A World to Win

by Sven-Eric Liedman

  Before Marx and Engels went on to draw up the guidelines for their own view of history, they attached a warning that has all too seldom been noted. ‘These abstractions in themselves, divorced from real history, have no value whatsoever’, they stressed. It is only when grappling with putting the material into order – ‘whether a past epoch or a present’ – that the real difficulties begin. The general principles can only provide guidance before the actual work begins.59 Once again, we glimpse the implacable rigour that was so typical of Marx, which he observed both in himself and in others.

  There are four ‘abstractions’:

  1.People must create conditions for their material lives themselves: food and drink, clothing and housing;

  2.Once those have been satisfied, new needs are created that require new productive forces in a continuing spiral;

  3.People must procreate, and increasing production creates space for a growing population; and

  4.Production requires constantly increased collaboration between people, and this collaboration itself becomes a productive force.60

  It is not a question of any chronological order; these are simply four necessary conditions for the development of humanity. The point is that only according to these four conditions do we arrive at the fact that humans also have consciousness. The German philosophers’ favourite category, Spirit, is inseparable from matter from the very beginning. Spirit is also directly linked to language, without which no intellectual communication or development is possible. Consciousness, in other words, is a social product.

  The division of labour also influences people’s way of thinking, and this is the ultimate condition for a phenomenon that Marx had not previously spoken about: the class struggle. In every hitherto existing society, the ruling class has not only directed production, but has also been responsible for the ruling consciousness. What appears as normal and natural to think and believe in a society, in other words, agreed with what the ruling class thinks and believes.

  One sentence in the introduction deserves particular attention. As in the Manuscripts, it is said that in and through the division of labour, people feel like strangers in their work. This is what Marx called estrangement, or alienation. But now he wrote the word in quotation marks, and italicized it with the comment: ‘to use a term which will be comprehensible to the philosophers’.61

  How should this now be interpreted? It is clear that the authors were distancing themselves from a word that was so closely associated with the idea of the essence of humanity. But it was even more important to realize that the phenomenon itself that the word represents was equally as important and central as it had ever been in the Manuscripts.

  Larger parts of the text consist of a thorough history lesson on the Middle Ages and the beginning of the new era, with hurried associations with contemporary conditions. Trade and manufacture are dealt with in detail. It is a text that shows how important historical concreteness was, for Marx in particular. But we have no reason to dwell upon this.

  The German Ideology never came out in print during its authors’ lifetimes. They made many attempts to convince various publishers. The one who came closest to publishing it was Carl Friedrich Julius Leske, who lived in Darmstadt and who had already paid an advance for Marx’s outline of a book on economics and politics. Leske inquired about the work but received a response from Marx that he had postponed it and first completed ‘a polemical piece against German philosophy and German socialism up to the present’. This was necessary ‘in order to prepare the public for the viewpoint adopted in my Economy, which is diametrically opposed to German scholarship past and present’.62 Leske proved to be reluctant. The Prussian authorities were monitoring him scrupulously, and he therefore asked Marx to look for another publisher.

  Marx, and Engels in particular, made more attempts to find a publisher, but their efforts were in vain. Marx would soon be consumed by another writing project that he successfully brought to a close without going overboard. Engels was more stubborn in his attempt to convince publishers, but he too was forced to quit.

  More than a decade later, Marx noted that he and Engels had given up in the hunt for publishers. He added, with a gentle smile, that ‘we abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly, since we had achieved our main purpose – self-clarification’.63

  This was justified. With The German Ideology, both Marx and Engels had arrived at an understanding of the principles for what would later be called their materialist conception of history. But there is more to be said about the work – things that only become clear with posterity.

  The Hard Edges of Polemics

  Early on, Marx had shown himself to be argumentative. In his doctoral thesis, he vehemently attacked those who thought differently. The young journalist had a sharp pen, and in The Holy Family he was merciless against his former fellow Young Hegelians.

  But when he and Engels wrote The German Ideology, something new had come into both their lives. Engels was living a financially insecure life. He was dependent upon his father, despite the deep mutual discord. He was roaming between his home districts in Germany, Paris, and Brussels, with detours to Manchester. He had not been as at home as Marx in the French metropolis. He lived an erotically dissolute life that involved not only pleasure, but also hard emotional blows.

  For Marx, the situation was even more precarious. He had settled down in Paris, happy to live his life in the midst of what he saw both as a new intellectual home and a centre for political and cultural development in Europe. He had absorbed everything novel that met him there, with tireless energy. His financial situation was, as always, precarious, but he could greet tomorrow with the hopes of something better. Life with Jenny and their little daughter was full of causes for rejoicing.

  With the deportation, he was thrown off track. Everything in his life became even more limited, more shabby. He no longer had a large, multifarious social life, and he was forced to experience the complete degradation of the deportation. The passing quarrels between him and Engels certainly had their basis not only in sexual morals, but also in the fact that both were easily irritated in their new environment.

  But more important were the consequences that the disappointments had for Marx’s actions in both a political and theoretical context. He became even more polemical than before, and above all he attacked perceptions that had recently been his own with remarkable ardour. In Paris – in fact, even back in Bad Kreuznach – he had embraced most of what he saw as the revolutionary left with sympathy. Like many others at the time, he drew no sharp boundaries between socialism and communism.

  He regarded the workers and journeyman craftsmen who formulated their radical opinions in writing with particular warmth. Fully admiring, he dove into the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the former typesetter. He was even more effusive, as we have seen, in his initial assessments of tailor Wilhelm Weitling.

  One could perhaps talk about the uncritical enthusiasm that easily affects the learned academic when he has just become an enthusiastic socialist. Everything seems attractive; everything is promising. Gradually, his ability to discriminate sharpened and his assessments were marked by greater critical moderation.

  But one can also speak of the openness and tolerance that the feeling of progress and positive outlooks provide. Marx felt he was living and working in the right environment, and he received appreciation – and high expectations, in fact – from many quarters.

  But the happiness would be of short duration. He was hastily forced out from the centre to the periphery, where he had to construct his own, far more limited centre. In his letters and writings, he did not display the same enthusiasm as he had in Paris. His polemics often took on a tone of bitterness.

  His reckoning with Weitling was much discussed. Its objective basis was in actual, and important, differences of opinion. But the mercilessness in Marx’s attack was unexpected. Let us observe the background to this clash more closely. Marx and
Engels had created an International Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels.64 The committee was an attempt to link up the various centres of the still rather modest revolutionary movement: Paris and London, but also New York City and a few places in Germany and Switzerland. Most correspondents were German refugees or emigrants, who in their letters – conveyed through the well-developed postal system of the time – supplied the others with what was happening in their respective locations. Brussels would serve as a hub and Marx would be its dominant voice. The committee would thereby contribute to breaking his enforced isolation and make him as central as he had ever been in Paris. But something had changed in Marx’s attitude: he distinguished between friends and enemies in the radical left movement in a new, sharper way. Engels did likewise: likely they both egged each other on, even if Marx – as always – was the dominant party in their collaboration. Marx wrote the first preserved letter in the name of the committee, while Engels added a few brief lines, as did the third initiator, Belgian communist Philippe-Charles Gigot. (Gigot was part of Marx’s close circle of acquaintances in Brussels; by all appearances, he shared Marx’s opinions loyally.)65

  This first letter is an example of the newer, harder attitude. It was directed at Proudhon, in the context an important name in every respect. Marx encouraged him to become a hub in the work of the Correspondence Committee. In a special postscript, Marx warned Proudhon about Karl Grün, who was described as a charlatan who trafficked in modern ideas. The German Ideology indicates why Marx disliked Grün so intensely. Grün had not read the writings he had definite opinions on, and, in Marx’s eyes, such things were unforgivable.

  But the step from there to making the repudiation of Grün into a main question for the new committee was a large one. Grün was, of course, intellectually insignificant and, moreover, pretended to have knowledge he did not possess. But why brand him for that reason? Nor is the explanation sufficient that Grün, with his so-called ‘true socialism’, stood politically a good distance from Marx. Marx knew quite well that Proudhon did not agree with him either on crucial points, and it was still to Proudhon that he now turned.

  Proudhon’s response to the letter breathed surprise over Marx’s unforgiving attitude. Evidently, he did not recognize his friend from the many joint meetings in Paris. He said that he found the idea of a Correspondence Committee splendid. But he did not want to take part in it if it was to become a tool for a new dogmatism. Do not become a new Martin Luther! he exclaimed. Luther had settled accounts with all Catholic orthodoxy, but soon created his own. You, my dear philosopher, cannot make this classic German mistake again. Let us instead together give the world an example of scholarly tolerance and good polemics. We cannot become apostles for a new religion – ‘the religion of logic, the religion of reason’ – simply because we are among the leadership of a new movement.66

  That last remark is important. Proudhon saw both himself and Marx as leading figures. But he did not want to know about any joint excommunication of anyone who had to write in order to provide for his wife and children.

  Marx evidently drew the conclusion that he and Proudhon could no longer collaborate. He did not even respond to the letter. Or, rather, his response came in the form of a book that will be dealt with soon.

  The campaign against Grün continued. Now it was Engels who became the most active in the controversy. In contrast to Marx, he could work in Paris, where Grün was also staying, and where both socialism and communism had their natural centre.

  From Paris, Engels sent reports to the committee alongside private, franker letters to Marx.67 The campaign against Grün was a main issue there right from the beginning; nor did Weitling escape disparaging judgements. Grün was accused of plagiarism, and Weitling of having written his main work, Garantien, with the help of other, more knowledgeable persons. Even Hess was treated roughly in the correspondence, as was Feuerbach. In his private letters, Engels also described his erotic escapades with wonderful French women, and gave an account of new setbacks in his attempts to find a publisher for The German Ideology.

  The letters showed that Engels wanted to carry out a hard and merciless campaign just as much as Marx did. Even supporters could express concern over what they saw as unnecessary quarrelsomeness. Would it not have been better to concentrate on their opponents in common instead? What would they win in this ‘mutual causticness’, asked August Hermann Ewerbeck, one of Marx’s faithful correspondents.68

  But Marx and Engels had made up their minds. The Correspondence Committee would become an organization of struggle within the incipient workers’ movement, tasked with not only directing polemics outwards against the aristocracy and bourgeoisie but also inwards against socialists and communists of other opinions. Success in these ambitions was not a given. No unity prevailed within the groups now being linked together.

  One crucial issue concerned how communists and socialists should act in the event of a future revolution in Prussia and other German states. Marx had arrived at the conclusion that proletarians could not seize power before the bourgeoisie had first transformed the old feudal society the way it had done in England and France. In England, the transformation had started with the various revolutionary upheavals in the 1600s; in France, in 1789. The Germans had not yet managed to get that far, but were now ready. Only after that could the working class seize power. Until then, it was a question of supporting the struggle of the bourgeoisie. The first goal was to establish democracy with universal voting rights, and civil rights and freedoms.

  But there were many who held other interpretations. They saw the opportunity for a more rapid seizure of power. Their hopes were a child of the utopian 1840s, where Marx had recently felt at home. Some believed that the transition to an entirely new and just society would occur rather peacefully. The majority of the people would quite simply realize the superior advantages of a system in which opportunities in life were divided fairly, and they would therefore resolve to change the prevailing circumstances. Others propagandized for a violent revolution in which a smaller group would actively bring the masses along with it in a total transformation of society.

  Wilhelm Weitling was among the latter, and he held a strong position both in Paris and in London, where he was living in exile at the time. As we saw earlier, he laced his political theses with Christian messianism but that made him no less militant. He dreamed of assembling a large army with which he would liberate the oppressed in his old homeland.

  For these plans, he believed he could obtain a majority among the members of the Correspondence Committee, and it was with that intent that he set out for Brussels. The meeting was held on 11 May 1846, and became turbulent. We know about the course of events from an eyewitness description. The Russian Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov – who would later become known as one of Russia’s foremost literary critics – was a friend of Marx during their time in Brussels. Both shared an interest in economics, politics, and especially literature (Pushkin was one of Marx’s favourite writers, and in the 1850s Annenkov would become the first to publish a critical edition of Pushkin’s writings).

  According to Annenkov’s account, some of the committee’s members were seated around a small table.69 Marx took his place at one of the narrow ends ‘with a pen in his hand and his leonine head bent over a sheaf of paper’ while Engels, ‘tall and upright’, gave an introductory address. In the middle of the speech Marx interrupted him, sprung up from his seat and addressed himself directly to Weitling. ‘Tell us, Weitling – you who have raised such a racket in Germany with your preaching: on what basis do you justify your activity and what do you intend to base it on in the future?’ When Weitling answered in evasive terms, Marx struck his fist on the table with all his might and roared: ‘Ignorance has never helped anyone!’

  With that, the break was complete. Weitling was, of course, deeply offended by the attack. Here he, the former tailor, had been accused of ignorance by a man with a doctorate. A person claiming to be central to a movement ac
ting in the cause of the workers could not speak disparagingly to an autodidact. But the effusively positive evaluation of Weitling’s efforts a few years earlier had been replaced by an equally complete belittlement of his capacities.70 Naturally, it can also be said that Marx was essentially right. Weitling’s military plans were completely unrealistic. But this fact does not excuse the vehemence of Marx’s attack or his disparaging judgement.

  The Correspondence Committee’s meeting not only saw the quarrel between Marx and Weitling. It was also decided, entirely in the same spirit, that a strong condemnation would also be aimed at the Volks-Tribun (People’s Tribune) newspaper, published in New York for the rapidly growing German-language minority there. Only Weitling voted against the resolution; the other six members supported it (one of whom was Marx’s brother-in-law and former classmate Edgar von Westphalen). The editor of the paper, Hermann Kriege – who was a part of the committee – was ordered to publish a succession of articles Marx and Engels had written that were devastatingly critical of what Kriege himself had written. Kriege was part of the group of ‘true socialists’ who united the hope for a rapid transformation of society with a doctrine of love, more or less tinged with Christianity, that had a clear eschatological element: the End Times were near, and soon the Kingdom of Heaven would be realized on earth. The condemning articles were done in Marx’s usual polemical style that Engels also appropriated. Scornful quotes were mixed with powerful condemnations. Communism had become ‘love-sick’ in Volks-Tribun; the paper was blowing ‘metaphysical trumpetings’ and Kriege himself posed as a prophet and apostle of love. This device had been well honed since The Holy Family. Their opponent was depicted as a quasi-religious cheat who lacked all deeper insights into society and its development.71