chapter 5 An All Too Human Communism

1 A Generalised Inversion

When Marx left the editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung on 17 March 1843, the fate of the Cologne paper was inexorably sealed. Due to the radical nature of the liberalism that inspired the paper under Marx’s editorship, the Prussian government had for some time already effectively decided upon its suppres- sion. However, officially, it was only a ministerial order of 21 January 1843 that stated that the Rheinische Zeitung would cease publication by 31 March of the same year. This accordingly took place, despite Marx’s efforts to obtain a revoc- ation of the government decision and the petitions submitted by the citizens of Cologne and other Rhineland cities, as well an appeal on the part of the paper’s shareholders to the Prussian sovereign.1 The closure of the Rheinische Zeitung resulted in a determining change in both the public and private spheres of the young intellectual’s life. He was now 25 years old. Weighty issues, both practical and theoretical, loomed on the horizon for him. The previous year, after the death of his brother Hermann,2 difficulties arose with his mother, Henriette, who, wanting to see him take up a secure and advantageous profession, had already refused both any finan- cial assistance and access to his paternal inheritance. On the other hand, his engagement to Jenny von Westphalen had existed since the autumn of 1836

1 During the discussion on this of the General Meeting of the Shareholders of the Rheinische Zeitung, Jung, one of the directors, declared that ‘the newspaper has prospered in its present form, it has gained a surprising number of readers with astonishing rapidity’ (mecw 1, p. 717). 2 ‘Not much is known about Marx’s brothers and sisters. The first born, Moritz David, died soon after birth. The second was Sophie, born 13 November 1816. As far as we know, she was the only sibling with whom he had a degree of intimacy during his youth. Nonetheless, he later only just remained in contact with his sister who had married a lawyer called Schmalshausen and lived in Maastricht. Karl was born on 5 May 1818 at 1:30 in the morning. Of Karl’s two younger brothers, Hermann died at the age of 23 and Eduard at the age of 11. They both died of tuberculosis, a hereditary family illness, as did the other two sisters Henriette and Karoline who died fairly young. Louise, born in 1821, married the Dutchman Jan Karl Kuta and migrated with him to Cape Town. She came to visit Marx twice in London, with her husband, and in 1853 Marx wrote several articles for Zuid-Afrikaan, edited by his brother-in-law. Emilie, born in 1822, married the engineer Conradi and lived happily in Trier up until her death in 1888’ (Nikolaevskij and Maenchen-Helfen 1969, p. 23).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/9789004307643_006 an all too human communism 201 and Karl, apart from the strength of his passion, felt profoundly responsible for this young woman from a good family who, for him ‘has fought the most viol- ent battles, which almost undermined her health’.3 It was absolutely necessary for him to find some means of support, without foregoing the cultural-political activities to which his life was, by now, irrevocably destined. Thus, the invit- ation from Arnold Ruge, after the Prussian government had also imposed the closure of his journal Deutsche Jahrbücher, was providential. He proposed co- editing a journal in German to be published abroad. Between Switzerland, Strasburg and Paris, the latter was chosen for the publication, both due to its importance and the large resident German population. As soon as the contract was signed, Marx returned to Kreuznach, where Jenny lived with her mother, Caroline von Westphalen, married and spent the initial post-wedding period there before leaving for France in October of the same year. This meant a more or less definitive departure from his native land. Having resolved his sentimental situation and suspended the urgency of his journalistic and publicist activities, Marx passed the months in Kreuznach before his departure for France in a return to an intensive activity of concen- tration and study, equalled only by that in the period of his preparation for his dissertation. The most noteworthy outcome of this organic revival of his theor- etical engagement is a day of reckoning with Hegel and a liquidation – for us, as will be seen, only presumed as such – of Hegelian philosophy. Marriage and the disappearance of any professional opportunities in his homeland, even of a literary and essayist nature, the move to a new country and the maturing of increasingly radically democratic political ideas, had, by now, enabled him to liberate himself from all authorities and to resolve to carry out the parricide which, with its characteristics of extremism and absoluteness, constitutes the pivotal point of his transition from idealism to materialism. As we have seen, during the Rheinische Zeitung period the young Marx had experimented, above all, with being an ethical-political essayist, criticising the distance of the German public institutions from coherence with a radical and unconditional democratic state. It was precisely with regard to political philo-

3 ‘I can assure you, without the slightest romanticism, that I am head over heels in love, and indeed in the most serious way. I have been engaged for more than seven years, and for my sake my fiancée has fought the most violent battles, which almost undermined her health, partly against her pietistic aristocratic relatives, for whom “the Lord in heaven” and the “lord in Berlin” are equally objects of religious cult, and partly against my own family, in which some priests and other enemies of mine have ensconced themselves’ (mecw 1, p. 399). Marx here refers to, amongst other things, Jenny’s deeply conservative stepbrother, Otto Wilhelm H. von Westphalen, who was the Prussian Minister of the Interior from 1850–8.