Brentano vs. Marx

 Further. It is simply not true that Marx then withdrew under the plea of want of time. And Mr. Sedley Taylor knew this, or

it was his business to know it. We have seen that before this Marx delivered proof to the anonymous godlike Brentano that

the reports in The Morning Star and The Morning Advertiser also contained the "lyingly added" sentence. Only after this

did he declare that he could waste no more time on Anonymous.

 The further polemic between Mr. Sedley Taylor and Eleanor Marx (Documents, Nos 

9

, 

10

 and 

11

) showed in the first

place that he did not try for a moment to maintain the original charge about the lying addition of a sentence. He went so far

as to claim that this was "of very subordinate importance." Once again the direct disavowal of a fact which he knew, or

which it was his business to know.

 In any case we take note of his admission that this charge does not hold water, and congratulate his friend Brentano on

this.

 So what is the charge now? Simply that of Mr. Brentano's second line of defence that Marx had wished to distort the sense

of Gladstone's speech -- a new charge of which, as we have noted, Marx never knew anything. In any case, this brings us to

a completely different field. What was concerned to begin with was a definite fact: did Marx lyingly add this sentence or

not? It is now no longer denied that Marx victoriously rebuffed this charge. The new charge of distorted quotation,

however, leads us into the field of subjective opinions, which necessarily vary. De gustibus non est disputandum. [There

can be no argument about taste. -- MECW Ed.] One person may regard as unimportant -- intrinsically or for the purpose of

quotation -- something which another person declares to be important and decisive. The conservative will [never] quote

acceptably for the liberal, the liberal never for the conservative, the socialist never for one of them or both of them. The

party man whose own comrade is quoted against him by an opponent regularly discovers that the essential passage, the

passage determining the real sense, has been omitted in quotation. This is such an everyday occurrence, something

permitting so many individual viewpoints, that nobody attaches the slightest significance to such charges. Had Mr.

Brentano utilised his anonimity to level this charge, and this charge alone, against Marx, then Marx would scarcely have

regarded it as worth the trouble of a single word in reply.

 In order to accomplish this new twist with that elegance peculiar to him alone, Mr. Sedley Taylor finds it necessary to

repudiate thrice his friend and comrade Brentano. He repudiates him first when he drops his originally sole charge of

"lying addition", and even denies its existence as original and sole. He repudiates him further when he summarily discards

the infallible Hansard, to quote exclusively from which is the "custom" of the ethical Brentano, [Play on words: "Sitte" --

custom, "sittlich" -- ethical.-- MECW Ed.] and uses instead the Times report, which the selfsame Brentano calls

"necessarily bungling". Thirdly, he repudiates him, and his own first letter to The Times into the bargain, by seeking the

"quotation in dispute" no longer in the Inaugural Address but in Capital And this for the simple reason that he had never

laid his hand upon the Inaugural Address, to which he "had the hardihood" to refer in his letter to The Times!

 Shortly after his controversy with Eleanor Marx he vainly sought this Address in the British Museum, and was introduced

there to his opponent, whom he asked whether she could not obtain a copy for him. Whereupon, I sought out a copy

amongst my papers, and Eleanor sent it to him. The "detailed comparison of texts" which this enabled him to make

apparently convinced him that silence was the best reply.

 And in fact it would be superfluous to add a single word to Eleanor Marx's retort (

Documents, No. 11

)

 

V

T

hird act. My Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of Marx's Capital, reprinted as far as necessary in

Documents, 

No. 12

, explains why I was forced to return to the bygone polemics of Messrs Brentano and Sedley Taylor.

This Preface forced Mr. Brentano to make a reply: this was the pamphlet Meine Polemik mit Karl Marx usw. by Lujo

Brentano, Berlin, 1890. Here he has reprinted his anonymous and now finally legitimated Concordia articles, and Marx's

answers in the Volksstaat, accompanied by an introduction and two appendices, with which, for better or worse, we are

obliged to deal.

 Above all we note that here too there is no longer any mention of the "lyingly added" sentence. The sentence from the

Inaugural Address is quoted right on the first page, and it is then claimed that Gladstone had "stated in direct opposition to

Karl Marx's claim" that these figures referred only to those paying income tax (which Marx had Gladstone say too, since

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he explicitly limits these figures to taxable income) but that the condition of the working class had at the same time

improved in unexampled fashion (which Marx also has Gladstone say, only nine lines before the challenged quotation). I

would request the reader to compare for himself the Inaugural Address (

Documents, No. 1

) with Mr. Brentano's claim

(

Documents, No. 13

) in order to see how Mr. Brentano either "lyingly adds", or fabricates in another manner, a

contradiction where there is none at all. But since the charge about the lyingly added sentence has broken down

ignominiously, Mr. Brentano, contrary to his better knowledge, must attempt to take in his readers by telling them Marx

tried to suppress the fact that Gladstone had spoken here only of "taxable income", or the income of classes which possess

property. And here Mr. Brentano does not even notice that his first accusation is thus turned into the opposite, in that the

second is a slap in the face of the first.

 Having happily accomplished this "forgery", he is moved to draw the attention of the Concordia to the "forgery" allegedly

committed by Marx, and the Concordia then asks him to send it an article against Marx. What now follows is too delicious

not to be given verbatim:

 

"The article was not signed by me; this was done, on the one hand, at the request of the editors in the interests of the

reputation of their paper, and, on the other hand, I had all the less objection, since following earlier literary

controversies pursued by Marx it was to be expected that this time too he would heap personal insults on his

adversary, and for this reason it could only be amusing to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his adversary."

 

So the editors of the Concordia wished "in the interests of the reputation of their paper" that Mr. Brentano should keep his

name quiet! What a reputation this implies for Mr. Brentano amongst his colleagues in his own party. We can well believe

that this actually happened to him, but that he himself shouts it from the rooftops is a really pyramidal achievement on his

part. However, this is something which he has to settle with himself and with the editors of the Concordia.

 Since "it was to be expected that Marx would heap personal insults on his adversary", it could naturally "only be amusing

to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his adversary". It was hitherto a mystery as to how you can heap personal

insults upon a person you do not know. You can only get personal if you know something of the person in question. But

Mr. Brentano, made anonymous in the interests of the paper's reputation, relieved his adversary of this trouble. He himself

waded in with "insults", first with the "lyingly added" printed in bold type, and then with "impudent mendacity", "simply

nefarious", etc. Mr. Brentano, the non-anonymous, obviously made a slip of the pen here. Mr. Brentano "on the other hand,

had all the less objection" to the anonymity imposed upon himself, not so that the well-known Marx could "heap personal

insults" upon the unknown Brentano, but so that the concealed Brentano could do this to the well-known Marx.

 And this is supposed to "be amusing"! That's what actually transpired, but not because Mr. Brentano wanted it. Marx, as

later his daughter, and now myself, have all tried to see the amusing aspect of this polemic. Such success as we have had,

be it great or small, has been at the expense of Mr. Brentano. His articles have been anything but "amusing". The only

contributions to amusement are the rapier-thrusts aimed by Marx at the shady side of his "left-in-the-dark person", which

the man at the receiving end now wishes to laugh off belatedly as the "loutishness of his scurrilous polemics". The Junkers,

the priests, the lawyers and other right and proper opponents of the incisive polemics of Voltaire, Beaumarchais and Paul

Louis Courier objected to the "loutishness of their scurrilous polemics", which has not prevented these examples of

"loutishness" from being regarded as models and masterpieces today. And we have had so much pleasure from these and

similar "scurrilous polemics" that a hundred Brentanos should not succeed in dragging us down to the level of German

university polemics, where there is nothing but the impotent rage of green envy, and the most desolate boredom.

 However, Mr. Brentano once again regards his readers as so duped that he can lay it on thick again with a brazen face:

 

"When it was shown that The Times too ... carried this" (Gladstone's) "speech in a sense according with the

shorthand report, he" (Marx) "acted, as the editors of the Concordia wrote, like the cuttlefish, which dims the water

with a dark fluid, in order to make pursuit by its enemy more difficult, i.e. he tried as hard as he could to hide the

subject of controversy by clinging to completely inconsequential secondary matters."

 

If the Times report, which contains the "lyingly added" sentence word for word, accords in sense with the "shorthand"

report -- should be with Hansard -- which suppresses it word for word, and if Mr. Brentano once again boasts that he had

demonstrated this, this can mean nothing other than the charge concerning the "lyingly added" sentence has been

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