Karl Marx by Francis Wheen

Author:Francis Wheen [Karl Marx ]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Historical
ISBN: 9780007387595
Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 2012-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

This absurd interlude began with a chance remark by the radical author Karl Blind, who shared the platform with Marx at an anti-Russian rally organised by the Urquhartites in May 1859. Whenever two or three German socialists were gathered together it was a safe bet that they would soon begin swapping slanderous gossip about fellow émigrés, and on this occasion Blind happened to mention that Karl Vogt – a former liberal member of the Frankfurt Assembly now exiled in Switzerland – was receiving clandestine payments from Napoleon III.

Since Vogt had recently written a pro-Bonapartist political tract, Marx thought this titbit interesting enough to pass on to the journalist Elard Biskamp, who duly published it in his new weekly paper for London refugees, Das Volk. Meanwhile, Blind produced an anonymous flysheet repeating the accusation, which was reprinted in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, a respectable German newspaper. Vogt, wrongly assuming Marx to be the author, issued libel writs against the paper – whereupon the man responsible for the brouhaha, Blind, went into a blue funk and refused to testify, pretending that the flysheet had nothing to do with him. Though the case was dismissed on a technicality, Vogt claimed a moral victory since the defence had been unable to prove its allegations. (A few years later, documents found in the French archives showed that Bonaparte had indeed been paying him a secret stipend.)

There it might have ended, had not Vogt decided to gloat over his success in a small book called Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung (‘My Lawsuit Against the Allgemeine Zeitung’) which denounced Marx as a revolutionary charlatan who sponged off the workers while consorting with the aristocracy. He was also identified as the leader of a ‘Brimstone Gang’ which blackmailed German communists by threatening to expose them unless they paid hush money. The many pages of supporting evidence included a particularly damning letter from Gustav Techow, an ex-lieutenant in the Baden campaign, describing a meeting of the Communist League soon after his arrival in London in 1850:

First we drank port, then claret (which is red Bordeaux), then champagne. After the red wine he [Marx] was completely drunk. That was exactly what I wanted, because he would be more openhearted than he would probably otherwise have been. I became certain of many things which would otherwise have remained mere suppositions. In spite of his condition Marx dominated the conversation up to the last moment.

He gave the impression not only of rare intellectual superiority but also of outstanding personality. If he had had as much heart as intellect and love as hate, I should have gone through fire for him, even if he had not just occasionally hinted at his complete contempt for me, which he finally expressed quite openly. He is the first and only one among us all whom I would trust to have the capacity for leadership and for never losing himself in small matters when dealing with great events.

In view of our aims, I regret that this man, with his fine intellect, is lacking in nobility of soul.

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