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communist
movement, Moses Hess became a communist. It was he and his friends
who were among the prominent editors of the Rheinische Zeitung.
Marx lived then in Bonn. For a long time he was only a contributor, though he
had already begun to wield considerable influence. Gradually Marx rose to a position
of first magnitude. Thus, though the newspaper was published at the expense of the
Rhine industrial middle class, in reality it became the organ of the Berlin group of the
youngest and most radical writers.
In the autumn of 1842 Marx moved to Cologne and immediately
gave the
journal an entirely new trend. In contradistinction to his Berlin comrades, as well as
Engels, he insisted on a less noisy yet more radical struggle against the existing
political and social conditions. Unlike Engels, Marx, as a child, had never felt the
goading yoke of religious and intellectual oppression -- a reason why he was rather
indifferent to the religious struggle, why he did not deem it necessary to spend all his
strength on a bitter criticism of religion. In this respect he preferred polemics about
essentials to polemics about mere externals. Such a policy was indispensable, he
thought, to preserve the paper as a radical organ. Engels was much nearer to the
group that demanded relentless open war against religion. A
similar difference of
opinion existed among the Russian revolutionists towards the end of 1917 and the
beginning of 1918. Some demanded an immediate and sweeping attack upon the
Church. Others maintained that this was not essential, that there were more serious
problems to tackle. The disagreement between Marx, Engels and other young
publicists was of the same nature. Their controversy found expression in the epistles
which Marx as editor sent to his old comrades in Berlin. Marx stoutly defended his
tactics. He emphasised the question of the wretched conditions of the labouring
masses. He subjected to the most scathing criticism the laws which prohibited the
free cutting of timber. He pointed out that the spirit of these laws was the spirit of the
propertied and landowning class who used all their ingenuity to
exploit the peasants,
and who purposely devised ordinances that would render the peasants criminals. In
his correspondence he took up the cudgels for his old acquaintances, the Moselle
peasants. These articles provoked a caustic controversy with the governor of the
Rhine province.
The local authorities brought pressure to bear at Berlin. A double censorship
was imposed upon the paper. Since the authorities felt that Marx was the soul of the
paper, they insisted on his dismissal. The new censor had great respect for this
28
intelligent and brilliant publicist, who so dexterously
evaded the censorship
obstacles, but he nevertheless continued to inform against Marx not only to the
editorial management, but also to the group of stockholders who were behind the
paper. Among the latter, the feeling began to grow that greater caution and the
avoidance of all kinds of embarrassing questions would be the proper policy to
pursue. Marx refused to acquiesce. He asserted that any further
attempt at
moderation would prove futile, that at any rate the government would not be so
easily pacified. Finally he resigned his editorship and left the paper. This did not save
the paper, for it soon was forced to discontinue.
Marx left the paper a completely transformed man. He had entered the
newspaper not at all a communist. He had simply been a radical democrat, interested
in the social and economic conditions of the peasantry. But he gradually became
more and more absorbed in the study of the basic economic problems relating to the
peasant question. From philosophy and jurisprudence Marx was drawn into a
detailed and specialised study of economic relations.
In
addition, a new polemic between Marx and a conservative journal burst out
in connection with an article written by Hess who, in 1842, converted Engels to
communism. Marx vehemently denied the paper's right to attack communism. "I do
not know communism," he said, "but a social philosophy that has as its aim the
defence of the oppressed cannot be condemned so lightly. One must acquaint himself
thoroughly with this trend of thought ere he dares dismiss it." When Marx left the
Rheinische Zeitung he was not yet a communist, but he was already interested in
communism as a particular tendency representing a particular point of view. Finally,
he and his friend, Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), came to the conclusion that there was
no possibility for conducting political and social propaganda in Germany. They
decided to go to Paris (1843) and there publish a journal Deutsch-Französischen
Jahrbücher (Franco-German Year Books).
By this name they wanted, in
contradistinction to the French and German nationalists, to emphasise that one of
the conditions of a successful struggle against reaction was a close political alliance
between Germany and France. In the Jahrbücher Marx formulated for the first time
the basic principles of his future philosophy, in which evolution of a radical democrat
into a communist is discerned.
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CHAPTER III
THE RELATION BETWEEN
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM AND
PHILOSOPHY.
MATERIALISM.
KANT.
FICHTE.
HEGEL.
FEUERBACH.
DIALECTIC MATERIALISM.
THE HISTORIC MISSION OF THE PROLETARIAT.
This study of the lives of Marx and Engels is in accordance with the scientific
method they themselves developed and employed.
Despite their genius, Marx and
Engels were after all men of a definite historic moment. As both of them matured,
that is, as both of them gradually emerged from their immediate home influence they
were directly drawn into the vortex of the historic epoch which was characterised
chiefly by the effects upon Germany of the July Revolution, by the forward strides of
science and philosophy, by the growth of the labour and the revolutionary
movements. Marx and Engels were not only the products of a definite historic period,
but in their very origin they were men of a specific locality, the Rhine province, which
of all parts of Germany was the most international, the most industrialised, and the
most widely exposed to the influence of the French Revolution.
During the first years