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PENGUIN (^j CLASSICS KARL MARX Dispatches for the New York T r ib u n e ; Selected Journalism o f Karl Marx PENGUININ© [4\) CLASSICS DISPATCHES FOR THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE Born in Trier in the Rhineland in 1818, k a r l m a r x was the son of a Jewish lawyer recently converted to Christianity. As a student in Bonn and Berlin, Marx studied law and then philosophy. He joined with the Young Hegelians, the most radical of Hegel’s followers, in denying that Hegel’s philosophy could be reconciled with Christianity or the existing State. Forced out of university by his radicalism, he became a journalist and, soon after, a socialist. He left Prussia for Paris and then Brussels, where he stayed until 1848. In 1844 he began his collaboration with Friedrich Engels and developed a new theory of communism to be brought into being by a proletarian revolution. This theory was brilliantly out lined in The Communist Manifesto. Marx participated in the 1848 revolutions as a newspaper editor in Cologne. Exiled together with his family to London, he tried to make a living writing for the New York Tribune and other journals, but remained financially dependent on Engels. His researches in the British Museum were aimed at underpinning his conception of communism with a theory of history that demonstrated that capitalism was a transient economic form destined to break down and be superseded by a society without classes, private property or state authority. This study was never completed, but its first part, which was published as Capital in 1867, established him as the principal theorist of revolutionary socialism. He died in London in 1883. ja m e s l e d b e t t e r is deputy manager editor of CNNMoney.com. He is the author of Starving to Death on $200 Million: The Short, Absurd Life of the Industry Standard and Made Possible by—: The Death of Public Broadcasting in the United States. f r a n c i s w h e e n is a journalist, author and broadcaster. He has written for most British national newspapers and was named Columnist of the Year in 1997 for his “ Wheen’s World” page in the Guardian. His biography of Karl Marx, which won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize, has been translated into more than twenty languages. His other books include Tom Driberg: His Life and Indiscretions, Who Was Dr Charlotte Bach f and Hoo-Hahs and Passing Frenzies, which won the George Orwell Prize in 2003. His latest book is How Mumbo-]umbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions. He is deputy editor of Private Eye and a regular panelist on the BBC program The News Quiz. Dispatches for the New York Tribune Selected Journalism of Karl Marx Selected and with an Introduction by JAMES LEDBETTER Foreword by francis wheen PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 8 0 Strand, London w c i r o r l , England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 3 7 5 Hudson Street, New York, New York 1 0 0 1 4 , USA Penguin Group (Canada), 9 0 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 7 0 0 , Toronto, Ontario, Canada M 4 P 2 Y 3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 1 1 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 0 17, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0631, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R o r l , England www.penguin.com This selection first published 2007 1 Selection and editorial material copyright © James Ledbetter, 2007 Foreword copyright © Francis Wheen, 2007 All rights reserved The moral right of the editor has been asserted Set in 10.25/12.25 pt PostScript Adobe Sabon Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser i s b n 978-0-141-44192-4 Contents Foreword ix Chronology xv Introduction xvii A Note on the Text xxix CHINA Revolution in China and in Europe 3 [The Anglo-Chinese Conflict] 11 [Russian Trade with China] 17 [English Atrocities in China] 20 History of the Opium Trade [I] 24 History of the Opium Trade [II] 28 [The Anglo-Chinese Treaty] 31 The British and Chinese Treaty 36 Trade with China 42 WAR, REVOLUTION AND COUNTER REVOLUTION IN EUROPE The Greek Insurrection 51 Declaration of War.—On the History of the Eastern Question 54 [Revolution in Spain.—Bomarsund] 63 Prussia 67 [Revolution in Spain] [I] 72 [Revolution in Spain] [II] 78 [On Italian Unity] 84 vi CONTENTS A Historic Parallel 90 What Has Italy Gained? 93 BRITISH POLITICS AND SOCIETY The Elections in England.—Tories and Whigs 98 Corruption at Elections 104 [Case of Starvation] h i [Starvation] 113 The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery 113 [Capital Punishment] 119 [Irish Tenant Right] 123 [Chartism] 129 [Prince Albert] 13 1 The War Debate in Parliament 134 [Clearing of Estates in Scotland] 139 The English Middle Class 142 Fall of the Aberdeen Ministry 145 [The Increase of Lunacy in Great Britain] 151 ECONOMICS AND FINANCE Pauperism and Free Trade.—The Approaching Commercial Crisis 161 The Labor Question 163 The Commercial Crisis in Britain 166 The French Credit Mobilier [I] 17 1 The French Credit Mobilier [II] 1 77 The French Credit Mobilier [III] 183 Condition of Factory Laborers 189 [The Bank Act of 1844 and the Monetary Crisis in England] 192 [The Crisis in Europe] 198 British Commerce and Finance 200 [Project for the Regulation of the Price of Bread in France] 204 CONTENTS vii INDIA AND IMPERIALISM The British Rule in India 212 The Future Results of British Rule in India 219 The Revolt in the Indian Army 225 The Indian Question 229 The Indian Revolt 234 [Investigation of Tortures in India] 237 The Approaching Indian Loan 243 The Indian Bill 246 Great Trouble in Indian Finances 250 AMERICA AND SLAVERY The British Government and the Slave-Trade 261 The American Question in England 266 The British Cotton Trade 276 The North American Civil War 280 The London Times on the Orleans Princes in America 291 The News and Its Effect in London 295 Progress of Feeling in England 300 English Public Opinion 305 Notes 312 Foreword When my biography of Karl Marx was published, in 1999, some academic critics complained that the book was rather “ journalistic” —one of the most damning insults in the univer sity lexicon, even in an age when many dons are happy to dash off a thousand words on the cultural significance of Madonna’s new hairstyle. I had no defense against the charge: I am a journalist. If this is a crime, however, then Marx himself was guilty of it. For freelance intellectuals who might otherwise spend all day closeted away in libraries, writing for newspapers is a useful discipline. It forces them to engage with the here and now, to test their theories against reality, to apply their understanding of history to the specific events of the day, and to write with a clarity that will reach into the minds of the general public. It can also provide the satisfaction of achieving immediate results: there are few greater pleasures than publishing an article that sparks off a controversy, or infuriates the high and mighty. All of which is a pretty fair summary of what drew Marx to journalism in the first place, when as a young man in the early 1840s he started writing for the German press. As a student he had envisaged some sort of academic career for himself, but after leaving Berlin University his thoughts shifted from ideal ism to materialism, from the abstract to the actual. He had come to despise the nebulous, sentimental arguments of those German liberals who thought freedom was best honored in the starry firmament of the imagination instead of on the solid ground of reality. “ Since every true philosophy is the intellectual quintessence ofitstime,” he wrote in 1842, “ the time must come X FOREWORD when philosophy not only internally by its content, but also externally through its form, comes into contact and interaction with the real world of its day.” 1 His new direction would require an exhausting, and exhaustive, course of self-education, but that was no discouragement to such an insatiable autodidact. Marx produced his first article in February 1842 and sent it to a newspaper in Dresden, the Deutsche Jahrbucher. It was a brilliant polemic against the latest censorship instructions issued by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV—and, with glorious if unintended irony, the censor promptly banned it. The news paper itself was closed down shortly afterward by order of the Federal Parliament. Marx then tried his luck at the Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. It was immediately clear that he had qualities which are essential to all great journalists: a determination to speak truth to power, and absolute fearlessness even when writing about people whose friendship or support one might need.