Routledge Library Editions karl marx

LE^TTER FROM THE COLOGNE COMMITTEE TO






who clearly realized the real situation, came into deeper and deeper conflict with the other emigrants. How could the voice oflogic and reason hope to master the storm of passion which was rising higher and higher in the hearts of men who were growing more and more desperate ? It was hopeless, and in fact the general delirium penetrated even into the ranks of the League itself and demoralized its Central Committee.

In the session of the Central Committee which took place on the 15 th ofSeptember 1850 an open split occurred, six members being on one side and four on the other. Marx, Engels, Bauer, Eccarius and Pfander from the ranks of the old guard stood with Konrad Schramm from the younger generation against Willich, Schapper, Frankel and Lehmann, of whom only Schapper came from the old guard. Schapper, “ an inveterate revolutionary ” as Engels had once called him, had been swept off his feet wi th revolutionary anger after having witnessed the brutalities of the counter-revolution at firsthand for over a year, and he had only just arrived in England.

At this decisive session the dispute was summed up by Marx as follows : “ The minority replaces critical observation with dogmatism, a materialist attitude with an idealist one. It regards its own wishes as the driving force of the revolution instead of the real facts of the situation. Whilst we tell the workers that they must go through fifteen, twenty, perhaps even fifty years of war and civil war, not only in order to alter existing conditions, but even to make themselves fit to take over political power, you tell them, on the contrary, that they must seize political power at once or abandon all hope. Whilst we point out how undeveloped the German proletariat still is, you flatter the nationalism and the craft prejudices of the German artisan in the crudest fashion, and that is naturally more popular. Just as the Democrats made a sort of holy entity out of the word people, you are doing the same with the word proletariat.” Violent discussions took place and Schramm even challenged Willich to a duel, though Marx disapproved of his action. The duel actually took place near Antwerp and Schramm was slightly wounded. In the end it proved impossible to reconcile the two parties.

The majority sought to save the League by transferring its central leadership to Cologne. The Cologne district was to elect a new Central Committee and the London district would be divided into two separate districts independent of each other and connected only with the Central Committee in Cologne. The Cologne district agreed to this proposal and elected a new Central Committee, but the minority then refused to recognize




it. The minority had the upper hand in the London district, and particularly in the German Workers Educational League, from which Marx and his nearest associates then resigned. Willich and Schapper proceeded to form an organization of their own, but it soon degenerated utterly into adventurism and sham revolutionism.

Marx and Engels explained their point of view in the fifth and sixth numbers of the Neue Rheinische Revue, which appeared together as a double number in November 1850 and concluded the life of the paper altogether. Their position was given in even greater detail than in the session at which the split took place. The double number also contained a long article by Engels on the peasant war of 1525 from the historical materialist standpoint, and an article by Eccarius on the tailoring trade in London. This latter article was greeted enthusiastically by Marx who declared : “ Before the proletariat fights out its battles on the barricades it announces the coming of its rule with a series of intellectual victories.”

Eccarius was himself working in one of London’s tailoring workshops and he had realized that the replacement of handicraft by large-scale industry was a historical step forwards, and at the same time he observed that the results and achievements of large-scale industry created the conditions for the proletarian revolution and renewed them daily. He adopted a purely materialist standpoint and opposed bourgeois society and its forces without the usual sentimentality. For this reason his article was praised by Marx as a great step forward beyond the sentimental, moral and psychological criticism of existing conditions as practised by Weitling and other working-class writers. It also represented one of the fruits of Marx’s own tireless enlightenment work, and it was a very welcome fruit.

However, the most important contribution to this final number was the politico-economic review of the period from May to October. Marx and Engels dealt with the economic causes of the political revolution and counter-revolution in an exhaustive analysis, pointing out that the former had arisen out of the economic crisis whilst the latter had its roots in a new advance of production. The conclusion they came to was : “ In view of the general prosperity which now prevails and permits the productive forces of bourgeois society to develop as rapidly as is at all possible within the framework of bourgeois society, there can be no question of any real revolution. Such a revolution is possible only in a period when two factors collide; when the modern productive forces collide with the bourgeois mode of production. The various squabbles in'which the representatives




of the individual fractions of the Continental order are now indulging and compromising themselves will not lead to any new revolution. On the contrary, they are only possible because at the moment the basis of prevailing relations is so secure and, a point on which the reaction is ignorant, so bourgeois. All the attempts of the reaction to prevent bourgeois development will break down as helplessly as the moral indignation and the enthusiastic proclamations of the Democrats. A new revolution will be made possible only as the result of a new crisis, but it is just as certain as is the coming of the crisis itself.”

This clear and convincing description of the existing situation was then compared with an appeal issued by a European Central Committee and signed by Mazzini, Ledru-Rollin, Darasz and Ruge, which represented a collection of all the illusions of the political emigration in as small a space as possible, explaining the failure of the revolution as the result of the ambitious jealousy of individual leaders and of the contradictory teachings of the various representatives of the people, and concluding with a confession of faith in liberty, equality and fraternity, the family, the community, the State and the Fatherland, in short, in a social system with God and His eternal laws at the apex and the people at the base.

This politico-economic review is dated the 1st of November 1850 and with it the direct and immediate co-operation of its authors ceased for two decades, for Engels went to Manchester to work once again for Ermen & Engels whilst Marx remained in London to devote all his energies to scientific study.

2. 
   Life in Exile
   

The days of November 1850 fall almost exactly in the middle ofMarx’s life and they represent, not only externally, an important turning point in his life’s work. Marx himself was keenly aware of this and Engels perhaps even more so.

Writing to Marx in February 1851 Engels declares : “ One can see more and more that exile is an institution in which everyone must necessarily become a fool, a donkey and a scurvy knave unless he withdraws from it completely and contents himself with being an independent writer who doesn’t bother his head in the least even about the so-called revolutionary party.” And Marx answered : “I very much like the public isolation in which we two now find ourselves. It is quite in




accordance with our attitude and our principles. The system of mutual concessions, of half-measures tolerated for the sake of appearances, and the necessity of taking one’s share of the responsibility in the eyes of the general public together with all those donkeys, is now at an end.” And Engels again : “ We have now once more an opportunity, for the first time for a very long time, of showing that we need no popularity and no support from any party in any country, that our position is completely independent of such trivialities. From now on we are responsible to ourselves alone. ... By the way, we can hardly complain about the fact that the petits grands hommes avoid us. For years we acted as though Krethi and Plethi ¹ were our party, although we had no party and the people whom we considered as belonging to our party, at least officially, did not understand even the elementary principles of our cause.”

It would be wrong to take the expressions “ fools ”, “ donkeys ” and “ knaves ” all too seriously, and a certain amount may be deducted from these spirited remarks, but what then remains shows us that Marx and Engels rightly regarded their decision to cut themselves loose from the fruitless squabbles of the exiles as their salvation. They withdrew, as Engels said, into “ a certain isolation ” in order to continue their scientific studies until such time as men should better understand their cause.

However, the cut was not made so thoroughly, so quickly and so deeply as would appear to the retrospective observer. In the letters which the two exchanged in the following years we find that the internal struggles amongst the exiles play a very considerable role, and this was due to the ceaseless friction which occurred between the two fractions into which the Communist League had split, if to no other reason. And further, although Marx and Engels had decided to take no part in the noisy squabbles of the emigration period, this certainly did not mean the abandonment of all part in the political struggles of the day. They continued to contribute to the Chartist newspapers, and they did not accept the disappearance of the Neue Rheinische Revue as final.

A publisher named Schabelitz in Basel offered to undertake the continuation of the Review, but in the end nothing came of it, and Marx then opened up negotiations with Hermann Becker, who had succeeded in maintaining his position in Cologne as editor of the Westdeutsche Zeitung for some time and when that was finally suppressed had taken over a small publishing house. Marx wanted to have his works published in a collected edition and to issue a quarterly magazine from Liege. However, this

¹ Krethi and Plethi = university-student expre&ion for Tom, Dick, and Harry.


plan was spoiled by the arrest of Becker in May 185 I, though one brochure of the Collected Works did actually appear. Two volumes were to have been published, each containing 400 pages, and whoever subscribed to the venture before the 15th of May was to receive the volumes in ten brochures at eight silver groschen each, and after that the sale price was to be one thaler and 15 silver groschen for each volume. The first brochure was quickly sold out, but Weydemeyer’s statement that 15,000 copies were sold is probably an error, for even one- tenth of that figure would have been quite a fair success for those days.

When drawing up these plans Marx was under “ the urgent necessity of making a living ”. He and his family were living in great poverty. In November 1849 the fourth child, a son named Guido, was born, and its mother wrote : “ The poor little angel suckled so many cares and worries that it was always ill and in violent pains day and night. Since it came into the world it has not slept a single night properly, and never more than two or three hours at a time.” This child died about a year after its birth.

The family was evicted in the most brutal and ruthless fashion from its first home in Chelsea because although the rent had been paid to the tenant the latter had not paid it to the landlord. After many difficulties they succeeded in finding a temporary shelter in a German hotel in Leicester Street near Leicester Square, and shortly afterwards they moved into 28, Dean Street, Soho Square. For the next six years the two rooms in Dean Street offered the family a permanent shelter. However, this did not settle their financial troubles, which steadily increased. Towards the end of October 1850 Marx wrote to Weydemeyer in Frankfort-on-Main asking him to take the family silver out of pawn and sell it at the best price he could get for it, saving only a small case of spoons, etc., belonging to little Jenny. “ At the moment my situation is that I must get hold of money under all circumstances in order to be able to go on working.” At about the same time Engels departed for Manchester to devote himself to “ damned business ” and certainly in order to be able to assist his friend financially.

Apart from Engels, friends proved to be rare in need, and in 1850 Frau Marx wrote to \Veydemeyer : “The thing that hits me hardest of all and makes my heart bleed is that my husband is worried by so many petty troubles. He could be assisted with so little, but he who always helped others so readily is left helpless himself. Please don’t think, Herr Weydemeyer, that we are asking anyone for anything, but at the very least




my husband could justly ask those who turned to him for so many ideas and for support, to show a little more business energy and interest in his Review. They owe him that little, and I am not ashamed to say so—after all, no one was defrauded in the matter. It hurts me, but my husband thinks differently. He has never lost his confidence in the future, not even in the worst moments, and he has always kept up his good spirits and was happy if he saw me in a good humour and our dear children making a fuss of me.” And as she looked after him when friends were silent, so he looked after her when enemies were all too vociferous in their attacks.

In August I 85 I Marx again wrote to Weydemeyer : “ You can imagine that my situation is gloomy. My wife will go under if it lasts much longer. The continual troubles and the petty day-to-day struggle to make ends meet are wearing her out. And on top of all this there is the infamy of my opponents, who do not even attempt to attack me objectively, but revenge themselves for their impotence by casting suspicion on me and spreading the most indescribable infamies about me. ... As far as I am concerned, I should laugh at the whole business and I am not letting it interfere with my work in the least, but you can imagine that it is no relief to my wife, who is ill, whose nervous system is run down and who is forced to struggle with miserable poverty from morning to night, when foolish go- betweens bring her the latest exhalations from the democratic sewers. The tactlessness of some people in this respect is often colossal.”

A few months previously (in March) Frau Marx had given birth to a daughter, Franziska, and despite an easy confinement she had been very ill, “ more for psychological than for physical reasons”. There was not a penny in the house, “and at the same time we exploited the workers and worked for a dictatorship ”, as Marx wrote in a bitter mood to Engels.

Marx’s scientific studies were a never-failing source of consolation to him. He sat from nine o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock in the evening in the British Museum, and referring to the empty bombast of Kinkel and Willich he once declared : “ Naturally, the democratic simpletons whose inspiration comes ‘ from above ’ have no need to do anything of that sort. Why should the innocents bother their heads about economics and history? As the worthy Willich used to say to me, everything is so simple. Everything is so simple ! In their confused heads perhaps, for they are really great simpletons.” At that time Marx hoped to have his Critique of Political Economy completed within a few weeks, and he began to look for a publisher,


a search which once again caused him one disappointment after the other.

In May 1851 a loyal friend on whom Marx could rely absolutely, Ferdinand Freiligrath, came to London, and during the next few years the two remained in close touch, but bad news followed quickly on his heels. On the loth of May the tailor Nothjung was arrested in Leipzig whilst on a tour of agitation as a representative of the Communist League. Papers which he carried betrayed the existence of the League to the police, and soon afterwards the members ofthe Central Committee in Cologne were arrested. Freiligrath himself had escaped by the skin of his teeth and without even knowing the danger he was in. When he arrived in London the various fractions amongst the German exiles immediately fought each other tooth and nail for the privilege of the famous poet’s allegiance, but he put a stop to this by informing them that he stood with Marx and his circle, and he refused to attend a meeting which took place on the 14th of July 1851 in order to make another attempt to compose the differences which existed amongst the exiles. The attempt failed as all previous attempts had failed and it produced only new differences. On the 20th ofJuly the “ Agitation Club ” was founded under the intellectual leadership of Ruge, and on the 27th of July this was followed by the formation of the “ Emigration Club ” under the intellectual leadership of Kinkel, and these two associations were soon fighting each other vigorously, particularly in the columns of the German- American press.

Naturally, Marx had nothing but contempt for this “ war of the frogs and mice ”, and the intellectual attitudes of its leaders were all more or less abhorrent to hini. Ruge’s attempts to “ edit the reason of events ” in i 848 had already been dealt with in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in a lighter vein, but heavier artillery had also been brought into action against “ Arnold Winkel- ried Ruge ”, the “ Pomeranian thinker ”, whose writings were “ the gully ” in which “ all the waste phraseology and contradictions of German democracy flowed off”. However, for all his political confusion, Ruge was of a different calibre from Kinkel, who had been engaged in a ceaseless attempt to play the role of interesting social lion in London since his flight from prison in Spandau, “ now in the ’pub, and now in the club ”, as Freiligrath had mocked. In addition, Marx was more interested in Kinkel at the time because Willich had become his ally in order to organize a big swindle, a sort of revolution on a limited liability basis. On the 14th of September 1851 Kinkel landed in New York on a mission to win respected fugitives as guarantors




for a German National Loan “ in the sum of two million dollars to further the coming republican revolution ”, and to collect a preliminary fund of 20,000 thaler. Kossuth had first conceived the brilliant idea of sailing over the herring pond with a collecting box, but on a smaller scale Kinkel carried on the business no less zealously and recklessly, and in the course of their activities both master and pupil preached against slavery in the Northern States and in favour of it in the Southern.

Whilst this farce was proceeding Marx established serious relations with the New World. In rus growing financial embarrassment—“ It is almost impossible to go on like this,” he wrote to Engels on the 31st of July—he proposed to issue a lithographed correspondence for American newspapers, and a few days afterwards he received an offer from The New York Tribune, the most widely-read newspaper in the Northern States, to become a regular contributor. The offer was made by Dana, the publisher of the paper, whom Marx knew from his stay in Cologne. At the time Marx did not have the necessary fluent command of the English language so Engels deputized for him and wrote a series of articles on revolution and counterrevolution in Germany, and shortly afterwards Marx was able to secure the publication of one of his books in the United States in German.

2. 
   The Eighteenth Brumaire
   

Throughout the revolutionary years Marx’s old friend from Brussels, Josef Weydemeyer, fought courageously as the editor of a democratic newspaper in Frankfort-on-Main. When the counter-revolution became more insolent this paper was also suppressed, and after the discovery of the Communist League, of which Weydemeyer was an active member, the police spies soon got on to his track also.

At first he took refuge “ in a quiet little inn in Sachsen- hausen ”, hoping that the storm would roll by and occupying himselfin the meantime with a popular book 011 political economy. However, instead the atmosphere became more and more oppressive until finally Weydemeyer burst out with “ the devil take this endless hanging around in hiding ”. He was a husband and the father of two small children, and as he saw no likelihood of being able to earn a living in Switzerland or in London he decided to emigrate to America.