Karl Marx_ A Biography ( PDFDrive )

the Democratic Society and Gottschalk's Workers' Association when Willich appealed to the Society for financial aid on behalf of the refugee remnants of Herwegh's Legion. The Society refused to help - fearing to be associated with the Legion; but Gottschalk's Association (although Gottschalk himself disagreed with the aims of the Legion) agreed to arrange payments.

On one thing Marx and Gottschalk did agree, and that was the increasing irrelevance of the Communist League. At a meeting of the Cologne branch in the middle of May, Gottschalk confirmed his decision to resign from the League, declaring that its constitution needed reframing - though he promised his future co-operation if required.19 However, by this time the League had virtually ceased to exist. From Berlin Born wrote to Marx: 'The League has dissolved; it is everywhere and nowhere.'20 It seems probable that Marx exercised the power granted him in Brussels in February to declare a formal dissolution in spite of the opposition of the former leaders of the League of the Just. According to Peter Roser, a member of the Cologne group who later turned King's evidence: 'because it was impossible to agree and Schapper and Moll insisted on the maintenance of the League, Marx used his discretionary power and dissolved the League. Marx considered the continuance of the League to be superfluous, since the aim of the League was not conspiracy but propaganda, and under present circumstances propaganda could be conducted openly and secrecy was not necessary since a free Press and the right of association were guaranteed.'21 Marx himself said later that the League's activities 'faded out of their own accord in that more effective means of carrying out its aims were available'.22 And two years later in London Marx found the Communist League 'reconstituted'.23 The reasons Marx gave for the dissolution seem implausible: they only argue for the continuance of an open Communist League. More likely, Marx considered the radical policies of the Communist League and the Seventeen Demands harmful to the more moderate line being pursued by the

Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

III. T H E ' N E U E R H E I N I S C H E Z E I T U N G '

Marx's main energies throughout this period were concentrated on giving effect to an idea he had had since the outbreak of the German revolution: the founding of an influential radical newspaper. The Cologne communists had already planned a paper of which Hess was to be the editor. But Marx and Engels had laid their plans too. They had started collecting subscriptions while in Paris; and on arrival in Cologne, in Engels' words,

i8o K A R L M A R X ! A B I O G R A P H Y

'in twenty-four hours, through Marx, we had conquered the terrain and

Of his father, he wrote that 'he would sooner send us iooo bullets than 1000 thaler'.25 In the end they raised only 13,000 thaler out of the 30,000 which had been their aim, and Marx had to contribute substantially from his own pocket. T h e provenance of the share money was severely criticised in the paper of the Workers' Association, edited by Gottschalk: Marx's paper, it was said, had put itself in the hands of the 'money aristocracy' and its printer, Clouth, had lowered wages and tried to impose no-strike agreements on his workers. Clouth replied that he had merely refused to raise wages; and that the editorial board had no control over the printing workers. T h e editorial board was composed entirely of members of the Communist League with the exception of Burgers, who was soon forced out. According to Engels, Marx exercised 'a dictatorship pure and simple' which was 'completely natural, uncontested and freely accepted. By the

criticism voiced was that Marx worked too slowly 'Marx is no journalist and never will be,' wrote Born. 'He spends a whole day on a leading article that another would write in two hours, as though it was concerned with the solution of a deep philosophical problem. He changes and polishes and changes the changed and can never be ready in time.'27

From the start the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was conceived as a national paper containing little local news. Engels contributed most of the leading articles in the early period and followed developments in France and England, while Marx concentrated on internal politics. Its general character was factual and ironically descriptive rather than theoretical, and there was an attractive Feuilleton edited by Georg Weerth.

Marx had arrived in Germany with the hope of reproducing there the sort of revolutionary situation that he had experienced in Paris, but he soon realised that this was beyond the bounds of possibility. T h e German 'revolution' had been a very partial one: only in Berlin and Vienna had there been any serious violence, and in the whole of Germany only one prince lost his throne - let alone his head. In 1848 it was only possible to modify autocratic structures: these did not entirely disappear until after the First World War. For the autocratic Government managed to retain control both of the army and of the administration that was more powerful than that in either France or England (since it controlled the development of the economy which at that time needed protection). There were two main reasons for this necessarily limited character of the 1848 revolution.