Study of his life nd work maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale

being terribly mistreated and now have to stay there another three months while the great men of the future are pocketing thousands in the name of the revolution and are already distributing among themselves the posts in the government to come.

In early February Marx was visited for the first time by the Hungarian officer Janos Bangya, who was, unknown to Marx, a secret police agent and emissary of Louis Kossuth. He provided Marx with information on the relations between the various rival revolutionary leaders and national heroes. Attracted by Bangya’s offer of £25 sterling in payment, Marx accepted the proposal to write a pamphlet containing character sketches of prominent members of the German immigration in exile. However, before giving his definitive answer on this project, Marx




had asked Engels for an opinion (April 30). Engels replied that he had already been putting together files of such material in order to have information at hand ‘when things start popping’ and advised Marx to accept (May 1).

Marx was indeed sorely in need of the £25, for he again found himself in serious financial difficulty. This man, whom Hermann Ewerbeck characterised as a critical genius of a rank no less than Lessing (cf. H. Ewerbeck, L’Alletnagne et les Allemands. Paris, 1851, p. 58yf.), was now hardly able to concentrate on his writing projects. In February the family's situation was so critical that Marx had pawned his overcoat and was consequently unable to leave the house and had lost his credit at the butcher’s. Despite small sums from friends and the proceeds from the first New-York Daily Tribune articles, their misery grew until on April 14 the youngest child, Franziska, died of bronchitis. They were forced to borrow money from their French neighbours in order to pay for the little girl’s coffin and her burial. Jenny Marx later wrote:

She had no cradle when she came into the world and for a long time was refused a last resting place. With what heavy hearts we saw her carried to her grave ! (Reminiscences of Marx and Engels, p. 228).

Since Bangya had insisted that the pamphlet was urgent and that payment would be made on delivery, Marx quickly set to work together with Ernst Dronke to draft a text which he intended to revise with Engels's aid. About May 26 he went to Manchester, where he and Engels spent about a month revising the manuscript, which he sent to Bangya at the end of June. The expected payment did not arrive on time, however, nor was there a sign of the published text. Not until the end of the year did Marx learn from Gustav Zerffi that Bangya was a secret agent for the police of several European countries. Zerffi disclosed that Bangya had probably turned Marx’s manuscript over to the Prussian police lieutenant Greif with whom he was in regular contact. Marx decided not to expose Bangya until he had had the opportunity to look for a publisher for his pamphlet entitled Great Men of Exile. The objects of Marx’s critique and biting sarcasm included Gottfried Kinkel, August Willich, Gustav Struve, Arnold Ruge, Karl Heinzen and Harro Haring, whose quarrels and differences gave ample material for a lively picture of the German immigration since 1848.


104 Karl Marx, 1850-1856 Meanwhile in New York Weydemeyer was having difficulty financing his journal and wrote to Marx that he was not certain to be able to publish The Eighteenth Brutnaire. As Marx finished writing the sections of this manuscript, he sent them off to New York. With the March 5 delivery he enclosed a letter which summarised the difference between his approach to economic theory and the theories of the other socialists and the bourgeois economists:

As for me, I cannot claim the honour of having discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle of these classes among themselves. Long before me, bourgeois historiographers had shown the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists have traced out the economic structure of this very struggle. The novelty of what I have done is to prove simply that the existence of classes with certain historic phases of the development of production, that the class struggle necessarily culminates in the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that this dictatorship is itself only a transitional form leading to the abolition of all classes and a classless society (Mar. 5).

The final instalment of The Eighteenth Brumaire was sent off on March 25. Not until two months later did the work appear as the first issue of Weydemeyer’s new revue Die Revolution, thanks to the financial assistance received from a German immigrant in America. A mixture of history, sociology and political pamphleteering, The Eighteenth Brumaire retraced the chain of events from 1848 to the coup d’etat of 1851 as France regressed from a bourgeois republic to a praetorian regime dominated by the histrionic autocrat Louis Napoleon. Frightened by the prospect of social revolution, the propertied classes had preferred to abandon their political power to a man who seemed capable of turning back the clock of history and helping them retain their dominant social position. For Marx, this relapse into an earlier form of state power showed that the social republic in France was still a utopia and that there was not yet any real participation by the proletariat in the governing process. The real social revolution to come

cannot draw its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has shed all superstitious belief in the past. Earlier revolutions needed reminiscences of history in


1852 105

order to deceive themselves as to their own significance. The revolution of the 19th century must let the dead bury the dead if it wants to arrive at its own proper destiny (MEW 8:117).

Marx found that the authoritarian regime of Louis Napoleon was most popular among the small-holding peasants [Parzellett- baucrn], who, as he remarked in passing, actually formed no real social class at all. Each being self-sufficient and independent of his neighbours, these peasants had ‘no sense of community, no national ties and no political organisation among themselves’ (MEW 8:198). However, Bonaparte’s state organisation was preparing its own inevitable demise through the growing state centralisation which turned the governing apparatus into a nearly autonomous force, existing side-by-side with the social classes. The task of the coming proletarian revolution, which would make allies of the small-holding peasants and the industrial proletariat, would thus be to destroy the state machinery while conserving the advantages of centralisation:

Bureaucracy is only the vulgar and brutal form of centralisation still afflicted with its opposite, with feudalism. When he loses faith in the Napoleonic Restoration, the French peasant will abandon faith in his own small holding and the proletarian revolution will then obtain its chorus, for want of which its solo song becomes a swan song in all peasant nations (MEW 8:204).

Although Marx did not return to his readings on economics until July, he had made numerous efforts in the meantime to find a publisher for his projected work. The publisher Wigand in Leipzig turned down the offer ‘on account of the risks to which one would be exposed in view of the state’ should he venture to publish Marx (see Wigand to Marx, March 20). Ebner in Frankfurt also reported negative results in the search for a publisher (Ebner to Engels, July 19). In July and August Marx then began his studies afresh with works on cultural history, the history of woman (Wachsmuth), of feudalism and literature m general. He was also interested in a number of works by and about Giordano Bruno.

During the summer Marx began writing his own articles for the New-York Doily Tribune with Engels providing the translations into English. The first, entitled ‘The Elections: Tories and Whigs', appeared on August 26 and was followed by six others




on the Chartists, British political institutions and electoral corruption, all translated by Engels and published between August and November. For one article on the ‘Movements of Mazzini and Kossuth. League with Louis Napoleon' (Oct. 19) Marx used information furnished by Bangya on the secret ambition of Kossuth and his accomplice Mazzini to win the tyrant Napoleon for an alliance with revolutionary Hungary—a goal which could only discredit the revolutionaries in the eyes of their people. One of Marx's articles, on the Disraeli budget, was translated- by Pieper and appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune on December 28.

Constantly penniless, increasingly indebted to the landlord and the neighbourhood shopkeepers, Marx tried to find new sources of income through translations of earlier publications and contracts for articles. He proposed to the publisher Brock- haus an article, to be based on his readings at the British Museum, dealing with ‘Modem Literature on Political’ Economy in England, 1830-1852’ for the Brockhaus periodical Die Gegen- wart. Here Marx intended to treat (1) general works on political economy, (2) writing on specialised topics such as population problems, colonisation, banking, protective tariffs, free trade, etc, The proposal was declined on August 27. Efforts to bring out an English edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire or to publish it in Germany were likewise fruitless. As Stephan Naut wrote, to Marx (Sept. 14): ‘The name alone [Marx] suffices to bring a mass of unpleasantries down on one's head.’ In September, With three members of the family ill, Marx lacked money to pay the doctor or to buy the English dailies which he used in writing correspondent’s reports for the Daily Tribune. Engels and Freiligrath helped him over tins crisis.

After numerous delays the trial of the Cologne communists began on October 4. Marx sent a detailed letter for the defence of the accused to their attorney Karl Schneider in Cologne (Oct. 14). Determined to bring this trial to the attention of the public, Marx wrote a pamphlet and called upon Engels to help find the funds for its publication. This pamphlet, he wrote Engels, ‘is not a vindication of principles, but a denunciation of the Russian government, based on a presentation of facts and the course of events' (Oct. 27). Judgment in the case was delivered on November 12: seven of the accused were sentenced, four acquitted. Marx finished his pamphlet on December 2 and sent


it off to Schnabelitz in Basle and to Adolph Cluss in Washington, who had both agreed to publish it.

At a meeting of the League on November 17 Marx moved that the group be disbanded and declared that since the arrests in Cologne its existence was no longer in keeping with the times. The motion was passed (cf. Marx to Engels, Nov. 19).

Through Cluss in America Marx received a letter from someone claiming to be Kossuth's secretary in reply to Marx’s two Daily Tribune articles on the Hungarian leader. Marx wrote to Kossuth personally and learned that in fact he had no American secretary and was furthermore grateful to Marx for the warnings about Louis Napoleon. Kossuth’s statement appeared in the Daily Tribune on January 4, 185.3.

On December 30 Szemere, another of the Hungarian immigrants wrote to Marx to warn him about the informant Zerffi who was reputed to be ‘good at best as a source of information about the enemy's camp'.

1853 The ‘sleepless night in exile’ had begun for the Marx family in London^ In the previous three years the family's situation, both financial and social, had grown even more precarious than on the Continent and Marx's reputation as a writer, scholar and activist had, if anything, diminished. While the interest in his writings and studies remained limited to a small circle of loyal adherents, following the trial in Cologne he was branded as the head of an international conspiratorial organisation, the ‘Marx party', whose goal was said to be the overthrow of the Prussian monarchy. The worst fears of the German publishers who had not dared accept his writings for publication

were realised. 3

Although he had expected to be far enough advanced in his studies to begin writing the ‘Economics' in the spring of 1851, Marx did not resume his reading until this year. Yet instead of starting to put his own thoughts on paper, he continued malting extracts from the authors he was reading, as if his research were still far from being finished. He began with works by Opdyke, Banfield and Herbert Spencer on social and industrial organisation but was soon forced to abandon his reading again. Because of illness and the need to support his family by writing articles for the Daily Tribune, Marx did not take up his private studies ^again until 1856. >


It was not long before he began writing his Daily Tribune artides directly in English, choosing topics of current economic or political interest which provided him with material for brief social or historical critiques. The documentation thus furnished a vivid illustration of his theoretical viewpoint. In discerning the profit-drive, the hunger for power within the dominant classes of Victorian England and continental Europe, Marx exposed the hidden forces behind the contemporary course of events.

Along with several articles on the recent British elections the Daily Tribune published a contribution by Marx on ‘The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery’ which reported on a protest address sent by a group of aristocratic Englishwomen to their American sisters. The president of the protesting group was none other than the Duchess of Sutherland, whose family had made its fortune by driving Scottish peasants from their lands and appropriating them as grazing pastures for Sutherland sheep. Marx concluded, therefore, that:

The enemy of British wages slavery has the right to condemn Negro slavery; a Duchess of Sutherland, however, a duke of Athol, a Manchester cotton lord—never ! (Feb. 9).

Marx wrote his first article in English on the subject of ‘Capital Punishment’ in reply to another article in the London Times. He condemned this ‘hangman’s apotheosis’ praised by the Times and showed that the argument of its deterrent effect was untenable from both a moral and an empirical standpoint:

... it would be very difficult, if not altogether impossible, to establish any principle upon which the justice or expediency of capital punishment could be founded in a Society glorying in its civilization (Feb. 9).

Hegel had once given a systematic theory of punishment, Marx noted, and had maintained that ‘Punishment is the right of the criminal. It is an act of his own will’—that the criminal’s negation of right is negated to give an ultimate confirmation of right. For Marx, however, Hegel’s dialectic game was ‘only a metaphysic expression for the old “jus talionis” ’, in other words, the law of vengeance.

Other important topics which Marx dealt with in the first part of the year included the Milan uprising, ‘symbol of the




approaching revolutionary crisis on the entire European Continent’ (March 8), as well as the Turkish question.

It had been arranged that the Neu-England Zeitung in Boston was to publish Marx’s Revelations on the Communist Trial in Cologne in instalments (March-April), while Schnabelitz in Basle would print it in pamphlet form for subsequent distribution in Germany (Jan.). In the Revelations Marx narrated the ‘repugnant comedy of lackeys and police agents’ staged by the Prussian government using its own secret agents and aided by the French police together with other corruptible elements. Mounted in order to put the Cologne communist who entertained relations with Marx behind bars, this spectacle depicted the latter as the head of an international organisation of conspirators, plotting to overthrow the Prussian government. Since the documents found in the possession of the accused, such as The Communist Manifesto, did not provide adequate proof that the accused had actually established a programme of revolutionary action, the Prussian government, assisted by its agents and ‘hired hands’ in France and England, resorted to the manufacture of the missing pieces, to forgery and to perjury so that the ‘facts’ would coincide with the indictment. The infamy did not stop there, however; they had even attempted to buy a false witness. With this magnificent production the Prussian government had risked its own international reputation, imagining itself forced to abuse all the laws of the criminal code in order to defeat this small but treacherous party of conspirators. The issue at stake was not therefore the guilt or innocence of the accused, but their guilt or the guilt of the Prussian government. The verdict of guilty was duly pronounced against the seven members of the League.

In recapitulating the complicated story of this piece of Prussian justice, Marx had intended to enlighten the German public about the numerous scenes of the drama which had been played, as it were, in the wings. Publication of the document did not, however, assure that it would actually reach its audience. Schnabelitz’s stock of 2000 copies was seized by the police while being smuggled across the Swiss border into Germany (March ?)• As Jenny Marx wrote to Cluss:

At the moment the pamphlet would have had the most colossal effect, t would have struck like a thunderbolt amidst the trembling, shaking




police people ... You can imagine what an effect this news has had on my husband’s health, etc. (March 10).

Marx’s first bout with hepatitis dated from