Brentano vs. Marx

 

My remark on this is: "How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained 'poor', only 'less poor' in proportion as it

produces for the wealthy class 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', then it has remained relatively just as poor.

If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have." And these "glosses"

are nowhere to be found in The Theory of the Exchanges.

 

"And the glosses too ... are already contained in that hook, in particular also the quotation from Molière given in Note

105 on p. 640 of Capital."

 

So, "in particular also" I quote Molière, and leave it up to the "learned men" of the Concordia to detect and communicate to the

public the fact that the quotation comes from The 'Theory of the Exchanges. In fact, however, I state expressly in Note 105, p.

640 of Capital that the author of The Theory of the Exchanges "characterises with the following quotation from Molière" the

"continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches".

 Finally:

 

"... in the same way the statement of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM about the rising prices of foodstuffs quoted by

Marx appears on p. 135 of that book, though Marx bases his claim for its correctness not on that hook, but on that book's

sources (see Capital, p. 640, Note 104)".

 

The Concordia advisedly forgets to inform its readers that "that book" gives no sources. What was it trying to prove? That I

took from that "book" a passage from Gladstone's speech without knowing its source. And how does the Concordia prove it?

By the fact that I really did take a quotation from that book, and checked it with the original sources, independent of the book!

 Referring to my quotation from Professor Beesly's article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), the Concordia remarks.

 

"This article by Professor Beesly deals, in fact, with the history of the International, and as the author himself informs

every enquirer, was written on the basis of material provided him by Marx himself."

 

Professor Beesly states:

 

"To no one is the success of the association so much due as to Dr. Karl Marx, who, in his acquaintance with the history

and statistics of the industrial movement in all parts of Europe, is, I should imagine, without a rival. I am LARGELY

indebted to him for the information contained in this article."

 

All the material with which I supplied Professor Beesly referred exclusively to the history of the International, and not a word

concerned the Inaugural Address, which he had known since its publication. The context in which his above remark stood left

so little doubt on this point that The Saturday Review, in a review of his article, more than hinted that he himself was the author

of the Inaugural Address. [Brentano note: Professor Beesly drew my attention, in writing, to this quid pro quo.]

 The Concordia asserts that Professor Beesly did not quote the passage in question from Gladstone's speech, but only stated

"that the Inaugural Address contained this quotation". Let us look into this.

 Professor Beesly states:

 

"The address [...] is probably the most striking and powerful statement of the workman's case as against the middle class

that has ever been compressed into a dozen small pages. I wish I had space for copious extracts from it."

 

After mentioning the "frightful statistics of the Blue Books", to which the Address refers, he goes on:

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"From these appalling Statistics the address passes on to the income-tax returns, from which it appeared that the taxable

income of the country had increased in eight years twenty per cent, 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power',

as Mr. Gladstone observed, 'entirely confined to classes of property'."

 

Professor Beesly sets the words: "as Mr. Gladstone observed" outside quotation marks, Saying these words on his own behalf,

and thus proves to the Concordia with the greatest clarity that he knows Gladstone's budget speech -- solely from the quotation

in the Inaugural Address! As the London business friend of the German Manufacturers' Association, he is the only man who

knows Gladstone's budget speeches, just as he, and he alone, knows: "Persons with an income under 150 pounds sterling, in

fact, pay no income tax in England." (See the Concordia, Nos. 10 and 27.) Yet English tax officials suffer from the idée fixe

that this tax only stops at incomes under 100 pounds sterling.

 Referring to the disputed passage in the Inaugural Address, the manufacturers' paper stated:

 

"Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech." I proved the contrary with a quotation from the "Times"

report of April 17, 1863. I gave the quotation in the Volksstaat in both English and German, since a commentary was

necessary on account of Gladstone's assertion that he would "look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this

intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were" his "belief that it was confined to the CLASSES WHO ARE IN

EASY CIRCUMSTANCES". Basing myself on Wakefield, I declared that the "CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY

CIRCUMSTANCES" -- an expression for which there is no German equivalent -- means the "really rich", "the really

prosperous portion" of the propertied classes. Wakefield actually calls the real middle class "THE UNEASY CLASS

which is in German roughly "die ungemächliche Klasse". [Marx note: "THE MIDDLE OR UNEASY CLASS" [E. G.

Wakefield] ("ENGLAND AND AMERICA", London, 1833, V.1, p.185).]

 

The manufacturers' worthy organ not only suppresses my exposition, it ends the passage I quoted with the words: "Marx quotes

The Times to this point", thus leaving the reader to suppose that it had quoted from my translation; in fact, however, the paper,

leaving my version aside, does not translate "CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" as "wohlhabenden

Klassen" but as "Klassen, die sich in angenehmen Verhältnissen befinden". The paper believes its readers capable of

understanding that not all sections of the propertied class are "prosperous", though it will always be a "pleasant circumstance"

for them to possess property. Even in the translation of my quotation, as given by the Concordia, however, Gladstone describes

the progress of Capitalist wealth as "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power", and remarks that here he has "taken

no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population", closing with words to the effect that this "augmentation is

entirely confined to the classes possessed of property". Once the "learned man" of the German Manufacturers' Association has,

in the report of The Times of April 17, 1863, thus had Gladstone say "both in form and in content", the same as I had him say in

the Inaugural Address, he strikes his swollen breast, brimming with conviction, and blusters:

 

"Yet despite this Marx has the impudence to write in the Volksstaat of June 1: 'So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone

declared 'both in form and in content' in the House of Commons, as reported in his own organ, The Times, on April 17,

1863 that 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property'."

 

The "learned man" of the German Manufacturers' Association obviously knows exactly what to offer his readership!

 In the Volksstaat of June 1, I remarked that the Concordia was trying to make its readers believe I had suppressed in the

Inaugural Address Gladstone's phrases about the improvement in the condition of the British working class, though in fact the

exact opposite was the case, and I stressed there with great emphasis the glaring contradiction between this declamation and the

officially established facts. In its reply of July 4, the manufacturers' paper repeated the same manoeuvre. "Marx quotes The

Times to this point," the paper says, "we quote further." In confrontation with the paper, I needed only to quote the disputed

passage, but let us look for a moment at the "further".

 After pouring forth his panegyric on the increase of Capitalist wealth, Gladstone turns to the working class. He takes good care

not to say that it had shared in the "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power". On the contrary, he goes on, according to

The Times: "Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer, etc." He consoles himself further on with

the fact "that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor". Finally, he asserts that he and his

enriched parliamentary friends "have the happiness to know" the opposite of what parliamentary enquiries and statistical data

prove to be the fact, viz.,

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