Brentano vs. Marx

pronounce to be unexampled in the history

of any country and of any age."

I invite especial attention to the hearing on Mr. Gladstone's meaning of the passages in the Times report which I have thrown

into italics. The sentence, "I must say ... easy circumstances," conveys the speaker's belief that the intoxicating augmentation of

wealth and power previously described was not confined to those in easy circumstances. There is, it is true, a verbal contrariety

with the later sentence, "The augmentation ... property," but the intervening words, "This takes no cognisance... population,"

unmistakably show what Mr. Gladstone meant, viz., that the figures which he had given, being based on the income-tax returns,

included only incomes above the exemption limit, [Note by Taylor: This stood at £150 from 1842 to 1853, and was then

lowered to £100.] and therefore afforded no indication to what extent the total earnings of the labouring population had

increased during the period under consideration. The closing passage, from "but the average" to the end, announces in the most

emphatic language that, on evidence independent of that obtained from the income-tax returns, Mr. Gladstone recognised as

indubitable an extraordinary and almost unexampled improvement in the average condition of the British labourer.

 Now, with what object were these essential passages almost wholly struck out in the process by which the newspaper report

was reduced to the remarkable form in which it appears in Dr. Marx' work? Clearly, I think, in order that the

arbitrarily-constructed mosaic, pieced together out of such of Mr. Gladstone's words as were allowed to remain, might be

understood as asserting that the earnings of the labouring population had made but insignificant progress, while the incomes of

the possessing classes had increased enormously -- a view which the omitted passages explicitly repudiate in favour of a very

different opinion.

 I must not pass over unnoticed the fact that the German translation of this docked citation in the text of "Das Kapital" is

immediately followed there by the expression of Dr. Marx' contemptuous astonishment at the "lame anti-climax" presented by

the sentence made to figure as the conclusion of Mr. Gladstone's paragraph, when compared with his previous description of

the growth of wealth among the possessing classes.

 I am, Gentlemen, yours truly,

 Sedley Taylor

Trinity College, Cambridge

February 8th, 1884

 

No. 11.

ELEANOR MARX'S SECOND REPLY

 TO-DAY, MARCH 1884

 

To the Editors of "To-Day"

 Gentlemen,

 Mr. Sedley Taylor disputes my statement that, when the anonymous slanderer fell foul of Dr. Marx, the only point at issue was

whether Mr. Gladstone had used certain words or not. According to him, the real question was,

 

"whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying or of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning".

 

I have before me the Concordia article (No. 10, 7th March, 1872), "How Karl Marx Quotes". Here the anonymous author first

quotes the "Inaugural Address" of the International; then the passage of Mr. Gladstone's speech, in full, from Hansard; then he

condenses the passage in his own way, and to his own satisfaction; and lastly, he concludes,

 

"Marx takes advantage of this to make Gladstone say, 'This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely

confined to classes possessed of property. This sentence, however, is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. The

very contrary is said in it. Marx has lyingly added this sentence, both as to form and contents."

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That is the charge, and the only charge, made against Dr. Marx. He is indeed accused of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning by

"lyingly adding" a whole sentence. Not a word about "misleading", or "craftily isolated" quotations. The question simply is,

"whether a particular sentence did, or did not, occur in Mr. Gladstone's speech".

 Of two things, one. Either Mr. Taylor has read Brentano's attacks and my father's replies, and then his assertion is in direct

contradiction of what he cannot help knowing to be the truth. Or else he has not. And then? Here is a man who dates his letters

from Trinity College, Cambridge, who goes out of his way to assail my dead father's literary honesty in a way which must

needs turn out to be a "calumny" unless he proves his case; who makes this charge upon the strength of a literary controversy

dating as far back as 1872, between an anonymous writer (whom Mr. Taylor now asserts to be Professor Brentano) and my

father; who describes in glowing terms the "masterly conduct" in which Saint George Brentano led his attack, and the "deadly

shifts" to which he speedily reduced the dragon Marx; who can give us all particulars of the crushing results obtained by the

said St. George "by a detailed comparison of texts"; and who after all, puts me into this delicate position that I am in charity

bound to assume that he has never read a line of what he is speaking about.

 Had Mr. Taylor seen the "masterly" articles of his anonymous friend, he would have found therein the following:

 

"Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only then when he himself invents an untruth, or does he not tell a lie quite as much

when. he repeats it contrary to what he knows, or is bound to know better?"

 

Thus saith the "masterly" Brentano, as virtuous as he is anonymous, in his rejoinder to my father's first reply (Concordia, No.

27, 4th July, 1872, p. 210). And on the same page he still maintains against all comers:

 

"According to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power

not to be confined to classes of property."

 

If Brentano thus appears utterly ignorant of what was the real point at issue, is Mr. Sedley Taylor better off? In his letter to The

Times it was a quotation made in the "Inaugural Address" of the International. In his letter to To-Day it is a quotation in "Das

Kapital". The ground is shifted again, but I need not object. Mr. Taylor now gives us the Gladstonian passage as quoted on

pages 678 and 679 of "Das Kapital", side by side with the same passage as reported -- not by Hansard, but by The Times.

 

"My reason for using the Times report instead of that of Hansard, will be obvious to readers of Dr. Marx's letters and his

correspondence with Brentano."

 

Mr. Taylor, as we have seen, is not of these "readers". His reason for his proceeding may therefore be obvious to others, but

upon his own showing at least, it can hardly be so to himself.

 Anyhow, from Hansard the Infallible we are brought down to that very report, for using which the anonymous Brentano

(Concordia, same page, 210), assails my father as quoting "necessarily bungling (stümperhafte) newspaper reports". At any

rate, Mr. Taylor's "reason" must be very "obvious" to his friend Brentano.

 To me that reason is obvious indeed. The words which my father was accused of having lyingly added ("an augmentation",

etc.), these words are contained in The Times as well as in the other dailies' reports, while in Hansard they are not only

"manipulated", but entirely "obliterated". Marx established this fact. Mr. Taylor, in his letter to The Times, still awfully shocked

at such unpardonable "hardihood", is now himself compelled to drop the impeachable Hansard, and to take refuge under what

Brentano calls the "necessarily bungling" report of The Times.

 Now for the quotation itself. Mr. Taylor invites especial attention to two passages thrown by him into italics. In the first he

owns:

 

"there is, it is true, a verbal contrariety with the latter sentence'. the augmentation property; but the intervening words:

this takes ... population, unmistakeably show what Mr. Gladstone meant," etc., etc.

 

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