articles thus relegated the solution of the questions then prominent
in Germany to the advent of socialism, and so far
resembled in principle other socialist publications of the time.
But the way of reasoning was different, and the final words
of the last quoted sentence pointed to a political revolution,
to begin in France as soon as the industrial evolution had
created a sufficiently strong proletariate. In contradistinction
to most of the socialists of the day, Marx laid stress
upon the political struggle as the lever of social emancipation.
In some letters which formed part of a correspondence
between Marx, Ruge, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Mikhail Bakunin,
published as an introduction to the review, this opposition
of Marx to socialistic “dogmatism” was enunciated in a still
more pronounced form: “Nothing prevents us,” he said, “from
combining our criticism with the criticism of politics, from
participating in politics, and consequently in real struggles. We
will not, then, oppose the world like doctrinarians with a new
principle: here is truth, kneel down here! We expose new principles
to the world out of the principles of the world itself. We
don’t tell it: ‘Give up your struggles, they are rubbish, we will
show you the true war-cry.’ We explain to it only the real
object for which it struggles, and consciousness is a thing it must
acquire even if it objects to it.”
In Paris Marx met Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), from whom the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher had two articles—a powerfully written outline of a criticism of political economy, and a letter on Carlyle’s Past and Present. Engels, the son of a wealthy cotton-spinner, was born in 1820 at Barmen. Although destined by his father for a commercial career, he attended a classical school, and during his apprenticeship and whilst undergoing in Berlin his one year’s military service, he had given up part of his free hours to philosophical studies. In Berlin he had frequented the society of the “Freien,” and had written letters to the Rheinische Zeitung. In 1842 he had gone to England, his father’s firm having a factory near Manchester, and had entered into connexion with the Owenite and Chartist movements, as well as with German communists. He contributed to Owen’s New Moral World and to the Chartist Northern Star, gave up much of his abstract speculative reasoning for a more positivist conception of things, and took to economic studies. Now, in September 1844, on a short stay in Paris, he visited Marx, and the two found that in regard to all theoretical points there was perfect agreement between them. From that visit dates the close friendship and uninterrupted collaboration and exchange of ideas which lasted during their lives, so that even some of Marx’s subsequent works, which he published under his own name, are more or less also the work of Engels. The first result of their collaboration was the book Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten, a scathing exposition of the perverseness of the high-sounding speculative radicalism of Bauer and the other Berlin “Freie.” By aid of an analysis, which, though not free from exaggeration and a certain diffuseness, bears testimony to the great learning of Marx and the vigorous discerning faculty of both the authors, it is shown that the supposed superior criticism—the “critical criticism” of the Bauer school, based upon the doctrine of a “self-conscious” idea, represented by or incarnated in the critic—was in fact inferior to the older Hegelian idealism. The socialist and working-class movements in Great Britain, France and Germany are defended against the superior criticism of the “holy” Bauer family.
In Paris, where he had very intimate intercourse with Heinrich Heine, who always speaks of him with the greatest respect, and some of whose poems were suggested by Marx, the latter contributed to a Radical magazine, the Vorwärts; but in consequence of a request by the Prussian government, nearly the whole staff of the magazine soon got orders to leave France. Marx now went to Brussels, where he shortly afterwards was joined by Engels. In Brussels he published his second great work, La Misère de la philosophie, a sharp rejoinder to the Philosophie de la misère ou contradictions économiques of J. P. Proudhon. In this he deals with Proudhon, whom in the former work he had defended against the Bauers, not less severely than with the latter. It is shown that in many points Proudhon is inferior to both the middle-class economists and the socialists, that his somewhat noisily proclaimed discoveries in regard to political economy were made long before by English socialists, and that his main remedies, the “constitution of the labour-value” and the establishment of exchange bazaars, were but a repetition of what English socialists had already worked out much more thoroughly and more consistently. Altogether the book shows remarkable knowledge of political economy. In justice to Proudhon, it must be added that it is more often his mode of speaking than the thought underlying the attacked sentences that is hit by Marx’s criticism. In Brussels Marx and Engels also wrote a number of essays, wherein they criticized the German literary representatives of that kind of socialism and philosophic radicalism which was mainly influenced by the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, and deduced its theorems or postulates from speculations on the “nature of man.” They mockingly nicknamed this kind of socialism “German or True Socialism,” and ridiculed the idea that by disregarding historical and class distinctions a conception of society and socialism superior to that of the English and French workers and theorists could be obtained. Some of these essays were published at the time, two or three, curiously enough, by one of the attacked writers in his own magazine; one, a criticism of Feuerbach himself, was in a modified form published by Engels in 1885, but others have remained in manuscript. They were at first intended for publication in two volumes as a criticism of post-Hegelian German philosophy, but the Revolution of 1848 postponed for a time all interest in theoretical discussions.
In Brussels Marx and Engels came into still closer contact with the socialist working-class movement. They founded a German workers’ society, acquired a local German weekly, the Brüsseller deutsche Zeitung, and finally joined a communistic society of German workers, the “League of the Just,” a secret society which had its main branches in London, Paris, Brussels and several Swiss towns. For this league, which till then had adhered to the rough-and-ready communism of the gifted German workman Wilhelm Weitling, but which now called itself “League of the Communists,” and gave up its leanings towards conspiracy and became an educational and propagandistic body, Marx and Engels at the end of 1847 wrote their famous pamphlet, Manifest der Kommunisten. It was a concise exposition of the history of the working-class movement in modern society according to their views, to which was added a critical survey of the existing socialist and communist literature, and an explanation of the attitude of the Communists towards the advanced opposition parties in the different countries. Scarcely was the manifesto printed when, in February 1848, the Revolution broke out in France, and “the crowing of the Gallican cock” gave the signal for an upheaval in Germany such as Marx had prophesied. After a short stay in France, Marx and Engels went to Cologne in May 1848, and there with some friends they founded the Neue rheinische Zeitung, with the sub-title “An Organ of Democracy,” a political daily paper on a large scale, of which Marx was the chief editor. They took a frankly revolutionary attitude, and directed their criticism to a great extent against the middle-class democratic parties, who, by evading all decisive issues, delayed the achievement of the upheaval. When in November 1848 the king of Prussia dissolved the National Assembly, Marx and his friends advocated the non-payment of taxes and the organization of armed resistance. Then the state of siege was declared in Cologne, the Neue rheinische Zeitung was suspended, and Marx was put on trial for high treason. He was unanimously acquitted by a middle-class jury, but in May 1849 he was expelled from Prussian territory. He went to Paris, but was soon given the option of either leaving France or settling at a small provincial place. He preferred the former, and went to England. He settled in London, and remained there for the rest of his life.
At first he tried to reorganize the Communist League; but soon a conflict broke out in its ranks, and after some of its members had been tried in Germany and condemned for high
