Материал: Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

edge which is a product of historical process will have associated itself consciously with it, ceased to be doctrinaire and become revolutionary.96

Proudhon was also deficient in his account of the division of labour which was not an economic category but a historical one; competition, equally, was above all an eighteenth-century product and no 'eternal' category; and landed property was no 'independent relation, a category apart, no abstract and eternal idea'. Finally Marx rejected Proudhon's view that strikes for higher wages were useless as their success only entailed a corresponding increase in prices. He dealt with this view in the last pages of his book which contained a sort of anarchist manifesto portraying the working class as essentially revolutionary:

An oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies necessarily the creation of a new society. For the oppressed class to be able to emancipate itself it is necessary that the existing productive powers and social relations should no longer be capable of existing side by side. Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary elements as a class presupposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be brought to fruition within the framework of the old society.

Does this mean that after the collapse of the old society there will be a new dominant class culminating in a new political power? No. The condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of every class, just as the condition for the liberation of the third estate, of the bourgeois order, was the abolition of all estates and all orders.

The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will be no more political power as such, since political power is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society.

Meanwhile the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class - a struggle which, carried to its highest expression, is a total revolution. Indeed, is it at all surprising that a society founded on the opposition of classes should culminate in brutal contradiction, the shock of body against body, as its final denouement?

Do not say that social movement excludes political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social. It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on the eve of every general restructuring of society, the last word of social science will always be: 'Le combat ou la

mort, la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant. C'est ainsi que la question est invinciblement pos£e.' George Sand.97

Marx's book contained the first published and systematic statement of the materialist conception of history and he himself recommended it as an introduction to Capital. It also demonstrated Marx's great talent as a pamphleteer - though Proudhon's book was certainly an easy target. However, in spite of its having been published in both Brussels and Paris, the total edition of 800 copies made little impression on Marx's contemporaries and he had to pay for the printing himself. Proudhon called the book 'a tissue of abuse, falsification and plagiarism'98 and its author 'the tape-worm of socialism'.99 He carefully annotated his own copy of The Poverty of Philosophy and probably intended to reply but was interrupted by family affairs and the 1848 revolution. Thus culminated the highly acrimonious debate between the two men.

Proudhon was only one of several Paris socialists that the Brussels Correspondence Committee sought to recruit. The others, however, were not much more fruitful. There was a brief exchange of letters with Louis Blanc; and Dr Ewerbeck, who espoused a sort of peaceful communist humanism based on Cabet's ideas, served as a rallying point for what remained of the League of the Just. Having persuaded the Marx family to spend a fortnight with him at Ostend, Engels himself went to Paris in August 1846. In the regular letters he sent back to the Brussels Correspondence Committee he reported on the progress of his propaganda among the German workers which he directed particularly against Griin and the disciples of Proudhon. Among the main craft unions in Paris, the tailors were still subject to the effect of Weitling's emotionally based communist propaganda (though he himself had left the city). Engels therefore attempted to recruit the remnants of the League of the Just (mostly members of joiners' unions) and instil into them some definite form of communism. By October he could report back to Brussels that his new recruits had now accepted a definition of communism comprising: a maintenance of the interests of the proletariat against those of the bourgeoisie; the abolition of private property; and, as a means, a violent democratic revolution. This ideological victory, however, was not of great moment for Engels continued in the same letter: 'The public in front of whom we played this face was composed of about twenty joiners. Apart from our meetings they organise discussions with all sorts of people in the outer boulevards, and outside their working association, they do not form any real group. .. .'I0° This letter showed Engels in a moment of uncharacteristic realism. In general it is clear that Engels was overoptimistic about the success of his propaganda. At the end of October the police intervened to stop even what small-scale activity existed and Engels

thought it more prudent to turn his attention to the conquest of as many girls of as many different nationalities as possible before he left Paris.

Correspondence with Germany was established on a fairly regular basis: there were periodic reports from Silesia inspired by Wilhelm Wolff, from Wuppertal where the painter Koettgen (a close friend of Hess) led a communist group, and from Kiel where Georg Weber, a doctor, led the movement. Marx, however, was impatient with Weydemeyer's failure in Westphalia to find a publisher for The German Ideology and relations became strained. The centre of communist activity was still Cologne. Hess was there for the second half of 1846 and declared himself 'to some extent reconciled to "the Party" ';101 he recognised the necessity of basing communism on historical and economic presuppositions and was waiting with great interest for the appearance of Marx's book; his break with Marx did not become final until early 1848. But Marx's ideas seem to have had very little impact there, although the group there was organised by Roland Daniels (a close friend of Marx) with the support of d'Ester and Burgers, and was very active in local politics.

The only letter that has survived from the Brussels communists to Germany is one to Koettgen written in June 1846. Marx, together with the other members of the committee, criticised 'illusions' about the efficacy of petitions to authorities - arguing that they could only carry weight 'when there is a strong and well-organised communist party in Germany - both elements being currently lacking'. Meanwhile the Wuppertal communists should act 'jesuitically' and support bourgeois demands for freedom of the Press, constitutional government, etc. Only later would specifically communist demands be possible: for the present 'it is necessary to support, in a single party, "everything" that helps the movement forward and not have any tiresome moral scruples about it."02

III. T H E F O U N D I N G O F T H E C O M M U N I S T L E A G U E

The most important result of the Correspondence Committee was to create close ties between Marx and Engels and the London communists who at that time were the largest and best-organised colony of German workers. Until the late 1830s the most important centre had been Paris where exiled German artisans had started in 1836 the League of the Just (a secret society with code names and passwords) which itself derived from an earlier League of Outlaws. Its original object was to introduce into Germany the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and very roughly half of its membership came from artisans and half from the professions. The League of the Just participated in the rising organised by Blanqui and

Barbes in 1839 and on its failure the majority of its members fled to London where they founded a flourishing branch.103 This in its turn created a 'front' organisation, the German Workers' Educational Union, which had almost 1000 members by the end of 1847 and survived until the First World War.

The League was led by a triumvirate of Karl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer and Joseph Moll. Schapper was a veteran communist from Nassau, the son of a poor country pastor. As a forestry student he had joined the Burschenschaft movement and had worked with both Buchner and Mazzini while Marx was still a schoolboy. According to one of his colleagues in the League Schapper was a revolutionary 'more through enthusiasm than theoretical knowledge'.104 Bauer was a shoemaker. Moll was a Cologne watchmaker, intellectually and diplomatically the most gifted of the three.105 The Union organised courses four evenings a week in the Red Lion public house near Piccadilly. A German economics professor, Bruno Hildebrand, has left an account of one of these evenings which is worth extensive quotation as it vividly conveys the atmosphere in which was born the Communist League (and also the German Workers' Educational Union, which remained peripheral to Marx's activities for many years). Hildebrand described an evening in April 1846 just at the time when Marx was beginning to establish regular contact with the London communists. He wrote:

We went to the meeting place of the Association about half past eight in an atmosphere of tension and impatience. The ground floor seemed to be a beer shop. Porter and other fine beers were on sale but I did not notice any seats for consumers. We went through this shop and up a staircase into a room furnished with tables and benches which could accommodate about 200 people. Twenty or so men were seated in little groups eating a very simple dinner or smoking one of the pipes of honour (of which there was one on each table) with their pot of beer in front of them. Others were still standing and the door was always opening to admit new arrivals. It was clear that the meeting would not begin for some time. The clothes were very proper, the behaviour had a simplicity that did not exclude dignity, but most of the faces were evidently those of workers. The main language was German, but we could also hear French and English. At the end of the room there was a grand piano with some music books on it - and this, in a London that was so unmusical, showed us that we had come to the right place. We had been scarcely noticed and sat down at a table opposite the door. While waiting for Schapper, the friend who had invited us, we ordered porter and the traditional little penny packet of tobacco. Soon we saw a man enter who was tall and strong, a picture of health. He had a black moustache, a clear and penetrating look and an imperious

B R U S S E L S

manner. He seemed to be about thirty-six. He was introduced to me as Schapper....

Schapper invited us to sit with him at the back of the room. On the way he showed me a poster with the heading, 'Statutes of the German Workers' Educational Union'. . . . The main principle of the Union is that men can only come to liberty and self-consciousness by cultivating their intellectual faculties. Consequently all the evening meetings are devoted to instruction. On one evening, English is taught, on another geography, on the third history, on the fourth, drawing and physics, on the fifth, singing, on the sixth, dancing, and on the seventh communist politics....

We sat in the places allotted to us; meanwhile the room had filled up completely. The president, who was unknown to me - I was told he was a doctor, opened the meeting. When a solemn silence had been established and everyone had taken his pipe from his mouth, the secretary (a working tailor whose descriptive talent seemed to me to be truly enviable) declared that Citizen Schapper had invited Citizen Hildebrand and Citizen Diefenbach and asked if anyone had an objection to make. Then we went on to current politics and Citizen Schapper delivered a report on the week's events. His speech was eloquent, very detailed and full of interest. It was evident that he and the Association had many sources of information.... Naturally a strong communist tendency was always plain and the proletariat was the constant theme and the one real thread running through the entire speech. I admit

that I can stand a good dose of liberalism, but certain passages made my hair stand on end... .106

At first the German communists in London had been under the influence of Cabet's peaceful Utopian communism, following the failure of their attempt at a putsch in Paris in alliance with the Blanquists. Cabet had also persuaded them to give up their conspiratorial methods - though they necessarily remained a secret society. But they rejected Cabet's proposal to found a communist colony in America. By that time Weitling's influence had become important. But his notions of immediate revolution soon alienated the majority of the London communists who began to be much influenced by their personal experience of Owenite schemes, by Chartism and by the tangible success of the British trade unions. Weitling held the view that 'mankind is either always ripe or it never will b e . . . .

Revolutions arise like storms and no one can chart their operations beforehand. . .. The intellect has only a poor role to play and without emotion can do nothing... the greatest deeds are accomplished by the emotions that move the masses.'107 Schapper's view, on the other hand, was that 'it is as easy to compel a tree to grow as to inculcate new ideas into mankind by force. Let us avoid physical violence: it is crude; and