Study of his life nd work maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale
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EUROPE 1857-58 From America, where economic difficulties have fol lowed an excessively rapid development of the railroad industry in scarcely populated regions, a financial crisis extends to Europe. It is in part responsible for renewed agitation for political unity and the consolidation of economic interests on the Continent. Friedrich Wilhelm IV, now known to be mentally ill, has to abandon the Prussian throne. The regency is assumed by his brother Wilhelm. ^58 An Italian refugee in France, Felix Orsini, unsuccess fully tries to assassinate Napoleon III. Following his arrest and execution the same year, the diplomats of both countries, Italy and France, are stimulated to negotiate for closer understanding. Cavour and Napoleon meet at Plombieres-les-Bains for a secret dis cussion of their interests and conclude an agreement which stipulates that France will support Italy in a war against Austria. Once the Austrians are expelled from Venetia and Lombardy, France is to gain in the ,o settlement the territories of Nice and Savoy. 9 Cavour’s plan bears fruit: Austria is provoked to an attack and is defeated by united Franco-Sardinian troops. A rapidly concluded peace at Villafranca pro viding for the establishment of an Italian confederation under Papal rule fails to satisfy Cavour and the republicans. Under the leadership of Garibaldi the
enters Naples. Naples and Sicily vote for inclusion in the Sardinian kingdom. At the first meeting of the Italian Parliament all the provinces are represented except the Papal state and Venetia. Sardinia’s Victor Emmanuel II is elected king of Italy.
— Wilhelm I is ordained King of Prussia after the death of his brother in January. He immediately reorganises and strengthens the army and then attempts to bend
Lassalle under the name Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeitverein (ADAV—General Union of German Working Men), its declared first aim the achievement of universal suffrage. Upon the death of the Danish king Frederick VII the throne passes to Christian IX in accordance with the London Protocol of 1852. His first official act is to confirm a constitutional act annexing Schleswig to Denmark. Although officially bound by the provisions of the London agreement, Prussia and Austria neverthe less declare their opposition to this incorporation and the separation of Schleswig from Holstein. Prussian troops occupy Holstein and Lauenburg. Congress Poland revolts against the domination of the Czar and sets up a provisional national govern ment, which declares the country's independence and proclaims land reforms. The liberals meet with over whelming opposition from conservative landowners and the bourgeoisie, who prevent the masses from assuming the initiative and extending the revolution to other regions of the country. Despite intervention from England, France and Austria, the national move ment is crushed and Russia reasserts its hegemony. AMERICAS The Dred Scott Decision: The US Supreme Court declares that negroes are not to be considered citizens according to the constitution and therefore do not enjoy the rights and privileges established therein. In Mexico the establishment of a reactionary govern ment which repeals the liberal measures of its pre decessor and suspends payment on foreign debts incites both internal and external opposition. Self-appointed liberator of the Southern slaves, the abolitionist John Brown invades the South with a party of armed followers and seizes the US arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. His call to insurrection is not heeded by the slaves, however, and eventually the Southern general Robert E. Lee attacks the fort and captures the Brown party. The affair ends with Brown’s conviction on a charge of attempting to incite a slave rebellion and his execution by hanging.
— In the midst of hostilities, President Lincoln issues an Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves in those states which have repudiated the Union. the far east
i860 continues. The imperialists ultimately bring about the Treaty of Peking which ratifies and extends the earlier treaty. England is to receive a higher indemnity cover ing the costs of the war, new ports are opened to foreign trade and the first foreign legations are allowed in Peking. scientific and technological progress The first accumulator for the storage of electrical energy and its re-conversion into current is. constructed by Gaston Plante in France. 1 °° Two German chemists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff, demonstrate that infinitesimal quantities of metals can be readily detected with the spectroscope, Their discovery marks the beginning of the science of spectral analysis. Marcelin Berthelot introduces synthetic organic chemistry with the publication of his book Chimie organique fondSe sur la synthese. Etienne Lenoir markets an early engine operating on illuminating gas, producing pressure from combustion rather than vacuum. The ‘illuminant’ was a gas of an unsaturated carbon mixture like benzene, propylene and ethylene. 1863 Charles Tellier invents a process of conservation through refrigeration. IMPORTANT BOOKS PUBLISHED
1857-59 Carl Friedrich Koppen: Die Religion des Buddha und ihre EntsteHung.*
I’Eglise, James Mill: A History of British India.*
Natural Selection.* John Stuart Mill: On Liberty, -f
— George Eliot: Silas Mamer.
Victor Hugo: Les Miserable, V ■ : < ,
fife P.-J. Proudhon: Dn Principe federatif,* KARL MARX 1857-1863 1857 While continuing to act as regular correspondent for the Daily Tribune, Marx resumed his work in economics, after reading recent contributions in that field by his former antagonist Proudhon (Manuel du speculateur d la bourse, 1857) and Proud hon’s disciple Alfred Darimon (De la Reforme des banques, 1856). During the first part of the year Marx read and took notes on Thomas Tooke’s History of Prices (vols. V and VI, 1857). When in January and February the Tribune temporarily stopped publishing Marx’s contributions, the family found itself in dismal financial straights, for Jenny’s inheritances had been consumed by the move from Soho Square to Maitland Park. Marx was obliged to accept Charles Dana’s offer of guaranteed payment for one article per week, whether one be printed or not, with additional payment only for those articles actually used. Marx saw himself ‘in a more desperate situation than five years ago', he wrote to Engels, ‘I thought I had already swallowed the quintessence of misery. Mais non. And the worst of the matter is that this crisis is not temporary. I do not see how I am going to work my way out of it’ (Jan. 20). Among the topics of international significance which Marx heated for the Daily Tribune the most persistent was British aggression in the East—Persia, China and India. He also dealt frequently with financial questions and with political and social Problems in England. The issue of the lorcha ‘Arrow’ became a topic of parliamen- jgy debate in England and resulted in the dissolution of wuament, as the country’s naval forces launched an offensive agamst Canton and other Chinese ports. Marx denounced ‘this mode of invading a peaceful country, without previous declar ation of war’ under the pretence of an insult to the British flag. But while the press was full of outcries against the Chinese wrongs, no word was said about the British crimes: opium trade, corrupting native civil servants, fraud, Chinese slave trade and ‘bullying’ (Jan. 23). The outbreak of hostilities in India delayed the prosecution of the second opium war until the end of the year. Marx then interrupted his reporting on China until the second half of 1858. The Sepoy rebellion was for Marx a symptom of the general discontent with the British hegemony in the Asiatic world. However infamous the conduct of the natives, it was only a ‘reflection’ in concentrated form of Britain’s own conduct in India during the whole of its rule. In January Marx began writing a pamphlet in reply to the pro-Russian articles published by Bruno Bauer in 1853-54 and sent to Marx at the beginning of this year by Edgar Bauer. He studied material on Russian history and on the political views of Russia’s Scandinavian neighbours and composed a table of events for the ioth-i7th centuries in Russian history. The manuscript for this pamphlet was abandoned unfinished. Upon the request of its editor David Urquart, Marx provided the Free Press with pertinent information on the treacherous role played by the spy Bangya in Circassia and his relations with Constantinople. Articles based on this information appeared in the Free Press in April and May. Charles Dana solicited Marx’s collaboration in April on a new popular encyclopedia which he was planning to publish together with George Ripley. Engels advised Marx to accept the offer, thinking that this would be an ‘enormous lift’ for his friend, and suggested that he accept as many articles as possible. Marx agreed to write the articles on economics for The New American Cyclopedia, Engels those on military personages. Marx began with a one-page article on ‘aesthetics’ which he never finished. He did, however, compose a number of biographical entries, notably one on Simon Bolivar (about Oct.). When assembling material for these short biographical sketches, Marx employed various encyclopedias in different languages. The German lexica he characterised as ‘written for children under eight’, the French as ‘partisan but at least mundane. The English cyclopedias candidly copy the French and the German’ (letter to Engels, Sept. 25). 1857 *4* The Marx family’s financial situation did not improve, especially since they were frequently ill and required medical attention. In July Jenny Marx was delivered of a child that died shortly after birth; in the spring Marx suffered a recurrence of his liver ailment which seriously impeded his work on the ‘Economics’. Engels's aid came at two crucial moments, in July— to pay the overdue rent—and in December—for the long overdue taxes. After eighteen months of silence Lassalle and Marx resumed their correspondence in April. Lassalle reported on his recent voyages, his life in Diisseldorf and the advancement of his ‘half- philosophical, half-philological’ work on Heraclitus, which he had now taken up again for the first time in ten years. While finishing this theoretical work, Lassalle was also labouring on a more ‘concrete, political-economic product’ and promised Marx copies of both as a sign of his ‘unchanged respect and friend ship’ (Apr. 26). Marx, meanwhile, was also making progress on his ‘Economics’. In August he drafted a general introduction which, for the first time, elaborated in great detail the plan and procedure he intended to follow in constructing his work. He explained that his method would be to proceed from the abstract to the concrete, since the abstract categories of our thought are the actual starting point of observation and conception, not, however, the source which generates the concrete. He distanced himself with this method from Hegel who: fell into the error of considering the real as the result of self- coordinating, self-absorbed and spontaneously operating thought, while the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is but the way of thinking by which the concrete is grasped and reproduced in our minds as concrete (Grundrisse, p. 22). For Marx, therefore, the simplest abstract category exists only as the one side of a given concrete subject in its relation to man. His plan moved, in accordance with this concept of method, from the most highly abstract categories of political economy, applic- aMe to all forms of society, to their concrete forms, as found in existing society, and used the Hegelian scheme, elaborated in his Logic, of following the ‘generality’ with the concept’s ‘par- ticularity and its ‘singularity’. The plan for Marx’s book I of the 'Economics’ was sketched out in the second of seven notebooks that contained what was later entitled the Grundrisse ziir Kritik dtr politischen Okonomie [Outlines for a Critique of Political Economy]. Like the overall plan for the ‘Economic*! it was divided into 6 parts:
QI. Capital as credit.
After finishing with ‘capital’ Marx intended to embark on part 2, an investigation of bourgeois society as a universal organis ation manifested in capital, wage-labour, landed property, social classes, etc. Part 3 was to be devoted to an analysis of bourgeois society as a state apparatus with its institutions such as taxation, public debts, credit; part 4 to the international organisation of pro duction and part 5 to the world market. Of the abstract categories which Marx undertook to examine, the most fundamental, as far as political economy is concerned, is the concept of value. Value's most concrete expression— money—provided the theme for Marx’s second chapter. In the introduction he examined as well the concepts of labour and production, generalising the common elements of the two at all levels of economic development, yet he remarked that alone these concepts were nothing but abstractions which were never at any stage part of the productive process. Production always means a certain mode of production at a certain stage of social develop- Yüklə 0,64 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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