Marx- A Complete Introduction

by Gill Hands

  Here is his description of part of Manchester.

  ‘The cottages are old, dirty, and of the smallest sort, the streets uneven, fallen into ruts and in part without drains or pavement; masses of refuse, offal and sickening filth lie among standing pools in all directions; the atmosphere is poisoned by the effluvia from these, and laden and darkened by the smoke of a dozen tall factory chimneys. A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here, as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps and in the puddles.’

  Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845, The Great Towns

  Engels was a generous benefactor to the Marx family and to the many other people in his life; he gave money for the upkeep of Marx’s illegitimate son, for example. He lived in a ménage à trois with his mistress Mary Burns, a beautiful Irish redhead, and her sister Lizzie. He was also very generous to their family. He never seemed to complain about supporting all these people even when he had to embezzle money from the office cash box in order to keep up his financial commitments.

  The only bad feeling between Marx and Engels came when Mary died. Marx appeared unsympathetic and asked for money in his letter of condolence, because he was about to be declared bankrupt. It was insensitive to say the least, but Marx soon apologized and the two became friends once again.

  Engels’ money came from his father, a rich textile merchant who had a branch of his business, Ermen and Engels, in Manchester at the heart of the industrial North of England. He first worked there in 1842 and it was then that he met Mary. It was his involvement with her that led to some of his writing about the conditions of the working classes. Mary was a Chartist and a strong supporter of the rights of factory workers. Chartism was one of the first mass working class labour movements in the United Kingdom and it grew in popularity after the publication of the People’s Charter in 1838. This asked for changes to the voting system including giving the vote to all men over the age of 21.

  Engels reluctantly went back to work in Manchester in 1850 with the aim of helping Marx financially. He stayed there for 20 years until the closure of the factory meant that he could return to live in London permanently.

  He managed to keep most of his socialist activities and his ‘secret’ household hidden from his parents; he appeared to be nothing much more than a local businessman to many people who knew him. His father gave him an entertainment and hospitality allowance, a lot of which ended up in the Marx household. However, he did ride with the Cheshire hunt and entertained guests at his respectable house, one where his mistress was never seen. Jenny Marx could not approve of his way of life, she always referred to Mary as ‘your wife’; she did not refer to Lizzie at all.

  The Marx family always called Engels ‘General’, a nickname he acquired due to his interest in military strategy and time spent in the armed forces. Letters passed between them all very frequently and give an interesting insight into their private lives. Marx and Engels kept no secrets from each other and even invented their own code language in order to keep their correspondence free from the prying eyes of police spies. Most of the letters have personal as well as political details in them as Engels also liked to gossip and write about his favourite hobbies: wine, beer, women and song!

  In addition to working at the family business, Engels helped Marx write articles for the New York Tribune, a radical newspaper that had a large circulation in America. Marx did not write very good English when he arrived in London and Engels, as usual, came to his rescue. He helped out with translation and even wrote some of the articles, especially those that needed his expertise in military affairs.

  Engels wrote most of the entries that Marx should have written for the New American Cyclopedia, which were commissioned by the editor of the New York Tribune. This became difficult when Engels fell ill and Marx had to pretend that his work had been lost in the post on its way to New York.

  Engels was one of the few people who could read Marx’s handwriting and so it was naturally he, with the help of Eleanor Marx, who came to sort out Marx’s papers after he died. Engels found that he was now the authority on communism and he went on to complete the further volumes of Das Kapital that Marx had intended to write. He became the interpreter for all that Marx had said or written and kept up an enormous correspondence until his death in 1895.

  Work in London

  Marx never had a ‘proper’ job while he lived in London, even though the family were sometimes destitute. On the one occasion he applied for a job, as a railway clerk, he was rejected because of his handwriting, which was completely illegible. He dedicated most of his time to the cause of communism and to writing the book that later became Das Kapital, and Engels was quite happy to support him financially whenever he was able.

  Spotlight

  Marx’s dreadful handwriting is legendary and an example of it can be seen at the online Marx Engels archive where an original page of The Communist Manifesto is reproduced complete with scribbles and crossings out.

  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/page.jpg

  Marx did have some regular income as he was paid £1 per article (quite a good sum in those days) for his pieces in the New York Tribune, even though Engels helped out with a lot of the work. Marx became a popular journalist with the American readership of the Tribune and wrote on a weekly basis for ten years. His articles were witty and often vitriolic in nature against those who had offended him, for Marx kept his fiery temperament until late in his life and it often showed in his writing. He wrote about English politics and social analysis: articles on Chartism, foreign policy, the British rule in India and Ireland, economics, nationalism and land enclosures in Scotland, for example.

  He also wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (Revue) a political economy review sold in Germany and London. It was managed and financed by Conrad Schramm, another German who was sympathetic to the revolutionary cause. The revue did not sell well as it had only a small circulation among German revolutionaries and exiles and it only ran for five issues. Marx hardly made any money from this but he did make some money from the New American Cyclopaedia entries, even though Engels did much of the work.

  Marx was always busy, even if his work was unpaid. One of his unpaid roles involved helping out with the German Workers Education Society. He was an inspiring teacher, although a little intimidating to some of his young students. He gave lectures which were often packed out with people impressed by his oratory and political invective. One series of lectures, which was filled to capacity, was on the subject ‘What is bourgeois property?’ He attended weekly discussion groups and also lectures on subjects ranging from astronomy to languages. Singing and dancing and musical entertainment were also available for the German refugees who made up most of the membership of the German Workers Education Society. Marx was fond of fencing and joined a club of French émigrés where he could practise his swordsmanship. He obviously hadn’t been put off by the duel earlier in his life during which he was wounded.

  Within a few days of arriving in London he was meeting with other refugees and beginning to set up London headquarters for the Communist League. He was soon to be one of its most dominant members due to the force of his charismatic and intense personality; this was one of the reasons why a split formed in the League and it was eventually dissolved. Marx did not like having to work on projects where he was not in control, and when his ideas clashed with those of others he was likely to fly into rages and denounce them. He spent a great deal of time, which he could have spent working on Das Kapital, writing lengthy diatribes against those who he believed had wronged him in some way.

  An example of this was his campaign against Karl Vogt. Vogt had written a book denouncing Marx as a lover of the aristocracy who wanted nothing but personal power. The book was not printed in London but Marx went into a white hot rage and, as he couldn’t afford to sue for libel, he wrote a book in return, denouncing Vogt and anyone who had ever supported him.

&nbs
p; These numerous distractions led him away from what he believed to be his true purpose, the writing of Das Kapital.

  Das Kapital

  Nearly every day of his life in London Marx would turn up at the reading room of the British Museum to work on his writing. He often stayed there for 12 hours and wrote again at home into the small hours of the morning. This was the writing which eventually became Das Kapital or Capital as it is sometimes known in English. Volume 1 was finally finished in August 1867, but even then Marx continued revising and refining his work, making notes for the sequel he intended to publish. His letters are full of references to the toll that this work took on him. He was forever predicting that he was about to complete it but then finding he had more to write about.

  Marx considered Das Kapital to be a scientific study of capitalism, politics and economics. He used the government Blue Books that were available at the Library to gather first-hand evidence on the plight of the poor. These contained statistics, census figures and reports from factory and public health inspectors. Engels had used these as a source for The Condition of the Working Class in England. Marx was impressed by this and decided to use them in a similar way in his masterwork.

  Opinion is divided over the merits of Das Kapital. Many people find it a very difficult read. Marx was fond of satirical puns and he uses many literary references which are not easily understood by the general reader of today, but even at the time the book was met with total incomprehension by most readers. Insight into the literary background of Das Kapital can be found in Francis Wheen’s book Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography.

  Das Kapital is very long, with a lot of footnotes which can be off-putting to anyone first opening the book. The footnotes are some of the most interesting bits, in my opinion, because it is there that Marx gives some of the first-hand accounts of the lives of working people and they give a fascinating glimpse into our industrial past. One example, taken from a Children’s Employment Commission Report of 1865, is of children walking the equivalent of 15–20 miles every six hours in a bottle factory while continually performing their work. They were not allowed meal breaks as the furnace would cool down and their shifts were often 14 or 15 hours long.

  Engels tried to get Marx to change the format of Das Kapital because he could see that it opened with difficult abstract concepts. ‘It is dreadfully tiring and confusing too’, he wrote, when shown the proofs. He thought Marx should have broken up the chapters into much shorter sections with headings to make the book easier to read. Marx did not take much notice of his comments.

  The publication of Das Kapital brought Marx a great deal of personal satisfaction but it did not have the huge reception that he had hoped for. Engels, ever the true friend, sent false reviews to German papers with the hope that they might stir up some public opinion but to no avail. There were a few favourable reviews in the British press but the book did not have mass sales or lead to any type of political action by workers as Marx had hoped.

  The first nine chapters of the book deal with the explanation of Marx’s economic theory in rather abstract terms, while the rest of the book explores the evidence that shows the ways in which capitalists exploit their workers. Marx uses a lot of historical examples for he believed that capitalism was a stage in a process of social history that was inevitably and ultimately leading to its own downfall. For those who find Das Kapital a difficult read, the basics of Marx’s economic theory can be found in the works Value, Price and Profit and Wage-Labour and Capital. These were based on lectures given to working men’s associations and are much easier to understand. The ideas in Das Kapital are discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.

  The International

  One of the other distractions that took Marx away from his writing was his involvement with The International Workingman’s Association. The International, as it became known, was founded in 1864 at a public meeting to which Marx was invited. Until then, workers throughout Europe and America had been concentrating on their own struggles, without much thought for others in similar situations worldwide. It was French and British trade unionists who finally realized that there would be strength in numbers and that they would all reach their aims more efficiently if they banded together.

  The first meeting took place in London at St Martin’s Hall and the chairman was Edward Beesly, a professor of ancient history who was also a radical and a supporter of trade unions. The meeting voted in favour of forming a constitution for an international federation that would work towards destroying the current system of economic relations. They intended to replace this with a system where workers owned the means of production, leading to the end of exploitation, a sharing out of the profits and the end of private property.

  Marx was voted onto the executive committee as the representative of the German artisans and by the time of the second meeting, where the constitution was drawn up, he had effectively taken control. Marx did not usually like to be associated with groups that he had not initiated himself. It was well known that he preferred to be in control of everything and he only made the exception of going to the first meeting because he had great respect for Edward Beesly. He also believed strongly in the principles of the workers and could see that they had been greatly influenced by his own writing.

  He managed to obtain a great degree of control because the delegates who had been issued with the task of writing the constitution failed to do a good job and he took over and wrote the constitution and inaugural address himself. The address began with the words ‘The emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves.’

  The constitution was a daring statement at the time, for the International members were pledged to assist one another in improving their ‘common condition’ and to subvert and possibly overthrow the existing capitalist regime by open political action. They were to do this by democratic means where possible by trying to enter parliament. The foundations of the British Labour party and many European socialist parties can be traced back to the work of the early International, although Marx did not see these formed in his lifetime.

  Marx also included a short survey of economic and social conditions in his inaugural address, showing that the ruling classes benefited by setting workers against the workers in other countries. He pointed out that wars only benefited the ruling class and not the ordinary man. He concluded that in order to make changes in the system the workers should protest, demonstrate and harass their governments. It was up to the workers to make changes in the existing social structure for they were the only class that this would benefit. The address finished with the words famous from The Communist Manifesto, ‘Working men of all countries, unite.’

  The aims of the International were to establish close relations and co-operation between workers in various countries and close relations between different trades and trade unions, who up until then had often worked against each other. This was to be achieved by collecting relevant statistics and passing information on the conditions, needs and plans of workers from one country to another. There were also to be discussion groups, publication of regular reports and international co-ordination in times of crisis. Yearly meetings were to be convened by a democratically elected council.

  Marx found that he became a well-known public figure, among socialist circles at least, and much of his time was soon taken up by the International. It grew rapidly as more and more unions joined and it was efficient and well organized. He dominated the meetings and writings of the International because of his vast experience and his forceful personality. There was no one else in the group who could really match his intelligence and idealism and his work for them took up his nights and days, although he was not paid. He did not usually attend the meetings of the congress for he preferred to stay in London at the centre of operations, dealing with correspondence and issuing orders.

  This finally led to a dispute with Bakunin, the Russian anarchist leader. Marx and Bakunin were old enemies. Marx had a habit of enthusiast
ically embracing people only to utterly reject them later when they disagreed with his theories. Both men grudgingly admired the intellect of the other but there was a great personal animosity between them. As can be seen later, in Chapter 3, Bakunin believed that the only way for the workers to be freed from the chains of capitalism was by violent means and the destruction of all governments.

  Bakunin wanted the International to be run more loosely as a federation of semi-independent local bodies and he had followers in Italy and Switzerland. They decided to form a splinter group, loosely affiliated to the International but with its own organizational structure. This went against the principles of the International, which was supposed to be a united party. Marx finally had Bakunin and his supporters expelled from the International after they became affiliated with a Russian terrorist, Nechaev.

  Marx fell out of favour with many members of the International during the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870. The Paris Commune was a result of a revolution that occurred when the National Guard, a volunteer citizens’ force, took over Paris. They deposed government officials and elected a revolutionary committee which they said was the true government of France. This led to the formation of a short-lived government of the people known as the Paris Commune. It existed formally between March and May 1871 before being overthrown. In this short time the communards had begun implementing social policies of separating the church and state and giving the right to employees to take over business enterprises. They also planned to make education and training free for all citizens. It was not a communist revolution but it was one of the first examples of open class war ever to take place. Workers, soldiers, artists, writers, all manner of free thinkers, joined forces to overthrow a rule that they saw as unjust. There was mass hysteria and the communards had only vague plans of how they would rule after the initial violent revolution had taken place. Paris was besieged by troops and a reign of terror began. Food ran out, innocent people were blamed and hostages were guillotined, including the archbishop of Paris. Many of the middle classes believed the communards to be a bunch of criminally insane thugs and their actions horrified the bourgeois citizens of Europe, even those in the International who welcomed revolution.