KARL MARX AS FIGHTER

Evening Star, Issue 22526, 19 December 1936, Page 2

KARL MARX AS FIGHTER

( f Times Literary Supplement.’) For many years there was no serious biography of Marx in English. Of late the clanger has been of a glut rather than a shortage The embarrassment of choice is increased by the appearance, a few months after the English translation • of Franz Mehringfs “ official ” life, of a new biography, the product of collaboration between a Russian and a German Marxist, both exiles from their respective countries. (‘Karl Marx: Man and Fighter,’ by Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto MaenchenHeifen.) It was presumably written in German, though it is published for the first time in its present English dress. The translation reads on the whole extremely well; but a high police official, though doubtless a “ Polizist ” in German, is not “ a policeman ” iu English. The work of M. Nicqlaievsky and Herr Maenchen-Helfen will be indispensable to the student, whom it introduces for the first time to a mass of hitherto unpublished material. This comes in the main from two sources. The first is the archives of the German Social-Democratic Party, which were at Mehring’s disposal, but were not exhaustively used by him, and which have been safely removed from Germany sine© the Naxi revolution. The second is the official archives of the principal European countries (mainly, of course, Germany), which have been combed by the authors in their search for contemporary police reports and diplomatic correspondence relating to the activities of Marx and other leading revolutionaries of the period. Not falling into either of these categories is the famous blackmailing letter from Nechaev to the Russian publisher’s agent Lyubavin, which Marx used to discredit Bakunin at The Hague Congress of the First International and of which the original is in the Marx-Engels-Lenim Institute in Moscow. It had not before appeared in English, and until two years ago had not been published in Soviet Russia. Even now the complete text does not appear to he given. The writers in their preface rightly claim credit for having resorted throughout the book to extensive quotation. _ They add that “ the fact that we give the source of our quotations will be welcome to many readers.” Unfortunately this promise is not fulfilled in the present edition, which contanis no references. A book of 400 pages on Marx is necessarily selective. “ Marx was above all a revolutionary,” said Engels at his graveside in Highgate Cemetery ; and this book, as the sub-title explains, is a portrait of Marx as a practical revolutionary, not\ a study of Marxism. Marx’s importance in history depends, however, less on what he did in his life than on the wide recognition which his ideas obtained after his death and on the practical consequences of that recognition. The authors have imposed on themselves a self-denying ordinance by excluding from their survey that aspect of Marx which is ultimately the most vital. Tim distribution of space is, moreover, intentionally uneven. More than half of it is devoted to the period down to 1849, when Marx finally emigrated to England. _ Half the remainder goes to the period of the First International. Marx’s first 15 years in England and the last 10 years of his life get only a chapter each. No reader need_ regret the preponderant attention given to the first half of Marx’s life, for it is this part of the book which contains nearly all the new contributions t® knowledge. There is much fresh datci! about his youth. It has hitherto boM. supposed that the whole Marx faflllly were baptised in 1824, when Karl was six. This was, in fact, the date of the baptism of the children; but it transpires that the father had been baptised (for professional, not for religious, reasons) some time before Karl’s birth._ Tho head master of the school which Karl attended at Trier comes into the story for the first time; for police reports show that he, and indeed the whole school, was under grave suspicion of political heresy. We learn for the first time of a duel with a fellow student at Bonn, More important, the authors have an unrivalled and encyclopedia knowledge of the by-ways of the revolutionary movement in Western Europe during the ’forties of last century. These pages _ throw a flood of light on the revolutionary background of the opening years of Marx’s career, They contain a particularly _ good account of that odd genius Weitling, the first working man Communist, and show the part played in the growth of Communism by • the Anabaptists and other Christian sects which still flourished in parts of _ Germany among the workers. Among interesting points of detail, Engels is established as the author of the world-famous slogan, “ Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

The latter part of the hook contains less that is new, and seems less impartial. Marx’s own account of the invitation to him to attend the inaugural meeting of the International is followed without mention of the other sources which throw serious doubt on its accuracy. Like nearly all Continental writers, the authors look on the role of the English trade unionist members of the International through Marx’s spectacles. and regard them as having betrayed Marx when the split came over the P'afis Commune. In the quarrel between Marx and Bakunin it is perhaps natural for Marx’s biographer to lean to the side of the former. But it is scarcely fair, while doing full justice to Bakunin’s “ naive slyness,” to pass over in silence the many actions of Marx in this famous controversy which are equally repugnant to the moralist. The account of the affair in the present volume contains more than one glaring instance of “ suppressio veri.” M. Nicolaievsky and Herr MaeuchenHelfen, are indeed happily free from the excesses of official Marxism, and do not attempt to depict Marx as an infallible demi-god. But there_ is no doubt that the process of selection has made their portrait of him a more amiable one than could be allowed by an impartial witness. Some of his pettiest and . most vindictive quarrels—those, for example, with Kinkel and Freiligrath—are ignored altogether. His relations with Lassalle, which show him in anything but a pleasant light, are rather cursorily dealt with. _ The name of Schweitzer is not mentioned; and Marx’s denunciation of the Gotha Programme is dismissed in a few lines as “ a mistake.” It cannot be an accident that a book so full of quotation contains hardly a specimen of Marx’s fertile talent for personal vituperation. An account of Marx as a “ fighter ” ought to show how bitter, and sometimes how unscrupulous, a fighter he was.

The point is not without political significance. Both Techow, the German “ emigre,” and Mazzini remarked, by a striking coincidence of phrase, that Marx had “ more hatred than love ” in his composition. Of Marx in his intimate personal relationships this was not true. But it was true of his whole political life; and this negative character is stamped on his system., Marxism, as a critique of the bourgeois capitalism of the nineteenth century, is

amazingly penetrating, incisive, and convincing. Constructively, it has nothing to offer but a workers’ paradisa no more substantial than the rosecoloured dreams of the French Utopian Socialist. It is not for nothing that the only country which has hitherto achieved a revolution on Marxist principles should be turning further and further away from Marxism in its attempts to organise a new order,