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CHAPTER VI
THE REACTION OF THE FIFTIES.
THE New York Tribune.
THE CRIMEAN WAR.
THE VIEWS OF MARX AND ENGELS.
THE ITALIAN QUESTION.
MARX AND ENGELS DIFFER WITH LASSALLE.
THE CONTROVERSY WITH VOGT.
MARX'S ATTITUDE TOWARD LASSALLE.
With the liquidation of the Communist League there came for
Marx and
Engels a cessation of political activity which lasted for many years. The reaction
which had commenced in 1819 was gaining in intensity and reached its climax in
1854. All traces of free political activity were obliterated. Labour unions were strictly
forbidden. Free press had perished in the turmoil of 1849. All that was left was the
Prussian assembly and even this was frightfully reactionary.
Marx and Engels were confronted now with the very serious question of
earning a livelihood. We can hardly visualise the distressing material circumstances
in which Marx and Engels were at that time. Engels was too proudly recalcitrant to
bow to his rich father with whom he had had violent disagreements. He and Marx
tried to find some literary work. But Germany was closed to them. In America they
had a chance to write for labour organs, but this was not in the least lucrative. It was
a splendid opportunity to work without pay.
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It was then that Marx published in an American paper
his most inspired piece
of historical writing, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In it Marx gave a
brilliant study of the February Revolution. Step by step, disentangling difficulties, he
traced the determining effects of the struggle between the classes upon the fate of the
revolution. He showed how various portions of the bourgeoisie, including the most
democratic ones, had one after another, some knowingly and maliciously, and others
unwillingly and with tears in
their eyes, been betraying and selling the proletariat,
casting it forth as prey for generals and executioners. He showed how conditions had
been gradually prepared so that a vapid nonentity like Napoleon III was able to seize
power.
Meanwhile Marx's material straits were aggravated. During his first years of
residence in London he lost two children, a boy and a girl. When the latter died, there
was literally no money with which to meet the funeral expenses.
Grinding
his teeth, Engels decided to resume his old "dog's trade," as he used
to call business. Having found employment in the office of the English branch of his
father's factory, he moved to Manchester. At the beginning he was a simple
employee. He had still to win the confidence of his father and of the English branch
of the firm; he had to prove that he was able to engage himself in a business
enterprise.
Marx stayed in London. The Communist League was no more. Only a small
number of workers remained clustering about the Communist Workers' Educational
Society and eking out a precarious living as tailors and compositors. Only at the end
of 1851 an opportunity to write for the New York Tribune suddenly presented itself to
Marx. The New York Tribune was then one of the most influential papers. Charles
Dana, one of the editors of the Tribune, who had been in Germany and who had met
Marx during the Revolution of 1848, invited Marx to write a series of articles on
Germany for the paper. Dana had been in Cologne and he knew the important
position Marx occupied among the German journalists.
Having taken to heart the
interests of his German readers (German immigration into the United States during
the Revolution had greatly increased), Dana decided for their benefit to enlarge the
section of the Tribune dealing with Western Europe. This unforeseen invitation
brought in its train some embarrassments, for at that time Marx was not yet able to
write English. He turned to Engels for help, and a very curious form of collaboration
was established. We have already seen that the Communist
Manifesto, though it
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appeared under the joint names of Marx and Engels, was overwhelmingly the work of
Marx. Engels' contribution to it was almost as little as had been his contribution to
their common work, The Holy Family. Now it was Engels who performed the major
task. His articles were later collected into a separate volume called Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Germany. Marx was credited with this book, but from their
correspondence we now know that Engels was the author. However, ideologically it
was the common work of Marx and Engels. The latter wrote it on the basis of ideas
and facts that were supplied by Marx, and chiefly on the basis of the articles which
they had both been writing for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Thus began Marx's
relations with the New York Tribune. One year later he gained sufficient mastery of
the English language to be able to write his own articles.
Thus from 1852 Marx had a periodical publication in which he could express
his views. Unfortunately, it was not in Europe. The American
readers sought from it
answers to their own specific questions. Though interested in European events, they
were interested in them only insofar as they affected events in the United States of
America. In the fifties the most vital, the most absorbing question in the United
States was the abolition of slavery. Another burning question was that of free trade as
it affected the southern and the northern states.
The New York Tribune was an abolitionist paper. But in the free-trade vs.
protectionism controversy it stood for a most thoroughgoing protectionism. On the
question of slavery Marx was in full accord with this paper. On the second issue Marx
could not accept the point of view of the editors. But Europe supplied sufficient
material on other subjects.
From the Spring of 1853 the tempo of events in
Europe began to be
accelerated. This acceleration, we must observe, was not caused by any pressure from
below. On the contrary, a number of the chief European states, such as Russia,
France and England, which were all alike interested in the preservation of order,
suddenly began to quarrel. This is characteristic of ruling classes and ruling nations.
As soon as they became freed of the dread of revolution, old misunderstandings that
had existed among
the states of Germany, France, England and Russia again began
to rise to the surface. The rivalry, which had been raging among the nations before
the Revolution of 1848 and which had only for a time, and through the stress of
necessity, been smothered to give place to a common alliance for the suppression of
revolution, now flared up again. Russia, who had so successfully helped to restore