Marx- A Complete Introduction

by Gill Hands

  The readership of the paper grew greatly under his editorship and it began to cause consternation in government circles. In January 1843, the paper and its editor were prosecuted for the article about the peasant’s firewood and the paper was closed down by order of the government in Berlin. The closure of the paper was largely due to the intervention of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, who had taken exception to an anti-Russian piece that had also appeared in the paper that January.

  Although Marx was now out of a job again he was not unhappy about it, because he had begun to realize he was feeling restricted by government policies, censorship and the need to placate officials. He saw that Bauer and his other old friends at the Doctor’s Club were intellectually isolated and too theoretical, spending far too much time on academic argument and the denunciation of religion. Marx wanted to do more. He wanted to be able to write freely and passionately about what he believed in. He knew that this would no longer be possible for him in Prussia and so in 1843 he moved to Paris.

  Marx moved to Paris as a married man, for he had finally taken Jenny as his wife after a seven-year engagement. Baron von Westphalen had eventually given his approval of the match but had died before the wedding. The happy couple married in June 1843 at Kreuznach, a fashionable spa town. Jenny’s half-brother Ferdinand was head of the family and showed his disapproval by not attending, but her younger brother Edgar attended, as did her mother who gave them a large sum of cash to set up home with. This was soon gone as they spent it on having a good time during their honeymoon, a Rhine cruise. They were also given a present of some old family silver that became very useful to them later in their marriage but possibly not in the way that Jenny’s mother had intended – it was often in the pawn shop!

  Even during his honeymoon Marx continued to write, working on The Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. This was not published until 1927 but in it we can see that Marx hoped for radical political change in German society through democratic means. At that time he had not formulated any theories of workers’ revolution.

  Paris was the revolutionary capital of Europe with a large population of refugees including thousands of expatriate Germans. Dissidents were drawn in by the reputation of past revolutions, even though France was once again under the rule of a monarchy. It was here that Marx came into contact with communist and revolutionary sects, with numerous members from all walks of life including artisans and workers.

  Marx had moved to Paris after persuasion from Arnold Ruge, his old friend from Berlin University. Ruge hoped that his family, Marx and Jenny and the German poet Heine and his wife, could live together in a communal way as a kind of experiment. Heine’s wife would have nothing to do with it and the experiment failed after only two weeks because Ruge and his wife could not tolerate Marx’s untidiness and his nocturnal writing. Marx and Jenny moved into their own apartment and their first child Jenny, also known as Jennychen, was born in May 1844.

  Marx was to be editor of a new paper that Ruge had set up, The German French Annals. Although this only ran for one issue because of censorship problems, it was an important part in the development of Marx’s thought processes because it was the first time that he had written something that was directed more at the worker than at intellectuals.

  It was in Paris that Marx really came face to face with working class people and it totally changed the way he thought about the possibilities of communism. It is important to remember that communism existed as a development from the ideals of the French Revolution before Marx wrote about it, but Marx and Engels were the first to popularize the term as founding members of the Communist League.

  As a student he wrote in theoretical and abstract terms; as a journalist he began writing about the practical problems of the poor and their struggle against private property but he was not really involved with them in any real sense. Finally, in Paris he began to meet with workers and to study political economists, such as Adam Smith. He began to think about society and the economy in materialist terms – real terms not abstract visions. He became convinced by the power of working men to change society during an uprising of Silesian weavers. This led to a huge argument with Ruge who wrote about the weavers’ rebellion in very critical terms. It ended their friendship and Marx’s connection to the Young Hegelians.

  Marx met many revolutionaries and liberal thinkers in Paris and he became very friendly with the anarchists Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, and with Heinrich Heine, the German poet.

  Case study: Anarchism

  The rise in anarchy in the nineteenth century developed from the aftermath of the French Revolution where conflict between rival political factions led to a reign of terror; thousands of people were executed, there was starvation and civil war. This led to the term anarchy being used to describe a state of political and social chaos, or disorganization, which is not intended in the original use of the word.

  There are many diverse strands within the philosophy of anarchism but at its core is the belief that the state does not need government and there is no justification for state authority. Some anarchists believe that all forms of social institutions such as private property, trade and even social traditions like marriage should be abolished.

  Many anarchists, following the revolutionary socialist ideals of early anarchists such as Mikhail Bakunin, argue that government is actually harmful to the individual and that anarchists should actively oppose authority through revolution. This was emphasized by revolutionary anarchist Johann Most in his doctrine of ‘propaganda of the deed’ which advocated revolutionary acts of terrorism as acts of propaganda.

  Others believe that the state will disappear through a peaceful evolution in society, as described by William Godwin in Political Justice, written in 1793. Godwin is acknowledged as one of the first writers on modern anarchism, although he did not use the word. The first person to call himself an anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property?, published in 1840.

  There is also division in anarchism between individualist anarchists who follow the ideals of philosophers including Max Stirner, who believe that the rights of the individual are paramount, and those who favour a decentralized society, based on mutual support and voluntary cooperation, as advocated by anarchist communist Peter Kropotkin. This ideal of a decentralized society is very similar to the ideals of the early communists as described in the Communist Manifesto.

  Although the Annals closed down they had a wide readership in Germany and among German exiles because Marx persuaded Heine to write some satirical socialist poems.

  Spotlight

  Heinrich Heine, 1797–1856, was one of the few friends that Marx did not later fall out with as he believed allowances should be made for poets. Marx told his daughter Eleanor that he did not believe poets should be judged by the standards that apply to other people, but he was also forever grateful because he believed Heine had saved the life of little Jennychen by plunging her into a cold bath when she had convulsions.

  The new influences Marx found in Paris led him to write the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1844. They were not published until 1932 but in these we can see him grasping towards some of his later theories on the materialist view of history and the role of the worker in capitalism. These theories are discussed in detail later in this book.

  Marx became acquainted with Friedrich Engels who was to become his life-long friend and co-writer. Their paths had crossed very briefly during Marx’s early journalistic career. Engels had a reputation as a radical journalist and young Hegelian and wanted to contribute to the Annals. He had written for the Rheinische Zeitung but at that time Marx had believed him to be too much of a theorist and distrusted his ideas. Since then Engels had gone to work in Manchester for his father’s firm and he saw the terrible poverty in the city and the Industrial Revolution at first hand. He had become involved with the Chartist movement (an early form of trade unionism) and his association with a factory girl, Mary Burns, who
became his mistress, meant that he visited slum areas that people from his class would not normally enter. The result of these experiences was The Condition of the Working Class in England, an amazing piece of writing that included shocking accounts of the lives of the poor. It had really impressed Marx and he was very pleased to meet with Engels again when he visited Paris in August 1844. They spent much of that time together, soon became firm friends and began collaborating on pieces of writing.

  Their first writing together was supposed to be a short critique of Bruno Bauer and his followers but it ended up as a 200-page booklet, most of it written by Marx. The Holy Family contained philosophy and literary criticism and defended the rights of workers, but really it was a bit of a rant by Marx attacking Bauer and his companions in the ‘Free’, as the Young Hegelians had become known.

  Marx was now a notorious figure in France as well as Germany and the French authorities became uneasy. It only took a little persuasion from the Prussian government for them to expel Marx from France in 1845. He moved to Brussels, where Engels soon followed him having given up his job. They worked together on The German Ideology, which was the first time the materialist theory of history was defined in a structured way. It was not published until after Marx’s death but he realized at the time that its main purpose had been to help him clarify his ideas.

  Marx and Engels became involved in the League of the Just, a revolutionary secret society with a large German membership. These expatriates were led by Wilhelm Weitling, a German tailor who agreed with Auguste Blanqui, the French extremist who believed in revolution. He thought that the majority of workers would not be won over to communism and a minority would have to seize power on their behalf. The League was banned in France and so the headquarters were based in London, where eventually a large split grew between those who believed the ideas of Weitling and those who believed that the workers could be won over gradually through education and that communism would evolve peacefully.

  By 1847 Marx and Engels were in control of the League and had turned it from a secret society into an open organization called The Communist League. At the second meeting of the League in December, Marx and Engels were asked to draw up the statutes of the League and write a statement of principles, or manifesto. The League already had a slogan ‘Working men of all countries, unite!’

  The Communist Manifesto

  The aim of the Communist League was to overthrow the old bourgeois society and Marx and Engels had to write some kind of document that would make their objectives clear. Unfortunately, Marx did not concentrate on the task straight away and it was only when he received a letter from the committee threatening ‘that measures would be taken against him’ if he didn’t deliver the goods that he got on with it. It was finally finished in February 1848 and opens with the words, ‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.’

  It is one of the earliest socialist writings and despite seeming dated and rather quaintly archaic in style it is still in print today and has some contemporary relevance. Although Marx had discussed the Manifesto with Engels and Engels had made several attempts at writing a version of it, the final document is almost entirely the work of Marx himself and it is here that Marxism can be seen in its embryonic form.

  The Communist Manifesto:

  • describes the capitalist system that existed at that time and explains how it came about

  • describes the proletariat and how it was created

  • examines the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie

  • puts forward the idea of revolution

  • explains how communism might work in practice.

  It ends with these famous words …

  ‘Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!’

  Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848, Chapter IV http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/ communist-manifesto/ch04.htm

  The Communist Manifesto is one of the most famous of all revolutionary texts and because it was written as an appeal to the workers it has the feel of propaganda. The ideas in it are discussed in much more detail throughout this book.

  Exile

  Marx had already been exiled from Germany and from France and now that the Communist Manifesto had been published the Belgian authorities began to look on him with suspicion. The year 1848 was exciting for Marx and Engels, for not long after the Manifesto was published revolutions and uprisings began in many European cities. King Louis Philippe abdicated in February 1848 as a result of the new unrest sweeping through France and a new French Republic was proclaimed. Could this be the start of the revolutions that Marx and Engels had hoped for?

  Prussian police spies had been watching Marx; in April 1847 the Prussian ambassador in Brussels had demanded the suppression of the journal he was editing and now that uprisings had begun the authorities wanted him out of the country.

  In March 1848, a decree signed by King Leopold I of Belgium ordered him out of the country, never to return. Marx was not particularly upset by this as he had already considered returning to life in France. The official who had signed the form ordering his expulsion from Paris was now dismissed and Marx had been invited back by an old socialist comrade, Ferdinand Flocon, who was now a member of the provisional government.

  Despite his willingness to leave, he was arrested on trumped-up charges of not having a proper passport and thrown into a prison cell. Although this was the official reason for his imprisonment, it is likely that it had more to do with his funding of dissident Germans working in Belgium. Some of the money ended up being used for buying guns, knives and other weapons – no wonder the authorities were nervous. Jenny Marx was also imprisoned under very wide-reaching vagrancy laws and although both of them were acquitted by a jury the next day, they were given only a few hours to leave the country. They had to quickly sell all their possessions before being taken to the French border under police escort.

  Marx arrived in Paris on 5 March and he and Engels, inspired by the French example, soon began working towards a German revolution. They amended the Communist Manifesto into The Demands of the Communist Party in Germany and distributed it as far as they could.

  Marx realized that he really needed to be back in Germany in order to be more effective and so he decided to move back to Cologne. He still had contacts there and he hoped some of them would help in his new endeavour, a paper to be called New Rheinische Zeitung. When he arrived in Cologne he reported to the authorities and asked them to renew his Prussian citizenship but they refused. Engels returned to his family hoping that he could persuade them to finance this new venture but they did not.

  Scraping together money, including Marx’s family inheritance, they managed to publish the first issue in June 1848 and the paper soon had a large circulation. Some of this was due to the style of the paper, which was daring and often witty. In contrast to the other more dry and rambling philosophical German papers it was informative and came to the point. This did not go down well with the authorities as revolutionary uprisings were beginning throughout Germany and there were street fights in Berlin. A campaign of police harassment against the paper and its editors began. In October 1848 Engels left for Belgium where he was arrested and deported to France and the paper suspended publication for a few weeks.

  When Engels returned, he and Marx were put on trial for ‘insulting the public prosecutor’. No sooner did they get off this charge through Marx’s brilliant and witty defence, than Marx was re-arrested on charges of ‘incitement to revolt’ for encouraging people to resist paying taxes, using force if necessary. Again, he was acquitted. Because he had been acquitted twice Marx began to feel that he was above the law and he still continued to write articles that upset the authorities and became even more daring. This was too much and the authorities pounced on the paper in May 1848, closed it down and prosecuted the w
orkforce. All non-Prussians were to be deported and as Marx had not been able to get his citizenship renewed this included him. Everything was sold up, the family silver went into pawn and Marx and his family moved to Paris.

  Paris was now totally changed from the city that he had left only recently. There had been a royalist reaction to the revolution and all foreign revolutionaries were to be evicted. Marx had hardly arrived when armed police came to the door to banish him to a rural part of Brittany immediately; as Jenny was pregnant she was allowed another month to follow him. Marx did not wish to live in what he considered to be a swamp in the middle of nowhere. He could not go back to Germany or Belgium, he tried going to Switzerland but they wouldn’t give him a passport, so he got on the next ship to Dover, in England.

  Key ideas

  Anarchists Believers in the theory that society does not need government.

  Bourgeoisie The middle classes who developed capitalism and took power from the aristocrats.

  Communism A state where private property has been abolished, where people live in equality without classes or social divisions.