The life and teaching of Karl Marx Part 4

FERDINAND FLOCON, Member of the Provisional Government."

The stay in Paris was, however, of short duration. Marx and Engels gathered together the members of the League of Communists and procured them the means for returning to Germany to take part in the German revolution. They themselves travelled to the Rhineland and succeeded in getting the establishment of the newspaper planned in Cologne into their hands. On the first of June, 1848, the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ appeared for the first time. It goes without saying that the editor was Karl Marx, and among his collaborators were Engels, Freiligrath, Wilhelm Wolff, and Georg Weerth. Occasionally, too, La.s.salle sent contributions. It is but rarely given to a daily paper to have such an editorial staff. In the third volume of his "Collected Papers of Marx and Engels," Franz Mehring gives a selection of the articles which appeared in this journal. They are still worth reading. Here are a few examples. After the fall of Vienna he wrote an article concluding with the following words: "With the victory of the 'Red Republic' in Paris the armies from the inmost recesses of every land will be vomited forth upon the boundaries and over them, and the real strength of the combatants will clearly appear. Then we shall remember June and October, and we too shall cry, 'Woe to the vanquished!' The fruitless butcheries which have occurred since those June and October days ...

will convince the peoples that there is only one means of shortening, simplifying, and concentrating the torturing death agonies of society--only one means--revolutionary terrorism."--(_Neue Rheinische Zeitung_, November 6, 1848.)

Or take, for example, this pa.s.sage from the last article of the paper, when on May 18, 1849, it succ.u.mbed to the "craft and cunning of the dirty West Kalmucks" (i.e., the Prussians).

"In taking leave of our readers we remind them of the words in our first January number: 'Revolutionary upheaval of the French working cla.s.s, general war--that is the index for the year 1849. And already in the east a revolutionary army comprised of warriors of all nationalities stands confronting the old Europe represented by and in league with the Russian army, already from Paris looms the Red Republic.'"

In reading these extracts one has only to subst.i.tute Russia for France and Moscow for Paris and we get at one of the sources of Lenin's and Trotsky's revolutionary policy. The articles written by Marx in 1848 and 1849 have supplied the Bolsheviks their tactics.

The censors.h.i.+p, Press lawsuits, and the decline of the revolution severed the life threads of the paper after scarcely a year of its existence. Marx sacrificed everything he had in money and valuables--in all, 7,000 thalers--in order to satisfy creditors and to pay the contributors and printers. Then he travelled to Paris, where he witnessed not the triumph of the Red Republic but that of the counter-revolution. In July, 1849, he was banished by the French Government to the boggy country of Morbihan, in Brittany; he preferred, however, to go over to London, where he remained to the end of his life.

IV. DAYS OF CLOUD AND SUNs.h.i.+NE IN LONDON.

Marx lived for more than a generation in London. Half of this time was spent in a wearying struggle for existence, which, however, did not prevent him from collecting and systematising a vast amount of material for his life-work, "Capital," nor from taking a decisive part in the Labour movement as soon as the opportunity presented itself, as it did on the founding of the International. The first decade was particularly trying. A letter written on May 20, 1851, by Marx's wife to Weydemeyer, in America, gives an affecting picture of their poverty during these first years of exile.--("Neue Zeit," 25th year, Vol. II., pp. 18-21.)

The attempt to continue the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ under the t.i.tle _Neue Rheinische Revue_ had only the negative result of swallowing up Marx's last resources. How poor Marx then was can be judged from the fact that he had to send his last coat to the p.a.w.nshop in order that he might buy paper for his pamphlet on the Cologne Communist trial (towards the end of 1852). On top of all this, lamentable differences sprang up among the German exiles, who, deceived in their revolutionary illusions, overwhelmed one another with recriminations; an echo of these conflicts is heard in the pamphlet "Herr Vogt"

(1860). Marx's only regular source of income in the years 1851-60 was his earnings as correspondent of the _New York Tribune_, which paid him at the rate of a sovereign per article, and this hardly covered his rent and the cost of newspapers and postage. Yet his articles were veritable essays, the fruit of researches which cost him a good deal of time. And in the midst of this penury the idea of writing a Socialistic criticism of political economy burnt within him. One might almost say that since 1845 this idea had allowed him no peace.

Freiligrath's lines are, as it were, stamped upon him:

In the clouds his goal he planted; In the dust had he to live, Bare existence daily granted.

Cramped, hemmed in on every side, Pinched by poverty and urged By want, he, of all denied, By necessity was scourged.

Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over 800, and Engels' more plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about 350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.

To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's reminiscences--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)--of his intercourse with the Marx family. In particular he depicts the personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never a.s.serted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great hards.h.i.+ps and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife.

Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his ma.n.u.scripts to her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the girls grew up--Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor, who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.

The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and seemed to promise an abundant harvest in his later life. But his health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work.

The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847 and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the Commune).

V. THE INTERNATIONAL.

The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-cla.s.s movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign, have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and expression of the working-cla.s.s revolutionary movements, and especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to obtain knowledge of the actual working-cla.s.s movement and to take part in it, he watched the activities of the English working cla.s.s, which in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested an interest in the fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning liberty.

At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men, with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and 1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the 28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the formation of the International Working Men's a.s.sociation. Committees and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles and outline the const.i.tution. One of Mazzini's followers and a Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to please English and French working men; it consists essentially of Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to Engels--("Correspondence," Vol. III., p. 191)--"so to arrange matters that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to the working-cla.s.s movement with its present outlook.... It needs time before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of speech. One must go _fort.i.ter in re, suaviter in modo_ (firmly maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."

The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working cla.s.s from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the working cla.s.s; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the ruling cla.s.ses by the proletariat; international co-operation of workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist diplomacy.

Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In 1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and I) have this powerful machinery _in our hands_."--("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)

The International pa.s.sed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative economic form of social organisation, only the Bakunists were also Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one point--that he made economics the basis of the working-cla.s.s movement.

Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands.

Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume, the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Karl Marx, Pangermaniste" (Paris).

Michael Bakunin (b. 1814, near Twer, in Russia; d. 1876, in Berne) lived and studied in Germany during the forties. In 1848 and 1849 he took part in the revolution, was arrested, then handed over to Russia and banished to Siberia, whence he escaped in 1856, afterwards living in various countries of Western Europe. He was an indifferent theorist, and contributed little to the enrichment of philosophical Anarchism, but he distinguished himself by his immense revolutionary activity and his capacity for sacrifice. The influence which he exercised sprang from his character. He had been acquainted with the Young Hegelians as well as with Marx, Engels, and Wilhelm Wolff since the beginning of the forties. Until the end of 1868 he acknowledged Marx as his intellectual leader, as is evident from the following letter which he addressed to Marx:

"123, Montbrillant, Geneva, "December 22, 1868.

"Serno has shown me the portion of your letter which concerns me. You ask him whether I am still your friend. Yes, more than ever, my dear Marx, for now I understand better than ever how truly right you are when you advance along the high road of economic revolution and invite us to follow, and when you set those below us who stray into the side-tracks either of national or exclusively political enterprises. I am now doing the same thing that you have been doing for more than twenty years. Since my solemn public leave-taking from the bourgeois of the Berne Congress, I no longer know any other society, any other milieu, than the world of the workers. Henceforth my country is the 'International,' of which you are one of the most ill.u.s.trious founders. Yon see, my dear friend, that I am your disciple--and I am proud of it. That will be enough to make clear my att.i.tude and my feelings toward you."--("Neue Zeit," 19th year, Vol. I., p. 6.)

Nevertheless, this disciples.h.i.+p did not hinder Bakunin from secretly forming a separate organisation which contributed to the break-up of the International. Moreover, the International was only a kind of school for Socialist officers who had yet to create their armies, but it proved even more successful than Marx himself could have expected.

The fundamental principles of Marxism ousted every other social revolutionary system which had made itself prominent within the working-cla.s.s movement.

VI. THE PARIS COMMUNE.

On September 1, 1870, a part of the French Army was defeated near Sedan and compelled to capitulate on the following day. Among the prisoners was Louis Bonaparte, the French Emperor. The Empire fell on September 4, and France was proclaimed a Republic. On September 6 Marx wrote to Engels: "The French section of the International travelled from London to Paris in order to do foolish things in the name of the International. They want to overthrow the Provisional Government and set up a _Commune de Paris_."--("Correspondence," Vol. IV., p. 330).

Although the Provisional Government of the newly-baked French Republic was in no wise made up of friends of the democracy, Marx and Engels expressed themselves _against_ any revolutionary action by the Paris working cla.s.s. In the second Address (or declaration) of the General Council of the International, written on September 9, and composed by Marx, the question is discussed as follows:

"Thus the French working cla.s.s finds itself placed in extremely difficult circ.u.mstances. Any attempt to overthrow the new Government, when the enemy is already knocking at the gates of Paris, would be a hopeless piece of folly. The French workers must do their duty as citizens; but they must not let themselves be overcome by the national reminiscences of 1792.... They have not to repeat the past but to build the future. Let them quietly and with determination make the most of the republican freedom granted to them, in order to carry out thoroughly the organisation of their own cla.s.s. That will give them new, Herculean strength for the rebirth of France and for our common task--the emanc.i.p.ation of the proletariat."--("Civil War in France," Second Address.)

Marx then urged the French workers not to do anything foolish, not to set up a revolutionary Commune of Paris, but to make use of their republican liberties to create proletarian organisations and to save and discipline their forces for future tasks. Circ.u.mstances, however, proved much stronger than any words of wisdom. Goaded by the anti-democratic moves of the Government supporters, deeply humiliated by the defeats of the French army, burning with patriotism and whipped up into fury against the "capitulards," the Paris working men cast Marx's words to the winds and rose in revolution on March 18, 1871, proclaiming the Paris Commune. Paris was to be the capital of a Socialist Republic. In seven weeks the Paris Revolution was overthrown--and "Vae victis!" (Woe to the vanquished!) Marx afterwards wrote the pamphlet on "The Civil War in France, 1871," which is one of the most mature of his writings. He did not cut himself entirely adrift from the revolutionaries--the Bolsheviks of that time--but defended them with unsurpa.s.sable energy. It is the swan song of Marx and of the first International.

VII. THE EVENING OF LIFE.

During the last twelve years of his life Marx had to fight almost uninterruptedly against various bodily ailments, all of which had their origin in his chronic liver complaint and over-exertion. His work, for which he had sacrificed, as he wrote to an American friend, "health, happiness and family," remained unfinished. He devoted his enforced leisure to making a study of American agriculture and of rural conditions in Russia, for which purpose he learnt Russian; he likewise occupied himself with studies of the Stock Exchange, banking, geology, physiology, and higher mathematics. In 1875 he wrote his "Criticism of the Gotha Program"--("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., No.

18)--which contains some very important data as to Marx's att.i.tude to the State, to the revolutionary period of transition from Capitalism to Socialism, and lastly to Socialist society itself.

He went to Karlsbad for the purpose of recovering his health. In 1877 and 1878 he was in some measure capable of carrying on his work, and set about arranging his ma.n.u.scripts and getting the second volume of "Capital" ready for the press; it soon appeared, however, that his capacity for work had gone. The decline in body and mind could no longer be checked; even visits to French and Algerian watering-places proved ineffective. It was just at this time that Marx began to find recognition both in France and in England: Jules Guesde, Henry M.

Hyndman, Belfort Bax set about spreading Marxian doctrines, and Marxian and anti-Marxian parties were formed. But the man to whom this recognition had come was already a ruin. Bronchial catarrh, inflammation of the lungs, spasmodic asthma, together with the loss of his wife on December 2, 1881, and of his eldest daughter (Mme.

Longuet) in January, 1883, gave the finis.h.i.+ng stroke to his enfeebled body. On March 14, 1883, Marx breathed his last. Engels gives an account of the last moments in a letter to his American friend Sorge, dated March 15, 1883:

"Yesterday, at half-past two in the afternoon, the best time for visiting him, I went down to see him; everybody was in tears; it looked as if the end had come. I made inquiries, trying to get at the truth of the matter and to offer consolation. There had been a slight haemorrhage, but a sudden collapse had supervened.

Our good old Lena, who had tended him better than any mother does her child, went up, came down. He was half asleep, she said; I could go up. As we went in, he lay there, sleeping, never to wake again. Pulse and breathing had ceased. In those two minutes he had gone painlessly and peacefully to sleep....

Mankind is less by a head, and indeed by the most important head it had to-day. The working-cla.s.s movement will pursue its course, but its central point, to which French, Russians, Americans, and Germans turned of their own accord in decisive moments, always to receive that clear, unambiguous counsel which genius and perfect mastery alone can give--is gone."

On Sat.u.r.day, March 17, he was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London.

Among those who spoke at the graveside were Friedrich Engels and Wilhelm Liebknecht. The former gave a brief account of his revolutionary struggles, in which he said:

"Just as Darwin discovered the law of the evolution of organic nature, so Marx discovered the evolutionary law of human history--the simple fact, hitherto hidden under ideological overgrowths, that above all things men must eat, drink, dress, and find shelter before they can give themselves to politics, science, art, religion, or anything else, and that therefore the production of the material necessaries of life and the corresponding stage of economic evolution of a people or a period provides the foundation upon which the national inst.i.tutions, legal systems, art, and even religious ideas of the people in question have been built, and upon which, therefore, their explanation must be based, a procedure the reverse of that which has. .h.i.therto been adopted. Marx discovered also the special law of motion for the modern capitalist mode of production and for the middle-cla.s.s society which it begets.

With the discovery of surplus value light was at once thrown upon a subject, all the earlier investigations of which, whether by middle-cla.s.s economists or by Socialist critics, had been gropings in the dark...."

After him spoke Liebknecht, who had hastened from Germany to pay a last tribute to his friend and master:

"The dead one, whose loss we mourn, was great in his love and in his hate. His hate sprang from his love. He had a great heart, as he had a great intellect. He has raised social democracy from a sect, from a school, to a party, which now already fights unconquered, and in the end will win the victory."

Engels, who outlived him by twelve years, edited the two last volumes of "Capital," while Karl Kautsky, the disciple and successor of Engels and the real disseminator of Marxian doctrines, edited the three volumes of Marx's historical studies on surplus value. The latter work is not far short of being a great history of political economy.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] By democratic parties were then understood working-cla.s.s political movements, such as Chartism, etc.