Royal Road to Science — Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 12, Marx&Engels 1853–1854

Even the Marx and Engels that were donning journalism caps made classical literary references

Introduction

I am sorry for the third consecutive entry to say “this is my longest delay.” Life happens. Other books happen. But especially, the journalistic parts of Marx’s works can sometimes be less compelling to me than the Critique of Political Economy and the debate over it. So I had to push through some of these journalistic (and monologic epistolary volumes) at the pace I can handle.

But now I am entering the three way overlapping period of the MECW for the mid 1850s-mid 1860s:

1. Volumes 13–19 continue mostly the journalism of Marx and Engels in 1853–1864.
2. Volumes 28–34 cover Grundrisse, the Economic Manuscripts including Theories of Surplus Value (then volume 35 is Capital Volume 1 which apparently has TWO new English translations coming out soon in addition to the Fowkes/Penguin edition and MECW/Aveling — one by those involved in the journal “Historical Materialism” and another by Germanists Paul North and Paul Reitter that I am particularly excited about.)
3. Volumes 39–41, which cover the letters of Marx and Engels during 1852–1864.

I am not sure how I will balance doing the three timelines, but my instinct is if I want to move more quickly and with more enthusiasm, it would be better to do #2 above and put aside #1 and #3 until I am done with the economic works. The downside of course is it might be somewhat harder to talk about influences noted in letters and articles on the economic work until after the fact, but otherwise it will be an incredible amount of disruptive flipping between books and tones to maintain a purer chronological order.

Anyway, the outline for this volume’s entry is as follows:

I. This Introduction

II. The MECW Preface

IV. All works in this volume (mostly newspaper articles)

As always, bold emphasis is my own, italics are from the authors.

The MECW preface (again not mirrored on History Is a Weapon unfortunately, though many key pieces are there) can be read online as a PDF here, at the website of the Worker-communist Party of Iran — Hekmatist, which mirrors the PDFs that Lawrence Wishart claims exclusive copyright over otherwise. I also found a new source for the text of the MECW on “wikirogue”, which is less attractive but quicker to navigate than the PDFs.

The Preface first notes the dates of these journalistic entries by Marx and Engels: March 22nd, 1853 to February 10th, 1854. Mostly these were in the New-York Daily Tribune. The Preface also tells us something that isn’t in the articles themselves which we should know — which is that the Daily Tribune was a pro abolitionist newspaper with a popular following. Further, Marx and Engels entries were popular enough that they would often be run in special supplemental semi-weekly and weekly papers separately from appearing as daily columns. And despite being a US published paper, they gained some British attention, with a column on free trade even being mentioned in a UK House of Commons speech.

Other pieces appeared elsewhere, such as the smaller English Chartist People’s Paper and German-American socialist Die Reform.

Although most of the pieces run towards current events, especially the lead up and start of the Crimean War and Indian colonialism, there is also some basic economic analysis of the news by Marx in particular that informed his upcoming political economy critique, which we know since he referenced some of the same data and journalistic columns in his various economic notebooks.

I think the MECW preface is correct to identify a larger historical significance in Marx’s India writing here than the relatively small number of pages it takes up out of 784 in total: Marx finally connects the dots about the “merchant adventurers, who conquered India to make money out of it”, further developing at least somewhat further away from his previous Euro-centric comments that I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries. And Ireland is an important part of that too, as Marx observed pre-capitalist exploitation there paralleling India in some ways, especially by landlords over de facto enslaved tenants.

The MECW claims, I think accurately, that Marx maintained a general historical optimism about these exploitative relations (though I wonder if they’re actually accurate to new historical accounts that for instance show a declining Indian GDP during its imperial conquest) — i.e. that he thought the British pushing a capitalist economy in colonies would lead to a local bourgeoise and proletariat that could overthrow British rule and lead to chaos that could further a crisis and revolution in Europe as well.

Further, the MECW also too neatly follows what I think was the Soviet line at the time of the publication of this volume: “Thus, Marx saw two possible paths for the future liberation of the colonies, which he by no means regarded as mutually exclusive. He considered the struggle of the working class for proletarian revolution in the capitalist countries and the national liberation movement as two interconnected aspects of the revolutionary process.”

Despite some skepticism about that arc of human progress, where I do share some optimism with the MECW interpretation of Marx though is highlighting his statement that revolutionary events in China and India represented a spark thrown into “overloaded mine of the present industrial system”, which could lead to revolution spreading from East to West.

Least interesting to me is the significant number of articles on the “control of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and for predominance in the Balkans and the countries of Asia Minor” leading to the Crimean War. I am not downplaying their historical significance, just that I personally found it hard to find the more detailed Ottoman/Russian entries at all interesting. Marx and Engels had some optimism about the idea of southern Slavs uniting for independence from the old empires, anticipating Yugoslavia with the idea of a “Federal Republic of Slavonic States.” Marx and Engels bias against reactionary Russia remained the same as in earlier volumes, but more arguments against the feudal Ottomans come forward now as well (and sometimes both together — claiming that Russia would poke Greece into fighitng for independence against the Turks but then hold back any real support.) And they were historically proven correct to reject the idea that the west could simply just resolve these issues.

Finally, the MECW also highlights a couple of other entries that are not only in newspaper form, including the longer pamphlet on Lord Palmerston I will mention below and some more commentary on events in France and Switzerland.

On to some specific articles now!

Marx and his grind mindset

• The first entry chronologically I will talk about is “The New Financial Juggle; Or Gladstone and the Pennies” (gotta love a newspaper article that has two titles.) This was published in the Chartist “The People’s Paper”, which Marx contributed to without payment until they moved towards a more conciliatory bourgeois class stance in 1858. I found it worth reading to see the source of Britain’s total national debt at this time, dating all the way to 1701; as well as the amount of tax revenue per year since then as well. Marx of course pulls no punches, as this is openly and honest in its attempts to be pro-worker biased journalism, as are the rest of the entries within: “The ‘State,’ that jointocracy of coalesced land and money mongers, wants money for the purpose of home and foreign oppression. It borrows money of capitalists and usurers, and in return gives them a bit of paper, pledging itself to pay them so much money in the shape of interest for each £100 they lend. The means of paying this money in tears from the working classes through the means of taxation — so that the people are the security for their oppressors to the men who lend them the money to cut the people’s throats.” And always a fan of horror illusions and sharp insults, Marx remarks that debts are masked in “occult science”, where there are masters doing “financial alchemy”, leading to the public to be “bamboozled by these detestable stock-jobbing scholastics.”
• On April 15th, 1853, Marx continued the criticism of the British government’s fiscal policies in a nearly identical piece for the Tribune but adding another wonderful historical reference and typical literary flair: “I shall not dwell on the internal dissensions of the Cabinet, which appeared in the debates on the Canada Bill, in the hot controversy of the ministerial papers with regard to the Income-Tax, and above all, in their foreign policy. There is not one single question to which the Coalition Ministry might not answer, as did Gaysa, the Magyar king, who, after having been converted to Christianity, continued, notwithstanding, to observe the rites of his ancient superstition. When questioned to which of the two faiths he really belonged, he replied: ‘I am rich enough to belong to two sorts of faith.’”
• In April 26th-29th, Marx and Engels both get credit for writing about “The Rocket Affair and the Swiss Insurrection.” Like many columns in this volume, it combines multiple events into one entry. This was sparked by a letter from Engels about events in Switzerland, and Engels would write his own journalism about that country as well. Switzerland remained a relative tinderbox, with conservative Jesuits (how times have changed?) continuing their militant discontent: “At 4½ a. m., the body of 400 peasants, all wearing the colors of the Sonderbund, and carrying the emblem of the Virgin on their standard, moved towards Fribourg, on the road from Lausanne, headed by Colonel Perrier, and the notorious peasant Garrard, the chief of the insurrection of 1851, who had been amnestied by the Grosse-Rath. About 5 o’clock they entered the town, by the ‘Porte des Etangs,’ and took possession of the College and the Arsenal, where they seized 150 guns. Alarm having been beaten, the town council immediately declared the state of siege, and Major Gerbex assumed the command of the assembled civic guard. While he ordered the streets at the back of the college to be occupied with cannon, he pushed a body of riflemen forward, to attack the insurgents in front. The riflemen advanced up the two flights of steps, leading to the college, and soon dislodged the peasants from the windows of the buildings. The combat had lasted for about an hour, and the assailants already numbered eight dead and eighteen wounded, when the insurgents, attempting in vain to escape through the back streets, where they were received with grape shot, sent forth a priest with a white flag, declaring their readiness to surrender. A Committee of the Civic Guard instantly formed a Court-martial, which condemned Col. Perrier to thirty years’ imprisonment, and which is still sitting.”
• In June, Marx published “Revolution in China and Europe” in the Tribune. First Marx explains some of the origins of the issues of China and its relationship to Europe and European companies at the time: “Whatever be the social causes, and whatever religious, dynastic, or national shape they may assume, that have brought about the chronic rebellions subsisting in China for about ten years past, and now gathered together in one formidable revolution the occasion of this outbreak has unquestionably been afforded by the English cannon forcing upon China that soporific drug called opium. Before the British arms the authority of the Manchu dynasty fell to pieces; the superstitious faith in the eternity of the Celestial Empire broke down; the barbarous and hermetic isolation from the civilized world was infringed; and an opening was made for that intercourse which has since proceeded so rapidly under the golden attractions of California and Australia. At the same time the silver coin of the Empire, its lifeblood, began to be drained away to the British East Indies. Up to 1830, the balance of trade being continually in favour of the Chinese, there existed an uninterrupted importation of silver from India, Britain and the United States into China. Since 1833, and especially since 1840, the export of silver from China to India has become almost exhausting for the Celestial Empire. Hence the strong decrees of the Emperor against the opium trade, responded to by still stronger resistance to his measures. Besides this immediate economical consequence, the bribery connected with opium smuggling has entirely demoralized the Chinese State officers in the Southern provinces. Just as the Emperor was wont to be considered the father of all China, so his officers were looked upon as sustaining the paternal relation to their respective districts. But this patriarchal authority, the only moral link embracing the vast machinery of the State, has gradually been corroded by the corruption of those officers, who have made great gains by conniving at opium smuggling…the epoch when the monopoly of trade with China was transferred from the East India Company to Private commerce, and on a much greater scale since 1840, the epoch when other nations, and especially our own, also obtained a share in the Chinese trade. This introduction of foreign manufactures has had a similar effect on the native industry to that which it formerly had on Asia Minor, Persia and India. In China the spinners and weavers have suffered greatly under this foreign competition, and the community has become unsettled in proportion.”
• Marx continues to talk about tea in India and the decline of agricultural productivity as part of a possible global economic crisis, related to the centralized manufacturing production of Great Britain. And what is the connection between China and European revolution?: “Since the commencement of the eighteenth century there has been no serious revolution in Europe which had not been preceded by a commercial and financial crisis.” Noting a possible irony, Marx observes “ It would be a curious spectacle, that of China sending disorder into the Western World while the Western Powers, by English, French and American war-steamers, are conveying ‘order’ to Shanghai, Nanking and the mouths of the Great Canal”.
• Continuing with an Eastern colonialism theme, Marx turns to “The British Rule in India”, a key piece of the entire volume. First I want to say how charming and romantic I find statements like “Telegraphic dispatches from Vienna announce…”. Here we see Marx further increase his criticism of the particular form of imperialism that was manifesting at the time, instead of only placing it as a progressive force of heightening civilization and capiatlist contradictions.
• First Marx uses a fairly amusing Italy-metaphor:“Hindostan is an Italy of Asiatic dimensions, the Himalayas for the Alps, the Plains of Bengal for the Plains of Lombardy, the Deccan for the Apennines, and the Isle of Ceylon for the Island of Sicily. The same rich variety in the products of the soil, and the same dismemberment in the political configuration. Just as Italy has, from time to time, been compressed by the conqueror’s sword into different national masses, so do we find Hindostan, when not under the pressure of the Mohammedan, or the Mogul, or the Briton, dissolved into as many independent and conflicting States as it numbered towns, or even villages. Yet, in a social point of view, Hindostan is not the Italy, but the Ireland of the East. And this strange combination of Italy and of Ireland, of a world of voluptuousness and of a world of woes, is anticipated in the ancient traditions of the religion of Hindostan. That religion is at once a religion of sensualist exuberance, and a religion of self-torturing asceticism; a religion of the Lingam and of the juggernaut; the religion of the Monk, and of the Bayadere.”
• But then he goes on to differentiate the current situation from previous conquests: “There cannot, however, remain any doubt but that the misery inflicted by the British on Hindostan is of an essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all Hindostan had to suffer before…” Then he turns to quote Sir Stamford Raffles about the old Dutch East India Company as a critique of the current situation which could have sounded right at home in Capital: “The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, and viewing their [Javan] subjects, with less regard or consideration than a West India planter formerly viewed a gang upon his estate, because the latter had paid the purchase money of human property, which the other had not, employed all the existing machinery of despotism to squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, the last dregs of their labor, and thus aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous Government, by working it with all the practised ingenuity of politicians, and all the monopolizing selfishness of traders.”
• “Marx observes a remarkable example of disruption in Dhaka (current day Dakka, Bengaldesh): “From 1818 to 1836 the export of twist from Great Britain to India rose in the proportion of 1 to 5,200. In 1824 the export of British muslins to India hardly amounted to 1,000,000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64,000,000 of yards. But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,000 inhabitants to 20,000. This decline of Indian towns celebrated for their fabrics was by no means the worst consequence. British steam and science uprooted, over the whole surface of Hindostan, the union between agriculture and manufacturing industry…These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities, by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.”
• He finishes with a Goethe quote but first has an optimism perhaps more in line with an earlier version of his own thinking on imperial materialistic determinition, which makes no damn sense but compels me though: “England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.”
• Jumping ahead now to July 1853, Marx wrote “The War Question. Doings of Parliament. India” (as you may be figuring it, his column really did combine all sorts of issues into a daily mind dump.) Continuing his analysis of the colonial situation, Marx continues with a bit of racist stereotyping along with economic anaylsis,“in Bengal, we have a combination of English landlordism, of the Irish middlemen system, of the Austrian system, transforming the landlord into the tax-gatherer, and of the Asiatic system making the State the real landlord. In Madras and Bombay we have a French peasant proprietor who is at the same time a serf, and a métayer of the State. The drawbacks of all these various systems accumulate upon him without his enjoying any of their redeeming features. The Ryot is subject, like the French peasant, to the extortion of the private usurer; but he has no hereditary, no permanent title in his land, like the French peasant. Like the serf he is forced to cultivation, but he is not secured against want like the serf. Like the métayer he has to divide his produce with the State, but the State is not obliged, with regard to him, to advance the funds and the stock, as it is obliged to do with regard to the métayer. In Bengal, as in Madras and Bombay, under the Zemindari as under the Ryotwar, the Ryots and they form 11–12ths of the whole Indian population have been wretchedly pauperized; and if they are, morally speaking, not sunk as low as the Irish cottiers, they owe it to their climate, the men of the South being possessed of less wants, and of more imagination than the men of the North.”
• Jumping further ahead to late September 1853, Marx publishes “Panic on the London Stock Exchange. Strikes” (doesn’t quite fit the Smiths song but I sang it that way nevertheless.) Here, Marx explicitly speaks of “the trade in human flesh and blood” (perhaps we could call it “labor power”) being treated differently than other commodities only to the extent that capitalists and their media hypocrtically wish to deny them even the benefits of supply and demand, sticking them only with the downsides: “When the working people ask for more than ‘the prime necessaries of life,’ when they pretend ‘to share’ in the profits resulting from their own industry, then they are accused of communistic tendencies. What has the price of provisions to do with the ‘eternal and supreme law of supply and demand?’ In 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842, while there was a continued rise in the price of provisions, wages were sinking until they reached the starvation point. ‘Wages,’ said then the same manufacturers, ‘don’t depend upon the price of provisions, but upon the eternal law of supply and demand.’…’The demands of the working people,’ says the Sunday Times, ‘may be submitted to when urged in a respectful manner.’…What has respect to do with the “eternal law of supply and demand?” Has any one ever heard of the price of coffee rising at Mincing-lane when ‘urged in a respectful manner?’ The trade in human flesh and blood being carried on in the same manner as that of any other commodity, give it at least the chances of any other.”
• Marx’s political conclusion foreshadows debates that have been held many times about the interaction between workplace struggles, so called “class concisouness” (don’t love that term!) and politics more broadly: “The change in the general commercial prospects must change the relative position of the work-people and their employers. Sudden as it came on, it found many strikes begun, still more in preparation. No doubt, there will be more, in spite of the depression, and, also, for a rise of wages, for as to the argument of the manufacturer, that he cannot afford to advance, the workmen will reply, that provisions are dearer; both arguments being equally powerful. However, should, as I suppose, the depression prove lasting, the work-people will soon get the worst of it, and have to struggle very unsuccessfully against reduction. But then their activity will soon be carried over to the political field, and the new organization of trades, gained in the strikes, will be of immense value to them.”
• Marx’s longest entry in the volume was “The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston”, which were originally eight articles published in both the Tribune and People’s Paper, as well single chapters published in the Glasgow Sentinel and as a political pamplhet. The full run was republished in the London Free Press from November 1855 to February 1856 as well. But actually the version linked above and published in the MECW was the one with corrections by Elenaor Marx in 1899. Karl Marx said he believed it sold 15,000–20,000 copies in pamphlet form. The origin of the work was Marx’s anaylsis of the diplomatic “Blue Books”, which were essentially official parliamentary papers, in this case on foreign affairs. Sadly, my experience was that if one doesn’t have both a grounding and interest in The Treaty of Akkerman and The Treaty of Turkmanachai, it can be quite hard to follow, and I found little of interest to Marx’s thought deveolpment generally despite their commercial sucssess.
• More fruitful for me was reading “The Labor Question” from November 1853, which was split off by publishers from its connected submission “The Russian Defeats” by Engels. The first thing that struck me was how funny it is that Marx is criticizing The Economist already for the sorts of thing one could still say about them today, an entirely disdainful attitude about the working class; the Economist had said“The working classes, for the first time, had their future in their own hands! The population of the United Kingdom began actually to diminish, the emigration carrying off more than its natural increase. How have the workingmen used their opportunity? What have they done? Just what they used to do formerly, on every recurrence of temporary sunshine, married and multiplied as fast as possible. […] At this rate of increase it will not be long before emigration is effectually counterbalanced, and the golden opportunity thrown away.”
• Marx replies “The golden opportunity of not marrying and not multiplying, except at the orthodox rate allowed by Malthus and his disciples! Golden morality this!” And then criticizes The Economist for claiming workers were entering a new age of improved conditions thanks to the repeal of the Corn Laws (I believe mentioned in all 14 volumes to this point chronologically, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they hit nearly all 50) and the subsequent economic growth, by replying “Brisk trade was synonymous with enlarged factories, with increased application of machinery, with more adult laborers being replaced by women and children, with prolonged hours of work. The more the mill was attended by the mother and the child, the less could the school be frequented.”
• Of course since this time, The Economist has rejected Malthus’ population theories as well, and generally been optimistic about population growth and GDP growth together — but their general optimistic belief in capitalist free trade lifting all boats has rarely wavered. Marx continued the criticism more directly in a similarly named article as well. In addition to various charts of numbers of goods, Marx makes a powerful moral observation about the situation defended by the press: “Boys of nine and ten working 60 hours consecutively, with the exception of three hours’ rest! Let the masters say nothing about neglecting education now. One of the above, Ann B., a little girl only nine years of age, fell on the floor asleep with exhaustion, during the 60 hours; she was roused and cried, but was forced to resume work!!”
• The last thing I will highlight for Volume 12 is “The Knight of Noble Conciousness” by Marx in January 1854 (yay, we hit a new year.) The MECW has no qualms in fully embracing Marx’s version of the story here, despite Willich’s later status as a genuine US Civil War hero: “Marx’s pamphlet The Knight of the Noble Consciousness, written in November 1853 and published with Adolph Cluss’ and Joseph Weydemeyer’s assistance in pamphlet form in New York in January 1854 was a reply to the slanderous article by August Willich, ‘Doktor Karl Marx und seine Enthüllungen’, which was published in the Belletrisches Journal und New-Yorker Criminal-Zeitung on October 28 and November 4, 1853. Soon after Willich’s article appeared supporters of Marx and Engels in the USA, Joseph Weydemeyer, Adolph Cluss and Abraham Jacobi, sent a refutation to the newspaper which was published on November 25, 1853. However, Marx thought it expedient to answer himself. In his pamphlet Marx refutes Willich’s attempts to cast doubt on the fairness of Marx’s criticism of the activity of the Willich-Schapper sectarian and adventurist group in his work Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne. Marx included statements of refugees who testified to the slanderous character of Willich’s assertions and borrowed passages The Great Men of the Exile which was not published.”
• Overall the pamphlet has much similarity to The Great Men of the Exile which I’ve discussed before. I only mention it here to raise attention to Willich, and the personality of these splits generally. Sometimes these splits are more entertaining now than particularly relevant to surviving political sects: Willich for instance challenged Marx to a duel and was known for being a daring man and debonair dresser who would meet up with Jenny von Westphalen, talking late into the night while wearing his dashing red sash.
• To his credit, Marx did put aside a grudge long enough to praise Willich years later during the US Civil War as a genuine republican hero. I’d find this easy to be inspired by as well: “The 32nd saw action at Shiloh on the second day, during which Col. Willich displayed great leadership. When his troops became unsteady under fire, he stood before them, his back to the enemy, and conducted the regiment through the manual of arms. He had the regimental band play ‘La Marseillaise’, the anthem for all republican movements in Europe. Recovering its stability, the 32nd launched a bayonet attack.”

Engels had previously given Willich his due as well for their service together in 1848, calling him “the best soldier among the revolutionaries: ‘brave, cold-blooded, skillful, and of quick and sound perception in battle.’”

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, his soul is marching on!

A later form of the paper Marx wrote for in 1852–1862.