Routledge Library Editions karl marx

What Marx writes in this letter to Ruge about his article must not be taken to mean that Marx really undertook the defence of the Archbishop in order to lead the unwary Catholics of Cologne into a trap. On the contrary, he remained absolutely true to his principles and completely logical when he declared that with the illegal arrest of the Archbishop for having performed his religious functions, and with the demand of the Catholics that the illegally arrested man should be given a legal trial, the defenders of the State had taken up a religious attitude and the defenders of the church a political attitude. It was certainly a decisive question for the Rheinische Zeitung that it should adopt a correct attitude in a topsy-turvy world, precisely for the reasons which Marx gives later on in the same letter to Ruge, namely, because the ultramontane party, which the paper energetically opposed, was the most dangerous force in the Rhineland and because the opposition had grown far too accustomed to conducting its struggle exclusively within the church.

The third treatise, which was composed of five long articles, dealt with the proceedings of the Diet concerning a law against the pilfering of sticks in the forests. At this point Marx was compelled to “ come down to earth ” or, as he expressed the same idea in another connection, he was embarrassed by having to speak of material interests for which Hegel had made no provision in his ideological system, and in fact he did not master the problem presented by this law with the incisiveness which he would have shown in later years. The point at issue was a fight between the developing capitalist era and the last remnants of common ownership of the land, a brutal struggle to expropriate the masses of the people. Out of 207,478 penal proceedings begun in Prussia in 1836 no less than i 50,000, or almost three-quarters, referred to the pilfering of sticks in the forests, poaching offences, trespassing, etc.

During the discussion which took place in the Diet the exploiting interests of the private landowners shamelessly forced through their claims, going even beyond the provisions of the government draft, and Marx now entered the field with caustic criticism on behalf of “ the propertyless masses without political and social rights ”. However, his reasoning is still based on

considerations ofjustice and not yet of economics. He demanded that the customary rights of the poor people should not be violated, and he found the basis of these rights in a somewhat vague form of property whose character was neither definitely private property nor definitely common property, but a mixture of both such as evidences itself in all the institutions of the Middle Ages. These hybrid and vague forms of property had been abolished by applying the categories of abstract civil law taken from Roman law, but an instinctive sense of justice was embodied in the customary rights of the poorer classes and their roots were positive and legitimate.

Although the historical perception of this article bears “ a certain vacillating character ” it nevertheless, or rather precisely on that account, shows us what in the last resort roused this great defender of “ the poorer classes ”. His description of the villainies committed by the landowners and of the way in which they trampled under foot logic and reason, law and justice, and in the last resort the interests of the State, in order to satisfy their own private interests at the expense of the poor and the dispossessed reveals the fierce anger against injustice which moved him. “ In order to destroy the poacher and the pilferer the Diet has not only broken the limbs of the law, but it has pierced it to the very heart.” On the basis of this one example Marx wished to show what might be expected of a class assembly of private interests when once it seriously set about the task of legislating.

At the same time he still adhered to the Hegelian philosophy of law and the State, though he did not do so after the fashion of the orthodox disciples of Hegel who praised the Prussian State as ideal. On the contrary, he compared the Prussian State with the ideal State resulting from the philosophical hypotheses of Hegel. Marx regarded the State as the great organism within which legal, moral and political freedom must find its fulfilment, whilst the individual citizen obeyed the laws of the State only as the natural laws of his own reason, of human reason. From this standpoint Marx. succeeded in dealing satisfactorily with the debates of the Diet on the law against wood pilfering, and he would probably have dealt equally satisfactorily with the fourth treatise discussing a law against poaching and trespassing, but not with the fifth which was intended to crown the whole work and discuss “ the mundane question in life size ”, the question of partitioning the land.

Together with the bourgeois Rhineland, Marx was in favour of complete freedom to partition landed property. His attitude was that to refuse the peasant the right to divide up his property

as he wished would be to add legal impoverishment to physical impoverishment. However, this legal consideration was not wide enough to provide a solution of the problem. The French socialists had already pointed out that unlimited freedom to partition landed property created a helpless proletariat and placed it on a level with the atomistic isolation of the artisan. If Marx wanted to deal with this problem therefore he must first try conclusions with socialism.

It is certain that Marx recognized this necessity and it is equally certain that he would not have evaded it had he concluded the series. However, he did not get as far as that, and by the time his third treatise was published in the Rheinische Zeitung he was already its editor and found himself faced with the socialist riddle before he was in a position to solve it.

6. 
   Five Months of Struggle
   

During the course of the summer months the Rheinische Zeitung made one or two minor excursions into the social field. In all probability Moses Hess was responsible for them. On one occasion it reprinted an article on housing conditions in Berlin taken from one of Weitling’s publications and entitled it “ A Contribution to an Important Contemporary Question ”. And on another occasion it published a report on a congress of savants in Strassburg which had also touched on the socialist question, and added a harmless remark to the effect that if the non-possessing classes were now casting their eyes on the riches of the middle classes this might be compared to the struggle of the middle classes against the feudal aristocracy in 1789 with the difference that this time the problem would meet with a peaceable solution.

Small though the inducement was, it proved sufficient to cause the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg to accuse the Rheinische Zeitung of flirting with communism. As a matter of fact the conscience of the Allgemeine Zeitung was not quite clear in this respect, for it had published much sharper articles from the pen of Heinrich Heine on French socialism and communism, but it was the only German newspaper of any national and even international importance and it felt its position threatened by the Rheinische Zeitung. Although the violent attack launched by the Allgemeine Zeitung had thus no very edifying motive, it was not without a certain malicious dexterity. Together with

various allusions to the sons of well-to-do merchants who in their innocent simplicity played with socialist ideas without the least intention of sharing their possessions with the dockers or with the men at work on Cologne Cathedral, it played a trump card by declaring it childish to threaten the middle classes in an economically backward country like Germany with the fate of the feudal aristocracy in France in 1789, particularly in view of the fact that the German middle classes were hardly granted room to breathe freely themselves.

It was Marx’s first editorial task to parry this biting attack and he found it uncomfortable enough. He was unwilling to defend things which he himself thought to be amateurish, but he was also not in a position to say quite what he thought of communism. Therefore he did his best to carry the war into Egypt by accusing the enemy of communist leanings, but at the same time he admitted that the Rheinische Zeitung had no right to dispose with a phrase or two of a problem at whose solution two great peoples were working. The Rheinische Zeitung would subject the ideas of communism to thorough criticism “ after protracted and deep study ”, for writings like those of Leroux and Considerant, and above all the sagacious writings of Proudhon, could not be disposed of by the superficial and chance ideas of the moment. However, in their present form the Rheinische Zeitung was not prepared to grant these ideas even theoretical reality, much less wish for their realization or think such realization possible.

Later on Marx declared that this polemic had spoiled his enthusiasm for the work on the Rheinische Zeitung and that he had therefore “ eagerly ” seized the opportunity of withdrawing into his study. However, as so often happens when one thinks back to past events, cause and effect were brought too close together. For the moment Marx was heart and soul in his work for the Rheinische Zeitung and it even appeared important enough to him to risk a breach with his old companions in Berlin for its sake. There was very little to be done with them, for the issue of the mitigated censorship instructions had turned the Hegelian Club, which had “ at least always been a centre of intellectual interests ”, into a society of so-called “ Freemen ” which embraced almost all the pre-March literary lights in the Prussian capital. They now met to play at being political and social revolutionaries like unhinged Philistines. Even during the summer months Marx had been disquieted by this development, declaring that it was one thing to proclaim one’s emancipation, that was conscientiousness, but quite another to indulge in advance in self-adulation and self-advertisement. However,




he went on, Bruno Bauer was in Berlin and he would see to it that at least no “ imbecilities ” were committed.

Unfortunately Marx was wrong in this assumption. According to reliable information Koppen kept himself aloof from the antics of the “ Freemen ”, but Bruno Bauer certainly did not, and in fact he even played the role of standard-bearer in their buffooneries. The ragging processions through the streets, the scandalous scenes in brothels and taverns, and the deplorable guying of a defenceless clergyman at Stirner’s wedding when Bauer removed the brass rings from a knitted purse he was carrying and handed them to the officiating clergyman with the remark that they were quite good enough to serve as wedding rings, made' them the object half of admiration and half of horror for all tame Philistines, but they hopelessly compromised the cause which they were supposed to represent.

Naturally, these guttersnipe antics had a devastating effect on the intellectual production of the “ Freemen ”, and Marx had great difficulties with their contributions to the Rheinische Zeitung. Many of their contributions were blue-pencilled by the censor, but as Marx declared in a letter to Ruge : “I permitted myself to dispose of at least as many. Meyen and his satellites sent us piles of world-uprooting scribblings, empty of ideas and written in a slovenly style, the whole tinged with a little atheism and communism (which the gentlemen have never bothered to study). Owing to Rutenberg’s complete lack of any critical faculty, independence or capacity, they had grown used to regarding the Rheinische Zeitung as their complaisant tool, but I had no intention of letting that sort of thing go on.” This was the first reason why “ the Berlin horizon became overclouded ”, as Marx put it.

The breach came in November 1842 when Herwegh and Ruge paid a visit to Berlin. At that time Herwegh was on his triumphant career through Germany, and in Cologne he had quickly made friends with Marx. In Dresden he met Ruge and went on with him to Berlin where they were naturally unable to find any virtue in the antics of the “ Freemen ”. Ruge came to grips with his collaborator Bruno Bauer, because, as he pointed out, the latter wanted him to agree to “ the most absurd things ”, for instance that the State, private property and the family must be dissolved as conceptions without bothering about the practical side of the question at all. Herwegh disapproved equally strongly of the “ Freemen ” and they revenged themselves for his disdain by slating him in their usual fashion in connection with his audience with the King and his engagement to a rich girl.

Both parties appealed to the Rheinische Zeitung. In agreement with Ruge, Herwegh asked for the publication of a statement to the effect that although the “ Freemen ” were quite excellent as individuals, their political romanticism, their megalomania and their itch for self-advertisement compromised the cause and the party of freedom, as both Herwegh and Ruge had told them frankly. Marx published this statement and was then bombarded with impolite letters from Meyen who had made himself the mouthpiece of the “ Freemen ”.

In the beginning Marx answered these letters coolly and objectively in an endeavour to secure fruitful co-operation with the “ Freemen ” : “I demanded less vague complainings, fewer fine-sounding phrases, less self-adulation and rather more concreteness, a more detailed treatment of actual conditions and a display of greater practical knowledge of the subjects dealt with. I told them that in my opinion it was not right, that it was even immoral, to smuggle communist and socialist dogmas, i.e. an entirely new way oflooking at the world, into casual dramatic criticisms, etc., and that if communism were to be discussed at al then it must be done in quite a different fashion and thoroughly. I also asked them to criticize religion by criticizing political conditions rather than the other way about, as this would be more in accordance with the character of a newspaper and the necessity for educating our public, because religion, quite empty in itself, lives from earth and not from heaven and will disappear on its own once the inverted reality whose theory it represents is dissolved. And finally I told them that if they wanted to deal with philosophy they should flirt less with the idea of atheism (which is reminiscent of those children who loudly inform anyone who cares to listen that they are not afraid of the bogyman) and do more to acquaint the people with its meaning.” These remarks afford us an instructive glance at the principles according to which Marx edited the Rheinische Zeitung.

However, before this advice reached those for whom it was intended, Marx received “ an insolent letter ” from Meyen in which the latter demanded no more and no less than that the paper should stop “ temporizing ” and “ go the limit ”, in other words, that it should challenge suppression for the sake of the “ Freemen ”. At this Marx became impatient and wrote to Ruge : “ All this shows a terrible degree of vanity. They are quite unable to realize that in order to save a political organ we should be quite prepared to abandon some of the Berlin gas- baggery which deals with nothing but its own clique concerns.

. .. Day after day we have to put up with the chicanery of




the censorship, ministerial letters, complaints from the provincial governor, wails from the Diet, protests from the shareholders, etc., etc., and as I am sticking to my post only because I feel it my duty to foil the intentions of the despots as far as possible, you can imagine that I was rather irritated by this letter and I have sent Meyen a pretty sharp reply.”

In fact, this represented the final breach between Marx and the “ Freemen ”, almost all of whom came to a more or less woeful political end, from Bruno Bauer who later worked on the Kreuz-Zeitung and the Post, to Eduard Meyen who ended his days as the editor of the Danziger Zeitung and characterized his wasted life with the dismal joke that he was now permitted to ridicule only the Protestant orthod-“ oxen ” because the liberal owner of his paper had forbidden him to criticize the Papal syllabus out of consideration for his Catholic readers. Others of the circle found a shelter in the semi-official and even the official press. Rutenberg, for instance, died a few decades later as editor of the Preussischer Staats-Anzeiger.

However, at that time, in the autumn of 1842, Rutenberg was a much-feared man and the government demanded his removal from the Rheinische Zeitung. Throughout the summer the government had done its best to make life a nuisance for the paper, but it had spared it in the hope that it would die of its own accord. On the 8th of August the governor of the Rhineland, von Schaper, reported to Berlin that the paper had only 885 subscribers, but on the 15th of October Marx took over the editorship and on the ioth of November von Schaper was compelled to report that the number of subscribers was steadily increasing, it having risen from 885 to 1,820, and that the tendency of the paper was becoming more and more insolent and hostile. To make matters worse the Rheinische Zeitung obtained a copy of a marriage Bill of an extremely reactionary nature and published its contents before the authorities were ready for it. This greatly embittered the King because the Bill aimed at making divorce more difficult and was thus certain of strenuous opposition amongst the masses of the people, and he therefore demanded that the paper should be threatened with immediate suppression unless it revealed the name of the person who had provided it with the draft. However, the King’s Ministers were unwilling to place the crown of martyrdom on the brow of the Rheinische Zeitung, for they knew very well that such a degrading proposal would be rejected immediately it was made, and they therefore contented themselves with demanding the removal of Rutenberg and the appointment of a responsible editor to sign for the paper in place of the publisher Renard. At the same time an assessor




named Wiethaus was appointed censor in place of Dolleschall, whose utter stupidity had brought him into bad odour.

On the 30th of November Marx reported to Ruge : “ Owing to the colossal stupidity of our State dispensation Rutenberg, who had already been deprived of the German article (his work on it consisted chiefly in correcting the punctuation) and was given the French article only at my intervention, is regarded as dangerous, although he is dangerous to nothing and no one apart from the Rheinische Zeitung and himself. StiU, his removal was demanded categorically. The Prussian dispensation, this despotisme prussien, le plus hypocrite, le plus fourbe, has spared the guarantor (Renard) an unpleasant experience, and the new martyr, who is already an adept in the physiognomy, carriage and language of his new role, is exploiting the occasion to the full. He is writing everywhere, including Berlin, declaring that he represents the exiled principle of the Rheinische Zeitung and that the latter is now about to revise its attitude towards the government.” Marx mentions the incident because it aggravated his quarrel with the Berlin “ Freemen ”, but it would appear almost as though he went a little too far in his mockery of the poor devil, the “ martyr ” Rutenberg.

Marx’s observation that the government had “ categorically ” demanded the removal of Rutenberg and that the guarantor Renard had thereby been spared an unpleasant experience can only mean that the Rheinische Zeitung gave way to the pressure exerted by the government and that it made no attempt to keep Rutenberg. In any case, such an attempt would have been hopeless and in addition there was every reason to spare the publisher “ an unpleasant experience ”, i.e. an examination by the police and the drawing up of a protocol, an ordeal which the absolutely unpolitical man w^ quite unsuited to stand. However, he signed a written protest against the threat to suppress the paper, but the handwriting of the document (which is now in the town archives of Cologne) shows that it was drawn up by Marx.

It announces that, “ giving way to force ”, the Rheinische Zeitung agrees to the temporary removal of Rutenberg and to the appointment of a responsible editor. It also assures the authorities that the Rheinische Zeitung will gladly do everything reconcilable with the character of an independent newspaper to save itself from suppression, and that it is prepared to moderate the form of its articles in so far as the subject matter may permit. This document is drawn up with a diplomatic caution of which the life of its author offers no second example, but it would be unfair to weigh scrupulously every word of it and equally unfair to

say that the young Marx did any noticeable violence to his convictions at the time even when he referred to the pro-Prussian attitude of the paper. Apart from its polemical articles against the anti-Prussian tendencies of the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg, and its agitation in favour of the extension of the Zollverein to North-Western Germany, its Prussian sympathies had expressed themselves chiefly in repeated references to North German science as against the superficiality of French and South German theories. Marx also points out in this document that the Rheinische Zeitung was the first “ Rhenish and South German newspaper ” to introduce the North German spirit into the South, thus contributing to the intellectual unification of the separated branches of the German people.

The answer of the governor of the Rhineland, von Schaper, to this address was somewhat ungracious : even if Rutenberg were dismissed immediately and a thoroughly suitable editor named it would still depend on the future conduct of the paper whether it would be granted a definite concession or not. However, the paper was granted until the 12 th of December to appoint a responsible editor, though things did not progress as far as that, for in the middle of December a new cause for dissension arose. Two articles from a correspondent in Berncastel concerning the impoverished situation of the Mosel peasants caused von Schaper to send in two corrections which were as empty of content as they were formally ill-mannered in style. For the moment the Rheinische Zeitung again made the best of a bad job and praised the “ calm dignity ” of von Schaper’s corrections, declaring that they put the agents of the secret police to shame and were calculated “ as much to dissolve mistrust as to restore confidence ”, but when it had collected sufficient material it published five articles, beginning in the middle of January, containing a mass of documentary evidence showing that the government had stifled the complaints of the Mosel peasants with brutal severity. The highest government official in the Rhineland was thus exposed to general ridicule, but he had the agreeable consolation of know ing that on the 21st of January 1843 the Cabinet had decided, in the presence of the King, that the paper should be suppressed.

Towards the close of the previous year a number of happenings had angered the King : a sentimentally defiant letter which Herwegh had addressed to him from Konigsberg and which the Allgemeine Zeitung in Leipzig had published without the knowledge of the author ; the acquittal of Johann Jacoby by the Supreme Court on charges of high treason and lese-majeste ; and finally the New Year’s proclamation of the Deutsche Jahrbiicher in favour of “ Democracy with all its practical problems ”. The


Deutsche Jahrbiicher was immediately suppressed and the Allgemeine Zeitung also as far as Prussian territory was concerned, and the “ sister harlot on the Rhine ” was to be suppressed in the general clear up, particularly as it had still further irritated the authorities by publishing an indignant protest against the suppression of the other two publications.

The formal pretext for the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung was the alieged lack of an official concession—“ As though it could have appeared in Prussia for a single day without official permission when not even a dog can exist without a government licence ”, as Marx exclaimed. The supplementary and “ objective ” reason was the usual babble about its nefarious tendency—“ The old stuff and nonsense about its ill-will, its empty theorizing, diddledumdey, etc.,” as Marx declared contemptuously. Out of consideration for its shareholders the paper was permitted to appear until the end of the quarter. Writing to Ruge, Marx declared : “ During our gallows respite we are under double censorship. Our real censor, a very decent fellow, is himself under the censorship of the Provincial President von Gerlach, a passive and obedient blockhead. When it is ready for print the paper must be thrust under the noses of the police and if they think they can smell anything un-Christian or un-Prussian then the paper may not appear.”

Assessor Wiethaus showed spirit and decency enough to give up his post as censor and for this action he was honoured with a serenade by the Cologne Choral Society. Ministerial Secretary Saint-Paul was then sent from Berlin to take his place and this man did the garrotting so thoroughly that the double censorship was withdrawn on the 18 th of February.

The suppression of the paper was felt as a personal insult by the whole population of the Rhineland and the number of subscribers jumped to 3,200 whilst petitions with thousands of signatures were sent to Berlin in an attempt to ward off the final blow. A deputation from the shareholders went to Berlin in order to see the King, but they were not permitted an audience, the petitions from the populace wandered into the waste-paper baskets of government offices and those officials who had signed them were severely reprimanded. However, much worse was the fact that the shareholders were inclined to demand that the policy of the paper should be toned down in the hope that this would prove successful where their appeals had failed, and it was chiefly this circumstance which caused Marx to resign his post as editor on the 17th of March, though naturally, this did not prevent him giving the censorship as much trouble as possible up to the last moment.

The new censor, Saint-Paul, was a youthful Bohemian. In Berlin he had caroused with the “ Freemen ” and in Cologne he was soon mixed up in affrays with night watchmen outside the brothels. However, he was a cunning fellow and he soon discovered the “ doctrinaire centre ” of the Rheinische Zeitung and “ the living source ” of its theories. In his reports to Berlin he speaks with involuntary respect of Marx, whose character and intellect obviously made a deep impression on him despite “ the great speculative errors ” which he thought he discovered in Marx’s views. On the 2nd of March he was able to report to Berlin that “ under the existing circumstances ” Marx had decided to sever his connection with the Rheinische Zeitung and to leave Prussia. This report caused the Berlin wiseacres to make a note in their records to the effect that it would be no loss if Marx emigrated because his “ ultra-democratic opinions are in utter contradiction to the principles of the Prussian State ”, a statement which it would be difficult to dispute. On the I 8th of March the worthy Saint-Paul then sent a triumphant report to Berlin : “ The spiritus rector of the whole undertaking, Dr. Marx, definitely retired yesterday, and Oppenheim, on the whole a really moderate though insignificant man, took over the editorship. ... I am very pleased at this and to-day I had to spend hardly a quarter of the usual time on the censorship.” The censor then paid the departing Marx the flattering compliment of suggestion to Berlin that in view of Marx’s retirement the Rheinische Zeitung might now be permitted to continue publication. However, his masters displayed even greater cowardice than he did, for they instructed him to bribe the editor of the Kolnische Zeitung, a cettain Hermes, and to intimidate its publishers, who had been made to realize by the Rheinische Zeitung that dangerous competition was possible, and the underhand trick was successful.

As early as the 25th ofJanuary, the day on which the decision to suppress the Rheinische Zeitung had become known in Cologne, Marx wrote to Ruge : “ I was not surprised. You know what I thought about the censorship instructions from the beginning. What has now happened I consider nothing but a logical consequence. I regard the suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung as an indication of the progress of political consciousness and I am therefore resigning. In any case, the atmosphere was becoming too oppressive for me. It is a bad thing to work in servitude and to fight with pinpricks instead of with the sword even in the cause of freedom. I am tired of the hypocrisy, the stupidity and the brutality of the authorities and of our submissiveness, pliancy, evasiveness and hair-splitting, and now the government

has given me back my freedom. . . . There is nothing more I can do in Germany. One debases oneself here.”

6. 
   Ludwig Feuerbach
   

In the same letter Marx acknowledges the receipt of the collection to which he had given his political first-born. This collection appeared in two volumes under the title, Anekdota zur neuesten deutschen Philosophie und Publizistik, and it was published in Zurich at the beginning of March 1843 by the Literarisches Kontor which Julius Frobel had made into an asylum for those authors who had been compelled to flee the German censorship.

In this collection the Old Guard of the Young Hegelians took the field once again, but its ranks were already wavering. In the van was Ludwig Feuerbach, the daring thinker who had already thrown the whole philosophy of Hegel on to the scrap- heap, who had declared the “ absolute idea ” to be nothing more than the deceased spirit of theology and thus a belief in pure phantoms, who found all the secrets of philosophy resolved in the contemplation of humanity and nature. The “ Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy ” which he published in the Anekdota were a revelation for Marx also.

In later years Engels dated the great influence which Feuerbach exercised on Marx’s intellectual development from The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach’s most famous work, which was published in 1841. Referring to “ the liberating effect ” of this book Engels declared that one must have read it in order to realize its effect : “ The enthusiasm was general and we were all followers of Feuerbach immediately ”. However, Marx’s writings for the Rheinische Zeitung reveal no trace of Feuerbach’s influence, and although Marx did, in fact, “ enthusiastically welcome ” the new ideas, whilst making one or two critical reservations, this was not until February 1844, when the Deutsch- Franzosische Jahrbiicher appeared and indicated even in its title a certain relation to Feuerbach’s ideas.

The ideas of the “ Preliminary Theses ” are already contained in germ in The Essence of Christianity and therefore the trick which Engels’ memory played him would seem to be of very little importance, but it is in reality not quite so unimportant because it tends to misrepresent the intellectual relations between Feuerbach and Marx. Feuerbach was only at ease in rural seclusion, but he was no less a fighter on that account. With

Galileo he regarded the town as a prison for speculative minds, whilst in the freedom of rural life the book of nature was open to the eyes of anyone with sufficient intelligence to read it. This was always Feuerbach’s defence against all the reproaches directed against him on account of the secluded life he led in Bruckberg. He loved rural seclusion, not in the sense of the old minatory maxim that he is fortunate who lives in obscurity, but because in seclusion he found the strength necessary to carry on the fight. It was the need of the thinker to compose his thoughts in peace away from the noise and bustle of the town which might have distracted him from the contemplation of nature which he regarded as the great source of all life and of all its secrets.

Despite the rural seclusion in which he lived, Feuerbach was in the forefront of the great struggles of his day. His contributions had given Ruge’s publications their point and trenchancy. In his Essence of Christianity he pointed out that man makes religion and not religion man, and that the higher being which man’s fantasy creates is nothing but the fantastic reflection of his own being. However, just at the time when this book was published Marx had turned his attention to the political struggle and it led him right into the hurly-burly of public life, as far as it was possible to speak of such a thing in Germany, and the weapons which Feuerbach had forged in his writings were not suited to such surroundings. The Hegelian philosophy had already proved itself incapable of solving the material problems which had arisen during Marx’s work on the Rheinische Zeitung, when the “ Preliminary Theses on the Reform of Philosophy ” appeared and gave Hegelian philosophy the coup de grace as the last refuge and the last rational prop of theology. The work, therefore, deeply impressed Marx, although he immediately made critical reservations.

Writing to Ruge on the 13th of March he declared : “ Feuerbach’s aphorisms are not to my liking in one point only, namely, that they concern themselves too much with nature and too little with politics, although an alliance with politics is the only way in which contemporary philosophy can become truth, but I suppose it will be the same as in the sixteenth century when the nature enthusiasts were faced with another set of State enthusiasts.” Marx’s objection was reasonable enough, for in his “Preliminary Theses” Feuerbach mentioned politics only once, and even then his attitude represented rather a retrogression from Hegel than an advance on him. The upshot was that Marx determined to examine Hegel’s philosophy of law and the State as thoroughly as Feuerbach had examined his philosophy of nature and religion.




Another passage in this letter to Ruge reveals how strongly Marx was under Feuerbach’s influence at the time. As soon As he had realized that he could not write under Prussian censorship and that the air of Prussia was altogether too oppressive, Marx had decided to leave Germany, but not without his future wife. On the 25 th ofJanuary he had written to Ruge inquiring whether it would be possible for him to find something to do on the Deutscher Bote which Herwegh intended to publish in Zurich. However, owing to his own expulsion from Zurich Herwegh had been unable to carry out his plan. Ruge had then made other proposals, including the joint editorship of the re-named Jahrbucher, suggesting that when his “ editorial purgatory ” in Cologne was at an end Marx should come to Leipzig to discuss “ the place of our resurrection ”.

In his letter of the I 3th of March Marx agreed in principle, but expressed his “ provisional opinion on our plan ” as follows : “ After the fall of Earis some proposed that the son of Napoleon should be made Regent, whilst others suggested Bernadotte as the ruler of France, whilst still others were in favour of Louis Philippe. But Talleyrand answered : either Louis XVIII or Napoleon. That would be a matter of principle, anything else would be intrigue. And I should call everything with the exception of Strassburg (and perhaps Switzerland) an intrigue and not a matter of principle. Voluminous books are not for the people and the best we can do is to issue a monthly. Even if the Deutsche Jahrbucher was permitted to appear again the utmost we could manage would be a feeble imitation of the late lamented and that is not enough to-day. The Deutsch- Franzosische Jahrbucher, on the other hand, that would be a matter of principle, an event of consequence, an undertaking to inspire enthusiasm.”

In this letter one can hear the echo of Feuerbach’s “ Preliminary Theses ” in which he declares that a real philosophy in harmony with life and humanity must be of Gallo-Germanic origin. The heart must be French and the head German. The head must reform and the heart revolutionize. Only where there was movement, emotion, passion, blood and feeling could there be any spirit. Only the spirit ofLeibniz with his sanguinary materialist-idealist principle had rescued the Germans from their pedantry and scholasticism.

Replying to Marx’s letter on the 19th of March Ruge declared himself in complete agreement with the “ Gallo-Germanic principle ”, but the settlement of the business side of the arrangements took up a few further months.

6. 
   Marriage and Banishment
   

During the lively years of his first public struggles Marx also had to contend with a number of domestic difficulties. He always referred to them unwillingly and only when unpleasant necessity compelled him to. In direct contrast with the pitiful lot of the Philistine who can forget God and the world in his own petty -troubles, it had been given to Marx to raise himself above his bitterest troubles in “ the great affairs of mankind ”. Unfortunately his life offered him all too frequent opportunity for exercising this power.

We find his attitude to such matters expressed in a very characteristic fashion in the first utterance concerning his “ paltry private affairs ” which has come down to us. Writing to Ruge on the 9th of July 1842 to excuse himself for not having sent in the contributions he had promised for the Anekdota he mentions a number of difficulties and then declares : “ The remaining time was wasted and upset by the most unpleasant family controversies. Although quite weH off, my family has put difficulties in my way which have temporarily placed me in most embarrassing circumstances. I cannot possibly bother you with a description of these paltry private affairs and it is really fortunate that the state of our public affairs makes it impossible for any man of character to let his private troubles irritate him.” This is one of the many indications of that unusual strength of character which has always enraged the Philistines with their “ irritability in matters private ” against the “ heartless ” Marx.

No details have become known about these “ most unpleasant family controversies ”, and Marx referred to them again only on one occasion and even then only very generally when the Deutsch- Franzosische Jahrbiicher was about to be launched. Writing to Ruge he declared that as soon as their plans had taken on a more definite form he would go to Kreuznach, where the mother of his future wife had gone to live after the death of her husband, get married there and spend some time in the house of his mother- in-law “ because we must have a certain amount of material ready before we start work. ... I can assure you without any romanticism that I am head over heels and in all seriousness in love. We have been engaged now for over seven years and my future wife has had to fight hard struggles on my behalf partly against her pious aristocratic relatives who regard their ‘ Father in Heaven ’ and the government in Berlin as equal objects of veneration, and partly against my own family in which a number of parsonical individuals and other enemies of mine have got a hold, and these struggles have almost undermined her health.




For years, therefore, my future wife and I have been compelled to engage in unnecessary and exhausting conflicts, more so in fact than many people three times our age who are always talking about their ‘ experience of life ’.” Apart from these rather vague indications we know nothing of the difficulties of the engagement period.

Not without trouble, but comparatively quickly, the arrangements for the issue of the new publication were made without Marx having to go to Leipzig. Mter Ruge, who was well-to-do, had declared himself ready to put up 6,000 thaler 1 as a shareholder in the Literarisches Kontor, Frobel agreed to undertake the publishing. Marx was promised a salary of 500 thaler as editor and with these prospects he married his Jenny on the 19th of June 1843.

It still remained to decide where the Deutsch-Franzijsische Jahrhiicher should be pu blished, and the choice was between Brussels, Paris and Strassburg. The young pair would have preferred the Alsatian capital, but finally the decision was taken in favour of Paris after both Ruge and Frobel had visited Paris and Brussels and made various inquiries. In Brussels the press had more elbow room than in Paris with its provision for the deposit of securities and its September laws, but the French capital was in closer touch with German life, and Ruge wrote encouragingly that with 3,000 francs or perhaps a little more Marx would be able to live quite comfortably there.

In accordance with his plans Marx spent the first few months of his married life in the house of his mother-in-law, and in November he moved his young household to Paris. The last documentary evidence of his early life in Germany is a letter written to Feuerbach on the 23rd of October 1843 asking him for a contribution to the first issue of the new Jahrhiicher, preferably a criticism of Schelling : “ I feel myself almost justified in

assuming from your introduction to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity that you have something in store for this windbag. That would be a fine debut, don’t you think ? How cleverly Herr Schelling has succeeded in deceiving the French : first the feeble and eclectic Cousin, and later on even the brilliant Leroux. Pierre Leroux and his associates still regard Schelling as the man who put reasonable realism in the place of transcendental idealism, ideas offlesh and blood in the place of abstract ideas, world philosophy in the place of formal philosophy. . . . You would therefore render our publication a great service and the cause of truth a still greater one if you gave us a characterization of Schelling for our first issue. You are just the man for the

¹ Thaler: a three-mark piece.-Tr.




job because you are the exact opposite of Schelling. As far as Schelling is concerned the honest ideas of his youth—we are entitled to believe the best of our opponents—for whose realization he had no other means but imagination, no other energy but vanity, no other motive force but opium, no other organ but the irritability of an effeminate receptive capacity, have never been anything more than a fantastic youthful dream, but in you they have become truth, reality and manly gravity. ... I regard you therefore as the necessary and natural opponent of Schelling, appointed by the twin powers of nature and history.” How amiable is the tone of this letter and at the same time how delighted is its author at the prospect of a great struggle !

But Feuerbach hesitated. He had already praised the venture to Ruge and then refused to assist it. Even an appeal to his “ Gallo-Germanic principle ” had not moved him. It had been his writings which had chiefly aroused the ire of the authorities and caused them to bludgeon out of existence what still remained of philosophic freedom in Germany, thus compelling the philosophical opposition to leave the country unless it was prepared to capitulate miserably.

Feuerbach himself was not the man to capitulate, but at the same time he was unable to summon up sufficient courage to plunge into the breakers which surged around the dead land of Germany. Feuerbach’s reply to the fiery words with which Marx sought to win him was friendly and interested, but it was nevertheless a refusal. It was a black day in his life and from then on his isolation gradually became an intellectual one also.


CHAPTER THREE: EXILE IN PARIS

1. 
   The Deutsch-FranzOsische Jahrbiicher
   

The new publication was not born under a lucky star. A double volume was published at the end of February 1844. It was the first number and also the last.

It proved impossible to realize the “ Gallo-Germanic Principle ”, or, as Ruge had renamed it, “ the intellectual alliance between France and Germany ”. The “ political principle of France ” showed no eagerness to accept Germany’s contribution, the “ logical acumen ” of Hegelian philosophy, which was to serve it as a sure compass in the metaphysical regions in which Ruge saw the French drifting at the mercy of wind and wave.

Ruge intended to approach first Lamartine, Lamennais, Louis Blanc, Leroux and Proudhon, but even this preliminary list was mixed enough in all conscience. Only Leroux and Proudhon had any idea of German philosophy, and of these two one lived in the provinces whilst the other had temporarily abandoned writing in order to rack his brains over the invention of a linotype machine. The others, including even Louis Blanc, who regarded anarchism in politics as a development from atheism in philosophy, all refused to co-operate, advancing this or that religious objection.

On the other hand, however, the new publication collected an imposing array of German contributors : apart from the editors themselves there were Heine, Herwegh and Johann Jacoby, all names of the first magnitude, whilst in the second rank, Moses Hess and a young lawyer from the Palatinate named F. C. Bernays were men of consequence, not to mention the youngest contributor of all, Friedrich Engels, who, after various excursions into the field of authorship, now appeared in the arena for the first time in full armour and with raised visor. But even this German band was mixed. Some of them understood little of Hegelian philosophy and still less of its “ logical acumen ”, and, above all, disagreement between the two editors themselves soon arose and rendered further co-operation impossible. The double number, which was to prove its one and only issue, opened with “ Correspondence ” between Marx,

58




Ruge, Feuerbach and Bakunin, a young Russian who had attached himself to Ruge in Dresden and written a much- discussed contribution to the Deutsche Jahrbiicher. This “ Correspondence ” consists of eight letters, each signed with the initials of its author, and showing us that three each were written by Marx and Ruge, and one each by Bakunin and Feuerbach. At a later date Ruge declared that the “ Correspondence ” was his work, though he had “ used extracts from real letters here and there ”. It is included in his collected works, but it is interesting to note that serious mutilations have been made and that the final letter, which is signed with the initials of Marx and contains the real point of the whole correspondence, has been suppressed. The contents of the letters leave no doubt that they are really the work of the authors whose initials they bear, and as far as they represent a uniform composition Marx plays the first fiddle in the concert, but it is not necessary to deny that Ruge mayhave tinkered with his own letters and those ofBakunin and Feuerbach.

Marx opened and closed the correspondence. His introduction is like a short and spirited fanfare. The romanticist reaction was leading to revolution. The State was much too serious a matter to be degraded to the level of a harlequinade. A shipload of fools might drift before the wind for quite a time before anything happened, but it would finally meet its doom just because the fools refused to believe it. Whereupon Ruge answered with a long jeremiad on the inexhaustible and sheeplike patience of the German Philistine. His contribution was “ plaintive and hopeless ” as he afterwards declared himself, or, as Mai"x replied immediately and more politely : “ Your letter is a good elegy, a breath-robbing dirge, but it is not in the least political.” If the world was the property of the Philistines then it was worth while studying these Lords of the World, although the Philistine was the Lord of the World only because, like the worms in a corpse, he filled the world with his society. So long as the Philistine was the material basis of the monarchy, the monarch himself could never be more than King of the Philistines. More wideawake and alive than his father, the new King of Prussia had attempted to dissolve the Philistine State on its own ground, but so long as the Philistines remained Philistines he would be able to make neither himself nor his subjects really free men. Thus the old petrified servile and slave State had returned, but even in this desperate situation there was new hope. Marx then pointed to the incompetence of the masters and the inertia of their servants and subjects, who let everything come and go as God pleased, and both things together were sufficient to bring about a catastrophe. He pointed to the enemies of Philistinism,

all thinking and suffering men, who had come to an understanding. He pointed even to the perpetuation of the old servile system, which recruited new fighters every day in the cause of a newer humanity ; whilst the system of profits and trading, of property and the exploitation of humanity, was leading even more rapidly to a split within society, a split which the old system would be unable to repair because it did not heal and create, but only exist and enjoy. The task was therefore to drag the old world into the full light of day, and to develop the new world in a positive fashion.

Both Bakunin and Feuerbach wrote to Ruge encouragingly, each in his own way, whereupon the latter declared that he had been converted by “ the new Anarchasis and the new philosophers ”. Feuerbach compared the end of the Deutsche Jahrbiicher with the end of Poland, declaring that the efforts of a few men must prove ineffective in the general quagmire of a rotten society, and Ruge then wrote to 11arx : “ As the Catholic faith and aristocratic freedom failed to save Poland, so theological philosophy and respectable science failed to save us. We can continue our career only by making a decisive breach with them. The Jahrbucher are dead and Hegelian philosophy belongs to the past. Let us strive for an organ in Paris in which we can criticize ourselves and Germany as a whole with complete freedom and relentless honesty.”

Marx had the first word and he also had the last : Clearly, a new rallying-point must be created for thinking and independent brains. Although there was no doubt about the past, there was confusion enough about the future. “ General anarchy has broken out amongst the reformers, and all of them would be compelled to admit that they have no exact ideas about the future. However, it is just the great advantage of the new movement that we do not seek to anticipate the new world dogmatically, but rather to discover it in the criticism of the old. Up to now the philosophers have always had the solution of the riddle lying ready in their writing desks, and all the stupid exoteric world had to do was to close its eyes and open its mouth to receive the ready-baked cake of absolute science. Philosophy has secularized itself; and the most striking proof of this is that the philosophic consciousness itself has been drawn into the heat of the fray not only superficially, but thoroughly. It is certainly not our task to build up the future in advance and to- settle all problems for all time, but it is just as certainly our task to criticize the existing world ruthlessly. I mean ruthlessly in the sense that we must not be afraid of our own conclusions and equally unafraid of coming into conflict with the prevailing powers.”




Marx had no desire to unfurl any dogmatic standard, and communism as preached by Cabet, Dezamy and Weitling he regarded as a dogmatic abstraction. Whether one liked it or not, the chief interest of contemporary Germany was in religion and only secondarily in politics. It was no use presenting them with a ready-made system such as was contained in The Journey to fcaria,¹ one must begin with them just as they were.

Marx condemned the attitude of the “ crass socialists ” who felt that political questions were beneath their dignity. Social truth could be arrived at everywhere from the contradiction in the political State, from the conflict between its ideal mission and its practical hypothesis. “ There is therefore nothing to prevent us beginning our criticism with a criticism of politics, taking part in politics, that is to say, in real struggles. In this way we should avoid presenting ourselves to the world in a doctrinaire fashion and with a new principle, declaring : here is truth, bow down and worship it. We should develop new principles for the world out of its old principles. We must not say to the world : stop your quarrels, they are fbelish, and listen to us, for we possess the real truth. Instead we must show the world why it struggles, and this consciousness is a thing it must acquire whether it likes it or not.” Marx sums up the programme of the new organ as follows : to assist the age to come to a realization (critical philosophy) of its struggles and its wishes.

Marx came to this realization, but not Ruge. Even the “ correspondence ” shows that Marx was the driver and Ruge the driven. A supplementary factor was that after his arrival in Paris Ruge fell ill and was able to take very little part in the editorial work. He was thus unable to exercise his chief capacity to the full and Marx seemed to him to be “ too circumstantial ” for the purpose. He was unable to give the organ the form and the attitude which he considered the most suitable and he was even unable to publish a contribution of his own in it. However, he was not altogether displeased with the first issue, and he found “ some quite remarkable things in it which will create a sensation in Germany ”, although he complained that “ a number of unpolished things ” had been served up in a hurry and that he would have improved them. The undertaking would probably have continued to appear, but for the fact that a number of outside hindrances prevented it.

First of all, the funds of the Literarisches Kontor soon became exhausted and Frobel declared that he could not carry on without more money ; and, secondly, the Prussian government took ¹ Etienne Cabet's Utopia.—Tr.

action immediately after the first announcement of the publication of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher. It met with no particular sympathy from Metternich and still less from Guizot, and it had to content itself for the moment with informing the governors of all Prussian provinces that the Jahrbiicher represented high treason and lese-majeste, and this it did on the 18th April 1844. At the same time the governors were instructed to cause their police to arrest Ruge, Marx, Heine and Bernays with as little stir as possible and to confiscate their papers should they set foot on Prussian soil. As a hare must be caught before it can be jugged, this action was comparatively harmless, but the uneasy conscience of the King of Prussia became more dangerous when it caused him to instruct his subordinates to increase their vigilance at the frontiers. They succeeded in confiscating 100 copies of the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher on a Rhine steamer, and well over 200 copies on the French-Palatinate frontier near Bergzabern. In view of the very small circulation with which the publishers were entitled to reckon these were very grievous blows.

Where internal differences already exist they are readily embittered and accentuated by external difficulties. According to Ruge these circumstances accelerated his breach with Marx or even caused it, and there may be something in this because, whilst Marx always displayed a sovereign indifference in money matters, Ruge did just the contrary, displaying the suspicious avarice of a grocer. He did not hesitate to apply the truck system when paying out the salary agreed upon to Marx, presenting him with copies of the Jahrbucher in lieu of money, but he became really indignant at an alleged suggestion that he should risk his money in an attempt to proceed with the publication, pointing out that he had no knowledge of the book trade. In a similar situation Marx certainly risked his own money, but it is very unlikely that he proposed that Ruge should. Perhaps he advised Ruge not to throw down his arms at the first failure, and it is possible that Ruge, who had already been “ angered ” by a proposal that he should put up a few more francs to secure the publication of Weitling’s works, suspected this advice to be a dangerous attack on his pocket-book.

Further, Ruge himself indicates the real reason for the breach when he admits that the immediate occasion was a quarrel about Herwegh, whom he had called “ a rogue ”, though “ perhaps with rather too much emphasis ”, whilst Marx had stressed Herwegh’s “ great future ”. As a matter of fact, as far as Herwegh was concerned, Ruge was right ; the man had no “ great future ”, and the mode of life he was leading in Paris at the time would really seem to have been open to objection.




Even Heine condemned him sharply, whilst Ruge himself admits that Marx also was none too pleased with the man. In any case, the generous error of the “ bitter ” and “ malignant ” Marx did him more honour tHan the uncanny instinct of the “ honest and irreproachable ” Ruge did the latter, for Marx was concerned with the revolutionary poet whilst Ruge was thinking of petty-bourgeois morality.

This was the deeper significance of the insignificant incident which separated the two men for ever. The breach with Ruge did not possess the political significance of the later polemics with Bruno Bauer and Proudhon. As a revolutionary Marx had probably been annoyed with Ruge for a long time before the quarrel about Herwegh caused his bile to rise, even assuming that it all took place exactly as Ruge describes.

If one wishes to know Ruge from his best side one must read the memoirs which he published about twenty years later. The four volumes deal with his life up to the time when the Deutsche Jahrbiicher ceased publication, that is to say, throughout a period when Ruge was an irreproachable example of that literary advance-guard of schoolmasters and students who spoke on behalf of a bourgeoisie which lived on small business and great illusions. They contain a wealth of charming genre pictures from Ruge’s childhood spent on the lowlands of Rugen and Pomerania, and they give a description unique in German literature of the stirring times of the Burschehschaften and the Demagogue Hunt. Ruge’s misfortune was that his memoirs appeared at a time when the German bourgeoisie was beginning to abandon its great illusions in favour of big business, and so his memoirs went almost without notice, whilst Reuter’s Festungs- tid, a book incomparably inferior both historically and as literature, was received with storms of applause. Ruge had really been an active member of the Burschenschaften whereas Reuter had fallen in with them as a happy-go-lucky fellow who might just as easily have been anywhere else. However, the German bourgeoisie was already flirting with Prussian bayonets, and it much preferred Reuter’s “ golden humour ” and the jocular manner in which he treated the infamous mockery of justice committed in the days of the Demagogue Hunt, to the “ audacious humour ”, to quote Freiligrath’s appropriate words, with which Ruge described how his gaolers had failed to break his spirit and how he won inner-liberty during his imprisonment.

But even in the graphic descriptions of Ruge one feels keenly that pre-March liberalism was in the last resort nothing but Philistinism despite all its fine words, and that its spokesmen were Philistines and must remain so to the last. Ruge was the

most high-spirited of them al and within his ideological limits he fought bravely enough, but the same temperament made as defection al the easier when in Paris he came face to face with the great contradictions of modern life.

He had reconciled himself with socialism as the hobby of philosophic philanthropists, but the communism of the Paris artisans filled him with panic-stricken horror and Philistine fear, not so much for as personal safety as for his pocket-book. In the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher he had signed the death-warrant of Hegelian philosophy with a flourish, but before the year was out he had welcomed its most grotesque successor, the philosophy of Stirner, as a champion against communism, which he regarded as the most stupid of all stupidities, as the new Christianity preached by the simple, as a system whose realization would mean the degeneration of human society into a farmyard.

The breach between Ruge and Marx became irreparable.

2. 
   A Philosophic Perspective
   

The Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher was therefore a still-born child. Once it became clear that its editors could not work together permanently, then it mattered little when and how they separated ; in fact, an early breach was preferable to a later one. It was enough that Marx himself should have taken a great step forward along the path to a clear view of things.

He published two contributions in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher : an “ Introduction to a Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law ”, and a notice of two books which Bruno Bauer had published on the Jewish question. Despite the different matter with which these two contributions deal, they are very closely connected in ideological content. Later Marx summed up his criticism of the Hegelian philosophy of law in the declaration that the key to an understanding of historical development must be sought in society, which Hegel disdained, and not in the State, which he praised. In the second contribution he deals with this viewpoint in still greater detail than in the first.

From another angle the two contributions are related to each other as means and end. The first gives a philosophic outline of the proletarian class struggle, whilst the second gives a philosophic outline of socialist society. However, neither the one nor the other appeared like a bolt from the blue, and both




indicate the intellectual development of their author in a strictly logical order. The first contribution proceeded directly from Feuerbach, who had completed the criticism of religion, the hypothesis of all criticism, in its essentials : man makes religion, religion does not make man.

But, begins Marx, man is not an abstract being existing outside the world. Man is the world of men, the State, society, a world which has produced religion as an inverted world consciousness because it is an inverted world. The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion. Thus it becomes the task of history to establish the truth of contemporary reality after the supernality of truth has disappeared. The criticism of heaven thus turns into a criticism of earth, the criticism of religion into a criticism of law, the criticism of theology into a criticism of politics.

For Germany, however, this historical task can be performed only by philosophy. If one negatives the conditions in Germany in 1843 one finds oneself, according to French historical computation, hardly in the year 1789, still less in the focus of contemporary problems. If modern politico-social reality is to be subjected to criticism then criticism finds itself outside of German reality or it would fail to reach its real object. ^ an example of the fact that up to then German history had, like a clumsy recruit, only the task of performing the same old wearisome drill, Marx mentions “ one of the chief problems of modern times ”, the relation of industry, the relation of the world of wealth in general, to the political world.

This problem occupies the Germans in the form of protective tariffs, prohibitory duties, the system of national economy. The Germans are thus beginning where the English and the French are ending. The old and rotten conditions against which these latter countries are theoretically in rebellion and which they tolerate only as one tolerates chains, are being welcomed in Germany as the rising sun of a rosy future. Whilst in France and England the problem is “ political economy or the dominance ofsociety over wealth ”, in Germany it is “ national economy or the dominance of private property over nationality ”. In the one case it is a question of resolving the knot, and in the other one of first tying it.

Although they are not historical contemporaries of other nations, the Germans are philosophic contemporaries. The criticism of the German philosophy of law and the State, which has received its most logical form in the hands of Hegel, leads directly into the centre of these burning questions of the day.




Marx then clearly defines his attitude both to the two tendencies which had existed side by side in the Rheinische Zeitung and to Feuerbach. Feuerbach had thrown philosophy on to the scrap- heap, but if one wished to deal with really vital matters one must not forget, points out Marx, that up to the present the really vital life of the German people had flourished in its skull only. To “ the cotton barons and iron magnates ” he declares : you are quite right to demand the liquidation of philosophy, but you cannot liquidate it without first having realized it. And to his old friend Bruno Bauer and the latter’s followers he declares on the contrary : you are quite right to demand the realization of philosophy, but you cannot realize it without first having liquidated it.

The criticism of the philosophy of law resolves itself into tasks for which there is only one means of solution—practice. How can Germany raise itself to a practical level a la hauteur de principes, that is to say, to a revolution which will not only raise it to the level of the modern peoples, but to that human level which will be the immediate future of these peoples ? How can it jump with a salto mortale not only over its own limitations, but at the same time over the limitations of the modern peoples, limitations which it must in reality feel to be an emancipation from its own limitations, and which it must itself seek to attain ?

The weapon of criticism can certainly not supplant the criticism of weapons. Material force must be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it takes hold of the masses, and it does so immediately it becomes radical. However, a radical revolution needs a passive element, a material basis. Theory is realized in a people only in so far as it is the realization of its needs. It is not enough that the idea should press forward to realization, reality must urge itself to the idea. However, this would seem to be lacking in Germany where the various spheres of society are related not dramatically, but epically, where even the moral confidence of the middle class is based solely on the consciousness that it is the general representative of the Philistine mediocrity of all other classes, where each sphere of burgeois society suffers its defeat before it has celebrated its victory, and shows its narrow-mindedness before it has had a chance of showing its broad-mindedness, so that each class is involved in a struggle with the class below it before it can engage in a struggle with the class above it.

However, this does not prove that the radical revolution, general human emancipation, is impossible in Germany, but only that the merely political revolution, the revolution which would leave the pillars of the house standing, is impossible.

The preliminary conditions for such a political revolution are lacking in Germany : on the one hand a class which undertakes the general emancipation of society from its own particular situation, but only on condition that the whole of society finds itself in the same situation as this class, i.e. that it possesses, for instance, money or education, or can obtain them at its pleasure. And on the other hand a class in which all the defects of society are concentrated, a particular social sphere which is held responsible for the notorious crime of the whole of society, so that emancipation from this class appears as the general self-emancipation of society. The negative-general significance of the French aristocracy and the French clergy conditioned the positive-general significance of the immediately contiguous and opposing class, the bourgeoisie.

From the impossibility of a half-revolution Marx concludes the possibility of a radical revolution. Asking where this possibility exists, he answers : “ In the formation of a class with radical chains; a class of bourgeois society which is not a class of bourgeois society; a class which is the dissolution of all classes; a sphere of society which has a universal character as a result of its universal suffering; a sphere which demands no particular right, because no particular wrong has been done to it, but wrong as such; a sphere which can no longer appeal to a historical title, but to a human title only; a sphere which does not stand in a one-sided contradiction to the consequences, but in a general and all-round contradiction to the very hypotheses of the German State; and finally, a sphere which cannot emancipate itself without at the same time emancipating itself from all other spheres of society and thus emancipating all other spheres of society also ; a class which, in a word, represents the complete loss of humanity and can therefore win itself only through the complete re-winning of humanity. This dissolution of society is the proletariat.” This class began to develop in Germany as a result of the industrial movement which swept over the country, for it was formed not by poverty of natural origin, but poverty artificially produced, not by the mass of human beings mechanically oppressed by the weight of society, but by the mass of human beings resulting from the acute dissolution of society, and chiefly from the dissolution of the middle classes, although gradually and as a matter of course natural poverty and Christian-Germanic serfdom entered its ranks.

As philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy, and as soon as the lightning of thought has struck deep into the mass of the common people, the emancipation of the Germans




into human beings will take place. The emancipation of the German is the emancipation of man. .Philosophy cannot be realized without the liquidation of the proletariat; the proletariat cannot liquidate itself without realizing philosophy. When all the inner conditions have been fulfilled the day of German resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallic chanticleer.

Judged both by its form and its content, this article is in the front rank of all those youthful writings of Marx which have been preserved. A short sketch of the basic ideas contained in it cannot give even an approximate idea of the overflowing richness of thought which Marx disciplines in such an epigrammatic and concise form, and those German professors who found its style grotesque and its manner in appalling taste have thereby borne inglorious testimony against themselves. However, even Ruge found its “ epigrams ” “ too artificial ”. He criticized its “ formlessness and super-form ”, but discovered in it “ a critical talent developing into dialectic, but occasionally degenerating into arrogance ”. This is not unfair criticism, for the youthful Marx sometimes exulted in the mere swish of his sword through the air, though in action it proved sharp and heavy enough. Arrogance is the dowry of all talented youth.

However, the philosophic perspective into the future which this article opens up is still a far-off one. No one has proved more conclusively than the later Marx that no nation can spring with a salto mortale over the necessary stages of its historical development, but the shadowy perspectives he sketched in this article were not incorrect. In detail many things have come about differently, but on the whole they have come about as he prophesied. Both the history of the German bourgeoisie and that of the German proletariat are his vindication.

2. 
   On the Jewish Question
   

The second contribution which Marx published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher is not so arresting in its form, but in the power of critical analysis it displays it is almost superior. In this second contribution he examines the difference between human emancipation and political emancipation on the basis of two treatises on the Jewish question written by Bruno Bauer.

At that time the question had not sunk so deeply into the morass of anti-semitic and philo-semitic badgering. A class of

society which was increasing its power as one of the most prominent representatives of mercantile and loan capital was deprived of all civil rights on account of its religion, with the exception of those special privileges it enjoyed as a result of its usurious practices. The most famous representative of “ enlightened absolutism ”, the philosopher of Sans Souci, Frederick the Great, gave the world an edifying object-lesson by granting “ the liberty of Christian bankers ” to those moneyed Jews who assisted him in his coining forgeries and other doubtful financial operations, whilst tolerating the presence of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn within his territory not because the latter was a philosopher and strove to guide his “ nation ” into the intellectual life of Germany, but because he occupied the post of book-keeper to one of the privileged and moneyed Jews. His dismissal by his master would have deprived him of all righ ts.

With one or two exceptions, even the pioneers of the bourgeois enlightenment movement displayed no particular objection to the proscription of a whole section of the population merely on account of its religion. The Israelitic religion was repugnant to them because it was the prototype of religious intolerance from which Christianity had first learnt its “ human censoriousness ”, whilst on the other hand the Jews showed no interest whatever in the bourgeois enlightenment movement. The Jews were delighted when enlightened criticism took the Christian religion to task, for they had themselves always cursed it, but when the same criticism turned its attention to the Jewish religion they howled aloud as though humanity were being betrayed. The Jews demanded political emancipation for Judaism, but not in the sense of equal rights for all and with the intention of abandoning their own special position, but rather with the intention of consolidating that special position ; and all the time they were prepared to abandon liberal principles the moment they came into conflict with any specifically Jewish interest.

The criticism of religion conducted by the Young Hegelians naturally extended to the Jewish religion, which they regarded as a preliminary stage of Christianity. Feuerbach had analysed Judaism as the religion of egoism : “ The Jews have maintained their special peculiarities down to the present day. Their principle, their God, is the practical principle of the world—■ egoism in the form of religion. Egoism centres and concentrates man upon himself, but at the same time it limits his theoretical outlook because he is indifferent to everything which is not directly related to his own welfare.” Bruno Bauer said much the same thing, declaring that the Jews had crawled into




the nooks and crannies ofbourgeois society to exploit its uncertain elements like the Gods of Epicurus who lived in the interstices of the world where they were freed from certain labour. The religion of the Jews was animal cunning and trickery, and with it they satisfied their sensual needs. They had always opposed historical progress and in their hatred of all other peoples they had cut themselves off from the world and lived the most overweening and circumscribed life.

Feuerbach explained the character of the Jewish religion from the character of the Jew, whilst despite the thoroughness, daring and trenchancy of his treatises on the Jewish question, which earned high praise from Marx, Bauer saw the question exclusively through theological spectacles. Like the Christians, he declared, the Jews could win through to freedom only by overcoming their religion. Owing to its own religious character the Christian State was unable to emancipate the Jews, whilst at the same time the Jews could not be emancipated owing to their own religious character. Christians and Jews must cease to be Christians and Jews if they wished to be free. However, as Judaism as a religion had been superseded by Christianity, the Jew had a longer and more difficult path to traverse than the Christian before he could win freedom. In Bauer’s opinion the Jew must first take a course in Christianity and Hegelian philosophy before he could hope to emancipate himself.

At this point Marx intervened, declaring that it was not enough to ask who was to emancipate and who was to be emancipated. Criticism must go further and ask what kind of emancipation was in question, political emancipation or human emancipation. In certain States both Christians and Jews were completely emancipated politically without thereby being humanly emancipated. There must therefore be some difference between political emancipation and human emancipation.

The essence ofpolitical emancipation was the highly developed modern State and this State was also the fully developed Christian State, for the Christian-Germanic State, the State of privileges, was only the incomplete, the. still theological State as yet undeveloped in all its political clarity. However, the political State in the highest stages of its development did not demand the abc ndonment of Judaism by the Jews or the abandonment of religion in general by humanity as a whole. It had emancipated the Jews and its very character had compelled it to do so. Even where the State Constitution expressly declared the exercise of political rights to be completely independent of religious beliefs, the citizens of that State nevertheless refused to believe that a man without religion could be a decent man




and a good citizen. Thus the existence of religion was not in any way in contradiction to the full development of the State. The political emancipation of the Jew, of the Christian, of the religious man in general, was the emancipation of the State from Judaism, Christianity and religion in general. The State could free itself from a hindrance without the human being in the State really being free of that hindrance, and here lay the limit of political emancipation.

Marx then develops this idea still further. The State as a State negatived private property. The human being liquidated private property in a political fashion immediately he abolished the property qualification for active and passive franchise, as had been done in many of the North American States. The State liquidated differences in birth, social standing, education and occupation ini ts own way when it declared differences of birth, social standing, education and occupation to be unpolitical differences, and when, regardless of such differences, it declared every member of the body politic to be an equal participant in the sovereignty of the people. Nevertheless, the State permitted private property, education and occupation to operate in their own fashion and to make their own particular character felt, that is to say, as private property, education and occupation. Far from abolishing these actual differences, the existence of the State rather presupposed their existence. It regarded itself purely as a political State and made its universality felt in contradiction to these its constituent elements.

The fully developed political State was essentially the social life of humanity as opposed to its material life. All the hypotheses of this egoistic life remained in existence outside the State sphere in bourgeois society and as attributes of bourgeois society. The relation of the political State to its own hypotheses, whether they are material elements such as private property, or ideological elements such as religion, was the antagonism between public interests and private interests. The conflict in which the human being as the adherent of a particular religion found himself with his State citizenship and with other men as members of the community, reduced itself to the cleavage between the political State and bourgeois society.

Bourgeois society is the basis of the modern State as classical slavery was the basis of the classical State. The modern State recognized its origins with the proclamation of the general rights of man, whose enjoyment is as much open to the Jews as the exercise of political rights. The general rights of man recognize the egoistic bourgeois individual and the untrammelled movement of the intellectual and material elements which make up




the content of his life and the content of contemporary bourgeois life. They do not free man from religion, but give him religious freedom. They do not free him from property, but give him the freedom of property. They do not free him from the indignity of trading, but give him freedom to trade. The political revolution created bourgeois society by destroying the patchwork system of feudalism and all the corporations, guilds and associations which were so many expressions of the separation of the people from the commonwealth. It created the political State as the concern of all, as a real State.

Marx then sums up : ” Political emancipation is the reduction of man to a member of bourgeois society, the egoistic independent individual, on the one hand, and to a citizen of the State, a moral being, on the other. Only when the real, individual man takes back the abstract citizen of the State into himself and becomes a social being as an individual man in his empirical life, in his individual work and in his individual conditions, only when man recognizes and organizes hisforces propres as social forces and, therefore, no longer separates the social force from himself in the form of political force, only then will the emancipation of humanity be completed.”

The contention that the Christian as such was more capable of emancipation than the Jew, a contention which Bauer sought to prove from the Jewish religion, still remained to be examined. Marx proceeded from Feuerbach, who had explained the Jewish religion from the Jew and not the Jew from the Jewish religion, but he went beyond Feuerbach by revealing the special social element which reflects itself in the Jewish religion. What was the secular basis of Judaism ? Practical necessity, self-interest. What was the secular cult of the Jew ? Buying and selling. What was his secular God ? Money. ” Very well then : emancipation from buying and selling and from money, that is to say, from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society which abolished the necessary conditions for buying and selling, that is to say, the possibility of buying and selling, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would dissolve like stale fumes in the clear and vital atmosphere of society. On the other hand, when the Jew recognizes this, his practical character, as futile, and works for its abolition, then he is working from the basis ofhis own previous development for the emancipation ofhumanity itself and turns against the highest practical expression of human self-alienation.” Marx regards Judaism as a general, contemporary, anti-social element driven to its present height by historical development and the zealous co-operation of the


Jews themselves, a height at which it must necessarily dissolve its elf.

What Marx achieved with this treatise was a twofold gain. He went to the root basis of the connection between society and the State. The State was not, as Hegel imagined, the reality of the moral idea, absolute reason and the absolute aim in itself, and it had to content itself with the incomparably more modest task of presiding over the anarchy of bourgeois society which had enrolled it as watchman; the anarchy of the general struggle of man against man, and individual against individual ; the war of all individuals, separated from each other only by their individuality, against all; the general and unhindered movement of all the elementary forces released from their feudal fetters; actual slavery although the individual was apparently free and independent, mistaking the unhindered movement of his alienated elements such as property, industry and religion for his own freedom, whereas in reality it represented his complete enslavement and alienation from humanity.

And then Marx recognized that the religious questions of the day had no more than a social significance. He showed the development ofJudaism not in religious theory, but in industrial and commercial practice, which found a fantastic reflection in the Jewish religion. Practical Judaism is nothing but the fully developed Christian world. As bourgeois society is of a completely commercial Jewish character the Jew necessarily belongs to it and can claim political emancipation just as he can claim the general rights of man. However, the emancipation of humanity is a new organization of the social forces w make man the master of those sources which give him life. Thus in shadowy contours we observe an outline of socialist society beginning to form.

In the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher Marx is still ploughing the philosophic field, but in the furrows turned over by his critical ploughshare the first shoots of the materialist conception of history began to sprout, and under the warm sun of French civilization they soon began to flower.

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