Karl Marx; his life and work

j sponse to their demands, earlier concessions having proved j unsatisfactory. The King appeared on the balcony and spoke, i but could not be heard. He was loudly cheered, however, by the crowd in the belief that he had granted what they asked. A cry went up for the removal of the troops surrounding the palace and the people made way for the soldiers to leave. Then, without warning, two shots rang out, whether ordered in the hope of frightening the people, the result of accident, or of the fear of excited soldiers, these shots had the effect of rousing the people to rebellion. “To arms! To arms! ” was the cry that went up from thousands of angry throats, and barricades were raised as if by magic. Paving stones : were torn up and made into barricades, and over each barricade waved the red, black and gold flag of revolution. Men * of all classes armed themselves with whatever weapons they could command, rifles, shotguns, pikes, axes, broadswords, and whatever else could be used for the purpose. The soldiers j were ordered to attack the people and soon the streets flowed 1 with blood. Men fought behind the barricades, or in the I open where barricades were not to be made, and the women brought them food and drink, urged them on and cared for the wounded as they fell.

All night the battle raged, the roar of cannon and rattle of musketry mingling with the shrieks of the wounded and of the women behind the barricades. One hour the King — already insane, perhaps — ordered the fight stopped; the next he or- f dered it to be resumed. Soon after midnight he wrote an ad- ‘


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dress to “ My dear Berliners,” pleading that the two shots which caused the insurrection were accidental, that miscreants, mostly foreigners, had goaded on the fratricidal strife. He promised to withdraw the troops the moment the barricades were removed, protesting his fatherly affection for them. The appeal for peace fell upon deaf ears. The fighting continued.

On the afternoon of the 19th, Sunday, when the revolutionists had captured a military commander of importance, General Malendorf, the King and his advisers decided upon the withdrawal of the troops. Peace was concluded upon the understanding that the troops should leave Berlin, that freedom of the press should be secured, and that Prussia should have a democratic constitution.

Carl Schurz, from whose Reminiscences the foregoing account of the insurrection is mainly drawn, describes an intensely dramatic incident which took place as soon as the soldiers had marched off: “ From all parts of the city,” he says, “ solemn and silent processions moved toward the royal palace. They escorted the bodies of those of the people who had been killed in the battle; the corpses of the slain were carried aloft on litters, their gaping wounds uncovered, their heads wreathed with laurel branches and immortelles. So the processions marched into the inner palace court, where the litters were placed in rows in ghastly parade, and around them the multitude of men with pallid faces, begrimed with blood and powder smoke, many of them still carrying the weapons with which they had fought during the night; and among them women and children bewailing their dead. Then the King was loudly called for. He appeared in an open gallery, pale and dejected, by his side the weeping Queen. ‘ Hat off 1 ’ the multitude shouted, and the King took off his hat to the dead below. Then a deep voice among the crowd intoned the old hymn,

‘ Jesus, meine Zuversicht ’—‘ Jesus, my Refuge ’— in which all present joined. The chorus finished, the King silently with

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drew and the procession moved away in grim solemnity.” 1

It is not necessary to describe in detail the sweeping movement of the revolutionary spirit of 1848. To attempt such a description would involve writing a volume for that purpose alone. And that would be an altogether superfluous task, for Marx himself has done it with rare genius in that little book, Revolution and Counter Revolution in Germany in 184.8. It is sufficient for our purpose that we have seen how half of Europe was roused by the Gallican cock, that we have heard the Marseillaise sung from London to Vienna and Berlin.

During the whole of March and April Marx and Engels remained in Paris. They were not inactive — who could be at such a time ? — but they were not victimized by the illusive hopes which obsessed so many of their friends and allies. They welcomed the Revolution, not because they entertained the false hope that the mere destruction of reactionary governments would bring about any great social change, but because they realized that it was a necessary preliminary condition for the development of a class-conscious proletarian movement such as they were seeking to develop. The greatest task before Marx, then, was to hold the really revolutionary proletariat together, to strip the revolutionary rising of its illusory features by interpreting the significance of the kaleidoscopic events of the day.

Marx knew very well that the union of different classes in j the struggle for the overthrow of despotism was perfectly natural, that by no other means could such a struggle be sue- { cessfully waged. He knew, also, that such a union must of | necessity be a temporary one; that as soon as the common f enemy, the reactionary despotism, was vanquished, the victors | would divide into hostile camps and fight each other. He foresaw that as soon as the immediate aims of the revolutionary allies were attained, the bourgeoisie would use all their

¹Vol. I —pp. 120-121.


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powers to crush the proletariat, should the latter seek to gai*. any substantial social advantage. Thus the Revolution would do two things: first, it would gain the civic freedom, the political weapons, necessary for the social struggle; second, it would destroy the illusions which obscured the fundamental class antagonisms upon which society rests, and show that the victory over absolutism, made possible only by the unity of the classes, produced not peace, but a new social struggle.

The opportunity for a great proletarian political movement, therefore, from the point of view of Marx and Engels, would be the greatest gain resulting from the Revolution. Their immediate task was to shatter by merciless criticism the illusions of those who thought that the accomplishment of the aim of the revolutionists would be equivalent to the liberation of all the oppressed from all forms of bondage; to hold together a sufficient number of followers to take advantage of the opportunity which they foresaw would be forthcoming.

For that opportunity they had not long to wait. By the middle of April it was evident that the revolutionary torrent \ was stemmed. Where there had been rejoicing at the hope of early victory in the middle of March, there was a sense of sadness and oppression in the middle of April, due to feelings of disappointment and impending disaster. The ioth of April witnessed the pitiful collapse of the Chartists in England, quelled by such a display of force as every despot in Europe envied. The 16th of the month saw the suppression of a rising of the workers in Paris, an ill-timed, premature revolt, symptomatic of that deep and bitter disappointment of the proletariat which was to find such bloody expression later, on

_I

the 15th of May and the 25th of June. The time had come
when it was necessary for the leaders of the proletarian Com-
munists to bestir themselves.

« May found Marx and Engels in Cologne, preparing to ^ carry on a vigorous proletarian agitation. Because Marx has been so often denounced as a “ doctrinaire dogmatist,” who

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insisted upon an implicit and full acceptance of all his theories as the only condition upon which he would work with anybody, and because many of his followers, in his name, have made of “ Marxism ” a dogma and felt impelled to keep aloof from any movement which did not accept that dogma, it is worth while observing that he did not attempt to create a sect based upon an agreement as to theoretical principles. Just as in the previous year, he had insisted that the all-important thing was the actual movement of the working class, so now he did not insist upon theoretical agreement as a basis for practical cooperation. “ When we returned to Germany,” says Engels, “ in spring, 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of gaining the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it.” Marx became the vice-president of the Democratic club and a member of the District Committee of the Rhenish Democrats, whose headquarters were at Cologne. Among the members of the extreme left of this party was Ferdinand Las-> salle, who was then living at Diisseldorf, and who soon came | into contact with Marx through the official organ of the party, ( the Neue Rhenische Zeitung, of which Marx was editor in/ chief.

The Neue Rhenische Zeitung made its first appearance on 1 the first day of June, 1848. Although frequently so represented, this was not in any sense of the word a Socialist paper. It was the organ of the Democratic Party, that is, of the most advanced section of the middle-class radicals. Among its chief contributors were Freiligrath, Wilhelm Wolff, Engels, Ernst Droucke, George Weerth, the wit and poet, and Ferdinand Lassalle. Probably no political newspaper ever published in Germany before that time or since had such a remarkable set of contributors. It is easy to understand how, in a very little while, it became the most powerful organ of the radical opposition.

Like its predecessor of 1842-1843, the Neue Rhenische


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5 Zeitung was owned by middle-class stockholders. Like it, ;also, the new journal soon caused the reactionary government to regard it with hatred and fear. Marx assailed the govern- l ment with all his accustomed audacity and brilliance. Audacity was the great need of that period, when the tide of reaction was rising and vacillating policies and temporizing counsels were rampant. And Marx was, as ever, audacious; he might have adopted for his motto Danton’s historic saying, de I’au- dace, encore de I’audace, et toujours de Vaudace! Sometimes their editor’s audacity frightened the stockholders and the more timid members of the Democratic Party quite as much as it harassed the government.

Such was the case, for example, when news came of the June rising in Paris. Marx at once took the side of the workers, brilliantly defending their cause and attacking the bourgeois French National Assembly with all that merciless invective of which he was master. That this open, unconcealed espousal of the cause of the French workers would be certain to draw upon the paper the wrath of the government; that it would be resented by some of the stockholders, mattered nothing to the brave editor, whose thought was ever of the working class.

After the defeat of the workers on the 25th of June, after the terrible grenades of Cavaignac had reduced the workers to silent hatred, and reddened the streets with blood. Marx wrote in the Neue Rhenische Zeitung:

“ The last official remains of the February Revolution, the Executive Commission, has disappeared like a hazy phantom before the seriousness of events. Lamartine’s Roman candles have transformed themselves into Cavaignac’s war-rockets. The “ fraternite,” which the exploiting class proclaimed in February on the forehead of Paris, with gigantic letters, on every prison, on every barracks, its true unsophisticated, prosaic expression is the civil war, civil war in its most frightful shape, the war between Labor and Capital. This “ fraternite ”

Kart. Marx's Passport. Paris. 184S

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flashed before all eyes on the evening of June 25, when the Paris of the middle classes illumined, whilst the Paris of the proletariat was bled to death. The “ fraternite ” lasted just as long as the interests of the middle class fraternised with those of the proletariat.

“ The February Revolution was the revolution of moderation, the revolution of a general sympathy, because the contrasts which coalesced in it against the royai power, lay undeveloped, peacefully side by side, because the social contract that formed its background had only an aerial existence, the existence in phrase, in word only. The June Revolution is the rotten revolution, the nauseous revolution; because fact has taken the place of phrase, because the republic revealed the head of the monster itself by knocking off its protecting, concealing crown.

* Order! ’ was the war-cry of Guizot. ‘ Order! ’ shouted Sebastian, the Guizotist, when Warsaw became Russian. ‘ Order! ’ shouts Cavaignac, the brutal echo of the French National Assembly and of the republican bourgeoisie. ' Order! ' thundered its cannons, tearing the body of the proletariat. None of the numerous revolutions of the French bourgeoisie was a plot against order, for it left the dominion of the class; it left the slavery of the workmen, it left untouched the bourgeois order, however often the political form of this misrule and this slavery changed. June has touched this order. Woe to the June Revolution! ”

The Neue Rhenische Zeitung was the only German paper \ which took the part of the insurgent workers of Paris without i apology or equivocation. For this bold action Marx was de- S nounced by many members of the Democratic Party, and | by all the reactionaries and their press. The Kreuz Zeitung shrieked at the “ Chimborazo impudence ” with which Marx attacked everything holy and defied all authority, and that in a fortress where there were eight thousand troops. Day after day, week after week, the paper came out with trenchant attacks upon the government, upon the failure of the National Assembly to meet the expectations of the people, and upon all the

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reactionary elements. Article after article roused the fury of the Frankfort Imperial Department of Justice and was denounced to the State prosecutor with demands for the legal prosecution of the paper, but Marx and his friends kept bravely on. Even when, during the autumn, the paper was officially suspended, under martial law, the city being placed in a state of siege, the paper came out every day just the same, calmly , edited and printed in plain view of the main guard house! A ; mass meeting was held, in the open air, in defiance of orders prohibiting it, at which protests were made against the declaration of the siege and the “ suppression ” of the Neue Rhenische Zeitung. After the meeting barricades were built in the streets by the citizens, but there was no fighting. ,

I The friendship of Marx and Lassalle dates from this period.

I Both were active members of the Democratic Party, and Las- _x salle frequently sent communications to the District Committee of which Marx was a member, and sometimes attended the meetings. Frequently, also, he wrote for the party organ and at least occasionally visited the editorial office. Thus a friendship gradually developed which was fraught with great importance to the lives of both men, and still more to the Socialist movement. Like Marx, Lassalle recognised the importance of educating the proletariat, and what made him of influence in the party was his close connection with the working class at Diisseldorf, where he lived.

In the course of the summer of 1848, a Democratic congress was held at Cologne, at which Marx was a delegate, taking a prominent part in the proceedings. Whether Lassalle attended the congress or not, there seems to be no record, though his presence there would have been most natural in view of his position in the party. Among the delegates were the youthful Carl Schurz and his friend, Professor Kinkel. The congress itself has no interest for us, and the only reason for this refer- j ence to it is the pen-picture of Marx which Schurz gives in his ■ Reminiscences. It is not a flattering picture:

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“ He could not have been much more than thirty years old at that time, but he already was the recognised head of the advanced Socialistic school. The somewhat thick-set man, with his broad forehead, his very black hair and beard and his dark sparkling eyes, at once attracted general attention. He enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager to gather words of wisdom from the lips of that famous man. This expectation was disappointed in a peculiar way. Marx’s utterances were indeed full of meaning, logical and 5 clear, but I have never seen a man whose bearing was so pro- f voking and intolerable. To no opinion, which differed from j his, he accorded the honor of even a condescending considera- j tion. Everyone who contradicted him he treated with abject j contempt; every argument that he did not like he answered | either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives ‘ of him who had advanced it. I remember most distinctly the cutting disdain with which he pronounced the word “ bourgeois ”; and as a “bourgeois,” that is, as a detestable example of the deepest mental and moral degeneracy, he denounced everyone that dared to oppose his opinion. Of course, the. propositions advanced or advocated by Marx in that meeting were voted down because everyone whose feelings had been hurt by his conduct was inclined to support everything that Marx did not favour. It was very evident that not only had he not won any adherents, but had repelled many who otherwise might have become his followers.”

This judgment, by a romantic and impressionable youth of nineteen, undoubtedly contains some elements of truth, but it should not be taken too seriously. Nothing could be more unjust than to regard it as a faithful picture of Marx. It ill accords with the patient, generous teacher the workingmen knew in Brussels, as well as with much that we know of his after life. It accords ill, too, with another account we have of his manner at that time from the pen of an American writer. In the summer of 1848, Albert Brisbane, the brilliant American exponent S of Fourier’s theories, was in Cologne, whither he had gone ’ from Paris by way of Brussels after the February Revolution.

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KARL MARX

The picture from his pen which follows is in striking contrast to that of Schurz, though it undoubtedly refers to the same gathering:

“ I found there Karl Marx, the leader of the popular movement. The writings of Marx on Labor and Capital and the social theories he then elaborated, have had more influence on the great Socialistic movement of Europe than those of any other man. He it was who laid the foundation of that modern collectivism which at present bids fair to become the leading Socialist doctrine of Europe. He was then just rising into prominence ; a man of some thirty years, short, solidly built, with a fine face and bushy black hair. His expression was that of great energy, and behind his self-contained reserve of manner were visible the fire and passion of a resolute soul. Marx’s supreme sentiment was a hatred of the power of capital, with its spoliations, its selfishness, and its subjection of the labouring classes.

“ Marx did not advocate any integral scientific organization of industry . . . but he saw the fundamental falseness of our whole economic system; he saw the immense power accumulated wealth gave to the few who yielded it, and he saw how helpless labour was without combination, without unity of thought or action and oppressed by the capitalists’ oligarchy. He unfolded the radical falseness of this system, presenting it clearly to the minds of advanced thinkers, and out of this has grown the great movement now deeply agitating the progressive thought of Europe. The indications are that it is destined before long to revolutionize the whole economy of our civilization. It will introduce an entirely new order of society based on what we may call capitalist equality — the proprietary equality of humanity and the equality of industrial rights and privileges.

“ As I remember that young man uttering his first words of protest against our economic system, I reflect how little it was imagined then that his theories would one day agitate the world and become the important lever in the overthrow of time-honoured institutions. How little did the contemporaries of St. Paul imagine the influence which that simple mind would produce on the future of the world! Who could have supposed at that time that he was of more importance than the Roman

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Senate or the reigning Emperor — more even than all the Emperors of Christendom to follow? In modern times Karl Marx may have been as important in his way as was St. Paul in his.” 1

Marx was not exactly a gentle antagonist. That contemptuous, satirical, half-sneering expression of the mouth which impressed so many would of itself warn us against the error of regarding him as the most amiable person one could desire for an opponent. He had, like all strong men, the defects of his qualities. Just as he was capable of strong attachments, so he was capable of strong antipathies. Like all great lovers, he could hate with an intense, implacable hatred. The bitter invective and merciless satire which characterized his polemical writings were rather intensified in oral debate by his intense manner and almost blazing eyes. Yet he could be, and generally was, patient and tolerant in discussion. Indeed, his patience was frequently commented upon. Upon one occasion when, as usual, he had been rebuking some “ hot-heads ” and counselling patience, a young man said to him: “ I marvel,

Comrade, that you who have struggled so long can be so patient.” The reply he received was characteristic: “When

you have been impatient as long as I have been, you will not marvel at my patience, Comrade.”

By reason of the very nature of their work, the pioneer advocates of unpopular causes are peculiarly liable both to be intolerant and to be accused of intolerance and bigotry without just cause. Every Socialist propagandist of large experience knows how sensitive many people are, how prone to take an unanswerable exposure of the weakness of their opinions as a personal affront. For the rest, it need only be said that the Cologne congress took place at a very trying time, when feeling upon all sides was intense; that Marx was witnessing the incoming tide of reaction, while the National Assembly was supinely frittering away all the opportunities of the revolution

¹ Albert Brisbane: a Mental Biography — By Redelia Brisbane, pages 273-274-