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blind, he lectured on the history of mechanics, on political economy and on
philosophy. His versatility was amazing; no doubt, he was a remarkable personality.
When he came out with his caustic criticism of the recognised socialist teachings and
particularly those of Marx, his lectures made a tremendous impression. To the
students and the workers it appeared that his was a "voice of life in the realm of
thought." Dühring emphasised the significance of action, of struggle, of protest; he
stressed the political factor as against the economic one; he pointed out the
importance of force and violence in history. In his polemic he knew no restraints and
abused profusely not only Marx but also Lassalle. He was not even ashamed to cite
the fact that Marx was a Jew, as an argument against him.
Engels hesitated for a long time before he decided to strike against Dühring.
He finally gave way to the solicitations of his German friends and in 1877 published
in the Vorwarts, the central organ of the party, a series of articles in which he
subjected Dühring's views to scathing criticism. This provoked indignation even
among some of his comrades in the party. Dühring's followers, Eduard Bernstein
(1850 -- ), the future theoretician of revisionism, and Johann Most (1846-1906), the
future German-American anarchist, were the most outstanding. At the convention of
the German Social-Democrats a number of delegates, among whom was also the old
Lassallean Walteich, attacked Engels mercilessly. It reached the point where a
resolution was almost adopted which would prohibit the further publication of
Engels' articles in the central organ of the party, which regarded Marx and Lassalle
as their teachers.
An inconceivable scandal would have resulted, had it not been for one
conciliator who proposed a clever way out by suggesting that the publication of
Engels' articles be continued not in the central organ proper but in a special
supplement. This was passed.
These articles were collected and published in book form in 1878 under the
title Herr Eugen Dühring's Umw?lzung der Wissenschaft or, as it has later become
known, Anti-Dühring. It was epoch-making in the history of Marxism. It was from
this book that the younger generation which began its activity during the second half
of the seventies learned what was scientific socialism, what were its philosophic
premises, what was its method. Anti-Dühring proved the best introduction to the
study of Capital. A perusal of the articles written in those days by would-be Marxists
reveals a view most awry of the problems and the methods of Capital. For the
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dissemination of Marxism as a special method and a special system, no book except
Capital itself, has done as much as Anti-Dühring. All the young Marxists who entered
the public arena in the early eighties -- Bernstein, Karl Kautsky (1854 -- ), George
Plekhanov (18571918) -- were brought up on this book.
But this book left its imprint not only on the upper layers of the party. At the
solicitation of the French Marxists, Engels, in 1880, extracted a few chapters which
were translated into the French and which became one of the most famous Marxist
books as widely read as the Communist Manifesto. This was the well-known
Socialism -- Utopian and Scientific. It was immediately translated into Polish, and a
year and a half later, into Russian. All this Engels accomplished while Marx was still
alive. Engels benefited by his advice and even his co-operation. In Anti-Dühring, for
instance, Marx wrote one complete chapter.
At the beginning of the eighties a change took place in the European labour
movement. Owing to Engels' tireless labours and his splendid popularising gifts,
Marxism was steadily gaining ground. In 1876, in Germany, the Social-Democratic
Party was declared illegal. After a temporary confusion Marxism began to rise to the
top. Bebel shows in his reminiscences that it was the old men from London who
played an important part in this turn of affairs, for they demanded, under the threat
of a public protest, the discontinuance of what they called "the scandal" and the
irreconcilable struggle against all attempts to enter into any relations with the
bourgeoisie.
In France at the Marseilles Congress of 1879 a new labour party with a
socialist programme was organised. Here a young group of Marxists, headed by the
ex-Bakuninist, Jules Guesde (1845-1921), came to the fore. In 1880, it was decided to
formulate a new programme. Guesde and his comrades went to London to see Marx,
who was taking an active part in the working out of the programme. Refusing to
subscribe to several of the points dealing with the practical aspect of the work on
which the Frenchmen were insisting because of their local propaganda value, Marx
proceeded to formulate the fundamental principles of the programme. He once more
demonstrated his ability to comprehend the peculiarly French conditions by
formulating a programme which would be understood by every Frenchman but from
which the basic ideas of communism would follow with incontrovertible logic. The
French programme served as the pattern for all the subsequent programmes -- the
Russian, the Austrian, the German Erfurt. After Guesde and Lafargue had composed
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their commentaries to this programme, Bernstein translated it into German and
Plekhanov into Russian under the title, What the Social-Democrats Want. This book
as well as Engels' brochure served as a text which was studied by the first Russian
Marxists and which was used in the teaching of Marxism in workingmen's circles.
Marx had also composed for the French comrades a detailed questionnaire as
an aid in the investigation of the conditions of the working class. This appeared
without Marx's signature. While the questionnaire drawn up by Marx for the Geneva
Congress of 1866 contained only about fifteen queries, the new questionnaire was
made up of over one hundred questions which covered to the minutes/index.htm"
detail, the living conditions of the workers. It was one of the most exhaustive
inquiries at the time and it could have been composed only by such a profound
student of the labour movement as Marx. It offered additional proof of Marx's ability
to approach concrete conditions, to comprehend concrete reality despite his reputed
penchant for abstractions. The capacity for analysing reality and for arriving at
general conclusions on the basis of such analysis does not yet signify the absence of
reality, the soaring in nebulous abstractions.
Marx and Engels followed the development of the Russian Revolution very
carefully. They studied the Russian language. Marx took it up quite late in life, but he
mastered it sufficiently well to be able to read Dobrolyubov, Chernishevsky, and even
such writers as Saltikov-Shchedrin, who were particularly difficult for a foreigner to
understand. Marx was already able to read the Russian translation of his Capital. His
popularity in Russia was steadily on the increase, even after the Hague Congress. As
the critic of bourgeois political economy he was regarded as a great authority and his
influence, direct and indirect, was felt in most of the economic and political writings
in Russia. Peter Lavrov (1823-1900), and his followers were under the direct
influence of Marx, though they did manage to inject some idealist notions into
Marxian materialism.
Later in their history, the Russian Bakuninists too regarded Marx with great
respect. Some of the greatest Marxians, George Plekhanov, Vera Sassulitch (1851 -- ),
Paul Axelrod (1850-1928), Leo Deutsch (185~),were Bakuninists in their early years.
Marx and Engels valued greatly the movement known by the name of Narodnaya
Volya (the People's Will).
There are a number of Marx's manuscripts and letters which show how
carefully Marx studied Russian literature and Russian socio-economic relations.
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