Материал: Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

voluntarily into the purgatory of decrepit capitalist rule in order to arrive at the cloudy heaven of your Communist Credo? . . . You are not serious about the liberation of the oppressed. For you the misery of the worker, the hunger of the poor has only a scientific and doctrinaire interest. You are elevated above such miseries and merely shine down upon the parties as a learned sungod. You are not affected by what moves the heart of man. You have no belief in the cause that you pretend to represent. Yes, although every day you prune the revolution according to the pattern of accomplished facts, although you have a Communist Credo, you do not believe in the revolt of the working people whose rising flood is already beginning to prepare the downfall of capitalism; you do not believe in the permanence of the revolution, you do not even believe in the innate capacity for revolution. .. . And now that we, the revolutionary party, have realised that we can expect nothing from any class except our own, and thus our only task is to make the revolution permanent, now you recommend to us people who are known to be weaklings and nonentities.'2

the Association disapproved. Gottschalk returned to Cologne in the summer but died of cholera in September while coping with an epidemic in the poor quarters of the city.

It was not only Gottschalk who considered that Marx's policies were not radical enough. Moll and Schapper had never really approved of Marx's unilateral dissolution of the Communist League,73 and the branches outside Germany had continued to lead a (rather shadowy) existence. On his flight from Cologne in September Moll had settled in London and reinvigorated the group there. It was decided to re-establish the League on a wider basis: a new Central Committee comprising Moll, Heinrich Bauer and Eccarius was elected, and Schapper was invited to found a group in Cologne 'even without Marx's agreement'.74 Schapper called a meeting of selected persons to whom he suggested that, after the events of December 1848, the existence of the Communist League was once again a necessity. This meeting proved inconclusive and shortly afterwards Moll appeared in Cologne with the specific object of winning over Marx and Engels. A meeting was held on the premises of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung at which Marx resolutely opposed the idea. Firstly, he maintained that the relative freedom of speech and Press that still obtained rendered

- and this made the proposed League statutes more socialist than communist - and also since the statutes had a conspiratorial tendency.'75 T h e

meeting agreed to disagree and Moll continued his trip to other German towns but with little success.

Meanwhile pressure on the Neue Rheinische Zeitung mounted. Marx's paper - and Marx himself - came in for attention from the military as well as the civil authorities. On 2 March two N C O s called on Marx in his home to ask for the name of the author of an article reporting on the conviction of an officer for the illicit sale of army material. Marx described the encounter in a subsequent letter of complaint to the Cologne Commandant:

I answered the gendemen (1) that the article had nothing to do with me as it was an insertion in the non-editorial part of the paper; (2) that they could be provided with free space for a counterstatement; (3) that it was open to them to seek satisfaction in the courts. When the gentlemen pointed out that the whole of the Eighth Company felt itself slandered by the article, then I replied that only the signatures of the whole of the Eighth Company could convince me of the correctness of this statement which was, in any case, irrelevant. The N C O s then told me that if I did not name 'the man', if I did not 'hand him over', they could 'no longer hold their people back', and it would 'turn out badly'. I answered that the gentlemen's threats and intimidation would achieve absolutely nothing with me. They then left, muttering under their breath.76

Engels, in a much later letter, made it plain that it was not only Marx's bitter irony that made the soldiers leave so fast: 'Marx received them wearing a dressing gown in whose pocket he had placed an unloaded pistol with the handle showing. T h e sight of this was enough to make the N C O s stop asking for any further explanation. In spite of the sabre bayonets with which they were armed, they lost their self-possession and departed.'77 Engels also recounted later that many wondered

how we were able to conduct our business so unhampered in a Prussian fortress of the first rank in face of a garrison of 8000 men and right opposite the main guard post; but the eight bayonets and the 250 sharp cartridges in the editorial room and the red Jacobin hats of the typesetters made our building also look like a fortress to the officers and one that could not be taken by any mere surprise attack.78

But the days of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung were evidently numbered. One month before the end Marx took the most dramatic step of his year in Cologne: he broke the ties with the Democrats that he had, till then, been so eager to foster. On 15 April the Neue Rheinische Zeitung carried the brief announcement, signed by Marx, Schapper, Anneke, Becker and Wolff:

1 9 8 K A RL M A R X : A B I O G R A P H Y

We consider that the present organisation of Democratic Associations contains too many heterogeneous elements to allow of an activity profitable to the aims of the Cause. We are rather of the opinion that a closer connexion between workers' associations is preferable as their composition is homogeneous; therefore, as from today, we are resigning from the Rhineland Committee of Democratic Associations."

T h e reasons for Marx's decision were probably complex. T h e Demo - cratic Association had debated at length the question whether it should change its title to Democratic and Republican Association, but it had rejected the proposals and had in consequence been bitterly attacked by Anneke's Neue Kolnische Zeitung. Probably also the refounding of the Communist League and criticism from within the Workers' Association

'left turn' for some time: in March Wolff had started a series of articles on the misery of the Silesian peasantry and on 5 April Marx began to publish the lectures that he had given two years before to the German Workers' Association in Brussels on Wage Labour and Capital.80 T h e articles were prefaced with a reference to the reproach addressed to the paper 'from various quarters' o f ' n ot having presented the economic relations which constitute the material foundation of the present class struggle and national struggles'.81 Three days before Marx left the Democratic Association, the Cologne Workers' Association had invited all the Rhineland Workers' Associations to unite on a regional basis; on 16 April the General Assembly decided to cease co-operating with Democratic Associations in the Rhineland; and on 26 April the leaders of the Workers' Association summoned a Congress of the Workers' Associations of the Rhineland and Westphalia to meet in Cologne on 6 May. One of the tasks of this Congress was to be to elect delegates to attend the all-German Workers' Congress in Leipzig the following month. This Congress was called by the Verbriiderung (Brotherhood), the only national workers' organisation in Germany.82 This change of tactics further weakened the Cologne Workers' Association: a section of the members resigned and sent a letter to Gottschalk asking him to return, saying that recent policy

All this, however, happened in Marx's absence. For the past two months the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had been perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy. Immediately on resigning from the Democratic Association Marx went on a three-week trip through North-West Germany and Westphalia to collect money for the newspaper and also, no doubt, in view of the policies just adopted, to make contacts with workers' groups: he spent a

fortnight in a first-class hotel in Hamburg laying plans for further communist activity with Karl von Bruhn and Konrad Schramm, both members of the Communist League.84 While Marx was in Hamburg, revolution broke out in Germany for the last time for many years. T h e Frankfurt Assembly had at length drafted a Constitution, but the King was in a strong enough position to reject it and coined at this time the famous phrase: against Democrats the only remedy is soldiers. In early May street fighting broke out in Dresden and lasted for a week with such colourful figures as Bakunin and the young Richard Wagner behind the barricades. There were also shortlived revolts in the Ruhr, but it was only in Baden that there was any extensive insurgency.

to the police for his expulsion. T h e request had gone so far as Manteuffel, the Minister of the Interior, but was not immediately implemented as the civil authorities in Cologne thought it would be unduly provocative to expel Marx without any particular reason. By May, however, they felt strong enough to do just that: on his return to Cologne on 9 May Marx learnt that he was to be expelled; the authorities in Hamburg had already issued him with a passport valid for Paris only. On the sixteenth he received the order to leave Prussian soil within twenty-four hours 'because of his shameful violation of hospitality'.85 All the other editors of the Neue

Also on the first page was a message to the workers of Cologne from the editors which warned them against any attempt at a putsch in Cologne and finished: 'the last word of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung will always and everywhere be: emancipation of the working class'.87

Marx himself contributed a defiant article claiming - rather implausibly - that the paper had always been revolutionary and had made no attempt to conceal its views:

Of what use are your hypocritical phrases that strain after impossible subterfuges? We also are ruthless and we ask for no consideration from you. When our turn comes we will not excuse our terrorism. But royal terrorists, terrorists by the grace of God and the law are brutal, contemptible and vulgar in their practice, cowardly, secretive and double-faced in their theory, and in both respects entirely without honour.88

Twenty thousand copies of the 'Red Number' were sold and were soon changing hands at ten times the original price. It was even rumoured that some copies had been expensively framed, to serve as ikons.

Marx was left with the task of winding up the affairs of the paper. All the plant and machinery - which belonged to Marx personally - had to be sold to pay the various debts to shareholders, employees and contributors: Marx later claimed to have sunk 7000 thalers of his own money in the paper.89 The circulation of the paper at the time of its demise was almost 6000, but its growth had merely increased the expenses without a corresponding increase in revenue. Everything that remained, including incoming articles, Marx gave over to the Neue Kolnische Zeitung. This left them only Jenny's silver. This was packed in a suitcase lent by one of Marx's creditors and the whole family left Cologne on 19 May 1849 and went down the Rhine to Bingen where Jenny stayed with friends for a few days. Marx and Engels went on to Frankfurt where, assisted by Wilhelm Wolff, they met the leaders of the Left in the Frankfurt Assembly to persuade them to assume leadership of the revolutionary movement in South-West Germany by summoning the revolutionary forces to Frankfurt. Meanwhile Jenny arranged, with the help of Weydemeyer, to pawn her silver in Frankfurt. She then took the children to stay with her mother in Trier for a few days. She found her mother much changed: 'Straitened circumstances and old age have infiltrated into a soul that is otherwise so mild and loving the qualities of hardness and selfishness that deeply wound those near to her.' But she comforted herself with amusement at the provinciality of Trier and the confidence of Marx that 'all the pressures that we now feel are only the sign of an imminent and even more complete victory of our views'.90

When Marx and Engels could get no agreement from the Left in Frankfurt, they went south to Baden where they spent a week vainly urging the revolutionary leaders (who had established a provisional government) to march on Frankfurt. In Speyer Marx encountered Willich, still enthusiastic for campaigning, and in Kaiserslautern he met d'Ester who gave him a mandate on behalf of the Democratic Central Committee (of which Marx had recently been so severely critical) to liaise on their behalf with the Paris socialists. There was plainly no further role for