Karl Marx; his life and work

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a free translation of a passage in a work by Wilhelm Marr, entitled Das junge Deutschland in der Schweiz.¹

Marr was not a Socialist at all, but an Anarchist of the most violent type. His programme was the abolition of Church, State, property and marriage, with the one positive tenet of “ a bloody and fearful revenge upon the rich and powerful! ” He was a bitter opponent of Socialism, and later on became a fanatical anti-Semite. In a letter to Kugelmann telling of his meeting with Marr, Marx described him as “ a kind of Christian version of Lassalle, but he is not naturally worth as much as the original.” Later, when Marr devoted himself to Jew-baiting, Marx spoke of him with measureless loathing and scorn.

On his return journey from Hamburg to London, Marx had an amusing experience with a young lady, which he described in a letter to Kugelmann as follows:

“ My journey to London from Hamburg was, on the whole, a good one, though we had bad weather on the first day. A few hours before reaching London a young German girl, who had impressed me by her military appearance, told me that she wanted to leave the same evening for Weston-Super-Mare, and she did not see how she could do it with so much luggage. The case was the more desperate because it was Sunday, and the Sabbath is an awkward day in England. I asked her what was

¹ It is perhaps worth while calling attention to another amusing confusion of personalities which caused the author of Capital to be held responsible for views grotesquely at variance with those he really held. Some years ago I picked up a piece of newspaper, which could not be identified, containing a quotation signed “ Karl Marx,” which was an orthodox, evangelical Christian appeal such as any Protestant missionary society might issue! Long afterward I came across some similar sentences in an English Christian Socialist paper. Of course, it was obvious that there was some mistake. The puzzle was solved when I, quite accidentally, stumbled across another “ Dr. Karl Marx ” in the pages of an Indian journal, the Transactions of the Bengal Society. This other Dr. Karl Marx was a Moravian missionary at Leh, Ladakh. He was born at Niesky, in Silesia, Prussia, January 9th, 1859, and died at Leh, Ladakh, May 29, 1891.




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the station which she had to go to, and this friends had written down for her. It was the North-Western station, by which I had also to travel. I offered, as a good knight, to accompany the lady. She accepted. But I then thought that Weston- Super-Mare is in the South-West, while the station given goes to the North-West. I consulted the captain and found, as I thought, that she must leave by another station — Waterloo, which is quite in another direction. But I had promised, and must do the best I could. We landed at 2 p. M. I took the lady to her station and found, as I feared, that the first train she could take did not leave till 8 p. M. So I was in for it, and I had to kill six hours with Mademoiselle by taking her to Hyde Park, etc. It appeared that her name was Elizabeth von Putt- kamer, a niece of Bismarck, with whom she had stayed for several weeks in Berlin. She knew the whole Army List, for this family is a military one. She was a nice, cultured girl, but aristocratic and Tory to her very finger tips. She was not a little astonished when she found that she had fallen into the hands of one of the ‘ reds.’ I trust that she was not hurt, and I saw her safe and sound to the station. Think how Blind 1 would talk of my conspiracy with Bismarck if he knew of this! ”

By the middle of June, Marx began to receive proof sheets of § his book, the first copies of which reached London at the be- j ginning of September. His health in the interim was very i poor, and reading the proofsheets was a severe strain. Upon j every page he sought the advice of Engels, making occasional [ journeys to Manchester to consult with him. He was especially afraid that he had not made himself clear, and was always greatly relieved when Engels described it as “ easy reading.” When he saw his work in print it always made him fear that it was not clear, he said.

In spite of illness, poverty and the work involved in seeing his book through the press, he found time for an almost incredible amount of other work. Practically all the correspondence of the General Council of the International to and from

¹ Karl Blind, the German revolutionist, who had bitterly attacked Marx.


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the various sections passed through his hands, and he wrote every important letter which the General Council sent out, as well as all the reports and resolutions of that body. In addition he wrote innumerable private letters and arranged the Lausanne congress so that his supporters would defeat the followers of Proudhon, drafting most of the important resolutions | in advance. The election of Liebknecht and Bebel to the | North German Diet in that year added considerably to the | strength of Marx’s following in Germany and his advice was

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  constantly sought upon questions of tactics and policy.
  

| Marx sympathized with Ireland quite as much as with Po- j land, and never failed to manifest his sympathy with the Irish 1 cause in a practical way. In 1866 he agitated the question of

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  the treatment of political prisoners in Irish prisons, and the General Council of the International decided to send a deputation to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, protesting against the prevailing ill-treatment and demanding reform. The deputation, however, was not received. Then, in 1867, came the sentence of the four Fenians—'the “ Manchester Martyrs ”— to death. Marx at once denounced the sentence as “ projected judicial murder.” Toward the end of October the General Council held a great mass meeting in London to protest against the death sentence. In a resolution which Marx wrote the sentence was denounced as “ judicial murder,” and the Home Secretary was called upon to remit the penalty, not merely as an act of humanity, but also as one of sound political policy. In the end, three of the men were hanged, the fourth being pardoned by the Queen.
  

In the beginning of 1868 Marx completely broke down and 1 was compelled by illness to give up work. He worried greatly 1 over the loss of so much precious time. For nearly three months he was unable to write, but he made the best use of the time by going through a mass of statistics “ that would have | been enough to make many people ill.” Earning very little, i his circumstances continued to be most painful and embarrassing.


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It was absolutely necessary for him to keep up a decent appearance, and the children, especially the two older daughters, had to dress reasonably well. The desirability of moving to ' Geneva was the theme of frequent anxious discussions in the family circle. At Geneva, it would have been possible to live comfortably upon his income, but London was frightfully expensive. In Geneva an income of a thousand dollars a year would have been sufficient to maintain them in comfort, but in London it took from two thousand to twenty-five hundred dollars. “ If I had not these two damned books to get through, I which I cannot do anywhere but in London, I would go to j Geneva, where I could live comfortably on my present income,” 1 he wrote in March. And in August he wrote again: “ I hope

very much that at the end of next September (1869) the state of my work will allow me to leave London for good, and to go to the Continent. I would go at once as soon as I could leave the Museum (i. e., the Library). The expense of living here gets worse and worse, and I should be glad to be quiet, too, as peace is the first duty of a ‘ bourgeois.’ ”

In 1868 Gladstone forced the Irish question to the front, and Marx gave a great deal of attention to it. He distrusted and almost despised Gladstone, and did not believe in the sincerity of his friendship for Ireland. He believed that the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland would lead to the j speedy disestablishment of the English Church, and that the fall of landlordism, first in Ireland and then in England, would J speedily follow as a logical and necessary result. “ I am quite ) convinced,” he wrote on April 6, 1868, in a letter to Kugelmann, “ that the social revolution, which must depend on the fall of [the] landlords, will soon begin. Especially will this be in Ireland, for as soon as the Protestant Irish tenants in Ulster join, for the purpose of agitation, the Catholic tenants in the other three provinces of Ireland, they will succeed, as the landlords will no longer be able to take advantage of religious bigotry.”


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In the autumn of the following year he carried on a vigorous agitation in favour of granting an amnesty to Irish political prisoners, attacking Gladstone as vigorously as he had ever attacked Palmerston. Marx’s friendship for the Irish cause was no slight affair. He believed with all the intensity of which he was capable that the English working class would never be able to free itself until the Irish question was settled. Therefore he urged that the English workers should make common cause with the Irish in their struggle, and that they should take the initiative in denouncing the union of 1800 and demanding that it be replaced by a free federation. While he did not hold a high opinion of O’Donovan Rossa, the Fenian, the election of “ the convicted felon ” to the House of Commons pleased him greatly as “ a heavy blow to the government.” The English rule of Ireland he described as “ a government of cruel force and shameless corruption.”

In the letter to Kugelmann from which the foregoing quotations are taken, he says:

“ The first thing to be done for emancipation here is to strike down the English oligarchy of landlords, and the fort here can never be stormed as long as there are strong outposts in Ireland. But as soon as the Irish people begin to have freedom, as soon as they make their own laws and regulations, as soon as it is autonomous, then the downfall of the landed aristocracy in that country will come (and most of these landlords are also English landlords). The matter will be easier there than here, because in Ireland it is not only an economical but also a national question, as the landlords there are not, as in England, of the same race as the people, but they are the deadly, hated oppressors of the Irish. Now, not only is the social awakening of England hindered by the present union with Ireland, but England’s foreign policy, especially with Russia and the United States, is also affected by it. If the English workers will at last decide on working for their emancipation, then matters should begin to move. Cromwell’s English republic was wrecked because of Ireland. The same thing must not occur again.”


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Early in October, 1868, Marx was delighted to receive from a St. Petersburg bookseller word that a Russian translation of Capital had been published with the author’s photograph.

“ I have my Russian friends to thank for this,” he wrote. “ It is strange that the Russians should always have been my well-wishers, for I have fought against them for twenty-five years. In 1843—1844 the Russian autocrats thought a lot about me in Paris, and my books against Proudhon in 1847 an(l against Duncker in 1848 were received with great favour in Russia. Of course, the Russian aristocracy have been influenced by French and German culture. Many Russians hold very extreme views but like to keep them to themselves, and, as Voltaire said of himself, he did not write for cobblers and tailors. And as statesmen the Russians are very reactionary.”

The statement of Marx that he had fought against the Russians for twenty-five years might, taken by itself, seem to confirm a very common notion concerning his anti-Russian attitude. It has been very commonly charged that he detested everything Russian, and that his Russophobia extended even to the revolutionary movement itself. In support of this charge, his bitter hostility to Bakunin, Herzen and other Russians is pointed out. When Engels was asked on one occasion if it were not a fact that Marx was a bitter enemy of Russia he confused his questioner by demanding to know “ Which Russia ? ” Of course, Marx violently opposed the Russian autocracy. He looked upon Russian absolutism as the backbone of the reactionary forces of Europe. But opposition to official Russia no more suffices to make an anti-Russian of Marx than of Bakunin, Herzen or Tchernychefsky, for example.

It is true also that Marx vigorously opposed the fantastic Panslavisme of Bakunin and Herzen, and that he sometimes attacked them with great asperity and bitterness. On the other hand, for Tchernychefsky, the brilliant author of What Is to be Done, he entertained the greatest respect, frequently speaking of him with admiration, alike as a scientist, a critic and a

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man. For Herman A. Lopatin, who finished the translation of the first volume of Capital which Bakunin began, Marx entertained genuine affection, and there were many other Russian revolutionists with whom he was on intimate terms. When the terroristic Party of the People’s Will (Narodama Volia) was organized in 1879, it was greeted by none more enthusiastically than by Marx, and he was often called upon to advise its leaders upon questions of policy. Marx believed that at last the weapon had been forged which would destroy Russian absolutism and weaken the whole reactionary mass throughout Europe. To represent him as being antagonistic to the Russian revolutionary movement, or to any Russia except that of the autocracy, is to commit a great injustice to his memory.

Before the rise of the Narodattia Volia, in 1877, he had shown his friendship to the more pacificatory educational association, Semlia e Volia. Marx and his theories were much discussed in Russia at that time, he was warmly attacked and as warmly defended. That was a time when Socialism was “ in the air,” when ladies of fashion named their children after Lassalle, Marx, Herzen and other revolutionary leaders. The relation of the Marxian theory of historical development to Russia became the subject of a great deal of discussion. The question was: Will the Commune prove an effective ob

stacle to the development of capitalism in Russia; will it be destroyed by capitalism, or will it survive and prove to be the nucleus of the organization of a Socialist society?

This question was submitted to Marx and he dealt with it in an article which was published in Fatherlands Records, the leading radical magazine of Russia in those days. The article was circulated by the revolutionists as a document of great importance but the police confiscated most of the copies. For this reason it was reprinted, in December, 1886, in the revolutionary magazine, The Messenger of the People’s Will, which was edited from Paris, and of which Peter Lavroff was one of the editors. In his article, which ought to be carefully studied by

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those who insist upon a narrow interpretation of his theory of historical development, Marx lays unusual emphasis upon the element of national choice as a factor of social evolution. He refers to Tchernychefsky’s view that instead of beginning with the destruction of the rural commune and going through all the developments of capitalism, Russia might “ adopt all the fruits of this system without going through the tortures connected with it, and develop in accordance with its peculiar historical environment.” He is rather cautious about committing himself, but it is very evident that he does not think the theory of the great scientist and critic at all absurd or impossible.

After telling how he learned the Russian language, “ for the purpose of enabling myself to judge about the process of the economic development of modern Russia with certitude,” he says that he had come to the following conclusion: “ If Rus

sia will follow the way chosen by it after 1861, it will lose one of the most convenient opportunities which history ever offered to a people — to evade all the features of the capitalist system.” In a later paragraph he makes this application to Russia of the chapter of Capital which deals with the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation: “ If Russia endeavours to become a

capitalistic land like Western Europe (and during late years it has laboured sufficiently in that respect) it will not reach it without first transforming a good portion of its peasants into proletarians. But after this, first having fallen under the yoke of a capitalistic regime, it will be compelled to submit to the cruel laws of capitalism on a par with other unsuspecting nations.”

Five years later, in a preface to Plechanoff’s translation of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels made a joint reply to the same question. “ The sole possible answer, at this time,” they wrote, “ is this: If the Russian revolution is the

signal for the labour revolution in the West, so that both complete each other, the modern Russian Communal landowner- ship might become the basis for a communistic development.”

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This long digression from the main lines of our narrative can only be justified by the importance of the subject to the student of Marx’s life and opinions. No account of his life could be satisfactory which failed to take his attitude toward Russia and the Russian revolutionary movement into just account. Having attempted so much, we must retrace our steps to the point of our departure from the straight course of our story.

r In addition to an enormous amount of work for the Interna- j tional, and the part he played in the Irish agitation, Marx did | a great deal of work in 1869 on Volumes II and III of Capital. j He was far advanced with the second volume when he felt the j need of making a study of some important works to be had only ‘ in the Russian language. Nothing would satisfy him then except to learn Russian, to which he devoted himself with such I diligence, despite his ill-health, that in a few months he could both read and speak it with ease. He was constantly revising his manuscript to secure absolute accuracy, and it was said that in order to verify a single statement, which did not materially affect his argument in any case, he would spend a week In the British Museum library. Naturally progress was slow under these circumstances, and though Marx had written in March, 1869, that the manuscript of the second volume would be ready before the end of summer, it was still unfinished at the end of the year.

That the police kept close track of his movements is evident from two incidents which occurred during this year. About the middle of March he had planned to go to Paris to pay a visit to his daughter, Madame Lafargue. Either the news had leaked out through the gossip of his friends, or his mail had been tampered with, for a few days before the date fixed for his arrival in Paris, a gendarme appeared at the Lafargue home to inquire if Monsieur Marx had arrived, he had something to say to him! Needless to say, Monsieur Marx did not

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afford the Paris police the pleasure of a personal interview just then.

The other incident arose out of a visit to Germany at the end of the summer in company with his youngest daughter, Eleanor. Upon this occasion they visited Joseph Dietzgen, the tanner, spending several days at his home in Sieburg. Marx held the “ tanner-philosopher ” in high esteem as one who, working quite independently, had reached philosophical conclusions very similar to his own. In the preface to the second edition of the first volume of Capital, he paid a warm, tribute to Dietzgen, whose work both he and Engels frequently praised. The visit to the proletarian thinker’s home at Sieburg was greatly enjoyed by both visitors and their host.

The travellers also visited their old friends, the Kugelmanns, at Hanover. It is probably that this was one of the several occasions upon which he escaped arrest or molestation by the police through Herr Lothar Bucher’s timely warnings. But although Bismarck’s adviser and friend could protect his old associate in this manner, his influence did not extend to the, postal service. Marx suspected that his mail was tampered with, and received convincing proof of the fact when a letter which he wrote from Hanover to Engels, who was in Manchester, was delivered in a state which proved that it had been opened and clumsily sealed again.

During this visit to Hanover, Marx had an interview with Herr Hamann, Secretary of the German Metal Workers’ Trade Union, in which he expressed views concerning the relation of the trades unions to political parties which contrast in a very striking manner with the views held by many of his followers. The interview was published in the Volkstaat, and it is most likely that Marx saw the proofs of it prior to its publication, for he was usually very punctilious in such matters. In any case, the report was never corrected by Marx, as it certainly would have been had he regarded it as a misrepresentation of

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\ his views. We may, therefore, attach to it practically the same I importance as if it were a signed article from his own pen. ! According to Hamann, Marx said:

, “ The trades unions should never be affiliated with or made

! dependent upon a political society if they are to fulfil the object | for which they were formed. If this happens it means their ' death blow. The trades unions are the schools for Socialism, the workers are there educated up to Socialism by means of the incessant struggle against capitalism which is being carried on before their eyes. All political parties, be they what they may, can hold sway over the mass of the workers for only a time: the trades unions, on the other hand, capture them permanently; only the trades unions are thus able to represent a real working- class party, and to form a bulwark against the power of capital. The greater mass of the workers conceive the necessity of bettering their material position whatever political party they may belong to. Once the material position of the worker has improved, he can then devote himself to the better education of his children; his wife and children need not go to the factory, and he himself can pay some attention to his own mental education, he can the better see to his physique. He becomes a Socialist without knowing it.”

It has often been charged that Marx desired the utmost impoverishment and degradation of the workers in the belief that their misery and suffering would force them into the Socialist ranks. How far he was from that brutal thought the foregoing extract clearly shows. Just as twenty years before, in the Communist Manifesto, he had pointed out the utter unfitness for struggle of the “slum proletariat,” so, in 1869, he laid stress upon the fact that improved material conditions, better education and physical development would be far more likely to lead the workers to Socialism than their opposites', a maximum of poverty and degradation.

Marx’s attitude toward the trades unions, as set forth in the interview with Hamann, is diametrically opposed to that which many of his followers have seen fit to adopt. It would be both




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foolish and unfair to attempt to base an outline of the trades union policy Marx would favour to-day upon the sketch of his views reported by Hamann. It is, however, quite evident that Marx did not, in 1869, believe that the Socialists should start in opposition to the “ pure and simple trades unions ” already existing, new unions, pledged to the programme of the Socialist parties and holding loyalty to the political Socialist movement as a test of membership. His whole life, and not merely this isolated utterance, warrants the belief that he would have opposed such a policy, which from time to time some of his followers have adopted in his name.

On the other hand, it is a safe inference from this utterance, especially when considered in conjunction with the policy which he pursued during the greater part of his life, that Marx would have been just as much opposed to the policy of sending delegates to the trades union assemblies and conventions to beg the unions to endorse the Socialist party. Difficult as it may be to construct from his explicit utterances a definite statement of his thought concerning the character of the bond which should unite the trades unions with the political Socialist movement, it is very evident that he neither expected nor desired that the unions should be an appendage to the Socialist party. He would have resented as emphatically as any non-Socialist trades union leader the attempts, sometimes secret and sometimes openly avowed, to “ capture the unions ” which have at sundry times entered into the policy of some of his followers, especially in England and the United States.

The interview with Hamann has been frequently cited to prove that Marx believed that the trades unions should be strictly neutral upon all political questions, but all such attempts are disingenuous and misleading, as Kautsky and Bebel, among others, have shown. The interview itself shows that Marx believed in nothing of the sort, for he speaks of the trades unions as being “ the schools for Socialism ” and declares that it is they “ who are to form the Socialist working-class party.” It is


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evident that he would have agreed with Bebel’s saying that a union that was politically neutral in respect to any interest of its members would be “ a knife without handle or blade.”

That we may understand Marx’s views upon this important question, and properly evaluate them in regard to present-day Socialist policies, it is necessary to understand the conditions which prevailed at that time, especially in Germany. The Lassallean organization, the Universal German Workingmen’s Association, had from the first been opposed to the trades union movement, notwithstanding the fact that such men as Fritzsche, the cigarmaker, Luebkert, the carpenter, and Schob, the tailor, while prominent in the association, had formed powerful unions of the workers in their respective trades, and were constantly pleading for a closer and more harmonious relation between the political association and the unions. As a whole, the Association was opposed to and afraid of the unions. Its leaders held strictly to Lassalle’s view that only political action could benefit the workers, that everything else meant a division of strength. Schweitzer, Lassalle’s successor, seems assiduously to have cultivated this feeling in private, even while he sided publicly with Fritzsche. This hostility to the unions on the part of the Las- salleans continued right into the seventies, so that in 1872, at the convention of the association, a warning was given against “ advancing the trades union movement at the expense of the political movement,” and repeated at two subsequent conventions — at Frankfort-on-Main in 1873 and at Hanover in 1874. At the latter convention, those who had continued to push the trades union movement in spite of the warnings were by resolution branded traitors to the movement.

On the one hand, then, Marx had to confront the fact that the existing Socialist party was hostile to the trades unions, denied their importance as a means of working-class defence, and set up the panacea of cooperative production as being of far more importance. On the other hand, he saw that Max Hirsch and Max Duncker had formed trades unions, the Gewerk-Ver-


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elne, as appendages to the Progressive Party. Under such circumstances what hope could there be of a united working-class party if the great mass of the workers were to be organized into trades unions either actively opposed by the political Socialist movement or controlled by a hostile political party? Such were the conditions in 1869, and we must bear those conditions in mind when we consider the bearing of the views Marx then expressed upon present-day Socialist policy.

Marx knew very well that the trades unions had been brought into existence as a result of the struggle which the wage-workers were forced to carry on against exploitation, a struggle which, while it leads the combatants into the field of government, politics and legislation, is always primarily an economic one, begun at the gate of the factory or workshop. As in the actual world of industry workers are employed without regard to religious or political convictions, so must they organize. To be effective, to attain the necessary comprehensiveness and solidarity, the trades union movement must embrace all workers, without regard to religious, political or racial divisions. Marx would have agreed with August Bebel that the trades union has no right to question its members as to their religious views or affiliations, or as to their political views or affiliations. He would have agreed that what political party the member joins is as much his private affair as what church he joins; that, therefore, the interests of the union demand that there be a complete cessation of bitter discussions upon questions of religious belief and party politics.1

Those conservative leaders of the trades union movements who have, in the interests of the solidarity of the trades union movement, long insisted upon the observance of these principles have been, even though they knew it not, far closer followers of Marx than those who in his name have tried to unite the trades union movement to the Socialist party, either by an or

¹ See Bebel’s pamphlet, Labor Unions and Political Parties. (English translation by E. H. Thomas, 1906.)