Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

The old International was incapable of resurrection. In February, 1881, Marx wrote to Domela Nieuwenhuis, the Dutch Socialist, that the right moment for the formation of a new workers' association had not yet come. But the right moment was drawing nearer every year. The old General Council was dead, and the new was only in the making. There were no congresses, no resolutions to which the movements in the various countries could adhere. But Marx was alive. His significance for the proletarian movement after the dissolution of the International cannot be better illustrated than by a few sentences from a letter Engels wrote to Bernstein in October, 1881. 'By his theoretical and practical work Marx has acquired such a position that the best people in the workers' movements in the various countries have full confidence in him. They turn to him for advice at decisive moments, and generally find that his advice is the best. He holds that position in Germany, France and Russia, not to mention the smaller countries. Marx, and in the second place myself, stand in the same relation to the other national movements as we do to the French. We are in constant touch with them, in so far as it is worth while and opportunity is provided, but any attempt to influence people against their will would only do harm and destroy the old trust that survives from the time of the International. In any case, we have too much experience in revolutionary matters to attempt anything of the sort. It is not Marx who imposes his opinions, much less his will, upon the people, but it is they who come to him. That is what Marx's real influence, which is of such extreme importance for the movement, depends on.'

Marx issued no orders and set no patterns which the class war should follow. Just as he believed the idea of commanding the European workers' movement from London to be absurd, so did he abstain from devising a plan of action that should be valid for all countries and all times. The speech he made at Amsterdam after the Hague Congress has already been mentioned. It had an unusual fate. When it appeared in the Volksstaat in October, 1872, those passages in which Marx spoke of force as the lever of the revolution in most Continental countries were missing. It had been necessary to omit them for fear of police persecution. In recent years it has again been quoted, put once more in abbreviated form, though needlessly now; and this time the omitted passage is that in which Marx spoke of the possibility of a peaceful seizure of the state power by the proletariat in England and America. Only the whole speech is the whole Marx. In 1881, the year in which Marx welcomed the Russian Terrorists' attempted assassination of the Tsar, he said to Hyndman: 'If you say that you do not share the views of my party for England I can only reply that that party considers an English revolution not necessary but--according to historic precedence--possible. If the unavoidable evolution turns into a revolution, it would not only be the fault of the ruling classes, but also of the working class. Every pacific concession of the former has been wrung from them by "pressure from without." Their action kept pace with that pressure and if the latter has more and more weakened, it is only because the English working class know not how to wield their power and use their liberties, both of which they possess legally. In Germany the working class were fully aware from the beginning of their movement that you cannot get rid of a military despotism but by a revolution. England is the one country in which a peaceful revolution is possible, but,' he added after a pause, 'history does not tell us so.'

Hyndman quoted this conversation correctly. Three years after Marx's death Engels wrote in the foreword to the English translation of Das Kapital: 'Surely, at such a moment the voice ought to be heard of a man whose theory is the result of a life-long study of the economic conditions of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit without a "pro-slavery rebellion" to this peaceful and legal revolution.'

The proletariat would win, peacefully perhaps in the countries where there was an old and deeply rooted democracy, but by force in those countries that were in the hands of despotism. When his daughter Jenny gave birth to a son in April, 1881, Marx wrote to her: 'My "womanly half" hopes that the "newcomer" will increase the "better half" of humanity; so far as I am concerned at this turning point in history I favour children of the masculine sex. They have before them the most revolutionary period mankind has ever known. It is bad to be an old man at this time, for an old man can only foresee instead of seeing.' With this unflinching confidence Karl Marx died.

His was a painful dying but an easy death. Both his elder daughters lived in France. Jenny was married to Charles Longuet, Laura to Paul Lafargue. Eleanor, known to everyone as Tussy, looked after her parents. Marx was ill and his wife was wasting away with an incurable cancer. In summer, 1881, they visited Jenny Longuet at Argenteuil. Frau Marx came back to London in a state of collapse, was confined to bed and died on December 2, 1881. For a long time Marx had known she was incurable, but her death was a heavy blow. 'The Moor has died too,' Engels said when he received the news of Frau Marx's death.

Marx was forbidden to attend the funeral, being bedridden after an attack of pleurisy. As soon as he was well enough to travel the doctors sent him to the south. At the end of February, 1882, he went to Algiers but succumbed to pleurisy again. An exceptionally cold winter and a wet spring aggravated his condition. He went to Monte Carlo in the hope of an improvement, but succumbed to pleurisy for the third time. Not until he reached Argenteuil and later the Lake Geneva did he recover sufficiently to be able to return to England. London fog drove him to the Isle of Wight. He caught cold again, had to keep to his room for a long time, tortured by a cough and barely sleeping four hours a night.

Jenny Longuet died unexpectedly in Paris on January 11, 1883. Marx hurried back to London. He scarcely spoke for days. He put up no more resistance to the advance of illness. Laryngitis made it almost impossible for him to swallow. He died on March 14, 1883, of a pulmonary abscess. 'For the past six weeks,' Engels wrote to the faithful Sorge, 'I was in mortal terror as I turned the corner each morning lest I should find the blinds pulled down. Yesterday afternoon at half-past two, the best time of day for visiting him, I went there. The whole house was in tears, it seemed to be the end. I made inquiries, tried to find out what was happening, to console. There had been a slight hemorrhage, but then there had been a sudden collapse. Our excellent old Lenchen, who had nursed him better than a mother, came down. He was half asleep, and she said I could go up with her. When we entered the room, he lay there asleep, never to reawaken. His pulse and breathing had stopped. In those two minutes he had peacefully and painlessly passed away.'

He was buried in the cemetery at Highgate on March 17. Liebknecht spoke for the German workers, Lafargue for the French workers, Engels for the workers of the world.

His name, and his work, will re-echo down the centuries.

Chapter 20 notes

1: 'Sous cette forme l'ouvrage sera plus accessible à la classe ouvrière et pour moi cette considération l'emporte sur toute autre.'

2: 'Ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que moi je ne suis pas Marxiste.'

Translated by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher

METHUEN & CO. LTD. LONDON 36 Essex Street W.C.2

First published in any language in 1936

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

Digital version 2.0. Produced for http://www.redtexts.org and based on Archive.org's scan of the 1936 original British edition. The only intentional changes made to the original text are to indicate misspellings; to move English translations of German and French into the body of the text, rather than footnotes; and to exclude the index. It is believed that the original text is now in the public domain. This ebook is entered into the public domain. Posted to red texts on 2015-08-01. Last modified 2017-02-27. Taken from http://www.redtexts.org/html/man_and_fighter.html