Karl
There was need for haste in the matter of finding a new home, seeing
that the writer was expecting the birth of her fourth child within a few
weeks.et
sa dame
must quit Paris within twenty-four hours. The authorities
were kind enough to say that we might, if we pleased, take up our
residence at Vannes in Morbihan. Of course we had no taste for exile in
such a place, and I got together my few poor possessions in order to
seek a safer port in London. Karl had hastened thither before us.
§ The Neue Rheinische Revue
¶At that time, England was the chief haven of refuge for political
exiles. Its hospitality was extended to revolutionists from all
lands–from France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Russia.
Here refugees could find safe harbourage. Thus England earned the
honourable title of Mother of the Exiles,
at this period when the
forces of reaction were triumphant throughout the continent of
Europe.
¶The Marx family was poverty-stricken on arrival in London, where they settled in a furnished room in Camberwell. Marx still had a small fragment of landed property in Treves, and the sale of this supplied a pittance on which they were able to live for the first few months. But it was essential to find some permanent means of livelihood.
¶It seemed to Marx self-evident that his future occupation would be, pen in hand, to serve the cause of the revolution. His first thought, therefore, was to found a periodical which should aim at concentrating all the forces of the revolution, should undertake a critical study of the mistakes made during the recent revolutionary period, and should help to excogitate a more successful plan of campaign for the future. He regarded it as absolutely certain that within a few months the social revolution would resume its course. As of old, the spark would come from France, and would set the world aflame.
¶In a letter to Engels, Marx sketched his plan. He proposed to edit
from London a politico-economic monthly, the Neue Rheinische
Revue,
each number of which was to contain about eighty pages. Funds
for this undertaking were to be obtained by founding a joint-stock
company. The Revue
would be printed in Hamburg, and from that
city its distribution was to take place. The purpose being to exert a
continuous and permanent influence on public opinion,
the periodical
was to be issued more frequently as time went on. Indeed, as soon as
circumstances make it possible for me to return to Germany,
the
monthly Revue
was to become a daily newspaper.
¶Engels, who was eager to revive the fires of the revolution, made no objection. He was still in Switzerland, but determined to rejoin Marx in London. To avoid the catchpolls in France and Belgium, he went by sailing ship from Genoa to London, where he arrived in August.
¶The Neue Rheinische Revue,
however, was ill-starred, just as
the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher,
Marx’s first venture of the
kind, had been. There was a serious lack both of funds and of copy. It
is doubtful whether many shares were subscribed, and certainly Marx and
Engels had to supply almost the whole of the literary materials. The
first issue had been planned for January 1, 1850, but the manuscripts
for this number did not reach Hamburg until February.
¶Marx had penned a dear sighted and exhaustive study of the French
February revolution, and this was published in three issues of the
Revue,
under the title Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich
[Class Struggles in France]. Engels wrote a long account of the
constitutional campaign in Germany and the risings in Baden and the
Palatinate. This also ran for three numbers. In addition, Engels
contributed an extensive essay on the Peasant War in Germany,
which occupied almost the whole of a double number. From him, too, came
a short essay on the Ten Hours Bill in England.
¶In all, there were four single numbers of the Revue,
and
finally a double number in November. During a period which had ceased to
be revolutionary, there was no scope for a revolutionary periodical, and
no chance of a long life. People did not wish to listen to the voice of
a critic or a counsellor. They had had enough of revolution, had gone
back to work, were on the look out for chances of making money, desired
order and tranquillity. The bourgeois, ashamed of their passing
revolutionary enthusiasm, were busied in their counting-houses, banks,
and factories, devoting themselves to the lucrative occupation of
upbuilding capitalism. The petty bourgeois thanked God that they had
escaped with nothing worse than a drubbing. The workers, grumbling,
exhausted, but resigned on the whole, put their necks back under the
yoke of victorious capital. Thus it was that the articles in the
Revue,
admirable though they were as literary exercises, aroused
no echoes. They were theories with no possibility of practical
application; revolutionary thought in a world devoid of revolutionary
reality.
¶Marx had come to the conclusion that the commercial crisis of 1847
had been the real mother of the February and March revolution.
It
was inevitable, therefore, that, when the crisis came to an end in the
middle of 1848, the forces of the revolution should decline. But Marx
was too near to the events to see this clearly, and in the beginning of
1850 he was still counting upon the likelihood of a speedy revival of
the revolution. As late as April 1851, even the Prussian government
opined that during the next four weeks a red revolution will break
out in France, and will spread to Germany.
But Marx was taken aback
when the news of great discoveries of gold in California reached Europe.
In the second issue of the Revue
he alluded to the enormous
importance of this discovery, and to the beginning of a period of
flourishing trade. By the summer of 1850, had come the crushing
conviction that the prospect of a revolution in Europe had been
indefinitely postponed. In the closing number of the Revue
he
wrote: There can be no talk of a real revolution in such a time as
this, when general prosperity prevails, when the productive forces of
bourgeois society are flourishing as luxuriantly as is possible within
the framework of bourgeois conditions. Such a revolution can only take
place in periods when these two factors, the modern forces of production
and the bourgeois forms of production, are in antagonism each to the
other.
¶Californian gold had saved European capital. This was a fact which made all manifestos inoperative, all proclamations vain, all revolutionary hopes futile.
¶It was a rock, moreover, upon which the ship of the Neue
Rheinische Revue
was wrecked. There was nothing left but to wind up
the affair.
§ Split in the Communist League
¶Not all revolutionists, however, shared the conviction that the revolution had been indefinitely postponed. At any rate, many revolutionists failed to recognize this at the date when Marx had begun to advocate the liquidation of the revolution. Those who were still hopeful, could not understand Marx; they became suspicious of him; they regarded him as a renegade, and openly opposed him.
¶It was certainly difficult for persons who lacked Marx’s and Engels’ theoretical insight to understand so sudden a change in outlooks and tactics. For, until very recently, Marx had made no secret of his opinion that the revolution was dose at hand.
¶In the end of 1849 and the beginning of 1850, the Communist League had been reconstructed, with London as centre. One of the original members of the central committee, Moll, had fallen in the skirmish on the Murg; but Schapper and Bauer were still in the land of the living. Willich, who had led the Badenese volunteers with Engels as his adjutant, was a new member of the central committee. In March 1850, this committee issued to the League an address penned by Marx, describing the political situation, and specifying what ought to be the behaviour of the working class in the expected revolution.
¶The revolution is imminent. It may be brought about by an
independent rising of the French proletariat, or by an attack on the
part of the Holy Alliance directed against the revolutionary
Babel.
¶The relationship of the revolutionary labour party to the
petty-bourgeois democracy is as follows: it joins forces with the
petty-bourgeois democracy against the fraction whose over-throw it aims
at effecting; but it opposes both the one and the other in matters it
wishes to establish on its own account.
¶Whereas the democratic petty bourgeois wish to bring the
revolution to an end as speedily as possible while satisfying their own
claims, it is our interest and our aim to make the revolution permanent,
until all the more or less possessing classes have been deprived of
power, until the proletariat has achieved the conquest of the powers of
State, and until the association of the proletarians, not in one country
alone, but in all the leading countries of the world, has advanced so
far that competition between the proletarians of these various countries
has ceased to exist, and until at least the most important productive
forces have been concentrated in the hands of proletarians. It cannot be
our concern to palliate class oppositions, for we wish to abolish
classes; it cannot be our concern to improve extant society, for we wish
to found a new one.
¶From the first moment of victory, those whom we shall have to
regard with suspicion will not be the members of the conquered
reactionary party, but those who belong to the party with which we have
been allied, those who will try to exploit our joint victory on their
own account alone.
¶With this address, based on the belief that a revolution was
imminent, Bauer was sent to Cologne, and secured there an abundance of
adherents. Out of former members of the League and former members of the
Workers’ Brotherhood founded by Stephan Born, there was constituted a
new organization which began to play a leading part
in the
workers’ societies, peasants’ societies, and gymnastic societies. When
emissaries from Switzerland (dispatched at this time by a central
bureau of the German emigrants
organized by Struve, Sigel, Schurz,
and others) attempted to recruit German workers, they found it necessary
to report that all the utilizable forces are already in the hands of
the League.
¶But the summer of 1850 came and went, and there had been no revolution. The economic conditions of the day had favoured a luxuriant development of the German bourgeoisie, which had been able to take advantage of the financial difficulties of the government in order to secure political advancement. The petty bourgeoisie had retired from the political stage. The stormy waves of the revolution had by now become mere ripples, plashing gently on the sands of Prussia.
¶That was why, in the course of the summer of 1850, Marx abandoned his
hopes of a second revolution. But he could find few to follow him in
this change of mood. The international refugees in London, the main
supporters of the Communist League, were impatiently expecting the
revival of the revolution. They were impoverished, they were homesick,
they were tired of passivity, they longed for battle and vengeance.
Since nothing but a revolution could help them, they believed in a
revolution. Their wishes and hopes coloured their picture of the
political situation; their affects falsified the logic of history. Thus
their revolutionary appetites were whetted, and, sharp-set, they were
ready to sit down at the revolutionary board long after everything had
been eaten. The forcible defeat of a revolution,
wrote Marx
subsequently, with reference to this period, leaves in the minds of
those who have been participators, and especially of those who have been
uprooted from home and cast into exile, a condition of shock thanks to
which even efficient personalities become, so to say, mentally incapable
for a shorter or longer time. They cannot adapt themselves to the course
of history; they are unwilling to see that the form of the movement has
changed. That is why they wish to engage in conspiratorial activities,
to play at revolution-mongering, in a way which is compromising both to
themselves and to the cause they have espoused.
¶We can readily understand that such men as Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin,
Mazzini, Kossuth, Ruge, Willich, etc.–whose whole revolutionary past had
been devoted to inaugurating revolutionary outbreaks and conspiracies,
or who, being communists on emotional rather than rational grounds, were
inaccessible to argument were prone to regard Marx’s change of front as
the expression of heresy, poltroonery, or treason. This mingling of
romanticism and morality, of sentimentalism and blindness towards
historical reality, poisoned the discussions in the Communist League,
with the result that argument degenerated into personal abuse, and
Willich actually challenged Marx to a duel. The unhappy outcome of all
this was that on September 1, 1850, the Communist League split up. On
Marx’s side were Engels, Bauer, Eccarius, Pfänder, and Conrad Schramm.
In the opposing party were Willich, Schapper (Marx’s old
companion-in-arms), Lehmann, and Fränkel. The proposal for separation
came from Marx, and was supported by him in the following terms: The
minority has a dogmatic outlook instead of a critical one, an idealist
outlook instead of a materialist one. It makes mere will the motive
force of the revolution, instead of actual relations. Whereas we say to
the workers:
You will have to go through fifteen or twenty or fifty
years of civil wars and international wars, not only in order to change
extant conditions, but also in order to change yourselves and to render
yourselves fit for political dominion
; you, on the other hand, say
to the workers: We must attain to power at once, or else we may just
as well go to sleep.
Whereas we draw the German workers’ attention
to the undeveloped condition of the German proletariat, you grossly
flatter the national sentiment and the class prejudices of the German
handicraftsmen, which is of course far more popular. Just as the
democrats have sanctified the word people,
so you sanctify the
word proletariat.
Like the democrats, you subordinate
revolutionary development to revolutionary phrasemaking.
¶The Communist Workers’ Educational Society in London was almost united in support of the minority. Marx and his followers therefore withdrew from it. But Great Windmill Street, where it had its headquarters, continued for a long time to play a considerable part in the discussions of Marx and Engels, and in the letters they exchanged; for Marx watched all the doings of the society with close attention and interest, kept himself informed as to what was going on, and passed on the news to Engels, who had quitted London, being once more at work as book-keeper in his father’s Manchester factory. But what Marx had to say about his sometime associates was full of bitterness. He was especially mortified that the revolutionary champions from abroad, like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Mazzini, etc., and the Chartist leaders, like Harney, Ernest Jones, and Feargus O’Connor, should be in the opposing camp as representatives of the revolution. Although he had voluntarily withdrawn from the society, he conducted himself as if he had been expelled from it.
¶The confined circumstances in which these impoverished refugees had
to live, and the heated political atmosphere which surrounded them, made
their circle (as Engels said) a school of tittle-tattle and
back-biting … an institute in which every one who does not break away
from it perforce becomes a fool, a donkey, and a common rascal.
Marx, therefore, came to lead a more and more isolated life. Writing to
Engels, he declared that this was congenial to him. I like the
public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find
ourselves.. It harmonizes very well with our position and our
principles. The system of mutual concessions, of half-measures tolerated
from complaisance, and the need for shouldering before the public one’s
share (as a member of the party) of responsibility for all the
absurdities of these donkeys–are things over and done with.
Engels
rejoined: We have at length once more–the first time for so long–the
chance of showing that we do not want popularity, do not require the
support of any party in any country; and that our position is totally
independent of such rubbish. Henceforward we are responsible to
ourselves alone; and when the moment comes in which these gentry have
need of us, we shall be able to dictate our own conditions. Till then,
at any rate, we can have tranquillity. No doubt, also, a measure of
loneliness…
¶Thus the result of the disputes in the Communist League was, as far as Marx was concerned, that he cut himself off completely from communal work, reduced his sphere of activity to the smallest possible radius, and became completely isolated. His only contacts were with Engels, who was settled in Manchester, and a small number of devoted friends, or rather pupils and disciples. He was king in his own country, but a king with scarcely any subjects. This retreat into isolation might have ended tragically, had it not also been a retreat to labour.
¶His first task was to save the Communist League for the Continent.
With this end in view, the central committee was transferred to Cologne.
Heinrich Bürgers, Hermann Becker, Ferdinand Freiligrath, and the
physician Roland Daniels, took over the leadership. Marx had sent
instructions that citizen L. of Düsseldorf
was also to be on the
committee; but Roeser, a cigar-maker by trade, wrote to say that the
instructions had been disregarded, because we have had this same
citizen Lassalle under close observation here,
and have discovered that he continues to cherish aristocratic
principles, and is less concerned than he ought to be for the general
welfare of the workers.
¶In Cologne, the central committee did good work for six months. Then the police took action, and made a large number of arrests. An important criminal trial followed.
¶The trial of the communists in Cologne represents the concluding chapter, not only of the history of the Communist League, but also of the practical revolutionary phase in the life of Karl Marx.
§ The Trial of the Communists in Cologne
¶After the suppression of the rising in Baden, Prince William of
Prussia, the cartridge prince,
recalled from England by the
reaction, had reorganized
the Badenese army. He had become the
brain and the arm of the reaction, for the king, still terrified by his
memories of the dreadful days of the revolution, did not venture, as
yet, to come into the open as champion of the counterrevolution. Prince
William did everything he could to reorganize,
not only the army,
but also the constitution, the administration, the law courts, public
opinion, as they were before the March days. He intervened in affairs of
State by writing a memorial upon the revision of the constitution which
the king had been forced to grant; and in like manner he arbitrarily
interfered with the course of justice when the law courts failed to,
deal with revolutionists as harshly as he wished.
¶Among the insurgents taken prisoner by the Prussians in the skirmish on the Murg, was the poet Gottfried Kinkel, who had sought as musketeer under the command of Willich, and had been wounded in the head by a shot, though not severely. Tried by a court martial composed of Prussian officers, he was condemned to lifelong imprisonment in a fortress. Prince William considered the sentence too lenient, and demanded that Kinkel should be sentenced to death. In this matter, however, he was opposed, not only by the ministry, but also by public opinion, for the general view was that the sentence of lifelong imprisonment was excessive. In the end, however, the judgment of the court martial was confirmed, except that the king, following the advice of the ministry, changed the imprisonment in a fortress into ordinary imprisonment.
¶This was not, as it seemed, an intensification of the punishment, but
an alleviation. There were two kinds of imprisonment in a fortress:
Festungshaft
(detention in a fortress), the usual punishment for
gentlemen offenders; and Festungsbaustrafe
(punishment in a
fortress by work on the fortifications, etc.), one of the most
detestable barbarities in the military code. It was the latter to which
Kinkel had been condemned. The public, however, did not understand the
difference between the two, and regarded the king’s commutation of the
sentence as a reactionary measure. There was a lively agitation, in
which the bourgeoisie took part, expressing loud indignation. The
general anger was increased when Kinkel, in prison, was put to forced
labour and was refused the privileges usually accorded to political
offenders. The movement on his behalf became a popular one, a sort of
Kinkel cult. Amid the rumpus, people overlooked the fate of the
numberless victims of the March rising who had not the advantage of
being poets and members of the cultured classes; they forgot, too, that
before the courts Kinkel had cut a poor figure.
¶In the Revue,
Marx and Engels had taken a strong line against
him. Too strong, perhaps, for Kinkel had not betrayed the cause of
freedom, but, being of an emotional temperament, had merely let his
tongue run away with him. Besides, there could be no question but that
he had fought on behalf of liberty, and was now, in prison, bearing the
brunt of the counterrevolution. For these reasons, the article in the
Revue
aroused fierce wrath in the bourgeois camp, and
considerable discontent even in revolutionary circles. The end of the
Kinkel affair was that the prisoner, aided in especial by his friend
Carl Schurz, escaped from Spandau prison, fled to London, and got in
touch there with the section of the Communist League controlled by
Willich and Schapper.
¶As far as Marx and his friends were concerned, the Kinkel affair had
a further consequence. The king, angered by the prisoner’s escape,
determined to take vengeance on the bourgeoisie by relentless
persecution of the liberal opposition. To begin with, however, the
object of attack was to remain concealed, and public attention was to be
diverted by sharp measures against the communists. On November 11, 1850,
the king wrote to his minister, von Manteuffel, as follows: Dear
Manteuffel: I have just read the report on Kinkel’s escape. This has put
into my head an idea which I will not class among the brightest. Namely,
whether Stieber would not be the best person to disentangle the web of
the conspiracy on behalf of liberty, and to provide the Prussian public
with the long and rightly desired spectacle of discovered and (above
all) punished conspiracy. Push on, therefore, with Stieber’s
appointment, and let him try his hand. I think the idea is fruitful, and
I lay great stress upon its prompt realization. … Frederick
William.
¶This same Stieber was a discredited tool of the police, a man whom Hinkeldey, chief superintendent of the Berlin police, had now, much against his will, to make chief of the political police. Thus was Stieber enabled to try his hand at a campaign on behalf of the throne, the altar, the maintenance of law and order.
¶In Haupt, a German refugee in London and a member of the Communist League, he found a traitor to give him his first inside knowledge. Then, among his numerous spies and agents, he discovered two who could do him yeoman’s service by their cunning and unscrupulousness. One of these was a sometime cigar-maker in Dresden, Krause by name, who had served various terms of imprisonment, and was now living in London under the alias of Charles de Fleury, reputed to be a city merchant, and actually a spy on the communist movement. The other, Hirsch, who had been a commercial clerk in Hamburg, and was likewise a recidivist, worked under Fleury in London as provocative agent. To get the requisite materials for their chief, they had to break open desks, commit burglaries, steal papers, make false declarations, construct pseudo-conspiracies, forge documents, commit perjury, undertake bribery and corruption, induce people to bear false witness–in a word, practise all the arts proper to the trade of police spies.
¶Yet it was not until a year had elapsed since Frederick William had
written the letter just quoted, not until November 1851, that
it became possible to arrest the tailor Nothjung in Leipzig. In the raid
on his house, the only things of importance discovered were: a copy of
the Communist Manifesto, which could be bought at any
bookseller’s; the rules and regulations of the Communist League; two
publications of the League; and a few private addresses. This list of
addresses enabled the police to follow up Nothjung’s arrest by arresting
in Cologne: Bürgers the journalist, Roeser the cigar-maker, Dr. Hermann
Becker; three medical practitioners, Dr. Roland Daniels, Dr. Abraham
Jacoby, and Dr. Klein; a chemist named Otto, a clerk named Erhard, the
tailor Lessner, and another workingman named Reiff. Ferdinand
Freiligrath had removed to London, and thus escaped arrest. By these
arrests, Stieber had laid the foundation for the long and rightly
desired spectacle
which, in accordance with the king’s wish, was now
to be staged. All that was needed was to furbish up evidence of the
conspiracy that was to be discovered and punished.
¶There was absolutely nothing of a serious character with which to
charge the accused. They were members of a secret organization, but this
was not prohibited by Rhenish law. Furthermore, the aim of the secret
organization was to carry on a perfectly legal political movement, the
Marxist trend being distinguished in this matter from the trend of
Willich and Schapper, who were inclined to conspiratorial machinations.
Since the collapse of the revolution of 1848,
writes Marx, the
German labour movement had continued to exist only in the form of
theoretical propaganda, restricted to a narrow circle, and propaganda as
to whose practical innocuousness the Prussian government was under no
illusions for a moment. … Some of the secret societies did directly aim
at overthrowing the extant State power. This was justified in France,
where the proletariat had been conquered by the bourgeoisie, and where
an attack upon the existing government coincided with an attack on the
bourgeoisie. Another section of the secret societies aimed at forming
the proletariat into a party, without concerning themselves about the
extant governments. This was necessary in such countries as Germany,
where the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were jointly subordinate to
their semifeudal governments, so that a victorious onslaught upon the
existing governments would not break the power of the bourgeoisie or of
the so-called middle classes, but would necessarily help these to power.
No doubt here, likewise, the members of the proletarian party would
participate anew in a revolution against the status quo; but it was not
their business to prepare the way for this revolution.
¶But the police paid no heed to such distinctions. They needed a conspiracy, a sensational prosecution, a State trial; and they turned their knowledge of the split in the Communist League, their personal acquaintance with members of this body, and the documents they had seized, to account in order to create an appropriate atmosphere for the drama they wished to stage. If they could not find what they wanted, they were prepared to invent it. Still, luck was against them. Despite all their domiciliary visits, interceptions of letters, widespread inquiries, and imprisonment of the accused for months pending trial, they could not discover materials for the sensational affair they hoped to manufacture. Month after month, they had to postpone bringing the case into court. Their search for evidence to connect the accused with a conspiracy, a plan for assassination, or a scheme of insurrection, had been fruitless.
¶At length, in October 1852, Stieber thought he had collected enough
to begin the trial. But the course of the affair was unprosperous. Every
he of the prosecution was disclosed, every falsification of the minions
of the law was revealed, every move of Stieber and his spies was
successfully countered. Marx and his friends in London were doing their
utmost in the hope of transforming the trial from a blow directed
against the communist movement into a tremendous defeat of the police,
the judicial authorities, and the government. Although the police, the
postal service, and the press had joined forces against his work of
enlightenment, he was able to attain his end. Frau Marx wrote in a
private letter: My husband has to work all day and far on into the
night, for the proofs of falsification have to be elaborated here in
London. Every document has to be written six or eight times over, and
then sent to Germany by various routes, by way of Frankfort, Paris,
etc., for all letters directed to my husband, and all letters sent hence
to Cologne, are opened and intercepted. The whole thing has now become a
struggle between the police on the one hand, and my husband on the
other, seeing that everything, even the conduct of the defence, is
thrown upon his shoulders. … We have a regular office established here.
Two or three of us write; others run messages; others scrape pennies
together, so that the writers can keep themselves alive, and can furnish
proofs of the scandalous behaviour of the official world.
¶When Stieber, as desperate as a trapped fox, saw that his cause was
practically lost, he played his last trump, producing as evidence of the
conspiratorial activities of the accused the minute book of the
Communist League. But it speedily became apparent that this exhibit was
a forgery. It was recorded in the minutes that the meetings of the
Marx Party
in London had always occurred on Thursdays, whereas
since January 1852 they had been held on Wednesdays; it re ported the
meetings as having been held at the old headquarters, whereas, since the
same date, they had been transferred to new headquarters; it showed that
the minutes were signed by H. Liebknecht, whereas Liebknecht (who, by
the way, did not sign the minutes at all) was called Wilhelm. Marx
showed that the provocative agent Hirsch had for six or eight months,
week after week, been concocting this minute book in the room and under
the eyes of his chief Fleury in London. In the room above Fleury was
living the Prussian police lieutenant Greif, who kept watch on Fleury
and inspired his activities. Greif spent part of every day at the
Prussian embassy, where he himself was supervised and supplied with
inspiration. Thus the Prussian embassy was the original hothouse in
which the forged minute book ripened.
¶The case for the prosecution collapsed. When Stieber, amid a flood of
subterfuges, falsehoods, and perjuries, had admitted that the alleged
minute book was a mere notebook, the public prosecutor ceased to claim
that the document had evidential value. Nevertheless, it was essential
that the accused should be found guilty, not only because such were the
king’s wishes, but also because (as, during the prosecution, Hinkeldey
wrote to the embassy in London) the whole existence of the political
police hangs upon the issue of this trial.
In the end, the guilt of
the accused was considered to be proved because they had secretly
diffused the principles of the Communist Manifesto, principles
that endangered the State. For this crime–which was not a crime at all,
seeing that every one who wished could acquaint himself with the
contents of a document which had been openly printed and sold–the
accused received savage sentences. Nothjung, Bürgers, and Roeser were
condemned to six years’ imprisonment in a fortress; Reiff, Otto, and
Becker, to five years; Lessner, to three years. The others, all of whom
had been in prison for eighteen months pending trial, were acquitted.
The result of this sentence was to dispel for ever the superstitious
faith in trial by jury, a faith which still flourished in Rhenish
Prussia. People realized that trial by jury is trial by a court of the
privileged classes, a court established in order to bridge over the gaps
in the law by the breadth of the bourgeois conscience.
¶Marx elaborated the materials relating to the trial into a booklet, which was published in Switzerland. The whole edition was seized on the German frontier. Then the work was reissued in the United States, where it attracted considerable attention, and caused much distress to some of the refugees, who had removed across the Atlantic since the arrests had taken place. Especially does this remark apply to Willich. He had for a considerable time been in close personal touch with Fleury, and had received money from that spy. On reaching America, Willich had entered the United States service. In order to cover up the dubious part he had played in the affair, he published diatribes against Marx in American journals, and Marx answered these in a little essay entitled Der Ritter vom edelmütigen Bewusstsein [The Knight of the Magnanimous Spirit]. One of the results of the trial of the communists in Cologne, a trial which had intensified the mutual enmities of the refugees, was the final break-up of the Communist League.
¶Marx withdrew from public propaganda, and buried himself in scientific study.
§ Chapter 05: The Trial, Part 2
Klassenkämpfe In Frankreich
¶Marx had been put to the test as revolutionary champion. He had withstood the test. Maybe in his zeal, in the heat of battle, he had erred on the side of passion rather than on that of moderation, had been too impetuous rather than unduly cautious. But he had never blenched in the decisive hour; had never lost sight of the goal or been wanting in impetus; had never for a moment been lacking in readiness to leap into the breach. As a man, he had been tried, and had not been found wanting.
¶But what of the cause he had been fighting for? Could that resist the test of criticism?
¶Marx now devoted himself to answering this question–not once, but again and again. He set to work with the relentlessness, the thoroughness, the incisiveness, that were his leading characteristics.
¶With the scalpel of an anatomist, he dissected history, and demonstrated the result.
¶His first critical examination, his first attempt to explain a
section of history, by means of the materialist method of
interpretation, as an expression of the extant economic situation,
took the form of an analysis of the February revolution in the year
1848. It was entitled Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich [Class
Struggles in France].
¶Here are some of the results of his inquiry.
¶In the reign of Louis Philippe, what ruled in France was not the
bourgeoisie as a whole, but a section thereof, the so-called financial
aristocracy, consisting of bankers, stock-exchange magnates, railway
kings, mine owners, ironmasters, and some of the great landed
proprietors. They occupied the throne; they dictated the laws that were
passed by the Chambers; they appointed the office holders, ranging from
the ministers of State down to the minor employees in the Tobacco
Office.
¶The industrial bourgeoisie was part of the official opposition,
and only represented in the Chambers as a minority. Its oppositional
attitude became intensified in proportion as the power of the financial
aristocracy grew, and in proportion as (after the risings of 1832, 1834,
and 1839 had been drowned in blood) it believed its own dominion over
the workers to be assured.
¶The petty bourgeoisie in all its gradations, and the peasant
class, were completely excluded from political power. Finally, in the
official opposition or altogether outside the
pays légal
[the
king, his ministers, the deputies, and the 200,000 electors], were the
ideological representatives and spokesmen of the aforesaid classes,
their professors, lawyers, doctors, etc., in a word, their so-called men
of talent.
¶It was to the direct interest of the ruling and legislating
section of the bourgeoisie (ruling and legislating through the Chambers)
that the State should run into debt. The deficit was for these gentry
the material substratum of their speculative activities and the main
source of their enrichment. Every year there was a new deficit, and
every four or five years there was a new loan. Each new loan gave the
financial aristocracy fresh opportunities for diddling a State
artificially kept insolvent, and therefore compelled to deal with the
bankers on very unfavourable terms.
¶The sections of the French bourgeoisie that were excluded from
power raised a clamour about corruption. … Then came worldwide economic
happenings to hasten the outbreak of general discontent, to ripen
disaffection into revolt. These were: the potato disease, a failure of
other crops, and a general commercial and industrial crisis.
¶The provisional government, climbing to power from the February
barricades, necessarily represented in its composition the various
parties which had shared in the victory.
¶The February republic had first of all to complete the dominion of
the bourgeoisie, by allowing all the other possessing classes to enter
the charmed circle of political power, and to take their places in it
side by side with the financial aristocracy.
¶The proletariat, which had imposed a republic on the provisional
government (and, through the provisional government, on the whole of
France), at once came to the front as an independent political party,
but thereby summoned the whole of bourgeois France into the lists
against it. What it had conquered was a field on which it could fight
for its revolutionary emancipation, but by no means that emancipation
itself.
By the establishment of universal [manhood] suffrage, the
nominal owners who form the great majority of the French, the peasants
that is to say, had been made the arbiters of the destiny of
France.
¶By accepting the bills of exchange which the old bourgeois society
had drawn on the State, the provisional government had ruined itself. It
had become the harassed debtor of bourgeois society, instead of
confronting that society as a menacing creditor, as one to whom the
revolutionary indebtedness of several years had become payable.
¶The emancipation of the workers, even as a mere phrase, was now an
intolerable danger to the new republic, for it was a perpetual protest
against the establishment of credit, which rests upon the undisturbed
and unqualified recognition of the extant economic class relations. The
workers, therefore, must be reduced to impotence.
¶Only in the name of the republic could the fight against the
proletariat be undertaken.
¶In the National Assembly, all France sat in judgment on the
Parisian proletariat. Promptly abandoning the socialist illusions of the
February revolution, the Assembly proclaimed the bourgeois republic,
pure and simple. Forthwith it excluded Louis Blanc and Albert, the
proletarian representatives, from the executive committees it now
proceeded to appoint; it rejected the proposal to establish a labour
office as a special department of the government; and it greeted with
vociferous applause Trélat’s statement,
the only matter with which we
are concerned is to bring labour back to its old conditions.
¶The workers had no other option than between starvation and
rebellion. Their answer took the form of the insurrection of June 22nd,
the first pitched battle between the two classes into which modern
society is severed. It was a struggle for the maintenance or the
destruction of the bourgeois order. The veil hiding the true visage of
the republic had been torn.
¶Fraternity had lasted just so long as the interest of the
bourgeoisie had been able to fraternize with the interest of the
proletariat.
¶Cavaignac did not signify the dictatorship of the sword over
bourgeois society; he signified the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie
exercised by means of the sword.
¶The constitution did not sanction a social revolution, it
sanctioned the momentary victory of the old society over the
revolution.
¶December 10, 1848, was the day of the peasants’ insurrection. The
French peasants’ February began on December 10th. The symbol which
expressed their entry into the revolutionary movement–clumsily astute,
knavishly simple, clownishly sublime, a calculated superstition, an
emotional burlesque, a brilliantly stupid anachronism, a practical joke
on the part of universal history, an undecipherable hieroglyph for
civilized understandings–this symbol bore unmistakably the physiognomy
of the class which represents barbarism within the confines of
civilization. The republic had announced itself to the peasants by
sending a tax collector; the peasants announced themselves to the
republic by sending the emperor. Napoleon was the only man who had fully
represented the interests and the fancies of the peasant class newly
created in 1789.
¶With the formation of the Legislative National Assembly, was
completed the manifestation of the constitutional republic, that is to
say of the republican form of State in which the dominion of the
bourgeoisie is embodied.
¶With the official restoration of the financial aristocracy, it was
inevitable that the French people would ere long be face to face once
more with a February 24th.
¶So rapidly had circumstances been ripened by the course of the
revolution, that the reformers of all shades of opinion, including those
who represented the most modest demands of the middle classes, had to
group themselves round the banner of the extreme revolutionary party,
round the red flag.
¶The proletariat is grouping itself more and more round
revolutionary socialism, round communism. This socialism is the
declaration that the revolution is permanent, that the class
dictatorship of the proletariat is a necessary transition to the
abolition of class distinctions in general, to the abolition of all the
productive relations on which class distinctions depend, to the
abolition of all the social relations which express these productive
relations, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas which proceed from
these social relations.
¶The proletariat did not allow itself to be provoked into riots,
for it was engaged in making a revolution. … Despite all endeavours, the
socialist candidates were victorious. Even the army voted for the June
insurgents against their own war minister Lahitte. The Party of Order
was as if thunderstruck. … The election of March 10, 1850! It was the
reversal of June 1848. Those who had massacred and transported the June
insurgents returned to the National Assembly, but with bowed heads, in
the train of the transportees, and with the latter’s principles on their
lips. It was the reversal of June 13, 1849. The Mountain, which had been
proscribed by the National Assembly, returned to the National Assembly,
but as the advance trumpeter of the revolution, no longer as its
commander. It was the reversal of December 10th. Napoleon had been
discomfited with the discomfiture of his minister Lahitte.
¶March 10th was a revolution. Behind the votes lay paving
stones.
¶A new revolution is only possible as the sequel to a new crisis.
But the one is as certain as the other.
¶Those who, when they refer to Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, speak of Marx’s brilliant style, of the force of his descriptions, of his mastery of satire, of the splendid way in which he exhibits the movements of universal history, and of the boldness with which he discovers the hidden interconnexions of events, are in the right of it. But this praise, since it is restricted to formal merits, overlooks the material importance of the book.
¶What gives Klassenkämpfe special significance, as Engels
pointed out, is the fact that here for the first time is clear
expression given to the formula which was subsequently to become the
general formula of the class struggle as pursued by all parties, of all
socialistic trends, and in all countries. This formula is the
appropriation of the means of production by the proletariat, the
abolition of the wage system and of capital and of their mutual
relations. Therewith, to quote Engels, was formulated the demand by
which modern working-class socialism is sharply distinguished, not
only from all the various shades of feudalist, bourgeois,
petty-bourgeois, etc., socialism, but also from vague utopian ideas as
to a community of goods and from the elementary but spontaneously
developed forms of working-class communism. When, subsequently, Marx
extended the formula to include appropriation of the means of exchange
as well, this extension, which is an obvious corollary to the
Communist Manifesto, signified nothing more than an expansion
of the main proposition.
¶In matters of detail, the book is not free from errors. When he wrote
it, Marx was still unduly influenced by impressions derived from earlier
revolutions; was still, as Engels puts it, under the spell of prior
historical experiences.
¶The fundamental tint of the revolutions from 1789 to 1830 shows through in all Marx’s deductions. He is here and there because, despite the depth of his insight, his grasp of economic causes is still defective. Owing to a lack of sufficient statistical information, trustworthy reports, exhaustive politico-economic study, he arrives at the erroneous conclusion that the social revolution, as the last decisive struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in Europe, will necessarily follow hard upon the revolutionary upheaval of 1848.
¶Writing in 1895, Engels said that history had shown this assumption
to be an illusion. It has made clear to us that in those days the
condition of economic development on the Continent was far from being
ripe for the abolition of capitalist production; it has proved this by
the economic revolution which since 1848 has affected the whole
Continent, has involved large-scale industry in France, Austria,
Hungary, and Poland; has recently begun seriously to influence Russia;
and has made of Germany an industrial country of the first rank. All
this has occurred upon a capitalist foundation far wider than that which
existed in the year 1848. Now, it is this industrial revolution which
has everywhere for the first time clarified class relations; has done
away with a number of intermediate conditions which had persisted as
vestiges of the manufacturing period, and in eastern Europe even as
vestiges of the guild system; has created a true bourgeoisie and a true
urban proletariat; and has pushed these two classes into the foreground
of social evolution. Thanks to this, however, the struggle between these
two great classes, which in 1848 existed outside England in Paris alone
and a few great industrial centres, has now been diffused throughout
Europe, and has attained an intensity which was still quite unthinkable
in 1848.
¶These defects notwithstanding, Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich is a fine piece of critical and analytical history penned in the light of historical materialism. It is a brilliant draft for the completer study of the same period, for Marx’s masterpiece, Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte.
§ Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte
¶The coup d’état of Louis Napoleon was a logical sequel to the
February revolution. The imperial crown was nothing more than a piece of
theatrical property,
a symbol added under stress of a dynastic
megalomaniac urge. Marx, who had already drawn attention to the part
played by the bizarre in French history, thanks to which in France,
the simplest man acquires the most complicated significance,
now
went on to show that the class war in France created circumstances
and relations that enabled a grotesque mediocrity to strut about in a
hero’s garb.
¶The coup d’état had already set a number of pens to work, justifying it, condemning it, or explaining it. Marx refers to some of them.
¶Among books which, almost simultaneously with mine, discussed
Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état, only two are worth mentioning, Victor
Hugo’s Napoléon le petit; and Proudhon’s Coup
d’état.
¶He goes on to say:
¶Victor Hugo confines himself to a scathing and brilliantly worded
polemic against the man personally responsible for the coup d’état. For
him, the incident resembles a thunderclap in a clear sky. He can see
nothing but the arbitrary act of an isolated individual. Hugo fails to
realize that he makes this individual seem great instead of small by
ascribing to him a capacity for personal initiative without parallel in
history. Proudhon, on the other hand, tries to show that the coup d’état
was the outcome of an antecedent historical development. But in his case
an exposition of the coup d’état becomes transformed into a historical
apology for the hero who effected it.
¶In contrast with these writers, Marx, with the aid of the materialist interpretation of history, gives his readers an insight into the nature of the various interests which led to the coup d’état, exposing their operation so clearly that not even the slightest detail can retain its ideological mask. Louis Bonaparte and his policy are unsparingly dissected.
¶This book, full of profound thought and keen vision, and written in a
brilliant style, was composed at a time when Marx was in danger of
succumbing to the hardships of a refugee’s life. The family of six or
seven persons was packed into two small rooms, not knowing from day to
day whether they would get food on the next. Clothing and shoes had been
pawned. Marx had to keep the house, for lack of a coat to go out in,
and had no meat for dinner, as the butcher had refused further
credit.
He was ill, and could see no hope of better days. Engels was
only a clerk in his father’s Manchester house; and the other refugees
were all as poor as church mice.
¶At this juncture, Marx had a letter from his old friend Weydemeyer. During the revolution of 1848, Weydemeyer had published a revolutionary periodical in Germany. Then, subject to police persecutions and weary of a hunted life, he had emigrated to America. Now he wrote that he was about to issue a new periodical, and would like Marx to send him paid contributions. Week by week, down to the middle of February 1852, Marx dispatched articles dealing with the history of the coup d’état.
¶Then, instead of the eagerly expected fees, came news that the whole plan of the periodical had come to grief. These unhappy tidings arrived at a moment when Marx’s little daughter Francisca had just died, and when Frau Marx, impecunious as usual, was forced to borrow from her neighbours the sum needed for funeral expenses.
¶Soon, however, more cheerful intelligence came from New York.
Weydemeyer wrote that he would be able to issue the periodical after
all, though as a monthly instead of a weekly. A comrade, a tailor by
trade, who had saved forty dollars, was prepared to devote the whole sum
to the venture. To this nameless Maecenas we owe it that Marx’s
Eighteenth Brumaire was able to appear in the second issue of
Die Revolution
–a periodical whose existence was brief.
But several hundred extra copies of the second number were printed,
found their way to Germany, and were circulated there.
¶In the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx revised the opinion put
forward in the Class Struggles that a social revolution was to
be expected in connexion with the movement of 1848. Since writing the
earlier work, he had been engaged in profounder economic studies
(carried on in London), had seen further into the mechanism of the
processes of history, and had come to conclusions whose elaboration
threw light on the victory of the usurper Louis Bonaparte. The
adventurer from foreign parts
had risen to the front, step by
step, climbing on the shoulders of the tatterdemalion proletariat,
that vague, dissolute, down-at-heels and out-at-elbows rabble which the
French denote by the composite name of la Bohème
; upon their
shoulders, and upon the backs of the conservative peasants, whom petty
proprietorship had transformed into troglodytes
; and upon the
bayonets of a drunken soldiery, whom he had bribed with brandy and
sausages. What had been the upshot?
¶The French bourgeoisie rose in revolt against the rule of the
working proletariat; with the result that it has brought the slum
proletariat into power, the loafers and tatterdemalions. … The
bourgeoisie kept France breathless in alarm by talking about the menace
of Red Anarchy; on December 4th, Bonaparte gave it a taste of the future
it had prophesied when he had the most respectable burghers of the
Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard des Italiens shot, while they sat
at their windows, by the soldiers of the army of order, who had been
made half drunk to keep up their enthusiasm. The bourgeoisie glorified
the sword; now it is to be ruled by the sword. It destroyed the
revolutionary press; now its own press has been destroyed. It subjected
public meetings to police supervision; now its own drawing-rooms are
under police supervision. It disbanded the democratic National Guard;
now its own National Guard has been disbanded. It had cowed the workers
by declaring a state of siege; now it is itself cowed by the same
weapon. It had substituted courts martial for trial by jury; now its own
juries are replaced by courts martial. It had put elementary education
under the thumb of the priests; now it is to experience clerical
dominion in its turn. It had transported the workers without trial; now
the bourgeois are trans ported without trial. It had suppressed every
kind of social stir by the use of all the powers of the State; now every
social stir initiated by the bourgeoisie is suppressed by all the powers
of the State. In its passion for its money-bags, it had rebelled against
its own statesmen and men of letters; now its statesmen and men of
letters have been swept out of the way, and its money-bags are rifled
when its mouth has been gagged and its pen broken.
Thus was the
bourgeoisie punished for all the sins it had committed against the
spirit of the revolution; and the instrument of this punishment, this
vengeance, was Louis Bonaparte, the chosen of the smallholders.
¶Nevertheless: By the economic development of this smallholding
system the relationship between the peasantry and the other classes of
society has been turned upside down. Under the first Napoleon, the
parcelling-out of the land encouraged free competition in the rural
districts, and favoured the beginnings of great industry in the towns.
The peasant class was an embodied and ubiquitous protest against the
landed aristocracy, so recently overthrown. The roots, which the new
system of smallholding struck deep into French soil, cut off the supply
of nutriment upon which feudalism had depended. The landmarks of peasant
proprietorship were the natural fortifications of the bourgeoisie
against any attempt at a coup de main that might be made by the old
overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century the feudal
extortioner was replaced by the urban usurer; the obligations that the
feudal system had imposed upon those who were bound to the soil found
their modern counterparts in the obligations to the mortgagee;
aristocratic landlordism had been exchanged for bourgeois capitalism.
The peasant’s holding is still only the pretext whereby the capitalist
is enabled to draw profit, interest, and rent from the land, while
leaving the cultivator to wrest his own wages from the soil. French
agricultural land is so heavily burdened with mortgages that the
interest paid on them is equal to the interest on the British national
debt. … At the beginning of the century, the bourgeois system of society
placed the State as sentinel in front of the newly created petty
landholdings, and manured their soil with laurels. Today, that same
bourgeois system has become a vampire which sucks the blood and marrow
from the peasants’ little farms, and throws them into the alembic of
capital. The Code Napoléon is now nothing more than the warrant for
distraints and forced sales. … The result is that the interests of the
peasants no longer coincide, as during the reign of the first Napoleon,
with the interests of the bourgeoisie, with the interests of capital.
There is now a conflict of interests. The peasants, therefore, find
their natural allies and leaders in the urban proletariat, whose mission
it is to subvert the bourgeois order of society.
¶All
Napoleonic ideas
(a vast expansion of bureaucracy, the
rule of the priests, the preponderance of the army) are the ideas of the
petty proprietors in their callow youth. When the peasants have grown
old and experienced, these ideas seem nonsensical to them. In the death
struggle of the system of petty proprietorship, the Napoleonic ideas
have become hallucinations; the words are empty phrases; the spirits are
but ghosts. Yet the parody of Empire was necessary that the mass of the
French nation might be freed from the yoke of tradition, and that the
opposition between the State authority and society might be displayed in
all its nudity. With the progressive decay of the system of petty
proprietorship, the State structure that was founded upon it
collapses.
¶Again: Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth
century, spread from success to success; they vie with one another in
the lustre of their stage effects; men and things seem to be set in
sparkling brilliants; every day is filled with ecstasy: but they are
shortlived; their climax is soon reached; on the morning after, society
has to pass through a long fit of the dumps; and only when that is over
can there be a dispassionate assimilation of the achievements of the
periods of storm and stress. Proletarian revolutions, on the other hand,
like those of the nineteenth century, are ever self-critical; they again
and again stop short in their progress; retrace their steps in order to
make a fresh start; are pitilessly scornful of the half-measures, the
weaknesses, the futility of their preliminary essays. It seems as if
they had overthrown their adversaries only in order that these might
draw renewed strength from contact with the earth and return to the
battle like giants refreshed. Again and again, they shrink back appalled
before the vague immensity of their own aims. But, at long last, a
situation is reached whence retreat is impossible, and where the
circumstances clamour in chorus:
Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Here is the
Rose; dance here!
§ Sufferings in Exile
¶Marx and his family had reached London in the end of June 1849. They had no money, no occupation, no source of help.
¶The funds derived from the sale of what was left of his property in
Treves were soon exhausted. The publication of the Neue Rheinische
Revue
had been a failure.
¶More than once Marx had considered the possibility of setting to work
in conjunction with Wilhelm Wolff to supply syndicated correspondence
for a few dozen American journals, correspondence in which he would
discuss the problems of European politics and economics. Now,
unexpectedly, there came a chance for journalistic activity. In 1848, at
Cologne, Freiligrath had introduced him to Dana, the managing editor of
the New York Tribune,
then visiting Europe. In 1851, when Dana
asked Freiligrath, one of the German refugees in London, to send him
reports on European politics, Freiligrath turned the offer over to
Marx.
¶Marx came to an understanding with Dana. Twice every week he was to
send an article dealing with European politics, and was to receive for
each article a fee of two pounds. This gave him an opportunity for which
he had long been eager. Now he could bring his opinions concerning
political matters before a large circle of readers, and make his
influence felt. Moreover, at a season of dire poverty, when he had found
the nocturnal tears and lamentations
of his wife almost
unendurable, the work would provide him with an income which would at
least keep the wolf from the door.
¶But in 1851, Marx was not yet at home in the English tongue, and he
therefore had to ask Engels for help. After some hesitation, Engels
agreed, sent one article after another, and in the end wrote the whole
series of articles which Karl Kautsky republished in 1896 under the
title Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, articles
signed by Marx. From the correspondence between Marx and Engels
published at a still later date by Franz Mehring, we learn that this
incomparable friend was Marx’s ready helper in all possible
difficulties. Not only was he in unceasing correspondence with Marx upon
political, literary, and personal topics; not only was he untiring in
the supply of pecuniary aid; but he also unselfishly devoted his
evenings, year after year, when the day’s work was over, to writing the
necessary articles for the New York Tribune.
¶After a while, Engels, following his natural bent, concentrated upon military topics, whereas Marx discussed English politics in their interconnexion with economic conditions. Thus, in his articles on the Crimean war, he disclosed the Anglo-Russian slavery which weighed so heavily on Europe, proved from acts of parliament and blue-books that there were secret diplomatic ties between the British and the Russian cabinets, stigmatized Lord Palmerston as the purchased tool of tsarist policy, adopted a definite attitude towards panslavism, towards the Indian Mutiny, towards the Eastern question, towards the Italian war, towards the North-American civil war, and so on.
¶Ryazanov has been at pains to make a careful examination of the files
of the New York Tribune
from 1852 to 1862, in order to discover
the articles contributed by Marx and Engels.
¶The result has been rather unsatisfactory, for most of the articles
were unsigned. The name of Marx does not appear in the newspaper after
1855; and many of the contributions were published as leading articles,
anonymously. As Ryazanov says, to begin with, Marx and Engels wrote
exclusively from a bourgeois-democratic outlook. Only by degrees did
they free themselves from this influence, and consistently present a
proletarian standpoint. They recognized that the great aim they had
set themselves, the freeing of the working class, was incompatible (for
the very reason that it necessitated the collaboration of various
nations)
with a foreign policy which pursues criminal aims, takes
advantage of national prejudices, sheds the blood and wastes the goods
of the people in piratical wars.
While thus pointing out the
necessary connexion between home policy and foreign policy, and while
proclaiming the class struggle of the proletariat against the
bourgeoisie to be the leading principle in all domains and all phases of
the historical evolution of bourgeois society, they urged the
proletariat never to lose sight of the machinations of secret diplomacy,
and to worm its way into the mysteries of international
politics.
¶Hence the collaboration on the staff of the Tribune
was for
Marx a valuable school of mental development. But as far as material
benefit was concerned, it was less lucrative than he had been led to
expect. Dana was close-fisted. He committed to the wastepaper basket
numberless articles for which he had no use, and for which he did not
pay the author a cent. The result was that the income fell far short of
anticipations. Despite the utmost industry, and despite the unfailing
help of Engels, who was continually supplying him with articles, Marx
was unable to make ends meet.
¶He and his were living in excruciating poverty. They were ever on the edge of an abyss. A letter penned by Frau Marx during this period gives a heartrending picture of their distresses.
¶“Dear Herr Weydemeyer: Nearly a year has passed since you and your
wife gave me so friendly a reception, since you made me so cordially at
home in your house, and in all that long time I have not given you any
sign of life. … Now circumstances force me to take up my pen. It is to
beg you that you will as soon as possible send us any money that has
come or is coming to hand from the Revue.
We are urgently, most
urgently, in need of it. Certainly no one can reproach us for having
made much fuss about what we have sacrificed and borne for years. The
public has been little if at all troubled with our private affairs. In
these matters my husband is extremely sensitive, and he would make any
sacrifices rather than practise the arts of democratic mendicancy, like
great public men. But he had certainly looked to his friends, especially
those in Cologne, for energetic support of his Revue.
Above all,
he had reason to expect such support from those who were acquainted with
his sacrifices on behalf of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Instead
of this, the affair has been brought to utter ruin by neglectful and
disorderly management, and it is hard to say whether the procrastination
of the bookseller or the manager and acquaintances in Cologne, or the
behaviour of the democracy in general, has been the most
disgraceful.
¶“My husband is almost overwhelmed here by the pettiest cares, which
press on him in so disturbing a way that all his energy, the quiet,
clear, tranquil self-consciousness of his nature, have been necessary to
maintain his equanimity in these daily, hourly struggles. You know, dear
Herr Weydemeyer, what sacrifices my husband made for the newspaper. He
paid thousands in cash, buying it (persuaded to this step by democratic
worthies) at a time when there was already very little prospect of a
successful consummation. For the sake of the newspaper’s political
honour, and to save the civic honour of his acquaintances in Cologne, he
took upon himself all the burdens … handed over his whole income; nay,
in the end he borrowed three hundred thalers to pay the rent of the new
offices, to provide arrears of fees for contributors, and so on–and then
he was driven out by force. You know that we had absolutely nothing left
for ourselves. I went to Frankfort to pawn my silver-plate, the last
thing we had; in Cologne I sold my furniture. When the unhappy epoch of
the counter-revolution began, my husband went to Paris; I followed him
thither with my three children. Hardly had we reached Paris than we were
driven out again; I and my children were forbidden to stay there. I
followed him once more across the sea. A month later, our fourth child
was born. You would need to know London, and the conditions there, to
understand what that meant: three children, and the birth of a fourth.
Simply for rent, we had to pay forty-two thalers a month. We were able
to manage for a time, out of the funds we had brought with us. But our
poor resources were exhausted when the Revue
was first published.
Agreements notwithstanding, money did not come to hand; or if it did, it
was in such small sums that we were in the most terrible situation.
¶“Let me describe only one day of this life, as it actually was, and you will see that perhaps few other refugees have had to suffer as much. Since wet-nurses are exceedingly expensive here, I made up my mind, despite terrible pains in the breasts and the back, to nurse the baby myself. But the poor little angel drank in so much sorrow with the milk that he was continually fretting, in violent pain day and night. Since he has been in the world, he has not slept a single night through, at most two or three hours. Of late, there have been violent spasms, so that the child is continually betwixt life and death. When thus afflicted, he sucked so vigorously that my nipple became sore, and bled; often the blood streamed into his little mouth. One day I was sitting like this when our landlady suddenly appeared. In the course of the winter we had paid her more than two hundred and fifty thalers, and then it had been agreed that in future we were not to pay her but her landlord, who had put in an execution. Now she repudiated this agreement, and demanded the five pounds which we still owed her. Since we could not pay this sum instantly, two brokers came into the house, and took possession of all my belongings–bedding, clothes, everything, even the baby’s cradle and the little girls’ toys, so that the children wept bitterly. They threatened to take everything away in two hours. If this had happened, I should have had to lie on the floor, with my freezing children beside me, and with my aching breast. Our friend Schramm hastened forthwith to seek help. He took a cab, the horse fell down, he jumped out, and was brought back into the house bleeding, the house where I was lamenting and my poor children were trembling.
¶“Next day we had to leave. It was cold and rainy. My husband tried to find a lodging, but as soon as he said we had four children no one would take us in. At length a friend helped us. We paid what was owing, and I quickly sold all my beds and bedding, in order to settle accounts with the chemist, the baker, the butcher, and the milkman, who had heard that the brokers had been put in, and had hastened to send in their bills. The beds and bedding that had been sold were loaded on to a handcart at the street door–and what do you think happened then? It was late in the evening, after sunset; the English law forbids this; the landlord arrived with policemen, saying that some of his goods might be on the cart. Within five minutes, there was a crowd of two or three hundred people in front of the door, the whole mob of Chelsea. The beds had to be brought in again, and could not be sent to the purchaser until after sunrise next morning. Now that the sale of all our possessions had enabled us to pay our debts to the last penny, I removed with my little darlings to our present address, two tiny rooms in the German Hotel, Leicester Street, Leicester Square, where they were good enough to take us in for five pounds ten a week.
¶You must not imagine that I am cast down by these petty troubles.
I know only too well that we are not the only ones engaged in such a
struggle. I know, too, that I am among the lucky ones, am specially
favoured, seeing that my dear husband, the prop of my life, is still at
my side. But what really crushes me, what makes my heart bleed, is that
my husband has to suffer so many paltry annoyances, that so few have
come to his help, and that he, who has willingly and joyfully helped so
many others, should here be left unaided. … The one thing which my
husband might certainly have expected of those who have had from him so
many thoughts, so much uplifting, so extensive a support, was that they
might have devoted more energy to his
Revue,
might have shown
more participation in it. This small thing, at least, they owed him. …
This hurts me. But my husband thinks otherwise. Never, not even in our
most terrible afflictions, has he lost hope of the future, has he ceased
to be cheerful; and he would be perfectly content if he could only see
me cheerful, and if our dear children could play happily round their
beloved mother. He does not know, dear Herr Weydemeyer, that I have
written to you at such length about our situation, so please keep these
lines to yourself.
¶The tragedy of this life in London as a refugee began in two small rooms which Marx rented in Dean Street, in June 1850. The living room, which had to serve the turn of seven persons, was at one and the same time kitchen, study, and reception room for the numerous visits paid to him. For real study, therefore, he had to depend on the British Museum Reading Room, where for many years, day after day, he worked from morning till night.
¶For Engels, it became a matter of course to give Marx financial aid.
Among the thousands of letters exchanged between London and Manchester,
there is hardly one in which we do not find a few words or a line or two
about money. Sometimes we read from Marx an outburst of despair or
wrath, in which he asks his friend for speedy help. Sometimes it is
Engels who, quietly and straightforwardly, pens the stereotyped phrase:
Enclosed a post office order for —- pounds.
Yet at this time
Engels was by no means well off. He had a moderate salary, and had
frequent disputes with his father and with the other members of the firm
because he wanted an increase. Besides this, there were various
troubles. At one time, the cashier was short of money; at another time,
the head clerk refused to sanction an advance; at another, Engels’
relatives were visiting him, and must not be allowed to know about the
sending of a remittance to Marx: My governor has been buzzing about
here for a week,
writes Engels to Marx. At length I am glad to
say he has departed, so that I can send you the enclosed post office
order for five pounds.
Again: My brother is leaving tomorrow, and
I shall have peace once more. I have not been alone for a moment during
his stay, and it was simply impossible for me to send you the banknote
before Saturday.
¶From time to time, there came from London exceptionally loud cries of
distress. Under date March 31, 1851, we read: You know that on March
23rd I had to pay £31.10s. to old Bamberger, and on the 16th, £10 to the
Jew Stiebel, all at the current rate of exchange. I had applied to my
mother-in-law through Jenny. The answer was that Edgar had been sent off
to Mexico with the rest of Jenny’s money, and I could not raise a
centime. With Pieper’s aid, I paid Stiebel his £10 on March 16th. All I
could do for old Bamberger, was to give him two bills of exchange. … My
mother has positively assured me that she will protest any bill drawn on
her. On April 21st, therefore, I have the worst possible to expect from
old Simon Bamberger, who will be furious. At the same time, my wife has
been confined. The confinement was an easy one, but she is now very ill
in bed, from sentimental rather than physical reasons. Meanwhile, I have
literally not a farthing in the house, though there are plenty of unpaid
bills from the small shopkeepers, the butcher, the baker, and so on. You
will agree that the dish is agreeably sauced, and that I am dipped up to
the ears in a petty-bourgeois pickle. To crown all, I am accused of
exploiting the workers, and of striving to establish a dictatorship!
Quelle horreur! But that is not all. The factory owner who in Brussels
sent me money on loan from Treves, wants it back again, because his iron
mines are in a bad way. Tant pis pour lui. I cannot pay him his
due.
¶It was Engels, always Engels, who provided advice and money, without
ever growing impatient, without a single refusal. In letter after
letter, the remittances streamed into Lon don, to be emptied there into
the sieve of the Danaides, to vanish into the bottomless pit of a
household that was not very well managed. As late as 1854, Engels was
still entertaining tacit hopes of devoting himself to authorship, and of
removing to London. But the conviction that if he did this he would no
longer be able to give Marx material help, determined him to keep his
neck under the yoke of the detested commerce.
¶In August 1851, the Marx household was once more at grips with
penury. You will realize,
wrote Marx to Weydemeyer, that my
situation is a gloomy one. It will bring my wife down to the grave if it
lasts much longer. The unceasing troubles, the paltry struggles of life,
are a perpetual friction. Then there is the infamous conduct of my
adversaries. … For my part, I should laugh at the scum; I should not let
them disturb me in my work for a moment. But you will understand that my
wife, who is ill, who has to endure the most dismal poverty from morning
till night, and who is nervously upset, gets none the better because,
day after day, idiotic chatterers bring her all the vapourings of the
democratic cesspools.
¶At Easter 1852, Marx’s little daughter, born into this
poverty-stricken environment, quitted an inhospitable world. Here is
what her mother writes about the matter: Our poor little Francisca
fell ill with severe bronchitis. For three days the poor child struggled
with death. She suffered so terribly. When it was over, her little body
rested in the small back room, and we all came into the front room. At
night, we lay down on the floor. The three other children were with us,
and we wept at the loss of the little angel. … The dear child’s death
happened at a time when we were in the direst need. Our German friends
were unable to help us. … Ernest Jones, who paid us a visit at this
time, and had promised to help, was unable to do anything. … In my
overwhelming need, I hastened to a French refugee who lived in the
neighbourhood, and had visited us not long before. At once, in the most
friendly way possible, he gave me two pounds. With this sum I was able
to buy the coffin in which my poor child now lies at peace. She had no
cradle when she came into the world, and for a long time it was
difficult to find a box for her last resting place.
¶The years from 1852 onwards were for Marx, politically considered,
almost idyllic years of peace,
for he had no further conflicts or
controversies with opponents, had withdrawn from political activity, and
had buried himself in scientific work. Pecuniarily, however, they were
no better than their predecessors. Consider two passages from the
letters of 1853. Dear Engels: I have not written to you for a long
time, not even to acknowledge the receipt of the five pounds, for my
time and my energies were fully engaged in an indescribable stew. On
July 7th I had given a bill of exchange to Spielmann. On August 31st the
fellow, after I had been to see him seven times, declared that the bill
had been lost, and so on. Thus I had been dragging along for weeks, had
pawned the last thing pawnable, and had put all my creditors off until
September 3rd, having fended them away since July. Since I have no
resources beyond the income from the ’Tribune
you will understand my
situation.” Again, under date October 8th: For ten days we have been
without a son in the house. I have proof, now, that Spielmann has
cheated me. … I must draw another twenty-four pounds.
¶Sickness, like poverty, was an unceasing guest. The dwelling was
unwholesome, airless, and sunless. Marx was kept in bed for weeks by a
disorder of the liver; a family trouble, he believed. Not long
afterwards, he wrote to Engels: My wife is very ill, cough and loss
of weight.
Another time: My wife is ill, so is little Jenny, and
Lenchen has a sort of nervous fever. I cannot send for the doctor,
having no money. For the last eight or ten days I have fed the family
upon bread and potatoes, but I doubt if I can raise any for today. Of
course this diet was not calculated to improve matters in the present
climatic conditions.
¶There was great anxiety about the third child, the only son, at once his pride and his hope. Little Edgar (named after Marx’s brother-in-law) was remarkably talented, and took after his father in his love for learning, for books. But from earliest childhood he was sickly, lacking in vital energy, the sort of plant that might be expected to grow where light and nutriment were so inadequate. In 1855 came a new child of sorrow, little Eleanor, the sixth in the series. Known by the pet name of Tussy, she was at birth so immature, so weakly, that she was very difficult to rear. Fed exclusively on milk until she was five years old, and mainly on the same diet until she was ten, she grew plump and healthy, and was the darling of all.
¶A few months after Eleanor’s birth, Marx had to endure the greatest
affliction of his life. At the age of nine, Edgar, his dear
Musch,
died in his arms after several weeks’ illness. A few days
later, Marx wrote to Engels: The house is desolate and orphaned since
the death of the dear child, who was its living soul. I cannot attempt
to describe how we all miss him. I have been through a peck of troubles,
but now for the first time I know what real unhappiness is. As luck
would have it, since the funeral I have been suffering from such intense
headaches that I can no longer think or see or hear. Amid all the
miseries of these days, the thought of you and your friendship has kept
me going, and the hope that you and I will still find it possible to do
something worth doing in the world.
¶A year afterwards, Baroness von Westphalen died in Treves. Frau Marx
had gone with her children to sit by the mother’s deathbed. When all was
over, there was a small heritage for Frau Marx, amounting to a few
hundred thalers. Marx thereupon decided to seek a new dwelling. In the
beginning of 1857, the family settled into a roomier and healthier
habitation, 9 Grafton Terrace. This was a relief to them all, and Frau
Marx was happy. We have a really princely home, compared with the
hovels we have lived in up to now,
she wrote to a friend.
Although the whole furnishings did not cost much more than forty
pounds (second-hand rubbish played a great part in them), our new
parlour, to begin with, looked splendid to me. … Its splendours did not
last very long, for soon one article after another found its way to the
pawnshop. Still, we have been able to enjoy our bourgeois
comfort.
¶In this house another child was born to Marx, but did not survive. The circumstances were so dreadful, and made so terrible an impression on the father, that for several days afterwards he was almost beside himself. In letters to Engels he refers to the matter again and again. He says that the retrospect is so painful that he cannot write any details.
¶All who came into close contact with Marx were agreed in what they
had to say about the tenderness and affection he showed where children
were concerned. What could be more characteristic than this as regards
the delicate mysteries of his inner life. A violent, quarrelsome,
contentious man, a dictator and a swashbuckler, one at feud with all the
world and continually alarmed lest he should be unable to assert his
superiority–none the less, in the depths of his soul, he had vast
treasures of gentleness, kindliness, and capacity for self-sacrifice.
But because in the unconscious he was filled with anxiety lest his
gentleness and kindliness might prove disadvantageous to him, he kept
them under close guard, and was ashamed to display to grown-ups the
beauties which he regarded as weaknesses, and would only disclose them
in a region where there was no struggle with adult rivals, far from the
gladiatorial combats for mastery and self-assertion in the arena we call
life. With children, he could play like a child. In their company he
threw aside authoritarianism as burdensome armour; was never mortified,
never fretful, never concerned to maintain his prestige. Children called
him, as his intimate friends called him, Mohr
; and in the
neighbourhood where he lived he was generally known as Daddy
Marx,
the man who always had a packet of sweets in his pocket.
¶There was one person besides Engels who did much to mitigate the
unspeakable miseries of the early years of the Marx family in exile.
This was the familiar spirit of the household, the faithful Helene
(Lenchen) Demuth. An embodiment of unselfishness, a counterpart to
Pestalozzi’s Babeli, she had entered the house of the Baroness von
Westphalen at the age of eight or nine years. When Jenny married Marx,
her mother sent Lenchen away with her daughter as the best thing I
can send you.
Lenchen went with the Marxes to Paris, Brussels,
Cologne, and London; saw the children born and die; experienced poverty,
hunger, and sorrow with the family; cared indefatigably for the
children, for the friends of the house, for innumerable poverty-stricken
refugees; served bread at table when everything had been pawned; nursed
the sick, sewed and mended far on into the night; was the indispensable
buttress of the household, the guardian angel of the family, a
perennially flowing source of help. Wilhelm Liebknecht says of her:
All the same, she exercised a sort of dictatorship. To this
dictatorship Marx yielded like a lamb. It has been said that no one is a
hero to his valet. Certainly Marx was not a hero to Lenchen. She would
have sacrificed herself on his behalf; if necessary, she would have
given her life a hundred times over for him and Frau Marx and any one of
the children (and she did indeed give her life for them), but Marx was
not an imposing figure for her. She knew him with all his whimsies and
weaknesses, and she twisted him round her finger. No matter how
irritable he might be, no matter how he might storm and rage so that
every one else kept away from him in terror, Lenchen would go into the
lion’s den; and if he roared at her, she would give him such a rating
that the lion became as tame as a lamb.
It was fitting that this
devoted friend, who was united with the Marx family by a thousand
spiritual bonds, should in due course, as both Frau Marx and Karl Marx
had wished, find her resting place in the family tomb.
§ Associates and Friends
¶Repelled by the unsavouriness of party struggles, and full of bitterness towards an environing world which he felt to be hostile, Marx had withdrawn into the solitude of scientific research.
¶But the life he tried to escape followed him into his study, sat
beside him at his desk in the British Museum Reading Room, stood at his
shoulder when he was writing, and found issue through his pen. It
appeared in the vesture of the poverty which compelled him to write
articles for the New York Tribune
upon the events of the day and
upon political problems. It disclosed itself in the form of the friends
and companions-in-arms who sought him out in London, asked his advice,
appealed to his political interest. It displayed itself in the form of
happenings on the political fighting front, happenings which constrained
him to adopt a position, to pass judgments, to take measures.
¶Thus it came to pass that living practice could not be kept away by theoretical reflection. Nevertheless, the transition from a contemplative and critical reserve to active participation and positive collaboration was effected by slow degrees. Fundamentally, Marx was an unsocial being, and was happiest in solitude.
¶Despite this temperament, he entered into relations with men who at that time were playing an important part in the political life of England. Among these may be mentioned, David Urquhart, George Julian Harney, and Ernest Jones.
¶Urquhart was a British diplomatist, a turcophile who had made it his
business in life to counteract Russian plans for world dominion,
particularly in the East. According to Urquhart, Lord Palmerston, the
leading figure in the British foreign policy of that day, had been
bought by Russia. Urquhart hated Palmerston with a deadly hatred; and
the English liberals, to whom Palmerston was the arch-enemy, were glad
to avail themselves of all the materials and arguments that Urquhart
could bring forward. Marx, who was likewise opposed to Palmerston and
the latter’s russophile policy (not as a turcophile, but as a
revolutionist), had an interview with Urquhart which led to permanent
relations; and he wrote articles for Urquhart’s newspaper the Free
Press
(in 1866 renamed the Diplomatic Review
), though without
getting into dose touch with the man. For Urquhart, whom Marx described
as a complete monomaniac,
was an opponent of the Chartist
movement, whereas Marx was intimate with those who formed the left wing
of Chartism. Nevertheless, in the eight articles upon Lord Palmerston
contributed to the People’s Paper
in 1853, articles in which Marx
threw a glaring light on the underground trends of Anglo-Russo-Turkish
policy in the Balkans, he made use of all the information which Urquhart
had gathered together in diplomatic activities and in the study of the
relevant documents. This is a fitting occasion,
wrote Marx in the
sixth of these articles, to give his due to Mr. David Urquhart, the
indefatigable antagonist for twenty years of Lord Palmerston who has
proved his only adversary–not one to be intimidated into silence, bribed
into connivance, charmed into suitorship–while, what with cajoleries,
what with seductions, Alcina Palmerston contrived to change all other
foes into fools.
¶With Harney and Jones, Marx had closer ties than with Urquhart. These
two men were leaders in the Chartist camp, were men of culture,
thoroughly trustworthy, and widely popular. Harney was a journalist of
proletarian origin, whilst Jones was a lawyer connected by blood with
the aristocracy he despised. Both of them had the greatest respect for
Marx’s revolutionary personality, for his outstanding intelligence, and
for his unerring consistency. Harney had done good service by
publishing, in his newspaper the Red Republican,
a translation of
the Communist Manifesto and of some of the Rheinische
Revue
articles. Jones often rendered the Marx family much-needed
help in its material difficulties. But in the quarrels among the
refugees, neither Harney nor Jones took Marx’s side without
qualification, which was what Marx demanded. Of Harney, Marx said that
he had chosen for a following some of his (Marx’s) personal enemies; and
of Jones that despite his energy, tenacity, and activity, he spoiled
everything by charlatanry, a tactless grasping at pretexts for
agitation, and a restless desire to outrun time.
Since both of them
made concessions to the opposing party, and showed a reserved or
hesitating attitude in some of the disputes, Marx gave them a liberal
taste of the gall with which, in his ebullitions of impetuosity, he was
so apt to ruin the possibilities of intimate friendship and fruitful
comradeship.
¶Even in his relations with young Wilhelm Liebknecht, who was a daily guest in the house and a playfellow of the children, there was a period of tension and irritability, with the result that for a long time Liebknecht, most reluctantly, kept aloof. In this case the offence was that Liebknecht had not broken away from the Workers’ Educational Society, but had earnestly endeavoured to mediate between the two hostile camps. His attempts failed, and it soon became plain to him that he was falling between two stools. Then, one day, he happened upon the Marx children in the street. Delighted at meeting their favourite playmate, they would give him no rest until he went home with them. They smuggled him into the house, but could not restrain their rejoicings. When Marx heard the clamour they were making, and found Liebknecht, he stretched out his hand with a cordial laugh. No further word was said about their differences.
¶In 1856, when the tailor Lessner, who had been one of those sentenced
in the Cologne communist trial, came to London after spending four and a
half years in prison, he found the Workers’ Educational Society in a
very poor way, but was ready to give Liebknecht active assistance in its
reorganization. The Kinkel clique, which had been in control, was driven
out; a working programme was drawn up; and even Marx was induced to take
part in the educational activities. During the winter of 1856-1857, the
society was as flourishing as ever; many of the old members rejoined;
and the tactics of the ultra-radical hotspurs were abandoned. Once more
the society had become a centre of serious and fruitful work. Marx
delivered a course of lectures on political economy, thus resuming his
role of 1850-1851. He expounded his subject, as Liebknecht tells us, in
the most methodical way. He would formulate a proposition, as pithily as
possible, and would then proceed to elaborate it, carefully avoiding any
words or phrases which his working-class hearers might have found it
difficult to understand. Then he would ask for questions. If there
were no questions, he would subject the audience to an examination, and
would do it with so much skill that no gaps and no misunderstandings
could be overlooked.
Marx was not an orator; he lacked the faculty
of speaking easily before a considerable audience. Moreover, his speech
was rather thick, and he spoke with a broad Rhenish accent. When, as was
inevitable from time to time, he had to deliver a set speech, he would
display passionate excitement, which was an over-compensation for his
dread of failure. Throughout life, in all important situations, this
titan, who had made it his task to turn the world upside down, was
overwhelmed with a sense of inadequacy. The weaker he felt, the more was
he inclined to bluster.
¶The list of friends and companions with whom Marx had close
association in the fifties is concluded when the names of Ferdinand
Freiligrath and Wilhelm Wolff have been mentioned. When Freiligrath came
to London and was courted by refugees representing various trends and
belonging to various camps and faction, he categorically declared that
he proposed to associate only with Marx, and Marx’s most intimate
friends.
He was manager of the London agency of the Genevese Banque
Générale Suisse, and had a good income, being thus able to say of
himself that he was lucky enough to eat the beefsteaks of exile.
He was liberal in furnishing aid to less fortunate political refugees,
and the, Marxes found in him a valuable supporter. Wilhelm Wolff, a
close friend of Marx since the days of the Rheinische Zeitung,
was the latter’s nearest intimate with the exception of Engels. He was
the son of a Silesian hotel-keeper, and had inherited a small property
from his father. He lived upon this in England as best he could,
supplementing it by occasional paid occupation.
¶When he died in 1864 of a stroke, after a long illness, Marx became his heir.
§ Herr Vogt
¶For Marx the fifties, the first decade he spent on English soil, ended as they had begun, with a feud. The witch’s cauldron of the refugees was boiling over once more, and was sending forth the vapours of a pestiferous brew which poisoned the political life of Europe.
¶In 1859 Marx became involved in a controversy which was extremely trying to his nerves. It concerned the Vogt affair, which originated as follows.
¶For several decades the Italian bourgeoisie had been carrying on a struggle on behalf of national independence and unity. By its unaided powers, it could not hope within any reasonable time to bring this struggle to a victorious issue. Ultimately, the liberal and democratic bourgeois had harnessed the kingdom of Sardinia to their coach as trace-horse, but this had not sufficed to pull them up the hill. Then Sardinia, which now formed the nucleus of the national consolidation, prompted by Cavour, turned to Napoleon III for armed assistance. In the treaty of Plombières, it was agreed that Sardinia and France should make common cause in a war on Austria, and that Nice and Savoy should be ceded to France in return for this help. The unification and independence of Italy were to be achieved, not by revolution, but by war.
¶This diplomatic and militarist move, which excluded revolutionary action on the part of the people, encountered widespread opposition in Italy and elsewhere. Mazzini, who as a refugee in London was the father of all the conspiratorial secret societies, declared the treaty to be a dynastic intrigue, which would sacrifice the interests of Italy to the imperialist lusts of Napoleon. In actual fact, Napoleon III was less concerned about the liberation of Italy from Austria than about the expansion of the French sphere of influence. The war was designed, not so much to drive Austria out of Italy, as to keep Austria away from the Balkans, where Russia wished to carry out her imperialist plans undisturbed. Thus, for those who, as revolutionists, were opposed to the policy of Russia and of France, but could not favour the maintenance of Austrian dominion in Italy–and for those who were simultaneously concerned about Italian interests and German interests–it was extremely difficult to choose a political line.
¶Some regarded the Italian war as only a pretext behind which French Bonapartism and Russian tsarism were joining hands against Germany, which would be impotent without Austria’s help. A victory of France in Italy, they said, would mean for Germany the loss of the left bank of the Rhine, as the outcome of a Franco-German war which would immediately follow. They therefore advocated common action on the part of Prussia and Austria, to attack Napoleon. Any one who wished to defend the Rhine must stand beside Austria for the defence of the Po. Other onlookers were filled with enthusiasm on behalf of the liberal and nationalist aspirations of the Italians, who must be supported whatever happened. They declared that Prussian action in favour of Austria would result in strengthening the counter-revolution, and would be a crime directed against historical evolution. In petty-bourgeois circles, however, Napoleon had supporters and defenders, who urgently desired his success should Prussia join forces with Austria. In Napoleon’s own view, nothing could be more dangerous to his schemes than active intervention of Prussia on the side of Austria, and consequently, through his press agents, he carried on a vigorous propaganda in favour of Prussian neutrality.
¶In German nationalist circles yet another view prevailed, and found
considerable support. Those of this way of thinking were anti-Austrian
on the ground that if Austria were weakened or defeated, Prussia would
be strengthened. Thus the unification of Germany under Prussian hegemony
would be brought nearer to realization. Lassalle espoused this view, and
advocated it vigorously in his pamphlet Der italienische Krieg und
die Aufgabe Preussens [The Italian War and Prussia’s Tasks]. The
German nation, he said, was as keenly interested in the overthrow of
Austrian despotism as in the success of the Italian movement for
unification, seeing that Austria was the focus of reaction. Should
Napoleon make war on Prussia, the whole nation would rise like one man.
Now, however, the favourable moment had come for Prussia, not only to be
neutral towards Austria, but also to do in the north what Napoleon was
doing in the south. If Napoleon alters the map of Europe in the south
in accordance with the principle of nationalities, let us do the same
thing in the north. If Napoleon frees Italy, let us take
Schleswig-Holstein.
¶Much the same view was advocated by the Swiss professor Karl Vogt. In
a letter to Engels, Marx sketched Vogt’s political programme in the
following words: Germany gives up her possessions outside the German
frontier. She does not support Austria. The French despotism is
transitory, the Austrian is permanent. Allow both the despots to let
blood (a certain predilection for Bonaparte is manifest). Germany, armed
neutrality. Of a revolutionary movement in Germany there cannot be, as
Vogt has learned
from trustworthy sources,
any thought during our
lifetime. Consequently, as soon as Austria has been ruined by Bonaparte,
they will spontaneously begin an all-German moderate national-liberal
development in the fatherland, and Vogt will perhaps become Prussian
court-fool to boot.
¶Marx adopted a very different standpoint from Lassalle and Vogt.
Being passionately opposed both to Bonaparte and to tsarism, he
considered the war to be the issue of a Franco-Russian alliance. In an
article in the People’s Press,
Jones’ newspaper, he let himself
go against both Lassalle and Vogt. In a letter to Engels, he wrote:
Lassalle’s pamphlet is an enormous blunder. … As regards the
governments,
obviously, from all standpoints, were it only in the
interests of the existence of Germany, we must demand of them that they
should not remain neutral, but, as you rightly say, should be patriotic.
Yet a revolutionary point can be given to the affair simply enough, by
throwing even more emphasis on the opposition to Russia than on
that to Boustrapa [Napoleon III]. This is what Lassalle ought to have
done, as contrasted with the anti-French clamour of the Neue
Preussische Zeitung.
This, too, is the point where, in practice
during the continuance of the war, the German governments will act
treasonably, and where we can seize them by the collar.
¶Meanwhile, Engels had incorporated his own and Marx’s views in a booklet entitled Po und Rhein, which, through Lassalle’s instrumentality, was published in April 1859 by Franz Duncker of Berlin.
¶At about this date, Marx was privately informed by Karl Blind, the
Badenese refugee, that Vogt was in Napoleon’s pay, had received large
sums of money, had attempted to bribe a journalist, and so on. In
conversation, Marx made no secret of the matter; and at length it found
its way into the German newspaper Das Volk,
published in
London, to which Marx was an occasional contributor.
¶Vogt answered with a flood of invectives, and started in the German
press a furious campaign against the band of ruffians,
and its
ringleader, Karl Marx.
¶As chance would have it, in a Manchester printing house, shortly
afterwards, Liebknecht came across a leaflet written by Blind,
containing the latter’s revelations about Vogt. Liebknecht sent a proof
of the leaflet to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung,
of which he
was correspondent. The substance of the leaflet was published in that
journal and attracted widespread attention. Vogt swore by all the gods
that he was the victim of a disgraceful calumny, and brought a libel
action against the newspaper.
¶The upshot was very unsatisfactory. Blind, when called as a witness,
wilted. No other proof of the accusation was forthcoming. In the end,
the charge was dismissed on technical, not factual grounds. Although
Vogt had not won his case legally, he had secured a moral victory, of
which he made the most before the public. As a further complication,
Blind now wrote to the papers declaring Liebknecht’s story about the
leaflet to be a malicious invention.
Vogt published the shorthand
report of the proceedings at the trial, a report which told very much in
his favour. The general impression produced was that Marx and his
friends had circulated a base calumny. Thereupon Marx lost patience.
Returning to the charge, he attacked Vogt with all the weapons at his
command. He sought out witnesses; made careful investigations, explored
old correspondence; sharked up materials from every quarter of the
world; picked Vogt’s articles to pieces, and showed that they were made
up of catchwords and commonplaces lifted from Bonapartist pamphlets;
opened all the sluices of his wit, his scorn, his pitiless satire, in
order to make Vogt appear ludicrous and contemptible. In the course of a
year, he compiled a volume of two hundred pages, entitled Herr
Vogt. It was published in London, but had so small a circulation
that it was without any notable influence on public opinion. The book
was killed by the silence of the press. Only the few who had a special
interest in the matter read it. Others were repelled by its bulk, its
overweighting with detail, and its prolixity. Vogt had triumphed. The
artillery directed against him had missed fire. His shield was
untarnished.
¶But eleven years later, during the Commune of Paris, the archives of the Napoleonic government were rifled in the Tuileries. There was found, signed by Vogt, a receipt for 40,000 francs, paid over to this man of honour in August 1859, out of the Bonapartist secret-service fund.
¶Not a word about this revelation found its way into the ordinary press.
¶Nevertheless, Marx had been justified.
§ Condemned to Permanent Expatriation
¶In the year 1861, Prince William of Prussia came to the throne, and an amnesty was declared.
¶It was an extremely ungracious amnesty, half-hearted, reluctant,
petty; the scurviest which has been granted since 1849 in any country
(Austria not excepted),
as Marx wrote bitterly to Engels. The
refugees of 1848-1849 were graciously permitted to return, but not
unconditionally. They had to make an official
application for the
king’s clemency, whereupon His Majesty would be guided by a report
from Our Military justice department.
¶In this matter, Marx came worse off than most of the German refugees.
It was not merely that the conditional amnesty was no good to him, since
he was unwilling to demean himself by suing King William’s favour.
Furthermore, he was no longer a Prussian subject, and had only a refusal
to expect should he apply for reinstatement. As an actual fact, when
Lassalle made zealous efforts to secure naturalization papers for Marx,
his applications were refused on the ground that Marx was of
republican, or at least non-royalist sentiment.
¶Since Marx was unable to recover his status as a Prussian subject, he was, in effect, condemned to permanent expatriation. For him, however, expatriation implied the lack of a means of livelihood, economic insecurity, incessant poverty.
¶At the time when the amnesty was declared, his financial
embarrassments had again become extreme, notwithstanding the unceasing
help of Engels and the frequent contributions to his expenses made by
Lassalle. The editor of the New York Tribune
had cut down the
space allotted to him, and had for several weeks stopped publishing his
contributions at all. Urgent debts were accumulating. I do not know
how on earth I shall get on,
he wrote to Engels. Taxes, school
expenses, rent, the grocer, the butcher, and God and the Devil alone
know what others, will wait no longer.
Besides, Marx was ailing, his
chronic liver trouble having lighted up again. Frau Marx had just
recovered from an attack of smallpox, and this had cost a lot of money.
The children had been taken care of by Liebknecht, while Marx and
Lenchen ran the house alone. Once more everything possible had been
pawned, and they were in dire need.
¶Then Marx made up his mind to go to Holland, and to ask an uncle who
lived there for help that would save his family from utter ruin. Engels
encouraged him to this undertaking, so with borrowed funds and a false
passport he made his raid into the land of my maternal forefathers,
tobacco, and cheese.
¶This time, fortune smiled. His uncle Philips in Rotterdam forked out
£160, which would have enabled Marx to pay most of his debts. But, now
that he had money in his pocket, he had no fancy for returning home
immediately. Instead, he went to visit his mother at Treves, and she,
since there was no talk of ready cash,
was complaisant enough to
tear up his earlier notes of hand. From Treves he made his way to
Berlin, where he stayed as Lassalle’s guest. He got in touch with
various friends, clinked glasses with Köppen, had himself photographed,
made arrangements for contributing to a Viennese newspaper, attended (in
the press gallery) a sitting of the Lower House, which seemed to him
an extraordinary mixture of office and schoolroom,
and talked
over with Lassalle the plans for founding a great newspaper. His general
impression of Berlin, where an impudent and frivolous tone
prevailed,
was unfavourable. On the way home, he caroused with old
acquaintances, both in Elberfeld and in Cologne, and finally got back to
London after two months’ absence.
¶Ere long he was on the rocks again. Within a month of his return he
wrote to Engels saying that the money he had brought back with him was
already finished. Since applications to his mother produced only
affectionate phrases, but no cash,
Engels had to come to his help
once more. From a visit to Manchester, Marx brought back some money with
him. There followed the usual remittances by letter. But in November he
was in trouble once more: With the last money you sent me I paid the
school fees, so that I might not have to pay two terms’ fees in January.
The butcher and the grocer have forced me to give them notes of hand.
Although I do not know how I shall pay these notes when they fall due, I
could not refuse without bringing the house down about my ears. I am in
debt to the landlord, also to the greengrocer, the baker, the newspaper
man, the milkman, and the whole mob I had appeased with instalments when
I came back from Manchester; also to the tailor, having had to get the
necessary winter clothing on tick. All I can expect to receive at the
end of the month will be £30 at most, for these infernal devils of the
press are only printing part of my articles. … What I have to pay
(including interest to pawnbrokers) amounts to about £100. It is
extraordinary how, when one has no regular income, and when there is a
perpetual burden of unpaid debts, the old poverty persistently recurs,
despite continual dribbles of help.
¶The dribbles of help
that came in from Engels amounted to a
very large sum in the course of the year. But Engels was only a salaried
employee, kept on short commons by his father, and with no share in the
profits of the factory. Writing to Marx in February 1862, he said:
This year I have spent more than my income. We are seriously affected
by the crisis, have no orders, and shall have to begin working half time
next week. I shall have to pay the £50 to Dronke in a month, and during
the next few weeks a year’s rent for my house falls due. This morning,
Sarah (be damned to her) stole the money out of my coat pocket. … I am
now living almost entirely at Mary’s, to keep down expenses as much as
possible; unfortunately, I cannot get on without a house of my own, or
otherwise I should remove to her place altogether.
The more Engels
denied himself, and the more he sent to his friend, the more hopeless
became the condition of the Marx household, whose shiftlessness seemed
irreparable.
¶It is sickening to have to write to you in this way once more,
said Marx apologetically in a letter under date June 18, 1862. Yet
what can I do but pour my miseries into your ears again? My wife says to
me every day that she wishes she were with the children in the grave,
and I really cannot take it amiss of her, for the humiliations,
torments, and horrors of our situation are indescribable. As you know,
the fifty pounds went to the payment of debts, but did not suffice to
settle half of them. Two pounds for gas. The pitiful sum from Vienna
will not come in before the end of July, and will be damned little, for
the dogs are not printing as much as even one article a week now. Then I
have had to meet fresh expenses since the beginning of May. I will say
nothing about the really desperate situation in London, to be without a
centime for seven weeks, since this sort of thing is chronic. Still, you
will know from your own experience that there are always current
expenses which have to be paid in cash. As far as that was concerned, we
got on for a time by pawning again the things we had taken out of pawn
in the end of April. For some weeks, however, that source has been so
utterly exhausted that last week my wife made a vain attempt to dispose
of some of my books. I am all the more sorry for the poor children
seeing that we are so short in this season of exhibitions, when their
acquaintances are amusing themselves, and when their one terror is that
any one should visit them and see the nakedness of our poverty.
In
another letter he writes: With Jenny it has gone so far that she
feels all the pressure and filthiness of our circumstances, and this, I
believe, is one of the main causes of her bodily troubles (Apropos!
Allen ordered wine for her yesterday, and I should be awfully glad if
you could send a few bottles.) Without telling us, she went to
Mrs. Young, to see if she could get an engagement at the
theatre.
¶In July 1862, Lassalle spent several weeks in London. Marx, wishing
to return his hospitality, had invited him to stay in the house. To
be able to keep up appearances before him,
wrote Marx to Engels,
my wife had had to pawn practically every thing that was not nailed
down.
Lassalle made the best of things, but was, in the end,
profoundly moved when he became aware of the abysses that had been
laboriously and exiguously hidden out of sight. He realized from my
dejected aspect that the crisis which he had long known to be impending
was about to culminate in a catastrophe. He questioned me. When I told
him how things were, he said he could lend me fifteen pounds up to
January 1, 1863; and that I could draw upon him to any amount.
Marx
wished to avail himself of this offer forthwith, and tried to secure
four hundred thalers, but Lassalle wanted Engels’ guarantee, and Engels,
through Freiligrath’s instrumentality, had the amount covered in Berlin.
A few days later came another urgent appeal to Engels: Eccarius has
lost three children one after another from scarlet fever. They are in
terrible straits. Beat up a trifle amongst our friends, and send it to
him.
Six days later: Since you have just sent money to Eccarius,
as well as paying the large sum for the Lassalle bill of exchange, you
must be
And
so on, letter after letter, week after week.stony
yourself. Still, I have to beg you to send me a
trifle by Monday, for I have to buy coal, and also food. The grocer has
refused me credit for three weeks past, and until I have paid the pig
off I must buy of him for cash, if I do not want him to sue me.
¶Thus Engels was incessantly dipping his hand into his pocket.
Sometimes, when he took stock of his payments, he realized that they
were far greater than he could afford, and that he was living beyond his
means; but he never refused help. When his father died, and his position
in the firm had consequently improved, so that he had a larger income,
he was able to hand over more considerable sums without pinching himself
unduly. Nevertheless, since Marx’s claims on his generosity continually
increased, there was a strain on both sides. In the end, just as towards
the close of 1862 there had been a breach between Marx and Lassalle
for financial reasons,
so, early in 1863, there was grave risk of
a sudden end to the friendship between Engels and Marx. The trouble came
from Marx’s side.
¶In the beginning of January 1863, occurred the death of Engels’
friend Mary Burns, an Irish working-class girl with whom he had been
living in a free union. Her loss was a bitter grief to him, and on
January 7th he wrote to Marx: Dear Mohr: Mary is dead. Yesterday
evening she went to bed early. When Lizzy went up to bed towards
midnight, she was dead already. Quite suddenly. Heart disease, or a
stroke. I did not hear of it till this morning; on Monday evening she
was perfectly well. I simply cannot tell you how I feel about it. The
poor girl loved me with all her heart.
¶To this letter so moving in its simplicity, to this letter in which
his friend’s tears could be read between the lines, Marx wrote the
following almost incredible answer: Dear Engels: The news of Mary’s
death has both astonished and dismayed me. She was extremely
good-natured, witty, and much attached to you. The devil knows that
there is nothing but trouble now in our circles. I myself can no longer
tell whether I am on my head or my heels. My attempts to raise some
money in France and Germany have failed, and it is only to be expected
that £15 would not hold off the avalanche more than a week or two. Apart
from the fact that no one will give us credit any more, except the
butcher and the baker (and they only to the end of this week), I am
harried for school expenses, for rent, and by the whole pack. The few of
them to whom I have paid a little on account, have pouched it in a
twinkling, to fall upon me with redoubled violence. Furthermore, the
children have no clothes or shoes in which to go out. In a word, there
is hell to pay. … We shall hardly be able to keep going for another
fortnight. It is abominably selfish of me to retail all these horrors to
you at such a moment. But the remedy is homoeopathic. One evil will help
to cancel the other.
¶Although Engels was familiar with Marx’s cynicism, and with his
friend’s inclination to make a parade of coldness, he was thunderstruck
by this letter. He had not expected an outburst of sentiment, but he had
not been prepared for an answer couched in such terms. It was five days
before he replied, writing: You will find it natural enough that on
this occasion my own trouble and your frosty attitude towards it have
made it impossible for me to write to you sooner. All my friends,
including acquaintances among the philistines, have on this occasion,
which indeed touches me shrewdly, shown more sympathy and friendship
than I could have anticipated. To you it seemed a suitable moment for
the display of the superiority of your frigid way of thinking. So be
it!
¶This call to order, so delicate, so magnanimous, brought Marx to his
senses. The crust of ice in which his heart was wrapped, speedily
melted, and within a few days he answered ruefully: It was very wrong
of me to write you that letter, and I repented it as soon as it was
posted. My wife and children will confirm me when I say that on receipt
of your letter I was as deeply moved as by the death of one of my own
nearest and dearest. But when I wrote to you in the evening, I had been
driven desperate by the state of affairs at home. The brokers were in; I
had a summons from the butcher; we had neither fire nor food; and little
Jenny was ill in bed. In such circumstances, I can, generally speaking,
only help myself out by cynicism.
¶Engels knew his friend so well that he could not but be aware of the
weakness, the desperate anxiety, that were masked by this cynicism.
Though he was still profoundly shaken by the loss of his companion, he
thanked Marx for replying so frankly, and went on to say: I felt that
when I buried her, I buried with her the last fragment of my youth. Your
letter came before the funeral. I must tell you that I could not get the
letter out of my head for a whole week, could not forget it. Never mind,
your last letter has made up for it, and I am glad that in losing Mary I
have not at the same time lost my oldest and best friend.
¶As if nothing had happened, Engels promptly turned to consider what
he could do to straighten out the hopelessly disordered finances of the
Marx household. After casting this way and that for means of raising
money, he ventured upon the bold coup
of borrowing a hundred
pounds on account of the firm, without consulting his partners. Speedy
aid was essential. Marx had announced that he contemplated the desperate
step of going through the bankruptcy court, breaking up his home,
getting the children placed elsewhere, dismissing Lenchen Demuth, and
going with his wife into cheap lodgings. I cannot bear to look on
while you carry out your plan,
wrote Engels. Still, you will
understand that after my exceptional efforts I am absolutely cleaned
out, and that therefore you will not be able to count on anything from
me before June 30th.
¶In the Marx family, after all the agitations, conflicts, and conjugal
disputes, there now prevailed the greatest possible delight at the happy
turn of events. But only two months later, Dronke had to help them out
with £50, to which, with Engels’ assistance, he added an additional £200
in July. At odd times in between, Engels continued to send small
remittances. When, in December 1863, old Frau Marx died in Treves,
Engels had to supply a further £10 in order that Marx, who had just been
very ill with boils and was still in extremely poor health, could go to
the funeral. No man ever had a better friend than Marx had in Engels.
Never a reproach, never a refusal, never an evasion. To the last of
these letters, clamouring for money and draining his purse to the dregs,
he answered, referring to Marx’s handwriting (which no one could read so
well as he): I was damned glad to see your crabbed old fist once
more.
§ Lassalle
¶Whereas for the bourgeoisie, the fifties, the years of the
counter-revolution, were a period characterized by a tremendous economic
impetus, for the proletariat they were a period of limitless
exploitation, which the workers were powerless to resist. Towards the
end of the decade, however, from 1857 onwards, there came a crisis which
arrested the victorious advance of the capitalist economy. Marx had
staked all his revolutionary hopes on the prospect of this crisis, and
he was bubbling over with cheerful anticipation when the wave of
bankruptcies, failures, arrest of production, and difficulty in making
ends meet, spread across the Atlantic from America to England, and
ultimately overwhelmed the continent of Europe. Although the crisis
in America has a very unpleasant effect on our own purse,
wrote Frau
Marx to Comrade Schramm in Jersey, you can imagine how delighted Mohr
is. His old capacity for work has come back, with the old freshness and
cheerfulness which have been in abeyance for years. … In the daytime,
Karl works for daily bread, and at night to finish his
Ökonomie. Now, when this book is so greatly needed, one may
hope that it will find a publisher.
¶As things turned out, the crisis had not the result anticipated by
Marx. It did not restore the revolutionary enthusiasm of the workers.
The proletariat had been too much disheartened by the counter-revolution
after 1848; and the stimulating effects of the economic catastrophe,
terrible as it was, were insufficient. Still, and this was a gain
anyhow, the workers were scared out of their paralysis, were induced to
think things over, and were spurred into political activity. That had
brought Lassalle into contact with Marx once more. What Lassalle had
said in 1852, namely that during this apparent stillness of death the
genuine German labour party will be born,
seemed likely, now, to
find confirmation.
¶Down to 1855, in numerous letters, Lassalle had tried to get into closer touch with Marx, working for a vigorous exchange of ideas. Again and again, with all possible respect, and with assurances of the most friendly sentiments, he had sent Marx information concerning the political situation in Germany; concerning his own views, experiences, and projects; concerning his literary undertakings, and the like. He was never tired of saying how much he admired Marx’s historical erudition, penetrating insight into economic categories, and revolutionary impetus. He had written enthusiastic letters to Frau Marx; had gone out of his way to secure information for Marx from diplomatic sources; had found a publisher for one of Marx’s books; had sent money (a whole two hundred thalers in the New Year of 1855); had found Marx openings in the press; had been exuberant in proofs of friendship. Yet always Marx had kept him at a distance, had been coldly uncivil, had been provocative in the assumption of superiority. Often he left Lassalle’s letters unanswered; and when he did answer them, it was distantly, irritably, and with an obvious lack of interest. He rarely tried to mask his contempt by introducing a few cordial words.
¶Almost all Lassalle’s letters begin with a complaint because Marx
does not write. Why don’t you write to me? Why do you never let me
hear direct from you? I learn from others that you have been through a
very bad time, but that now things are a little better. I was sorry to
learn of your troubles, for you are among the very few for whom I really
have a weakness, and whom I would often be glad to see helped rather
than myself
(1851). Again: At length I have a line or two from
you, a real Christmas present. It was so long since I had heard from you
that I had positively begun to wonder
(1852). And so on, in
subsequent years.
¶Marx never gave any frank explanation of his coldness towards this man. Lassalle was not in any way to his taste. Our minds tend to react with sympathy towards those from whom we expect advancement and profit, and with antipathy towards those from whom we expect danger and loss. It is fairly obvious that Marx must have regarded Lassalle as a dangerous rival in the field where both men were at work, the field of political theory, the labour movement, and the revolution. Since Lassalle was not a second Engels, was not willing to put himself entirely into Marx’s hands, but strode forward independently towards his own goal as hero of the European revolution, Marx was naturally confirmed in this sentiment of hostility. That was why his letters to Lassalle were so sparse, so laconic, and so cold.
¶Lassalle’s energies were fully engaged in other concerns and other
tasks. He successfully wound up Countess Hatzfeld’s divorce proceedings,
which had occupied much of his time for years; wrote an extremely able
book on Heraclitus, which brought him considerable renown in the world
of learning; made a journey to Egypt, Constantinople, Smyrna, and the
Balkans; and, as the last of the Mohicans in revolutionary
Rhineland,
was able ultimately, after considerable difficulties, and
after humbugging the authorities by the pretence that he needed
specialist treatment for an affection of the eyes, to achieve a removal
to Berlin. On April 26, 1857, he wrote cordially to Marx: You are not
exiled, but I! You are living in the same city with numbers of the old
companions-in-arms; whereas I, these many years, have been living so
much alone, quite cut off from them all. … That is really very trying.
If we leave out of account the working class, whose heart and
sensibilities are not merely as healthy and fresh as of old, but have
greatly developed since those days–among the so-called cultured people
there still prevails, and more than ever, the same timidity, the same
anxiety, the same tendency to skulk in the corner, as of old. In the
long run it becomes an urgent need to refresh oneself among those who
are of the same way of thinking as oneself and have enjoyed the same
sort of education. I have been feeling this need for a long, long time;
so keenly that I am almost prepared to swear it will drive me to London
next year–I have long wished to come thither, that I may see old
associates once more.
¶Lassalle’s visit to London did not mend matters between the two men.
Their correspondence did not become more regular or more fruitful. When
Lassalle sent Marx a copy of his Heraclitus, the unfortunate
fact that Marx had to pay excess postage to the amount of two shillings,
at a time when this sum was almost the last he possessed, ensured a bad
reception for the book. Despite its colossal erudition, Marx could not
admire it, but could only make fun of it. Writing to Engels, Marx said
that Lassalle moved to and fro in his philosophical spangle-bedecked
State with all the grace of a rough fellow who has for the first time
put on a well-fitting suit.
His thanks to Lassalle for the gift were
expressed in two lines, curtly and coolly.
Lassalle was wounded,
but hid the smart, and made no moan of mortified vanity. Instead, he
persisted in wooing the friendship of his suspicious rival. He offered
to find a publisher for the forthcoming work on economics, and brought
pressure to bear on his own publisher Franz Duncker, until the latter
agreed to issue the book, and to pay Marx a fee far higher than was
customary. Marx took all these manifestations of friendship as a matter
of course, tendering no thanks for them, but regarding them as a
perfectly natural tribute to his own abilities. He was almost a year
behind time in the delivery of the manuscript, and offered no excuses to
Lassalle for this delay, which had put Lassalle in Duncker’s bad graces.
Then, when Duncker delayed publication for a few months, Marx loaded the
innocent Lassalle with reproaches. He considered that Lassalle was
working against him behind the scenes, and thus stripped the last veils
which had hidden the jealousy with which his own soul was poisoned.
Lassalle, however, merely wrote good-naturedly to Duncker: Marx is
the Marat of our revolution. No web of treason can be spun betwixt
heaven and earth, but Marx will have foreseen its spinning. Indeed, he
will foresee many a web which no one has ever thought of spinning. Well,
one must take the rough with the smooth.
¶In the year 1859, in connexion with the Italian war, there was an open conflict between Marx and Engels on one side and Lassalle on the other. Lassalle was always ready to learn from his friends; but always brought forward material considerations in support of his opinion; and, having done so, with due modesty he would ask for an admission that he had been right. All he could get from Marx was blunt contradiction, malevolent suspicion, uncomradely behaviour! While we cannot but admire Lassalle for his courage and confidence, it is painful to contemplate Marx in the role of one who defends a case in a way calculated to lose it. At any rate, the course of the Italian movement rewarded Lassalle for the fine humanity of his attitude by proving him to have been right in his judgment.
¶The Vogt affair led to another controversy between Marx and Lassalle,
a fierce and bitter one this time. To Lassalle, Blind seemed an infamous
liar, who had scattered accusations without having any evidence to
substantiate them, and had then backed down. Liebknecht, for him, was a
ne’er-do-well who, though professing to be a revolutionist, contributed
to reactionary journals; and Marx was a man who had been rashly eager to
attack, and then, when his accusations had proved untenable, had not
been honest enough to withdraw them frankly. In long letters full of
sincerest and most heartfelt friendship,
he put his views before
Marx. What did Marx do? Not only did he shower vulgar abuse on Lassalle
in his letters to Engels; but he hunted up the most abominable, most
odious inventions,
flinging them as charges against Lassalle–on whom
he wished to revenge himself because he had not succeeded in extorting
from him as much money as he wanted. A man must have great magnanimity
to maintain his composure in face of such behaviour. Lassalle did more,
quietly explaining that the charges were malicious calumnies, and
continuing his correspondence with Marx as if nothing had happened. He
wrote long letters discussing important political topics; supported Marx
in the action for libel which the latter brought against the
Nationalzeitung
; provided funds for the publication of the book
against Vogt; and in all possible ways showed himself a true friend.
¶Thus by the beginning of the sixties, the two men were on sufficiently friendly terms for Marx to stay with Lassalle when he visited Berlin.
¶At this time Lassalle’s mind was full of great schemes. Being
extremely ambitious, he was on the look-out for some field which would
open exceptional possibilities. His close ties with Countess Hatzfeld,
who since her divorce had regained control of her extensive possessions,
provided him with abundant means for these far-reaching enterprises.
Lassalle’s first desire was to found a great daily newspaper in Berlin.
He had broken away from the bourgeois democrats, and aimed at
establishing the labour movement upon a broader foundation, of which he
would be one of the main buttresses. This new movement was to be a trump
in his political game, and was to be played with a sensational gesture.
When Marx was in Berlin, Lassalle talked over with him the question of
the proposed daily newspaper. It would, no doubt, be opportune,
wrote Marx to Engels after returning to London, if next year we could
issue a newspaper in Berlin, much as I detest the place. With the aid of
Lassalle and others we could get together twenty or thirty thousand
thalers. But hic jacet. Lassalle made me a direct proposal. At the same
time he confided to me that he must act with me as editor-in-chief.
What about Engels?
I enquired. Well, if three are not too
many, Engels can join us as one of the chief editors. But you two must
not have more votes in the matter than I, for if you had I should always
be outvoted.
As reasons why he must have an equal voice in the
chief-editorship he alleged: first, that in the general view he was more
closely connected with the bourgeois party, and could therefore more
readily secure funds; secondly, that in this venture he would sacrifice
his theoretical studies and theoretical repose,
and must get
something out of it in return. Lassalle, being blinded by the prestige
he has secured in certain learned circles by his Heraclitus,
and which toadies ascribed to him because he has a good cellar and a
good cook, is naturally unaware that as far as the general public is
concerned he is a discredited man. Then we have to remember his
disputatiousness, the way in which he is still entangled in
speculative concepts
(the fellow actually dreams of writing a new
Hegelian philosophy multiplied to the second power), his infection with
old-school French liberalism, his overbearing pen, his obtrusiveness,
his tactlessness, and so on. Lassalle might be of service as a member of
the staff, under strict discipline. Otherwise, he would only make us all
ridiculous. But, as will be obvious to you, the position was an
embarrassing one, in view of his extremely friendly attitude towards me.
It was hard to know what to say. I was vague, therefore, and said that I
could decide nothing until I had consulted you and Lupus [Wilhelm
Wolff].
¶An essential preliminary to Marx’s proposed removal to Berlin was
that he should once more be naturalized as a Prussian subject. Lassalle
had undertaken to pull the necessary strings. He ran from pillar to
post, interviewed ministers of State, sent in petition after petition,
had a question asked in the Landtag, and displayed the utmost zeal–at
the very time when, in letters to Engels, Marx was writing of him with
contempt and mockery. When Lassalle published his work in two volumes,
System der erworbenen Rechte [System of Acquired Rights], Marx
fobbed it off with a few casual observations, although he knew that
Lassalle was eagerly awaiting a detailed criticism from his pen. I am
really very much annoyed at your way of reading my book,
wrote
Lassalle, in justified ill-humour. If I write such a book, it is done
with my best blood and all my nervous energy, au fond, and, in the last
resort, only for a very few persons. … Surely of these few, anyhow, I
may expect that a work which is the outcome of so much self-martyrdom
shall at least be read in the precise order and evolution of the
thoughts in which it was written by the author.
In detailed letters,
Lassalle endeavoured to answer Marx’s objections, and to correct his
misunderstandings, but it was all love’s labour lost. Marx ignored the
schoolboy theme.
¶In 1862, Lassalle at length came to London, and, under very
distressing conditions, was a guest in Marx’s house. Since Lassalle had
the airs of a grand seigneur, Marx felt that the poverty of his own
household was shown up in a ludicrous light. His vanity was touched; he
conceived himself forced into an inferior position; and he gave vent to
his feelings in outbursts of spleen. Lassalle,
he wrote to
Engels, is now posing, not only as the greatest of scholars, the
profoundest of thinkers, the most brilliant of investigators, etc., but
also as a Don Juan and a revolutionary Cardinal Richelieu. He confided
to me and my wife in the utmost confidence that he advised Garibaldi not
to attack Rome but … also that he had recently been to see Mazzini, who
had approved and
In another letter Marx wrote: admired
his plan. He presented himself to these
people as representative of the German revolutionary working
class,
and declared to them (this is literally true!) that he
(Lassalle) by his pamphlet on the Italian war had prevented Prussia’s
intervention,
and, in fact, had guided the history of the last
three years.
Lassalle also
informed me that he would perhaps found a newspaper when he got home in
September. I told him that for good fees I would supply his paper with
English correspondence, without undertaking any responsibility or
political partnership, seeing that politically we were agreed as to
nothing except certain distant goals.
¶The newspaper scheme fizzled out. But Lassalle entered the political arena, and placed himself at the head of the labour movement, which he had conjured up out of the ground by loud and fiery appeals. He expounded his labour programme to the manual workers of Oranienburg, a suburb of Berlin. To the Leipzig workers, who had applied to him through Vahlteich, Dammer, and Fritzsche, he sent his Offenes Antwortschreiben [Open Answer]. He secured publicity by his speech on the constitution; and by a propagandist tour, which resembled a triumphal procession. When he founded the General Union of German Workers, he provided the working class of his native land with its first political organization, its first contact with the vanguard of the class struggle.
¶Marx’s attitude towards these multifarious activities, which implied
nothing less than the awakening and mobilization of the proletariat for
the tasks of the social revolution, was one of chill reserve and
scarcely concealed enmity. He looked upon Lassalle as a successful
rival, who threatened to outdo him; as the fellow who obviously
believes himself to be the man who will enter into our heritage.
Marx did not show the smallest readiness to recognize at least
Lassalle’s good intentions; did not make the slightest endeavour to do
justice to Lassalle’s activity; did not manifest a trace of glad
recognition of the historical fact that a breach had at length been made
in the political passivity and indifference of the German proletariat.
Instead, in his letters to Engels, Marx continued to display envy,
malice, and all uncharitableness towards the person and the doings of
Lassalle. This fellow
; this boomster
; this future
dictator of the workers
; these commonplaces
; these
borrowed phrases
this monumental arrogance
; this
ridiculous assumption of learning and preposterous sense of
self-importance
this botched work of a schoolboy, who is in a
hurry to parade himself as a learned man and an independent
investigator
–such are the tones in which Marx passes judgment.
Since the beginning of this year, I have not been able to bring
myself to write to him. It would be a waste of time to criticize his
stuff. Besides, he appropriates every word as a
Engels sounded the same note: discovery
of his
own. But it would be absurd to rub his nose in his plagiaries, for I
will have no truck with our own things after he has smeared them all
over. Nor will it do to recognize these pufferies and exhibitions of
tactlessness. He would hasten to turn that to account. All that remains,
therefore, is to wait until his anger breaks out at last. Then I shall
have a fine answer ready: that he always remarks this is not
communism,
and so on.The
stories about Lassalle, and the scandal they are making in Germany, are
beginning to become disagreeable. It is certainly time that you finished
your book. … It is disastrous that the man should get a position for
himself in this way.
¶That was the sore point! Lassalle was making a position for himself. A criminal undertaking, which could only be answered with enmity, battle, and annihilation! Marx, who throughout life was feverishly striving for the highest possible achievement, for success, and for recognition, was made blind and crazy by hatred for his rival. No longer could he think of the joint mission, of the great historical task, of the revolutionary aim. He could think of nothing but priority, the right of the first-born, the triumph of uniqueness, the glory of the originator, the dictatorship of the victor. This hysteria of the struggle for power found expression in venomous outbreaks.
¶Who can doubt that Marx breathed more freely when Lassalle was killed
in a duel? There is no word of regret, no indication of a sense of loss,
in the heartless and frivolous words he wrote to Engels when the news
came. It is hard to believe that so noisy, so stirring, so pushful a
man should be as dead as a doornail, and have to hold his tongue
altogether.
Nothing but profound hostility could make any one speak
in this way of a companion-in-arms.
¶At a later date, when hatred had been mitigated by time, and when no
further rivalry was possible, Marx was able to appraise Lassalle and his
work in a more concrete way, though not less critically. Writing to
Schweitzer, Lassalle’s successor in the General Union of German Workers,
under date October 13, 1868, Marx said: As regards the Lassallist
Union, it was founded during a period of reaction. When the labour
movement had been slumbering in Germany for fifteen years, Lassalle
wakened it once more, and this was his imperishable service. But he made
great mistakes. He was unduly influenced by the immediate circumstances
of the time. He made a small starting-point (his opposition to a dwarf
like Schulze-Delitzsch) into the central feature of his agitation
(State-help versus self-help). … For him, the State transformed itself
into the Prussian State. Thus he was compelled to make concessions to
the Prussian monarchy, the Prussian reaction, and even the clericals.
With the demand for State-help on behalf of associations, he combined
the Chartist demand for universal suffrage. He overlooked the difference
between German and English conditions. Also, from the very start–like
every one who believes that he has in his pocket a panacea for the
sufferings of the masses–he gave a religious sectarian character to his
agitation. … Furthermore, being the founder of a sect, he repudiated all
natural connexion with the earlier movements. He fell into the same
mistake as Proudhon, in that he did not seek his concrete foundation in
the actual elements of the class movement, but wished to prescribe its
course to the class movement in accordance with a doctrinaire
prescription of his own.
¶Marx’s judgment of Lassalle’s mission, which is substantially just in
this respect: that Lassalle was not in fact a historical materialist,
and did not ground his theory upon a fundamental knowledge of economics,
became a one-sided and erroneous judgment in this respect: that it was
coloured with personal animus. And it became utterly fallacious in this
respect: that it contained no syllable about the enormously important
fact that Lassalle (for whatever reason and with whatever programme) had
actually appeared in history, and, at this particular epoch, had
conjured up the labour movement out of the ground. It is of minor
importance how much in Lassalle’s theory and in his method of agitation
may have been sound or unsound, how much he may have borrowed from
Buchez, taken over from Malthus, understood in Ricardo, or misunderstood
in Marx. The decisive thing was that he succeeded in marshalling the
proletariat in a politically independent formation upon the battlefield
of history. Mehring rightly points out that at a later date, when the
proletarian movement began to develop in the United States, Engels,
writing to Sorge anent the criterion of achievement in a particular
historical situation, said: The first great step when, in any
country, the movement makes its appearance, is the constitution of the
workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long only
as it is a separate labour party.
That was the sense in which
Lassalle acted; and in that sense, Lassalle’s achievement was a
historical deed of supreme importance.
¶Man of transcendent genius though he was, Marx’s insight failed him when his emotions were profoundly stirred by the appearance of a formidable rival. He forfeited his revolutionary infallibility as soon as nervous anxiety for the maintenance of his personal prestige marred his devotion to the material advancement of the cause.
¶Marx was not a team worker. He was not a man of comradely spirit, not one of those whose powers are intensified by the sense of living community with others. He was not a rank-and-file fighter.
¶He could only create as first in the field; could only fight as generalissimo; could only conquer when assigned the heroic role. He was a lonely eagle upon an icebound crag.
§ Chapter 06: Achievement, Part 1
§ Foundation of the International
¶The international exhibition held in London during the year 1862 was a rendezvous at which worldwide capitalism was given an opportunity of publicly demonstrating its wealth and its achievements.
¶Before the astonished eyes of the international bourgeoisie, the lords of commerce, the magnates of finance, and the kings of industry, puffed up with the pride of success, displayed the tremendous results of capitalist economic development. Not only did they exhibit their machines, raw materials, methods of production, technical discoveries, and statistical tables; but they also assembled at this centre of progress their technicians, masters of works, and manual operatives, whose zeal was to be stimulated by the spectacle, that they might be spurred on to fit themselves for the tasks of the day and to make themselves more efficient for the purposes of capitalist production. In Prussia and other parts of Germany, the sending of working-class delegates to London was the outcome of private enterprise; but from France delegates were dispatched under official auspices and with government support. Proudhon was an enemy of the Bonapartist regime, and Louis Napoleon wishing to undermine his influence with the proletariat was not content to extend an amnesty to numerous workers who had been imprisoned in connexion with strikes or for infringing the draconian laws against combination; but was also active in promoting the dispatch of a working-class delegation to the London exhibition. A special electoral bureau was installed, two hundred delegates were chosen, the cost of sending them was defrayed from public funds and by subscriptions; and in order that the activities of the delegation might be freely reported at public meetings of the workers, the relevant passages in the laws which forbade such meetings were tacitly suspended.
¶It was inevitable that the French and German delegations, in their visit to London, should come into contact with British trade unionists, should become acquainted with the economic and political influence of the British unions, and thus derive agitatorial impetus for their work in their own lands. The British trade unions had a direct interest in promoting such contacts, for the British workers, whenever the class war entered upon an active phase, were seriously injured by the blackleg competition of foreign workers whom the capitalists used to ship across the Channel on such occasions. They hoped, by enlightening their continental brethren, and by promoting the organization of these, to put an end to strike-breaking of this kind. During the exhibition, therefore, they did everything they could to encourage an international exchange of ideas among the workers, being especially interested in the Parisian delegates.
¶Since 1860, the trade-union movement had in England been advancing
with rapid strides, especially in London. Not only were wider and ever
wider circles of the workers being organized, but the organized British
workers were modifying their attitude towards the problem of political
action. Whereas hitherto it had been a principle of the trade unions to
ignore politics, parliamentarism and elections, the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, and the Ladies
Shoemakers’ Society, under the leadership respectively of William Allan,
Robert Applegarth, and George Odger, were now beginning to interest
themselves in political problems and political action. A working-class
newspaper, the Beehive,
edited by George Potter, favoured this
change of policy by its advocacy. Eccarius, a tailor from Thuringia, who
had been a member of the Federation of the Just and then of the
Communist League, and had for a long time been Marx’s right-hand man,
did his utmost to promote the expansion of the organizational field,
with the design of founding an international working-class organization.
It was to him, in especial, that the formation of effective ties between
British trade unionism and the foreign labour delegations to the
exhibition was due.
¶It is probable, however, that the interest of the French and German labour delegates would soon have cooled, had not the general political situation on the Continent helped to fan the flames. The paralysing reaction of the fifties was now spent. Capitalism, for the purposes of its own development, needed freer and more mobile working-class elements, and for this reason it had been necessary to mitigate the pressure of tsarist, Bonapartist, and Bismarckian policy. The flowers of liberty were blossoming once more. Lassalle, in his letters to Marx, had referred to the new vital impetus that was manifesting itself everywhere in the proletariat. In Italy and Hungary, the movements for national independence had become active once more, diffusing a stimulant influence.
¶The Polish rising of 1863 opened a new ventilating shaft for the
accumulated energies of the movement on behalf of freedom. This much
is certain,
wrote Marx to Engels under date February 13, 1863
that the era of revolution has at length been reopened in Europe. The
general posture of affairs is good. But the cheerful deceptions and the
almost childlike enthusiasm with which we acclaimed the revolution
before February 1848, are over and done with. Old comrades have passed
away, others have backslidden or been corrupted, and, as yet at least,
there is no sign of any new growth. Moreover, we know now how great a
part stupidity plays in revolutions, and how they are exploited by
rotters. One may hope that this time the lava will flow from east to
west, and not in the opposite direction.
When, in the course of the
Polish rising, Prussian soldiers were used against the revolution, this
was, according to Marx, a combination which compels us to raise our
voices.
The Workers’ Educational Society certainly ought to issue a
manifesto. You must,
wrote Marx to Engels, write the military
portion–that which concerns Germany’s military and political interest in
the re-establishment of Poland. I will write the diplomatic
portion.
¶The Polish rising speedily collapsed, but the idea mooted by Marx took due effect. The representatives of the London workers sent the Parisian workers a manifesto they had drafted in favour of the Poles, and asked their French comrades to take joint action. Thereupon the Parisian workers sent a delegation to London, headed by Tolain, who had been labour candidate at the recent elections in Paris. This delegation participated at a meeting held in St. James’ Hall in honour of the Poles. At this meeting a committee of British workers was appointed, to send a fraternal address to the Parisian workers and to arrange for a subsequent meeting. The second meeting was held at St. Martin’s Hall on September 28, 1864, having been summoned by Odger, chairman of the London Trades Council, and Cremer, secretary of the Building Workers’ Union. Reporting to Engels, Marx said: “A certain Le Lubez was sent to me, to ask if I would come on behalf of the German workers, would find a German worker to speak at the meeting, and so on. I suggested Eccarius, who did splendidly, and I assisted as a lay figure on the platform. I knew that on this occasion real forces were present, both from London and from Paris, and I therefore decided to waive my usual rule, which is to refuse all such invitations.
¶“At the meeting, which was packed out (for manifestly there is now a revival of the working classes), Major Wolff (Thurn and Taxis, Garibaldi’s adjutant) represented the London Union of Italian Workers. It was decided to found an International Workingmen’s Association, whose General Council is to sit in London, acting as intermediary for the workers’ societies in Germany, Italy, France, and England. In 1865, a general working-class congress is to be summoned in Belgium. At the meeting, a provisional committee was appointed, Odger, Cremer, and many others, in part sometime Chartists, sometime Owenists, etc., for England; Major Wolff, Fontana, and other Italians, for Italy; Le Lubez, etc., for France; Eccarius and myself, for Germany. The committee was empowered to co-opt as many members as it likes.
¶“So far, so good. I attended the first sitting of the committee. A sub-committee (of which I am a member) was appointed to draft a declaration of principles and provisional rules. Being indisposed, I was unable to attend the sitting of the subcommittee and the subsequent meeting of the General Council. At these two meetings, in my absence, this was what happened:
¶“Major Wolff handed in a rules and constitution (statutes) translated from those of the Italian workingmen’s associations (which have a central organization, but are, as appeared later, essentially associated mutual aid societies); this he thought was suitable for use by our new association. I saw the thing later. It was obviously botched up by Mazzini, and you will know without my telling you in what sort of spirit and what kind of phraseology the essential question, the labour problem, was treated. Also the problems of nationality were dragged in by the ears. In addition, a sometime Owenist, Weston, an amiable and worthy man, submitted a programme of unspeakable length and full of unutterable confusion.
¶“At the next meeting of the General Council, the subcommittee was instructed to remodel Weston’s programme and Wolff’s rules and regulations. Wolff departed to attend the congress of the Italian Workingmen’s Association at Naples, and to ask this body to affiliate to the London central association.
¶“Another meeting of the sub-committee, which I again failed to
attend, having been notified too late. To this was presented a
declaration of principles
and an elaboration of Wolff’s rules and
regulations drafted by Le Lubez, which was adopted by the sub-committee
to lay before the General Council. The General Council met on October
18th. Since Eccarius had written to warn me that there was danger in
delay, I turned up, and was truly terrified to hear the good Le Lubez
read out a horribly worded, badly written, and utterly raw foreword,
which professed to be a declaration of principles. Mazzini peeped
through it all, crusted over with vague rags of French socialism.
Substantially, the Italian rules and regulations were adopted. Whatever
their faults may be, they have a quite remarkable aim, that of
establishing a sort of central government (of course with Mazzini in the
background) of the European working classes. I played the part of
moderate opposition; and, after lengthy discussions, Eccarius proposed
that the subcommittee should subject the whole thing to
re-editing.
The principles
contained in Le Lubez’s
declaration were, however, accepted.
¶“Two days later, on October 20th, there was a meeting in my house,
attended by Cremer for the British, Fontana (Italian), and Le
Lubez–Weston could not come. I had not as yet had the papers (Wolff’s
and Le Lubez’s) in my hands, and therefore had been unable to prepare
anything; but I had made up my mind that if I could prevent it not a
line of the thing should be left. To gain time, I proposed that before
editing
the foreword, we should discuss
the propositions.
This was agreed. It was one in the morning before the first of forty
propositions was adopted. Cremer said (at my instigation): We have
nothing to put before the General Council, which is to meet on October
25th. We must postpone it until November 1st. The sub-committee can meet
on October 27th, and try to come to a definite conclusion.
This
proposal was accepted, and the papers
were left
for me to
look through.
¶“I saw that it was impossible to make anything out of the document.
In order to justify the very remarkable way in which I intended to
re-edit the already voted principles, I wrote an Address to the
Working Classes (which was not in the original plan); a sort of
retrospect of what had happened to the working classes since 1845. Under
the pretext that all factual matters were contained in this Address, and
that we need not say the same things thrice over, I modified the
introduction, cut out the declaration of principles, and finally reduced
the four and twenty propositions to ten. In so far as international
politics are mentioned in the Address, I refer to countries and not to
nationalities; and I denounce Russia, not the minor States. My proposals
were all adopted by the sub-committee. Only one thing, I had to pledge
myself to insert in the preamble to the rules two phrases about
’duty
and right
; also about truth, morality, and justice–but
they are all so placed that they cannot do any harm.
¶“At the sitting of the General Council, my Address, etc., were
adopted with great enthusiasm (unanimously). The discussions about
printing, and so on, will take place next Tuesday. Le Lubez has a copy
of the Address for translation into French, and Fontana one for
translation into Italian (and there is a weekly, the Beehive,
edited by the trade unionist Potter, a sort of Moniteur
). I
myself am to translate the thing into German.
¶It was very difficult to arrange matters so that our views should
appear in a form which would make them acceptable to the present
standpoint of the labour movement. The same people will in a few weeks
be holding joint meetings with Bright and Cobden on behalf of an
extension of the suffrage. It will be some time before the reawakened
movement will permit of the old boldness of speech. We must he strong in
the substance, but moderate in the form.
¶So much for Marx’s report to Engels. Enough to add that the chairman of the provisional General Council was Odger, and its vice-chairman Eccarius. It was to have its headquarters in London. That is all the noteworthy information that can be given as to the founding of the International Workingmen’s Association.
¶Summarizing the matter, it may be said that the objective conditions requisite for the foundation of the International were furnished by the general situation; that the subjective stimulus proceeded from the trade unions; and that the intellectual leadership and the furnishing of a political objective came from Marx.
§ The Inaugural Address
¶The Address, Preamble, and Provisional Rules of the International Workingmen’s Association is extant in the original English text that was adopted by the Association, but Marx’s German version of this original has not come down to us.
¶The first version published in German was the work of J. B. von
Schweitzer, Lassalle’s successor in the General Union of German Workers.
It appeared in 1864, in the second and third issues of the
Sozialdemokrat,
the organ of the union.
¶In 1866, J. T. Becker, who had fled to Switzerland after the rising
in the Palatinate and Baden, and had settled down in the Swiss republic,
published another German version of the Address in the Vorbote,
issued in Geneva as the central organ of the German-speaking group of
the International.
¶Two years later still, Wilhelm Eichhoff, in Die Internationale
Arbeiterassociation, a book published in Berlin, gave yet another
translation of the Inaugural Address, described as as faithful a
rendering as possible.
Since these translations differed in certain
respects, containing errors as well as conflicting interpretations, Karl
Kautsky subsequently published an authorized translation, made by Luise
Kautsky under his supervision.
¶In the preface to this translation Kautsky points out that in Marxist literature the Inaugural Address has a significance, as far as exposition of programme is concerned, second only to that of the Communist Manifesto. But though the two documents agree in fundamentals, the Inaugural Address has a very different visage from the Communist Manifesto.
¶When the Communist Manifesto made its way into the world with all the splendour of a mounted pursuivant, Marx was addressing himself to a choice group of working-class intellectuals, who were to form a propagandist society of persons carefully trained in matters of theory, persons who, in the forthcoming revolution, would seize the leadership, and would conduct the movement forward towards its goal. In the interim, seventeen years had passed away. The hopes of revolution had not been fulfilled. The revolutionary outburst of 1848 had been followed by a widespread reaction, and by a formidable development of capitalism. The bourgeoisie had made common cause with the vestiges of the feudalist powers, and the two had constituted a firm front. Against these united forces, no headway could be made by a small group of tried and trusty revolutionists backed up only by a blind following of the masses. What was needed now was a spontaneous mass movement of those who were thoroughly well informed regarding methods and aims. The Inaugural Address was designed to provide such a mass movement with practical objectives and immediate tasks. Thus it substituted concrete demonstrations for enthusiastic impetus, and provided a soberly drawn map of the nearest sections of the route for a splendidly conceived historical perspective.
¶The Address begins with a drastic and overwhelmingly powerful but
concise statement of the contrasts characteristic of capitalist
evolution: exuberant wealth among the possessing classes, and terrible
poverty among the non-possessing. The total import and export trade
of England had grown in 1863 to £443,955,000, an astonishing sum, about
three times the trade of the comparatively recent epoch of 1843. … From
1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by six per
cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the
basis taken in 1853 twenty per cent. …
That was one side of the medal. Here was
the obverse: This intoxicating augmentation
of wealth and power,
adds Mr. Gladstone, is entirely confined to
classes of property.
The House of Lords caused an inquiry to be made into,
and a report to be published upon, transportation and penal servitude.
Out came the murder in the bulky blue-book of 1863, and proved it was by
official facts and figures, that the worst of the convicted criminals,
the penal serfs of England and Scotland, toiled much less and fared far
better than the agricultural labourers of England and Scotland. But this
was not all. When, consequently upon the Civil War in America, the
operatives of Lancashire and Cheshire were thrown upon the streets, the
same House of Lords sent to the manufacturing districts a physician
commissioned to investigate into the smallest possible amount of carbon
and nitrogen, to be administered in the cheapest and plainest form,
which, on an average, might just suffice to
Such was the picture in England,
the exemplary land of capitalism–a horrible contrast between superfluity
and starvation. But avert starvation
diseases.
… He found … that quantity pretty nearly to agree with the
scanty nourishment to which the pressure of extreme distress had
actually reduced the cotton operatives … and … that the silk weavers,
the needlewomen, the kid glovers, the stocking weavers, and so forth,
received, on an average, not even the distress pittance of the cotton
operatives, not even the amount of carbon and nitrogen just
sufficient to avert starvation diseases.
… As regards the examined
families of the agricultural population, it appeared that more than a
fifth were with less than the estimated sufficiency of carbonaceous
food, that more than one-third were with less than the estimated
sufficiency of nitrogenous food … The agricultural population of England
[the richest division in the United Kingdom was considerably the worst
fed; but even the agricultural wretches of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and
Somersetshire fare better than great numbers of skilled indoor
operatives of the East of London.with local colours changed, and on a scale
somewhat contracted, the English facts reproduced themselves in all the
industrious and progressive countries of the Continent. In all of them
there has taken place, since 1848, an unheard-of development of
industry, and an undreamed-of expansion of imports and exports. In all
of them
the augmentation of wealth and power entirely confined to
classes of property
was truly intoxicating
… Everywhere the
great mass of the working classes were sinking down to a lower depth, at
the same rate at least that those above them were rising in the social
scale. In all countries of Europe it has now become a truth demonstrable
to every unprejudiced mind, and only denied by those whose interest it
is to hedge other people in a fool’s paradise, that no improvement of
machinery, no appliance of science to production, no contrivances of
communication, no new colonies, no emigration, no opening of markets, no
free trade, nor all these things put together, will do away with the
miseries of the industrious masses; but that, on the present false base,
every fresh development of the productive powers of labour must tend to
deepen social contrasts and point social antagonisms.
¶Having given this demonstration of the economic and social situation,
the Address turns to consider the political situation. After the
failure of the revolutions of 1848, all party organizations and party
journals of the working classes were, on the Continent, crushed by the
iron hand of force; the most advanced sons of labour fled in despair to
the transatlantic republic; and the short-lived dreams of emancipation
vanished before an epoch of industrial fever, moral marasm, and
political reaction. The defeat of the continental working classes,
partly owed to the diplomacy of the English government, acting then as
now in fraternal solidarity with the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, soon
spread its contagious effects to this side of the Channel. While the
rout of their continental brethren unmanned the English working classes,
and broke their faith in their own cause, it restored to the landlord
and the money-lord their somewhat shaken confidence. They insolently
withdrew concessions already advertised. The discoveries of new gold
lands led to an immense exodus leaving an irreparable void in the ranks
of the British proletariat. Others of its formerly active members were
caught by the temporary bribe of greater work and wages, and turned into
political blacks.
All the efforts made at keeping up, or
remodelling, the Chartist movement failed signally, the press organs of
the working class died one by one of the apathy of the masses, and, in
point of fact, never before seemed the English working class so
thoroughly reconciled to a state of political nullity.
¶Only two great happenings had lightened the darkness of this gloomy
period, the introduction of the Ten Hours Bill after a thirty years’
struggle, fought with most admirable perseverance, a struggle in which
the English working classes had turned to account a temporary feud
between the landlords and the money-lords; while the other redeeming
feature had been the foundation of the co-operative movement by a few
bold innovators, the Rochdale pioneers. The Ten Hours Bill was not
only a great practical success, it was the victory of a principle. … But
there was in store a still greater victory of the political economy of
labour over the political economy of property. We speak of the
co-operative movement, especially the co-operative factories.
The
great value of the co-operative movement was that it did not represent
the outcome of a casual favourable turn in the parliamentary situation,
but was the expression of a deliberate, spontaneous, and fully conscious
attempt to overthrow the capitalist system. Herein is disclosed the fact
that like slave labour, like serf labour, hired labour is but a
transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated
labour plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind, and a joyous
heart.
¶Experience has indeed shown that however excellent in principle,
and however useful in practice, co-operative labour, if kept within the
narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be
able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to
free the masses, nor even perceptibly to lighten the burden of their
miseries. … To save the industrious masses, co-operative labour ought to
be developed to national dimensions, and, consequently, to be fostered
by national means. … To conquer political power has therefore become the
great duty of the working classes. They seem to have comprehended this,
for in England, Germany, Italy, and France, there have taken place
simultaneous revivals, and simultaneous efforts are being made at the
political reorganization of the workingmen’s party. One element of
success they possess–numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance if
united by combination and led by knowledge. Past experience has shown
how disregard of that bond of brotherhood which ought to exist between
the workmen of different countries, and incite them to stand firmly by
each other in all their struggles for emancipation, will be chastised by
the common discomfiture of their incoherent efforts.
¶After referring to the war against Negro slavery in the United
States, to the Russian conquest of Caucasia, and to the suppression of
the Polish rising by Russian armies, the Address goes on to say that
these things have taught the working class the duty to master
themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the
diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if
necessary, by all means in their power; when unable to prevent, to
combine in simultaneous denunciations, and to vindicate the simple laws
of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private
individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations. The
fight for such a foreign policy forms part of the general struggle for
the emancipation of the working classes.
¶The fundamental ideas of the Address are reiterated in the Preamble
to the Provisional Rules, in a more concentrated form. Here we read
that the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the
working classes themselves; that the struggle for the emancipation of
the working classes means, not a struggle for class privileges and
monopolies, but for equal rights and duties and the abolition of all
class rule.
That the economical subjection of the man of labour
to the monopolizer of the means of labour, that is, the sources of life,
lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery,
mental degradation, and political dependence; that the economical
emancipation of the working classes is therefore the great end to which
every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means; that all
efforts aiming at that concrete end have hitherto failed from the want
of solidarity between the manifold divisions of labour in each country,
and from the absence of a fraternal bond of union between the working
classes of different countries; that the emancipation of labour is
neither a local, nor a national, but a social problem, embracing all
countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution
on the concurrence, practical and theoretical, of the most advanced
countries.
¶These important considerations once more give plain expression to the meaning and the aims of the International. Although the Inaugural Address lays so much stress upon the Ten Hours Bill and the co-operative movement as immediate aims of the working class, this nowise implies that the document represents a trend in favour of renouncing revolution and returning to reformist methods. Nothing could have been further from the author’s mind than the idea of regarding an opportunist endeavour to fulfil immediately practical demands as a panacea for the miseries of the proletariat. The aim of the Address was, rather, to make the workers aware of the need for international cohesion, and to do this by laying strong emphasis upon concrete practical interests; seeing that the comparatively abstract argumentation of the Communist Manifesto had been practically without influence upon the intelligence and the will of the proletariat. Incitement of the workers of England, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain to join forces in a living solidarity; the enlisting of Chartists, Owenists, Proudhonists, Blanquists, Mazzinists, and Lassallists by a programme which would not offend or exclude any of them–these were the fundamental motifs and aims of the Address. Both in form and content, it was admirably designed to achieve its end.
§ The Tower of Babel
¶Since the International did not absorb into its own structure the working-class organizations of the various countries, but left them intact as independent structures, it soon comprised a motley mosaic of groups, trends, schools, and camps; and it had to conduct its affairs in a multiplicity of languages, as at the Tower of Babel after the confusion of tongues.
¶Not only had the labour movement in every country its own specific national imprint; but further, in every country, there existed conflicting types of organization and movement. In England, for instance, there were still to be found considerable vestiges of Owenist utopism, which had degenerated into freethinking sectarianism. There were also the relics of the Chartist movement, which had now fallen into hopeless decay. Among the trade unionists, although collectivist ideas were gaining ground, individualist notions were still dominant, so that there was a strange mishmash of doctrine. Worst of all, as the Webbs point out in their History of Trade Unionism, the leaders of the movement were unaware that they were trying to combine incompatibles. The majority of the British trade unionists, moreover, like the Christian socialists led by Kingsley and Maurice, would not hear a word of political activity on the part of the workers. Nor were things any better in France. There, Fourierists and Cabetists continued to enjoy a popularity that was long overripe. Louis Blanc’s scheme for national workshops had still numerous supporters; and Blanqui’s futile policy of extemporized insurrectionism had not ceased to attract persons with a fondness for action in season and out of season. But among all the programmes that competed for popular support, Proudhon’s scheme for getting rid of capitalist society, and liberating every one peacefully, by means of a people’s bank secured the strongest support. In Germany, the utopian ideas of Weitling were still flourishing amid the moribund traditions of the petty-bourgeois radicalism of 1848. But in the foreground here, far more imposing than all the rest, stood the General Union of German Workers, enjoying widespread popularity which had been artificially inflated by Lassalle’s skill as an agitator. Since Lassalle’s death, however, its influence had begun to decline, owing to the civil war between those who adhered to the masculine trend under Schweitzer and those who adhered to the feminine trend under Countess Hatzfeld. In Italy, the nationalist-mystical republicanism of Mazzini was closely akin to the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin. Switzerland, finally, was the happy hunting-ground of cantonal particularisms.
¶Not that most of the groups and organizations just mentioned belonged as yet to the International. But it was to be foreseen that when they did join the International the result would be a mad confusion of ideas, a chaos of conflicts and the development of socialism into a monstrosity.
¶Marx recognized these dangerous possibilities, and therefore made it his business to ensure that the opposing outlooks should not forthwith find expression in the publicity of a congress, but that their discussion should be restricted, to begin with, within the narrow limits of a more or less confidential conference.
¶He was aided by the fact that the progress of the International, at first, was anything but rapid. Indeed, the beginnings were on a very small scale. After considerable hesitation, a few trade unions in which propaganda work had been carried on for a considerable time had decided to adhere. For the rest, the organization contained only individual members, who were grouped in sections. Even in this respect, the growth of the membership lagged behind expectations. The first to join, other than English, were the members of the Italian Workingmen’s Club in London. Then came three German workers’ societies, among them the Communist Workers’ Educational Society. A working-class society for the support of Polish refugees also affiliated. In Switzerland a few sections were formed. In Germany, although fifty thousand copies of the Address were circulated, there was no more than a feeble response. After the lapse of a year, the growth of the International had still been so inadequate that its voice could not have been expected, at a congress, to produce the desired political effect. On Marx’s initiative, therefore, the General Council decided that the congress planned for Brussels in 1865 should be replaced by a conference in London.
¶The London Conference was held from September 25 to 29, 1865. British labour was represented by Odger, Cremer, Howell, Wheeler, Dell, and Weston. From France came Tolain, Limousin, Varlin, Fribourg, Schily, and Clarion; from Brussels, César de Paepe, a qualified medical man, working as a compositor. Switzerland had sent J. P. Becker for the German-speaking and Dupleix for the French-speaking section. Besides this, the continental workers were represented by delegates from the respective national societies in London: Germany, by Lessner and Schapper; Italy by Major Wolff; Poland by Bobczynski. Finally, the following were present as corresponding members of the General Council: Marx for Germany, Jung for Switzerland, and Dupont for France. Eccarius reinforced the German representatives, being present as vice-chairman of the General Council.
¶The general secretary of the International, Cremer, reporting for England, said that as yet only a very small part of the trade unions had been won over to support the International. There was, however, he said, good reason to hope that, in view of the recently opened campaign on behalf of an extension of the suffrage (a campaign which the International would energetically support), a considerable accession of membership would be secured. The reports from France were little more encouraging, and the wrangling between the French delegates gave sufficient explanation for the failure of the International in that country. In Switzerland, on the other hand, thanks to the indefatigable and able recruiting work that had been carried on by Becker, a number of large working-class organizations had come into being, but this result was less encouraging than it might otherwise have been because Becker was so obviously nothing more than a reformist. The same tendency towards reformism, fostered in especial by the Proudhonist trend of so many of the French, and complicated by the general confusion of ideas, was manifest throughout the discussions. No matter whether the topic of debate was the Polish question, the religious problem, or the desirability of speedily holding a general congress–irreconcilable opinions were voiced, incompatible principles were advocated with violence on both sides, and a situation developed which represented the very opposite of international harmony.
§ Conflicts, Crises, Struggles
¶The development of the International Workingmen’s Association
proceeded along lines which soon made Marx for practical purposes the
head of the concern.
¶This involved for him a tremendous expenditure of energy and time,
which were eaten up by meetings, correspondence, and negotiations. His
days ere long proved too short, and he had to steal time from the night.
During these years, he was engaged in writing Capital, his
great work on political economy. This involved extensive studies, which
were perpetually being interrupted by the sittings of the General
Council and its subcommittees. The newspaper articles on which he was
dependent for daily bread remained unwritten, and again and again he
grumbled about the enormous waste of time,
and the frequent
interruptions.
Engels, likewise, whom Marx had often to call upon
for help, occasionally lost patience. The new movement,
he wrote
angrily, makes me sweat abominably. It is the devil and all when,
having written the livelong day for one’s business, one has to go on
writing afterwards till one or two in the morning for the party and
publishers and so on.
Yet all the while the movement was expanding;
was demanding more energy, closer supervision, keener participation;
would give its directors no rest.
¶Worse still, from day to day the affair seemed more and more
unsatisfactory, owing to the innumerable quarrels, jealousies, and
faction fights with which the inner life of the International was
convulsed. I had said to myself,
wrote Engels, that a naive
fraternity would not last long in the International. … There will
certainly be a lot more phases of the kind, which will cost you a great
deal of time.
In actual fact, brawls were unceasing. Now it was the
French who were taking up the cudgels against the brain-workers, and
were ready to tear one another’s eyes out because of differences upon
the religious problem; now the management of the Polish question gave
rise to violent disputes; now embittered struggles raged round the
periodical, the Commonwealth,
which had been appointed the
official organ of the International, and appeared to be too much
inclined to espouse a bourgeois reformist outlook; now there was a fight
between Odger and Potter, the editor of the Beehive,
a fight
which threatened to become a public scandal; now it became necessary to
expel members who had gravely infringed the rules, or had published
false reports concerning the internal affairs of the organization. So it
went on, month after month. Once, when Marx returned from a journey, he
wrote to Engels: This evening I was at a sitting of the International
again for the first time after three weeks. In the interim, there has
been a revolution. Le Lubez and Denoual have resigned, Dupont has been
appointed French secretary. Owing to the intrigues of Le Lubez and
especially of Major Wolff (who is a tool of Mazzini), the Italian
delegates Lama and Fontana have resigned. The pretext is that Lefort
(who has also in the interim declared his intention to resign) is to
retain his post as general defender of the Parisian press. The Italian
Workingmen’s Club has not withdrawn from the organization, but no longer
has a representative on the Council. Meanwhile, through the
instrumentality of Bakunin, I propose to countermine Signor Mazzini in
Florence. The English Bootmakers’ Union, with a membership of five
thousand, has joined the International while I have been away.
Engels, in his answer, expresses the hope that the rumpus will soon
come to an end.
His hope was not destined to be fulfilled, for, with
innumerable variations, the rumpus went on for weeks, months, years. As
soon as one conflict had been mitigated or settled, two new ones would
break out elsewhere.
¶Inasmuch as, whatever Marx may have been, he was not a peacemaker,
his influence tended rather to intensify than to mitigate these
frictions and quarrels. The effect he had in this respect was aggravated
by the unfortunate circumstance that years of bodily indisposition had
made him irritable and bitter. He had long suffered from liver trouble,
to which of late an obstinate tendency to boils had been superadded, so
that for many years this painful ailment was breaking out now in one
part of his body and now in another, hindering his work, and often
reducing him to despair. His letters to Engels are full of complaints
and outbursts of wrath on this account. I am tormented with the old
evil in various and most inconvenient parts, so that it is very hard for
me to sit.
… I have spent the greater part of a week in bed
because of a carbuncle.
… To my extreme disgust, after being
unable to sleep all night, I discovered this morning two more
first-class boils on my chest.
… I am working now like a
dray-horse, seeing that I must make the best use of all the time
available for work, and the carbuncles are still there, though they are
now giving me only local trouble, and are not interfering with my
brain.
… This time it was really serious–the family did not know
how serious. If it recurs as badly three or four times more, it will be
all up with me. I have wasted amazingly, and am still damnably weak not
in the head but in the trunk and limbs. … There is no question of being
able to sit up. But, while lying down, I have been able, at intervals,
to keep on digging away at my work.
¶Engels had again and again, ever more urgently, begged Marx to do
something reasonable, that you may rid yourself of this tyranny of
boils.
He asked the advice of doctors, studied medical literature,
sent his friend prescriptions. Marx could not make up his mind to
undergo methodical treatment. He lacked time and money, was afraid of
forfeiting his earnings, and was loath to leave the movement to itself
at so critical a time. But when, in the winter of 1865-1866, the boils
grew continually more troublesome, Engels wrote more seriously than
ever: No one can permanently endure this chronic fight with
carbuncles, without mentioning that sooner or later you may have one
assuming such a form that it will send you to the devil. What will
happen then to your book and your family? You know that I am ready to do
anything in my power, and, in this extreme instance, even more than I
would risk in other circumstances. Do be reasonable, then, oblige me and
your family to this extent at least, that you will have methodical
treatment. What would happen to the whole movement if anything went
wrong with you? … I can get no rest by day or by night until you have
got over this trouble.
¶Marx still hesitated. But at length the illness made it absolutely
impossible for him to work. He had become so irritable that he did not
venture to go to sittings of the General Council, finding it barely
possible to retain the storms within
He
therefore decided, in March 1866, to spend a few weeks at Margate,
enjoying the benefits of sea air and sea bathing.the limits of pure reason,
and being much more inclined to burst forth with undue violence.
¶Four weeks relaxation and change of air set him up once more. Although, after his return, he suffered in brief succession from a bad cold, from influenza, and from rheumatism, he was at any rate free from the carbuncles.
¶But he was not free from the material embarrassments by which, throughout that winter, he had been troubled almost as much as by the illness.
¶His work for the International (which was, of course, unremunerated),
his expenditures upon postage, travel to meetings, minor journeys,
doctor and medicines, in conjunction with the falling-off in his fees
for newspaper articles, had completely upset his tottering finances. In
the summer of 1865 he wrote despairingly to Engels: For the last two
months I have been living on the pawnshop, while suffering from
accumulated and ever more intolerable appeals from duns. You will not be
surprised at the state of my finances when you bear in mind: first, that
throughout this time I have not earned a penny; and, secondly, that the
mere liquidation of my debts and the furnishing of the house cost about
£500. I have kept an account down to the last farthing, for it seemed
incredible to me how the money was running away. Add that from Germany,
where God knows what has been spread abroad, all possible antediluvian
demands have been made. … I assure you that I would rather have my thumb
cut off than write this letter to you. It is crushing to be dependent
for half a lifetime. The only thought which consoles me is that we are
running a joint business in which I give my time to the theoretical side
of the matter and to party affairs.
Engels, sympathetic as ever, and
always ready to help, promptly sent £50, following this up with £15,
£20, and £10. Meanwhile Jenny had fallen sick, and had to be sent for
change of air to the country. Marx, going to visit her, found her still
very ill; he had his portmanteau stolen, and wrote to Engels for money.
The landlord had called, had talked of distraint, and of cancelling the
lease. The landlord’s visit was followed up by that of the rest of
the pack, partly in person, and partly in the form of threatening
letters. I found my wife so desperately ill that I had not the courage
to tell her the true state of affairs. I really don’t know what to
do!
Engels answered by return of post with a remittance of £1, and
the assurance: I am trying to think out ways of providing at least in
instalments for the others.
Then, letter after letter, £50, a
Christmas present, £15, £20, and £10, and finally the funds for the
visit to Margate.
¶To this period belongs a temptation to which a reference must be
made, because it subsequently played a part in the history of the German
social democracy. One day Marx received from Lothar Bucher, friend and
executor of Lassalle, the offer of a well-paid position on the staff of
the Staatsanzeiger
in Berlin. In return for his salary, he was to
supply a monthly report upon the movements of the money market and the
commodity market. Marx, not in general scrupulous about the choice of
the newspapers to which he contributed, was quick to suspect that
Bismarck lurked behind the offer. At this juncture Bismarck was strongly
interested in the idea of getting into political touch with the labour
movement. He had tried to win over Lassalle to support his policy; had
actually won over Countess Hatzfeld; and Marx (erroneously) believed
that he had already got Herr von Schweitzer under his spell. After
discussing the matter with Engels, Marx left the offer unanswered. Not
long afterwards, Lothar Bucher entered openly into Bismarck’s service,
and compiled the draft of the Anti-Socialist Law. During the worst days
of the persecution of the socialists in Germany, Marx published Lothar
Bucher’s letter. It was used by the social democrats as a weapon in
their campaign against Bismarck, for they declared that he wanted to
make friends with the workers when he needed them as pawns against the
bourgeoisie; and treated them as enemies when he no longer had any use
for them, or found them in the way of his policy.
¶While Bucher’s letter was calculated only to increase the depressing
effect of this depressing period, the advance now made by the
International could not but promote a recovery of spirits. As regards
the London unions,
wrote Marx to Engels, every day we have fresh
accessions, so that by degrees we are becoming a power.
Engels
answered with delight: The International Association has really, in a
very short time and with very little fuss, conquered a vast territory. …
At any rate you have gained something out of the time you have spent on
it.
¶Still, this objective growth was but poor compensation for the crisis
that raged within. All was going awry in the General Council; everywhere
rivalry, jealousy, hostility prevailed. Cremer was fighting Eccarius. Le
Lubez was intriguing against the Germans. Major Wolff was at war with
Jung. The Mazzinists were arming themselves against doctrinal control by
those whom they stigmatized as tyrants. In the official organ, which was
dependent upon bourgeois funds,
and therefore lacked the
requisite independence, political and commercial rivalries culminated in
something that was little better than a dog-fight. I have shown the
utmost patience in this affair,
said Marx, hoping that the
workers would make a push to carry it on themselves independently, and
also because I did not wish to be a spoil-sport.
¶Notwithstanding these internal dissensions, the public side of the
movement was successful. A huge meeting in St. Martin’s Hall on behalf
of the extension of the suffrage was entirely under the inspiration of
the International Workingmen’s Association. Writing to Engels about the
franchise demonstrations in London, inaugurated, after the fall of the
Russell government (in which Gladstone was the leading spirit), against
the procrastinatory policy of Disraeli, Marx said: It is really
amazing compared with anything seen in England since 1844, and wholly
the work of the International. … This shows how different it is when one
works behind the scenes and disappears from the public eye, as compared
with the democratic manner of assuming important airs in public and
doing nothing at all.
¶True that behind the scenes there was still a great deal to do.
The cursedly traditional character of all English movements, a
lukewarm reformism, coquetting and compacting often enough with
bourgeois radicalism, had their way, and quenched the early fire of the
movement.
As J. P. Becker once wrote to Jung, there was lacking
among the English workers a spice of revolutionary salt, which might
have roused them from the slumber of legalism.
Or, as Marx
complained: In France, Belgium, Switzerland (even here and there in
Germany, and actually in a sporadic way in America), the society has
made great and continuous progress. In England, the reform movement,
which we called into life, has nearly made an end of us. That would not
matter, were it not that the Geneva Congress has been summoned for the
end of May [1866]. For the English, a failure of the congress would be
very much to their taste. But for us! It would make us ludicrous in the
sight of Europe!
¶Marx was very much afraid lest the congress should be a failure, for
he knew that the movement was not yet sufficiently ripened to cope
adequately with such a public test. He debated the advisability of going
to Paris, in order to advise the comrades there, who were urging that
the congress should be held without delay, that a postponement was
essential. At the same time he was well aware that the whole future of
the International would be imperilled should it not be held. Engels
agreed with him: It is of minor importance whether the congress
passes any good resolutions; the essential thing is that there should be
no open scandal. Besides, any demonstration of the kind would be a
discredit–as far as we are concerned. And before the whole of Europe? I
hope it could be avoided. … Still, I would advise you on no account to
go to Paris for this reason. … The police would take prompt action. …
The whole affair is not worth the risk. … Better stay where you are in
Margate, getting out in the fresh air as much as you can. Who knows how
soon you will have need of all your strength?
¶Ultimately, at the wish of the Swiss sections, the congress was
postponed till the autumn of 1866. Marx did not attend it, wishing to
have no personal responsibility for its management.
This proved
to have been needless discretion, for the congress was by no means a
European scandal. Very much the contrary. It was an event of European
importance. For six days it was the centre of interest in the political
world, passing weighty resolutions, especially upon social topics and
labour protection laws, concerning which Marx had penned a memorial and
carefully edited the resolutions.
¶While Marx thus had reason to be well pleased with the Geneva
Congress next year’s congress, held at Lausanne from September 2 to
September 8, 1867, aroused great anxiety in his mind. At Geneva the
French Proudhonists had sustained a defeat, gaining experience which led
them to make better preparations for Lausanne. They flooded the Lausanne
Congress with proposals and discussions, and succeeded in carrying a
number of Proudhonist resolutions. Marx was at this time wholly immersed
in finishing the first volume of Capital. Not only did that
make it impossible for him to attend the congress, but he had been
unable to prepare the agenda, as he had done in the case of Geneva.
Commenting on the proceedings, he wrote to Engels: At next year’s
congress in Brussels, I shall make it my business to give these
jackasses of Proudhonists their quietus. On this occasion, I have been
extremely diplomatic, not wishing to intervene personally before my book
is published, or until our organization has struck roots. Besides, in
the official report of the General Council (despite all their efforts,
the Parisian chatterers could not prevent our re-election), I shall give
them a good lashing. Meanwhile, our society has made great strides
forward. The wretched
Star,
which wanted to ignore us altogether,
declares in a leading article that we are more important than the Peace
Congress. Schulze-Delitzsch was unable to prevent his workers’ society
in Berlin from affiliating to us. The English pigdogs among the trade
unionists, for whom we were too advanced,
are flocking to us. …
When the next revolution (which is perhaps nearer than it seems) comes,
we shall have this powerful engine in our hands. Compare that with the
results of the machinations of Mazzini and the rest of them during the
last thirty years! And this without any funds! Despite, too, the
intrigues of the Proudhonists in Paris, Mazzini in Italy, and the
jealous Odger, Cremer, and Potter in London, with Schulze-Delitzsch and
the Lassallists in Germany, to boot! We have good reason to be
satisfied!
¶But the more the International attracted public attention, the more alarmed was the bourgeoisie to witness the growth of a hostile power thus developing against it. The authorities mobilized their forces and took action: in England, on the occasion of an Irish conspiracy, with which the International was erroneously supposed to he connected; in France, under a law which forbade the formation of societies with more than twenty members; in Belgium, after a dispute between miners and mineowners in the Charleroi district, a dispute in which there had been bloodshed. These attacks however, served mainly to strengthen the prestige of the International. During the great strike movement which spread across the Continent from 1866 to 1868, the bourgeoisie came to regard the International as a dread spectre. Its influence was supposed to be at work in every active labour movement; its hand was suspected behind every strike, every rising, all working-class political activity. Ferdinand Tönnies tells us that in his boyhood the International was looked upon as the embodiment of the Red Peril. The newspapers were filled with references to this secret power, with paragraphs about its unlimited command of money. Marx was represented as the sinister protagonist of a worldwide conspiracy. Most of the chatter, of course, was gross exaggeration, the outcome of fear. This much, however, was true, that the organization–despite its internal dissensions, despite its urgent lack of funds, despite the apathy and the misunderstanding and the timidity it had to encounter–steadily grew in prestige and importance under Marx’s guidance and inspiration. What Marx had said about the Lausanne Congress, that the main thing was that it should be held, and that what happened at the congress mattered very little, applied still more to the International as a whole. Its value, its importance, did not depend upon its actual doings or achievements, but upon the mere fact of its existence.
§ Schweitzer and Liebknecht
¶It cannot but seem strange that the General Union of German Workers, which after Lassalle’s death had become the leading labour organization of the German proletariat, should not have been in touch with the International and should not have been represented at any of the congresses.
¶The reason was, above all, that the General Union of German Workers
had, immediately after Lassalle’s death, passed under incompetent
leadership, and been devastated by a war of succession. But
subsequently, when the wing of the organization that was under the
control of J. B. von Schweitzer had become able to undertake serious and
positive political activities, there was still no attempt to collaborate
with Marx. Marx himself had an invincible dislike for this organization
that had been founded by Lassalle. His aversion to Lassalle had been
transferred to Schweitzer, and was a barrier to any sort of alliance.
Furthermore, there had been a personal quarrel between Marx and
Schweitzer, the outcome of a trifling matter. The Sozialdemokrat,
the organ of the General Union of German Workers, edited by Schweitzer,
had printed an item of Paris correspondence furnished by Moses Hess in
which doubt was thrown on the trustworthiness of Tolain, a leading
member of the International in Paris. This was but one of the countless
intrigues characteristic of the life of the refugees. Marx ought to have
been lenient, seeing that, when he was editing the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung,
he had given publicity to a similar slander on Bakunin, but
he was not inclined to be lenient where Schweitzer was concerned. He
marshalled his heavy artillery, not only demanding satisfaction, but
making the accusation against Tolain the excuse for abruptly and rudely
breaking off his own relations with the Sozialdemokrat.
He
declared that the trend of the paper was antipathetic to him. His doubts
of Schweitzer ripened to venomous suspicions. Writing to Engels, Marx
said that he regarded Schweitzer as irreclaimable, and probably in
secret understanding with Bismarck.
He wanted to cut adrift from
Schweitzer at any price. He went on to say: As long as this
Lassallist business has the upper hand in Germany, the International
Workingmen’s Association will make no progress there.
He was going
much too far, in his anger, for Schweitzer not only withdrew the charge
that had been made against Tolain, but offered to lay before the
congress of the General Union of German Workers a resolution expressing
agreement with the principles of the International and a determination
to send delegates to the Brussels Congress. But Marx ignored this
proffer of friendship. He would have nothing more to do with Schweitzer
and the Lassallist organization. Since we have to break with the
fellow, we had better do it immediately,
he wrote to Engels. The
latter, answering in the same strain, said; The longer we dawdle
along with him, the deeper we shall get in the mire. The sooner the
better.
Marx and Engels thereupon sent the Sozialdemokrat
a
statement to the effect that they had not for a moment failed to
recognize the difficulties of the situation, and had never asked the
newspaper to put forward any demands unsuitable to the meridian of
Berlin. But they had repeatedly asked that the Sozialdemokrat
should use against the ministry and the feudal absolutists a language no
less bold than that which it used against the progressives. The tactics
adopted by the Sozialdemokrat
made it impossible for them to
continue collaborating with it. Their views concerning Prussian
monarchical governmental socialism, and concerning the attitude which
ought to be assumed by the labour party towards such humbug, had been
expressed as long ago as 1847 in the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung.
They were still prepared to subscribe to every word of the declaration
they had then published.
¶Thus without inquiry and without a shadow of proof, they implied that
the Sozialdemokrat
was secretly working hand in hand with
Bismarck, and was endeavouring to bring about an alliance between the
proletariat and the government against the liberal bourgeoisie. In this
matter, Marx and Engels were doing a gross injustice to Schweitzer. He
had never dreamed of entering into a conspiratorial alliance with
Bismarck. As Mehring shows, one cannot find in the Sozialdemokrat
a single line suggesting a pact with the government against the
progressives. The five articles concerning the Bismarck ministry
published by Schweitzer in the Sozialdemokrat,
the articles upon
which Marx and Engels based their statement, had a very different
complexion for one who was actually bearing the heat and burden of the
political struggle, and upon whom it was incumbent to avail himself of
chance happenings in the opposing army and to turn these to account on
behalf of the proletariat–than for one who lived in exile far from the
fighting line, and contemplated the fray through a distorting
atmosphere.
¶Schweitzer was a man of independent intelligence and strong character, filled with political earnestness and inspired with a sense of revolutionary responsibility. It may well be that Marx regarded him (like Lassalle) as a dangerous competitor, as one who wished to assume the political role which Marx had reserved for himself. The determination to discredit him, makes it extremely probable that such a sense of rivalry existed in Marx’s mind, in the under levels of consciousness at least. For not only did Marx take an erroneous view of Schweitzer’s personal character; he also went astray in his estimate of the General Union of German Workers. Although this had now become an imposing organization, Marx persisted in regarding it as an obscure and eccentric sectarian movement, devoted to the advocacy of petty-bourgeois democratic interests. Unfortunately, in this way of looking at the matter, he was supported by Wilhelm Liebknecht.
¶Liebknecht, who since 1862 had been living in Berlin, had already
played a strange part in the conflict between Marx and the
Sozialdemokrat.
He was on the staff of the Sozialdemokrat,
and had actually sub-edited the column in which the offensive paragraph
about Tolain had appeared. Instead of trying to pour oil on troubled
waters, Liebknecht showed himself completely wanting in tact and
comradely feeling. He was himself personally embroiled with Schweitzer,
and this led him, not only to ignore his duty to clear up the
differences between Marx and Schweitzer, but actually (we may suppose)
to intensify the trouble by the tone of his letters to London. For
instance, we read in a letter from Marx to Engels: According to
Liebknecht, the only reason why Schweitzer has not been able to sell
himself to Bismarck is that he would have had to do so through the
instrumentality of that old Hatzfeld woman.
This shows the evil
atmosphere in which gossip and intrigue were flourishing.
¶Lassalle, years before, had written fiercely and contemptuously
concerning the part played by Liebknecht in the Vogt affair. In a letter
to Marx penned in January 1860, he said: How in the world can
you–straitlaced as you rightly are in other respects, bring yourself to
have associations with any one who writes in the
Marx
himself who had been in close touch with Liebknecht during the latter’s
stay in London, was incessantly criticizing his pupil’s political
activities in Berlin. In letters to Engels, Marx says that Liebknecht is
Augsburger
Allgemeine Zeitung
? You say, indeed, that they all do it, that they
contribute to all newspapers without distinction of tint, and that you
would be a solitary exception. This bad custom does not affect the
matter. If they do, they are all under the same condemnation. … I am
afraid your ties with Liebknecht are not transient or isolated.dilatory,
a blockhead
; that Liebknecht makes many
blunders
; often goes astray.
In general, Marx had a poor
opinion of Liebknecht’s intelligence. Nevertheless, Marx continued, with
indefatigable indulgence, to back up Liebknecht and to excuse his
errors. He needed Liebknecht as a tool against Schweitzer; and
Liebknecht, wholly devoted to Marx, unruffled by the most vehement
scoldings, had no objection to being misused in this fashion.
¶Subsequently, Liebknecht was expelled from Berlin. He went to
Leipzig, joined forces with Bebel, and in conjunction with the latter
founded at Eisenach in 1869 the Social Democratic Labour Party. It now
became plain that everything which Marx blamed Schweitzer for, really,
on close examination, applied to Liebknecht. The latter, though Marx’s
own pupil, was enormously excelled by Schweitzer in the comprehension
and elaboration of Marx’s ideas upon socialist theory and socialist
politics. Schweitzer edited his newspaper in accordance with the
principles of the Communist Manifesto and the Address, and, as
a member of the North German Reichstag, sometimes asked Marx’s advice
upon difficult political problems. Liebknecht, on the other hand, in the
Demokratisches Wochenblatt,
advocated a particularist and
confused brand of petty-bourgeois socialism, which perpetually
conflicted with Marxian principles. Nevertheless, he remained Marx’s
favourite child, while Schweitzer was treated as whipping-boy.
¶I think you must have made many a worthy man your enemy who might
have been one of your adherents,
Lassalle had once said
reproachfully to Marx. Schweitzer was among the number of these
worthy men
whom unjust suspicion and mortifying coldness drove
out of the workers’ camp, although with all the powers of his
intelligence and all his sympathies he earnestly desired Marx’s
friendship and alliance.
¶Causeless suspicion has clouded Schweitzer’s name even in the tomb. Although there was never anything questionable or unsavoury about his behaviour or his political activities, although no words or deeds of his can be quoted that tend to show he was anything but a thoroughly honest socialist, although there is not a blemish on his revolutionary escutcheon, he is still currently supposed to have been dishonest, to have been sold to the other side. Mehring undertook to plead his cause, and Mehring’s demonstration of Schweitzer’s fundamental honesty would be convincing to any impartial tribunal. Nevertheless in the labour movement, it is generally believed that Schweitzer played false, because such was Marx’s opinion.
§ Bakunin
¶Michael Bakunin was arrested in 1844 in Saxony after the Dresden
rising, and was condemned to death. Instead of executing him, however,
the Saxon authorities handed him over to the Austrians, by whom he was
tried once more, and again sentenced to death. Yet again he escaped the
extreme penalty, and in 1851 the Austrians handed him over to Russia.
From then until 1857 he was imprisoned in the fortress of St. Peter and
St. Paul, and was afterwards sent to Siberia. Escaping thence in 1861,
he made his way back to Europe through Japan and America. Reaching
London in the end of 1861, he got into touch with his compatriots Herzen
and Ogaryoff, and wrote articles for Herzen’s Kolokol,
although
he was not in sympathy with the moderate tone of that periodical. Here
is Bakunin’s own account of what he learned in London:
¶While I was having a far from amusing time in German and Russian
fortresses and in Siberia, Marx and Co. were peddling, clamouring from
the housetops, publishing in English and German newspapers, the most
abominable rumours about me. They said it was untrue to declare that I
had been imprisoned in a fortress, that, on the contrary, Tsar Nicholas
had received me with open arms, had provided me with all possible
conveniences and enjoyments, that I was able to amuse myself with light
women and had an abundance of champagne to drink. This was infamous, but
it was also stupid. … Hardly had I arrived in London, when an English
newspaper published a statement by a certain Urquhart, a turcophile and
a semi-imbecile, to the effect that the Russian government had
apparently sent me to act as a spy. I answered in a newspaper,
challenging the anonymous calumniator to name himself, and promising him
that I would answer him, not pen in hand, but with a hand without the
pen. He left matters there, and I was not troubled any more.
¶In the beginning of 1863, Bakunin went to Sweden, his aim being, from
that platform to stir up a revolution in Russia. He returned to London
in the end of the same year, and then went on to Italy. In August 1864,
he visited Sweden once more, and in October was back in London. Before
leaving again for Italy, he had an interview with Marx. About this he
wrote: At that time I had a little note from Marx (it is still among
my papers), in which he asked me whether he could come to see me the
next day. I answered in the affirmative, and he came. We had an
explanation. He swore that he had never said or done anything against
me; that, on the contrary, he had always been my true friend, and had
retained great respect for me. I knew that he was lying, but I really no
longer bore any grudge against him. The renewal of the acquaintanceship
interested me moreover, in another connexion. I knew that he had taken a
great part in the foundation of the International. I had read the
manifesto written by him in the name of the provisional General Council,
a manifesto which was weighty, earnest, and profound, like everything
that came from his pen when he was not engaged in personal polemic. In a
word, we parted, outwardly, on the best of terms, although I did not
return his visit.
¶We also have Marx’s account of this meeting. Under date November 4,
1864, he wrote to Engels: Bakunin wishes to be remembered to you. He
has left for Italy today. I saw him yesterday evening once more, for the
first time after sixteen years. I must say that I liked him very much,
much better than before. He said that after the failure in Poland he
should in future confine himself to participation in the socialist
movement. On the whole he is one of the few persons whom I find not to
have retrogressed after sixteen years, but to have developed further. I
had a talk with him also about Urquhart’s denunciations.
¶Bakunin’s resolve to devote himself henceforward to the socialist movement exclusively, and his conviction as to the importance of the International, made him regard it as desirable to be on good terms with Marx once more. Of course this went rather against the grain. Between the old-time friendship and its renewal there had been, not only the series of calumnies circulated about Bakunin and the period of his imprisonment and exile, but also a deplorable dispute with Marx thanks to which Bakunin, from the beginning of his revolutionary career, had been flecked with the suspicion of being a spy. Here is Bakunin’s story of that matter:
¶“In the year 1848 Marx and I had a difference of opinion, and I must say that he was far more in the right of it than I. In Paris and Brussels he had founded a section of German communists and had, in alliance with the French and a few English communists, supported by his friend and inseparable comrade Engels, founded in London the first international association of communists of various lands. … I myself, the fumes of the revolutionary movement in Europe having gone to my head, had been much more interested in the negative than in the positive side of this revolution, had been, that is to say, much more concerned with the overthrow of the extant than with the question of the upbuilding and organization of what was to follow. But there was one point in which I was right and he was wrong. As a Slav, I wanted the liberation of the Slav race from the German yoke. I wanted this liberation to be brought about by the revolution, that is to say by the destruction of the regime of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Turkey, and by the reorganization of the peoples from below upwards through their own freedom, upon the foundation of complete economic and social equality, and not through the power of any authority, however revolutionary it might call itself, and however intelligent it might in fact be.
¶“Already at this date the difference between our respective systems (a difference which now severs us in a way that on my side has been very carefully thought out) was well marked. My ideas and aspirations could not fail to be very displeasing to Marx. First of all because they were not his own; secondly because they ran counter to the convictions of the authoritarian communists; and finally because, being a German patriot, he would not admit then, any more than he does today, the right of the Slays to free themselves from the German yoke–for still, as of old, he thinks that the Germans have a mission to civilize the Slavs, this meaning to Germanize them whether by kindness or by force.
¶To punish me for being so bold as to aim at realizing an idea
different from and indeed actually opposed to his, Marx then revenged
himself after his own fashion. He was editor of the
Neue Rheinische
Zeitung,
published in Cologne. In one of the issues of that paper I
read in the Paris correspondence that Madame George Sand, with whom I
had formerly been acquainted, was said to have told some one it was
necessary to be cautious in dealing with Bakunin, for it was quite
possible that he was some sort of Russian agent.
¶According to a statement published by Marx on September 1, 1853, in
the London newspaper the Morning Advertiser,
on July 5, 1848, the
Neue Rheinische Zeitung
had received two letters from Paris, one
from the Havas Bureau, and the other from a political
refugee
–Marx did not wish to give his name, but was referring to
Dr. Ewerbeck, the sometime leader of the Federation of the Just. Both
these letters contained an allegation to the effect that George Sand
possessed letters compromising Bakunin, showing that he had recently
been in communication with the Russian government.
¶Bakunin writes of this: The accusation was like a tile falling
from a roof upon my head, at the very time when I was fully immersed in
revolutionary organization, and it completely paralysed my activities
for several weeks. All my German and Slav friends fought shy of me. I
was the first Russian to concern himself actively with revolutionary
work, and it is needless for me to tell you what feelings of traditional
mistrust were accustomed to arise in western minds when the words
Russian revolutionist were mentioned. In the first instance, therefore,
I wrote to Madame Sand.
¶Bakunin’s personal peculiarities and his mode of life gave a good
deal of colour to all this gossip and suspicion. He was of aristocratic
birth, of striking appearance; his doings had caused a great deal of
talk; nobody could understand how it was he had so much money to play
about with; he had his fingers in all kinds of queer conspiratorial
pies. The Russian embassy, which kept him under close observation,
followed its usual policy of broadcasting suspicions about him, hoping
thereby to undermine his prestige in revolutionary circles. Writing in
the Neue Oder-Zeitung,
Bakunin declared that just before the
appearance of the defamatory statement in the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung,
like rumours had been circulated in Breslau, that they had
emanated from the Russian embassy, and that the best way in which he
could refute them would be by an appeal to George Sand.
¶Thereupon George Sand wrote to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
under date August 3, 1848: Your correspondent’s statements are
utterly false, and have not the remotest semblance of truth. I have no
atom of proof of the insinuations which you have tried to disseminate
against Herr Bakunin, whom the late monarchy banished from France.
Consequently, I have never been authorized to express the slightest
doubt of the loyalty of his character and the candour of his
opinions.
By this declaration Bakunin was fully rehabilitated.
¶Nevertheless, suspicion continued to attach to him. Fifteen years later, in December 1863, when he was travelling through France on the way to Switzerland, a Basle newspaper stirred up the Polish refugees against him by maintaining that, through his revolutionary intrigues, he had involved many of their fellow countrymen in disaster, while himself always remaining immune. During his stay in Italy, he was perpetually being attacked and calumniated in like manner by numerous German periodicals.
¶Marx, too, still regarded Bakunin with much suspicion, and never
missed a chance of speaking against him. With reference to Serne, a
Russian whom he believed to be an adviser of Bakunin, he said: I
wanted information from this young man regarding Bakunin. Since,
however, I do not trust any Russian, I put my question in this way:
What is my old friend Bakunin (I don’t know if he is still my friend)
doing?
–and so on, and so on. Serne could find nothing better to do
than communicate my letter to Bakunin, and Bakunin availed himself of
the circumstance to excuse a sentimental entrée!
¶This sentimental entrée
not only redounded to Bakunin’s
credit, not only showed his good feeling and his insight, but deserved a
better reception from Marx than the biting cynicism and the derogatory
insolence with which it was encountered (cynicism and insolence which
were only masks for embarrassment). You ask whether I am still your
friend,
wrote Bakunin. Yes, more than ever, my dear Marx, for I
understand better than ever how right you were to walk along the broad
road of the economic revolution, to invite us all to follow you, and to
denounce all those who wandered off into the byways of nationalist or
exclusively political enterprise. I am now doing what you began to do
more than twenty years ago. Since I formally and publicly said good-bye
to the bourgeois of the Berne Congress, I know no other society, no
other milieu than the world of the workers. My fatherland is now the
International, whose chief founder you have been. You see, then, dear
friend, that I am your pupil–and I am proud to be this. I think I have
said enough to make my personal position and feelings clear to
you.
¶Bakunin honestly endeavoured to be on good terms with Marx, and to avoid friction. But he could not entertain cordial sentiments for Marx. The two men differed too much in mental structure, in theoretical trends, and in fundamental attitudes towards the revolutionary problem, for this to be possible. Bakunin loved the peasants; detested intellectualism and abstract systems with their dogmatism and intolerance; hated the modern State, industrialism, and centralization; had the most intense dislike for Judaism and all its ways, which he regarded as irritable, loquacious, unduly critical, intriguing, and exploitative. Everything for which he had an instinctive abhorrence, everything which aroused in him spiritual repugnance and antagonism, was for him incorporated in Marx. He found Marx’s overweening self-esteem intolerable.
¶Marx loved his own person much more than he loved his friends and
apostles,
wrote Bakunin in a comparison between Marx and Mazzini;
“and no friendship could hold water against the slightest wound to his
vanity. He would far more readily forgive infidelity to his
philosophical and socialist system. That he would regard as a proof of
stupidity, or at least as an indication of the mental inferiority of his
friend, and it would only amuse him. Such a friend would perhaps even be
more dear to him, since it was now obvious that he could not be a rival,
could not dispute the topmost ground with himself. But Marx will never
forgive a slight to his person. You must worship him, make an idol of
him, if he is to love you in return; you must at least fear him, if he
is to tolerate you. He likes to surround himself with pygmies, with
lackeys and flatterers. All the same, there are some remarkable men
among his intimates.
¶“In general, however, one may say that in the circle of Marx’s intimates there is very little brotherly frankness, but a great deal of machination and diplomacy. There is a sort of tacit struggle, and a compromise between the self-loves of the various persons concerned; and where vanity is at work, there is no longer place for brotherly feeling. Every one is on his guard, is afraid of being sacrificed, of being annihilated. Marx’s circle is a sort of mutual admiration society. Marx is the chief distributor of honours, but is also the invariably perfidious and malicious, the never frank and open, inciter to the persecution of those whom he suspects, or who have had the misfortune of failing to show all the veneration he expects.
¶As soon as he has ordered a persecution, there is no limit to the
baseness and infamy of the method. Himself a Jew, he has round him in
London and in France, and above all in Germany, a number of petty, more
or less able, intriguing, mobile, speculative Jews (the sort of Jews you
can find all over the place), commercial employees, bank clerks, men of
letters, politicians, the correspondents of newspapers of the most
various shades of opinion, in a word, literary go-betweens, just as they
are financial go-betweens, one foot in the bank, the other in the
socialist movement, while their rump is in German periodical literature.
… These Jewish men of letters are adepts in the art of cowardly, odious,
and perfidious insinuations. They seldom make open accusation, but they
insinuate, saying they
have heard–it is said–it may not be true,
but,
and then they hurl the most abominable calumnies in your
face.
¶Despite the destructive analysis conveyed in the foregoing passage,
Bakunin had a profound respect for Marx’s intellectual abilities and
scientific efficiency. When he read Marx’s Capital he was
amazed, and promptly set to work upon translating it into Russian.
Writing to Herzen, he said: For five-and-twenty years Marx has served
the cause of socialism ably, energetically, and loyally, taking the lead
of every one in this matter. I should never forgive myself if, out of
personal motives, I were to destroy or diminish Marx’s beneficial
influence. Still, I may be involved in a struggle against him, not
because he has wounded me personally, but because of the State socialism
he advocates.
¶This struggle was soon to break out. Characteristically enough, the
flames blazed up on account of a personal dispute. At the Peace
Congress in Geneva,
reports Bakunin, the veteran communist Becker
gave me the first, and as yet the only, volume of the extremely
important, learned, profound, though very abstract work Capital. Then I
made a terrible mistake; I forgot to write to Marx in order to thank
him. … I did not hasten to thank him, and to pay him a compliment upon
his really outstanding book. Old Philip Becker, who had known Marx for a
very long time, said to me, when he heard of this forgetfulness:
Although Bakunin found it hard to believe that this
personal slight, however unpardonable a discourtesy, could be What, you haven’t written to him yet? Marx will never forgive
you!
the
cause of the resumption of hostilities,
a letter from Frau Marx to
Philip Becker shows that this must actually have been the case. Have
you seen or heard anything of Bakunin? My husband sent him, as an old
Hegelian, his book–not a word or a sign. There must be something
underneath this! One cannot trust any of these Russians; if they are not
in the service of the Little Father in Russia, then they are in Herzen’s
service here, which amounts to much the same thing.
¶A duel between the two titans had become inevitable. It was fought in the International, of which Bakunin had become a member a few months before the Brussels Congress.
§ Chapter 07: Achievement, Part 2
§ The Alliance and the International
¶At the Berne Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, Bakunin had tried to induce the league to adopt a revolutionary programme, and to affiliate to the International. When this attempt failed, he resigned from the league, and, in conjunction with J. P. Becker, founded the International Alliance of the Socialist Democracy, also known as the Alliance of Social Revolutionaries. His aim now was to get this Alliance accepted as part of the International; then, by degrees, to excavate and absorb the International; until, at last, the International would be replaced by the Alliance.
¶For, as he had said at the Berne Congress, he hated communism because it implied the annihilation of freedom, and would concentrate all the powers of society (property included) in the hands of the State. His aim, he had said, was not communism but collectivism, the socialization of the individual by way of free association. He also advocated republicanism and atheism. But high above all principles, he contended, must stand the moral principles of universal human justice.
¶This programme places him somewhere between Marx and Proudhon.
Mehring characterizes Bakunin’s attitude very aptly when he says:
Bakunin had advanced far beyond Proudhon, having absorbed a larger
measure of European culture; and he understood Marx much better than
Proudhon had done. But he was not so intimately acquainted with German
philosophy as Marx, nor had he made so thorough a study of the class
struggles of western European nations. Above all, his ignorance of
political economy was much more disastrous to him than ignorance of
natural science had been to Proudhon. Yet he was revolutionary through
and through; and, like Marx and Lassalle, he had the gift of making
people listen to him. Whereas, however, Marx considered that the core of
the revolutionary fighting forces would be formed by the manufacturing
proletariat, by the workers whose characteristics he had studied in
England, France, and Germany, Bakunin counted upon declassed youth, the
peasant masses, and even the tatterdemalion proletariat, for support.
Marx favoured centralism, as manifested in the contemporary organization
of economic life and of the State; Bakunin favoured federalism, which
had been the organizational principle of the pre-capitalist era. That
was why Bakunin found most of his adherents in Italy, Spain, and Russia,
in countries where capitalist development was backward. Marx’s
supporters, on the other hand, were recruited from lands of advanced
capitalist development, those with an industrial proletariat. The two
men represented two successive phases of social evolution. Furthermore,
Bakunin looked upon man rather as the subject of history who, ’having
the devil in his body, spontaneously ripens for the revolution, and
merely needs to have his chains broken; but Marx regarded man rather as
the object, who must slowly be trained for action, in order that,
marshalled for class activity, he may play his part as a factor of
history. The two outlooks might have been combined, for in combination
they supply the actual picture of man in history. But in the case of
both of these champions, the necessary compromise was rendered
impossible by the orthodox rigidity of intellectual dogmatism, by
deficient elasticity of the will, and by the narrow circumstances of
space and time, so that in actual fact they became adversaries. Then,
owing to their respective temperaments, owing to the divergences in
mental structure which found expression in behaviour, their opposition
in concrete matters developed into personal enmity.
¶The concrete oppositions found their first expression in the determination of the General Council to refuse the proposed affiliation of the Alliance. This decision was inspired by Marx. Rightly or wrongly, he regarded the Alliance as a rival of the International, and was afraid that in the future there might be two General Councils, two Congresses, and two Internationals. To him, this was an intolerable idea. Presumably that was why, in this particular case, he was so rigid in his insistence that the Alliance was not a suitable body for affiliation to the International, although the latter had not in general been strict in its demand for qualifications. In any case, at his instigation, the General Council insisted that the Genevese section, which had proposed the Alliance for affiliation, must refrain from setting up a Central Committee of the Alliance and from holding its own congresses. Geneva expressed its willingness to comply with these instructions, and the Genevese section was thereupon accepted. But Marx and Engels distrusted the Genevese, who were led by Bakunin. They felt that between them and Bakunin there was an irreconcilable opposition, which could not be shuffled out of the world by formalities. They believed that Bakunin would continue to pursue his hidden aims, would try to make of the Genevese section the centre of a secret society which would establish itself inside the International in order to disrupt this latter. They were anxious about the foundations of their power.
¶A further difficulty was the material incompatibility between the
programmes of the Alliance and the International. The Bakuninist
programme was not what Marx angrily called it: an olla podrida of
worn-out commonplaces, thoughtless chatter; a rose-garland of empty
notions, and insipid improvisation.
It was, however, based upon
another foundation than that of the mental and political characteristics
of the workers in contemporary Europe. Bakunin’s programme was directed
towards a distant goal, whereas Marx was predominantly interested in the
way thither. Marx said to himself:
The mentality of the workers,
arising out of their economic conditions, is this or that. Ways in
conformity with the powers of these workers are to be chosen in order to
establish economic conditions which will give them enhanced powers.
First of all, the workers must be made aware of their own strength by
awakening their class consciousness. When that has been done, other
things will follow in due course.
On the other hand, the programme
of the Alliance, as Marx saw it, wanted the end before the beginning. It
turned the aims of education upside down, and thus interfered with the
Marxian method of education.
¶The fear that Bakunin was plotting rivalry to the International was
intensified by the fact that, living in Geneva, he had, by zealous
agitation, succeeded in winning a large number of adherents among the
homeworkers in the watchmaking industry of the Neuchâtel and Bernese
Jura. Here there already existed the beginnings of a revolutionary
movement; and some years before, in 1865, Dr. Coullery had founded in La
Chaux de Fonds a section of the International with four or five hundred
members. These highly skilled workers–whose principal leader was James
Guillaume, a teacher at the Industrial School in Le Lode, and a Hegelian
in philosophy–were federalistically inclined because they were Swiss and
were independently working proletarians; they were atheistically
inclined as a protest against the sanctimonious orthodoxy of the
Genevese; and they were revolutionary because they were in poor
circumstances and because they were affected with repressed religious
impulses. They became ardent supporters of Bakunin. He amalgamated their
groups into a federal council; founded a weekly, Egalité,
and
started a vigorous revolutionary movement. In London, this aroused the
impression that Bakunin was trying, by a devious method and working
within the International, to attain the ends which he had been unable to
reach by a direct route. At the Basle Congress of the International, on
September 5 and 6, 1869, Bakunin was no longer, as he had been in
Brussels, alone against the Marxian front, but was backed up by a
resolute phalanx of supporters.
¶In the proceedings at this congress, Bakunin’s views concerning the
right of inheritance and the collective ownership of the land did not,
indeed, gain an unqualified victory over the views of the General
Council. It was obvious, however, that Bakunin’s influence was on the
increase. This became especially plain during the discussion of the
question of direct legislation by the people (initiative and
referendum). On this matter, Bakunin reports: At the Basle Congress
there were present for the first time delegates from Germany, Austria,
and German Switzerland in very large numbers, extremely well organized,
and members of the patriotic, unified, pangerman party, called the
Social Democratic Labour Party. Under the instigation of Marx and the
Marxists, and in obedience to a strict discipline, the German and
German-Swiss delegates presented to the Basle Congress a new political
programme which, had it been accepted, would have completely ousted the
true programme of the International, and would have made that
organization a tool in the hands of the bourgeois radicals. Their scheme
was warmly supported by all the German and English delegates of the
General Council. Fortunately, the Latin delegates were in the majority,
and the project of the Germans was rejected. Hence this wrath.
¶For a long time, Bakunin’s opponents had been working to undermine
his position. They tried to check the growth of his influence by a flood
of suspicions and invectives. In particular, an individual named
Borckheim, a literary man of doubtful antecedents, who had been helping
Marx in various monetary affairs and as intermediary in the arrangement
of loans, inaugurated a russophobe campaign against Bakunin. The year
before (1868), in the Demokratisches Wochenblatt
published in
Leipzig under Liebknecht’s editorship, he had attacked Bakunin’s
personal honour in the most odious way. At the same time Bebel, in a
letter to J. P. Becker, had written that Bakunin was probably an
agent of the Russian government.
Liebknecht, too, had circulated a
report that Schweitzer had been bought by Bismarck, and that Bakunin was
in the Tsar’s pay. Moses Hess, likewise, had joined in the underground
intrigues against Bakunin by disseminating suspicion. At the Basle
Congress, Bakunin was able to bring matters to a head with Liebknecht,
and to secure the appointment of a court of arbitration to investigate
the charges. Liebknecht had no proofs to adduce, and declared that his
words had been misunderstood. The jury unanimously agreed that
Liebknecht had behaved with criminal levity,
and made him give
Bakunin a written apology. The adversaries shook hands before the
congress. Bakunin made a spill out of the apology, and lighted a
cigarette with it.
¶Although it was natural that Bakunin should have defended himself
against calumny, suspicion is aroused by his extreme sensitiveness, and
by the violence of his reaction. Backbiting, detraction, the utterance
of suspicions, were then, as they are now, common enough in times of
ferment–especially in the revolutionary camp, which is always a focus
for the activities of spies. As we know today (although the matter was
then a profound secret), there was a weak spot and a sore one in
Bakunin’s revolutionary past, something he would fain have forgotten if
he could. In 1851, when confined in the fortress of St. Peter and St.
Paul, after years of rigorous imprisonment, and when in a condition of
intense bodily weakness and profound mental depression, he had, at the
instigation of Tsar Nicholas, signed a confession,
in the hope
that this would procure his liberation from the grim dungeon. It was a
confession as to his revolutionary past, a mixture of truth and
fiction,
as he wrote to Herzen; a romantic and inaccurate document,
intended to mislead, penned in a tone of assumed humility and
hypocritical subserviency. But it gave no names, and betrayed no one. It
was, as Polonski said, a Machiavellian masterpiece.
Bakunin was
disappointed in his expectations. Nicholas, dissatisfied with the
confession, gave orders that the prisoner was to remain where he was
till further notice. When, in the end, after the death of the tsar,
Bakunin was at least partially freed by being sent to Siberia, memories
of this mysterious document haunted him, filled him with shame, anxiety,
and despair. He was continually dreading that its publication would
expose him to ridicule, hatred, and accusations of dishonourable
conduct. These fears made him irritable, unduly sensitive. The worst of
it was that the emissaries of the tsarist police, who followed him
whithersoever he went, and were always on the watch to counteract his
revolutionary machinations, threatened again and again to publish his
confession, which they had ready for circulation printed as a pamphlet.
This happened in Stockholm, in Lyons, and in Italy. Bakunin naturally
believed that some knowledge of the confession had filtered through to
his adversaries in the International, and he trembled to think of the
day when the story would be spread far and wide and his name as a
revolutionist would be tarnished for ever.
¶In actual fact, his opponents had heard nothing of the confession.
They continued to spread calumnies about him, none the less. The rebuke
given to Liebknecht had no more than a temporary effect. Even Marx was
not ashamed to disseminate suspicion again and again, and in the
obscurity of private correspondence to besmirch the honour of the
detested rival. In this enterprise, Marx accepted the unclean assistance
of a Russian named Utin, who to begin with, a vain and talkative
man,
had forced himself on Bakunin, subsequently, when he met with a
rebuff, to persecute the latter by spreading abroad malicious reports
about him. This same Utin, after Bakunin had removed from Geneva to
Locarno, was able by interminable underground machinations to bring
about a split in the Genevese section, and to get the editorship of
Egalité
into his hands. Under Marx’s protection, he became the
go-between in promoting the policy of the General Council of the
International. On the strength of information mainly received from Utin,
Marx, on March 28, 1870, through the instrumentality of his friend
Kugelmann in Hanover, sent a confidential communication
to the
Brunswick executive of the Eisenach Labour Party–the party that had been
founded in 1869 by Liebknecht and Bebel as a rival of the General Union
of German Workers. In this confidential communication, Marx not only
revived the disproved charges against Bakunin, but added a new
revelation.
He declared that Bakunin, after Herzen’s death, had
embezzled an annual subvention of 25,000 francs, which Herzen had
intended to be used for propaganda purposes by a friendly
pseudo-socialist panslavist party in Russia.
There was not a word of
truth in the story. It is mentioned only to show the depths to which
those stooped who were engaged in this disastrous quarrel among
brethren.
¶It is necessary to point out, however, that Bakunin never tried to
pay Marx back in the same coin. What Mehring says of Bakunin’s writings,
that we shall look in them in vain for any trace of venom towards the
General Council or towards Marx,
applies with equal force to all
Bakunin’s doings in this fierce campaign. Notwithstanding his
unfortunate experiences, he preserved so keen a sense of justice and so
splendid a magnanimity, that on January 28, 1872, writing to the
internationalists of the Romagna about Marx and the Marxists, he was
able to say: Fortunately for the International there existed in
London a group of men who were extremely devoted to the great
association, and who were, in the true sense of the words, the real
founders and initiators of that body. I speak of the small group of
Germans whose leader is Karl Marx. These estimable persons regard me as
an enemy, and maltreat me as such whenever and wherever they can. They
are greatly mistaken. I am in no respect their enemy, and it gives me on
the contrary lively satisfaction when I am able to do them justice. I
often have an opportunity of doing so, for I regard them as genuinely
important and estimable persons, in respect both of intelligence and
knowledge, and also in respect of their passionate devotion to the cause
of the proletariat and of a loyalty to that cause which has withstood
every possible test–a devotion and a loyalty which have been proved by
the achievements of twenty years. Marx is the supreme economic and
socialist genius of our day. In the course of my life, I have come into
contact with a great many learned men, but I know no one else who is so
profoundly learned as he. Engels, who is now secretary for Italy and
Spain, Marx’s friend and pupil, is also a man of outstanding
intelligence. As long ago as 1846 and 1848, working together, they
founded the party of the German communists, and their activities in this
direction have continued ever since. Marx edited the profound and
admirable Preamble to the Provisional Rules of the International, and
gave a body to the instinctively unanimous aspirations of the
proletariat of nearly all countries of Europe, in that, during the years
1863-1864 he conceived the idea of the International and effected its
establishment. These are great and splendid services, and it would be
very ungrateful of us if we were reluctant to acknowledge their
importance.
¶To the obvious question why, since these things were so, there had been a breach between Bakunin and Marx, Bakunin, in the same epistle, gives the following answer: “Marx is an authoritarian and centralizing communist. He wants what we want: the complete triumph of economic and social equality, but he wants it in the State and through the State power, through the dictatorship of a very strong and, so to say, despotic provisional government, that is, by the negation of liberty. His economic ideal is the State as sole owner of the land and of all kinds of capital, cultivating the land through well-paid agricultural associations under the management of State engineers, and controlling all industrial and commercial associations with State capital.
¶“We want the same triumph of economic and social equality through the abolition of the State, and of all that passes by the name of law (which, in our view, is the permanent negation of human rights). We want the reconstruction of society, and the unification of mankind, to be achieved, not from above downwards, by any sort of authority, or by socialist officials, engineers, and other accredited men of learning–but from below upwards, by the free federation of all kinds of workers’ associations liberated from the yoke of the State.
¶“You see that two theories could hardly be more sharply opposed to one another than ours are. But there is another difference between us, a purely personal one.
¶Marx has two odious faults: he is vain and jealous. He detested
Proudhon, simply because Proudhon’s great name and well-deserved
reputation were prejudicial to him. There is no term of abuse that Marx
has failed to apply to Proudhon. Marx is egotistical to the pitch of
insanity. He talks of
my ideas,
and cannot understand that ideas
belong to no one in particular, but that, if we look carefully, we shall
always find that the best and greatest ideas are the product of the
instinctive labour of all. … Marx, who was already constitutionally
inclined towards self-glorification, was definitively corrupted by the
idolization of his disciples, who have made a sort of doctrinaire pope
out of him. Nothing can be more disastrous to the mental and moral
health of a man, even though he be extremely intelligent, than to be
idolized and regarded as infallible. All this has made Marx even more
egotistical, so that he is beginning to loathe every one who will not
bow the neck before him.
¶Insuperable material differences and invincible personal antagonisms combined to form the abyss which separated the life work of these two men. Fundamentally, the severance was a forcible laceration of their intrinsic interconnexion, and the hatred each felt for the other was a hatred that sprang from love. That is why the severance and the hatred were so distressing and so disastrous for both.
§ The Franco-German War and the Commune
¶The first half of the year 1870 was characterized by perpetual quarrels, jealous struggles, and polemical wrangles between the International and the Alliance, especially between the opposing parties in the region of the Jura. The climax of the bickerings occurred at the congress of the Alliance held in La Chaux de Fonds, on April 4, 1870, at which such violent differences of opinion became manifest within the Alliance that it broke up, and the majority and the minority continued their discussions in two separate congresses. The 1870 congress of the International was to have been held in Paris. Since, however, the Bonapartist police had inaugurated legal proceedings against the members of the International, and was staging a great public trial, the General Council summoned the congress for September 5th in Mainz.
¶But in July 1870, the Franco-German war broke out. In an address
issued by the General Council under date July 23rd, Marx expounded the
position of the International towards this war, which was described as a
consequence of the war of 1866, and as an amended edition of the coup
d’état of December 1851.
He strongly opposed the attitude of
Prussia. On the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put
Germany to the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis
Bonaparte to wage war upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired
with that very same Louis Bonaparte. … After her victory, did Prussia
dream one moment of opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just
the contrary. While carefully preserving all the native beauties of her
old system, she superadded all the tricks of the Second Empire. … The
Bonapartist regime, which till then only flourished on one side of the
Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on the other. From such a state of
things, what else could result but war?
What inference was to be
drawn as far as the working class was concerned? It must be on its guard
lest the defensive character of the war should be transformed into an
annexationist one. If the German working class allows the present war
to lose its strictly defensive character, and to degenerate into a war
against the French people, victory or defeat will prove alike
disastrous.
¶In a second address, under date September 9th, Marx showed that
Germany had no historical claim upon Alsace-Lorraine, and did not need
these provinces for the protection of the country as a whole against
France. If limits are to be fixed by military interests, there will
be no end to claims, because every military line is necessarily faulty,
and may be improved by an flexing some more outlying territory; and,
moreover, they can never be fixed finally and fairly, because they
always must be imposed by the conqueror upon the conquered, and
consequently carry within them the seed of fresh wars.
He expressly
referred to the interests of the working class, which must be given due
consideration after the war. The German working class have resolutely
supported the war, which it was not in their power to prevent, as a war
for German independence and the liberation of France and Europe from
that pestilential incubus, the Second Empire. It was the German workmen
who, together with the rural labourers, furnished the sinews and muscles
of heroic hosts, leaving behind their half-starved families. Decimated
by the battles abroad, they will be once more decimated by misery at
home. In their turn they are now coming forward to ask for
guarantees
–guarantees that their immense sacrifices have not been
brought in vain, that they have conquered liberty, that the victory over
the imperialist armies will not, as in 1815, be turned into the defeat
of the German people; and as the first of these guarantees, they claim
an honourable peace for France, and the recognition of the French
republic. … The French working class moves, therefore, under
circumstances of extreme difficulty. … They have not to recapitulate the
past, but to build up the future. Let them calmly and resolutely improve
the opportunities of republican liberty, for the work of their own class
organization. It will gift them with fresh Herculean powers for the
regeneration of France, and for our common task–the emancipation of
labour. Upon their energies and wisdom hinges the fate of the
republic.
¶The establishment of the French republic did not, indeed, as yet
signify the taking over of political power by the working class, but
only the proclamation of bourgeois interests, above all in respect of
the question, who was to pay the gigantic war indemnity demanded by
Prussia. The bourgeois class was determined that the burden of the war
should on no account fall upon its shoulders, but should be shifted to
those of the proletariat. With this end in view, it came to an
understanding with the German bourgeoisie (which it had just been
fighting) against the proletariat (which had just been fighting as its
ally). The negotiations between Thiers and Bismarck meant to the French
workers: Your money or your life!
When the Commune was proclaimed
on March 18, 1871, the Parisian proletariat, as vanguard of the French
workers, presented a bold front against the bourgeois highwaymen. It
drove its adversaries to Versailles, and engaged upon a life-or-death
struggle.
¶On March 19, 1871, the first number of the Journal Officiel,
the organ of the Commune, was published in Paris. Next day, in a leading
article, we read: Amid the defeats and the treachery of the ruling
class, the proletarians of Paris have understood that the hour has
struck when they must save the situation by taking the conduct of public
affairs into their own hands. … They have understood that it is their
highest duty and their absolute right to make themselves masters of
their own fate, and to seize the powers of government.
Marx was
overflowing with enthusiasm. Writing to Kugelmann, under date April
12th, he said: What elasticity, what historical initiative, what
capacity for self-sacrifice in these Parisians! After six months’
starvation and ruination by internal treachery, even more than by the
enemy without, they rise under the Prussian bayonets as if there had
never been a war between France and Germany, and as if there were no
enemy outside the gates of Paris. History offers no parallel to this
greatness!
¶At the communal elections held in Paris on March 26, 1871, 72 socialists were elected (out of a total membership of 92), among whom were members of the International. Although, in subsequent elections, many more Internationalists became members of the Commune, they did not gain a majority. The tactics were decided by the radicals and the Blanquists. Though there were members of the International in the most important administrative bodies, and though these revolutionists distinguished themselves by efficiency and by devotion to duty, the political influence of the International was restricted to the giving of occasional advice.
¶The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by
universal suffrage in various wards of the town, responsible and
revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally
workingmen, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The
Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and
legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of
the central government, the police was at once stripped of its political
attributes, and turned into the responsible and at all times revocable
agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the
administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public
service had to be done at workmen’s wages. The vested interests and the
representation allowances of the high dignitaries of State disappeared
along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to
be the private property of the tools of the central government. Not only
municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by
the State was laid into the hands of the Commune.
¶The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been
subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their
favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while
all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its
true secret was this. It was essentially a working-class government, the
product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating
class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the
economical emancipation of labour.
¶The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They
have no ready-made utopias to introduce by popular decree. They know
that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that
higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending, by its own
economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles,
through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and
men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the
new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is
pregnant. In the full consciousness of their historic mission, and with
the heroic resolve to act up to it, the working class can afford to
smile at the coarse invective of the gentlemen’s gentlemen with the pen
and inkhorn, and at the didactic patronage of well-wishing bourgeois
doctrinaires, pouring forth their ignorant platitudes and sectarian
crochets in the oracular tone of scientific infallibility.
¶When the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution into
its own hands; when plain workingmen for the first time dared to
infringe upon the governmental privilege of their ’natural superiors,
and, under circumstances of unexampled difficulty, performed their work
modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently–performed it at salaries the
highest of which barely amounted to one-fifth of what, according to high
scientific authority, is the minimum required for a secretary to a
certain metropolitan school board–the old world writhed in convulsions
of rage at the sight of the red flag, the symbol of the republic of
labour, floating over the Hotel de Ville.
¶In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents,
men of a different stamp; some of them survivors of, and devotees to,
past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but
preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by
the sheer force of tradition; others mere bawlers, who, by dint of
repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations
against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of
revolutionists of the first water. After March 18th, some such men did
also turn up, and in some cases contrived to play preeminent parts. As
far as their power went, they hampered the real action of the working
class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of
every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil; with time they
are shaken off; but time was not allowed to the Commune.
¶Owing to a number of grave tactical errors, owing to the lack alike
of a sufficiently definite aim and of adequate revolutionary
determination, and owing to internal dissensions, the Commune was not
equal to the performance of its historic mission. The Versaillese gained
the upper hand. If only the Commune had listened to my warnings,
wrote Marx to Professor Beesly. I advised its members to fortify the
northern side of the heights of Montmartre, the Prussian side; and they
still had time to do this. I told them that otherwise they would find
themselves in a mouse-trap. I denounced Pyat, Grousset, and Vésimier. I
begged them to dispatch instantly to London all the papers which could
compromise the members of the Committee of National Defence, so that the
savagery of the enemies of the Commune might to some extent be held in
check. This would in part have frustrated the plan of the
Versaillese.
Instead, during the last days of May 1871, the Commune
was overthrown and its defenders were massacred by the Parisian
bourgeoisie and the Versaillese troops.
¶The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its
lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against
their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as
undisguised savagery and lawless revenge. Each new crisis in the class
struggle between the appropriator and the producer brings out this fact
more glaringly. Even the atrocities of the bourgeois in June 1848 vanish
before the ineffable infamy of 1871.
¶To find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers and his bloodhounds,
we must go back to the times of Sulla and the two triumvirates of Rome.
The same wholesale slaughter in cold blood; the same disregard, in
massacre, of age and sex, the same system of torturing prisoners; the
same proscriptions, but this time of a whole class; the same savage hunt
after concealed leaders, lest one might escape; the same denunciations
of political and private enemies; the same indifference for the butchery
of entire strangers to the feud. There is but this difference, that the
Romans had no mitrailleuses for the dispatch, in the lump, of the
proscribed, and that they had not
the law in their hands,
nor on
their lips the cry of civilization.
¶Within a few days after the Commune had been drowned in the blood of the Parisian workers, Marx laid before the General Council of the International the draft of the Address it was to issue on The Civil War in France–the address from which the foregoing extracts have been taken. Brilliantly written, it is alive with revolutionary passion, and gives a masterly historical sketch of the Commune. At once a report and a criticism, simultaneously a justification and a work of propaganda, it presents a marvellously powerful picture of this volcanic outbreak, unique in the history of revolutions. It defends the honour of the Commune against the shameful injustice of its adversaries. It is a clarion call to arms against the bourgeoisie, a declaration of war whose menace rings through the decades and through the centuries.
§ End of the International
¶The Commune left three lessons for the European proletariat. First of
all it showed that the struggle of the working class against the
bourgeoisie must not be confined to the economic or industrial field,
but must take a political form as well. Secondly it showed that in
bourgeois national States this struggle could only be carried on upon
the platform of bourgeois politics, in parliament, the entry to which
must be secured by electoral campaigns. Thirdly it showed that the main
incidence of the political struggle had been transferred from France to
Germany, where the working class was rapidly acquiring political
impetus. Marx was quick to recognize the new features of the situation.
Writing to Kugelmann, he said: Through the fight in Paris, the
struggle of the working class against the capitalist class and the
capitalist State has entered upon a new phase. No matter how the affair
may end, a fresh starting-point of worldwide historical importance has
been won.
He was prompt, likewise, to do justice to the changed
situation.
¶He foresaw, however, that the Bakuninists inside the International would be a serious obstacle. The more definitely Marx became inclined to elaborate the tactics of a law-abiding policy, in conformity with the methods and trends of the bourgeois State, and the more he aimed at the conquest of the State instead of at the destruction of the State, the more must Bakunin and the Bakuninists consider that he was betraying the revolution, and the more, therefore, would they feel impelled to attack him. Consequently, he had made up his mind to clear the Bakuninist opposition out of the way.
¶With this, end in view, instead of summoning a regular congress of
the International, he arranged for a conference to be held in London,
paying no heed to protests from Geneva, the focus of intrigues and
quarrels.
The personnel of the conference was carefully chosen and
sifted. Since the General Council was represented by thirteen members,
and there were only ten additional delegates present, Marx was in
control from the first, and was able to ensure the passing of the
resolutions he wanted. The sessions were held from September 17th to
25th, and the work was done with compressed energy.
The General
Council was given increased power to deal with refractory organizations,
its dictatorial authority being thus notably enhanced. Then arrangements
were made for the change in tactics. Whereas in the Preamble to the
Provisional Rules it had been stated that the economical emancipation
of the working classes is therefore the great end to which every
political movement ought to be subordinate as a means,
the London
Conference adopted the following resolution: Considering that,
against this collective power of the propertied classes, the working
class cannot act as a class except by constituting itself into a
distinct political party, distinct from and opposed to all old parties
formed by the propertied classes; that this constitution of the working
class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the
triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end, the abolition of
classes; that the combination of forces which the working class has
already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to
serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of the
landlords and capitalists–this Conference recalls to the members of the
International that, in the militant state of the working class, its
economical movement and its political action are indissolubly
united.
The passing of this resolution implied the adoption of a
definite line against Bakunin. The instruction to Utin to collect
materials against Bakunin which would enable action to be taken against
the latter, was nothing more than a formal gesture, masking a fixed
determination to oust Bakunin from the International at all hazards.
¶The first result of the London Conference was to make the opposition consolidate its forces. In congress at Sonvillier, the Swiss Bakuninists decided to organize themselves as the Jura Federation, and to issue a circular to all sections of the International, protesting against the decisions of the London Conference, and demanding that a congress be summoned. The circular was widely supported in Italy and Spain, and aroused considerable sympathy in Belgium, France, and the United States. In London, the relations between the General Council and the trade unions had gradually become less intimate, and had at length been completely broken off. Odger, Lucraft, and other trade-union leaders, had resigned from the International. The Federal Council formed in accordance with a decision of the London Conference was soon at loggerheads with the General Council; and within the General Council itself there had appeared a majority and a minority faction which before long were at open war. Eccarius had resigned his position as secretary-general, and had quarrelled with Marx because Marx had accused him of conspiring with the American federalists. Jung was fiercely at odds with Engels, who had come to live in London in 1870, and was now a member of the General Council. Hales, finally, the new secretary-general, being also the leader of the newly founded Federal Council, entered into communication, without consulting the General Council, with the Spanish Federation, which had adopted the platform of the Alliance, and had expelled Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law. Thus the centre and headquarters of the International was rent with internal dissensions at the very time when it was threatened with formidable onslaughts from without.
¶Thus unfavourable were the omens when the Hague Congress opened on
September 2, 1872. The congress is a life-and-death question for the
International,
Marx had written to Kugelmann. Before I resign
from the General Council, I want at least to free the International from
disintegrating elements. Germany, therefore, must have as many
representatives as possible. Write to Hepner and tell him that I shall
be glad if he will procure for you a mandate as delegate.
Thus Marx
was carefully organizing the personnel of the Hague Congress just as he
had carefully organized that of the London Conference. This was to be a
decisive battle, in which he would gain a definitive victory over
Bakunin. He wanted to rid the International of all dangerous elements.
As soon as the purge had been effected, he intended to withdraw from the
General Council.
¶There were sixty-seven persons at the congress. Two more had turned up, but their credentials were rejected. This was the first congress at which Marx was present; he came as member of the General Council, and had, besides, three mandates (Mainz, Leipzig, and New York). Engels, in addition to his vote as member of the General Council, had a vote for Breslau and a vote for New York. In these circumstances it was not difficult for Marx to control a majority, especially seeing that Bakunin’s Italian supporters had abstained from sending delegates. Marx was sure of a victory before the fight had begun. Bakunin was not there. The cause of the Jura Federation was represented by James Guillaume.
¶The congress did not get down to solid business until the fourth day.
Then the dictatorial powers of the General Council were not merely
maintained, but were considerably augmented. This was decided by 36
votes against 6, with 15 abstentions, after Marx had made a long speech
in favour of the change. Then, since Marx and Engels were afraid of
Blanquist influence in London, the seat of the General Council was
transferred from London to New York. (The French delegates, greatly
disgruntled by this, declared in a pamphlet they subsequently issued
that the International summoned to do its duty, refused. It evaded
the revolution, and took flight across the Atlantic ocean.
) As
regards the question of political action, a resolution was adopted
declaring the organization of the proletariat as a political
party
to be indispensable,
and describing the conquest of
political power
as the prime duty of the proletariat.
A
committee was appointed, to sit in camera, in order to inquire into the
conflict with the Alliance. This committee, after Guillaume had refused
to appear before it in order to defend the Alliance, declared that that
body had been founded as a secret organization within the International,
that Bakunin had been responsible for its foundation, and that
Citizen Bakunin has resorted to fraudulent manoeuvres in order to
possess himself of other people’s property.
The committee therefore
urged the congress: (1) to expel Citizen Bakunin from the
International Workingmen’s Association; (2) likewise to expel Citizens
Guillaume and Schwitzguébel.
When the motion for Bakunin’s expulsion
was put, it was carried by 27 votes against 7, with 8 abstentions; and
Guillaume’s expulsion was carried by 25 votes against 9, with 9
abstentions.
¶Marx had won the victory over his detested adversary. Not content with breaking the political ties between himself and Bakunin, he had emphasized his animus by securing that Bakunin should be publicly stigmatized as an embezzler. It was said that Bakunin had failed to repay an advance of three hundred roubles made him for the translation of Capital into Russian. Such was the rope used by Marx to hang his enemy–Marx who had been involved in a thousand shady financial transactions, and had lived all his life as pensioner on a friend’s bounty.
¶Marx was justified in promoting the adoption of a policy which, he was convinced, could alone lead to the liberation of the proletariat. He was right, too, in insisting that the International must free itself from Bakunin, seeing that Bakunin was a declared opponent of this policy, and was doing all he could to counteract it. But that Marx, in order to secure this concrete triumph, should have stooped to personal calumny, is a condemnation, not of Bakunin, but of Marx himself. We have here a deplorable demonstration of the disastrous trait in his character which made him regard all the problems of politics, the labour movement, and the revolution, from the outlook of their bearing on his personal credit. A council of international revolutionaries, whose main business in life is to blow to smithereens the world of private property and bourgeois morality, is induced by its leader to pass a vote of reprobation and a sentence of expulsion upon one of the most brilliant, heroic, and fascinating of revolutionists the world has ever known, on the ground that this revolutionist has misappropriated bourgeois property. Is it possible to point to anything more painfully absurd in the whole story of the human race?
¶A victory thus secured could bear no fruit. Now that the national
labour organizations were taking shape as political parties, and were
assuming functions within the framework of the political system of the
extant State, there was no longer any justification for the existence of
the International. Subordination to the purposes of an extra-national
centre could not fail, at this juncture, to conflict with the national
independence of the labour parties, and, for the time being, to prove an
obstacle to their development. Bakunin had foreseen this. In a
contribution to the Liberté
of Brussels, in October 1872, he
wrote: I regard Monsieur Marx as an extremely earnest, if not always
perfectly upright revolutionist, as one who honestly desires the
uplifting of the masses, and I ask myself how he can fail to see that
the establishment of a universal, collective, or individual
dictatorship, which is designed to carry out, as it were, the work of a
chief engineer of the world revolution, regulating and guiding the
insurrectional movement of the masses in all countries much as a machine
might–that, I say, the establishment of such a dictatorship would alone
suffice to paralyse and falsify all popular movements? What man, or what
group of men, however richly endowed with genius, can venture to flatter
themselves–in view of the enormous quantity of interests, trends, and
activities, which are so different in every country, every province,
every locality, every occupation, and whose huge ensemble, united but
not made homogeneous by a great common aspiration and by certain
principles which have now entered into the consciousness of the masses,
constitutes the coming social revolution–who can flatter themselves that
they can grasp and understand this huge ensemble?
¶Indeed, as time went on, the threads of political interconnexion and
revolutionary leadership which had been concentrated in the
International were passing more and more hopelessly out of Marx’s hands.
The transference of the General Council to New York proved to have been
an egregious error. In London, the International remained active only as
a heap of ruins, for the mastery of which a swarm of dwarf potentates
were ceaselessly bickering. Marx barely escaped the vengeful destiny of
being expelled. At length, when the last congress began at Geneva on
September 8, 1873–a congress for which, as Becker said in a letter to
Sorge, he had conjured up, out of the ground, as it were, thirteen
delegates
out of the thirty present–Marx had to admit, not only that
the congress was a complete fiasco, but also that the International had
collapsed.
¶But Marx could not bring himself to retire from the stage without
throwing a last handful of mud at Bakunin. The Hague Congress had
instructed the committee that examined the charges against Bakunin to
publish the results of the investigation. Since the committee had failed
to carry out this behest, Marx, in conjunction with Engels and Lafargue,
undertook to elaborate a report. It was published under the title
Die Allianz der sozialistischen Demokratie und die Internationale
Arbeiter-Assoziation [The Alliance of the Socialist Democracy and
the International Workingmen’s Association], a malicious pamphlet, in
which almost every line is a distortion, almost every allegation an
injustice, almost every argument a falsification, and almost every word
an untruth. It furnishes pitiless evidence of the way in which years of
rivalry, years of struggle poisoned by vanity, hate, and the lust for
power, had corrupted and demoralized the genius for controversy which
radiates so magnificently from Marx’s earlier writings. Even Mehring,
who is invariably an indulgent judge where Marx is concerned, places
this work at the lowest rank
among all those published by Marx
and Engels.
¶Bakunin, an old man with one foot in the grave, suffering,
disappointed, broken, embittered, was content to meet the attack with
grieved resignation. Writing in the Journal de Genève,
he said:
This new pamphlet is a formal denunciation, a gendarme denunciation
directed against a society known by the name of the Alliance. Urged
onward by furious hatred, Monsieur Marx has not been afraid to box his
own ears, by undertaking to expose himself before the public in the role
of a sneakish and calumniatory police agent. That is his own affair;
and, since he likes the job, let him have it. … This has given me an
intense loathing of public life. I have had enough of it, and, after
devoting all my days to the struggle, I am weary. … Let other and
younger persons put their hands to the work. For my own part, I no
longer feel strong enough, and perhaps also I lack the necessary
confidence to go on trying to roll the stone of Sisyphus uphill against
the universally triumphant reaction. I therefore withdraw from the
arena, and ask only one thing from my dear
contemporaries–oblivion.
¶When Bakunin died on July 1, 1876, no trace of the Marxian International remained.
§ The Great Achievement
¶The painful feelings aroused in us by Marx’s campaign against Bakunin, and the moral judgments we may be inclined to pronounce on the former’s uncomradely behaviour, must not lead us astray, must not incline us to overlook how immense an achievement was the foundation of the International, must not blind us to the fact that the appearance of that organization marks an epoch.
¶The economic situation that prevailed throughout Europe in the sixties had brought proletarian masses into being every where, and was in itself an incitement to the workers. Nevertheless, the voicing of a call to arms was the outcome of Marx’s genius, and the mobilization of the awakening forces by the stimulus of international contact was a historic deed which will always remain associated with his name. In the perspective of history, it is of minor importance in what tone and in what rhythm the clarion call was sounded. Only the chronicler need care today to ascertain how much in the programmes and rules and regulations of the first labour battalions was true or false, practicable or impracticable. Marx, with clear vision and sound insight, discerned along what lines and in accordance with what theoretical principles the advance must be made; and this cannot but increase the admiration we feel for his shrewdness and his breadth of vision. By energetically safeguarding the proletariat against confusions, deviations, and misleadings, he did immense service, and saved the workers from many discouragements and disappointments. If Marx were to fulfil the task which he believed to be his historic mission, he had to take his course straight ahead, relentlessly and brutally, regardless of feelings and sentiments, honour and morality, ties of friendship or affection. If, in doing this, he had to forfeit much which is conventionally regarded as virtuous, had to lose the right to be considered what by traditional standards is spoken of as an estimable character, had to dispense with the attributes of a fine humaneness–this was undoubtedly the greatest of the many sacrifices he had to make in the cause. It was not the aim of his endeavour to be a man of noble disposition, a man shining with all the virtues. His business was, amid the turmoil of the moving forces of his age, to secure the triumph of subjecting these forces to his own intellectual guidance and control. The matter at stake was the victory of head over heart, the establishment of the superiority of the intellect in the configuration of life and the regulation of human affairs.
¶Herein, Marx was the most typical representative of the epoch in which he originated and acted.
¶The bourgeois era is ideologically characterized by a supreme
development of individualism. Previously, individuality had been
cabined, cribbed, and confined by family traditions, vestiges of
feudalism, communal ties of all kinds; but at the opening of the new era
it was definitively freed by the emancipating and isolating power of
money, so that its independence became boundless. The pure ego, absolute
individuality, was born, no longer isolated, but as a mass phenomenon.
Fichte, the typical representative of philosophical individualism, drank
champagne for the first time in his life when his little son said
I
for the first time. The ego is the final and unconditional
repudiation of the community. Individuality becomes the sole master of
the world, and mirrors itself in the image of the divine.
¶But this extremity of isolation, in which all ties with fellow men are severed, implies also the utmost peril, and therewith the utmost insecurity. The world of the community encountered every danger and every insecurity with the instrument of communal activity. As the individual awakened, and cut loose from the collectivity, it was necessary for him, since he had to maintain himself amid grave perils, to increase and develop within his own individuality all the forces of defence, all possible capacities for safeguarding, every kind of means for keeping himself going. Until now, with the aid of affects, feelings, moods, with the assistance of fantasy, suggestion, and ecstasy, individuals had been able to achieve transient or sometimes merely apparent community. With the definitive constitution of the individual, however, with the emergence of unconditional isolation, these expedients ceased to be effective. The individual, thrown back on himself, had for his maintenance to disclose and to apply the last reserves of his energy. He set the intellect free, and made of it the chief instrument of his safeguarding.
¶Thus the bourgeois phase inaugurates itself with the appearance of a vigorous trend towards intellectualization and rationalization. In the world of phenomena and relations, as time goes on, the supreme question is, what can justify itself before the tribunal of the intellect? Religion, hitherto human experience finding expression in works, is rationalized by Luther to a bare faith. Nature, the creation of God and a paradise of wonders and mysteries, is disclosed by science, measured, classified, brought under the dominion of law, and handed over to the exploitation of technique. Society, which man has hitherto regarded as a harmonious structure of will and work, requirement and performance, necessity and action, is made the object of the investigating, analysing, and theorizing human understanding; is fixed as a system, labelled as an evolutionary phase, and rationalized in the law-abidingness of its dynamic. Socialism, as the great hope and the fascinating dream of a complete liberation from the most arduous and most widely generalized needs of life, socialism which has hitherto been regarded as the outcome of human sacrifice and labour, the result of unselfish readiness, self-sacrificing education, noble zeal, and the boundless development of all the spiritual powers–this socialism of the utopists, fanciful enthusiasts, and pure fools–becomes the object of logical demonstration, the upshot of a historical process developed in accordance with fixed laws, something that can be fully grasped by the intelligence, the product of a naturally and scientifically demonstrable necessity.
¶Thus we proceed from Luther by way of Fichte, Adam Smith, Humboldt, and Darwin, in a direct line to Karl Marx. In this connexion, it is worth remembering that Marx lived in England, where economic life had already assumed a highly developed capitalist form. It was in Britain that political economy first came into being, as a typical science of the capitalist age. It was there that utilitarianism wove a philosophical mantle for capitalist interests. It was there that liberalism was born as the political doctrine of capitalism. It was there, too, that Marx first applied the methods of bourgeois intellectualism to the study of social happenings. Under his treatment, socialism for the first time ceased to be an affair of faith, hope, fantasy, the dream imagination; ceased to be a construction of the arbitrary creative will of man. His rationalist investigation supplied glimpses into the movements of history and the structure of social phenomena, just as the anatomist’s scalpel was doing into the functions of the body, just as the formula of the mathematician was doing into the mosaic of numbers, the microscope of the biologist into the cell-structure of the tissues, the analysis of the chemist into the mysteries of substance. Feelings, emotional heart-beats, spiritual stirrings, and ethical postulates no longer have anything to do with the case. The realm of fantasy is excluded. Ordinary humanity is no longer current. Just as in the world of commodities nothing counts but cash payment, so in the world of social forms and relations nothing counts but the exactly demonstrable, the scientifically proved, and in the world of the ideologies nothing counts but the concept as a coin minted by the intellect. In this way socialism becomes the last link in a chain of proof, all of whose links are strung together in accordance with the laws of logic; becomes the Z of an alphabet beginning with A; becomes the precipitate of a process of fermentation which proceeds in accordance with an ascertained formula; becomes the unknown x of a problem which can be mathematically worked out. Socialism is in this way lifted from the lowlands of mysticism, utopism, millenarianism, and a simple-minded faith in salvation, into the sphere of science. It quits the realm of religion, sectarian magic, charlatanry, and social quackery, to be consecrated by the approval of the intellect, to be legitimized academically. Taking its place in the domain of exact knowledge, it is ranged upon the same level as the natural sciences.
¶Such was the immense achievement of Marx–to have effected this scientific ennoblement of socialism! To that task he devoted the greatest number of his years, the ripest of his energies, and the utmost of his diligence. To the sphere of immediate practice, to the International, he gave only part of his attention and energy during less than a decade, whereas to the performance of his task in the domain of theory he addressed himself with the self-sacrifice and the indefatigability of a worker bee for nearly forty years.
¶The International had fulfilled its role as vehicle of the labour movement within a very short time of its foundation.
¶Socialist theory, on the other hand, as the spiritual ferment of the movement, had only just begun to get to work when the masses were first set in motion. Since then, operating powerfully and unrestingly down to the present hour, it has helped the proletariat to climb to a point at which the workers have become the decisive factor of history.
¶Marx’s theory, known for short as Marxism, takes indisputable precedence of all other socialist theories, and has had a decisive influence upon the life and struggles of the modern proletariat. It is today almost the only determinative trend of the proletarian class, almost the only one that is achieving realization in a revolutionary direction.
¶The driving force of this trend is the materialist interpretation of history.
§ The Materialist Interpretation of History
¶The Communist Manifesto contained the first draft of scientific socialism–sketchy, it is true, but precise. Studying this draft, we can realize how far the plan to write a great politico-economic work on the capitalist method of production had already matured. A partial contribution to the carrying out of this design was made by Marx in the lectures on Wage Labour and Capital which he delivered to the Workers’ Educational Society in Brussels. During the decade that followed, his work was continually being interrupted by indisposition or other unfavourable circumstances, and not until 1858 was he able to proceed further with the elaboration of his materials. In 1859 he was able to publish his Kritik der politischen Ökonomie.
¶For the moment, our only interest in this book is in the preface, where Marx, in a survey of the evolution of his scientific thought, presents the first connected account of his method of materialistic interpretation of history.
¶My study of the Hegelian philosophy of right led me to understand
that legal relations and forms of State are not to be comprehended out
of themselves, nor yet out of the so-called general evolution of the
human mind, but are, rather, rooted in the material conditions of life,
whose totality Hegel, following the example of English and French
eighteenth-century writers, subsumed under the name of
civil
society
; but that the anatomy of civil society was to be sought in
political economy. … The general result at which I arrived, the result
which, once achieved, served as guiding principle of my studies, may be
formulated as follows. In the social production which human beings carry
on, they enter into definite relations which are determined, that is to
say, independent of their will–productive relations which correspond to
a definite evolutionary phase of the material forces of production. The
totality of these productive relations forms the economic structure of
society, the real basis upon which a legal and political superstructure
develops and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond.
The mode of production of material life determines the general character
of the social, political, and intellectual processes of life. It is not
the consciousness of human beings that determines their existence, but,
conversely, it is their social existence that determines their
consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material
productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing
productive relations, or (to express the matter in legal terminology)
with the property relations within which they have hitherto moved. These
relations, which have previously been developmental forms of the
productive forces, now become metamorphosed into fetters upon
production. A period of social revolutions then begins. Concomitantly
with the change in the economic foundation, the whole gigantic
superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. When we contemplate
such transformations, we must always distinguish: on the one hand,
between the material changes in the economic conditions of production,
changes which can be watched and recorded with all the precision proper
to natural science; and, on the other, the legal, political, religious,
artistic, or philosophical forms (in a word, the ideological forms) in
which human beings become aware of this conflict and fight it to an
issue. Just as little as we form an opinion of an individual in
accordance with what he thinks of himself, just so little can we
appraise a revolutionary epoch in accordance with its own consciousness
of itself; for we have to explain this consciousness as the outcome of
the contradictions of material life, of the extant conflict between
social productive forces and productive relations. No type of social
structure ever perishes, until there have been developed all the
productive forces for which it has room; and new and higher forces of
production never appear upon the scene, until the material conditions of
existence requisite for their development have matured within the womb
of the old society. That is why mankind never sets itself any tasks
which it is not able to perform; for, when we look closely into the
matter, we shall always find that the demand for the new enterprise only
arises when the material conditions of existence are ripe for its
successful performance–or at any rate have begun to ripen. In broad
outline we can describe the Asiatic, the classical, the feudal, and the
modern (capitalist) forms of production, as progressive epochs in the
economic development of society. Bourgeois relations of production are
the last of the antagonistic forms of the social process of
production–antagonistic, not in the sense of individual antagonism, but
in the sense of an antagonism proceeding out of the social conditions in
the individual’s life; nevertheless the productive forces developing
within the womb of bourgeois society create simultaneously the material
conditions for the solution of this antagonism. Consequently, with this
formation of society, the primitive history of human society comes to an
end.
¶The foregoing sentences embody a classical statement of the fundamentals of the materialist interpretation of history. The idealist view, according to which the processes of history are the outcome of the unsearchable purposes of God, the expression of the activities of an objective world-spirit, or the achievements of heroic, almost superhuman, divinely endowed personalities, had thus been superseded and discarded.
¶The change in outlooks was connected with the great transformation
that had been taking place in social life. In a world where all things
were assuming the form of commodities, and where all the phenomena of
the mental and spiritual life were acquiring circumstantiality, it was
becoming less and less possible for the idea
to maintain its
credit as the motive force of history. When (as was now obvious in
England), behind the theses of philosophy, the postulates of ethics, and
the doctrines of politics, the material interests of the bourgeoisie
could be plainly seen at work, it had become natural to look upon
economic interests as the general determinants of all happenings, all
changes in the world of thought, and all the phases of history.
¶Day by day, Marx’s experiences in the environing world taught him to
how preponderating a degree economic factors condition the lives and
activities of human beings. He was acquainted, too, with the writings of
Saint-Simon and Adam Smith, whose theories bordered on that of the
materialist interpretation of history. Soon, therefore, it became clear
to him that economics were the motive force
of history, in this
sense, that the development of economic life brought about changes in
the institutions of society, the forms of the State, social structures,
ideologies, and ideals, these latter following the transformations of
the former. The changes which human beings effect in the ways by which
they satisfy their material needs are attended by changes in social
forms, legal institutions, the principles of State, scientific systems,
moral ideas, artistic ideals. To simplify matters into a vivid formula,
the social and ideological superstructure of any epoch is upbuilded upon
the economic foundation of the time.
¶This foundation is in part supplied ready-made to men, as climate, the fertility of the soil, water supply, the treasures of the earth. Another part of the foundation consists of the traditional technique with the aid of which human beings get to work upon the gifts and the productive forces of nature in order to turn these to human account. But for this it is necessary that human beings should make a further contribution: their more or less developed powers of work, their formative capacities, their mentality, their language, their powers of mental representation, their mind. Natural forces and human forces contribute to the joint effect, and the concrete expression of both combined comprises the relations of production. The general significance of production, as achieved in the cauldron of productive relations by means of the forces of production, is the control of the world in the interests of human beings, and the safeguarding of mankind against the hostile powers which threaten its existence. The forces of production and the relations of production are in a perpetual interplay of mutual dependence, each determining the other. The forces of production are not dead matter, and the relations of production are not a rigid framework. Their life flames up, their forms are transmuted, their content is fertilized, as they unceasingly act on one another in the dialectical process.
¶The fulfillers, the executors, of this process are human beings. Furthermore, human beings fulfil the process, not as lifeless machines, but as creatures animated with living consciousness.
¶Consciousness receives its directives from the necessities of the process. In turn, however, it reacts formatively and purposefully upon the process. Thus the ideological life of mankind becomes an image of mobile reality; and reflexes from the ideological content of human consciousness find their way back into reality. Religion, science, morality, politics, legislation, education, and art, receive their content and their form from the procreative power of the material conditions and the economic necessities of their time. They make pictures, sketch systems, fix values, establish postulates; and they introduce ideas into the consciousness of men. Then, this mental world, itself primarily a consequence, becomes in its turn a cause. From it there radiates a modifying, a formative, an ordering energy, which plays its joint part within the sphere of men’s lives–that sphere in which men are perpetually trying to safeguard their position.
¶The materialist interpretation or conception of history has never
consisted wholly and exclusively of the gross and commonplace view that
hunger alone, eagerness to satisfy the material needs of the stomach, is
the driving force of history. But the materialist conception of history
certainly arises out of the elementary, recognition that human beings
(as Engels said in his address at Marx’s funeral) must have food and
drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest
themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like.
¶The supporters of the materialist interpretation of history have never been so one-sided as to declare that economic forces are the only forces that make history. What they have always, and most emphatically, contended is that, among the factors of history, economic forces have the last word.
¶The initiators of the materialist interpretation of history never advocated that crudely mechanical form of materialism, according to which the motive force of history is exclusively derived from the dead materiality of things, so that there can be no place in the world of happenings for the functions of the mind. On the contrary, Marx vigorously opposed the misleading half-heartedness and the metaphysical spurious enlightenment of so-called naturalism–as we see, in especial, in the Theses on Feuerbach. He always insisted that, not lifeless things, but living met are the sustainers of the evolutionary process.
¶Those who advocated the materialist interpretation of history never
denied the influence of the mind, never ignored the power of ideas,
never under-estimated the importance of the mental or spiritual factor
in the course of history. On the contrary, when recognizing that history
is made by human beings, they recognized in these human beings the
importance of all human attributes, including, therefore, mind,
intelligence, consciousness, and ideas. What they were up in arms
against was the notion that the phenomena of a purely mental world, as
set apart by German ideologists in the form of an absolute idea,
a moral ego,
or something of the kind, should be regarded
primarily and abstractly as the essential factor of historical
evolution. In their view, neither, the idea nor matter was in the
beginning.
For them, all life was an inseparable and eternally
mobile interweaving and mutual conditioning of force and matter,
combined into an integral unity. And the human being who constituted the
core of this living whole was for them a social human being, one who had
countless interrelations with his fellows.
¶For the socialists of the days before Marx, socialism was not an evolutionary product, was not the outcome of a historico-dialectical process, but was the realization of an ethical demand, was something that had an aesthetic, a humanitarian, a philanthropic aim, was a scheme constructed in some one’s brain. As starting-point for their socialism they needed an ethic, a philosophy, a philanthropy, a psychology, or an aesthetic; but they did not need history, did not need any specific way of contemplating history. For them it was enough to know that there was poverty, and that poverty was due to exploitation. For them, therefore, the theory of political economy as stated by Ricardo was amply sufficient. Ricardo showed that capitalism is based upon exploitation, and consequently upon injustice. With shrewd insight, he already perceived in the capitalist system the potential elements of serious conflicts, and he even looked forward to the ultimate collapse of the system. Nevertheless, he did not dream of trying to do away with that system. Still farther from his sphere of thought was the assumption that the abolition of capitalism would occur as the outcome of an internal and inevitable economic development acting in conjunction with the class struggle.
¶To Marx the problem presented itself in a very different way. The materialist interpretation of history showed that the forms of society and the State, social institutions, human behaviour and human ideas, as these manifest themselves in the structural environment characteristic of a particular epoch, are dependent upon the economic relations peculiar to that epoch, and find therein the conditions of their realization. It was therefore incumbent on Marx to show that socialism was a logical outcome of socio-economic development. For this purpose, he had to study economics, the economics of is own day, the economics of industrial capitalism, in whose womb socialism was developing. His inquiries must be directed to discovering whether, out of the evolution of capitalism, there would organically and necessarily arise the economic basis and therewith the necessary conditions which would make the existence of socialism possible, indeed inevitable. He must reconstitute socialism by means of history and economics; must replace ethico-aesthetic socialism by historico-economic socialism.
§ Chapter 08: Achievement, Part 3
§ Das Kapital
¶The Kritik der politischen Ökonomie was published in 1859,
the year in which Darwin’s Origin of Species first appeared. It
was only a prelude to the great work which Marx had had on the stocks
for years, and whose final elaboration he was continually postponing. In
the preface to the Kritik, he writes: I regard the system of
bourgeois economics in this succession: capital, landed property, wage
labour; State, foreign trade, world market. Under the first three heads
I study the economic vital conditions of the three great classes into
which modern civil society is separated; the interconnexion of the three
other heads is obvious. … The whole material lies before me in the form
of monographs which I penned at widely separated periods for the
clarification of my own ideas, not for the press. Circumstances have
prevented my elaborating them into a connected whole in accordance with
the original plan.
¶When the Kritik der politischen Ökonomie had been published,
the author, examining his own work, speedily became aware that the
method of presentation could be improved, and he therefore decided to
incorporate the contents of the Kritik, after due elaboration,
in his new work Das Kapital. Thus the Critique forms
the first section of Capital. Here, however, we have not a mere
repetition, for the contents have been thoroughly reconsidered. In the
preface to the first edition of Capital, Marx writes: As far
as the nature of the subject matter rendered it possible, many points
that were merely alluded to in the earlier work have been more
comprehensively treated in the present one, whereas certain matters
treated in detail there find no more than cursory mention here.
¶The labours on the preparation of Capital had gone forward
very slowly. The vast abundance of the material concerning the history
of political economy which Marx had at his disposal in the British
Museum Reading Room had been a hindrance rather than a help. Frequent
interruptions by illness had occurred. His titanic activities on behalf
of the International had taken up much of his time. Then there had been
the endless money troubles, with all the vexation and waste of time they
involved, to interfere with the maintenance of a frame of mind suitable
for study and literary composition. Writing to Kugelmann in November
1864, Marx said: I believe that next year, at last, my work on
Capital (sixty sheets) will be ready for the press.
He was
mistaken. In a letter to Engels, eight months later, we read: As
regards my work, I will tell you how things really are. There are still
three chapters to write, in order to make the theoretical part (the
first three books) ready. Then there is still the fourth book to write,
the historical and literary one, which will be for me, comparatively
speaking, the easiest part, since all the main problems have been solved
in the first three books, so that this last one is more of the nature of
a recapitulation in a historical form. But I cannot make up my mind to
part with any of it until I have the whole in my hands. Whatever defects
they may have, it is the merit of my writings that they form an artistic
whole, and that is only attainable through my method of never sending
them to press until they are completed.
¶By January 1, 1866, Marx had got so far on with the work that he was
able to begin making a fair copy. He felt that he must finish it off
quickly, for the thing has become a perfect nightmare to me.
On
January 15th, he wrote to Kugelmann: As regards my book, I am now
spending twelve hours a day making a fair copy. I expect to bring the
manuscript myself to Hamburg in March, and shall then have a chance of
seeing you.
On February 13th, he wrote to Engels: As regards the
Thus also had the whole year of
1866 been spent, in hard and uninterrupted work, notwithstanding money
troubles, boils, and quarrels in the International. He could not finish
the job to his satisfaction. As early as August 1865, Engels had
written: damned book,
this is how the matter stands. It was finished in
the end of December. The discussion of land-rent alone, the penultimate
chapter, forms, in the present drafting, one book. I went to the Museum
in the daytime, and wrote at night.The day the manuscript goes to press, I shall get gloriously
drunk!
But he had to wait, to go on waiting, for the birth was a
difficult one, almost a torment.
¶At length, in March 1867, came the long desired day. I had made up
my mind,
wrote Marx to his friend, that you should not hear from
me again until I could announce to you that my book was ready, as it now
is.
To which Engels rejoined with a shout of delight: Hurrah! I
could not repress this exclamation when at length I read in black and
white that the first volume is ready, and that you are about to start
for Hamburg with it.
¶Yet there were difficulties about this voyage to Hamburg in order to
hand over the manuscript to the publisher, Otto Meissner. It was not
only that Marx was once more suffering from boils; he was short of
money. I must first of all,
he wrote to Engels, get my clothes
and watch out of pawn. Nor can I leave my family in their present need,
for they have not a penny, and our creditors are daily becoming more
vociferous.
As usual, Engels came to his aid: That sinews of war
may not be lacking, I am sending you seven five-pound notes, £35 in all.
… I hope the carbuncles are pretty well by now, and that the journey
will set you up once more altogether.
With the manuscript and money,
and free from illness, Marx was able at long last to set out.
¶On April 12th he reached Hamburg, went to see Meissner (a good
chap, with a Saxon accent
), and was able, after a brief
discussion, to arrange everything.
It was agreed that the
type-setting should be begun at once, Marx expressing his readiness to
correct the proofs while still in Germany: We clinked glasses, and he
declared himself
From Hamburg, Marx went to Hanover, being hospitably
received there by Kugelmann, a noted gynaecologist, delighted
to have made my esteemed
acquaintance.a splendid,
self-sacrificing, and thoroughly convinced
man. Marx stayed with
Kugelmann until the end of May.
¶Here he received from Engels a letter from which valuable conclusions
may be drawn. The writer pours out his heart concerning the troubles he
has had about Marx during all these years. The torments and birth-throes
which the book had caused, had, towards the last, reached the verge of
the intolerable. It has always seemed to me as if this damned book at
which you have been toiling so long was the root cause of your troubles,
and that you never would or could get over them until the incubus was
shaken off. This eternally unfinished job crushed you to the earth
bodily, mentally, and financially; and I can perfectly well understand
that, having shaken off the nightmare, you feel quite another being,
especially since the world, now that you are coming into contact with it
again, looks to you a less melancholy place than of yore.
¶Marx, ever curt and repressed where matters of feeling were
concerned, was content to answer: Without you I should never have
been able to bring the work to an end, and I assure you that it has
always been a heavy load on my conscience that mainly on my account you
should have had to waste your splendid energies and allow them to rust
in a commercial career, and, over and above this, have had to share all
my petty miseries.
¶On August 16, 1867, when the proof of the last of the forty-nine
sheets had been corrected, Marx drew a breath of relief, and, at two
o’clock in the morning, sat down to write to his friend in Manchester a
few cordial words: I have you, and you alone, to thank that this was
possible. Without your self-sacrifice on my behalf, I could not possibly
have undertaken the tremendous labour necessary for the three volumes. I
embrace you, full of thanks.
¶Marx had every reason, both for the sigh of relief, and for expressing his gratitude to Engels. For, while what he wrote to Kugelmann is probably true, that never was any work brought into being under such difficult conditions as Capital; it is equally true that never, under the most difficult conditions, did a friendship show itself more genuine, deeper, and more devoted, than the friendship of Engels for Marx.
§ First Volume
¶The full title of the book is Capital, A Criticism of Political
Economy. This implies that it was planned as an investigation, as
an analysis, in the field of social science. The subject of study in
the present work,
says Marx in the preface, is the capitalist
method of production, and the relations of production and exchange
appropriate to that method.
The second volume would deal with the
process of the circulation of capital, and with the various forms
assumed by capital in the course of its development; the concluding
volume, the third, would be concerned with the history of capitalist
theory. Thus the general topic of the whole work was to be
capitalism.
¶When we speak of capitalism, we are referring to the epoch of
economic history and social evolution in which the whole of life has
become predominantly economic life, and in which all things, ideas, and
feelings have been transformed into commodities. The analysis of the
capitalist economic system must therefore begin with an analysis of the
commodity. Since in Marx’s day England was the classical land of
capitalism, it was from that country that he took all the examples he
used to illustrate his theory. But the land which is more developed
industrially shows to the land which is less developed nothing but the
picture of what will be the latter’s future.
In Germany, the
capitalist method of production did not ripen until its antagonistic
character had already manifested itself noisily in France and England by
struggles that had become historical.
¶Capital begins by telling us that the wealth of societies
in which the capitalist method of production prevails, takes the form of
an immense accumulation of commodities,
wherein individual
commodities are the elementary units. Our investigation must therefore
begin with an analysis of the commodity.
¶A commodity is something possessed of qualities which enable it to satisfy human wants, and something which, before it passes into consumption in order to satisfy these wants, has been subjected to an exchange. It is therefore made with an eye to exchange. It has already come into existence in pre-capitalist epochs. What characterizes the capitalist world is the exclusive predominance of a commodity economy.
¶In order to be capable of being exchanged in the market, the commodity must have an exchange-value. This exchange-value has a specific quantity, in contradistinction to use-value, which is one of the natural qualities of the commodity, determines its capacity for use, and manifests itself as a quality. Political economy is solely concerned with exchange-value. This latter expresses the social relation in which commodities stand one to another, and it is measured by the amount of average social labour which is represented in the commodity. The measure of the labour is the labour time, conceived as average social labour time independent of individual and exceptional circumstances.
¶In practice, no absolute determination of the exchange-value manifested in a commodity is possible. For the needs of economic life, a relative determination by comparison suffices. In early days, two different commodities presenting themselves in the market are compared one with another as regards exchange-value on the basis of an estimate of the labour time which experience has shown to be necessary to produce one and the other. In due course, however, all the commodities in the market come to have their values expressed in terms of one particular commodity, which is used permanently as the measure of value. This commodity, which ultimately serves all other commodities for the drawing of conclusions as to their normal worth, is termed money. A minted coin functions as a symbol for a fixed number of hours of social labour, in which the value of every commodity is reflected. Value, originating in the process of production, appears in the money form as price, differing a little from time to time owing to the oscillations of the market.
¶The commodity enters the market labelled with a price. Its material
individuality and quality form only the stimulus to exchange. With the
social estimate of their value, commodities have no concern whatever.
The commodity has become an abstraction. Once it has left the hand of
the producer and has forfeited its peculiarity as a real object, it has
ceased to be a product and to be controlled by man. It has acquired a
ghostly objectivity,
and leads a life peculiar to itself. At
the first glance, a commodity seems a commonplace sort of thing, one
easily understood. Analysis shows, however, that it is a very queer
thing indeed, full of metaphysical subtleties and theological
whimsies.
Cut adrift from the will of man, it ranges itself in
mysterious ranks, acquires or renounces capacity for exchange, acts in
accordance with laws of its own as player upon a phantom stage. In the
market reports, cotton rises,
copper falls,
maize is
lively,
coal is slack,
wheat is jumpy,
and mineral
oil shows tendencies.
The things have acquired an independent
life, and exhibit human gestures. Human beings, meanwhile, subordinate
themselves to the things, allow the things to dictate human actions,
become servants of the world of commodities. The commodity, though made
by human hands, has become an idol, a fetish, which holds sway over its
human makers. Marx speaks of the fetishistic character attaching to
commodities. This fetishistic character of the world of commodities
is the outcome of the peculiar social quality of the labour which
produces commodities. … It is only the specific social relation between
men which here assumes the phantasmagorial form of a relation between
things.
¶The fetishistic character likewise influences the whole atmosphere of
capitalist economy. The fixing of prices, competition, the course of the
market, the value of money, and so on, constitute mysterious phenomena
in the world of commodities, phenomena which the capitalist regards with
the same uncomprehending impotence as that with which the savage in the
African forests regards the caprices of an idol. Money, in especial,
the reflexion of the relations of all other commodities clinging to
one single commodity,
acquires dominion over men, exercising the
tyrannical power of a demon, usurping authority over social and economic
life. Money becomes a god.
¶Money is exchanged for commodities of equal value. Men, too, can be bought for money. Nay more, money is able to buy parts of human beings, able to recruit the manifestation of human vital functions. Thus it is that, for instance, human labour power appears in the market and offers itself for sale as a commodity. The owner of this commodity labour power is a human being who has, besides labour power, a stomach, and he must from time to time put food into his stomach unless he is to die of hunger. In order to acquire the things with which he can satisfy his hunger, in order to cover his nakedness, in order to keep himself alive, he must, wherever a commodity economy prevails, have money, for none of the necessaries of life are purchasable as commodities except for money. Consequently, as his only possible means of self-preservation, he must sell his labour power.
¶The buyer of the commodity labour power, acting in accordance with the customary regulations of exchange, pays a price which corresponds more or less to its value. This value, like all exchanges-values, is determined by the average cost of production at the time and place where the commodity is sold. The average cost of production of labour power depends upon the expenditure upon food, clothing, shelter, etc., requisite to produce human labour power day by day and to keep it in a fit condition. That is what determines the price of labour power, and the price of labour power is what we call wages.
¶If there are persons who own nothing but their labour power, and have no other means of livelihood than what they receive for the sale of their labour power, this is an outcome of historical evolution, as is vividly set forth in the Communist Manifesto. Such persons make their first appearance as a social category in the capitalist era. They are known as proletarians.
¶The proletarian is a free man. No longer tied to the soil as in the days of feudal serfdom, not restricted by any prescriptions of station or conventions of origin, freed from all the ties of the guilds, he is his own master, can freely dispose of his own person, his labour power, his skill.
¶But if he does not succeed in selling his labour power as a commodity, he has only one option, to starve. He is blessed with the gift of freedom; but, should he try to use that freedom for any other purpose than to sell his labour power, he is condemned to irretrievable starvation.
¶Inasmuch as labour power attaches to man as a quality inseparable from the individual, since it cannot be isolated from him, or utilized apart from him, the man as a whole, having sold his labour power, passes into the possession of the purchaser. Not, of course, with his stomach, his hunger and thirst, his need for rest, his individual wishes and claims, but only in respect of his labour power. For the purchaser, he is not a human being with a soul, feelings, individuality, happiness and unhappiness; he is not God’s image or the crown of creation; he is not even of like kind with the purchaser. For the purchaser, the man who has sold him labour power is nothing but labour power; nothing but arms, hands, fingers, capable of work; nothing but muscles, eyes, voice; nothing but capacity for labour, faculty for production.
¶The owner of money, who has bought labour power, becomes the effective owner of the labour power as soon as, in virtue of the process of production, he has been able to detach it from the worker. By placing the worker in a factory or workshop, and by setting the man to work there upon iron, wood, clay, yarn, or what you will, in such a way that commodities are produced, the owner effects the liberation of labour power from the worker and its crystallization as commodity value. The labour power has been absorbed by the raw material, has been consumed, and reappears in conjunction with the raw material as a commodity.
¶In the course of the labour process, thanks to the continued expenditure of labour power on raw material, there comes into existence a quantity of commodity value which ere long is equal to the quantity of money value which the supplier of labour power receives as the price of his labour power in the form of wages. There comes a moment when the owner of labour power and the owner of money are quits. It would seem obvious, on the face of it, that at this point, when service and equivalent balance one another, their relation must be broken off.
¶Nevertheless, the owner of money, the buyer of the commodity labour power, is a capitalist. He is using his money in order to increase it in amount. He wants to get more out of the productive process than he has put into it. Money must breed money. The money which, when thus set in motion, has the quality of promoting its own increase, is known as capital.
¶If he is to gain his end, the capitalist must invest his money in two different ways. First of all he has to provide the material requisites of production, must spend money on the purchase of raw materials, machinery, tools, the erection and equipment of workshops, and so on. Money invested in these things has not the power of spontaneous growth, and is therefore termed constant capital.
¶If production is to begin, human labour power must come into contact with constant capital. The capitalist buys labour power in the labour market, investing therein part of his capital. Thereupon labour power, brought into contact with raw materials, machinery, tools, etc., develops the mysterious capacity for expending itself in such a way that in the process of its own consumption it reproduces its own value. But it can do more than this, can produce value over and above. Inasmuch as the quantity of capital invested in labour power varies thus in amount, it is known as variable capital.
¶The capitalist is not content that labour power should create only as much commodity value as corresponds to the amount of capital value invested in wages. He wants a surplus. In order to get this, he compels the worker to go on expending labour power for a longer time than is necessary to pay back the wages. He prolongs the process of creating value into a period when it effects the enhancement of value. Thus the surplus is added to the equivalent for wages. Surplus labour time provides surplus value. Surplus value has come into existence. Capital has attained its end.
¶If the worker were fully aware of the nature of this process, he would perhaps put himself in a posture of defence against the capitalist when he reaches the point at which the production of surplus value begins, for he would feel that at this point the capitalist has begun to overreach him. Being a seller of a commodity, who wishes to exchange his commodity for an equivalent, he would see that at this point he is being forced into the position of a debtor who has to pay back value received with interest superadded. Since more is being demanded from him than he has been given, he will, in so far as he understands the process, regard the exchange as an unjust one, and recognize that he is being exploited.
¶But if he were to enter a protest, his protest would be of little avail. Wherever he may turn, he will find himself faced by capitalists who will only buy his commodity, labour power, on similar terms. In the capitalist world, labour power is only saleable upon such conditions. If the worker does not like the conditions, and will not accept them, he must refrain from the sale of his labour power. There is no constraint. He is not forced to sell it. Except for this–that if he does not sell it, he must starve! To avoid starvation, therefore, he takes the only other option, and accepts the conditions. His course of action is dictated by the circumstance that he is under the yoke of a particular commodity; is subject to the laws regulating the sale of his own commodity, labour power; is a slave to its fetishistic character.
¶Besides, the worker is in truth making a mistake when he believes himself to be cheated and overreached by the capitalist. The capitalist has honestly paid him the full value of his commodity, labour power. The capitalist did not decide the value of labour power. That value was determined by the cost of producing labour power as a commodity, with the result that the price of labour power in the labour market, the price which the capitalist pays as wages, corresponds, on the average, to the value of the labour power. The wages paid the worker by the capitalist for a day’s work enable the worker and his family to live for a whole day. In return for these wages, the worker must place himself at the capitalist’s disposal in the process of production for a whole working day.
¶If, in the course of the labour process, it becomes apparent that the worker is able, by his activities, to repay his wages (in the form of commodity values) in a shorter time than a whole working day, this phenomenon is the outcome of the peculiar character of the commodity, labour power. That commodity, like all other commodities, is capable of being consumed; but it differs from all other commodities in this respect, that, in the course of being consumed, it creates more value than it itself represents. Not only does it reproduce its own value, but creates surplus value in addition.
¶Marx was not the original discoverer of this peculiar faculty in the
commodity, labour power. Observation and experience had disclosed the
wonder centuries before. At a certain stage in the development of
productive technique, labour becomes competent to produce a surplus
beyond what is required for the consumption of the worker. As soon as
this stage was reached, there was a motive for the deliberate
utilization of labour power in order to produce a surplus; and,
ultimately, the desire to obtain this surplus became the urge and the
precondition for the inauguration of the capitalist system. The
capitalist turned to account, and still turns to account, the peculiar
characteristic of the commodity, labour power. He monopolizes its
advantages. Capitalist production means production in order to secure
surplus value. The primary and proper function of production, namely to
supply human beings with the necessaries and the amenities of life, has
passed into the background. Capital, therefore, is not only what Adam
Smith calls it, the command over labour. Fundamentally, it is the
command of unpaid labour. All surplus value, whatever the form into
which it may subsequently become crystallized–as profit, land-rent,
interest, etc.–is, substantially, the materialization of unpaid labour
time. The secret of the self-expansion of capital finds its explanation
in this, that capital has at its disposal a definite quantity of other
people’s unpaid labour.
¶As compared with the worker, the capitalist is in the fortunate position of being stronger. Inasmuch as the worker is compelled, under the menace of starvation, to sell his labour power, the capitalist can impose the condition that he will only buy on terms advantageous to himself. The capitalist is able to gain surplus value because he is in a superior economic position. Thus the problem of the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist cannot be fought out in a hand-to-hand struggle between the one and the other. It is not a personal matter at all, and exploitation is not the outcome of the injustice of any particular capitalist. The problem is a social one, dependent upon the peculiarities of the capitalist system as a whole. The question of exploitation, therefore, is not a question of morality, or justice, or humanity; it is simply and solely a question of power, and here, indeed, a question of compulsion. The capitalist, like the worker, is subject to the compulsion of the capitalist system.
¶The superior power wielded by the capitalist finds expression, first of all, in the length of the working day. The more the working day is prolonged after the period at which the creation of the value of the labour power has come to an end, the longer will be the period during which capital is being increased, the greater will be the surplus labour and the surplus value. This surplus value becomes fluid as soon as the newly created commodity is sold in the market. It then returns into the capitalist’s pocket in the money form, and is known as profit.
¶But the working day has a natural limit, since a human being’s capacity for suffering exploitation has a limit. Even though it may be the capitalist’s ideal to keep the worker employed for twenty-four hours every day, it is not to his interest to wear out the worker prematurely, and thus to deprive himself of the requisite further supply of labour power. Consequently, the working day must be sufficiently short to enable the worker to recuperate his forces during the hours of leisure, and to bring up children until they shall become likewise fit for labour. Surplus value produced by means of prolongation of the working day is termed absolute surplus value. Its production constitutes the general foundation of the capitalist system.
¶Whereas, however, the length of the working day has limits, the
capitalist’s hunger for surplus value is unlimited; and even if the
prolongation of the working day cannot be effected directly, it can be
effected indirectly. In order to increase the period of surplus
labour, the period of necessary labour is shortened by means which
enable the equivalent of the wage of labour to be produced in a shorter
time. … The production of relative surplus value revolutionizes out and
out the technical processes of labour and the way in which society is
subdivided into groups.
With every improvement in tools and
machinery, and with increasing efficiency in the organization of the
work of production, the capitalist is given new possibilities of
indirectly lengthening the working day, and thus indirectly increasing
surplus value.
¶When the evolution of production has attained a certain level, the increase of surplus value becomes a purely technical problem. The interest of the capitalist class in the advance of science, research, and technique; capitalist enthusiasm for discoveries, inventions, and the triumph of human genius–disclose themselves, in the last analysis, as expressions of satisfaction at the appearance of new possibilities of indirectly increasing the rate of surplus value and the sum total of profit.
¶Thus it is a persistent trend of capitalist development to bring
about a relative increase in constant capital and a relative decrease in
variable capital. But this change in the internal composition of capital
has disastrous results. Inasmuch as profit is created by variable
capital alone, a persistent fall in the rate of profit is an inevitable
consequence. The rate of exploitation of labour increases, the total
number of workers increases, the absolute mass of surplus value
increases. These are not mere possibilities; they are (apart from
transient oscillations) inevitable upon the basis of capitalist
production.
None the less, with each advance in technique, the
relative rate of profit falls; the business of exploitation becomes, for
the capitalist, continually a less profitable one in relation to the
total outlay. Thus we have the absurd result that, the greater the
absolute outlay, the less the relative yield. In this way capital
gradually cuts off its own sources of supply. It increases by gnawing at
its own roots. It perishes more hopelessly at these roots, the more
luxuriantly it is flourishing above ground.
¶As an outcome of these inherent contradictions, capitalism must
inevitably perish. A point must infallibly be reached at which the total
quantity of profit at the lowered rate will be required for the
accumulation of constant capital, and a point therefore at which
production will have ceased to pay the capitalist. The point will have
been reached at which capital will have become an absurdity because it
will no longer provide profit for the capitalists. Marx says: The
capitalist method of production encounters a limit in the development of
the forces of production, a limit which has nothing to do with the
production of wealth as such; and this peculiar limit bears witness to
the fleeting character of the capitalist method of production.
¶The endeavour to increase the productivity of human labour is a necessary sequel to the existence of relative surplus value.
¶By an increase in the productivity of labour, we mean a change in
the labour process whereby the quantity of social labour time necessary
for the production of a commodity is diminished, so that a smaller
quantity of labour power becomes enabled to produce a greater quantity
of use-value.
¶The capitalist method of production begins with co-operation.
Alike historically and conceptually, the starting-point of capitalist
production is where a large number of workers are aggregated at one time
and in one place (or, if you like, upon the same field of labour), under
the command of one capitalist, for the production of one and the same
kind of commodity.
Each member of the co-operation is a fully
adequate and independent producer. The whole labour process is effected
by each member individually. It might seem, then, as if cooperation were
nothing more than the simple addition of individual labour functions.
But this is not the case. Just as the offensive power of a squadron
of cavalry or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry is very
different from the sum of the powers for offence and defence which the
individual cavalryman or infantryman can develop in isolation, so is the
sum of the mechanical energies which unassociated workers can develop
very different from the social potential which comes into being when
many hands are simultaneously engaged upon the same undivided
operation.
What has happened is, not merely that a new productive
power, the power of a mass, has come into operation, but also that the
productive power of the individual member of the co-operation has been
intensified. For, “apart from the new energy created by the fusion of
many energies into one united energy, it usually happens in productive
work that the very existence of social contact arouses emulation and
induces a certain stimulation of the animal spirits, whereby the
efficiency of each individual worker is promoted; with the result that a
working day of 144 hours comprising the conjoint 12-hour working days of
a dozen persons who co-operate, yields a much larger aggregate product
than the total product of 12 workers each of whom works 12 hours in
isolation, or than the total product of a solitary worker who works for
a total of 144 hours during 12 days in succession. The reason is that
man is by nature, if not (as Aristotle says) a political animal, at any
rate a social one. … When a worker co-operates systematically with other
workers, he transcends his individual limitations and develops the
capabilities that belong to him as member of a species.
¶Co-operation speedily involves the necessity for guidance. The
capitalist assumes this function of guidance. In course of time, his
command in the field of production becomes as indispensable as the
command of the general in the battlefield. Capitalist guidance and
control do not present themselves exclusively as a function arising out
of the very nature of the social labour process and appertaining to that
process; they present themselves also as a function whose purpose it is
to exploit a social labour process, one that is the outcome of the
inevitable antagonism between the exploiter and the living raw material
he exploits. … The capitalist is not a capitalist because he is a
commander of industry; he becomes a commander of industry because he is
a capitalist. Command in industry is an attribute of capital; just as,
in the days of feudalism, command in war and a seat on the judges’ bench
were attributes of landed property.
¶So far, simple co-operation. The next step in the development of the forms of production leads to a cleavage of the process of production, which has hitherto been unified in the hands of the individual worker. The division of labour ensues. Manufacture originates–manufacture in the original sense of that term, as it was used before the days of power-driven machinery and large-scale production.
¶In some forms of manufacture, the workers who complete a product from start to finish are all assembled in one work place under the command of one capitalist, but are organized in groups each of which is engaged upon a particular phase of the elaboration. In other forms of manufacture, the workers who are united under the command of a single capitalist carry out only one or only some of the stages in the elaboration of a completed product. In either case, manufacture is a method of production in which the worker has ceased to be one who completes a whole commodity from start to finish. The handicraftsman has become a detail worker, one who is perpetually repeating a partial operation in the labour process.
¶The pauses that used to occur while the handicraftsman was changing from the use of one tool to the use of another have been discontinued. The pores in the labour day have been filled out with productive labour power. The process of production has been compacted, has been intensified, has been made more productive.
¶The detail worker is confined to the performance of a partial operation. Therewith he acquires the utmost dexterity in the handling of his tool. The perpetual repetition of the same narrow function develops his skill in the performance of that function to the highest degree.
¶Experience gained in the performance of each detail operation gives
pointers for the perfection of the tools used in its performance. The
intensification of manual dexterity leads to the extremest possible
differentiation of the instruments of labour. The manufacturing
period simplifies, improves, and multiplies the implements of labour by
adapting them to the exclusive and peculiar functions of the detail
worker.
¶The next step is the combination of tools, the combination of the
technical aids to labour, for the purpose of speedier and more purposive
functioning. Therein we find the material presuppositions for the
origination of the machine. Whereas the specific machinery of the
manufacturing period is the generalized worker who is a combination of a
number of detail workers, is an added and multiplied human being; the
machinery of the subsequent period is a highly elaborated and purposive
combination of tools, a putting together of mechanical apparatus and
instruments designed to carry on a unified productive function, a worker
of steel and iron. Whereas the manufacturing system proper culminates as
an economic artifice
upon the broad basis of urban handicraft and
rural home industry, the machine does away with handicraft as the
regulative principle of social production.
¶With the entry of machinery into the field, capitalist development begins its victorious career. The industrial revolution is inaugurated.
¶The worker manipulating an isolated tool is replaced by a mechanism
representing a mass of workers. His incompleteness, which consists,
above all, in his incapacity for the incessant repetition of precisely
similar movements, is made good by the perfectionment of a mechanical
apparatus which, driven by natural forces, is able to repeat a
particular movement millions upon millions of times with a precision far
exceeding the limits of human capacity. A system of machinery
(whether, like weaving, it be one in which there is a mere co-operation
among working machines of the same kind; or, like spinning, a
combination of machines of different kinds) becomes a huge automaton as
soon as it is driven by a self-acting prime motor. … An organized system
of working machines which are one and all set in motion by the
transmitting mechanism from a central automaton, constitutes the fully
developed form of machinofacture. In place of the individual machine, we
now have a mechanical monster whose body fills the whole factory, and
whose demon power, hidden from our sight at first because of the
measured and almost ceremonious character of the movement of his giant
limbs, discloses itself at length in the vast and furious whirl of his
numberless working organs.
¶One industry after another is revolutionized. At length large-scale
industry gains control over its own characteristic means of production,
the machine, and produces machinery by machinery. The forces of steam
are superadded, lifting machinery into the sphere of cyclopean wonders.
The mechanical lathe is a titanic reproduction of the ordinary
foot-lathe; the planing machine is an iron carpenter who works upon iron
with the same tool used by the living carpenter when he planes wood; the
implement which cuts veneers in the London shipbuilding yards is a
gigantic razor; the tool of the shearing machine, which cuts iron as
easily as a tailor cuts cloth with his shears, is an enormous pair of
scissors; and the steamhammer works with a head just like that of an
ordinary hammer, but such a heavy one that Thor himself could not wield
it.
¶As a highly elaborated tool which has become independent of the
worker, the machine enters into competition with the worker. The
instrument of labour, enormously excelling the worker in its power of
production, lays the worker low. The worker, who was formerly lord and
master of the tool obedient to his hand, now becomes a servant of the
machine, its appendage, a screw, a crank, in its mechanism. It makes him
superfluous, forces down his value, becomes the most powerful of weapons
for the repression of the periodical labour revolts against the
autocracy of capital. By making quick returns on the capital invested in
it essential to the capitalist, machinery enforces a prolongation of the
working day. At the same time, thanks to improved construction and
accelerated work, machinery becomes an objectified and systematically
utilized means of extorting more labour in a given period of time–a
means, that is to say, for the progressive intensification of labour.
In so far as machinery does away with the need for any considerable
expenditure of muscular power, it becomes a means for the utilization of
workers with comparatively little strength, and those whose bodily
growth is immature but whose limbs are all the more supple. The labour
of women and children was, therefore, the first word in the capitalist
utilization of machinery. … In former days, the worker used to sell his
own labour power, being ostensibly, in this respect, a free person. Now
he sells his wife and his children. He becomes a slavetrader.
¶All the advantages of machinery accrue to the capitalist. In a
shorter time, and at less expenditure of labour power, he obtains a
larger quantity of commodities, and therewith a larger quantity of
surplus value. Furthermore, with the aid of machinery and large-scale
industry, he is continually destroying manufacture, handicraft, and home
work, thus securing new markets, and forcing his way into an
increasingly large number of branches of production. Thus he secures a
progressively increasing share in the totality of production, and
ultimately becomes the lord of the commodity market. The revolution
in the social methods of carrying on industry, a revolution which
necessarily follows upon the revolution in the means of production,
expresses itself in a medley of transitional forms.
Factory
legislation has to intervene for the regulation of the activities of
labour. But the compulsory regulation of the working day in respect
of its length, its pauses, the hours at which it begins and ends, the
system of relays for children, the prohibition of the employment of
children below a certain age, and so on–necessitates, on the one hand,
an increased use of machinery and the replacement of human muscles by
steam-power as a motive force. On the other hand, in order to gain in
space what has been lost in time, there occurs an extension in the
domain of the jointly used means of production, the furnaces, the
buildings, etc. In a word, there ensues a greater concentration of the
means of production, and a correspondingly greater aggregation of
workpeople.
¶In the domain of agriculture, likewise, machinery has a revolutionary
influence, inasmuch as it destroys the bulwark of the old society, the
peasant, and substitutes for him the wage worker. The countryside is
assimilated to the town; traditions are swept away by reforms; lazy
adhesion to irrational customary methods is replaced by the purposive
technological application of science. In agriculture, as in
manufacture, the capitalist transformation of the process of production
signifies, at the same time, the martyrdom of the producer; the
instrument of labour becomes the means of subjugating, exploiting, and
impoverishing the worker; the social combination and organization of the
labour process, functions as an elaborate method for crushing the
worker’s individual vitality, freedom, and independence.
¶In his Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill
writes: It is questionable, if all the mechanical inventions yet made
have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.
There is no
question, however, about this, that the technical inventions
incorporated in machinery have transformed the process of production
into a perennial source of wealth, and have made the capitalist the sole
beneficiary of this wealth.
¶Capital produces profit. That is its purpose; that is its function. But profit is competent, in its turn, to produce capital. This closes the circle, and the circulation begins afresh.
¶The process which effects this is called, at first reproduction, and subsequently accumulation.
¶Simple reproduction is a mere repetition of the process of production upon the same footing. The worker receives as wages no longer, as at the outset of the process of production, a sum advanced by the capitalist, but part of the value he has himself created. He himself has reproduced the requisite variable capital. The remainder of the value, namely the profit, accrues to the capitalist, who consumes it. In these circumstances, under these conditions, production is repeated over and over again upon the existent foundation.
¶The worker, however, produces not merely his wages, but also himself. Inasmuch as he eats, drinks, and sleeps, he sees to it that his labour power shall be replaced from day to day, shall reappear in the labour market day after day. For the reproduction of capital it is indispensable that labour power should be continually renewed, should be eternalized. From the outlook of the process of reproduction, everything which the worker does for his own maintenance and for the maintenance of his class is reproduction.
¶If, however, production is to do something more than mark time, if it is to be an advance, if it is to be an evolution, constant capital must be reproduced as well as variable capital and labour power. Simple reproduction must develop into accumulation.
¶By accumulation is meant the retransformation of part of the acquired
surplus value into capital, so that an expansion of the primary basis of
production may occur. At present we are disregarding whatever portion
of the surplus value is consumed by the capitalist. Nor, for the moment,
are we interested in the question whether the additional capital is
tacked on to the original capital, or is applied separately to an
independent process of expansion. It does not matter to us whether the
capitalist who has accumulated it makes use of it, or whether he hands
it over to others. What we have to bear in mind is that, side by side
with the newly formed implements of capital, the original capital
continues to reproduce itself and to produce surplus value; and that the
same is true of every portion of accumulated capital in relation to the
additional capital it engenders.
¶Just as simple reproduction is continually reproducing the capital relation, so accumulation is continually reproducing this capital relation upon an extended scale; more capitalists or greater capitalists at one pole, more wage workers at the other. The accumulation of capital involves an increase in the proletariat.
¶In the general course of accumulation, a point is reached at which
the development of the productivity of associated labour becomes the
most powerful lever of accumulation. The organic composition of capital
is revolutionized. Constant capital increases at the expense of variable
capital, for it is the aim and the result of machinery to make human
hands superfluous. Thanks to the increasing productivity of labour, the
quantity of the means of production grows more quickly than the quantity
of labour power incorporated in them. The need for labour power lags
farther and farther behind the advance of accumulation. The continual
retransformation of surplus value into capital displays itself as a
steady growth of the cap ital engaged in the process of production.
This, in turn, becomes the foundation of an increase in the scale of
production, and of the accompanying methods of increasing the
productivity of labour and of bringing about an accelerated production
of surplus value. If, therefore, a certain amount of accumulation
manifests itself to be a necessary condition of the specifically
capitalist method of production, the latter conversely causes an
accelerated accumulation of capital. A specifically capitalist method of
production therefore develops as the accumulation of capital develops;
and the accumulation of capital develops as the specifically capitalist
method of production develops. Both these economic factors, in virtue of
their reciprocal relationships, furnish the impetus for that change in
the technical composition of capital thanks to which the variable
constituent grows continually smaller in comparison with the
constant.
¶This process has several consequences. The first of these is the
concentration of capital. Since every accumulation becomes the means for
new accumulation, accumulation, as it increases the quantity of wealth
functioning as capital, increases its concentration in the hands of
individual capitalists. The authority of capital over labour becomes
condensed in nodal points, which undergo enormous enlargement. At the
same time, portions break away from the original capitals.
These new
formations tend to interfere with the growth and the dominion of the old
capitals. But the tendency towards disintegration is counteracted by a
tendency towards integration. Thanks to mutual attraction, already
constituted capitals undergo concentration into a higher form; their
individual independence is abrogated; lesser capitalists are
expropriated by greater capitalists, many small capitals are transformed
into a few great capitals. Capital aggregates into great masses in
one hand because, elsewhere, it is taken out of many hands. Here we have
genuine centralization in contradistinction to accumulation and
concentration.
¶Competition is the motive force which determines all these movements, formations, aggregations. For the conquest of new markets, prices must be lowered, and prices can only be lowered if the productivity of labour is increased by perfected technique. Hence the urge towards the introduction of new machinery, more extensive plant, improved methods of production. Hence the levying of larger and ever larger aggregates of capital; the absorption of small enterprises by large ones; the development of productive foci into colossal structures and giant enterprises with the most highly elaborated technique, the best possible machinery, the most economical management.
¶The lesser capitals, therefore, crowd into spheres of production
which large-scale industry has not yet fully annexed, has conquered only
here and there. In these fields, competition rages in direct proportion
to the number and in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the
competing capitals. … With the growth of capitalist production there
comes into being an entirely new power, that of the credit system. To
begin with, the credit system appears furtively, as it were, in the form
of a modest helper of accumulation, drawing into the hands of individual
or associated capitalists the monetary resources scattered over the
surface of a society, and doing this by means of invisible threads. Ere
long, however, it becomes a new and formidable weapon in the competitive
struggle; and in the end it manifests itself as a gigantic social
mechanism for the centralization of capital. … With the magnitude of
social capital already functioning, and the degree of its increase, with
the extension of the scale of production and the increase in the number
of workers set in motion, with the development in the productivity of
their labour, with the extended flow of all the sources of wealth, there
is also an extension of the scale on which a greater attraction of
workers by capital is associated with a greater repulsion of them.
Therewith, there is an increasing rapidity in the change in the organic
composition of capital and in its technical form; and more and more
spheres of production become involved in this change, now
simultaneously, and now alternately.
¶In connexion therewith there arises an excess of labour power, an excess relatively to the capacity of capital for applying labour to promote its own increase; there is formed an industrial reserve army which, in this unhappy posture of affairs, stations itself outside the factory gates, undercuts wages, attacks strikers in the rear, paralyses the workers’ class struggle, and (consisting of persons whose existence is perpetually insecure, and who are always in danger of falling down into the tatterdemalion proletariat) is perpetually being used by the capitalist class against the working class as a whole.
¶The capitalist system moves in the following circle. The anarchy of
commodity production leads to competition. In the struggle of
competition, the producer of the cheapest commodities wins the battle.
Maximum cheapness is achieved by maximum productivity, and this is
brought about by having the most efficient machinery and installations.
For this, large aggregates of capital are requisite. Hence increasing
accumulation upon a larger and ever larger scale. But the more extensive
the machinery, the less extensive (relatively) the quantity of workers,
and the smaller, therefore, the proportion of variable capital. Since,
however, variable capital is the only constituent of capital which
creates value, the rate of surplus value, though it may increase
absolutely, is continually declining relatively. The larger, therefore,
is the number of workers set at liberty
by capital, and thus
deprived of wages. Thereby, the power of purchase and of consumption is
increasingly reduced in relation to the enormous quantity of commodities
with which the market is flooded. If the unemployed are to be made
capable of consumption, they must be given occupation in new or expanded
branches of production. But for this, capital is needed, and capital can
only be supplied by accumulation. To render accumulation possible, the
rate of surplus value must be increased. To increase the rate of surplus
value, the value of labour power must be reduced by cheapening
commodities. But, in order to make commodities cheaper, productivity
must be increased yet more, technique must be further improved, the
installations must be yet further rationalized. For this, accumulation
is indispensable. And so on, and so on. There is no issue from the
vicious circle.
¶From time to time there ensues a pause in the mad circular dance, a pause brought about by the occurrence of an economic crisis. Purchasing power falls to a minimum. The storehouses are overfilled. The market cannot take up any more goods. The channels along which commodities ordinarily flow are blocked. No orders come to the factories. These work short time, or close down; workers are dismissed wholesale; production is discontinued; unemployment is rife, bread riots occur. After a while, the accumulated supplies are gradually used up, the storehouses slowly empty themselves, demand begins once more, there is a general stimulus to production, the crisis is overcome, things are on the up-grade, and at length production is at full swing once more. So it goes on until the next crisis begins. This cycle usually occupies about ten years. Throughout the nineteenth century, decade after decade, economic life was convulsed by these cyclical returns of glut and stagnation. Entangled in the mechanism of the system, and dominated by the mysterious fetishism of commodities (which is stronger than the human will), the bourgeoisie bows before the dictates of a necessity whose ways to it are unsearchable because the bourgeoisie itself is not merely the object and the Victim of this necessity, but also its favourer and beneficiary.
¶But the proletariat, burdened with all the costs, disadvantages, and terrors of the system, seeks to defend itself, and, as soon as it has learned where to place the crow-bar which will overthrow that system, it deliberately marshals its ranks for the great struggle.
¶When money is transformed into capital, when capital produces surplus value, and when surplus value once more becomes capital, this is a movement which occurs upon the extant basis of the capitalist method of production starting-point of that method of production?
¶Marx answers the question in the chapter entitled Primary
Accumulation.
He writes: In political economy this primary
accumulation plays much the same part that is played by original sin in
theology. The origin of sin is supposed to be explained by a folk-tale.
In like manner we are told, as regards primary accumulation, that in
times long past there were two sorts of people: some of them, the chosen
few, were industrious, intelligent, and, above all, thrifty; the others,
lazy rascals, wasted their substance in riotous living. But there is a
difference. The theological legend of the Fall tells us this much, at
least, why man has been condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his
face. On the other hand, the economic history of the Fall reveals to us
why there are persons who need do nothing of the kind. No matter! It is
from this economic Fall that dates the poverty of the masses, who, for
all time, however hard they may work, have nothing to sell but
themselves; and thence, likewise, dates the wealth of the few, which
continually grows, although the few have long since ceased to
work.
¶Such is the legend; such the idyll. The reality is very different. In the real world, the last word lies with force.
¶The process which creates the capital relation is nothing other than
the divorce of the worker from ownership of the conditions of
labour,
a process which, on the one hand, transforms the social
means of life and production into capital, and, on the other hand,
transforms the immediate producers into wage workers. Primary
accumulation severs the producer from the means of production. It occurs
at the end of the feudalist epoch, with the cessation of adscription to
the soil, of serfdom, of guild coercion. The serf and the handicraftsman
are freed. But simultaneously the economic ground is cut from under
their feet, and they are deprived of the guarantees which the ancient
feudal institutions furnished for their existence. In the history of
primary accumulation we must regard as epoch-making all revolutions that
acted as stepping-stones for the capitalist class in course of
formation. Above all, this applies to those moments when great masses of
human beings were suddenly and forcibly torn away from the means of
subsistence, and hurled into the labour market as masterless
proletarians. The expropriation of the agricultural producers, the
peasants, their severance from the soil, was the basis of the whole
process. In different countries, the history of this expropriation
assumed different forms, running through its various phases in different
orders of succession, and at different historical periods. Only in
England can it be said to have had a typical development.
¶These free
proletarians, freed by the dissolution of the
companies of feudal retainers, these ex-peasants, driven off the land by
forcible expropriation, are absorbed into the rising manufactures. But
they are absorbed in part only, for their numbers increase more rapidly
than the process of production can incorporate them into its framework.
Besides, those who have thus suddenly been uprooted from their
traditional surroundings find it difficult to adapt themselves with
equal suddenness to the discipline of the new conditions. Many of the
masterless men become beggars, vagabonds, robbers, and for a long period
are the terror of western Europe. Ultimately, in accordance with a newly
inaugurated and barbarous legal code, they are flogged, branded, racked,
and, in the end, are handed over like beasts of burden for use in the
Houses of Terror,
the manufactories and the factories.
¶The same economic and political evolution which brings about the
formation of a landless, occupationless proletariat with no means of
subsistence, favours the appearance of capitalist farmers and industrial
capitalists. Unquestionably, too, guild masters, independent artisans,
and even wage workers, are sometimes able, in one way or another, to
become small capitalists, and, by gradually extending the scale on which
they exploit wage labour, in conjunction with a corresponding
accumulation of capital, some of these become capitalists on the grand
scale. During the childhood of capitalist production, what happened
was often parallel to what had happened during the childhood of the
mediaeval town system, when the question which of two fugitive serfs was
to become a master and which a servant was mainly decided by which had
run away before the other. But the snail’s pace of this method could not
keep up with the needs of the new world-market which had come into
existence thanks to the great discoveries at the close of the fifteenth
century.
As anticipatory forms of modern capital, there arose in the
Middle Ages trading capital and usurers’ capital. This money capital
effects the opening up of the world, and discloses the sources of vast
wealth. The discoveries of gold and silver in America; the
extirpation of the indigens in some instances, their enslavement or
their entombment in the mines in others; the beginnings of the conquest
and looting of the East Indies; the transformation of Africa into a
precinct for the supply of the negroes who were the raw material of the
slave trade–these were the incidents that characterized the rosy dawn of
the era of capitalist production. These were the idyllic processes that
formed the chief factors of primary accumulation. Hard upon their heels
came the commercial war between the European nations, fought over the
whole surface of the globe. It was opened when the Netherlands broke
away from Spain; it assumed gigantic proportions in England’s
anti-Jacobin war; and it found a recent sequel in the opium wars against
China.
¶In the annals of mankind, the history of capitalism is written in
letters of blood and fire. Its development has left a broad trail of
sweat, blood, and tears. W. Howitt writes: The barbarities and
desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every
region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to
subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however
fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in
any age of the earth.
Quoting this in Capital, Marx adds:
The history of the colonial administration of Holland, the model
capitalist nation during the seventeenth century, is, according to
Thomas Stamford Raffles, sometime lieutenant-governor of Java,
Marx goes on to say: one of
the most extraordinary relations of treachery, bribery, massacre, and
meanness.
The treatment of the
aborigines was, naturally, worst of all in the plantations which were
intended to serve only for export trade, such as the West Indies; and in
rich and well-populated countries, such as Mexico and Hindustan, which
were delivered over to plunder.
¶Commercial supremacy led to industrial dominance. The colonial system
was a
Profit-making was now proclaimed to
be the final aim of mankind. The system of public credit, of national
debts, developed into an instrument for the capitalist seizure and
subjugation of whole territories and States. strange god
who had mounted the altar cheek by jowl with
the old gods of Europe, and who, one fine day, with a shove and a kick,
swept them all into the dustbin.With the wave of an
enchanter’s wand, the
In addition,
the system of national debt “has given rise to joint-stock companies, to
dealings in negotiable securities of all kinds, to stock-jobbing–in a
word, to gambling on the stock exchange and to the modern bankocracy. …
The colonial system, national debt, the heavy burden of taxation,
protection, commercial wars, and so on–these offspring of the
manufacturing period properly so-called–grew luxuriantly during the
childhood of large-scale industry. … With the development of capitalist
production in the manufacturing period, the public opinion of Europe had
lost the last vestiges of shame and conscience. … The cotton industry,
while introducing child slavery into England, gave at the same time an
impetus towards the transformation of the slave system of the United
States, which had hitherto been a more or less patriarchal one, into a
commercial system of exploitation. Speaking generally, the veiled
slavery of the European wage earners became the pedestal of unqualified
slavery in the New World. … As Augier said, funds
endowed barren money with the power
of reproduction, thus transforming it into capital, and this without the
risk and the trouble inseparable from its investment in industrial
undertakings and even from putting it out upon usury.money comes into the
world with a birthmark on the cheek
; it is no less true that capital
comes into the world soiled with mire from top to toe, and oozing blood
from every pore.
¶“What does the primary accumulation of capital, its historical origin, amount to? In so far as it is not the direct transformation of slaves and serfs into wage earners (a mere change of form), it signifies nothing other than the expropriation of the immediate producers, that is to say the making an end of private property based upon the labour of its owner.
¶Self-earned private property, the private property that may be looked upon as grounded on a coalescence of the isolated, individual, and independent worker, with his working conditions, is supplanted by capitalist private property, which is maintained by the exploitation of others’ labour, but of labour which, in a formal sense, is free.
¶“As soon as this process of transformation has sufficiently disintegrated the old society, has decomposed it through and through; as soon as the workers have been metamorphosed into proletarians, and their working conditions into capital; as soon as the capitalist method of production can stand upon its own feet–then the further socialization of labour and the further transformation of the land and of the other means of production into socially utilized (that is to say, communal) means of production, which implies the further expropriation of private owners, takes on a new form. What has now to be expropriated, is no longer the labourer working on his own account, but the capitalist who exploits many labourers.
¶“This expropriation is brought about by the operation of the immanent laws of capitalist production, by the centralization of capital. One capitalist lays a number of his fellow capitalists low. Hand-in-hand with such centralization, concomitantly with the expropriation of many capitalists by a few, the co-operative form of the labour process develops to an ever-increasing degree; therewith we find a growing tendency towards the purposive application of science to the improvement of technique; the land is more methodically cultivated; the instruments of labour tend to assume forms which are only utilizable by combined effort; the means of production are economized through being turned to account only by joint, by social labour. All the peoples of the world are enmeshed in the net of the world market, and therefore the capitalist regime tends more and more to assume an international character. While there is thus a progressive diminution in the number of the capitalist magnates (who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this transformative process), there occurs a corresponding increase in the mass of poverty, oppression, enslavement, degeneration, and exploitation; but at the same time there is a steady intensification of the wrath of the working class–a class which grows ever more numerous, and is disciplined, unified, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist method of production. Capitalist monopoly becomes a fetter upon the method of production which has flourished with it and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point where they prove incompatible with their capitalist husk. This bursts asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
¶The capitalist method of appropriation proceeding out of the
capitalist method of production, and consequently capitalist private
property, is the first negation of individual private property based
upon individual labour. But, with the inexorability of a law of nature,
capitalist production begets its own negation. It is a negation of a
negation. This second negation does not re-establish private property;
but it does re-establish individual property upon the basis of the
acquisitions of the capitalist era; i.e. on co-operation and the common
ownership of the land and of the means of production (which labour
itself produces).
§ Chapter 09: Achievement, Part 4
§ Second and Third Volumes
¶In the first volume of Capital, which ends with a prophetic glimpse through the gates of the coming social order, Marx disclosed the economic fundamentals of contemporary society.
¶He solved the problem of the origin of profit. He had not solved that problem after the manner of the petty-bourgeois defenders of capitalism, who use science for the justification and safeguarding of selfish interests, and look upon profit as something which rightly accrues to the capitalist in return for services rendered. Nor did he answer it after the manner of the utopian socialists, to whom the capitalist system had seemed to be the outcome of human baseness, and who had denounced profit as being derived from theft and cheating. Marx dealt with the matter in a new way, one peculiar to himself. For him, the purchase of the commodity, labour power, by the capitalist was a legitimate exchange of values; the creation of surplus value by surplus labour was the logical consequence of an objective system; and the appropriation of this surplus value by the capitalists followed as a matter of course in accordance with the internal laws regulating a class society. Pursuing this train of scientific reasoning, he was inspired by it neither with love for capitalism, as were the bourgeois economists, nor with hatred for capitalism, as were the utopists. He merely drew the inference, clearly and coldly, that for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man a fundamental change in the system was essential. To him, such a change seemed to be an inevitable consequence of the laws of historical evolution. He expected the completion of this evolution to be effected by the working class, growing conscious of its situation as a class, and trained to pursue its aims as a class.
¶The first volume of Capital examines and analyses capitalism within the field of the process of production. That process goes on in the workshop or other place where work is carried on. The worker comes to the workshop as bearer of the commodity, labour power. He receives a wage, and begins to produce. Commodities proceed out of his hands. We cannot tell, simply from looking at these structures of iron, wood, earthenware, leather, etc., to what extent they represent newly created values, and at what point in them the process of expanding value has begun. We know, however, that surplus value is included in their value; that, freshly made and still damp with the sweat of the worker who has made them, they have hidden away within them a wealth which lives only for the capitalist. This unearned surplus value accruing to the capitalist will become profit, will assume the money form, and will, as jingling coins, find its way into the pocket of the beneficiary. But the transformation of surplus value into cash cannot take place in the workshop. For that a change of venue is requisite. Surplus value does not become profit until the commodity is sold, and therefore it can only become profit in the market, in the shop, or on the exchange.
¶Thither we are taken in the second volume of Capital, which
discusses the process of the circulation of capital in three sections,
respectively entitled: The Metamorphoses of Capital and their
Cycles
; The Turn-Over of Capital
; The Reproduction and
Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital.
¶In the market, the fetishistic power of commodities affects the capitalist differently from in the workshop. Whereas production is characterized by the discipline of an artificially constructed order, in the market the most perplexing anarchy prevails. There, commodities escape from the hands of their creator, engage in the maddest dance. They assume prices according to fancies of their own; make journeys; change owners; collect themselves into heaps, or scatter themselves to all the winds of heaven; store themselves away in warehouses, to rot there sometimes and thus fail to achieve their purpose; or speed from person to person, from town to town, to be consumed in the predestined way. Forming a fantastic world of their own, they lead therein an autocratic life, independent of the will of the producer.
¶If a man is not to lose his senses amid such a riot, and if, above
all, he is not to lose his money, he must learn how to take his bearings
in this process of the circulation of commodities. He must be able as a
capitalist to find a buyer for his wares at the proper time; must
provide himself at the proper time with the raw materials needed for the
production of more commodities; must supply himself with adequate funds
for the hiring of workers; and, in the eternal circulation of
commodities and money, must never miss an opportunity, never allow
himself to be got the better of by his competitors. In a realm where
time and place are perpetually uncertain, he must be always on the watch
to do the right thing at the right time and in the right place. He must
forecast the needs of the market, must estimate the purchasing power of
the consumers, must calculate the extent of demand. There is no guide
book he can consult, for the economics of the market are anarchical. The
market is a city without a plan. Nevertheless, the individual capitalist
must work according to plan, unless he is to go down in the struggle. He
cannot come to an understanding with others, for he must not disclose
his intentions, his business secrets, to his rivals. Nevertheless, he
must conduct himself as if he were acting on the basis of an
understanding with his rivals, as if he and they were solidarized in the
interests of the capitalist economy. It is not within his power to
establish order in the chaos. Yet, under pain of destruction, he must
see to it that everything shall click,
that no failure in the
market shall rob him of what he has gained in the workshop. For the
profit created as surplus value in the workshop does not come to life
until the market is reached and the commodity is sold. Only in the
market does that which hitherto has been a mere abstract calculation,
become a concrete gain. Only in the market is a man repaid for being a
capitalist, for engaging in capitalist enterprise.
¶The business awaiting the capitalist in the market is difficult, laborious, and risky. It demands from him the utmost efficiency and perspicacity, great resourcefulness, marked sagacity. He must have fine hearing and a thick skin; must be simultaneously cautious and venturesome, a swashbuckler and a calculator, careless and careful. He must develop all the qualities of an experienced man of business.
¶None the less, the individual, however talented he may be, remains exposed to the uncalculable vicissitudes of the market. Consequently, large-scale collective safeguarding must replace small-scale individual safeguarding. The capitalists, who are independent of one another, and indeed hostile to one another, have to combine in the one matter which for them is of central importance–in the matter of money. They engage in mutual aid by establishing banks; help one another out by the joint provision of credit; amalgamate their individual interests into a unity by measures conceived in the general capitalist interest.
¶Thenceforward the main process of circulation can be better subjected to examination in all its phases. In a sense, the chaotic interplay of phenomena and movements is regulated to this extent, that the basic pillars of the capitalist economy (the continuance of commodity production, the creation of surplus value, the supply of subsistence to the working class, and the enrichment of the bourgeoisie) are secured. Thus a primary provision is made for progressive accumulation, for the evolution of capitalism into mightier and ever mightier forms, and for the perpetuation of the system.
¶Of course the multiplicity of the processes of capitalism as a whole involves a like multiplicity of the functions which have to be performed, and of the forces requisite for their performance. The category of capitalists loses its earlier simplicity. The capitalist, nowadays, is not only a producer of commodities; he is also a seller of commodities, a middleman, a merchant, a banker, a landowner, a purveyor of raw materials. He appears in many shapes. Now, as from the first, in so far as he is a producer of commodities he is a producer of surplus value. But, as economic life has grown more complicated, he has delegated his functions to various persons. They all take part, in one way or another, in the production of commodities, the exploitation of the wage workers, the sale of commodities, the provision of capital, the continuance of the capitalist process, and the origination of profit. They all help to ensure that capital shall make profit. They present their respective claims, demand their appropriate shares in the spoil. They insist upon being satisfied. Profit has to be divided among a pack of hungry wolves.
¶But what share in the spoils is this or that individual to get? How is it to be measured? Who decides? How is the distribution so regulated that no one shall go short? The answer is that the world of commodities regulates these things for itself. The mechanism of the capitalist system is so contrived that, out of the interplay of its forces, factors, and trends, the satisfaction of all the before-mentioned claims spontaneously ensues. The settlement occurs without plan or set scheme, without rules and regulations, simply as the effect of the immanent logic of commodities, and the immanent justice of their exchange, which themselves formulate the principle in accordance wherewith each gets his share.
¶It is here that the fetishistic character of commodities manifests its supreme triumph, and it is to this matter that Marx devotes the third volume of Capital.
¶There he finds the answer to a riddle over which the professional
economists had previously puzzled their heads in vain. He unravels the
mystery of the fact that the capitals invested in different branches of
production, although they work
under the most widely varying
conditions, nevertheless, at any particular time and within the
boundaries of any particular country, secure much the same gains,
produce an average rate of profit. This average rate of profit arises
because the differences between the profits cancel one another when the
commodities are being sold in the market. The minus which results when
certain kinds of commodities are sold at less than their value is
compensated by the plus when certain other kinds of commodities are sold
above their value. Thus there arises an average in which all variations
are levelled. The individual capitalist does not pouch the profit made
by him in individual production, but only the proportional share that
accrues to him out of the general spoil. As far as profit is
concerned, the various capitalists play the part of mere shareholders in
a joint-stock company, whose shares in the profit are a percentage
allotted proportionally to their holdings; and thus these shares differ
from capitalist to capitalist only in proportion to the amount of the
capital which each has invested in the joint undertaking.
As if
endowed with magical powers, as if dominated by elemental forces, the
world of commodities regulates its affairs in accordance with its own
will and in pursuance of its own laws, regulates the course of the
processes and the balancing of the profits in a way that is independent
of individual intelligence and with a certainty which is far beyond the
power of human functioning. Only the firmament of heaven, where the
stars move on their courses for all eternity independent of the human
will, offers a parallel to the mystery of the capitalist economy.
¶But just as the science of astronomy has disclosed the working of the heavens, has described the paths of the stars, has learned how to predict cosmic catastrophes, and has thus revealed to us the secrets of the firmament, so Marx has thrown light upon the darkness of economic happenings, has discovered the laws of the world of commodities, has disclosed the mechanisms of the winning of profits, and has thereby resolved the mysterious predestination of man to wealth or poverty into the calculable consequences of a mutable system. He has shown that interest, land-rent, revenues of all kinds, every form of capitalist gain, are essentially nothing more than profit under a masquerade.
¶Of the three volumes of Capital, the first is the most straightforward, the most compact, the most impressive, and the most important. Though it be true that the second volume supplements the analysis of capitalism in ways that are of very great significance, and though it be true that from the scientific standpoint the third volume must be regarded as the completion of the Marxian criticism of political economy, it is unquestionable that the main features of Marx’s scientific achievement are contained in the first volume.
¶It answers the two central problems with which socialism and the labour movement are concerned: the origin of surplus value; and the socialization of the process of production. Only when we have learned how surplus value originates, can we scientifically explain how the proletariat is exploited. Only when we have understood the socialization of the labour process, can we scientifically demonstrate the fundamentals of the socialist revolution. The solution of the former problem reveals to the worker the nature of the capitalist present; the solution of the second problem discloses to him the way to the socialist future.
¶Therewith the main need of the labour movement, as far as theory is concerned, has been satisfied. Regarded from the outlook of the class struggle, these two problems are of more primary and more basic importance than any others, however interesting and noteworthy others may be in respect of detail.
¶That explains why in socialist circles, among the intellectuals and the leaders as well as among the rank and file, a knowledge of Marx’s Capital is usually confined to the first volume. This first volume is continually being discussed, has been popularized, is utilized day by day for propaganda purposes; the second and third volumes gather dust on the shelves of libraries. Bernard Shaw, the semi-socialist Fabian, was right when he made fun of Hyndman, the thoroughgoing socialist, because the latter, though he was acquainted only with the first volume of Capital, claimed the title of thoroughgoing Marxist. Nevertheless, Hyndman was likewise right when he pleaded in excuse that the whole labour movement, its greatest leaders not excepted, knew nothing of the third volume of Capital, and yet carried on the class struggle in the Marxian sense. In actual fact, a knowledge of the first volume was fully adequate for that phase of the class struggle which now lies behind us.
¶But with every step we take beyond this phase, the second and third
volumes gain in importance. The visage of Marxism changes as the times
change. As against the vulgar Marxist of the old school, who bases his
theoretical trend exclusively upon the first volume of Capital
and upon a crudely mechanistic historical materialism, the modern
Marxist, recognizing that Marxism is like all else subject to evolution,
is often tempted to echo Marx by saying: For my part, I am not a
Marxist!
§ The Evening and the End
¶Fate grudged Marx the privilege of sending the second and third
volumes of Capital to the press. Death struck the pen from his
hand. His great design of producing a standard treatise on economics
remained unfulfilled. Engels, his executor in scientific matters, saw to
it that at least Capital should be finished. Taking over the
editorship of the manuscripts left by Marx, he prepared them for the
press, publishing the second volume of Capital in 1885, and the
third volume in 1894. From 1870 onwards, the friendship between Marx and
Engels was yet further cemented by proximity of residence. Engels had
retired from his position in the firm of Ermen and Engels, had left
Manchester, and had settled down in London. Under date November 29,
1868, he wrote to Marx: 1. How much money will you need to pay all
your debts, so that you can make a clean start? 2. Can you get along
with £350 a year for your ordinary needs (excluding extraordinary
expenditure upon illness and other unforeseen happenings); get along so
that you will not need to run into debt any more? If that sum will not
suffice, let me know just what you will require. All this on the
assumption that the old debts are first of all paid off. My negotiations
with Gottfried Ermen have taken such a turn that he wishes to buy me out
when my contract expires on June 30th; that is to say he offers me a sum
of money if I pledge myself not to start a competitive business within
the next five years, and allow him to carry on the firm. That is the
very point to which I wished to bring him. … The sum he offers me will
enable me to pay you £350 a year for the next five or six years,
certainly, and in special circumstances a little more.
Marx answered
by return of post: I am quite overcome by your extreme kindness. My
wife and I have gone into the figures together, and we find that the
amount of the debts is much larger than I had supposed, £210 (of which
about £75 are for the pawnshop and interest).
On July 1, 1869,
Engels, with an hurrah, said farewell to sweet commerce,
became a
free man,
made a clean sweep
of Marx’s debts, and a year
later removed to London, settling down close to Marx.
¶In the Marx household, meanwhile, there had been many changes.
Suitors had come for the two elder daughters, Jenny and Laura. In August
1866, Marx had written to Engels: Since yesterday, Laura is half
pledged to Monsieur Lafargue, my creole medical student. She has been
treating him much like the others, but the emotional excesses
characteristic of creoles, a certain fear on her part that the young man
(he is twenty-five years old) would do himself a hurt, and so on,
perhaps some predilection for him, cold as ever in Laura’s case (he is a
handsome, intelligent, and vigorously developed fellow), have led, more
or less, to a compromise. The young man attached himself to me at the
outset, but soon transferred the attraction from the old man to the
daughter. Economically speaking, he is moderately well off, being the
only child of a sometime planter. He has been sent down from Paris
University for two years on account of the Liége Congress, but intends
to pass his examination in Strasburg.
Marx asked for precise
particulars as to the property question from the would-be son-in-law’s
parents, and, when these particulars proved satisfactory, categorically
declared that there must be no question of a marriage
until young
Lafargue had passed all his examinations. Yesterday I told our creole
that unless he can calm his manners down to the English standard, Laura
will unceremoniously dismiss him. He must make this perfectly clear to
himself, or the whole thing will be broken off. He is a thoroughly good
fellow, but a spoiled child, and too much a child of nature.
Lafargue passed his examination, and married his Laura. Having settled
down to practise in Paris, he took part in the struggles of the Commune,
became a refugee when the Commune was suppressed, and returned to
London. He abandoned his medical career on the ground that this could
not be carried on without quackery,
and started in business as a
photographer, at which he made barely enough to live upon.
¶Jenny, too, had a wooer. This was Charles Longuet, editor of a periodical run by the socialist students of Paris. He was sent to London in 1866 as a delegate of the French section of the International, which was in opposition to the General Council. Shortly afterwards, Longuet became a member of the General Council. During the Paris Commune, he was editor of the official organ of the Commune, and a member of the Council of the Commune. In 1873, he married Jenny, and eventually went back with her to Paris.
¶Of the three daughters, the only one now left at home was Tussy, or Eleanor. She was courted by Lissagaray, the historian of the Commune, who in 1871 had taken refuge in London; but Marx disapproved of the would-be son-in-law. Subsequently Tussy entered into a free union with Edward Aveling, was very unhappy with him, and after a time committed suicide. Bernard Shaw took Aveling as the model for Dubedat in The Doctor’s Dilemma.
¶Many years later, Laura Lafargue and her husband committed suicide in Paris, to escape the disagreeables of old age. Jean Longuet, a son of Charles Longuet, leader of the left wing of the French social democracy, is the only living descendant of Marx who plays an active part in public life.
¶When the household had been reduced by the marriages of Jenny and
Laura, Marx removed to 41 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill. Here he
spent the closing years of his life, which were a slow death.
From 1873 onwards, he suffered terribly from headache, which often
unfitted him for work. His long-standing liver trouble had also
recurred. Engels summoned his old friend and doctor Gumpert from
Manchester, and Gumpert ordered a cure in Karlsbad. With Engels’
financial help, Marx was able to visit Karlsbad in 1874, 1875, and 1876,
and derived much benefit. In 1877, he took a course of the waters at
Neuenahr. The liver trouble was now better, but chronic stomach
disorder, in association with headache, sleeplessness, nervous
exhaustion, and incapacity for work, were ailments that defied medical
skill. A stay at the seaside brought no more than temporary improvement.
His health grew worse from year to year.
¶There is good ground for the supposition that his unsatisfactory
general condition was as much dependent upon psychical as upon physical
causes. His illness was characterized by profound depression, both
bodily and mental. The collapse of the International had seemed to him
tantamount to a failure of his life work, although his reason told him
that the break-up of the organization had been the outcome of objective
necessities, just as its foundation had been. Furthermore, he had hoped
that Capital would have a signal success, and the reality
lagged far behind his expectations. The book was to have proved a lever
which would lift the world out of its old rut; but the world went
rolling along in that rut just as before, and as if the book had never
been written. For years, Capital was ignored; and when these
tactics were no longer accordant with the conditions of the time,
it
was mauled uncomprehendingly by the mealy-mouthed babblers of German
vulgar economics.
Even such a man as Freiligrath could find nothing
better to say than that on the Rhine many merchants and factory
owners will display great enthusiasm for the book.
In view of such
widespread lack of understanding, it was a poor consolation to Marx to
find one reader who really understood Capital,
Joseph Dietzgen, a
man of proletarian origin, making his livelihood in Russia as a
tanner.
¶There were additional reasons for Marx’s depression. In Germany a vigorous social-democratic movement had developed; but it went its own way, fought its battles and formulated its tasks, without troubling to ask his advice, and without expecting his sanction for its evolution. True, Liebknecht kept up a regular correspondence with Marx and Engels, asking counsel and help upon difficult political problems, and paying due respect to the oracle in London. But Liebknecht was not the German party, which in important matters was apt to disregard his wishes, and to follow its own bent. Thus it came to pass that Liebknecht often incurred Marx’s wrath. In letters exchanged between Marx and Engels we find much angry and even contemptuous criticism of him and his doings. For these differences and disharmonies there was a deep-seated cause. Marx, who had now been living in England for several decades, had lost touch with Germany, and no longer possessed an intimate understanding of the peculiarities of the German situation. He saw everything German in a distorted perspective, with the inevitable result that many of his judgments were erroneous, and much of the advice he tendered from London was injudicious or impracticable. These discrepancies became conspicuous when the Lassallists and the Eisenachers, weary of perpetual wrangling, and yielding to the pressure of circumstances, came together at Gotha in 1875, and founded the united Social Democratic Party. Marx strenuously opposed this step, subjected the programme of unification to a fiercely destructive criticism, and, in a letter to Liebknecht, tried to give the course of events the turn he desired. Liebknecht did the best thing he could when he kept the letter in his pocket; but Marx was affronted, felt himself shut out and robbed of his influence, was wounded in his most sensitive spot, his vanity.
¶His relations with the French socialists were no happier. Not even
his sons-in-law would march in accordance with his orders, although the
orders were sent often enough. Though they remained cordial in private
relations, they took the liberty of going their own way. Longuet is
the last Proudhonist,
writes Marx to Engels in 1882; and Lafargue
is the last Bakuninist! To the devil with them both!
¶Most painful of all to Marx was the state of affairs in England. He had lived and worked there for thirty years, but not a single grain of the seed he had cast upon this ground had sprouted. There was, indeed, a labour movement, but it took no notice of Marx or his teaching. Personal relations with the leaders of the movement had been broken off; with acrimony, as a rule. Nowhere was Marx held so completely at arms’ length as here.
¶The sense of being forsaken, the spiritual isolation, made his illness more and more intolerable; and, on the other hand, the progressive deterioration in his bodily condition made his mood more and more irritable. After 1878, Marx was no longer able to do any useful scientific work. He could not finish anything. His self-confidence had been shattered.
¶At about this time, Frau Marx began to fall ill. Her life had been a
hard one, and now the end was coming, slowly and terribly, from cancer.
Making a last heroic effort, she fulfilled a long felt wish in the
summer of 1881, by going to Paris to visit her daughters there. When she
returned, Marx was laid up with bronchitis and pleurisy. Tussy and
Lenchen Demuth had devoted themselves to the care of the invalid, and
had had the pleasure of seeing him on his feet once more. Writing to a
friend, Tussy says: Mother was in bed in the big front room, and Mohr
in the back room. These two, whose lives had been so closely
intertwined, could no longer be together. Mohr got over his illness. I
shall never forget the morning when he felt strong enough to go into
mother’s room. It was as if they had been quite young again–she a loving
girl and he a loving youth, entering upon life together, instead of an
old man ravaged by illness, and a dying old woman, taking leave of one
another for ever.
¶Frau Marx died on December 2, 1881. When Engels entered the house, he
said: Mohr is dead too.
How true this was was shown by the rapid
ebb which now set in in Marx’s forces. Writing to Sorge in December,
Marx said: I have come out of the last illness doubly crippled,
morally by the death of my wife, physically because it has left a
thickening of the diaphragm and great irritability of the bronchial
tubes.
Engels did everything in his power to promote a cure. Under
medical orders Marx visited the Isle of Wight. Then, in March and April
1882, he went to Algiers, where the weather was unkind, being rainy and
cold. May he spent in Cannes, Nice, and Monte Carlo. In June and July,
he was with his daughter Jenny at Argenteuil near Paris; and he stayed
during August with Laura at Vevey on the Lake of Geneva. In the end of
September he got back to London, obviously much better, and in the mood
for work. To avoid the London fogs, he went again to the Isle of Wight,
but here once more the weather was unfavourable, and brought about a bad
relapse.
¶On January 12, 1883, Marx’s favourite daughter Jenny, Madame Longuet,
died suddenly. This was an overwhelming blow, and his own condition
promptly grew worse, so that he was dangerously ill when he returned to
London. The end came on March 14th. Writing to Sorge, late on the
following evening, Engels said: For the last six weeks, every morning
as I turned the corner into the street, I was in terror lest I should
see the blinds down. Yesterday afternoon (the afternoon was the best
time to visit him) when I arrived at 2:30 I found every one in tears,
for it seemed that the end was at hand. I asked what had happened, and
tried to make them look at the hopeful side. He had only had a slight
haemorrhage, but there had been a grave collapse. Our good old Lenchen,
who has looked after him as assiduously as any mother ever cared for a
sick child, went upstairs, and came back to tell me that he was in a
doze, but I might go up. I found him lying there, asleep indeed, but in
the sleep from which there is no waking. He was pulseless and had ceased
to breathe. During the two minutes of Lenchen’s absence he had quietly
and painlessly passed away.
Already the day before, Engels had
written to Liebknecht: I find it almost impossible to realize that
this man of genius has ceased to fertilize the proletarian movement of
two worlds with his mighty thoughts. What we all of us are, we are
through him; what the contemporary movement is, it is thanks to his
activity in the fields of theory and practice. Without him, we should
still be wandering in a maze of confusion.
¶On March 17th, Marx was buried in Highgate cemetery. The funeral was a simple affair, the only persons present being Engels, Lessner, Liebknecht, Longuet, Lafargue, and one or two other friends. Engels delivered a funeral oration, which may be given at full length, for it contains an admirable summary of Marx’s life work.
¶“On March 14th, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest of living thinkers ceased to think. He had been left alone for barely two minutes; but when we entered his room we found that, seated in his chair, he had quietly gone to sleep–for ever.
¶“The loss which his death has inflicted upon the fighting proletariat in Europe and America, and upon the science of history, is immeasurable. The gaps that will be made by the death of this titan will soon be felt.
¶“Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history. He discovered the simple fact (heretofore hidden beneath ideological excrescences) that human beings must have food and drink, clothing and shelter, first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics, science, art, religion, and the like. This implies that the production of the immediately requisite material means of subsistence, and therewith the extant economic developmental phase of a nation or an epoch, constitute the foundation upon which the State institutions, the legal outlooks, the artistic and even the religious ideas, of those concerned, have been built up. It implies that these latter must be explained out of the former, whereas usually the former have been explained as issuing from the latter.
¶“Nor was this all. Marx likewise discovered the special law of motion proper to the contemporary capitalist method of production and to the bourgeois society which that method of production has brought into being. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light here, whereas all previous investigators (socialist critics no less than bourgeois economists) had been groping in the dark.
¶“Two such discoveries might suffice for one man’s lifetime. Fortunate is he who is privileged to make even one discovery so outstanding. But in every field he studied (the fields were many, and the studies were exhaustive), Marx made independent discoveries–even in mathematics.
¶“I have pictured the man of science. But the man of science was still only half the man. For Marx, science was a motive force of history, was a revolutionary force. Whilst he took a pure delight in a purely theoretical discovery, in one which had not and perhaps never would have a practical application, he experienced a joy of a very different kind when he was concerned with a discovery which would forthwith exert a revolutionary influence on industry, on historical evolution in general. For instance, he paid close attention to the advances of electrical science, and, of late years, to the discoveries of Marcel Deprez.
¶“For, before all else, Marx was a revolutionist. To collaborate in
one way or another in the overthrow of capitalist society and of the
State institutions created by that society; to collaborate in the
freeing of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to inspire
with a consciousness of its needs, with a knowledge of the conditions
requisite for its emancipation–this was his true mission in life.
Fighting was his natural element. Few men ever fought with so much
passion, tenacity, and success. His work on the Rheinische
Zeitung
in 1842, on the Parisian Vorwärts
in 1844, on the
Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung
in 1847, on the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung
in 1848 and 1849, on the New York Tribune
from 1852
to 1861; a great number of pamphlets; multifarious activities in Paris,
Brussels, and London; finally, as crown of his labours, the foundation
of the International Workingmen’s Association: there you have his
record. Had Marx done nothing but found the International, that was an
achievement of which he might well have been proud.
¶“Because he was an active revolutionist, Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. He was shown the door by various governments, republican as well as absolute. Bourgeois, ultra-democrats as well as conservatives, vied with one another in spreading libels about him. He brushed these aside like cobwebs, ignored them, only troubled to answer them when he positively had to. Yet he has gone down to his death honoured, loved, and mourned by millions of revolutionary workers all over the world, in Europe and Asia as far eastward as the Siberian mines, and in America as far westward as California. I can boldly assert that, while he may still have many adversaries, he has now hardly one personal enemy.
¶His name and his works will live on through the centuries.
¶The inscription on the tomb reads as follows:
¶Jenny von Westphalen The Beloved Wife of Karl Marx Born 12. February 1814 Died 2. December 1881 And Karl Marx Born May 5. 1818; Died March 14. 1883 And Harry Longuet Their Grandson Born July 4. 1878; Died March 20. 1883 And Helene Demuth Born January 1. 1823; Died November 4. 1890.
§ Chapter 10: Appraisement
§ The Man
¶If the materialist interpretation of history be, in very truth, the best interpretation of the processes of history, it must hold good, not only with regard to the masses who are the executors of these processes, but also with regard to the individuals who embody this execution.
¶The application of the materialist interpretation of history to the masses, as the executors of historical processes, is the task of sociology.
¶Its application to individuals is the concern of psychology.
¶The substance of the materialist conception or interpretation of history is as follows. Society (or, within a class society, the dominant class) forms the social order out of the natural forces of production and the extant relations of production. The structure of this material foundation is reflected in the ideological superstructure. The foundation and the superstructure have a dialectical reciprocal interaction. Decisive for the character of the social order is the need for safeguarding society, or for safeguarding its dominant stratum.
¶If we translate into psychological terms these principles of the method of historical materialism, we get the following. Man forms his character out of his organic constitution and his social and family position. The biological and social interests that promote his safeguarding find expression (unconsciously) in aims. The main trends of his behaviour arise with reference to these aims. Opinions, conceptions, ideas, manifest themselves as forms of expression of the individual’s aim to safeguard his own existence. Decisive for each one of us in the formation of character and in the development of trends of behaviour is, in the individualistic epoch, the urge to self-expression as an individuality, an urge dictated by the circumstances of life. When, in the light of these guiding principles, we contemplate the man Marx–contemplate him solely as a man, apart from his work–our attention is riveted by three characteristics:
¶First, his persistent ill-health, from which we infer that there was constitutional weakness or organic defect.
¶Secondly, his Jewish origin, which he felt as a social stigma.
¶Thirdly, his position as a first-born child.
¶Each of these traits, a biological, a social, and a family trait, seems, at the first glance, isolated from the others. There is nothing obvious to show that they are interconnected. Still less do we see any obvious reason for supposing that, as constituents of a whole, they can be reduced to a common denominator.
¶Nevertheless, the method of the materialist interpretation of history constrains us to connect them and unify them.
¶If we set out from the view that every organism is, in a general sense, unified through its adaptation to the natural conditions of existence, we shall perceive that all its constituents develop, coalesce, and mutually further one another, as if they were animated by a unitary purpose, and controlled by that purpose. From the purely biological standpoint, we can say that this fundamental aim in the case of a living organism is self-preservation, the maintenance of its life.
¶The human organism is distinguished from the organism of other living creatures by this, that in man the biological aims are complicated by social aims, which do not necessarily coincide with the biological aims–for human sociology, in contradistinction to that of the animal kingdom, has a tradition, has a history. Each generation of human beings takes over the social content handed down from previous generations, and has to elaborate this in the interest of its own maintenance. Furthermore, social evolution runs a speedier course than biological, and often runs a different course.
¶The organism of the individual human being is in a still more difficult position. The individual is threatened, not only by the dangers of the natural environment and by the dangers of society, but also by dangers proceeding from other individuals. The aim of self-preservation is not always in conformity with the aim of species-preservation, or of society-preservation. Conflicts ensue.
¶The general aim of life is to pass from insecurity to security. Phrasing this concretely, we get, in the biological domain, the aim to live long and remain healthy. In the sociological domain, we get in addition the aim to win a place in society, and thus to be enabled to fulfil the tasks of occupation, marriage, and comradeship.
¶True, society is not a unity, for it consists of stratified classes, of an upper stratum and a lower. Its sociological structure determines a psychological valuation. The personal aim in life thus becomes an aim, an individual urge, to avoid being outrun by others in the race of life, an urge to achieve validity in one way or another. Subjectively, this urge finds expression in the sense of individuality.
¶The lower the self-esteem, and the stronger therefore the feeling of insecurity, the stronger is the urge to intensify the sense of individuality, and the stronger therewith is the urge to secure compensation for the perils of the dangerous situation of inferiority. Appraised from the social standpoint, a comparative inadequacy for life, whatever its kind, is always felt as inferiority. This sense of inferiority generates an impulse towards exaggeration of the sense of individuality. The process presents itself as a compensatory endeavour to re-establish the lost mental balance; and it finds its counterpart in the physical sphere, where organic defect is compensated by increased organic activity.
¶It is a psychological characteristic of the capitalist epoch that, by proletarianization and individualization, it has robbed the great masses of the population of their traditional securities, and has made a sense of insecurity a generalized psychological trait. Inasmuch as the sense of insecurity is felt almost exclusively in comparison with a neighbour whose position is secure or is believed to be secure, the sense of inferiority has become a universal psychical feature of contemporary man.
¶This general sense of inferiority may, under special conditions, be excessively stimulated, and may then be so intensified as to dominate the individual’s mind, and to enlist all the mental faculties in its service. That is especially apt to happen in the case of those who suffer from a weak constitution, from organic defects, from grave social disadvantages, an unfavourable family position, and a bad preparation for life owing to a defective education. It is the typical outcome of a bad start in life, or of an inadequate equipment for life’s struggle.
¶Should a strong sense of inferiority be intensified by the failure of attempts at compensation, or should fresh factors of insecurity come into play, the attempts towards compensation will be excessive, and compensation will take the form of overcompensation. The individual’s aim will no longer merely be security, validity; the aim will be to prove oneself worth more than others, superior to others, superhuman, godlike.
¶Thenceforward the individual’s mental life will range from the
intensified sense of inferiority as starting-point, towards the
intensified ideal of individuality as aim. Consciously in part,
unconsciously for the most part, but always in a unified fashion, the
manifestations of the personality range between these two poles. From
the time when he becomes aware of his own ego, down to the day of his
death, all the individual’s doings, all his wishes, all his thoughts and
feelings, all his judgments–however contradictory and enigmatic they may
seem–move along this line from below upwards. Everything is coerced into
the service of the ideal of individuality: the body, sex life, the
intelligence, logic, memory, experience. Purposively and in unitary
fashion, thought and feeling and action express this struggle away from
the sense of inferiority and towards an intensified sense of
individuality. We discern numerous manifestations of behaviour whose
significance can only be understood with reference to this aim. The sum
of these methods of behaviour is what we speak of as character. In his
character traits, the man is building paths which, as he believes, will
lead him most swiftly and safely to the heights towards which he
aspires. With unconscious purposiveness, he makes
experiences,
stores up tendentious memories, formulates judgments. In each new period
of life he finds confirmation of his previous opinions concerning
himself, of his previous outlooks on the world and on life. He is
perpetually repeating the same round of luck and ill-luck; is having
again and again like experiences with women, colleagues, and friends; is
always reiterating the same impressions and judgments. What seems to be
a change is, as a rule, only a change of form, the new man being merely
the old one under new conditions. Those, therefore, who are not deceived
by the ostensible contradictions of the surface, can discern in every
individuality a unified and circumscribed image, in which all the
movements of the mind are dictated by a central aim, are controlled by a
unified tendency; and in which each function plays its appropriate part.
Biological and social aims become building material incorporated into
the individual psychological aims. The whole man stands before us as a
circumscribed unity.
¶Unified and unambiguous, too, is the use which the man makes of the means he finds to his hand in his bodily constitution, his social position, his situation within the family. Placed by birth in special circumstances which are not of his own choosing and which it is not within his power to alter, he must accommodate himself to the extant. He does accommodate himself, in accordance with his life plan. He turns a constitutional weakness, an organic defect, to his own uses; he learns how to take advantage of his social position; he is able to avail himself of his family situation. Every shortcoming, every disadvantage, becomes, under his (unconscious) manipulation, a means for promoting his advance towards his aim. This aim is always the achievement of superiority. If he is unable to reach the desired height by the application of the means at his disposal, he uses them as extenuating circumstances, to exonerate himself and to free himself from responsibility.
¶If, in the light of these considerations, we turn to examine the personality of Marx, we see the before-mentioned biological, social, and family traits in a new and instructive light. But the traits in question are only the elements, the first crude constituents, of a psychological analysis–with which we have to content ourselves, since we lack more detailed materials as regards the life of Marx. Obviously, they do not suffice for an exhaustive analysis. Many of the gaps in our observation will have to be filled in artificially; a schematic construction will have to supplement the defects of observation. Nevertheless, we can get a great deal farther than was possible by earlier psychological methods. Even if we do not achieve definitive knowledge, in this respect psychological analysis is no more inadequate than the other sciences, for science has to leave many ultimate problems open.
¶While quite young, Marx began to suffer from liver trouble, which was considered a family disease, and which Marx believed himself to have inherited. Throughout life, he suffered from a secret fear of cancer of the liver, which was supposed to be the doom of members of his family. Probably his liver trouble was closely connected with a general weakness of the digestive apparatus, a disorder of the whole gastro-intestinal tract; for, in addition to the ordinary symptoms of liver trouble, he suffered also from various morbid conditions, such as loss of appetite, constipation, gastric and intestinal catarrh, hemorrhoids, furunculosis, etc., which are to be regarded as manifestations and accompaniments of grave disturbances of metabolism. Essentially, he suffered from metabolic disorders.
¶This biological condition is of great importance. Obviously, so grave a disturbance of so vital a function could not fail to take effect on Marx’s psyche in the form of a strong sense of insecurity and inadequacy. Beyond question, this was the chief cause of his sense of inferiority.
¶To this was superadded a social factor, his Jewish descent. In the
early part of the present book I showed how great were the social,
legal, and political disadvantages from which the Jews suffered in
Germany before the time of the March revolution, and how the Jews of
Rhineland in especial were despised and persecuted. Marx felt that as a
Jew he had been given a bad start in life, one which would seriously
handicap his prospects of advancement. No doubt the conversion of the
family to Protestantism had done something to make up for this, but his
racial origin could not be washed away by the waters of baptism. No one
could ever forget that Marx had been born a Jew, for not only was his
facial type markedly Hebraic, but his whole aspect shouted a Semitic
origin. Baptized or unbaptized, Marx remained a Jew, recognizable as
such at the first glance, and burdened therefore with all the odium
attaching to his race. One may presume that from early childhood he had
been on the defensive, earnestly endeavouring, by means of intelligence
and industry, to compensate for the disadvantages of birth. Even if his
Jewish origin proved no drawback to Marx, or only entailed obstacles
which it was easy for him to overcome, he may none the less have felt
his descent to entail upon him a social stigma, which must have aroused
in him a sense of inferiority. For actual inferiority is not needed to
arouse the sense of it; mere suspicions, assumptions, imaginations, and
exaggerations suffice to induce this mental state. Very striking is the
unusual acerbity with which, when he is discussing the Jewish problem,
Marx attacks the empirical essence of Judaism.
He writes: What
is the mundane basis of Judaism? Practical needs; self-interest. What is
the mundane cult of the Jews? Huckstering. What is the Jews’ mundane
god? Money.
Marx denounces the Jews as prototypes of the commercial
spirit and of a monetary economy; he makes Judaism the symbol of
bloodsucking capitalism. The reader cannot escape the feeling that he is
ostentatiously showing his opposition to Judaism, is demonstratively
severing himself from his own race, and by emphasizing his
anti-capitalist tendencies is declaring himself before all the world not
to be a Jew. But one who takes so much trouble to declare that he is not
a Jew must have reason for being afraid of being regarded as a Jew. I
think there can be no doubt that this social factor of Marx’s Jewish
origin intensified his sense of inferiority, and must have increased his
urge towards compensatory achievements.
¶Finally, it is probable that his family position reinforced the same trend. Marx was a firstborn child, an only son, and the hope of the family. Since intellectual achievements were part of the family tradition, great hopes were entertained of his talents in this direction, especially seeing that he was a precocious and remarkably clever boy. Certainly at school his success justified high expectations. He was regarded as a wonder-child. At seventeen he was ripe for a university career.
¶But high gifts entail high obligations. Above all is this the case when they are associated with responsibility for the revival of a lost prestige. Still more exacting are the demands made of one who has shown precocious talent. When there has been an unusually rapid advance up to the age of seventeen, everyone expects this advance to be sustained at the same speed. These febrile anticipations are entertained by the person most concerned, and act upon him with the painful stimulation of a whip. Besides, Karl Marx’s father earnestly hoped that his son would enter one of the learned professions, and the father’s authority seems to have had a great influence upon the son’s education.
¶All the greater was the disappointment when, after the brilliant start, young Marx seemed at a standstill. During the first year of his life at the university, there appeared to be a relaxation in his forces, and a lull in his ambition. Serious disputes ensued between him and his father, so that at one time there was a risk that his university career would be broken off. That disaster was avoided, but Marx’s apparent failure at a time when his family was looking to him for success had shaken his self-confidence. A condition of anxiety, doubt, and confusion supervened. He began to be afraid that he would never fulfil these great expectations. He shirked his lectures, avoided examinations, procrastinated the choice of a profession–these being typical manifestations of profound discouragement. His ambition intensified his sense of responsibility so much that he was almost incapable of regular work.
¶To summarize, we may say that the three characteristic features of Marx’s individuality–poor health, Jewish origin, and the fact that he was firstborn–interact, and combine to produce an intensified sense of inferiority.
¶The resulting compensation begins with the formulation of an aim. The
lower the self-esteem, the higher the aim. The position of a child, with
the difficulties and needs attendant on that position, is retained as
foundation. Throughout life, Marx remains the young student, who is
afraid of disappointing others through the inadequacy of his
achievement, and therefore sets himself aim beyond aim, piles task upon
task. He cannot escape the voices calling after him: You must show
what you can do! Must climb! Must have a brilliant career! Must do
something extraordinary! Must be the first!
This will-to-conquest
and this urge-to-superiority dominate all the phases of his existence as
worker and fighter. Indefatigably he trains his understanding, schools
his memory, sharpens his wits. He is diligent to excess. Like
Saint-Simon, who made his valet exhort him every morning, so Marx
exhorts himself, day after day, in the tones of an ambition that
masquerades as a sense of duty: Get up! You have great things to
perform! You have a world to win!
Thus is the aim formulated. He
must do something extraordinary, unique; he must be the only one of his
kind; he must assume the highest responsibilities. The urge to be
godlike forms his plans in life, and guides all his activities.
¶But whatever aims a man may set himself, in his endeavours to attain them he is restricted to the use of the means with which he is endowed. He must work with the tools at his disposal. What were these, in Marx’s case? A sickly frame, Jewish descent, and the position of firstborn. If he wishes to attain greatness, it must be by the use of these instruments. He must press them into the service of his compensatory endeavours.
¶Persons with digestive disorders, with troubles of the stomach, the bowels and the liver, are well-known to be prone to disorder of the affective life. They are depressed, capricious, spiteful, discontented creatures; they lack a proper contact with the environing world; they are full of suspicions; they are unable to enter into sympathetic relations with others; they are isolated, embittered, always on edge, ever ready to scratch. It seems as if the bodily difficulties, inhibitions, and convulsions, had been transferred into the mental sphere. In very truth, the organic material substratum secures expression in the psychical superstructure. In the latter, as in the former, there are the same disturbances, the same irregularities, the same anomalies of function. The orderly succession of income and output has been disarranged. Either the output of thought substance is checked, this leading to a sort of spiritual constipation; or else there is a lack of spiritual income, and then the mind is starved. On the other hand there may be an immoderate absorption of spiritual sustenance, leading to a kind of mental distension; or there may be an extravagant expenditure, followed by mental exhaustion. Always there is a lack of due measure; always there is what may be called a disorder of mental metabolism. The example of the child recurs here, the child that eats too little or too much, that is over-dainty or gluttonous. In later life these become persons who never acquire a sound relation towards the important vital function of nutrition; they become misers or spendthrifts, are stingy or extravagant, are pedants, croesuses, etc.
¶Marx suffered typically from this sort of disorder of spiritual metabolism. Always capricious, depressed, spiteful, he behaved like one affected with indigestion, tortured by flatulence, or racked by biliary colic. He was a hypochondriac, and, like all hypochondriacs, made too much of his bodily troubles. Just as he had a poor relation to his food, ate little, irregularly, and with little appetite, stimulating his desire with mixed pickles, spices, vinegar, caviare, and the like; so he had a bad relation to his work and to his fellow men. Bad eaters are bad workers and bad comrades. They either do not eat at all or they overfill their stomachs; they either idle or overwork; they either shun their fellow men or make friends with Tom, Dick, and Harry. They are always in extremes. Neither their stomach, nor their brain, nor their spirit, can endure such sudden antitheses. Just as in youth Marx did not engage upon the regular study of something which might have proved a means of livelihood, so later he was incapable of regular intellectual work which would have nourished the whole man. He had no profession, no office, no regular occupation, no dependable means of livelihood. Everything was improvised, capricious, the sport of chance. Instead of attending lectures in his student days, and thus preparing himself for a professional career, he filled his mental stomach with philosophical and literary mixed pickles. He lacked discipline, a sense of order, a feeling for a proper relation between income and expenditure. Now, for months at a time, he would not write a line; then he would hurl himself at his work like a titan. By day and by night he devoured whole libraries, heaped up mountains of extracts, filled thick manuscript books, left behind him piles of half finished writings. Yet in all this work he had as little pleasure as he had at his meals; he groaned, cursed, deplored his fate, described himself as a slave of the intelligence, martyrized his family. Often, when his household was urgently in need of the fees he might have earned, he left it to Engels to write the necessary newspaper articles, while himself luxuriating in the ancient classics, poring over the most precious treasures of the libraries, devouring costly literature like caviare, or giving himself up with delight to the entirely unremunerative study of the higher mathematics. He could never get enough of these intellectual dainties, just as he could never eat enough caviare and mixed pickles to satisfy him. But regular work bored him, conventional occupation put him out of humour. Without a penny in his pocket, and with his shirt pawned, he surveyed the world with a lordly air. He detested social intercourse upon equal terms. He only cared to clink glasses with persons who praised and admired him. He took refuge in cynicism from any profounder manifestation of feeling. He was one who knew nothing of the joys of convivial intercourse; was a solitary, an eremite. Proneness to solitude and to severance from the community is apt to be intensified in persons suffering from disorders of metabolism, for they are inclined to regard their troubles (since these concern the digestive and excretory organs) as unclean and disgusting. They are apt to react with a mania for cleanliness, a fanaticism for tidiness, pedantry. Their personal ideal is: to be the cleanest, the most immaculate, the noblest and most sublime person in the world. From such therefore is recruited the army of moralists, of the apostles of good behaviour, of the heroes of virtue, of the revealers of a new ethic or of an ideal mode of life. The aspiration towards an especial purity of character, towards absolute immaculacy, towards perfect purity of motives, towards sublimity of philosophy, has in most cases such an origin. Paradoxical as it may seem, moral and aesthetic rigorism springs out of the bowel.
¶Marx was one of those persons who are overpowered by a perpetual urge towards the highest, the purest, the most ideal. It was not merely his ambition to be the most famous among those who have studied socialist literature, and the most learned of all the critics of economic science; he also wanted to be the most efficient revolutionist, and pre-eminent among the advocates of revolution. He wanted to expound the purest theory, to establish the most complete system of communism. As a preliminary to the demonstration of this superiority, he must prove that the socialist theories of all his predecessors were worthless, false, contemptible, or ludicrous. He had to show that the socialism of the utopists was a crazy-quilt of outworn and questionable ideas. That Proudhon was a suspect intruder into the realm of socialist thought. That Lassalle, Bakunin, and Schweitzer were tainted with bourgeois ideology, and had probably sold themselves to the enemy. He, Marx alone, was in possession of the true doctrine. His was the crystal-clear knowledge; his was the philosopher’s stone; his the immaculate conception of socialism; his the divine truth. With contemptuous wrath, with bitter mockery and profound hostility, he rejected all other opinions, fought against all other convictions, than his own, persecuted all ideas that had not originated in his own brain. For him, there was no wisdom except his own, no socialism other than the socialism he proclaimed, no true gospel outside the limits of his own doctrine. His work was the essence of intellectual purity and scientific integrity. His system was Allah, and he was its prophet.
¶In marked contrast with the lofty pedestal on which Marx thus placed himself in the world of theory, was the position he occupied as soon as it ceased to be a question of great ideas and abstract problems, and became a question of petty realities and the concrete tasks of life. In that world of concrete reality, Marx failed no less utterly than he triumphed in the realm of abstract intelligence. His failure was as pitiful in the one as his success was magnificent in the other. Essentially, however, there is no opposition between these two phenomena.
¶Persons affected with metabolic disorders, those who cannot regulate their digestive functions properly, almost always show themselves to be persons who are likewise unable to control the functioning of their economic life. In that field, too, they are unable to achieve a due balance between income and expenditure. They do not know how to put two and two together, even when, like Marx, they are adepts in the higher mathematics. They cannot keep petty accounts. They are thoroughly bad housekeepers. They are penny wise and pound foolish. They earn badly and spend badly. Their economic sense is either non-existent, or else it is hypertrophied. They suffer from a disorder of economic metabolism.
¶In the present volume, countless instances have been given to show how hopelessly ineffectual Marx was in the domain of domestic economy. Throughout life, he was hard up. He was ridiculously ineffectual in his endeavours to cope with the economic needs of his household and his family; and his incapacity in monetary matters involved him in an endless series of struggles and catastrophes. He was always in debt; was incessantly being dunned by creditors, persecuted by usurers, drained by bloodsuckers. Half his household goods were always at the pawnshop. His budget defied all attempts to set it in order. His bankruptcy was chronic. The thousands upon thousands which Engels handed over to him, melted away in his fingers like snow.
¶This state of affairs was not the outcome of any moral lapses, nor yet of a tragical destiny. It was simply the consequence of a grave disturbance of function, of a disorder of metabolism, which affected the man’s whole system, working itself out in the economic field as well as in the bodily and mental fields. Financial crises visited Marx’s household with the same inevitable frequency as that with which boils troubled his body; and disputes with friends and foes were as common among his experiences as were financial distresses. When we look closely into the matter, we see that all alike were symptoms of one and the same trouble, manifesting itself in three separate departments of life–equally painful, equally burdensome, equally tormenting in them all. But even a whimsical and malicious disorder of metabolism has a positive side as well as a negative one, this confirming the old experience that a man’s greatest weakness is at the same time his greatest strength.
¶Inferiority seeks compensation. The sense of inferiority, stimulated ever and again by recurrent ill-success, failure, and defeat, gives no rest until the minus has been compensated by a plus. If the minus be an inherited defect, the plus becomes a matter of personal achievement. Thus only was it that Demosthenes the stammerer could become the greatest orator of antiquity, that the deaf Beethoven proved the most famous of all musicians, that the hideous Michelangelo was able to hand down to posterity the most marvellous of all depictions of human beauty.
¶In like manner the sufferer from gastric trouble, the sufferer from metabolic disorder, feels a perpetual urge to compensate the negative of his physical condition by some positive achievement. Making a virtue of necessity, he wins victory out of defeat. It depends only on his courage how far he can secure compensation. In the endeavour to compensate for gastro-intestinal inferiority, one will become a famous caterer or chef; another will become a specialist in diseases of the digestive system; a third will discover some nutritive salt, will invent some special method of dietetics; a fourth will be a vegetarian propagandist, will advocate the use of unfired food, and so on. Always the compensatory aim arises out of the perspective of the actual inferiority. Already in childhood we can note how the ideas and wishes as to a future occupation are determined by unconscious feelings of inferiority. Always the hidden aim is to make good for an inherited defect by a surplus of achievement. Whether the achievement takes the form of something which counts in the concrete world, or only takes the form of a neurotic expedient, is a question of individual courage.
¶Marx sought for spiritual compensation in the realm of ideas. His compensatory endeavour made him the founder of an economic theory, the creator of a new economic system. His aim was the widest possible. He became the saviour of humanity at large, and built for eternity.
¶The man who had a poor appetite and a difficult digestion propounded a plan for the reorganization of the economic structure of society whose result was to be that every one was to have plenty to eat and an adequate supply of all the conveniences of life. The man who had always been short of money, perpetually in debt, announced and fought for the establishment of a world order in which everyone was to have a sufficient share in the world’s goods. The man who was a master of unsociability, and was incapable of true friendship, issued as a watchword that all men were to be brothers. The man who did not know how to spend a shilling wisely, elaborated in his own mind the most profound of all the theories of money; and created imaginatively the splendid thought edifice of a revolutionized economic system, established upon new and communal foundations.
¶As compensation for his sense of inferiority, he made it his life work to be the scientific founder of an economic and social order in which all were to be able to do what he could not do, and all were to have what he lacked.
¶In point of character, Marx differs in no essential respects from the men of his day and our own. They are all neurotic; they all suffer from a sense of inferiority, strive towards superiority, show themselves vain, ambitious; eager for success, greedy of power.
¶But Marx, though he does not differ from others in essentials, differs in the matter of degree. He differs alike in respect of the unusual intensity of his sense of inferiority, and in respect of the unusually high quality of his means of compensation. Thus he presents us with a classical example of the way in which the utmost subjective need releases in a man the most tremendous energies, develops them on a titanic scale, equips them with splendid creative faculties, sets them to work in the womb of the social process, where they ripen to historic deeds, and whence they are born into the light of day. The individual human being evokes the energies and achieves the work. He becomes the fulfiller of a function under stress of subjective necessity, as an outcome of the coercion of his personal needs and demands.
¶When the work thus performed is one of supreme worth to society, one which society recognizes as of supreme importance to its own safeguarding, society qualifies it as a work of genius.
§ His Work
¶If a man does not succeed in compensating his sense of inferiority by actual achievements, he contents himself, in the end, with the semblance of achievement.
¶Since, however, his increased impulse to self-assertion makes him feel the admission of incapacity or ill-success to be a defeat and a disgrace, he seeks for some expedient whereby he can evade responsibility for failure. His favourite method, in such circumstances, will be to have recourse to an illness which will relieve him of his burden. It is not only that illness will make others kindly and considerate towards him. Furthermore, in the general view, illness is the work of an objective and mysterious power to which man succumbs through the decrees of fate. In especial, such a view is an outcome of the doctrine (no longer scientifically tenable, but still widely held), according to which illnesses and anomalies are handed down automatically from generation to generation, so that the persons who suffer from them are the subjects of an inevitable doom. This outlook is an aid to one who wishes to regard his illness as an excuse for failure in life.
¶One who adopts such an expedient will have little difficulty in discovering somewhere in his organism a weakness, however insignificant, a defect, however trifling, which he can press into the service. By a process of training, deliberately though perhaps unconsciously pursued, he is able in course of time to develop this convenient lack or defect into the illness which will serve his turn. With increasing adroitness, he finds it possible to arrange that the morbid manifestations shall always occur when they suit his purpose. The purpose is, of course, to explain failure as the outcome of the overwhelming power of the illness. With long practice and special skill, such a person is able to make of his illness a charter which will excuse him from all further effort. Now he has gained his end. He will no longer be expected to prove his mettle, and will therefore be safeguarded against any further defeat. His illness has become a harbour of refuge.
¶For this advantage, the patient is willing to pay the price in the
form of pains, renouncements, material expenditure, troublesome methods
of treatment. To be freed from daily demands upon his efficiency, and
from the consequent daily prospect of dishonourable defeat, is worth
more to him than what he has to pay in the form of the inconveniences of
his malady. Besides, now that he is an invalid, he has gained advantages
that were unknown to him when he was in good health; he has become the
centre of a circle of devoted attendants, and is richer for interesting
experiences. He is a person of worth, now that he is among the sufferers
who are sympathized with, protected, and cared for. Above all, he has
risen in his own esteem, for the perennial excuse, If I were not ill
…
enables him to fancy himself otherwise
capable of boundless
achievements, destined for unrivalled successes. In these circumstances,
he will have enough self-conceit to regard his most trifling
achievements as heroic deeds.
¶Physicians and psychologists give the name of neurotics
to
persons of this kind, persons who by such expedients escape the tasks of
life, and are able to content themselves with the semblance of
achievement. Behaviour which aims at an escape from the duties, the
tasks, the functions of life, without renouncing the claims made on
life, and unaccompanied by any recognition that such behaviour is
anti-social and anti-evolutionary, is known as neurosis.
There
are today very few persons wholly free from neurotic traits. Neurosis is
a universal contemporary characteristic.
¶Unquestionably Marx was a neurotic. For every one familiar with neurotic symptoms, the neurotic traits in his clinical history are unmistakable. His supposed affliction with a congenital disorder of the liver obviously served him as a sort of lightning-conductor, as a pretext for escaping from difficult situations. Experience has abundantly shown that autosuggestion is competent to induce severe cardiac spasms, bilious attacks, asthmatic or epileptic paroxysms, haemorrhages, simulated burns, paralyses, etc. It is easy enough, therefore, especially when we may suppose a pre-existent genuine organic weakness or disorder of function, to develop a first-class liver trouble or metabolic disorder whenever it is wanted. I am not talking of deception, of deliberate fraud. Modern psychiatry has shown that psychological factors are at work in many illnesses; and the day may well come when a number of mysterious and incurable maladies now regarded as hereditary will be revealed as unconscious artifacts, the masks for discouragement. In the case of Marx’s illness, the characteristics are so obviously those of a cleverly operated unconscious mechanism, that there can be no doubt of its neurotic character. He believed that he was perpetually dogged by disaster, was continually afflicted with inefficient collaborators, was prevented from performing his duties as breadwinner, was disappointed again and again by untrustworthy friends, and was perpetually being entangled in conflicts and quarrels. In his own view, of course, his ailments were the basic cause of his troubles.
¶Yet however much Marx had recourse to neurotic tricks and expedients, when in search of extenuating circumstances, he never, mentally speaking, surrendered wholly and permanently to neurosis–and this is the decisive matter.
¶Even though Marx failed to solve the problem of earning a livelihood, he was never a man to shrink from hard work. On the contrary, his industry and his powers of work arouse our amazement.
¶Although he made a poor showing as breadwinner, he was otherwise a happy and successful husband, a tender father, was able on into old age to delight his charming and clever wife, and to retain her affection.
¶Though he was at feud with all the world, he never forfeited the friendship of Engels, who was worth hundreds of other friends, and was not a man to give his friendship to the first comer.
¶A sense of inferiority like that of Marx, intensified by various factors, may certainly induce neurotic behaviour, may lead in the end to neurotic flight from the world, but it does not compel one who suffers from it to sacrifice himself wholly to neurosis. Whether and how far a man gives way to the tendency to run away from life, yields to the inner urge to escape into a masked passivity–depends upon the amount of community feeling with which he is endowed, the amount of community feeling he is able to transform into a courageous facing of realities, into positive activities.
¶Marx had recourse to the neurotic protective mechanisms whenever he stood alone, whenever he was delivered over to his own weaknesses without the support of a community: as breadwinner, as the writer of articles for periodicals, as controversialist, as the defender of personal ideas and theses. From dread lest he should be put to the test, he was unable to show any community feeling in these private matters. But as soon as he was engaged in, a wider field, he was as if transformed. Then community feeling surged up in him from the depths. Just as Antaeus developed a giant’s strength as soon as he touched the earth, so Marx, as soon as he felt the ground of the community under his feet, was endowed with the power of courageously ignoring all the uncertainties, doubts, pusillanimities, and cowardices, which would otherwise have hindered his advance. Here what seemed more was really less, for the imaginary great community demanded from him less courage than did the actual small community. Nevertheless, on the ground of that greater community, his powers ripened, his courage grew, his work throve to become a historic deed. His monumental greatness was the outcome of the overwhelming powers of a spiritual community-sense.
¶When Marx entered the political arena, the German bourgeoisie was striving to secure social recognition, and to get possession of the powers of the State. It needed superabundant energies to cope with the situation into which its development had brought it. In order to mobilize all available forces and to throw these into the fighting front, it represented its struggle for power as a struggle for power on the part of the people in general, and represented its ideal as a universally valid human ideal. The consequence was that every one capable of enthusiasm for the ideals of progress and liberty, became an enthusiast for the ideals of bourgeois progress and bourgeois liberty. The amalgamation of all individual wills into one great communal will gained the victory.
¶But within the womb of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat had been engendered. As long as it was still attached by the navel string of its petty-bourgeois and peasant origin, it identified its interests with those of the bourgeoisie. For that reason, it accepted the war aims of bourgeois emancipation and bourgeois revolution, fought for the bourgeoisie on the barricades, and took the bourgeois proclamations of humanist ideals at their face value. But directly the victory had been won, a gulf opened between the rights and living conditions of the bourgeoisie and the rights and living conditions of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie, having safely reached port, dropped its humanitarian aims, and turned to attack the proletariat.
¶The conditions under which this took place were the most unfavourable for the proletariat that can be imagined. It had just been sacrificing blood and life and strength for the purposes of the bourgeoisie. It was still bleeding from a thousand wounds; it was weakened and exhausted; it was staggering along confusedly in a situation which it did not yet fully understand. This was the moment at which its sometime friends treacherously attacked it. Panic-stricken and despairing, the proletarians flung themselves on the ground, submitting to their evil fate. For a decade, they showed no understanding of history, displayed no sign of a political consciousness. But the decade passed. Overcoming their despair, shaking off their lassitude, the masses rose to their feet, looked this way and that, revived the demand for liberty and humanitarian aims which had been abandoned by the bourgeoisie, and hoisted the flag for renewed struggles. But the bourgeoisie of the sixties was not the bourgeoisie of the forties. The ten years after 1848 had been turned to good account for the economic and social strengthening of the bourgeois position. The bourgeoisie had become great, rich, and powerful; was in possession of excellent means for defending its position; and was determined to crush unmercifully any attempt at advance made by the proletariat. The pressure exercised by the bourgeoisie on the proletariat was overwhelming. The proletariat, powerless economically and socially, with no culture of its own, depressed by the failure of the revolution and the experience of the counter-revolution, delivered over to the onslaughts of an adversary possessed of enormously superior force, was profoundly discouraged.
¶Here, upon the plane of class life, was a neurotic situation analogous to that described above on the plane of individual life. In the course of historical evolution, the proletariat found itself faced with a great task, its very existence depending upon the proper performance of that task. It suffered from anxiety, it did not feel equal to the demands of the time. It attempted to evade these demands, to take refuge in political indifferentism, in the semblance of achievement, in neurotic behaviour. At the historic moment, its failure seemed imminent.
¶Nothing but an act which would bring encouragement would save the imperilled cause of the proletariat. A treatment that would overcome the sense of inferiority, a method of education that would re-establish self-confidence and revive self-esteem, was essential. The proletariat needed an elixir that would restore hope, needed a miraculous energy that could only be inspired by a great conviction, needed a quasi-fanatical obsession. Then came Marx, and supplied this magic potion. His community sense had led him, with instinctive logic, to espouse the cause of the proletariat. He saw that the conditions of proletarian impotence were the outcome of the structure of bourgeois society, and he drew the inference that the causes of this impotence could only be removed by changing the structure of society. With this end in view, he annulled the individualist concept of personality, replacing it by the collective concept of class–a concept which he originated. He deprived individual struggles for individual power of meaning and justification, putting in their place the notion of the community and the struggle on behalf of the collective power of the proletarian class. He made the class struggle a law of historical evolution, and depicted socialism as the necessary and logical outcome of that struggle.
¶By expounding in a scientific system his views on the foundations and connexions, the laws and the consequences, of social evolution, and by incorporating that system into his writings, he secured compensation for the torments of his subjective sense of inferiority. By placing his writings and his doctrine at the disposal of the proletariat, he provided this class with the means for compensating its social sense of inferiority through the practical application of the knowledge thus gained–once more, then, by achievement.
¶At a particular point in historical evolution at which a class, owing to psychical inhibitions and to the stagnation of its energies, is prevented from fulfilling the mission allotted to it by history and urgently needing fulfilment, it becomes a life-or-death question for society to overcome the obstacles that are hindering the course of evolution. For this an energy, a strength, is needed far exceeding the customary. There is requisite a superhuman achievement, a heroic deed. Only one who is subjectively aware of so profound an inferiority that nothing but a titanic achievement, a heroic deed, will restore his spiritual equipoise–only such a one is competent for such a task. But such a one is competent when the comprehensiveness and the quality of the means at his disposal are rightly accordant to the strength of his urge.
¶Thus a vitally important service is done to society or to one of its social classes. Thereby, society, or the class, is saved from destruction. For this reason, the person who performs such a task receives the highest honour, inasmuch as he becomes known as a genius.
¶Genius is something more than quality, form, achievement, work. Above all, genius is a social category. It expresses a definite relation between society and an individual. That relation exists when an individual supreme achievement is effected in a phase of social development wherein this particular achievement is supremely important in the interests of social safeguarding. In the genius, the line of the compensatory achievement of an individual intersects with the line of the compensatory need of society or of a class.
¶Appraised from the outlook of the proletariat, Marx was a genius.
What was his achievement, as regards the vital needs of the proletarian
class? By his teaching, when the proletariat was in a phase of extreme
discouragement, he inspired it with the uttermost courage. Historical
evolution is on your side,
he shouted to the proletariat.
Capitalism, brought into being by the laws of historical evolution,
will be destroyed by the inexorable working of these same laws. The
bourgeoisie, the business manager of the capitalist system, appeared on
the stage of history with that system, and must make its exit when that
system walks off the stage. You, proletarians, keep capitalism going by
your labour, and maintain the whole of bourgeois society by the fruits
of your industry. But socialism will be a necessary organic outcome of
capitalism, the essence of the latter being implied in the essence of
the former. With the end of capitalism, comes the beginning of socialism
as a logical consequence. You proletarians, as a class, being the
incorporators of the forces and tendencies which will do away with
capitalism, must necessarily make an end of the bourgeoisie. You merely
need, as a class, to fulfil the evolution which your mission calls on
you to fulfil. All you need is to will! History makes this as easy as
possible for you. You need not hatch out any new ideas, make any plans,
discover a future State. You need not
dogmatically anticipate the
world.
You need merely put your hands to the task which is awaiting
you. The means by which you will do it are to be found in the unceasing,
purposive, consistent fighting of the class struggle, whose crown will
be the victory of the social revolution.
¶Evolution is on your side!
With this word of power, the
proletariat was awakened from its lethargy, was delivered from its sense
of inferiority.
¶You need only will!
With this magic potion, it was raised to
its feet and set a-going. Its paralysing anxiety had been overcome, its
uncertainties had been shaken off, its lack of faith had been conquered
by self-confidence.
¶Socialism, till then an aim of religious ardour, a wonderland of fanciful hopes, an artifact of the imagination, had now been scientifically demonstrated as the ripe fruit of evolution, which would fall into the laps of those who shook the tree. Marx’s teaching came in black and white to give the proletariat the certainty that socialism would be realized.
¶This gospel, not the outcome of blind faith, but based upon a keen use of the intelligence, and upon the most rational logic, could not fail to provide the proletariat with an unprecedented dynamic impetus. It animated the workers to throw off their chains, filled them with a hope enabling them to unlock all the doors between them and the future.
¶If we consider Marx and his work from such a standpoint, we perceive that the historical greatness of the phenomenon which now passes by the name of Marxism depends neither on the man nor on his work. It depends, rather, on the fact that Marx, at the critical moment of history, bestowed his teaching on the proletariat as the vehicle of an upward movement which had become historically indispensable.
¶Thus envisaged and thus appraised, it does not matter whether we regard Marxism as an eternal truth, or as a temporarily valid guiding fiction: whether the system is consequential and coherent in all its details; or whether it contains gaps, contradictions, and untenable theses: whether the theory of the imminent collapse of capitalism complies with the demands of scientific method, or has merely the restricted value of a fascinating apotheosis. What Marxism had to effect (the shaking of the proletariat out of its historical namelessness, the compacting of it into a political power, the making of it into a conscious factor of historical evolution, the placing of it on the stage of history as the author of and the actor in its own drama), all these things Marxism has achieved. If, over and above this, as the facts show, Marxism was and is logically sound, then Marxism has done even more than history could have demanded of it.
¶Only those who are content to look at the surface of things can believe (though the view is widely entertained today) that the logicalness and validity of Marxism have been undermined by the most recent happenings of history.
¶Marxism, being primarily called upon to stir up the proletarian masses, to make them collect their forces, and to lead them on to the battlefield, must necessarily display itself at the outset in a guise which would encourage optimism; in a guise which, by representing historical evolution as the guarantee of the liberation of mankind, would make the workers believe in their own mission. To gain headway, it must relentlessly clear out of the path all rationalistic and utopian systems of socialism, and must inexorably proceed on its own course. Today, when its first work is finished, Marxism begins to assume a new aspect. In our own time, not merely can Marxism occasionally recur to the systems of the utopists and the rationalists; it is directly forced in this direction by the practical demands of the day, by the growing claims for positive achievements in the class struggle. Vulgar Marxism, the Marxism of the crowd, the Marxism of those who regard the mechanism of things as the essential factor of evolution, must yield place to a transformed Marxism, to a profounder Marxism, to the Marxism of those who look upon the activities of human beings as the main factors of evolution.
¶Therewith our appraisement of Marx’s personality has likewise been profoundly modified. Whereas persons of the last generation, in view of the opposing nature of their interests, reflected in their ideology, looked upon Marx either as a criminal disturber of the peace and a devil, or else as a saint and as an infallible pope–those of our own generation can admit him to have been a man equipped both with human weaknesses and with human strengths, both with human vices and with human virtues. We are, indeed, compelled to regard him thus, unless we would refuse to apply the materialist interpretation of history to individuals as well as to general processes. Modern psychology, as used in the present work to throw light upon the character and the behaviour of a human being, is nothing other than the application of the method of historical materialism to the study of the human mind.
¶Marx had to be an obstinate, pig-headed, intolerant thinker and investigator; had to regard other people’s opinions with suspicion; had to be hostile towards every alien trend; had to be cantankerous, dictatorial, fanatically obsessed with the rightness of his own convictions, fiercely opposed to any deviations from, any falsifications of, his ideas. He had to concentrate his genius, his understanding, his creative energy, for decade after decade, upon this one point, upon this one scientific task; had to neglect his calling, his family, his livelihood, his friends. He had to be whipped on by overweening ambition, blinded by intolerable selfishness, goaded day and night by a torturing sense of inferiority–that he might be equipped for his formidable achievements. The main thing was the work which had to be done; the qualities of the doer mattered little. Or, rather, the doer of the work which had to be done, had to be spurred to his task by an impetus such as could only be furnished by the neurosis from which Marx suffered! Today we have different problems to solve, and they must be solved by highly qualified persons who have freed themselves from neurosis; must be solved by champions of the class struggle who approach the undertaking with a keen sense of responsibility, an awakened consciousness, and a strongly developed community feeling.
¶To each age its own problems! Had Marx, as a neurotic, been content with the semblance of achievement, his work would have crepitated in the void, and he himself would have been a figure tragical in its futility. As things were, however, he performed a supreme task in the history of his own time and of subsequent times. That is why the class which he thus helped to become conscious of its own life and of the future which history holds in store for it, honours him as its greatest genius.