A World to Win

by Sven-Eric Liedman

  Marx wrote his articles in a period when technology was developing rapidly in both the United States and Europe. Rotary presses, it is true, were not in practical use until the mid-1860s. But the telegraph was already playing a major role in the dissemination of news. It was already in use in Europe and in North America, and news thereby spread rapidly over an ever greater portion of both continents. The idea of an enormous Atlantic cable linking the United States and Great Britain had been raised back in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London, and a few years later Cyrus W. Field, an American as rich as he was enthusiastic, decided to invest much of his fortune into the project. Field was a paper mill owner, and the development of the press was economically important to him.

  In 1858, it seemed as if a connection had been successfully set up, and Queen Victoria sent a telegram to the American president James Buchanan praising God for the wonders of technology. But the cable soon fell quiet, and new attempts could not be made until after the American Civil War. A functional cable was laid only in 1865.33

  By then, Marx had stopped writing for the Daily Tribune. During his time as a contributor, his texts had to be shipped across the Atlantic by steamer. He always dated his articles, which is why it is easy to see that it took at least 14 days before they were published. The news served to readers on the East Coast was thus not completely fresh. But, by the standards of the time, the distribution of news across the ocean was still fast.

  Marx’s standpoint was from London, and it can be seen in everything he wrote. The British press, the British Parliament, and the British governments – in particular their prime ministers – remain at the centre of his reporting. The British workers’ movement was also important, as are strikes and lockouts in an industry that constantly swung between boom and bust.

  But the British outlook also guaranteed that the perspective would never be narrowly national. The Empire – as time went on, the biggest the world had ever seen – was under construction. India was subjected to British domination, and China was forced into a dependency through widespread opium addiction. Marx wrote so many articles on both countries that there are special collections of them. Marx on China thus constitutes a separate volume, as does Karl Marx on India.34

  Between 1853 and 1856, the Crimean War was raging, in which a coalition of France, Great Britain, and the Ottoman Empire defeated Russia. ‘The Turkish Question’ is of course a recurring theme in Marx’s articles. (Where purely military questions were concerned, Engels stepped in.) War and the risks of war were generally central themes in Marx’s reporting. The war between France and Austria in 1859 received its share of attention, but this applied even more to the American Civil War.

  Moreover, Marx provided many glimpses of what was happening in the German states, in France, in Denmark, and in several other European countries. His articles were often an audacious potpourri of various subjects. One article could have a headline such as ‘The Russian Humbug – Gladstone’s Failure – Sir Charles Wood’s East Indian Reforms’ and another ‘Advertisement Duty – Russian Movements – Denmark – The United States in Europe’. But sometimes he concentrated on one subject, for example ‘The Worker Question’.35

  His reporting could sometimes be rather impersonal, sequences of events and statements that could have been made from starting points entirely other than his own. In short, he appeared as a competent and objective news journalist. But the typical Marxist convictions often shine through, and he even more frequently sets what he talks about in the context that his theories and political programme represent. He knew that the New York Daily Tribune was a radical newspaper and that Charles Anderson Dana had recommended precisely him so that he would voice his unmistakable opinions about what was happening in the world. Marx would not otherwise have agreed to anything else; he had an unwavering courage de son opinion, the courage to stand for his opinion even in the most inconvenient context.

  A common feature in his articles, as with what he wrote previously and would write later, is the conviction that technological development drives humanity forward, despite the sacrifices it cost. He could recount how many horsepower were now driving British industry.36 Statistics, with their exact figures, filled him with evident satisfaction; with their help, one can measure the rapidity of development and its potential failings.

  The telegraph, with its increasingly rapid flow of information, found an admirer in him. He found the conservative The Times excessively ridiculous when it questioned the reliability of the ‘mendacious wire’ of the new era, so unlike the messages by letter or oral information of previous epochs.37 The Times otherwise was among the constant subjects of his venomous attacks, as was British conservatism on the whole. The same applies to the even more extravagant Prussian right wing. In one article, he mentioned his own brother-in-law with disapproval: ‘The Minister von Westphalen represents the ultra-Prussian aristocracy.’38

  The loathing for the Russia of the tsars was even greater and partially rubbed off onto his attitude towards Denmark. With a certain degree of Russian assistance, Denmark had gone to war with Prussia (which had just been shaken by revolution) and won a victory that was confirmed through the peace at Malmö in 1848. Marx returned several times to the deceitful little country. He does not spare a word for the fact that Denmark got its first constitution in 1849. On the other hand, he depicts with relish some reactionary critics of that constitution, including the famous Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig, who predicted the prompt downfall of the country when it so shamefully broke with its ancient tradition of royal absolutism.39

  While he castigated all conservative regimes, he expressed his admiration for Great Britain. This was the country where the revolution of modern society first took place. But it was admiration that flourished best at a distance. In an article on The Times’s denunciation of radical refugees, he quotes its assessment of his lot: ‘Their punishment is exile in its harshest form’, and wryly concurs, ‘As to the last point, The Times is right; England is a lovely country to live out of.’ With a sigh, he quoted Dante, another writer forced into unhappy exile: ‘How salt the bread of others.’40

  Despite the bitter taste, he welcomed every measure that hastened development into the modern age. This was the explanation for him expressing himself positively towards those who held the most immediately opposing views, the Manchester liberals with Bright and Cobden at their head. He supported them in their untiring battle against the British right wing. In Marx’s opinion, free trade expedited the classless society.

  At the same time, he observed bitterly that the same representatives of the Manchester School opposed every proposal for improving workers’ conditions. In fact, his tone against the party of the factory owners became even harsher, the more union questions came to dominate his reporting.

  The Workers and Their Opportunities

  In the 1850s and early 1860s, Marx’s own political activities were negligible. This did not mean that his interest in the great social questions or the situation and possible future of the working class had disappeared. It is only that he saw no other opportunities to influence the situation himself than through his pen. The liberation of the working class was and would remain the achievement of the working class itself.

  He could express himself strikingly optimistically, for example in an article on Chartism in the New York Daily Tribune, in which he asserted that the crucial step would be the implementation of general and equal voting rights. The working class would thus not win victory with barricades and live ammunition but thanks to its superior numerical strength. The British were generally not naturally suited for revolutions but rather for reforms, he pointed out. Through their reform work, the Manchester liberals undermined the power of the old landowners; they were therefore carrying out the necessary work for future social upheavals.

  In these memorable articles, Marx spoke about revolutions without any violence whatsoever. The political revolution would be carried out with the ballot box, and the social revol
ution would also take place through the increasingly crucial role of the workers in production. The article actually dealt with the Chartists, who Marx called ‘the politically active portion of the British working class’. If Chartism could be brought completely back to life and organized in a better way, it would perform great deeds on the ground it had prepared. Here, as in many later articles, he cites Ernest Jones, a Chartist leader himself with anything but a proletarian background – he had a distinguished ancestry and a good education – but an unwavering sympathy for the cause of the industrial workers. Jones had spent hard time in prison in 1848–49 when the authorities in Great Britain tried to prevent the troubles on the Continent from spreading across the English Channel, but during the 1850s he could again freely publish newspapers and give speeches.41

  Marx also expressed optimism and great delight at the plans for a special workers’ parliament. When it actually met in Manchester in March 1854, he did not mince words, characterizing the gathering as a decisive sign that a new epoch of world history was breaking.

  The background to the parliament was a wave of strikes that broke out in Great Britain in the early 1850s, which Marx carefully reported on in the Daily Tribune. The idea was raised that the workers had to join their forces in order to assert their demands against the capitalists with greater success. The optimists – to whom Ernest Jones also belonged – imagined that the union and the political struggles would be united as a result of such a parliament. It was with that expectation that Marx wrote about the event in the New York newspaper. In the initial article, he pointed out that the delegates did not sit by the grace of any state or other authority. They directly represented all branches of the British labour market. Their most important task was to organize the working class into a functioning unity.

  Marx could also proudly announce that ‘Dr Marx’ had unanimously been elected an honorary member of the parliament. It is true that he had to share the honour with Louis Blanc and Martin Nadaud, two French socialists who were not among his favourites. But he was flattered, he wrote in a letter to the parliament which was published in the Chartists’ The People’s Paper. The parliament had great tasks before it. Nowhere had the despotism of capitalism gone so far as in Great Britain. On the Continent, there were still large classes of farmers and craftsmen. In England, they were on the way to disappearing.

  But the working class in Great Britain was also the most competent. By creating modern large-scale industry, they had laid a firm foundation for another society. ‘The labouring classes have conquered nature; they have now to conquer man.’ Much of the letter turned up again in an article in the New York Daily Tribune. But in it he also reproduced a programme of action that had been drawn up by the committee that had taken the initiative for the parliament. The most important proposal was the creation of special funds that would help workers who were striking, locked out, or wrongfully terminated. Quite simply, it concerned an early version of strike funds.42

  From a trade union perspective, the parliament was a success. Politically, on the other hand, it was tantamount to a disappointment. Most of the delegates were not interested in a broad political coalition. They wanted to concentrate on the immediate issue: the right to struggle for working conditions and wages.

  Marx’s optimism over the development was not broken by this setback. He had faith in the inner dynamic of the development, seen for example in a speech that he held in 1856 for the fourth anniversary of the People’s Paper. The speech was reproduced in the same newspaper and expressed the confidence in the future that was so typical of him. Steam, electricity, and spinning machines were more dangerous revolutionaries than bourgeois rebels like Raspail and Blanqui. ‘In our days, everything seems to be pregnant with its contrary,’ he declared. Machines were replacing labour – and labour was still getting more burdensome and more tiring. Riches were creating destitution. Humanity was learning to master nature – but was being compelled to submit to other people. Even the light of science seemed able only to shine against the dark background of ignorance. All our successes meant that we were replacing material forces with intelligent life, but at the same time we were dulling human life. The contradiction between modern industry and science on the one hand and the misery and degeneration of social relations on the other was obvious. But circumstances would change. English workers were ‘the first-born sons of modern industry’ (sons, not daughters, despite the countless women who worked, above all in the cotton industry). It was their task to lead the great liberation that was at hand.

  The contrast between the sharply outlined description of the times and the vague promises of future development are striking.43 This example of eloquence, however, is rare in Marx’s newspaper articles from the 1850s and 1860s. More frequently, he wrote about the concrete conditions in the factories. He then had great use of the reports that factory inspectors, appointed by the British Parliament, published once every six months. He commented on the results in a series of articles. They tell us much about the ‘social anatomy’ of Great Britain and reveal how vampires feed on ‘the life-blood of the young working generation’, he declared in 1857. And it was actually a grotesque reality presented here, with death, mutilation, lost eyes, and horrible burns.

  The safety measures that the inspectors recommended roused the indignant protests of the factory owners. Their operations would not break even with such comprehensive regulations, they declared. They ardently conveyed this opinion through their representatives in Parliament. Ridiculous battles between landowners and manufacturers – combatants who, in Marx’s opinion, were united in their contempt for the people – took place there. But the moral bravery of the factory inspectors was worth all admiration, he said.44

  In a new report from the factory inspectors in 1860, Marx found particular interest in an account that one of the deputy inspectors gave of a pioneering operation in Rochdale. Rochdale is known to history as the actual birthplace of the consumers’ cooperative, in which the weavers joined together in a shop where they themselves were the owners through their shares, thereby having democratic influence over it. Posterity has found it easier to forget that producers’ cooperatives also gained a foothold there, and it is this audacious operation that deputy inspector Patrick (his first name is unknown) talked about. A cotton factory had been in operation since the end of the 1840s; it was owned cooperatively, and most of the owners were workers. Other similar industries had also grown up in the vicinity. Marx said that Patrick’s information is valuable, but at the same time expressed a fear that the operation would be swept away during the next industrial crisis. On the other hand, he avoided any deeper commentary. Did he not see the producers’ cooperative as an opportunity to strengthen the power and freedom of the workers? We cannot judge this from these statements.45

  Industrial workers not only had to live under constant risk of accident and endure unreasonably long working days. Pure destitution threatened them in times of crisis, and not only then. During booms, riches were created for the few and continued poverty for the many. On top of it all, workers – like other poor people – were threatened by the deteriorating quality of basic foodstuffs. Marx devoted special attention to bread, and he was not the only one to do so. Parliament became concerned over the hazardous, strange, or nutrient-poor additives that were mixed into foodstuffs in order to stretch them further and thereby increase the profits for the producers, and subjected them to the investigative gaze of socially critical scientists. When Marx returned to the topic a few years later, he relied upon Adulteration Detected, the impressive 1861 book by doctor and nutrition specialist Arthur Hill Hassall.

  In an article in the New York Daily Tribune, Marx touched upon the adulterations, but above all complained about the wretched hygiene of the bakeries. Spider webs, insects, and other things that were more or less dangerous to health ended up in the dough. He imagined a future where giant bakeries with the highest mechanical standards provided people with bread.46 It was a dream that was n
early realized a few decades after the Second World War, but the bread produced was neither tasty nor nutritious. Since then the path has partially swung back towards small bakeries, which, one hopes, are now rid of spiderwebs and insects …

  Marx saw all issues that had to do with the status of the working class in the light of the class struggle. Their immediate opponents where the factory owners. It therefore irritated him – as it did many others – that the most visible spokesmen for the factory owners, Richard Cobden, John Bright, and their ilk, so readily spoke in the name of the entire people when they turned against the traditional upper class. In an 1855 article in Neue Oder-Zeitung, Marx spoke about a meeting in London that attracted a large audience chiefly of workers. But the speakers who appeared were no workers, and they praised the middle class to which they themselves belonged and which in their opinion should take over the responsibility of government in the name of the entire people. This speech roused lively protests, and order was only restored when Chartist leader Ernest Jones stepped forward and declared that the people really should not ally with Bright and Cobden, who had so vigorously opposed all humane factory laws. Marx commented that universal suffrage would one day be pushed through and contribute to changing society. Then, of course, the real people would attain decisive influence.47

  Political and Economic Crises

  In an article about a political crisis in Great Britain, Marx complained that the press devoted much more space to the political game in Parliament then to the ups and downs of the economy. It was an observation completely in agreement with his basic understanding of society. On the other hand, it is striking that Marx the journalist did not deviate from this pattern he found reprehensible. Of course, he devoted many articles to industrial, trade, and financial crises. But in many more, he dwelt upon debates in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, as well as to the constantly recurring political crises. The leading politicians of the time were the subject of many of his commentaries. The names of quite a few still have a certain aura: Benjamin Disraeli, William Ewart Gladstone, and of course the aforementioned Cobden and Bright.