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Later on, as an historical materialist, Marx proceeds still further to the differentiation between what a certain historical epoch thinks about itself, its “ ideology ”, and what it really, materially is.
This has been published for the first time in CE, I, pp. 403-63. Its editors assume that it was written from March to August 1843, that is to say, after the resignation of Marx from the editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung. In their introduction to the earlier works of Marx and Engels (Karl Marx, Historical Materialism, etc., Alfred Kroner, Leipzig, 1932.) S. Landshut and I. P. Mayer seek to prove that the work must be given an earlier date and that it was practically finished in March 1842 when Marx offered it to Ruge for publication in his Anekdota Philosophica. The great significance of this work, which was primarily intended by Marx as an attempt to get straight with himself on the issue, consists in three things. First of all in the discovery of the inverted “ mystical ” process of Hegelian idealistic dialectic, secondly in the discovery that not the State, as Hegel contends, but “ bourgeois society ” is the source of historical development, and thirdly in the contention that the bourgeois republic is itself an unsolved contra diction which not only fails to realize the real community of humanity but intensifies its opposite to the extreme, and that the basis of the bourgeois State in all its forms is private property. First of all concerning the “ logical pantheistic mysticism ” of Hegel : “ Reality (with Hegel) becomes a phenomenon, but the idea has no other content apart from this phenomenon. It has also no other purpose but the logical one ‘ of being the eternal real spirit in itself This paragraph contains the whole mystery of the Hegelian philosophy of law and of the Hegelian philosophy in general " (p. 408). “ It is important that everywhere Hegel makes the idea the subject, and the actual real subject, for instance, “ political opinions ”, the predicate. Development, however, proceeds always on the side of the predicate ” (p. 416). “ The only aim (of Hegel) is to find ‘ the idea ’ in itself, the ‘ logical idea ’ in each element, whether it is the State, or nature, whilst real subjects, in this case the ‘ political constitution become merely their names, so that only the appearance of a real recognition is present. They are and remain unconceived because they are not conditions conceived in their specific essence ” (p. 412). “ He (Hegel) does not develop his thought from the thing, but the thing according to a completed thought at one with itself in the abstract sphere of logic. The aim is not to develop the definite idea of the political constitution, but to arrange it as a link in its own history (as an idea), an obvious mystification ” (p. 415). “ Just because Hegel proceeds from the predicates of the general definition instead of from the real Ens (vnoxel-p£VOv, subject) and nevertheless a basis for these definitions must exist, the mystic idea becomes this basis. This is Hegel’s dualism; he does not regard the general as the real essence of the real-finite, i.e. the existing, definite, or the real Ens {being) as the real subject of infinity” (pp. 426-7). Thus Marx critically dissolves the mysticism of the Hegelian idealist dialectic, lays bare its process in all its details, and demands a dialectic based on reality, that is to say, a materialist dialectic. This represents a tremendous and fundamental advance not only on Hegelian idealism, but on all idealism, whilst still retaining the “ rational ”, that is to say, material nucleus of the Hegelian dialectic. Thus an advance beyond Feuerbach also. The State and bourgeois society : “ What is therefore the power of the proletarian State over private property ? The special power of private property itself, its essence brought into existence. What remains to the political State in contradiction to this essence ? The illusion that it determines where it is itself determined ” (p. 519). “ Private property is the general category, the general State bond ” (p. 53o)- The contradiction of the representative constitution, of formal democracy : “ The representative constitution (compared with the corporative) represents a certain progress because it is the frank, unfalsified and logical expression of modern State conditions. It is the unhidden contradiction ” (p. 492). The contradiction as it is expressed in the deputy : “ They are formerly deputized, but immediately, they arc really so they are no longer deputies. They are supposed to be deputies, but they are not” (p. 542). In the beginning Marx was able to give the solution of the contra diction only in general outlines : “ The political republic is democracy within the abstract State form. The abstract State form of democracy is therefore the republic. However, here it ceases to be the merely political constitution (p. 436). “ Hegel proceeds generally from the separation of the State and ‘ bourgeois society ’, from the ‘ particular interests ’ and from ‘ being in itself’, and the bureaucracy is certainly based on this separation ” (P. 454V “ The liquidation of the bureaucracy can only be that the general interest really becomes the particular interest and not merely, as with Hegel, in the idea, in the abstraction, and this is possible only if the particular interest becomes the general interest ” (pp. 457-8). “ Governmental power is the most difficult to develop. It belongs to the whole people to a far greater degree than the legislative power ” (p. 464V I t is really astonishing how far Marx has already obtained clarity on the essence of the bourgeois State in its most highly developed form, the democratic republic, through his thoroughgoing criticism of the reality of the bourgeois State and of the most highly developed philo sophy ofl aw of his own day, the Hegelian^ and how he already begins to draw the general outlines of another and further form of State, a State which for the moment, however, he refers to as the “ true ” State. In definition we can still sense the restraining influence of Feuerbach, but Marx was soon to throw it off. The most important conclusion offered by these early writings of Marx is that he was never a democrat in the sense of bourgeois and formal democracy. 3. Friedrich ENGELS Since the publication of Mehring’s biography of Marx a great amount of new material has been published on the development and activity of Engels. In 1920 the first volume of a biography by Gustav Mayer appeared together with a supplementary volume, Schrii.n tier Frahzeit (Earlier Writings). In 1930 the second volume of the CW appeared containing the works of Engels up to the beginning of 1844, together with letters and comments, a volume amounting to almost 700 pages. The volumes of the CW up to 1848 also contain new and important Engels material. Engels’ Dialectics in Nature has been published in full in Volume II of the Marx-Engels Archive. A number of other hitherto unpublished minor works of Engels are contained in the Annals of Marxism. In this way the information concerning his career and activity has been greatly enriched, and the more information we obtain about him the more he emerges from the comparative obscurity in which his own great modesty placed him.
Marx began his economic studies in Paris in 1843 on the basis of the works of the great English and French writers. His starting- point was Engels’ “ Outline of a Critique of Political Economy ” which appeared in the Deutsch-Fraru:,oslsche Jahrbiicher. The still extant note-books abstract from Adam Smith, Ricardo, James S. Mill, McCulloch, I. B. Say, Friedrich List and others. Boisguillebert was the first of the old French economists he read. Marx intended to issue the results of his economic studies in a special brochure to be followed by a number of further independent brochures on the critique of law, morality, politics, etc., then a special work on the connection of the whole and the relations of the individual parts, and finally a critique of the speculative study of the material. These economic- philosophic manuscripts have now been published in Vol. III of the CW, pp. 29 to 172, together with a review of the most important of the note-books, ibid., pp. 437-83. The terminology of these works is still strongly under the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach. In the sketch for his introduction to the drafts for a critique of political economy Marx points out that the only preliminary works were W. Weitling, M. Hess in the Deutsch-Fran- ziislsche Ja'hrbucher and F. Engels’ “ Outline of a Critique of Political Economy ”. “ Positive criticism in general, including therefore also the German positive criticism of political economy ” must thank “ the dis coveries of Feuerbach ” in his Philosophy of the Future and his Theses for a Reform of Philosophy for its “ real basis”. “ Positive humanist and naturalist criticism ” dated first from Feuerbach. The following points will indicate the stage of Marx’s economic criticism at the time : The law of wages put forward by Adam Smith is accepted as correct. “ According to Smith the usual wage is the lowest com patible with simple humanite, namely, an animal existence ” (p. 39). Overproduction is the result of a state of social affairs which is the most favourable for the worker, namely, increasing and extending riches (p. 43). The situation of the working class is characterized as follows : “ Therefore in a declining situation of society we find pro gressive misery for the workers, in a progressive situation complicated misery for the workers, and in the completed situation stationary misery.” Errors of the “ Reformers en detail, who want to raise wages, or who, like Proudhon, want to establish ‘ equality of wages ’ ” (p. 46). From the German economist Schultz Marx borrows the conception of the “ relative impoverishment of the worker ” in view of the increasing wealth of society and the stationary income of the worker. Capital is defined on one occasion as “ stored-up labour ” (according to Adam Smith) and then as “ the governing power over labour and its products ”. There is no analysis of capital profits. Under the rule of private property the accumulation of capital results in its concentration in the hands of a few as the natural destiny of capital encouraged by competition (p. 57). The categories of fixed and circulating capital are borrowed from Adam Smith. Constant and variable capitals have not yet made their appearance. He also takes over the ground-rent theory of Adam Smith, but observes critically : “ Thus clearly proving the inversion of conceptions in political economy which turns the fruitfulness of the earth into an attribute of the landowner” (p. 62). Ground-rent is established in a struggle between tenant and landowner. “ Everywhere in political economy we find the hostile play ofinterests, a struggle, war, recognized as the basis of social organization.” The small-scale working land owner stands in the same relation to the large-scale landowner as does the artisan who owns his own tools to the “ factory owner ” (p. 74). And finally society falls into two classes, the property owners and the propertyless workers (p. 8 1 ). (Bourgeois) political economy proceeds from the factor of private property ; it sums up the material process of private property in general abstract forms, in laws, but it does not understand these laws, i.e. it does not show how they proceed from the essence of private property. With this Marx arrives at his historical critical, i.e. his revolutionary standpoint towards the question. An explanation must be found not from any “ invented original state ”, but from “ the existing political and economic factors ”. In what does this consist ? “ Labour produces not only commodities, it produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and in the same relation in which it produces commodities in general ” (pp. 82-3). The object which labour produces presents itself as “ an alien entity ”, as a power independent of the producer. Aliena tion and externalization of labour. “ All these consequences lie in the condition that the worker adopts an attitude to the product of his labour as an alien entity. For according to this condition it is clear : the more the worker expends his labour the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he creates outside himself, and the poorer he and his inner-world become and the less he can call his own. It is just the same in religion, the more man places in God the le^ he retains in himself . . .” (p. 83). The “ alienation of labour ” expresses itself in the following fundamental phenomena :
Alienated labour produces “ the dominance of those who do not produce over production and its product ” (p. 91). Private property, apparently the reason and basis for alienated labour, is in reality one of its consequences (pp. 91-2). All political economic categories can be developed from the conception of alienated labour and private property. The conception of “ alienation ”, “ externalization ”, comes directly from Feuerbach and further back from Hegel, but it would be wrong not to observe, as most bourgeois critics of the early economic works of Marx fail to do, that here Marx grasps one of the fundamental facts of the bourgeois economic order from a revolutionary standpoint : the separation of the worker from the tools of production. Although the terminology is still that of Hegel and Feuerbach, the analysis is revolutionary and materialist, and grasps the basic relation of capital from the standpoint of the working-class and socialism, thus going far beyond both Hegel and Feuerbach. The essential factor of Marxist analysis at this stage is not the formal shell of Feuerbachianism, but the material content which is seen to be already far in advance of Feuerbach. Marx still distinguishes between “ primitive communism ”, that is to say a general levelling, the abstract negation of the world of civilization and culture (with this expression he means primitive artisan communism with its idea of asceticism, the overthrow of the previous cultural world, etc.), and the higher stage which is com munism, “ the positive liquidation of private property, as human self alienation, and thus the real appropriation of the attributes of humanity by and for humanity ; thus as a completely conscious return, on the basis of the whole wealth of previous development, of the human being as a social, that is to say, as a real human being ” (p. 114). Com munism on the basis of the technical and cultural achievements of capitalism ! At this stage Marx still calls this sort of communism “ completed naturalism ” and “ humanism ”. “ Communism ”, he declares further, “ is the position of the nega tion of the negation and therefore the real factor nece^ary for the next stage of historical development of human emancipation and self recovery. Communism is the necessary form and the energizing principle of the immediate future, but communism is not as such the aim of human development—the form of human society” (p. 126). The further and definitive development of this idea is to be found in Marx's marginal notes to the Gotha Programme sketching the various stages of the development of socialism and communism. Later on Marx abandoned the idea of “ the aim of human develop ment ” altogether, whilst in his Anti-Diihring Engels (in agree ment with Marx) develops the idea that a rising branch of human development necessarily supposed a declining branch and finally the historical end of humanity. Here we can also find the nucleus of the fundamental idea of historical materialism that the social consciousness of man is deter mined by his social being : “ In his generic consciousness man con firms his real social life and merely repeats his real existence in thought” (p. 117). The term “ generic consciousness ” is still Feuerbach, but the content is fundamentally in advance of Feuerbach. Following on his analysis of “ alienated labour ” Marx again gives a criticism of Hegelian idealist dialectics on the basis of Hegel’s Phenomenonology (I 807). The genius of Hegel : (1) that he grasps the self-creation of humanity as a process, and (2) analyses human labour. However, Hegel takes only “ abstract intellectual labour ” as labour. He sees only the positive side oflabour and not its negative side. The human being is regarded as an immaterial spiritual entity. The world of the spirit is recognized and liquidated as the self-aliena tion of the human being, but at the same time presented as the real existence of the latter. “ Here is the root of the false positivism of Hegel, or his merely apparent criticism ” (p. 163).
The organizational activities of Marx and Engels which culminated in the entry of their organizations into the Communist League and the adoption of scientific communism by the league were first revealed by D. Riazanov, who was assisted by the analogy between the Russian circles in the ’eighties and ’nineties which finally led to the formation of the Social Democratic Party of Russia as a centralized party, and the corresponding stage in the communist movement in the ’forties. Marx and Engels organized the “ Workers’ Educational League ” in Brussels. From Brussels they established connections with communist circles in Germany, London, Paris and Switzerland. “ Correspond ence Committees ” were formed and directed by them and their supporters in Brussels, Paris and London. Marx wrote to Proudhon to secure his assistance for the “ Correspondence Committee ” in Paris. In 1846 the Central Correspondence Bureau in Brussels was led by Marx, a bureau in Paris by Engels, and another one in London by Bauer, Schapper and Moll. On the 20th of January 1847 Moll came to Brussels as the delegate of the London Correspondence Committee in order to report on the situation in the London society. This visit led to a decision to hold an international congress in London. The Communist League was founded at this congress. Wilhelm Wolff was present as the representative of the Brussels organization. Draft statutes were adopted to be discussed by the individual branches until the next congress. The organizational unit was the “ commune ” or branch. The “ communes ” were organized in districts. The “ central district ” elected the Central Committee. The first communist journal was issued as the official organ of the league. (Only one number appeared.) The second congress took place in November 1847. This time Marx was present. Detailed discussions on the programme took place and Marx was instructed to draw up the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The Manifesto was published in the second half of February 1848. It is worth noting that in its first two editions The Communist Manifesto was entitled The Manifesto of the Communist Party. From these details it is clear that Marx and Engels did not act as isolated authors drawing up a manifesto and making it the pro gramme of the first international communist party, but as leaders of an international communist movement organized by them. Although this movement was numerically very weak, nevertheless it represented the concentration of all the most progressive elements in the working- class movement of the day, and it was the real starting-point of the socialist and communist working-class movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The organization took account of the need for illegality, but it was no longer a “ conspiratorial organization ” in the old sense, but an internationally organized revolutionary party whose main aim for the moment was the dissemination of consistent communist propaganda on the basis of scientific communism or socialism as developed by Marx and Engels.
The German Ideology, a Criticism of the Latest German Philosophy and its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer, and Stirner and of German Socialism and its Various Prophets has now been published in full in Vol. V. of the CW. The first section Feuerbach contains a description of the main factors of historical materialism as developed by Marx and Engels, and a summary criticism of Feuerbach. The development of humanity begins with the production of the means of life by humanity. A certain “ mode of life ’ ' is characterized by what is produced and how it is produced. The stages of the “ division of labour ” determine the various historical forms of property, i.e. the prevailing stage of the division of labour determines also the relations of the individuals to each other with regard to the material, the instruments and the product of labour (p. ii ). Main stages of property: (1) “Tribal property ” (i.e. primitive communism), the beginnings of slavery ; (2) “ Ancient communal and State property (Slavery still existing). Later on personal and then real property developed ; (3) “ Feudal or corporative property ” ; (4) Bourgeois property. “ Consciousness can never be anything but conscious being, and the being of humanity is ias real living process ” (p. 15). With the representation of reality “ independent philosophy ” loses the medium of its existence. At the utmost its place can be taken by a summary of the most general resulas which can be abstracted from the contemplation of the historical development of humanity (p. 16). “The production of life, both one's own in labour and new life in procreation, thus appears as a double relation, on the one hand as a natural relation, and on the other hand as a social relation—social in the sense that thereby the co-operation of several individuals is understood irrespective of the conditions, the fashion and the aim of such co-operation ” (p. 19). This passage is very important because it shows irrefutably that the formula later used by Engels summing up the production and re production of human life as the basic factors of social development, was not a fortuitous improvization of his own, as some critics of Marxism contend, but one already used by Marx and Engels together as early as 1845-86. Language is as old as consciousness ; it is a social product. The first division of labour is in the sexual act, and later as the result of the diversity of physical characteristics, etc. The State develops from the contradiction between particular and general interesas. All the struggles within the State are the illusory forms in which the real struggles between the classes are conducted (p. 23). Every class aiming at domination must first conquer political power. “ Bourgeois society ” is the real basis and stage of all history. The later expression “ ideological superstructure ” is here represented by the expression “ idealist superstructure ”, which raises itself on the economic basis of society (p. 26). Feuerbach wishes to turn the term communist as referring to the supporters of a particular political party into a mere category (p. 31). Feuerbach goes as far as a theoretician can go at all without ceasing to be a theoretician and philosopher. Feuerbach limits himself to the mere contemplation of the physical world. He remains stationary at the abstraction “ the human being ”. He appreciates the human being as a physical object, but not as a “ physical activity ”. He gives no criticism of the existing conditions of life. He falls back into idealism “ where the communist materialist sees the necessity and at the same time the conditions for a trans formation both of industry and the social organism. As far as Feuer bach is a materialist history has no say with him, and in so far as he examines history he is no materialist” (p. 34). Within the ruling class a division of labour takes place between its “ active conceptive ideologists ” and the remaining mass, which represents in reality the “ active members of this class ”. The “ State ” is “ nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeoisie necessarily adopts to guarantee its property and its interests both from within and without. The State is independent to-day only in countries where the estates have not yet completely developed into classes, in countries where the estates, which have been abolished in the more progressive countries, still play a role, countries therefore in which no section of society has yet succeeded in gaining the upper hand. This is the case particularly in Germany ” (p. 52). A stage is reached in the development of the productive forces when means of production and means of transport are produced which under the given circumstances can cause only damage, “ forces of destruction ”. The class which bears all the burdens of society, which is forced into an antagonism to all other classes, which represents the majority of all the members of society and in whose ranks the consciousness of the nece^ity of a fundamental revolution, the com munist consciousness, arises, is the active factor of the necessary revolution. It carries on a revolutionary struggle against the previous ruling classes. The communist revolution “ liquidates the domi nance of all classes and the claves themselves ”. The revolution is necessary not only because the ruling class can be overthrown only in this way, but also because only in this way can the rising class “ rid itself entirely of all the accumulated evils of the past and become capable of founding a new society ” (p 59). “ In our opinion therefore all previous collisions in history have their origin in the contradiction between the productive forces and the mode of society. ... It is, by the way, not at all necessary that in order to lead to collisions in a particular country this contradiction must necessarily be intensified to breaking point in that particular country. Competition with more highly industrialized countries brought about by an extension ofinternational relations is quite enough to produce a similar contradiction in countries whose industries are less developed (for instance, the latent proletariat in Germany brought to light by the competition of English industry) ” (p. 63). This passage indicates that even at that time Marx and Engels were well aware of the possibility that the communist revolution might not nece^arily break out first in the most highly industrialized countries. The criticism of Max Stirner takes up the greater part of the German Ideology (pp. 97-428). Mehring observes : “ It is a still more discursive super-polemic than even The Holy Family in its most arid chapters, and the oases in the desert are still more rare, although they are by no means entirely absent ” (see this volume, Chapter V, No. I, the German Ideology). It is certainly difficult for the workers of our day to follow the detailed polemic of Marx and Engels against Max Stirner, but never theless it is absolutely necessary to point out that it is not a question of any philosophical chimeras of no importance to the reader of to day, but a fundamental discussion between communism and anar chism. Stirner is one of the chief sources of anarchism. It would be a very valuable work to extract everything from this discu^ion which is of fundamental importance for the relation of socialism and communism to anarchism. The discu^ion contains in fact all the essential factors for such a critique. The work proves in detail that Stirner’s “ association of free men ” is nothing but “ an idealist re flection of present-day society ” (p. 188). The petty-bourgeoisie, its needs and its ideals, are revealed as the basis of Stirner’s criticism. Stirner propagates “ the revolt ” as against the communist revolution. “The whole philosophy of revolt”, observe Marx and Engels, “ which has just been presented to us in poor antitheses and faded flowers of eloquence is in the last resort nothing but bombastic apologia for parvenuism. Every upstart has something particular in mind when he undertakes his ‘ egoist action ’, something above which he wishes to raise himself irrespective of the general conditions. He seeks to overcome- the existing something only in so far as it is a hindrance, and for the rest he seeks to appropriate it. The weaver who has ‘ risen ’ to become a factory owner has got rid of his weaving loom, has left it. Otherwise the world continues its daily round as usual, and our ‘ flourishing ’ upstart now turns to the others with the hypo critical moral demand that they should also become parvenus like him. Thus the whole belligerent rodomontade of Stirner resolves itself into nothing but moral conclusions from Gellert’s fables and speculative interpretations of bourgeois misery ” (pp. 360-1). The following is an important paesage from the criticism of “ True Socialism ” : “ True socialism is the completest social literary movement ; it developed without any real party interests, and after the formation of the Communist Party it wished to continue its existence despite the latter. It is clear that since the development of a real Communist Party in Germany the True Socialists will be limited more and more to the petty-bourgeoisie as their public and to impotent degenerate scribblers as representatives of this public.” It was necessary to dissociate the Communist Party, as the or ganized movement of the proletarian advance-guard, from the amor phous movement of the petty-bourgeoisie and of those writers whose ideology was petty-bourgeois.
Marx and Engels entered the revolutionary movement in 1848-9, forming the left wing of the democratic movement, which they strove to force forward as far tr they possibly could. The chief democratic mass in 1848-g consisted of the revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie, the artisans and shop-keepers in the towns, and the small-scale and middle-scale peasants in the country. This petty-bourgeoisie repre sented the main contingent ofthe revolutionary movement in Germany. The working-class movement, numerically still very weak, operated up to a certain point as the ally, as the left wing of this petty-bourgeois movement. The tactical line adopted by Marx and Engels was an alliance between the working-class movement and the revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie so long as the latter was still progressive and did not hamper the working-class movement, the general aim being to urge forward the revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie up to that point where it would seize power, to persuade it to take energetic revolutionary metrures against the Junkers and the bourgeoisie, and then to organize the working class as an independent revolutionary power against the petty-bourgeoisie with a view to taking power from the hands of the latter -ft.t a suitable moment. The example before their eyes was the Great French Revolution with its Jacobin dictatorship, the dictatorship of the urban petty-bourgeoisie, the workers and the peasants. However, revolutionary development in Germany took a different course. The bourgeoisie concluded a compromise with the Junkers and the Crown, whilst the petty-bourgeoisie, after short onsets which did not give it power on any wide scale, retreated, for the most part miserably. The activity of Marx and Engels at the head of the democratic movement in the Rhineland is well known and has been described often enough. However, it was Mehring- who first made known the role which Marx and Engels played in the working-class movement in Cologne and in the Rhineland. On the 13th of April 1848 a doctor named Gottschalk founded the Cologne Workers Association, and it grew rapidly. On the 8th of May Gottschalk gave its membership as 5,000. The association was represented in the “ District Committee of Rhenish Democratic Associations ”, and from the beginning Marx exercised influence on it through Moll and Schapper. In the beginning, however, the “ Marx tendency ” was in the minority. The majority under the leadership of Gottschalk wanted to hear nothing of an alliance with the petty-bourgeois democrats, and it decided to boycott the elections to the Prussian and German National Assembly. On the 3rd of July Gottschalk and his assistant Anneke were arrested. The Marx grcup then obtained a majority in the association, and Joseph Moll was elected President on the 6th ofJuly and worked hand in hand with Marx and Engels. The struggles intensified, and on the 25th of September Karl Schapper (also a communist) and the young lawyer Becker were also arrested. An attempt was also made to arrest Moll, who had to go into hiding. Nothjung and Roser, who were the successors of Moll, felt themselves too weak for the job and therefore Marx himself took it over on the 16th of October, and on the 22nd of October he was confirmed in his position by a general meeting of the association in Gurzenich. He succeeded in persuading it to take part in the elections after all, and new statutes were introduced and confirmed on the 25th of February. On the 28th of February 1849 Schapper again took over the leadership. On the 15th of April 1849 Marx, W. Wolff, Schapper and Anneke resigned from the District Committee of Rhenish Democratic Associations and at the same time the Workers Association withdrew also. Marx had de cided that the time was ripe for the independent organization of the workers. On the 6th of May a congress of workers associations in the Rhineland and Westphalia took place. Its agenda was : (I) Or ganization of the Rhenish-Westphalian workers associations ; (2) Elec tion of delegates for the congress of all workers associations (June, in Leipzig) ; and (3) Resolutions for this congress. On the 16th of May 1849 Marx received the order expelling him from Cologne.
D. Riazanov has collected much new material on the history of the foundation of the First International (Marx-Engels Archive, Vol. I). We shall confine ourselves here to enumerating the most important events which led up to it. February 21st, 1862.—Appeal of a committee to the workers of Paris to send delegates to visit the London World Exhibition. 200,000 workers take part in the elections and 200 delegatrs are elected. The first group leaves on the 19th ofJuly and the last on the 15th of October 1862. At the suggestion of the editor of The Working Man a reception committee for the French workers is formed in London in July. On the 5th of August a meeting takrs place in the Freemasons’ Hall, but as it is of a bourgeois character the London trades council does not take part in it. A number of French delegatrs, including the building worker Tolain, establish connections with the London trade unions. The French commission splits; the non-Bonapartist elements (Tolain, etc.) withdraw from the commission and act independently. Lively agitation on behalf of the Polish insurrection in France and England. French workers invited to come to London. July 2nd, 1863.—Meeting in St. James’s Hall. Representatives of the London trade unions and of the French workers (Tolain, etc.) present. Discussions after the meeting between English and French participants and delegates. July 23rd.—Meeting in the “ Bell Inn ”, Old Bailey, called by the London trades council with the French delegates. Decision to elect com mittee (5 members) to issue appeal to the French workers. Addrrss read at second meeting in “ Bell Inn ” on the loth November and adopted. Address printed in The Beehive on the 5th of December I 863. Eight months pass before the answer of the French workers arrives. Answer read and discussed in a public meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London, on the 28th of September I 864. Marx present on the platform, but takes no active part in the meeting. Eccarius proposed by him as speaker. A provisional committee elected, including Eccarius and Marx for the Germans, to deal with the addresses. Decision taken to form an “ International Association ” on the basis of the English and French Addresses, in the sense of an international organization for information and discussion. Sub-committee appointed, including Marx, to work out the “ Rules and Regulations ” of the new association. The rest is already known. An examination of the Austrian police archives which became possible after November 1918 reveals the fact that Georg Eccarius, who was for many years a member of the General Council of the International Working-men’s Association and with whom Marx quarrelled later on, supplied the Austrian secret service with reports concerning the proceedings of the General Council (BrUgel, in Der Kampf, Vol. XVIII, Vienna).
Mehring’s attitude towards Lassalle-Schweitzer and their policy is no longer tenable to-day. Important facts which became known only after the death of Mehring, and new questions raised by the subsequent development of the working-class movement, compel the abandonment of Mehring’s attitude towards the Lassallean move ment. The whole question has been dealt with in detail in L. Poll- nau’s introduction to Vol. V. of the Collected Works of Franz Mehring, Zur Deutschen Geschichte. We shall confine ourselves here to enu merating briefly the new facts and the new fundamental considerations which make it necessary to revise Mehring’s opinion of the Lassallean movement. The first fact is the correspondence between Bismarck and Lassalle which was accidentally discovered in 1928 in the Cabinet of the Prussian Prime Minister Otto Braun amongst an assortment of nondescript and forgotten papers. The letters were given by Otto Braun to G. Mayer for publication : G. Mayer, Bismarck und Lassalle, ihr Briefwechsel und ihre Gespriiche (Bismarck and Lassalle, their Corre spondence and Discussions),Berlin, 1928. This correspondence begins as early as the 11 th of May 1863 with a short letter from Bismarck to Lassalle inviting the latter to meet him for a discussion “ on the labour question ”, i.e. before the founding of Lassalle’s Workers Association. The following passage taken from a letter written by Lassalle on the 8th ofJune 1863 shows his attitude towards Bismarck and the Prussian Crown : “ However, you will' realize clearly from this miniature (the statutes of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein) how true it is that the labouring classes incline instinctively to a dictatorship once they can be convinced with justification that the dictatorship is being exercised in their interests, and how much they would be inclined, as I suggested to you recently, despite their republican leanings—or rather just because of them—to accept the Crown as the natural instrument of a social dictatorship rather than the egoism of the bourgeois class, if the Crown On its part could make up its mind to take the—truly very improbable—step of adopting a really revo lutionary and national policy, and turn itself from a monarchy of the privileged classes into a social and revolutionary people’s monarchy.” The second fact is a document found amongst the literary remains of Hermann Wagener, also published by G. Mayer : a receipt for a loan of 2,500 thaler from Bismarck signed by von Hofstetten, a close friend and confidant of B. Schweitzer and one of the editors of Der Sozialdemokrat. See G. Mayer, Der Deutsche Allgemeine Arbeiterverein und die Krisls 1^fi (The Deutsche Allgemeine Arbeiterverein and the Crlsls of 1<86), published in the Archiv fiir Sozialwlssenschaf und Sozialpolitik (Archive for Social Science and Social Policy, Vol. 57 (1927), p. 167 and the following pages. These documents prove that Lassalle and Schweitzer pursued a policy which made them dependent on the feudal-absolutist reaction of Bismarck and the Prussian Crown to an impossible and intolerable extent for the working class. The policy which Marx and Engels pursued was : (I) the complete independence of the working-class movement ; (2) co-operation with the revolutionary elements amongst the petty-bourgeoisie and the peasantry against the main enemy, the feudal reaction ; and (3) to urge on the bourgeoisie whenever it came into conflict with the Junkers and the Crown. This policy was the only one in accordance with the interests and the principles of a revolu tionary working-class party. Marx and Engels immediately rejected the hypothesis of the Lassallean movement as an opportunist relapse into “ Realpolitik ” from the principles and clarity already reached by the communist movement in 1848-9. In the conflict Marx-Engels v. Lassalle-Schweitzer, the former were completely right.
Mehring’s attitude to the conflict between Marx and Bakunin in the First International is also untenable to-day, and 'in this case also it is the revelation of new facts and the development of new questions of working-class policy which make it necessary to revise his attitude. The following circumstances will serve to explain his errors in this question. First of all the fact that the social-democratic attacks on Bakunin and on the anarchist ideas he propagated were often (but not always and above all not as far as Marx and Engels were concerned) dictated by opportunist considerations coupled with considerations of Philistine morality. Secondly, the fact that from 1890 to 1914 anarchism in Germany never represented any serious danger to the social-democratic movement. Thus Mehring over looked the fact that the situation was fundamentally different in the days of the First International, and further that during certain periods of the revolutionary struggle anarchism raises its head almost un avoidably, and that when it appears it necessarily plays under certain circumstances a counter-revolutionary role. (For instance the role of Machnow in Ukrainia.) 1 The new facts concerning Bakunin were obtained from the Russian Imperial Archives when they were opened after the November Revo lution. The most important document concerning Bakunin which has come to light is the so-called “ Confession ” which Bakunin wrote to the Tsar at the suggestion of Count Orlov after he had been delivered into the hands of the Tsarist police by the Austrian government. This document was completed by Bakunin on the 15th of September 1851 and soon afterwards handed to the Tsar, who gave it to the heir to the throne to read, after which it was filed in the archives of “ De partment III ”, the notorious Ochrana. The document was dis covered in 1919 in the Central Archives in Leningrad and published soon afterwards. A letter written by Bakunin to the Tsar on the 14th of February 1857 was also discovered and published. The aim of both documents was to obtain a mitigation of punish ment. In the “ Confession ” Bakunin gives a description of his revolutionary career from the standpoint of “ a penitent sinner ”, which is the literal expression he uses when signing it. The letter of the 14th of February 1857 is even worse than the “ Confession ” and contains passages like the following : “ With what name shall I call my past life ? Beginning with chimerical and fruitless endeavours, it ended with crimes. ... I curse my errors and my aberrations and my crimes. . . .” Politically considered the “ Confession ” and the letter of the 14th of February represent a speculation on the pan- Slav reactionary inclinations of Tsarism. Bakunin also did not hesi tate to speculate on the reactionary antipathies of Tsarism to the democratic and revolutionary movement in Western Europe. 1 And during the recent revolutiorary struggles in Spain. On the basis of the material which is now available concerning Bakunin the only objection which one can make to the attitude of Marx and Engels towards him is that they did not subject his role to a critical examination still earlier. Any discussion of “ the moral qualities " of the methods used in the fractional struggles between Marx and Bakunin and their followers can be of only very subordinate interest to-day. Marx and Engels were not “ innocent lambs ”, but Bakunin and his friends were also not, and they waged the fractional struggle by no means in strict accordance with the categorical imperative. In any case, all this is of very subsidiary importance. In the struggle between Bakunin and his followers on the one hand and Marx and Engels and their followers on the other, fundamental principles and history were on the side ofMarx and Marxism and therefore, we may assume, “ moral ” j ustification also. BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography is in five parts : I. The Collected Works ; II. Collections and Anthologies ;
identified and printed; and
It makes no claim to be definitive. It will not be possible to isue a complete bibliography until all the collected works have been issued and until the research work to disinter Marx’s numerous contributions to news papers and other periodicals and encyclopaxlias has been concluded. I. The CoLLE^CTED Worn
Etsays, Letters. Itsued by D. Riazanov (since 1931 by V. Adoratzki) on behalf of the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. This edition complies completely with all scientific demands. Each volume contains a detailed index and voluminous critical annotations and notes. The edition is divided into three parts : the first contains all the writings of Marx and Engels (with the exception of Capital) in chronological order ; the second contains Capital together with all the previously unpublished preparatory work ; and the third contains the correspondence. Almost every volume contains previously unpub lished material or material never before published in full. Hereinafter referred to as CW.
Becker, Cologne, 1851. Only one volume appeared.
Lassalle. Collected by Franz Mehring and published in 4 vols. by Dietz, Stuttgart, 1902. The fourth edition was published in 1923. It contains many of the works written up to 1850, occasionally abridged. This is the famous “ Posthumous Edition ”. Hereinafter referred to as PE.
D. Riazanov and published in 2 volumes by Dietz, Stuttgart, 1917. This publication contains chiefly articles taken from The New rork Tribune, The People's Paper and the Neue Oderzeitung. Hereinafter referred to as R.
chosen by Franz Diederich, Vorwarts, Berlin, 1918. A third edition was isued under the title, Marx Brevier by Dietz, Berlin, in 1926. The book is a collection of extracts grouped under the headings : “ Revolutionary Theory ”, “ The Era of Capitalist Production ”, “ Surplus Labour and the Working Day ", “ Socialism and the Working-Class Movement ", “ The Historical Conception ”, and “ Aphorisms on Science ”.
tions on the tactical attitude of the communists. Compiled and Yüklə 0,87 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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