Материал: Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

L 8 6 K A RL M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

the most heterogeneous elements' which by exchanging their ideas would have to evolve a suitable political programme.45

Although the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had achieved a circulation of around 5000 - which made it one of the largest in Germany - sharecapital was no longer available to it: it had therefore to rely on its subscriptions. During July difficulties increased. The printer refused any more credit and one issue was lost before another printer could be found. Marx himself had to appear twice before a magistrate and the premises of the paper were searched following an article by Marx protesting at the brutality of the police when they arrested Anneke. More seriously, the Cologne authorities refused Marx's request for Prussian citizenship, a decision maintained despite energetic protests from the Democratic Society and a personal letter from Marx to the Prussian Minister of the Interior. This meant that his position in Cologne remained precarious as at any time he could be expelled as a 'foreigner'.

IV. T H E W A T E R S H E D

At the end of August 1848 Marx decided on a trip to Berlin and Vienna to meet the Democratic leaders there and try to raise funds for the paper. He spent two days in Berlin where he saw his old friend Koppen, Bakunin and leaders of the Left - such as the energetic d'Ester who represented Cologne in the Prussian Assembly. In Vienna he spent almost two weeks. A few days before his arrival, there had been a bloody repression of the workers and the whole city was to pass under democratic control for a short period at the end of October. Marx took part in a meeting of the Democratic Club which, though agreed on demanding the resignation of the Government, were debating whether the demand should be made of the Emperor or of Parliament. Marx is reported as intervening testily to say that Emperor and Parliament were largely irrelevant here: 'the greatest power of all has been forgotten: the people. We must turn to the people and influence them with all the means at our disposal, through the press, placards and public meetings.'44 Marx also gave two lectures in the Workers' Association, one on the development of the workers' movements in Europe and the other a repeat of his Brussels talks on 'Wage-Labour and Capital'. On his return to Berlin he attended a meeting of the Prussian Assembly and succeeded in negotiating a gift of 2000 thalers from the Polish community who were impressed by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung's defence of their cause. Another 2000 thalers he managed to collect from other sources.

The Hansemann ministry, proving too recalcitrant for the Prussian

establishment, had fallen while Marx was in Berlin; the controversial armistice with Denmark also contributed to the general feeling of unrest throughout Germany. Marx hurried back to Cologne on 11 September to experience the most tempestuous month of that turbulent year. Relations in Cologne between the citizens and the soldiers (most of whom came from East Prussia) were tense in any event; and on 13 September, after a particularly brutal provocation and looting by the soldiers, Wolff and Burgers summoned a public meeting on Cologne's main square. Several thousands surrounded the tribune draped in a black, red and gold flag; the flysheet with the Seventeen Demands was distributed, and a Committee of Public Safety of thirty members was elected 'to represent those portions of the population not represented by the present authorities'.45 The Committee included Marx and most of the staff of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung; its five-man executive committee, of which Marx was not a member, was headed by Hermann Becker. The last act of the meeting was to send an Address, proposed by Engels, to the Prussian Assembly urging them to stand firm in the face of government pressure.

The Committee of Public Safety summoned a mass meeting at Worringen just outside Cologne for the following Sunday, 17 September, in order to support the Frankfurt Assembly against the Prussian Government over Denmark. It was also hoped that the choice of venue would help to draw into the revolutionary movement peasants and factory workers who lived in the villages. About 10,000 people arrived to hear a series of speeches in favour of a Social-Democratic Republic from, among others, 1 lenry Brisbane (editor of the New York Daily Tribune) and Lassalle (whose championship of Countess von Hatzfeld in a cause celebre had already provided him with a national reputation), representing the Diisseldorf radicals. On Engels' proposal a motion was carried that, if a conflict broke out between Prussia and the other German states, the participants 'would give life and limb for Germany'.46 The news had not yet arrived that the Frankfurt Assembly (which had not even been previously consulted) had reluctantly agreed to the armistice of Malmo that Prussia had signed with Denmark. This aroused nationwide protests, particularly from Democrats who considered that Prussia had merely dishonoured Germany and had rejected all aspirations towards national unity. Barricades were erected in Frankfurt and two conservative deputies were lynched. The momentum of protest in Cologne was continued on 20 September with a mass meeting called in support of the Frankfurt insurgents by the Democratic Society and the Workers' Association as well as the Committee of Public Safety. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung opened a subscription for them and their families.

But the movement had already passed its zenith: the Frankfurt uprising

K A R L M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

was suppressed and the King nominated General Pfuel to form an administration that could no longer be called liberal.

T h e second Congress of the Rhineland Democrats had been called for 25 September. But early in the morning of the same day, the authorities struck: Becker and Schapper were arrested and only the gathering of a hostile crowd gave Moll time to escape. Warrants were also issued for the arrest of Engels, Dronke, Wolff and Burgers, the charge in every case being conspiracy to overthrow the regime. Marx himself could not be prosecuted as he had taken no active part in the recent public meetings. A meeting of the Democratic Society that afternoon - which Marx attended - decided to do everything to avoid a confrontation with the soldiers. Marx wrote two weeks later:

The democrats told . .. the workers that under no circumstances did they want a putsch. At this moment, there was no burning question to bring the people as a whole into the struggle and every revolt must therefore fail; it was even more senseless since in a few days violent events could occur and we would have made ourselves incapable of fighting even before the day of decision.47

A few barricades were raised and although these were dismantled without

Guard was disbanded, all political organisations were forbidden, and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (together with three smaller newspapers) was suppressed.

Martial law lasted for a week: it was lifted on 3 October on orders from Berlin following pressure from the Cologne City Council and the Prussian Assembly. T h e Neue Rheinische Zeitung had been hard hit: Marx had planned to bring out the newspaper in Diisseldorf had martial law continued, but even so it was impossible to put an issue together before 13 October. Engels and Dronke had gone to Belgium, Wolff to Pfalz, and Marx and Weerth were the only editors left. T h e one fresh recruit was the poet Ferdinand Freiligrath. Marx had to contribute yet more of his own and Jenny's money to get the paper restarted and it became legally his own property.

When it did reappear, the paper was full of reports on Vienna: the city had fallen under the control of the Democrats on 6 October, and the Emperor had been forced to flee for a second time; he was reinstated at the end of the month by loyalist troops under Prince Windischgratz who had struck the first blow for the counter-revolution as early as June when he suppressed the rising of the Czechs in Prague. Austria set the example for Prussia: on 2 November General Pfuel was replaced by

C O L O G N E

Count Brandenburg, illegitimate son of Frederick William II and an energetic conservative, and on 9 November the Prussian Assembly was transferred to the small provincial town of Brandenburg. At first it refused to move and had to be hounded ignominiously from one hall to another; but finally it agreed, merely appealing to the people not to pay their taxes as a protest.

These events marked the definite end of any revolutionary prospect for Germany. In response to the new situation there was a sharp change in the content and editorial policies of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung: much less space was given to purely political questions and more to problems of direct concern to the working class; the notion of class struggle was much more to the fore and the whole tone became more radical. Owing to the depletion in the paper's staff Marx wrote more of the articles himself. He appears to have believed, for a moment at least, in the possible success of an armed uprising. On 1 November the paper carried an appeal, inserted independently of the editorial board, for arms and volunteers for Vienna. On 6 November Marx himself announced the fall of Vienna to a sombre meeting of the Workers' Association and laid the blame for Windischgratz's victory on 'the manifold treachery of the Viennese bourgeoisie'.48 He elaborated this accusation in the article, 'Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna', published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung on 7 November. T h e article ended:

Granted that the counter-revolution is alive throughout Europe thanks to weapons, it will die throughout Europe thanks to money. The destiny that will abolish victory is European bankruptcy, State bankruptcy. Bayonet tips break on economic 'points' like dry tinder. . . . The useless butcheries of the June and October days, the wearisome feast of victims since February and March, the cannibalism of the counter-revolution will itself convince the people that there is only one means to shorten, simplify and concentrate the death agony of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new, one means only - revolutionary terrorism.49

And when it seemed that the Civil Guard in Berlin might refuse to surrender their weapons and support the Assembly, Marx proclaimed: 'It is the duty of the Rhine Province to hasten to the aid of the Berlin National Assembly with men and arms.'50

On 18 November the Committee of Rhineland Democrats proclaimed a three-point programme signed by Marx, Schapper and Schneider. It was published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and led to Marx's subsequent prosecution. T h e programme consisted in: resistance to tax collection; the organisation of a popular levy 'for defence against the enemy' (and

for those without resources 'weapons and munitions are to be procured at the expense of the communes and through voluntary subscription'); and, thirdly, any refusal to obey the National Assembly was to be answered by the creation of Committees of Public Safety.51 A 'People's Committee' was set up in Cologne (Marx was not a member), but the feeble reactions of the Assembly precluded any recourse to arms and tax refusal was the only point in the programme that was implemented: from 19 November until mid-December the Neue Rheinische Zeitung carried the slogan 'No More Taxes' underneath its masthead and the paper devoted much space to reporting the progress of the campaign. Marx had already given the historical and economic background to this campaign a month earlier in a popular application of his materialist conceptions:

After God had created the world and Kings by the grace of God, He left smaller-scale industry to men. Weapons and Lieutenants' uniforms are made in a profane manner and the profane way of production cannot, like heavenly industry, create out of nothing. It needs raw materials, tools and wages, weighty things that are categorised under the modest term of 'production costs'. These production costs are offset for the state through taxes and taxes are offset through the nation's work. From the economic point of view, therefore, it remains an enigma how any King can give any people anything. The people must first make weapons and give them to the King in order to be able to receive them from the King. The King can only give what has already been given to him. This from the economic point of view. However, constitutional Kings arise at precisely those moments when people are beginning to understand the economic mystery. Thus the first beginnings of the fall of Kings by the grace of God have always been questions of taxes. So too in Prussia.52

In spite of its vigorous campaigning, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was getting more difficult to produce. At the end of October Marx wrote to Engels: 'I am up to my ears in work, and find it impossible to do anything detailed; moreover, the authorities do everything to steal my time.'53 Engels had wandered through France during the month of October compiling a delightful travel-diary in which his admiration for the way of life of the French peasants was mingled with disgust at their political ignorance. Once he arrived in Switzerland Marx kept him supplied with money - a strange reversal of their later roles. The 'stupid reactionary shareholders' had thought that economies would be possible now that the editorial board had shrunk. But Marx replied 'it is up to me to pay as high a fee as I wish and thus they will get no financial advantage'.54 He further admitted to his friend that: 'it was perhaps not wise to have advanced such a large sum for the paper, as I have 3 or 4 press prose-