The following article is a chapter from The Idea: Anarchist Communism, Past, Present and Future by Nick Heath. We should point out that whilst we regard Marx's analysis of capitalism and class society as a very important contribution to revolutionary ideas, we are critical of his attitudes and behaviour within both the Communist League and the First International.
Marx was to
re-iterate his ideas and to put them into practice in all his time in the
working class movement. “Without parties no development, without division no
progress” he was to write (polemic with the Kölnische Zeitung newspaper, 1842).
In a much later letter to Bebel written in 1873, Engels sums up this approach:
“For the rest, old Hegel has already said it;
a party proves itself a victorious party by the fact that it splits and can
stand the split. The movement of the proletariat necessarily passes through
stages of development; at every stage one section of the people lags behind and
does not join in the further advance; and this alone explains why it is that
actually the “solidarity of the proletariat” is everywhere realised in
different party groupings which carry on life and death feuds with one
another”.
The
mythology of Marxism implies that the theory of communism was perfected by Marx
and Engels without really taking into consideration all that had gone before
and that communism, organised more or less into a loose movement, was created
by artisans and workers as a result of their practical experiences in the
French Revolution and the events of the 1830s, as well as their continuing
theoretical labours. Marx and Engels’ involvement in this communist movement
was one of continual political struggle with what they saw as their opponents
in it, a recurrent series of attacks often using slander as a weapon.
Marx was
won over to communism in 1842 by Moses Hess. In the same year, Marx
familiarised himself with the writings of Proudhon and Dézamy
as well as Pierre Leroux and Considerant in order to gain a grasp of the
currents of French socialism and communism. During a short stay in London in
1845, Marx and Engels made contact with the German exiles and radical elements
among the British Chartist movement. After Marx had been kicked out of France,
he made the acquaintance of Weitling in Brussels in 1846. Brussels acted as a
focal point for the clandestine movement across Western Europe. Not only were
there a number of exiles here from France and Germany, but it was a
distribution point for the spreading of radical literature in Germany, and was
a stopping off point for German workers and intellectuals. Elliot Eriksson has
argued that Marx did not fight his extradition from France, and was pleased to
be exiled to Brussels, and that he was able to use its importance as a focal
point to establish a stranglehold on all propaganda being smuggled into Germany.
Marx put forward the idea of convening a congress of all communists to create
the first international organisation of all communists. The Belgian city of Verviers was decided upon
as the venue- it was close to the border with Germany and convenient too for those
coming from France.
Before
preparations for this could be finalised, delegates of the League of the Just
arrived in Brussels and invited Marx and Engels to join their organisation. The
League had, as we have seen, established itself as an international
organisation, in contact with English and French revolutionaries. It now sought
to enlist the mind of Marx.
Marx and Engels then entered into struggle
with Weitling, who had defended Kriege. Up to then Weitling had been seen as
the leading light of the League. The League had commissioned him in 1838 to
write Mankind As It Is and As It Ought To Be, which had acted as a sort of
Manifesto for the League. However, Weitling’s ideas were increasingly being
seen by others in the League as outmoded. The League’s leading lights in
London, Karl Schapper, Heinrich Bauer and Josef Moll had rejected the communist
colonies advocated by Cabet, and now Weitling’s concept of communism was in
turn rejected as too militaristic and putschist. In addition, Weitling frequently
made reference to Christ as a pioneer of communism, often quoting the Bible,
and atheistic views were growing among League members. In addition Weitling now
advocated the need for a dictator to bring about the advent o communism, and he
strongly implied this dictator should be himself. His sel-importance alienated
other communists like Schapper and Moll.
Both Weitling and the Russian Pavel Annenkov
have left accounts of a plenary meeting in Brussels of the Communist League in
spring 1846. Marx viciously attacked Weitling, whom before he had praised to
the heavens for his Guarantee during his sojourn in Paris. Weitling’s work
Craft Workers’ Communism was severely criticised. Both Annenkov and Weitling
affirm that Marx demanded a thorough cleansing of the ranks of the communists,
as Weitling says “human feeling must be derided”. Despite the often asserted
claim that Weitling was opposed to propaganda preparing the way for a social
revolution, it was the Marx camp that opposed “ oral propaganda, no provision
for secret propaganda, in general the word propaganda not to be used in the
future”. Marx firmly stated that the realisation of communism in the near
future was out of the question, and that first the bourgeoisie must be at the
helm. (Letter from Weitling to Moses Hess April 1, 1846).
It’s worth
quoting extensively from this letter. “I believe Marx and Engels will end by
criticising themselves through their own criticism. In Marx’s brain, I see
nothing more than a good encyclopaedia, but no genius. His influence is felt
through other personalities. Rich men made him editor, voila tout (there you
have it all, tr. NH). Indeed, rich men who make sacrifices have a right to see
or have investigations made into what they want to support. They have the power
to assert this right, but the writer also has this power, no matter how poor he
is, not to sacrifice his convictions for money. I am capable of sacrificing my
conviction for the sake of unity. I put aside my work on my system when I
received protests against it from all directions. But when I heard in Brussels
that the opponents of my system intended to publish splendid systems in
well-financed translations, I completed mine and made an effort to bring it to
the man (Karl Marx). If this is not supported, then it is entirely in order to
make an examination. Jackass that I was, I had hitherto believed that it would
be better if we used all our own qualities against our enemies and encouraged
especially those that bring forth persecutions in the struggle. I had thought
it would be better to influence the people, and, above all, to organise a
portion of them for the propagation of our popular writings. But Marx and
Engels do not share this view, and in this they are strengthened by their rich
supporters. All right! Very good! Splendid!” This meeting was extremely
acrimonious with both Marx and Engels arguing vehemently against Weitling, who
responded in kind, Marx finally jumping up and down in his office.
The final
break between the Marx group and Weitling came in the following month of May and
only two years after Marx had called Weitling’s book “an exuberant and
brilliant debut of the German workers”.
Weitling soon left for the United States, from where he was not to
return till the 1848 Revolution.
Marx and
Engels next denounced the German communist Hermann Kriege, who had emigrated to
America. Engels had at first put great faith in Kriege and had recommended him
to Marx. When Kriege arrived in London shortly after he had joined the League
of the Just. He then emigrated to New York in 1845 He led the League of
Just there into the Social-Reform Association, which advocated radical land reform. He brought out a paper called Volks-Tribun to
support this move. There he wrote of a vague communism based on brotherly love.
And came out with statements like “We have no wish to lay bands on the private property of any man; what
the usurer now has, let him keep; we merely wish to forestall the further
pillaging of the people’s assets and prevent capital from continuing to
withhold from labour its rightful property” and: “Every poor man ... will
instantly become a useful member of human society as soon as he is offered the
opportunity of productive work.” The land should be nationalised and then
leased in rent free in plots of 150 acres to small holders.
On hearing
of this Marx and Engels were quite rightly appalled. They issued a renunciation
of Kriege’s ideas, the “Circular Against Kriege”, described by Gareth Stedman
Jones as a “grossly self-important missive”.. What was disturbing about this
was the viciousness of the attack, which was highly vitriolic and personalised.
The Committee in London wrote to Marx: “aren't you being too harsh
against Kriege? . . . Kriege is still young and can still learn. “(Kriege was
only twenty five years old). Another member of the League, Joseph Weydemeyer
wrote that there was 'widespread regret
that you have again got involved in such polemics'.
Moses Hess, who had been Marx’s mentor, was
next to be targeted, choosing to resign rather than be expelled. “In the struggle between Marx and Weitling,
Hess had taken Weitling’s side, and this was enough to infuriate Marx, and to
make him look for a means of crushing Hess. Nevertheless, Moses Hess, despite
many deviations and peculiarities had in the course of his socialist
development come so near to Marx’s standpoint, that, as late as July 28, 1846,
Hess wrote to Marx: “I am in full agreement with your views concerning
communist authorship. However necessary it may have been at the outset that
communist endeavours should be linked to German ideology, it is no less
necessary now that they should be based upon historical and economic premises,
for otherwise we shall never be able to settle accounts either with the
‘socialists’ or with the adversaries of all shades of opinion” (Rühle).
Marx and
Engels now set up a Workers Educational Society in Brussels, modelled on the
London organisation of the same name animated by Schapper. They gradually built
up contacts in Britain, Germany, France and Switzerland, gathering those of
like mind round them. They then decided to set up an international
organisation, to create cells in Brussels, Paris and London. It seems likely
that this, the second attempt at an international, was at the initiative of the
London group around Schapper. These groups were to set up correspondence
committees to maintain links with other communist groups. These became known as
the Communist Correspondence Committees. One such Committee was established in
Brussels by Marx, Engels and their associate Philippe Gigot. It would appear
that the preparatory work for these committees had already been put into place
by the middle of 1846 and that Joseph Moll, who came to Brussels to invite Marx
and Engels to join the League of the Just, was acting as a representative of
the Communist Correspondence Committee in London. The London group of the League of the Just had
answered favourably to the idea of increased communication between communists
and made clear that they had broken with the conspiratorial tactics of the
Blanquists and the outlook of Weitling, which sought to rouse the masses
through spiritual inspiration. However, they warned against the vicious
denunciations that Marx had made against Weitling and Kriege and emphasised that
correspondence between communists was to encourage ideas not to curb political
debate. Later they wrote another letter where they stated:
“We believe
that all these different orientations must be expressed and that only through a
communist congress, where all the orientations are represented in a
cold-blooded and brotherly discussion, can unity be brought to our
propaganda…If people from all the communist positions were sent, if
intellectuals and workers from all lands met together, then there is no doubt
that a lot of barriers, which still stand in the way, would fall. In this
congress all of the different orientations and types of communism would be
discussed peacefully and without bitterness and the truth would certainly come
through and win the day”.
After Marx
had been persuaded by Moll that most of the London group had broken with the
ideas of Weitling, a Congress was decided upon at the initiative of the
Brussels Committee. For his part, Engels, active in the Paris Committee, used
all the wiles of a politician to persuade those who had not broken completely
with Weitling. Weitling was portrayed as a “reactionary” and falsely accused of
not having written his books alone. In his reports back to Marx all the
contempt of these two for workers is manifest with constant references to
“those fools” “those asses”, “ those stupid workers who believe everything”
with their “drowsiness and petty jealousy” In Engels’ own words he was able “to
put it over” with some and “bamboozled” others. Engels was able to report that
“The remainder of the Weitlingites, a little clique of tailors, is on the point
of being thrown out”.
Karl Grün was next to
be targetted. A populariser of Proudhon’s ideas in Germany, he was not a member
of the League, but had a following in its groups. He was accused of embezzling
300 francs on flimsy grounds by Marx and Engels. The Grünites
explained that they had raised the money themselves, and considered it as a
loan. First Eisermann, “Grün’s chief follower” according to Engels, was expelled,
followed in a few months by the most closet of the Grünites. “The
last Grünites-
a whole commune- were thrown out” crowed Engels. As a result only 30 members of
the League were left in Paris. Only two members survived in one Paris group of
the League. The League was purged in Switzerland, Hamburg and Leipzig as well,
and any supporters of Weitling, Proudhon and Karl Grün expelled or
forced to leave.
Jonathan
Sperber notes that:” Ideological differences do not
entirely explain the vigour of Marx's attacks
on Grün, since there was a lot
in Grün's work on
French and Belgian socialism that was congenial to Marx. Grün denounced the liberal regime
in Belgium as facilitating capitalist exploitation of the workers, under the
guise of protecting civil rights; he spoke of the concentration of capital and
the impoverishment of the proletariat; he was critical of the efforts of
Fourier and his followers to get wealthy individuals to finance his socialist
schemes. Grün called for the abolition of wage labour, and for the proletariat
to assume political power; he expressly associated his socialism with atheism.”
The
campaign against Hess did not proceed so well in Paris. Engels reported that: “Moses’s
tittle-tattle produces the devil of a confusion for me, and exposes me to the
most long-winded counter-speeches from the workers. Whole meetings have been
wasted over it, and it is not even possible to make a decisive attack on this
stale nonsense”.
The League
of the Just had been decimated. As Otto Rühle remarked: “The net
upshot of the visit was that Engels, though he did indeed put an end to Grün’s
influence, only increased the confusion, so that the “Straubinger” ceased to be
possible recruits for an international communist league such as Marx and Engels
already hoped to found ”( Straubinger being Engels’ put down term for
travelling journeymen).
The projected
Congress convened in London in 1847, without the presence of Marx, but with the
participation of Engels. There were few delegates. Despite what Engels says,
the League of the Just was not reorganised into the Communist League. The
Communist League was a new organisation.
The
Communist League established a constitution, and its first paragraph proclaimed
that “The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of
the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society based on class
antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society without either classes or
private property”. The organisation was based on “democratic centralism”, with
all members expected to espouse communism and to be in accordance with its
aims. Groups of members, styled “communes” were the basic unit of the League.
These made up into districts with their own committees. The districts were
combined under the control of a special “leading district”. These leading
districts answered to a central committee.
The central
committee itself was not elected by the conference of the League. Its powers
were delegated to the district committee of any city appointed by the
conference as the seat of the central committee. So a district thus designated
would elect a central committee of at least 5 members.
Marx and
Engels suggest that the Communist League was the direct successor of the League
of the Just, and its predecessor the League of Outlaws. We have seen that this
is not completely true. They also give the impression that the lineage of these
organisations was one of centralist organisation. But the central committee of
the League of the Just was not just elected but broadly controlled by the
membership as a whole. The original constitution of the Communist League was
similar, and Marx and Engels’ usurped this constitution, with the establishment
of their highly centralised Central Committee in 1848. This arrangement was
convenient for the perpetuation of a ruling clique.
The
congress also decided to work on a programme for the League, and each district
was to offer its own project at the next congress. Further, a paper was to be
produced. Only one pioneer edition appeared. It was the first paper that openly
proclaimed itself communist on the masthead. It was mostly written by London
members of the League. It quite correctly argued against Cabet, who was
encouraging people to emigrate to America to found communist colonies there. It
urged people to remain in Europe and fight for the establishment of communism
there. The paper also distinguished its communism from those of Weitling and
the French groups.
A second congress was held, at the end of 1847
with Marx present this time. There were days of violent disagreement over a
programme (it appears both Engels and Marx had drafted separate proposals). The
Paris groups had commissioned Hess to write a text, approving this by a large
majority. As a member of the committee, Engels arranged that his own text, and
not that of Hess, be sent to London contrary to the members’ votes and as Engels
admitted “behind their backs”. “But of course, not a soul must notice this or
we shall all be deposed and there will be an unholy row”. The majority of the Congress was finally
persuaded to accept Marx and Engels’s proposals and Marx was charged by Congress
to write a Manifesto in the name of the League.
It should
be remarked upon that the Manifesto commissioned by the League took a
considerable time to write. Schapper and his associates as members of the
Central Committee had to write angrily to Marx that “If the Manifesto of the
Communist Party does not reach us before Tuesday, February 1, further measures
will be taken against him (Marx)”
Marx and
Engels argue in the Manifesto for a working class revolution in stages.
Political power would be captured, all banks would be amalgamated into one
State bank, and the means of production, transport and credit would also be
controlled by the State. As Bakunin was to later comment: This revolution will
consist of the expropriation, either successive or violent of the actual
landowners and capitalists, and in the appropriation of all the lands and all
of capital by the State, which, so that it can fulfil its great economic as
well as political mission, must necessarily be very powerful and very strongly
concentrated. The State will administer and direct the cultivation of the land
by means of its appointed engineers commanding armies of rural workers,
organised and disciplined for this cultivation. At the same time, on the ruin
of all the existing banks, it will establish a single bank, sleeping partner of
all labour and all commerce of the nation”.
It should
be pointed out that the Manifesto should not be seen as completely Marx and
Engels’ work, as the input of other League members, notably Karl Schapper, can
be detected. During the first months of 1848 Marx was an enthusiastic supporter
of the section of the bourgeoisie that was struggling for democratic rights. At
the same time, he had contempt for the democratic leaders, unlike some other
members of the League, who admired their heroism and military capabilities (see
Lattek). He clashed with Doctor Andreas Gottschalk and his grouping the Workers
Association in Cologne for separating the proletariat from the democratic bourgeois
camp
(Gottschalk
and co. were members of the Communist League). He accused this group of
isolating itself from the struggle. The agitation of Gottschalk and his circle
had increased the size of the Workers Society to 5,000 members. Finding himself
in a minority, Marx first of all dissolved the Central Committee. Despite the
Cologne group being a section of the Communist League, he set up a rival
organisation, the Democratic Association and launched an electoral campaign for
the Frankfurt Parliament, supporting a dubious left candidate. In June of the
same year, he and Engels set up a daily paper the Neue Rheinische Zeitung:
organ of democracy. Previously describing themselves as communists, Marx and
his associates now described themselves as “we other democrats”. They advocated
a united front between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as long as the
former remained on the “revolutionary” road, in other words as long as they
struggled for a democratic society. There was not a word of the antagonism
between the democracy of the bourgeoisie and the communism of the proletariat,
and nothing about the immediate economic problems of the workers as the paper
of the Workers Society was quick to point out. In fact, not once did the words
“communist” or “communistic” “socialist” or “socialistic” appear in any article
in the NRZ. During all of this, the Communist League was dropped and allowed to
fizzle out.
As Marx said
in an article in the paper (22nd January 1849) “The revolution must
be first of all a revolution for the bourgeoisie. The revolution of the
proletariat is solely possible after capitalist economy has created the
conditions”. Gottschalk responded in his own paper Freiheit, Arbeit (Freedom,
Labour): “Must we, after finally escaping the hell of the Middle Age, throw
ourselves voluntarily into the purgatory of a decrepit capitalist power?..”
He went to
say: “You have never been serious about the emancipation of the repressed. The misery of the worker, the hunger of the poor has for you
only a scientific, a doctrinaire interest... You do not believe in the revolt
of the working people, whose rising flood begins already to prepare the
destruction of capital, you do not believe in the permanence of the
revolution, you do not even believe in the revolution.”
The
criticisms of Gottschalk hit home among the German workers.
As Hunt
says, “Gottschalk was unusually inconsistent and vacillating in his political
views and could move from permanent revolution to social monarchism within a few
weeks, but his popularity with and closeness to the Cologne working classes probably
makes him a good weathervane of their sentiments”. Gottschalk was close to the
ideas of Hess and Grün. Devoid of notions of class
struggle, he believed in a peaceful transition to communism. Nevertheless, his
position vis-à-vis a united front with the progressive
bourgeoisie put him on a collision course with Marx and Engels.
The German
bourgeoisie signally failed in its endeavours to bring about a revolution for
democracy and Marx was obliged to break with the bourgeois democrats in April
1849 and resurrect the Communist League. It had been a complete debacle for
Marx and Engels. Not only had Marx and Engels attempted to hitch working class
communism to the democratic desires of the bourgeoisie (already outlined in the
Babouvists’ dangerous flirtation with it) but he had denounced the fundamental
principles of international solidarity between the peoples. Positing the theory
of “historic nations”- Germany, Poland, Hungary and Italy- and lesser nations
doomed to be germanised or disappear altogether, they argued that strong nation
states had to be created in order to facilitate the fall of absolutism. The Poles
were only useful as long as they fought against Russian despotism. After they
had fulfilled this task, they would have to be relegated to the second division
of nations doomed to extinction. In a totally inaccurate prediction, Engels
foresaw the extinction of the Czechs and Slovaks and the South Slavs.
Chillingly, he saw these nations as backwards and obsolete.
He warned
in a veiled attack on the then Pan-Slavist Russian Bakunin that “We shall fight
an ‘implacable life-and-death struggle’ with Slavdom, which has betrayed the
revolution; a war of annihilation and ruthless terrorism, not in the interests
of Germany but in the interests of the revolution!”, that “we can only secure
the revolution against these Slav peoples by the most decisive acts of
terrorism”. In a profoundly racist language against the Slavs he belly-aches
that no gratitude was shown “for the pains the Germans have taken to civilize
the obstinate Czechs and Slovenes, and to introduce amongst them trade,
industry, a tolerable agriculture and education!” (Democratic Pan-Slavism, 14th
February 1848). Even more chilling was Engels’ pronouncement that “the next
world war will not only cause reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear
from the face of the earth, but also entire reactionary peoples. And that too
is an advance”. (The Magyar struggle, 13th January 1850).
Just as
appalling was Marx’s belief in progressive wars. He was to support a war
against Denmark by Germany in 1848 because it would strengthen the German
nation and German democracy. “The real capital of Denmark is Hamburg, not
Copenhagen” Marx blustered. This was to be a continuing policy of Marx’s, as
witness his support for Germany in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
Ending up in
London later in the year, Marx formed an alliance with French Blanquist exiles
and the revolutionary wing of Chartism to set up a Universal Society of Revolutionary
Communists. The idea had come from Julian Harney, the communist Chartist
leader. With Engels, he drafted an Address of the Central Committee to the
Communist League in1850 refuting the opportunistic tactic of 1848-9, wrongly
believing that a proletarian social revolution was about to break out, and
developing the need for a Permanent Revolution until communism had been
achieved. They linked to this the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, a
concept which had been invented by Blanqui and was sired by the Babouvists.
But soon
Marx took a turn away from revolutionary activity, stating that no revolution
was possible for the present because of the economic recovery. Further, a
coming revolution did not just depend on another trade crisis, which he had
seen as the cause of the 1848 Revolutions, but a massive development of the
productive forces. Leading workers in the Communist League like Schapper,
Fraenkel, Lehmann and Willich fell out with him over this. Worse was to follow.
The communist Techow testifies that “Marx and his friends set Schramm, their
champion, on to Willich. Schramm attacked him with the coarsest invective, and
finally challenged him to a duel….there are bound to be repercussions, not only
in the local émigré set-up, but probably also in the Communist League. If this
happens, then the disgusting intrigues and the mean gossip which Marx and Co.
have been organizing on a small scale will probably have a more far-reaching
effect, principally on their literary activity. It is really too bad that men
of such real talent should end by making it impossible for anyone but the dregs
of humanity to make common cause with them”. The duel was fought and Schramm
was injured. This resulted in outrage against Marx. He was expelled from the
German aid committee and from the Workers Educational Association. In behaviour
that was echoed in Marx’s later tactics in the First International, he had the
Central Committee transferred to Cologne. As Schapper noted: “Just as the
proletariat cut itself off from the Montagne and the press in France, so here
the people who speak for the party on matters of principle are cutting
themselves off from those who organize within the proletariat”.
Harney had
originally insisted that Willich be involved in the Universal Society. He
refused to take sides now. Following this, Marx and Engels wrote to the
Blanquists saying that as far as they were concerned the World Society was no
longer existent. The Cologne section and indeed the whole German organisation
of the minority section of League controlled by Marx and Engels was closed down
by police action, as was the German majority section in 1851. The police
infiltrated both Leagues, but in his pamphlet on the Cologne events, Engels
went out of his way to falsely blame the Willich group for shopping them to the
police.
Marx
followed this up with another pamphlet The Knight of the Noble Conscience
attacking Willich in the most vicious way. Following this, Marx dissolved his
section of the League in 1852. The German exiles found it hard to forgive his
dismantling of the League. Being predominantly workers, it confirmed their
suspicions of university-educated intellectuals and their “arrogance”.
Marx and
Engels had done considerable damage to important sections of the nascent
communist movement with their tactic of allying the cause of the working class
with that of the bourgeoisie. They had further strengthened the pro-Statist
currents within this loose communist movement and had prepared the way for the
mass social-democratic parties to come. They had separated off the different
and loose currents of thought within the workers movement from each other by
their purges of the League of the Just, thwarting fruitful dialogue and
increasing division. None of the international endeavours had been at their
instigation, though they claimed credit for them, and all had been sabotaged by
them. As Christine Lattek points out it was never a case of the League having
come under the sway of Marx and Engels, and that what occurred was a certain
convergence of opinions between them.
As the
German Marxist Otto Rühle was to write: “Since Marx and Engels were ruthlessly
endeavouring to reach self-understanding, self-laceration could not be avoided.
This self-laceration conjured up an army of adversaries, and involved them for
five years or more in the most venomous personal quarrels. A further result was
that the proletarian united front, which was already in course of formation,
was, prematurely and without any sufficient objective reason, broken for
decades to come. The intolerant way in which the purging of the communist ranks
was effected and in which the cleavage in the communist camp was brought about,
was not the outcome of unavoidable necessity, not dependent upon the progress
of economic evolution. Its primary cause was Marx’s craving for exclusive
personal predominance, which he rationalized into a fanatical confidence in the
conquering power of his own idea.”
Now they
had the luxury of retreating into theoretical work until 1864, whilst communist
workers endeavoured to carry on their organisational work within the working
class. Marx and Engels dropped the term “communist” to describe their politics
from now on, preferring the terms “socialist” or “social-democrat”.
On the
positive side Marx and Engels had brought much clarity to the League with their
ideas on class struggle and exploitation. With their departure many of the
German communists returned to vague notions of oppression and tyranny, pointing
to their influence being only passing.
It would be
false to think that the communist movement vanished with the departure of Marx
and Engels. Activities continued in London and elsewhere for decades to come,
with the Willich League pursuing alliances with bourgeois democrats in efforts to
overthrow the existing system in Germany. In addition, particularly in the two
years after the 1848 defeat, the notion of a transitional dictatorship was
taken up by these German exiles.
The exile
German communist movement in London, embodied in the
CommunistischerArbeiterBildungsVerein (CABV)-Communist Workers Educational
Association, established by Schapper and his associates in 1840, continued to
exist and was still there when Johann Most -who was to turn it in an increasingly
anarchist direction -and later Rudolf Rocker arrived in London.
Nick Heath
Beamish, R.The
Making of the Manifesto. Socialist Register, 1998.
Erikson,
Eliott. Marx and the Communist Manifesto. Stanford University,1954.
Henderson,
W.O. The life of Friedrich Engels.Routledge,1976.
Hunt,
Robert Norman. The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels. Springer, 2016.
Lattek, Christine.
Revolutionary refugees: German socialism in Britain 1840-1860. Routledge,2006.
Lenin. VI.
Marx on the American “General Distribution”:
Rühle,
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