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of 'civil society', that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.61
Marx then, in a famous and often quoted passage, summed up the 'guiding thread' of his subsequent studies of political economy. This summary contained four main points:
1.The sum total of relations of production - the way men organised their social production as well as the instruments they used - constituted the real basis of society on which there arose a legal and political superstructure and to which corresponded definite forms of social consciousness. Thus the way men produced their means of subsistence conditioned their whole social, political and intellectual life.
2.At a certain stage in their evolution the forces of production would develop beyond the relations of production and these would act as a fetter. Such a stage inaugurated a period of social revolution.
3.These productive forces had to develop to the fullest extent possible under the existing relations of production before the old social order would perish.
4.It was possible to pick out the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. There bourgeois relations of production were the last ones to create a divided society and with their end the pre-history of human society would be brought to a close.
Marx added a few more biographical details, described his views as 'the result of conscientious investigation lasting many years'62 and finished with a quotation from Dante against any intellectual compromise.
The most striking thing about the Critique of Political Economy itself - particularly after the alarms and excursions accompanying its writing - is how little substance it contains. Almost half the book consists of a critical exposition, with much quotation, of previous theorists on value and money. The rest is in two sections, the first on commodities and the second on money. Both were rewritten several years later in the first three chapters of Capital, the first section being expanded and the second condensed. The first section was the more important, but broke off after enunciating a few basic propositions. Marx began by defining a commodity as 'a means of existence in the broadest sense of the word'63 and, quoting Aristode, explained that a commodity had both a use-value and an exchange-value. The concept of use-value was not difficult but there was a problem as to how objects could be made equivalent to each other as exchange-values. The key to this problem was labour: 'Since the exchange-
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value of commodities, is in fact, nothing but a mutual relation of the exchange-value of individuals - labours which are similar and universal - nothing but a material expression of a specific form of labour, it is a tautology to say that labour is the only source of exchange-value and consequendy of wealth, insofar as the latter consists of exchange-values.'64 Marx left unanswered (for the moment) the key question that he himself formulated: 'How does production, based on the determination of exchange-value by labour-time only, lead to the result that the exchangevalue of labour is less than the exchange-value of its product?'6S In the second section, on money, Marx went on to investigate 'the particular commodity which . . . appears as the specially adopted expression of the exchange-value of all other commodities, the exchange-value of commodities as a particular exclusive commodity'66 - money; the second section was devoted to examining money as a measure of value and a medium of circulation, with sections on coins, symbols and precious metals. Marx investigated the process of commodities being turned into money to buy further commodities, but there was nothing on capital as such. In the long sections on the history of theories of value, money and circulation, Marx incorporated much of the material that he had collected for the third, 'historical' volume of his 'Economics' in the early 1850s.
In view of its extremely fragmentary nature, it is not surprising that the book had a poor reception. Liebknecht declared that he had never been so disappointed by a book before and even Engels told Marx that the synopsis that he had given him was 'a very abstract abstract'.67 The Preface was reprinted in Das Volk, a small-circulation newspaper for German workers in England that Marx was supporting with his own money, and the paper also carried a review by Engels, the main points in which had been dictated by Marx. These two pieces were reprinted in a few American newspapers, but this hardly justified Marx's euphoric claim to Lassalle that 'the first part has been thoroughly reviewed by the whole German press from New York to New Orleans'.68 In Germany itself, however, Marx admitted that he had 'expected attacks or criticisms, anything but complete ignoring'.69 And Jenny spoke of the 'silent, longnourished hopes for Karl's book which have all been destroyed by the German conspiracy of silence'.70 Marx had also entertained hopes for an English translation which he thought might make a coup if the book went well in Berlin. He wrote to Dana for an American edition and entered into negotiation with an English publisher, but nothing came of it - according to Marx owing to the late appearance of the German edition.
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Immediately after sending off the manuscript of the first part, Marx had set to work on the chapter on capital. Duncker declared himself willing to continue with the publication, but the whole project was engulfed by the enormous dimensions taken on by Marx's quarrel with Karl Vogt.71 This quarrel, which occupied Marx for eighteen months, is a striking example both of Marx's ability to expend tremendous labour on essentially trivial matters and also of his talent for vituperation. Vogt had been a leader of the left wing in the Frankfurt Assembly - though not left enough to avoid being attacked by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung - and on the dissolution of the Assembly he had emigrated to Switzerland where he taught geography at the University of Berne. He was the author of several works preaching a crude materialism and was a member of the Swiss Diet. On the outbreak of the Franco-Austrian War, which had been engineered by Bonaparte and Cavour to loosen Austria's hold on North Italy, Vogt started a paper in Switzerland whose main editorial line was that Germany would benefit from Austria's defeat and ought to support Bonaparte. In early May 1859 Marx was on the platform of an Urquhartite meeting to protest at the supposed Russian menace caused by the war. Also on the platform was Karl Blind who informed Marx that Vogt was being subsidised by Bonaparte, that he had attempted to bribe printers in Germany and London, and that he had recently been in secret conclave with Prince Jerome Bonaparte to forward the establishment of the Tsar's brother on the throne of Hungary.
Marx mentioned these accusations to Elard Biskamp, editor of Das Volk, who promptly printed them and even sent a copy to Vogt. Das Volk was the successor to a small paper edited by Edgar Bauer on behalf of the German Workers' Education Association which collapsed when Kinkel offered its printer a more lucrative contract to print his own paper. When asked by the Association to accept a commission to step into the breach, Marx informed Engels that he had replied that 'no one but ourselves had bestowed on us our position as representatives of the proletarian party; but this position had been countersigned by the exclusive and universal hatred accorded us by all factions and parties of the old world'.72 But in spite of his decision ten years previously to have nothing more to do with the Association, Marx let himself be persuaded to support the paper, pardy from compassion for the honest but incompetent Biskamp and partly from a desire to get at Kinkel. He refused at first to contribute direcdy to any paper he did not edit, but became increasingly involved, spent a lot of time and energy in organising support for the paper and,
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when it finally collapsed after little more than three months, had to meet the outstanding printer's bill himself in order to avoid a scandal.73
Thus Vogt had no difficulty in identifying Marx as the source of the attack on him and replied in kind in his own paper. The matter would have rested there had not Liebknecht discovered the galleys of an anonymous pamphlet repeating the accusations against Vogt which was being printed on the same press as Das Volk and had, according to the typesetter, been handed in by Blind whose handwriting he also claimed to have recognised in the proof corrections. Liebknecht sent off a copy to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the leading conservative papers, for which he was London correspondent. On publication, Vogt prosecuted the Augsburger, which turned to Liebknecht for justification, who turned to Marx, who turned to Blind. Blind, however, refused to admit authorship of the pamphlet. Vogt's case against the Augsburger was dismissed on a legal technicality, though the fact that the defence had been unable to substantiate the accusations constituted a moral victory for him. This victory was enhanced by the publication in the Augsburger of a statement by Blind denying authorship of the pamphlet and supporting this with statements from the printer and typesetter whom he had suborned. Marx managed to secure an affidavit from the typesetter to the effect that the pamphlet really was in Blind's handwriting, and threatened Blind with prosecution. This produced a declaration in the Daily Telegraph that a friend of Blind's family, named Schaible, had been the author of the pamphlet; and at least Marx was exonerated.
There, too, the matter might have rested had not Vogt produced a book entitled My Action against the Allgemeine Zeitung. This included all the proceedings and documents of the trial followed by a commentary that branded Marx as a forger and a blackmailer who lived off the contributions of the proletariat while only having respect for pure-bred aristocrats like his brother-in-law Ferdinand von Westphalen. The book sold all its first printing of 3000 copies and immediately went into a second edition. The Berlin National Zeitung published two long leading articles drawn from Vogt's assertions, the arrival of which in London towards the end of January i860 sent Marx into a panic. He tried to keep the news from Jenny but of course she found out and was in a 'truly shattering state'.74 Marx also quarrelled violently with Freiligrath with whom his relations had become increasingly strained: Freiligrath had refused to heed his warning not to participate in the Schiller festival organised by Kinkel in November 1859; and he had dissociated himself abruptly from Das Volk when Liebknecht had mistakenly alleged that he was one of its collaborators. Marx's rage boiled over when he was informed - again mistakenly - that Vogt's book reprinted letters from Freiligrath
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that showed his intimacy with Vogt. When Marx realised how mistaken he was, he wrote to Freiligrath one of his most attractive letters. He claimed that his struggle against Vogt was 'decisive for the historical vindication of the party and its subsequent position in Germany', and continued:
I tell you frankly that I cannot decide to let irrelevant misunderstandings lose me one of the few men whom I have loved as a friend in the eminent sense of the word. If I am guilty of anything towards you, I am willing to make amends. Nihil humani a me alienum puto. ...
We both know that each of us in his own way, putting aside all private interest and from the purest motives, has held aloft for years over the heads of the philistines the banner of the classe la plus laborieuse et la plus miserable-, and I would consider it a petty crime against history if we were to break up because of trifles that are all explainable as misunderstandings.75
Freiligrath accepted Marx's explanations, but replied: 'My nature, like the nature of any poet, needs freedom. The party is also a cage, and it is easier to sing outside it, even for the party, than inside it.'76 Marx was pleased with Freiligrath's reply: 'Your letter pleased me a lot, for I give my friendship to only a very few men, but then I hold fast to it. My friends of 1844 are still the same.' But he thought Freiligrath's interpretation of the party was much too narrow:
After the 'League' was dissolved in November 1852 on my proposition, I no longer belonged to any Society whether secret or public, nor do I; thus the party in this completely ephemeral sense ceased to exist for me eight years ago.. . thus I know nothing of the party, in the sense of your letter, since 1852. If you are a poet, then I am a critic and had more than enough with the experiences of 1849-1852. The 'League'... like a hundred other societies, was only an episode in the history of the part}' which grows everywhere spontaneously from the soil of modern society.77
Thus Marx and Freiligrath repaired their friendship; but it never became as intimate as previously and all contact between the families was broken off by Jenny who was, as Marx admitted, 'of an energetic nature'.78
Meanwhile Marx had begun a forlorn prosecution of the National Zeitung in Berlin and the Daily Telegraph in London, both dismissed for lack of evidence, and began to collect material for a refutation of Vogt. Vogt's attack, thought Marx, had been on a large scale and a large-scale reply was needed, a reply which Marx also saw as a revenge for the Cologne trial of 1853. In March he went to Manchester for six weeks to check the archives of the Communist League in Engels' possession as