Karl Marx: Man and Fighter Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen

Chapter 10: Face to Face with Primitive Communism

Neither the old Communist Utopias nor nebulous speculations of the type of Hess's 'theory' of the various rôles of the different countries in the revolution--which, incidentally, Engels himself adopted for a time--could survive in the face of the new interpretation of history. Communism in Germany and France and Chartism in England no longer appeared accidental events which might just as well not have happened at all, or as ideas which could be measured against other ideas, or as systems which could be considered and accepted or rejected from an absolute, timeless, moral or logical standpoint. They now appeared, to use Engels's words, as movements of the oppressed proletarian class, as forms, more developed or less, of their historically necessary struggle against the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. Communism no longer meant imaginatively concocting an if-possible complete social ideal, but an understanding of the nature, conditions and consequent aims of the struggle of the proletariat.

Communism was no longer a doctrine but a movement. It no longer proceeded from principles, from the humanism of the Young Hegelians or of Feuerbach, but from facts. In so far as it was theoretical, it was the theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat in the class-struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie and the theoretical comprehension of the conditions for attaining the freedom of the proletariat.

Marx and Engels had established their views scientifically on the basis of German philosophical theory. It was now equally essential for them to win over the European, and first of all the German, working class to their point of view. 'We set about the task as soon as we had reached clarification,' Engels relates. The overthrowing of primitive Communism was the first and most urgent aim.

Wilhelm Weitling came to London in September, 1844. The sufferings and persecution he had undergone for his Communist ideals had increased his already considerable renown. He had been arrested by the Swiss authorities in the summer of 1843 and indicted for blasphemy, making attacks on the rights of property and forming a secret society for the spreading of Communism. He was imprisoned for four months on remand, condemned to a further six months in gaol by the Zurich court and, at the conclusion of his sentence, was delivered over the Prussian frontier in chains. His trial and still more the official report on 'The Communists in Switzerland according to the papers found in Weitling's possession' attracted attention far beyond the borders of Switzerland. The wide publicity given to his case caused many people to hear of the Communist movement and of Communism for the first time. Where the distribution of Communist literature was impossible the official report, which everybody could buy, with its copious extracts from Weitling's writings, was not a bad substitute.

This gifted young writer--at once a poet and a philosophising tailor's assistant--received universal sympathy. He wrote his Gaol Poems in prison. Even the Prussian Government was aware of the prevailing mood, and although the Swiss authorities delivered him up to them as a fugitive from military service, when he was found unfit they let him go free. But after a few months he had once more made himself so unpopular with the police that he was arrested again and sent off to Hamburg, where Heine saw him. 'My legs have no aptitude to carry iron rings like those Weitling bore,' he wrote. 'He showed me the marks.'

From Hamburg Weitling went on to London, where his German comrades enthusiastically received him. A big celebration was held in his honour on September 22, in co-operation with the Chartists and the refugees from France. But the jubilation and the tumult died away, and before six months had passed the contradictions that had long been forming within the movement led to an open rupture.

During the years in which Weitling wrote his Mankind as it is and as it ought to be and was developing the ideas he expressed in his most mature work, Guarantees of Harmony and Freedom, all the leaders of the League of the Just had been living in Paris. After the rising of May 12, 1839, they scattered. Weitling went to Switzerland, Schapper, Heinrich Bauer and Moll found refuge in England. The small Communist groups in Switzerland lost themselves more and more in sentimental Primitive Christian Communism and romantic plotting. Weitling, separated from his old friends, surrounded by backward artisans in a backward country, soon abandoned himself entirely to primitive Utopianism and highly irrational flights of fancy. It was different with those members of the League who went westwards. They came under the influence of Chartism, at the time the most advanced workers' movement in the world. They established friendly relations with the Chartist leaders, read the Chartist Press, and contributed to it themselves. The longer they lived in England the more they shook themselves free from their primitive equalitarian Communism. In 1843, when Weitling started talking of the communalisation of women and concocted a hare-brained scheme for forming an army of forty thousand thieves and robbers who were to bring the exploiters to their knees by means of a pitiless guerilla warfare, they firmly protested against such folly.

Imprisonment had disordered Weitling's mind more than ever. After the Zurich trial he completely lost all sense of proportion. His outward fame seemed to confirm his own conviction that he had been chosen as the teacher, leader and saviour of mankind, to free it from all its misery and suffering. The 'Londoners' and Weitling had to part.

The dispute flared up over the London German Workers' Union. The Union had been founded in February, 1840, by Schapper and six other members of the League of the Just as a legal organisation to serve as a screen for the League. The League made use of this kind of organisation everywhere. The statutes of the London German Workers' Union, printed as a special pamphlet, became the pattern for all organisations of the same kind founded by members of the League everywhere where German workers lived and legal organisations of this or a similar kind were possible. The chief purpose of these Unions was propaganda, and in addition they provided benefits for sick comrades. It did not take long for the Union to become the centre of the German workers' colony in London. In addition to Germans it had among its members Scandinavians, Dutch, Hungarians, Czechs, southern Slavs and Russians, nationalities which were of admirable service to the Germans in their contacts with other countries. In 1847 an English Grenadier Guardsman in uniform was a regular visitor. At the time the Union reached its zenith, on the eve of the revolution of 1848, it had between four and five hundred members, a more than respectable total for the time. The life of the Union was described in a letter by Hugo Hildebrand, the political economist, who visited it in April, 1846.

'About half-past eight we went to the Union premises in a spirit of considerable expectancy,' he wrote. 'On the ground-floor there was an ordinary shop, in which porter and other beers were sold. I did not notice any special place reserved for visitors. We went through the shop and upstairs into a hall-like room, capable of seating about two hundred men at the tables and benches distributed about the floor. About twenty men were sitting about in groups, eating a simple supper or smoking one of the pipes of honour (which lay on all the tables) with a beer-mug in front of them. Others were standing about. Every moment the door opened to admit newcomers, so that it was clear that the meeting was only due to begin later. One saw from their faces that most of the men belonged to the working class, although all were thoroughly decently clothed and an easy and unaffected but thoroughly decorous tone prevailed. The language was predominantly German, but French and English were also to be heard. At one end of the hall there was a grand-piano, with music, which in unmusical London was the best proof that we had found the right room. As we knew no one present we sat down at a table near the door. Very little notice was taken of us. We ordered a glass of porter and the usual penny packet of tobacco and awaited our host and acquaintance, Schapper. It was not long before a big, strong, healthy-looking man of about thirty-six, with a black moustache and a commanding manner, came up to Diefenbach (Hildebrand's companion). He was promptly introduced to me as Schapper, the former Frankfurt demagogue, who later took part in campaigns, or rather revolutions, in Switzerland and Spain. He was very serious on the occasion of my meeting him, but friendly, and I could feel that he looked down at my professional status with a certain inner pride.'

What Engels, looking back at the early years of the movement forty years later, said about Schapper, Heinrich Bauer and Moll, the three men who took such an important part in the birth of the Communist League, may be stated with advantage here. Engels remembered Schapper as a giant in stature, resolute and energetic, always ready to risk his life and bourgeois well-being, an ideal professional revolutionary of the type characteristic of the thirties. In spite of a certain ponderousness of thought, he was by no means inaccessible to better theoretical understanding than his own, to compensate for which he only held on the more grimly to what he had once grasped. Hence his intelligence was sometimes carried away by his revolutionary zeal. But he always saw his mistakes afterwards and candidly admitted them. Heinrich Bauer came from Franconia and was a bootmaker. He was a lively, spritely, witty little man, concealing a great deal of shrewdness and determination in his small frame. Finally Joseph Moll, a Cologne watchmaker, a middle-sized Hercules, was at least the equal of his comrades in energy and determination and was superior to them in intelligence. He was a born diplomat, besides being more accessible to theoretical understanding.

Hildebrand continues:

'Schapper invited us to sit down with him at one end of the hall and showed me a notice-board on which the Union regulations were displayed. They were under the heading of "German Workers' Educational Union." Anyone who earned his living honestly and had nothing dishonourable against him was eligible for membership, but every application for membership had to be proposed and seconded by a member. The Union officials were a president, a secretary, a librarian and a treasurer. Members were divided into two classes: (1) those who constituted a Communist club of their own, conditions for membership of which were as described and (2) other members who took part in the educational activities of the Union only. Only the first category could take part in meetings at which voting took place, elect officers and vote on the admission of new members. The others only took a passive part in the Union activities, took part in none of the Communist meetings proper and only paid contributions, and fines if they missed any of the educational meetings. The basic idea of the Union was that man could only attain liberty and self-knowledge by the cultivation of his mind. For this reason every evening was devoted to instruction of one kind or another. The first evening was devoted to study of the English language, the second to geography, the third to history, the fourth to drawing and physics, the fifth to singing, the sixth to dancing and the seventh to Communist policy. The subjects of instruction were changed every half-year. ...

'We took our seats at the indicated place. In the meantime the hall had become crowded, and the president, of whom all I know is that he was described to me as a doctor, opened the meeting. After a solemn silence had been obtained and everyone had taken his pipe out of his mouth, the secretary, a tailor's assistant, whose descriptive powers were really enviable, read out a notice to the effect that Citizen Hildebrand and Citizen Diefenbach had been introduced as guests by Citizen Schapper and asked whether any citizen had any objection. After that attention was turned to current events and Citizen Schapper made a report on the events of the week. His report was very eloquent, thorough and informative. It was evident that he and the club conducted a very widespread correspondence; for he reported the contents of a letter from Madrid which contained news of the fall of the military despotism, due to Christina's hierarchist tendencies, at greater length and in far greater detail than had yet appeared in any newspaper. A strong Communist colouring was naturally evident throughout, and the theme of the proletariat ran like a red thread through the entire discourse. I candidly admit that I can stand a good dose of Liberalism, but in some places my hair stood on end. ...

'The whole speech made a great impression on the audience and was followed by general and continuous applause. Next the minutes of the last Communist meeting, at which the objectionableness of the Christian religion was dealt with, were read by the secretary.

'After this a fresh subject came up for discussion, namely the question of what arrangements were to be made for the education of children in the Communist State. During the course of the discussion I discovered to my amazement that at least half of those present were married men. Unfortunately the debate did not get much beyond the initial stages; consequently all I found out to satisfy my curiosity was that they repudiated alike the communalisation of wives and the emancipation of women, and considered woman as the mental complement of man and marriage as a moral institution, in which both parties enjoyed equal rights, although the capacities, disposition and sphere of activity of man and woman were completely different. Education must be mental and physical, private and political and must actually begin before birth.

'As it was past midnight by this time, further consideration of these matters was postponed to the following week. Next I had a very serious private discussion with Schapper about his hostility to Liberalism, spoke to a few other members, including a Silesian joiner, inspected the Union library and bought some Communist pamphlets. ... The meeting dispersed in a very friendly and good-tempered spirit, so that the prevalent use of the second person singular did seem not just to spring from the club rules but to be rooted in the members' hearts.'

These German workers attentively followed political events not only in England where they lived and in Germany which was their home; their view took in the whole of Europe. Weitling's realm was not of this world. The only distinction that he recognised was that between the present, which he utterly rejected, and a glittering future. All else was evil. Schapper and his friends were patiently seeking a way for themselves along the thorny path of conflicting parties and systems. Their guide was reason. Weitling followed his feelings only. He took his stand on the Bible, on Love, the Noble and the Good. In his opinion the people were long since ripe for the new social order, and the only remaining task was to free them from their oppressors, for which all that was required was the determined initiative of a revolutionary organisation, a small band of resolute brothers. The obsolete old world must be crushed at a blow by the dictatorship of a revolutionary minority who would act in the interests of the latently revolutionary masses and shrink at nothing to attain their ends. One almost seems to hear the voice of Bakunin, with whom Marx was forced to repeat the same struggle twenty years later, in the following phrases of Weitling, which date from 1845: 'In my opinion,' Weitling said, 'everybody is ripe for Communism, even the criminals. Criminals are a product of the present order of society and under Communism they would cease to be criminals. Humanity is of necessity always ripe for revolution, or it never will be. The latter is nothing but the phraseology of our opponents. If we follow them we shall have no choice but to lay our hands on our knees and wait till roasted pigeons fly into our mouths.'

These words of Weitling's were spoken at a meeting at the German Workers' Union at the end of June, 1845. Since the beginning of the year regular weekly meetings had been held at which the fundamental questions of Communism were discussed. The extent of the breach between their old comrade-in-arms and themselves had gradually become clear to the members of the Union. They found it far from easy to break with their own past. Personally attached to their leader as they were, they went on trying to reconcile the incompatible, to find a middle way. They almost apologised for their secession, but the parting could no longer be postponed. Schapper, their spokesman, said in his reply to Weitling that he himself had spoken in just the same way eight, even six years ago. But now, tempered as he was by so much bitter experience, he was compelled to express agreement with the reactionary phrase; the people were not yet ripe; for if they were ripe, such a phrase would no longer be possible. He ended his speech by saying that truth could not be knocked into people's heads with rifle-butts.

The London German workers all honoured Weitling and his candid opinions, but they decided for Schapper by an overwhelming majority. Weitling could not get over his defeat. He was unable to follow Schapper's reasoning even a little way. He left London, angered and embittered, suspecting intrigue and treachery.

Engels had met the leading members of the Union in 1843. In the summer of 1845, when he and Marx were in London, he renewed the acquaintance and introduced Schapper, Bauer and Moll, who had made a 'tremendous impression' on him two years before as the first revolutionary proletarians he had ever met, to Marx. It is impossible from the scanty material that has survived to say whether Marx attended a meeting of the Union or not, but he certainly paid great attention to the progress of the controversy with Weitling. He set the greater store by it in that it cleared the way from below for his own special task of breaking scientific Socialism adrift from sentimental Communism, philosophising, and 'principles.' His most urgent practical aim was that of setting the movement on the right track and accelerating its development.

The Union had one institution which would be useful for his purpose. This was the active correspondence it kept up with members in other countries. These sent in fairly regular reports concerning political events in the countries to which they had emigrated, in so far as these events concerned the workers. It must be possible, Marx decided, to make a permanent institution of the Union's correspondence with its members, extend it to all groups and representatives of the Communist and Socialist movement and thereby bring it to a higher level. However desirable the sending in of reports might be, the clarifying of views was more important still. This purpose should be served by written contact maintained between individual countries and within the countries themselves.

Marx, with Brussels as his headquarters, set about founding his correspondence committees in the spring of 1846. As a complement to these he planned to start a newspaper in which questions concerning the movement were to be ventilated from every point of view. The tasks that Marx meant the correspondence committees to fulfil--for a long time their object and nature defied the efforts of research--were indicated in a letter of Marx to Proudhon, dated May 5, 1846, which was found a few years ago. Marx wrote: 'Together with two of my friends, Friedrich Engels and Philippe Gigot (both of whom are in Brussels) I have organised a regular correspondence with the German Communists and Socialists on scientific questions and the supervision of such popular writing and Socialist propaganda as one may be able to carry out in Germany by this means. The main object of our correspondence will, however, be to keep German Socialists in contact with French and English Socialists, and keep foreigners informed about the Socialist movement in Germany and inform the Germans in Germany of the progress of Socialism in France and England in turn. In this way differences of opinion will come to light; ideas will be exchanged and impartial criticism arrived at. This will be a step taken by the Socialist movement on its literary side towards ridding itself of the limitations of nationality. For at the moment of action it is certainly of great interest to everyone to be informed of the state of affairs abroad as well as at home.

'Besides the Communists in Germany our correspondence will include German Socialists in Paris and London. Our relations with England are already established; as for France we all believe that it would be impossible to find a better correspondent than you.'1

Beside the Communists in Germany our correspondence will include German Socialists in Paris and London. Our relations with England are already established; as for France we all believe that it would be impossible to find a better correspondent than you.

Proudhon, however, declined the invitation. He would very much like to give his aid when things got going, he said, but in the meantime he held it to be superfluous. Of the French Socialists Louis Blanc alone seems to have got into touch with the Brussels committee. In England G. Harney declared himself willing to co-operate, though he does not seem to have been very active. Quite an animated correspondence was carried on with Schapper and his friends, and several members of the Paris section of the League of the Just, particularly Ewerbeck, co-operated. Little is known of the contacts made with Communists in Germany, but there was correspondence with Silesia, with the Wuppertal, where Köttgen, a painter, was active, with Kiel, where Georg Weber, a doctor, conducted propaganda, and from Cologne. The Communists of Cologne, under the leadership of Roland Daniels, a doctor and a personal friend of Marx's, at first declined the invitation to found a correspondence committee as premature but later sent reports to Brussels all the same. On the whole this very loose organisation of correspondence committees did not achieve very much. It failed to gain a foothold outside German Communist circles, the reports came in irregularly and contributed practically nothing to the theoretical advancement of Communism. But it did bring Marx into closer contact with the London German Workers' Union, which was the most important German Communist organisation, and in that respect achieved its purpose.

The views of Schapper and his friends came ever closer to those of Marx.

Weitling refused to have anything to do with this 'new system of propaganda.' With growing embitterment he watched the dwindling of his prestige from day to day. The free, loose form of this new organisation, which aimed at attaining the co-operation of all Communists upon a basis of scientific Communism, ran counter to all his fundamental preconceptions, which refused to countenance anything but sentimental millenarianism and the tactics of the conspiratorial secret society. His stay in England brought him not only disappointment in the political field, but one personal failure after another. He tried a number of schemes, not one of which succeeded. His grandiose ideas, such as that for revolutionising science by means of 'a general logical study of thought and speech,' and for founding an artificial universal language, roused no interest. Obviously intriguing intellectuals were to blame. They barred his way to the publishers and to their secret 'sources of money.' Weitling had risen to fame in the rôle of an accuser. His first writings had been the mighty cry of resentment of the oppressed class from which he sprang, but half-educated as he was and full of mistrust for the science of 'this world,' as a discoverer of systems he descended into the absurd. He was forced to look on while the London Communists increasingly turned from him to follow Marx. He had had a short meeting with Marx in London in the summer of 1845, and on his way back to the Continent at the beginning of 1846 he stopped in Brussels. The Brussels correspondence committee had just been founded, and in view of the prestige Weitling still enjoyed an invitation to collaborate with the committee could not be avoided. Marx invited him.

Two accounts are extant concerning the confrontation of Marx and Weitling on March 30, 1846. One is a letter Weitling wrote to Moses Hess and the other a detailed account of the affair by the Russian writer, Annenkov, who was very close to Marx at the time and was introduced by him to the Communists of Brussels. Annenkov gives the only living description of Marx dating from those years, and it reproduces incomparably the atmosphere of the movement at the time. Thirty years later Annenkov could still call up a vivid picture of what young Marx was like on that spring evening in Brussels in 1846.

'Marx was a type of man formed all of energy, force of will and unshakable conviction, a type highly remarkable in outward appearance as well. In spite of his thick, black mane of hair, his hairy hands, and his coat buttoned up all awry, he had the appearance of a man who has the right and the power to demand respect, although his looks and his manners might appear peculiar sometimes. His movements were angular, but bold and confident, his manners were contrary to all social practice. But they were proud, with a touch of disdain, and his sharp voice, which rang like metal, sounded remarkably in accordance with the radical judgments on men and things which he let fall. He spoke only in the imperative, brooking no contradiction, and this was intensified by the tone, which to me was almost painfully jarring, in which he spoke. This tone expressed the firm conviction of his mission to reign over men's minds and dictate their laws. Before my eyes stood the personification of a democratic dictator such as might appear before one in moments of fantasy.'

In comparison with him Weitling appeared almost spruce--'a handsome, fair young man in a somewhat foppishly cut coat, with a foppishly trimmed beard.' He looked more like a commercial traveller than the gloomy, embittered worker, oppressed by the burden of work and thought, whom Annenkov had imagined.

Those present at the meeting were Engels, the Belgian, Gigot, Edgar von Westphalen, Marx's brother-in-law, Weydemeyer, Seiler, a German registrar who had fled from Germany, and the journalist, Heilberg. These took their seats at a small green table with Marx at the head of it, 'pencil in hand, his lion's head bent over a sheet of paper.' The question for discussion was what form propaganda should take in Germany. Engels, 'tall, straight, grave and looking like a distinguished Englishman,' rose and said how necessary it was to clarify opposing views and settle on a general programme, but before he had finished Marx, impatient and thirsting for battle, cut him short with a direct question to Weitling. 'But tell us, Weitling,' he said, 'what are the arguments with which you defend your social-revolutionary agitation and on what do you intend to base it in the future?' Annenkov stresses his remembrance of the exact form of this blunt question, which opened a heated discussion in the little group round the green table.

Before this unaccustomed audience Weitling lost his usual confidence and command of speech. He spoke indistinctly and confusedly, kept on repeating himself, continually corrected what he said and only made his points with difficulty. His speeches consisted of 'commonplaces of Liberal rhetoric.' He declined to create new economic theories, in his opinion the doctrines of the French were ample and sufficient. The workers must open their eyes, put faith in no promises and rest their hopes upon themselves alone.

He would probably have gone on speaking a long time yet if Marx, with angrily contracted brows, had not interrupted him and started a sarcastic reply, the essence of which was that to stir up the people without giving them firm foundations on which to base their actions was a simple act of treachery. The awakening of fantastic hopes led not to the saving of suffering people but to their downfall. Trying to influence the workers, in Germany especially, without a concrete teaching and strong, scientific ideas was hollow, unscrupulous playing with propaganda, like an enthusiastic apostle addressing a lot of open-mouthed donkeys. '"Here," he added, pointing suddenly to me with a powerful gesture, "here is a Russian among us. In his country, Weitling, perhaps there would be a place for your rôle, in Russia alone, perhaps, can successful unions be arranged between absurd apostles and absurd young men!"' But in a civilised country like Germany, Marx continued, nothing could be achieved without a settled, concrete teaching, and nothing had been achieved so far but noise, harmful excitement and destruction of the very cause that had been undertaken.

In a letter Weitling wrote next day he summed up Marx's speech by saying that unsuitable people must at once be parted from the 'sources of money.' It was his old illusion of an intellectual coalition that caused him so thoroughly to misunderstand Marx's demand for a 'sifting' of the party. He listened to Marx without understanding him. There could be no talk of the immediate realisation of Communism, Marx had said. The bourgeoisie must come to the helm first. How could Weitling possibly understand that, Weitling who believed that he could destroy the old form of society with forty thousand bandits and build up a new society on the basis of Christian Virtue? An unbridgeable abyss separated him from the Marxist interpretation of historical development. Marx said on this occasion for the first time what he had to repeat again and again in the next three years to those impatient souls who believed that only will was needed to leap a whole economic and therefore political epoch. Marx declared that the next revolution in Europe would have to destroy the remnants of feudalism, bring the Liberal and radical bourgeoisie into the saddle and thus for the first time create the political conditions for proletarian action. It was for this reason that Marx demanded the sifting of the party, the struggle against 'philosophical' Communism and the Communism of the artisans. Weitling understood that sentiment must be hooted from the stage. He did not understand that Marx replaced crude sentiment by scientific understanding. When Marx demanded that an end be put to 'secret propaganda,' that meant for Weitling the end of the movement itself. He recognised only one form of propaganda, that of the conspiratorial secret society. Because he believed the masses to be unripe and incapable of becoming ripe, he wanted and could want no mass movement.

Marx's criticism had struck Weitling in his weakest spot. With the mistrust of the self-educated, he felt once more the feared and hated pride of the intellectual. He replied that analysis in the study and criticism carried out far from the suffering world and the afflictions of the people accomplished nothing. 'At these words Marx struck the table angrily with his fist, so powerfully that the lamp shook. He jumped to his feet and exclaimed:

"'Ignorance had never yet helped anybody!"

'We followed his example and got up too. The conference was over. While Marx was striding up and down the room in unusually angry excitement I quickly said good-bye to him and the others and went home, greatly surprised by what I had seen and heard.'

The definite breach between Marx and Weitling did not come till May, 1848. Weitling even sent Marx an article for the paper he was going to start at the time, and he had no objection to accepting the help which the 'chief of the intellectuals,' whom he alleged to be 'sitting on the funds' though he was in fact short of them, continued to give him.

But Marx insisted on the sifting of the party and the first blow fell upon Hermann Kriege, a close friend of Weitling's and a man of the same way of thinking as he. Kriege, a young, not ungifted man whom Engels had recommended to Marx only a year before as a. 'splendid agitator,' had emigrated to America, where he published a weekly paper, the People's Tribune. His never very substantial and 'emotional' Communism degenerated in America into the most turgid sentimentalism. The People's Tribune only made Communism ridiculous. On top of it Kriege applied quite indiscriminately for financial support to people who had nothing whatever to do with Communism. The Brussels group felt the time had come to declare openly before the world that this activity had nothing whatever to do with them. Many of them found it hard to repudiate a man who had so recently been their comrade. But, as Marx and Engels stated in the circular letter they drafted, the cause took precedence of everything else, the party must not degenerate into a clique, and the party was more important than the persons who belonged or had belonged to it. There were long discussions, and on May 11 the group decided to make a public protest against Kriege's outpourings. Weitling alone refused to sign. On May 16 the lithographed circular was dispatched to the correspondence committees in Germany, Paris, London and New York. On the same day Weitling demanded the immediate return of his manuscript from Marx. This was the final rupture.

Chapter 10 notes

1: 'Conjointement avec deux de mes amis Fréderic Engels et Philippe Gigot (tous deux à Bruxelles) j'ai organisé avec les communistes et socialistes allemands une correspondence suivie, qui devra s'occuper et de la discussion de questions scientifiques et de la surveillance à exercer sur les écrits populaires et la propagande socialiste, qu'on peut faire en Allemagne par ce moyen. Le but principal de notre correspondence sera pourtant celui, de mettre les socialistes allemands en rapport avec les socialistes français et anglais, de tenir les étrangers au courant des mouvements socialistes qui seront opérés en Allemagne et d'informer les Allemands en Allemagne des progrès du socialisme en France et en Angleterre. De cette manière des différences d'opinion pourront se fair jour; on arrivera à un échange d'idées et à une critique impartiale. C'est là un pas, que le mouvement social aura fait dans son expression littéraire afin de se débarrasser des limites de la nationalité. Et au moment de l'action, il est certainement d'un grand interêt pour chacun, d'être instruit de l'état des afi'aires à l'étranger aussi bien que chez lui.

'Outre les communistes en Allemagne notre correspondence comprendra aussi les socialistes allemands à Paris et à Londres. Nos rapports avec l'Angleterre sont déjà établis; quant à la France nous croyons tous que nous ne pouvons y trouver un meilleur correspondent que vous...'