Routledge Library Editions karl marx

Marx and Engels were both very unwilling to lose such a loyal friend, and Marx racked his brains to find some way of finding him employment as an engineer, railway surveyor or something of the sort, but in vain. “ Once you are over there, what guarantee is there that you won’t lose yourself somewhere in the Far West ? We have so very few really good men and we must be economical with our forces.” However, when Weydemeyer’s departure proved unavoidable they found it was not a bad thing to have a capable representative of the communist cause in the New World. “ We need a reliable fellow like Weydemeyer in New York,” declared Engels. “ After all, New York is not out of the world, and we know that if we need him Weydemeyer can be relied on.” In the end therefore the two gave him their blessing, and he sailed from Havre on the 29th of September and after a stormy voyage which lasted almost forty days he arrived safely in New York.

On the 3 i st of October Marx sent a letter after him advising him to set himself up as a bookseller and publisher in New York, and to take the best things out of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and the Neue Rheinische Revue and issue them separately. He was therefore delighted when he received a letter from Weyde- meyer informing him, to the accompaniment of a certain amount of abuse directed against the shopkeeper mentality, which Weydemeyer declared was nowhere more naked and disgusting than in the New World, that he hoped to be able to issue a weekly under the title of Die Revolution at the beginning of January and asking for contributions to be sent over as quickly as possible. Marx immediately enthusiastically mobilized all the communist pens and above all that of Engels. He also secured Freiligrath, from whom Weydemeyer wanted a poem, Eccarius, Weerth and the two Wolffs. In his reply to Weyde- meyer he complained that the latter had omitted to mention Wilhelm Wolff when announcing the contributors to the paper and declared : “ None of us has his popular manner, but he is very modest and therefore it is all the more our duty to avoid any appearance of considering his co-operation superfluous.” For his own share Marx announced that apart from a long discussion of a new work by Proudhon, he intended to write on The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, or the Bonapartist coup d’etat of the 2nd of December, which was the most important event of the day in European politics and gave rise to much discussion.

Two of the works written on the subject by others became famous and their authors were richly rewarded. At a later date Marx described the difference between these two works and his own as follows : “ Victor Hugo’s Napoleon le Petit confines itself


to bitter and brilliant invective against the responsible author of the coup d'etat. The coup itself appears to him to have come like a bolt from the blue and to be nothing but the result of the violence of an individual, but he fails to observe that thereby he makes this individual great instead of small by crediting him with a personal power of initiative which would be unexampled in world history. On the other hand, Proudhon’s Coup d’etat attempts to show the coup as the result of a train of previous historical development, but in his hands the historical construction of the coup develops into a historical apologia for the hero of the coup. Thus he falls into the error of our so-called objective historians. In my treatment of the subject, however, I show how the class struggle in France created conditions and circumstances which made it possible for a mediocre and grotesque individual to play the role of a hero.” Marx’s book appeared like a literary Cinderella beside its more fortunate sisters, but whilst the latter have long since become dust and ashes his work still shines in immortal brilliance to-day.

In a work sparkling with wit and humour Marx succeeded, thanks to the materialist conception of history, in analysing a contemporary historical event to the very core The form of the work is as brilliant as its content. From the magnificent comparison contained in its first chapter : “ Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm forward more rapidly from success to success, their dramatic effects outdo each other, men and things seem set in fiery brilliance, ecstasy is the prevailing spirit of every day, but they are short-lived, they soon attain their zenith, and then a long period of depression falls on society before it learns to assimilate the results of its storm and stress period soberly. Proletarian revolutions, like those of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, criticize themselves ceaselessly, interrupt themselves constantly in their own course, return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin it again, deride with ruthless thoroughness the half-heartedness, weakness and wretchedness of their first attempts, appear to throw their adversary to the ground only in order that he should draw renewed strength from the earth and rise again still more powerfully before them, recoil again and again from the uncertain and tremendous nature of their own aims until. a situation is created which makes retreat impossible and the circumstances themselves cry out : “ Hie

Rhodus, hie salta ! ” —to the confident words of the prophetic conclusion : “If the imperial mantle finally falls on to the

shoulders of Louis Bonaparte the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash down from the Vendome -column.”




And under what circumstances was this brilliant work written ! Least important was the fact that after the first number Weydemeyer was compelled to cease publication of as weekly for lack of funds : “ The unparalleled unemployment which has prevailed here since the beginning of the autumn makes it very difficult to start any new venture. And then the workers have been exploited in various ways recently, first Kinkel and then Kossuth. Unfortunately, the majority of them would rather give a dollar for propaganda hostile to them than a cent to defend their own interests. American conditions have an extraordinarily corrupting effect and at the same time they inculcate the arrogant idea that Americans are better than their comrades in the Old World.” However, Weydemeyer did not give up hope of restoring his paper to life, this time as a monthly, and he wanted no more than a miserable 200 dollars.

Much more important than these troubles was the fact that early in January Marx fell ill and was able to work at all only with great difficulty : “ For years nothing has pulled me down as much as this cursed hremorrhoidal trouble, not even the worst French failure.” And above all he was continually troubled by “filthy lucre ”, or rather the lack of it, which left him no peace, and on the 27th of February he wrote : “ My affairs have now reached the agreeable point at which I can no longer leave the house because my clothes are in pawn and can no longer eat meat because my credit is exhausted.” But finally, on the 25th of March, he was able to send the last bundle of manuscript to Weydemeyer together with congratulations on the birth of another little revolutionary, of which Weydemeyer had informed him : “ It would be impossible to choose a better time to come into the world than at this moment. By the time it is possible to go from London to Calcutta in seven days we shall both have had our heads chopped off or they will be shaky with age. Australia, California and the Pacific ! The new- world citizens will be unable to realize how small our world was.” Even in the worst of his personal troubles Marx never lost his optimism with regard to the tremendous prospects of human development, but sad days were immediately before him.

In a letter of the 30th of March Weydemeyer must have robbed him of all hope that his work would be printed. This letter has not been preserved, but an echo it produced has, in the shape of a violent letter written by Wilhelm Wolff on the 16th of April, the day on which one of Marx’s children was buried, declaring : “ Almost all our friends are afflicted with general misfortune and under horrible pressure.” The letter




was full of bitter reproaches of Weydemeyer, whose own life was not a bed of roses and who always did his best.

It was a terrible Easter for Marx and his family. The child which had died was their youngest daughter, born a year before, and the following moving description is taken from the diary of Frau Marx : “ At Easter 1852 our poor little Franziska fell ill with severe bronchitis. For three days the poor child struggled against death and suffered much. Her small lifeless body rested in our little back room whilst we all went together into the front room and when night came we made up beds on the floor. The three surviving children lay with us and we cried for the poor little angel who now rested so cold and lifeless in the next room. The poor child’s death took place in a period of bitterest poverty. I went to a French fugitive who lives near us and who had visited us shortly before. He received me with friendliness and sympathy and gave me two pounds and

with that money the coffin in which my child could rest peacefully was paid for. It had no cradle when it was born and

even the last little shell was denied it long enough. It was

terrible for us when the little coffin was carried out to go to its last resting place.” On this black day Weydemeyer’s letter with its bad news arrived and Marx was sorely troubled about his wife who had witnessed everything fail to which he had set his hand during the previous two years.

However, during those unhappy hours a new letter was already on its way over the water. It was dated the 9th of April and read : “ Unexpected assistance finally cleared away the difficulties which prevented publication of the pamphlet. After I had sent off my last letter I met one of our workers from Frankfort, a tailor who also came over here in the summer, and he immediately placed all his savings, forty dollars, at my disposal.” But for this worker The Eighteenth Brumaire would not have been published—and Weydemeyer does not even mention his name ! But what does it matter what the man’s name was ? The power which moved him was the classconsciousness of the proletariat, which never tires of making noble sacrifices for its emancipation.

The Eighteenth Brumaire formed the first number of the monthly Revolution which Weydemeyer now began to issue. The second and final number contained two poetical contributions by Freiligrath in the form of letters to Weydemeyer scourging with brilliant wit and humour the mendicant peregrinations of Kinkel in America. And that was the end of the venture. A number of contributions sent in by Engels were lost on the way.

Weydemeyer printed a thousand copies of The Eighteenth


Brumaire and about one-third of this number went to Europe, but not into the hands of the booksellers. They were distributed by friends and sympathizers in England and in the ^Rhineland, for even “ radical ” booksellers could not be persuaded to handle such an “ untimely ” effort, and an English translation drafted by Pieper and polished by Engels was unable to find a publisher.

If it was at all possible to increase the difficulties of Marx in finding a publisher this was done by the circumstance that the Bonapartist coup d’etat in France was followed by the Cologne communist trial in Germany.

6. 
   The Communist Trial in Cologne
   

Since the arrests which had taken place in May 1851 Marx had closely followed the course of the preliminary investigations, but as they were repeatedly held up owing to the lack of any “ objective basis for an indictment ”, as even the official prosecutor was compelled to admit, there was not much to be done. All that could be proved against the arrested men was that they were members of a secret propaganda organization, and for this the Code Penal provided no punishment.

However, the King insisted that his nominee Stieber should be given a chance to show his mettle and provide the Prussian public with the much-desired consummation of a discovered conspiracy and punished conspirators, and Stieber himself was too good a patriot not to execute the will of his hereditary ruler and king. He began his task in a fitting fashion by instigating an act of robbery. One of his tools broke open and rifled the writing desk of a man named Oswald Dietz, who had been minute secretary to Willich’s organization. As an astute agent- provocateur Stieber realized that the recklessness of this organization opened up prospects of success for his own edifying task such as “ The Marx party ” would never have offered.

With the assistance of stolen documents and with the aid rendered to him on the eve of the Bonapartist coup d’etat by the French authorities Stieber manufactured the so-called “ Franco- German Plot ” in Paris, and in February 1852 this led to the conviction of a number of unfortunate German workers by the Paris courts, which sentenced them to various terms of imprisonment. However, what Stieber did not succeed in doing was establishing any connection between his Paris plot and the accused in Cologne. For all his cunning the “ Franco-German


Plot ” did not offer him even the shadow of a proof which could be used in Cologne.

In the meantime the differences between the “ Marx Party ” and the “ Willich-Schapper Party ” became still sharper. Willich still made common cause with Kinkel and the latter’s return from America caused all the squabbles amongst the exiles to flare up anew so that in the spring and summer of 1852 the tension between the two organizations was acute. Kinkel had not secured the 200,000 thaler which was to have been the backbone of the national revolutionary loan, but he had obtained about half of it, and now the question of what was to be done with the money developed into one over which the democratic fugitives not only racked their brains but also began to break each other’s heads. In the end a thousand pounds sterling was deposited with the Westminster Bank as an earnest for the first provisional government, the remainder of the sum collected having been expended on the journey and for administration costs. The deposited sum never served its intended purpose, but fifteen years later the foolishness came to a fairly satisfactory end when it assisted the press of the German social democracy over its initial difficulties.

Whilst the tumult and the shouting surged around this Nibelungen treasure Marx and Engels made sketches of the heroes of the battle, but unfortunately the manuscripts have not been preserved. They were persuaded to do so by a Hungarian colonel named Banya, who presented himself to them with a holograph authorization from Kossuth appointing him Police President of the Hungarian emigration, although in reality the man was a common spy and always at the service of the highest bidder. He was exposed by Marx and Engels because instead of handing the manuscript to the Berlin publishers for whom it was intended Banya gave it to the Prussian police. Marx nailed down the rogue’s knavery instantly in a signed declaration which was published in the New York Kriminal Zeitung, but he was unable to obtain the return of his manuscript, which has never turned up since. If the Prussian government had hoped to use it as material in the Cologne process it must have been disappointed.

In its desperation at the lack of proofs against the accused the government caused the postponement of the public trial from one assize to the next, thereby increasing the suspense of an eager public to concert pitch until in October 1852 it simply had to raise the curtain and let the performance begin. Not all the determined perjuries of the police agents were sufficient to establish any connection between the accused and the ‘ ‘ Franco- German Plot ”, i.e. with a plot which was fabricated by the




police whilst the accused were in prison and in an organization of which they were not only not members, but even opponents. In the end therefore Stieber in his desperation produced “ the original Minute Book of the Marx Party ” containing a chronological series of minutes describing meetings at which Marx and his comrades were alleged to have discussed their nefarious plans for world revolution. This “ Minute Book ” was an infamous forgery botched together by the agents-provocateurs Charles Fleury and Wilhelm Hirsch under the direction of a police officer named Greif. At first glance the precious document bore all the marks of forgery and its contents were simply idiotic, but Stieber counted on the stupidity of his carefully sifted bourgeois jurymen and kept a close watch on the post in order to prevent explanations and enlightenment coming from London.

However, Stieber’s wretched plan failed owing to the energy and circumspection with which Marx countered it, although he was ill-prepared for a long and gruelling struggle. On the 8th of September he wrote to Engels : “ My wife is ill. Little Jenny is ill. Lenchen has a sort of nervous fever, and I can’t call in the doctor because I have no money to pay him. For about eight or ten days we have all been living on bread and potatoes, and it is now doubtful whether we shall be able to get even that. ... I have written nothing for Dana because I have not had the money to buy newspapers. The best thing that could possibly happen now would be for the landlady to throw us out, for in that case I should have the weight of twenty- two pounds back rent off my mind, but I doubt whether she will be so considerate. And then we are indebted to the baker, the milkman, the grocer, the greengrocer and the butcher. How on earth am I to get out of this devilish mess ? During the past week or so I have borrowed a few shillings and even pence from workers. It was terrible, but it was absolutely necessary or we should have starved.” This was the desperate situation in which Marx was compelled to take up the struggle with powerful enemies, but in it both he and his wife forgot their domestic troubles.

Victory was still in the balance when Frau Marx wrote to an American friend : “ All the proofs of the forgery have had to be provided from here and my husband has had to work all day and even far into the night. And then we have had to copy everything six or seven times and send it to Germany by various ways, over Frankfort, Paris, etc., because all letters to my husband and all his letters to Germany are opened and confiscated. The whole affair has now been reduced to a struggle between the police on the one hand and my husband on the




other, and my husband is being made responsible for everything, even the conduct of the trial. You must excuse my confusion, but I have also had some part in the intrigue, and I have copied and copied until my fingers ached. Whole lists ofbusiness addresses and pseudo-business letters have just arrived from Weerth and Engels as a cloak for the safe sending of the documents, etc. Our house has been turned into a regular office. Two or three are writing, others are running messages, and the remainder are engaged in scraping pennies together in order that we can all continue to exist and provide proof of the most shameful scandal the official world has ever perpetrated. And all the time my three lively children are singing and whistling, occasionally earning a severe rebuke from their father. What a life ! ”

Marx won the victory and Stieber’s forgery was exposed even before the trial, so that the Public Prosecutor was compelled to abandon “ the wretched book ”. However, the public victory sealed the fate of the accused. The five weeks’ proceedings revealed such a mass ofinfamies committed in part by the highest authorities in the Prussian State that the acquittal of the accused would have meant the conviction of the State in the eyes of the whole world. To spare the State this humiliation the jurymen were prepared to besmirch their honour and violate their consciences, and they therefore found seven of the eleven accused guilty of attempted high treason. The cigar-maker Roser, the author Burgers, and the journeyman tailor Nothjung were sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in a fortress each, the worker Reiff, the chemist Otto and the former barrister Becker were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment in a fortress each, whilst the journeyman tailor Lessner received three years. The clerk Ehrhardt and the three doctors Daniels, Jacoby and Klein were all acquitted. However, Daniels died a few years later of consumption contracted during the eighteen months he had been imprisoned awaiting trial. In a moving letter his wife sent his last greetings to Marx, who mourned his death deeply.