Routledge Library Editions karl marx

But the spite of malice and trick,

^he skulking infamy lays me low Of the wretched Western Kalmuck.”


accompanied Marx back to Cologne, where the latter found the expulsion order awaiting him.

This sealed the fate of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Several of the other editors were in the same position rs Marx and could be expelled at any moment as “ foreigners ”, whilst the others were all being prosecuted. On the 19th of May the final red number appeared with the famous valediction of Freiligrath and a defiant farewell article by Marx in which the latter belaboured the government fiercely : “ Why bother with your

foolish lies and your formal phrases ? We are ruthless ourselves and we ask no consideration from you. When our turn arrives we shall make no apologies for our terrorism; but the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the Grace of God and the right of law, are brutal, contemptible and vile in practice, secretive and double-faced in theory, and without honour in both theory and practice.” The Neue Rheinische Zeitung warned the workers against any putsch as the military situation rendered any such attempt hopeless, and the editors thanked their readers for their sympathy and support, declaring that their final word always and everywhere would be : “ The emancipation of the working class ! ”

And at the same time Marx fulfilled the duties which devolved upon him as captain of the sinking ship. The 300 thaler he had received from Henze, 1,500 thaler paid in by subscribers, the presses, etc., which belonged to him, all resources in fact were used to meet the liabilities of the paper to its printers, its paper merchants, its clerks, its correspondents, its editorial staff, etc. Marx kept only the silver of his wife for himself and his family and that had to pay a visit to the pawnbrokers in Frankfort. The few hundred guilders which Marx obtained for this silver was all he and his family had to live on.

From Frankfort he went with Engels to the scene of the insurrection in Baden and the Palatinate, visiting first Karlsruhe and then Kaiserslautern, where they met d’Ester, who was the moving spirit in the provisional government. From d’Ester Marx received a mandate of the Democratic Central Committee to represent the German revolutionary party in Paris towards the Montagne of the National A^embly, the social democracy of the day, a mixture of petty-bourgeois and proletarian elements, which was preparing a great blow against the parties of “ law and order ” and their representative, the false Bonaparte. On their way back they were arrested by Hessian troops on suspicion of having taken part in the insurrection and taken to Darmstadt and from there to Frankfort where they were finally released. Marx then went to Paris whilst Errgels went to Kaiserslautern




to become the adjutant of a volunteer corps which had been raised by a former Prussian lieutenant named Willich.

Writing from Paris on the 7th of June Marx declared that a royalist reaction was in the saddle and that it was even worse than under Guizot, but that nevertheless a tremendous outbreak of the revolutionary volcano had never been nearer. However, his expectations were disappointed, for the blow which the Montagne was planning failed and it failed in a not very edifying fashion. A month later the vengeance of the victors descended on Marx also. On the 19th ofJuly the Prefect of Police conveyed an order of the Minister of the Interior to Marx that he should take up his domicile in the Departement Morbihan. It was a cowardly blow, “ the infamy ofinfamies ”, as Freiligrath declared in a letter to Marx after receiving the news. “ Daniels declares Morbihan to be the most unhealthy district in France, marshy and fever-racked, the Pontine swamps of the Bretagne.” Marx did not submit tamely to this “ cloaked attempt at murder ”, but succeeded in securing a stay of execution by an appeal to the Minister of the Interior.

By this time Marx was in desperate financial straits and he appealed to Freiligrath and Lassalle for assistance. Both men did their best, but Freiligrath complained of Lassalle’s indiscretion in collecting the necessary money, declaring that he had made the affair the talk of the taverns. Marx was greatly embarrassed at this and in a reply on the 30th ofJuly he declared : “ The greatest financial difficulties are preferable to public begging and I have written to him saying so. The business has annoyed me terribly.” However, Lassalle succeeded in dissipating Marx’s annoyance by a letter overflowing with good-will, although his assurances that henceforth he would treat the matter “ with the greatest delicacy ” left room for doubt.

On the 23rd of August Marx wrote to Engels telling him that he was leaving France, and on the 5th of September he wrote to Freiligrath that his wife would follow him on the 15th though he still did not know where he was to find the money necessary for her journey and for her settling down when she arrived. Black care accompanied him on his third exile and it remained an all too steadfast companion.


C HAPT E R S EVEN: E X I L E IN LONDON

I. The Neue Rheinische Revue

In the last letter which Marx wrote to Engels from Paris he informed him that there was every prospect of founding a German paper in London and that a part of the necessary money was already available. At the same time he asked Engels, who was then living as a political fugitive in Switzerland after the collapse of the insurrection in Baden and the Palatinate, to go to London at once, and Engels did so, making the journey in a sailing ship from Genoa.

It is no longer possible to discover where they obtained the necessary money for the venture. It cannot have been very much, and in any case they did not reckon with any very long life for the paper, and Marx hoped that a world war would come within the next three or four months. The share prospectus of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, politico-economic Review, edited by Karl Marx, is dated the 1st of January 1850 in London and signed by Konrad Schramm as guarantor. The document declares that after having taken part in the revolutionary movements in Southern Germany and in Paris during the previous summer, the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had come together again in London and decided to continue the publication of their paper. In the beginning it would appear as a monthly publication containing about 80 pages, but when finances permitted it would be issued fortnightly in the same format, or perhaps every week as a newspaper along the lines of the big English and American weeklies, whilst as soon as conditions permitted a return to Germany it would appear again as a daily newspaper. And finally the document invites its readers to take up shares to the value of 50 Francs each.

It is unlikely that many shares were floated. The magazine was printed in Hamburg, where a bookseller undertook to produce it on a commission basis and demanded 50 per cent of the 25 silver groschen which represented its quarterly net sale price per copy. The firm did not take much trouble about the publication, particularly as the Prussian army"of occupation in Hamburg




hampered its activities, but the situation would hardly have been improved even if it had shown real zeal in the matter. Lassalle succeeded in obtaining only 50 subscribers in DUsseldorf, whilst Weydemeyer, who had ordered 100 copies for sale in Frankfort, had taken only 5 i guilders after six months of effort : “ I put enough pressure on the people, but nevertheless no one is in a hurry to pay.” Frau Marx wrote to him with justifiable bitterness that the venture had been utterly ruined by careless management, and that it was impossible to say what or who was most responsible, the dilatoriness of the bookseller, or the manager and friends in Cologne, or the attitude of the democracy.

In any case, a certain amount of responsibility attaches to the insufficient editorial preparation ofthe first number, and Marx and Engels were chiefly responsible for this. The manuscript for the January number arrived in Hamburg on the 6th of February. However, we have every reason to be satisfied that the plan was carried out at all, for a few months’ further delay and it would have been made completely impossible owing to the rapid ebb of the revolutionary wave. As it is, the six numbers of the Review provide us with a valuable example of how Marx raised himself above the petty troubles of life which besieged him “ in a revolting form ” daily and even hourly, with, to use the words of his wife, “ all his energy and all the calm, clear and collected strength of his character ”.

In their youth Marx and Engels, the latter even more so than the former, saw the coming things much nearer than they were in reality, and often they hoped to pick the ripe fruit where the first blossoming had hardly begun. How often have they been denounced as false prophets on that account ! And to be regarded as a false prophet does not enhance the reputation of a politician. However, it is necessary to distinguish between false prophecies which spring from clear and acute thought and those which are the result of conceited self-reflection in pious wishes. In the latter case the resulting disappointment is enervating because an illusion disappears utterly, whilst in the former case it is salutary because the thinking man tracks down the cause of his error and thus gains new knowledge.

Probably no one has ever been quite so ruthless in his selfcriticism as Marx and Engels were. Both of them were completely free of that wretched dogmatism which still seeks to deceive itself even in the face of the bitterest disappointments, declaring that it would certainly have been right if only this or that had happened a little differently. And they were just as free of cheap defeatism and fruitless pessimism. They learned from their defeats and gained new strength to prepare for the coming victory.




With the defeat of the Paris workers on the 13th of June, the failure of the Reich’s Constitution campaign in Germany, and the crushing of the Hungarian revolution by the Tsar, a great stage in the revolutionary movement came to an end, and if there was to be any resuscitation of the revolution then it could take place only in France where, despite all that had happened, the last word had not been spoken. Marx held firmly to the hope of such a resuscitation, but that did not prevent him subjecting the previous development of the French revolution to a ruthless criticism which mocked at all illusions. On the contrary, it impelled him to do so, and in this criticism the chaotic confusion of the revolutionary struggles, which necessarily appeared more or less insoluble to the idealist politician, was examined from the standpoint of the economic antagonisms which collided in these struggles.

This criticism was published in the first three numbers of the Review, and in it Marx often succeeds in unravelling the most complicated questions of the day with a few epigram- matical sentences. How many words had been expended on the right to work by the most prominent representatives of the bourgeoisie and even by the doctrinaire socialists, and how completely Marx summed up the historic sense and nonsense of this slogan in a few sentences ! “ The first draft of the constitu

tion drawn up before the June days contained a demand for the right to work. It was the first clumsy formulation of the revolutionary desires of the proletariat. Later it was transformed into the right to public support, and what modern State does not support its paupers in one form or the other ? From the bourgeois point of view the right to work is nonsense, a pitiful and pious wish, but behind the right to work stands the power over capital, and behind the power over capital stands the appropriation of the means of production and their subordination to the a^ociated working class, that is to say, the abolition of wage- labour and capital and of their mutual relations.” Marx first recognized the class struggle as the motive power of historical development on the basis of French history, in which the class struggle has shown itself in a particularly clear and classic form from the days of the middle ages, and this explains his particular preference for French history. This dissertation and the later one on the Bonapartist coup d’etat, and the still later one on the Paris Commune, are the most brilliant gems in the crown of his minor historical works.

The first three numbers of the Review also contained an amusing contrast to this, but it was one not without its own tragic upshot. It was the sketch of a petty-bourgeois revolution




which Engels drew in his description of the Reich’s Constitution campaign in Germany. The reviews of the month, which were drawn up by Marx and Engels jointly, dealt chiefly with the course of economic events. In the February number they referred to the discovery of the Californian gold mines as a fact of “ even greater importance than the February revolution”’ and one which would have even greater and more far-reaching results than the discovery of America : “A coastal stretch of 30 degrees latitude, one of the most beautiful and fertile areas in the world, and practically unpopulated up to the present, is now turning before our eyes into a rich and civilized country thickly populated with men of all races, from the Yankee to the Chinese, the Negro to the Indian and the Malayan, the Creole and Mestizo to the European. Californian gold is pouring in streams over America and over the Asiatic coasts of the Pacific, sweeping the unwilling barbarian peoples into the orbit of world trade, into the province of civilization. For the second time world trade is receiving a new alignment. . . . Thanks to the gold of California and to the tireless energy of the Yankees both coasts of the Pacific will soon be as thickly populated, as highly industrialized and as open for trade as the coast from Boston to New Orleans is now. The Pacific Ocean will then play the role the Atlantic Ocean is playing now and the role that the Mediterranean played in the days of classical antiquity and in the middle ages—the role of the great water highway of world communications—and the Atlantic Ocean will sink to the level of a great lake such as the Mediterranean is to-day. The one chance which the civilized countries of Europe have to avoid falling into the same industrial, commercial and political dependence as Italy, Spain and Portugal lies in a social revolution whilst there is still time, a revolution which would transform the mode of production and intercourse in accordance with the needs of production arising from the nature of modern productive forces, thus making possible the development of new forces of production which would maintain the superiority of European industry and counteract the disadvantages of geographical situation”’ All that needed to be added to this magnificent perspective, as its authors were soon to discover, was that the chances of any immediate revolution foundered on the discovery of the Californian gold mines.

Marx and Engels also jointly criticized a number of works in which the intellectual leaders of the pre-March period did their best to unravel the problems of the revolution, including books by the German philosopher Daumer, the French historian Guizot and the English genius Carlyle. Daumer had developed from




the Hegelian school, whilst Guizot had exercised considerable influence on Marx, and Carlyle on Engels, but the verdict now passed on all three was : weighed in the balance of the revolution and found wanting. The incredible platitudes with which Daumer preached “the religion of the new world era” were summed up in the “ touching picture” : German philosophy is wringing its hands and lamenting at the death-bed of its economic sire German Philistinism. Their criticism of Guizot pointed out that even the most capable brains of the ancien regime, even those with considerable historical talent, had been thrown into utter confusion by the fatal February events, so that they had lost all historical understanding, even for their own former actions. Finally, they declared that Guizot’s book demonstrated the intellectual decline of the great leaders of the bourgeoisie, whilst a few pamphlets of Carlyle showed the decline of literary genius in face of the acute historic struggles on which it sought to exercise its misunderstood, direct and prophetic inspirations.

Although in these brilliant criticisms Marx and Engels demonstrated the disastrous effects of the revolutionary struggles on the bourgeois literary lights of the pre-March period, they were very far from believing in any mystical power of the revolution, although on various occasions they have been accused of doing so. The revolution had not created the picture which shocked Daumer, Guizot and Carlyle; it had done no more than tear away the curtain which had concealed it. Historical development did not alter its course during revolutions, but merely accelerated its progress, and in this sense Marx once called revolutions “the locomotives of history”. The stupid Philistine belief that “peaceful and legal reform” is superior to all revolutionary outbreaks was naturally never shared by men like Marx and Engels, who regarded force as an economic power, as the midwife of all new societies.

2. 
   The Kinkel Afair
   

With its fourth number, which appeared in April 1850, the Neue Rheinische Revue ceased to appear regularly and a contri butory factor was undoubtedly a short article which appeared in this number. Its authors prophesied that the article in question would cause “ general indignation amongst sentimental swindlers and democratic demagogues”. It was a brief but annihilating criticism of the speech delivered in his own defence




by Gottfried Kinkel on the 7th of August 1849 as a captured volunteer before a court-martial in Rastatt and published in a Berlin newspaper at the beginning of April 1850.

Objectively considered the criticism was absolutely justified, for Kinkel had abandoned not only the revolution, but also his comrades in arms. Before the court-martial, which had already sent 26 of his comrades to their deaths in the barrack square where they had died gallantly, Kinkel praised the “ grape-shot prince” and “ the Hohenzollern Kaiserdom ”, but for all that he was in prison when Marx and Engels attacked him, and it was generally considered that he had been chosen as the special object of royal vengeance because the sentence of imprisonment in a fortress passed on him by the court-martial had been subsequently changed by an Order in Council to the dishonouring one of hard labour in an ordinary prison. To pillory Kinkel in such a situation caused misgivings in the minds of many people who were certainly neither “sentimental swindlers” nor “ democratic demagogues”.

Since then the archives have been opened and the Kinkel case is seen to have been a maze of tragi-comic misunderstandings. Originally Kinkel had been a theologian, and an orthodox one at that, but his fall from grace, accompanied and perhaps furthered by his marriage to a divorced Catholic, had brought the irreconcilable hatred of the orthodox down on his head and given him a reputation as a “hero of freedom ” far beyond his real deserts. It was due more to a “ misunderstanding ” than anything else which caused Kinkel to slide into the same party as Marx and Engels. Politically he never advanced beyond the usual slogans of the common rut of German democracy, but the “damnable eloquence ”, to use an expression of Freiligrath, which had remained with him from his theological days occasionally swept him off his feet and sent him careering as far to the left as it did to the right before the court-martial in Rastatt, whilst moderate poetical talent contributed to making him better known than the other democrats of his kidney.

During the Reich’s Constitution campaign Kinkel joined the volunteer corps raised by Willich, in which Engels and Moll also served. He fought bravely, and during the last engagement of the corps on the Murg, where Moll fell, he was wounded in the head and taken prisoner. The court-martial which tried him sentenced him to lifelong imprisonment in a fortress, but the “ grape-shot prince ” or, to use the politer expression adopted by Kinkel in his defence, “ His Royal Highness the Heir to our Throne ”, was not satisfied with this and the military legal authorities in Berlin therefore requested the King to quash the