1847 was also the year in which Marx published his book The Poverty of Philosophy. This work was levelled at the French Utopian, Proudhon, and in this criticism Marx outlined the fundamentals of scientific Socialism.
The Communist Manifesto
The Manifesto was published as the platform of the “Communist League”, a working-men’s association at first German and later international. Due to the political conditions on the continent before 1848, it was a secret society. At a congress of the League, held in London in November 1847, Marx and Engels were asked to prepare for publication a theoretical and practical party programme, and this was published in 1848 as The Communist Manifesto. It has since been published in many languages. In an edition of 1888 Engels wrote a preface in which he gave in detail the history of the Manifesto. The following quotations are important:
Yet when it was written we could not have called it a Socialist Manifesto. By Socialists in 1847 were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems: Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks, who, by all manners of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances — in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the “Educated” classes for support. Whatever portion of the working class has become convinced of the insufficiency of mere political revolutions, and had proclaimed the necessity of a total social change, that portion, then, called itself communist.
Second:
And our notion from the very beginning was that “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself”.
Third:
The Manifesto being our joint production, I feel bound to state that the fundamental proposition which forms the nucleus, belongs to Marx. That proposition is that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, forms the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the intellectual history of that epoch.
For the German edition of 1872 Engels wrote as follows:
However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of section II. That passage would in many respects be very differently worded today.
Engels made it clear that although much of the Manifesto had become outdated, as shown by his 1888 preface: “But then, the Manifesto has become an historical document which we have no longer any right to alter.”
The first quotation gives an insight to the political situation in the working-class movement of 1847. Engels leaves no doubt as to why it was called the Communist Manifesto. An explanation is provided for those who have become tired and frustrated, an answer to the cynics is to be found, in the second quotation: the establishment of Socialism as the work of the working class. That class is not yet ready to accomplish its historic mission.
The third quotation is important and interesting Here we have Engels telling us that Marx had, as early as 1847, mastered and was able to apply the materialist conception of history. Engels gives us in this statement a concise definition of the materialist conception of history.
Cologne and London
1848 was a year of European revolt. There was an insurrection in Paris and Marx, expelled from Brussels, accepted an invitation from the Parisian government to return to that city. Shortly afterwards the wave of revolt spread to Germany, and Marx and Engels decided to return there.
In Cologne they commenced the paper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, of which Marx was the editor. The paper was a radical democratic journal, but in it Marx put forward his view that it was only the workers who could be relied upon in the revolution and that the industrialists who were the leaders of the movement would check it as soon as its full possibilities became clear. Marx’s view of the rôle of the leaders proved correct, and the revolt in Germany collapsed.
The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed and Marx himself arrested and tried for high treason. He was acquitted, but was forced to go to Paris. With the crushing of the revolt there, expulsion again threatened him and he travelled to what was to be his home for the rest of his life, London.
The early years of their life in London were extremely hard for the Marx family. A period of European reaction set in after the revolts of 1848. The Communist League broke up, and Marx had to provide for his family by poorly-paid journalistic work. During this period of extreme poverty Marx continued his social studies, making use of the reading room at the British Museum, which finally led to the publication of Capital.
Bob Ambridge
