Definitions of Socialism (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who are comparatively new to the ideas of the Socialist Party will perhaps wonder why we attach great importance to terminology. Unless there is agreement over terms, misunderstandings must follow. We don't wish to be pedantic, but the history of political movements indicates the enormous amount of confusion caused directly through the lack of satisfactory definitions. Because of this the Socialist Party always makes a point of defining what it means by socialism in every publication which goes out from the party. When we claim that the Labour Party is not a socialist party, and that the Communist Party is also not a socialist party it is because we have at least a clear idea of what we mean by socialism, and from this we don't intend on departing for any momentary political gain. Socialism has been defined by others as “The state control of exchange and a system of equal wages for all.” Such a definition we could not accept for four reasons. Under socialism there will be no state, for the state exists as an organisation for suppression, and for maintaining existence of a class or hierarchy. Secondly there will be no exchange under socialism, for exchange signifies buying and selling mid therefore ownership. Thirdly there will be no wages under socialism, because the wage system signifies that somebody is being exploited (and not getting the real fruits of their labour). And fourthly there will be no money under socialism, because money will not be needed. So for all these reasons we could not accept such a definition of socialism.

Von Scheel has defined socialism as "The economic philosophy of the suffering classes.” Such a definition is very inadequate; at all events the suffering classes have no philosophy in common even though they have poverty m common. G. Belot's definition was “The common entente with a view to social welfare. ” There are many such vague definitions. Even Wm. Morris was also vague in “The realisation for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of all these equalities.” and Hyndman "Socialism is an endeavour to substitute for the anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised co-operation for existence.”

Chas. Bradlaugh who was a champion of free speech was never a Socialist, by his own or others definition, and said “Socialism denies individual private property and affirms that society organised as the state should own all wealth, direct all labour, and compel the equal distribution of all products ”

John Stuart Mill in his “Political Economy” gives us “Socialism is any system which requires that the land and instruments of production should be the property not of individuals but of communities or associations of the government. ” This definition comes a little nearer to the ideas of Socialism which we hold. Marx on the other hand wrote that socialism was"Substitution of conscious development of humanity for the unconscious development.” This is of course more of a philosophical than an economic definition not designed for use in day to day socialist propaganda and because of this could not be used by an organisation as the Socialist Party. Engels’ definition was also a bit philosophical “Mental reflection of the conflict existing in reality between the productive forces and the modes of production.”

A. Schäffle in “Quintessence of Socialism” writes “The Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transformation of private and competing capitalism into united collective capital.” Such definitions, which are common enough, have been the cause of a large amount of real confusion between nationalisation and socialism, and have been deliberately fostered by the labour parties throughout the world, as indeed it is their idea of socialism. Ramsay MacDonald was equally confused in his “Socialism is the application of mutual aid to politics and economics.” Proudhon's definition was likewise inadequate “Socialism is every aspiration towards the amelioration of society.” We might all argue with justification as to what constitutes an amelioration of society. Bebel in his “Woman and Socialism," invokes science and takes us up into the clouds with, “Science applied with clearer conscious and full knowledge to every sphere of human activity.” In “Le Mouvement Socialiste," T. De Wyzewa defines socialism as "A doctrine which demands the suppression of the proletariat and the complete control of wealth and power by the collectivity.” Such an adverse definition savours of influence from Russian Bolshevism. Another from K. Diehl in “Uber Socialisms, Kommunismus und Anarchisms,” “Negatively Socialism is the abolishing of private property in land or capital; positively it postulates personal income derived from labour only, and the abolishing of private possessions of capital” Again the Socialist Party could never work on such an inadequate definition.

There have been no lack of adverse definitions of socialism, and although these are not accepted except by anti-socialists, a few are interesting and can be given to show that even socialists have a sense of humour. “Socialism, like every other social system, when stripped of its emotional trimmings, gets down to a formula for living without work.” The author, was perhaps a little biased for it was Henry Ford. Mrs. Fawcett authoress of a little book on political economy renders the follow amusing verse.

“ What is a Communist?

Why one that hath yearnings,

Of equal division of unequal earnings,

Idler, or bungler, or both, he is willing,

To fork out his penny, and to pocket your shilling!” 

Winston Churchill left one to go down in history after him, when he declared a few years ago that, "Socialism was the equalisation of poverty and the organisation of misery.”

One of the most curious was perhaps Lenin’s serious definition that “Socialism is Soviet Power plus Electrification.”

So when you read our literature again we hope you will appreciate the very sound reasons why we always print our definition and declaration of principles in all party material, and we don’t mind being pulled up on them because they are what we believe.

Horace Jarvis

50 Years Ago: The Freethinkers (1960)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mankind is prone to many errors. When, for instance, one mistake has been discovered and the error removed, many men fancy they have rid themselves of all wrong notions. Those people who, because they have abandoned certain religious superstitions are fond of calling themselves Freethinkers, often imagine they have banished superstition from their minds altogether. Vain delusion. The bulk of the so called Freethinkers, including their leading propagandists (such as C. Bradlaugh, G. W. Foote, and J. M. Robertson) still accept and repeat the wholly unsupported assertion of the parson Malthus, that the cause of poverty is over-population. In spite of the example of Ireland, which, under their very eyes, has had its population steadily decreasing during the last 50 years, yet the misery of its working-class continuing, they reiterate the same old superstition like the parsons they so often condemn.

From the Socialist Standard, February, 1910.

Letter: Some questions on Socialist policy. (1924)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (F. L. Rimington, of Leicester) in sending us his views on current politics, asks some questions relative to Socialist policy. These matters have been dealt with in the Socialist Standard before, but as they may be of interest at the present time we are replying to the questions here.

(1) Does the S.P.G.B. take part in Municipal Politics?

The answer to this question is contained in our Declaration of Principles, which declares for the conquest of the powers of government, local and national.

The master class spend huge sums to control local bodies, as these are a sub-division of the government of capitalism. It is important for the masters to control these councils, etc., and therefore it is equally important to dislodge the capitalists from power wherever they control.

The waging of the class struggle involves the conquest by the workers of the institutions of control, and hence Socialists must fight for conquest of local and national machinery of government. We do not take part in municipal elections to administer capitalism, but to advance the, interests of Socialism. The Socialist Party municipal election address tells the workers how little could be gained in improvements while capitalism lasts, and therefore in local as well as national elections we ask for votes from those alone who realise that the abolition of the present system and replacement by Socialism is the only hope of the working class. Socialists if elected to municipal bodies would use them as vantage points in the class struggle and to sound the message of Socialism to the unconverted workers.

(2) What is our opposition to the S.L.P.? 

The answer is contained in our Party Manifesto, and in many articles in the Socialist Standard during the years when the S.L.P. was an active body. Our opposition to the S.L.P. may be summarised thus : (1) Their lack of understanding of the class struggle shown by their reliance on industrial action as the workers’ remedy. (2) Their muddle-headed and continually changing views on fundamental points of policy, such as war, soviets, unity stunts, etc. (3) Lacking sound views on Socialist policy, they have simply followed the ups and downs of the American S.L.P., and are not evidently able to take up a consistent and firmly grounded Socialist position.

(3) What about taking the oath of allegiance in the House of Commons?

The answer to that question is implied in the Socialist need for getting political control. If we are to refuse to take oaths, then there is no chance for controlling parliament. The questioner does not fully realise the implications of the class struggle. Socialists are not simply waging war against detail grievances in the system. They are fighting against the system as a whole. As political action is necessary to workers’ triumph, Socialists cannot stop at taking oaths imposed upon them by the ruling class. There is nothing revolutionary in fighting against oaths, and by concentrating the electorates’ attention on the oath, Socialism is left aside as the issue. Republicans and Atheists like Bradlaugh can refuse* to take oaths, although they are bitter anti-Socialists.

The taking of oaths imposed by ruling classes has never prevented them being ignored when interest dictated it. The English Revolution of the 17th century was carried through in Parliament by men who took oaths to Kings they beheaded or drove from the throne.

Constitutionalists in Russia took oaths to the Czar and his Government in several Dumas, but that did not prevent them from breaking their oaths when opportunity presented itself, and so abolishing the Czar’s rule. In times of revolution in every country oaths have been broken by those who have been compelled to swear allegiance to the ruling power of the time. If Socialists are to keep out of Parliament because of formal matters of procedure, then the ruling class can keep on imposing conditions which they think you will refuse.

Our correspondent’s idea is that the propaganda value of refusing to take the Oath would be great. Possibly he is correct in this. But it would not be propaganda for Socialism or for the working class. It would be propaganda against the oath, and would not rouse or involve a class issue.

It would appeal to reformers, anti-monarchists, anarchists, and atheists, etc., people generally who are busy fighting effects or dealing with one aspect of capitalism.

The Editorial Committee

* Bradlaugh refused to take the oath at first but was willing afterwards. Then, however, the Government refused to let him take the oath.

Roads to Ruin (1951)

Book Review from the July 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Roads to Ruin: The Shocking History of Social Progress," by E. S. Turner.  (Published by Michael Joseph, Ltd., 256 pages indexed with 11 illustrations. Price 12s. 6d.)

Nowhere in the book does the author claim to be a Socialist. Written entertainingly, without indignation, but sympathetically for the exploited, he deals with some of the lesser known social legislation which caused much controversy—and is now almost forgotten. Forgotten because we accept and can hardly conceive of modern society without such legislation.

Among others he writes of the Bills for the abolition of spring guns (1825-1827); the struggle to stop the employment of climbing boy chimney sweeps (1780 approx-1875);: the acts to legalise the Saturday half holiday (1825-1911) and the agitation for the Plimsoll Line (1850-1906). These are the chapters that will have most interest for Socialists, although the accounts of other minor political disturbances are not without their value in exposing the depths of hypocrisy, cant, humbug and self interest to which the defenders of the existing social system descended in order to safeguard their position, profits and pleasure.

A justifiable criticism against the work is that it tends to foster the discredited idea that the main participants in these movements were the original innovators of the reform. The fact is that the general rising discontent of the working class against their oppressive conditions, both rural and urban, first posed the question. Only then did certain individuals or groups see the need and voice the demand for the particular reform. A modern parallel could be drawn if one overemphasized the importance of A. P. Herbert and his small group of supporters, who so successfully steered marriage and divorce reforms through the House of Commons in the nineteen-thirties, and underemphasized the hardships that impelled him to do so. Mainly they were the changing relationships between the sexes, consequent upon more and more women becoming wage earners and participating in activities outside the home. Since the Married Women’s Property Bill (1856-1882), described in this book, women have striven for more equal status and more control over their own property and earnings. It was some of these difficulties showing themselves in the marriage relationship that A. P. Herbert tried to resolve with his Bill.

It is not difficult for Socialists to believe that squires and owners of game preserves claimed the right to kill by hidden guns attached to trip wires any poacher of their fattened birds or indeed any unsuspecting stranger accidentally trespassing. Not difficult, that is, after the experience of two world wars which were the defence of private property raised to national level.

An established phenomenon in 1776 and not abolished until 1827 their retention was upheld by some of the most inhumane arguments. On page 17.

  "If the market gardener can use spring guns to protect his cabbages why not squires to protect their game?"

Guns were cheaper than keepers and on page 26 we read that the Duke of Wellington supported this view point. Further on page 29.

  “The object of setting spring guns was not personal injury to anyone but to deter from the commission of theft and that object was as completely attained by hitting an innocent man as a guilty man.”

Throughout the shocking history of the exploitation of children, in mines, factories, mills and workshops, in the early nineteenth century, there also runs the brutal story of the climbing boy chimney sweep. The detailed description of the horrifying experiences of these boys (and not only boys, for the author states on page 51 that the flues of Windsor Castle were at one time swept by two girls) form a chapter which will not be lightly forgotten. The gruesome accounts of tragedies, wherein children died of asphyxiation or brutal treatment from vicious master sweeps, stirred the country from time to time reviving the agitation, which lasted for 100 years, for the abolition of the practice. Death was not the only horror. Quoted on page 38:

  ". . . they suffered from inflamed eyes and throats and all manner of skin irritation, the worst of which took the form of a scrotal infection known as chimney boys cancer. .. . There was no cure but the knife and the less fortunate chimney boy might find himself in his teens, not only a bandy-legged hunch back, but a eunuch."

Self-interest defended this employment and the Church was no better. On page 46:

  “. . . this witness had twice been stuck in chimneys in his youth—once at the Bishop of Lincoln’s and once at Lord Melbourne’s . . .”

The Religious Tract Society published a booklet entitled “The Young Chimney Sweepers" (C.1830) in which the following paragraph is deservedly quoted on page 51.

  "This little book will show you that little boys like you have gone to Sunday School and have learned to read and become good. Mind that you go also. Get yourself well washed on Saturday and mind that you are in time on Sunday morning. Your teachers will be glad to see you with a smiling face.. . . learn your lessons and try to read the blessed Bible and to think about the gracious Saviour of whom it tells you.. . . Thus you will be happy little sweeps and you will learn to praise the gracious God, who can make our situation in life comfortable whatever be the circumstances in which Providence has placed us.”

In these days when the claims are all for a five day week, the arguments for a Saturday half-holiday may seem outmoded but when it is realised that shop assistants worked a fourteen and sometimes a sixteen hour day it is easy to understand the growth of the Early Closing Association formed in 1842. Not wishing to be associated with the radical movements of that day the Association attempted to effect a limitation of hours by voluntary negotiation and met with the failure one would expect. Eventually after a welter of moralizing on both sides the struggle entered the political field and an effective Shops Act reached the Statute Book—but not until 1911.

Early Closing Bills had been rejected as “un-English" and “grandmotherly” and Charles Bradlaugh supported these views in 1888. He further argued that a Bill to reduce hours to twelve on five days and to fourteen on Saturdays was “opening the door to legislation which might be of the most terrible character.” He regarded the Bill as “immoral” because it struck a blow at the self-reliance of the individual. Evidently the advocacy of atheism did not extend to the granting of leisure to workers to further study and propagate its cause.

Finally to the fight to save the lives of seamen sent afloat in “coffin ships” from which unscrupulous owners gained greater financial advantage if the vessel foundered and the insurance company paid without demur, than if the rotten hulk reached port safely. It had been shown (page 179) that “. . . I seaman in 60 met a violent death as against 1 in 315 in the mines.” On page 143 a ship owner, Sir Walter Runciman is quoted when he describes those times as:

  ’’days of aboriginal stupidity and sordid bloodsucking” when ships were . . . “scandalously unseaworthy, rotten, leaky, badly found, badly manned, abominably fed and always overloaded.”

It was against those prevailing conditions that seamen organised themselves. They were aided in no small measure by the vociferous agitation of Samuel Plimsoll and his supporters, for a load line on all seagoing vessels. On Samuel Plimsoll there is quoted (but not supported by the author) on page 144 the following:

  ”. . . But he (Plimsoll) was not a reformer, he was a propagandist and the famous 'Plimsoll Mark' indicating the maximum safe draught of a ship remained a valueless safeguard for no less than sixteen years after he secured it, for the simple reason that the selection of its position on the ships side was left to the ’murderers’ (i.e. the shipowners) themselves.”

As confirmation of this there was one “ whimsical Cardiff captain who inscribed the device on his funnel ” (page 170).

The scandal of coffin ships had exercised the deliberations of a committee of fifteen set up as far back as the eighteen thirties—over thirty years before Plimsoll was elected Liberal member for Derby in 1868. Nevertheless it was not until 1890 that the owners load line gave way to the Government load line, based upon scientific tables issued by Lloyds. Chambers of Commerce, Lloyds, shipowners, miners and engineers’ unions and not least of them, the Seamen’s Unions all played their part in the establishment of this and other regulations for sea-going vessels. The tragedy of it all is shown when we are informed that a thousand years before, Venetian and Sardinian sailors had a load mark, a disk similar to the Plimsoll Line. The Hanseatic League also used a mark, and, a glaring mockery to British sailors, so did the British Navy, based on fighting efficiency.

Who can doubt the accuracy of the Socialist case, with regard to reforms, in view of the length of time and enormous efforts which went into the establishment of even these minor reforms? Stated simply it is that whilst we accept all and every reform, grudgingly granted or strenuously wrenched from the capitalist class we do not advocate organising nor working for them. Our work is to organise for Socialism, knowing that when large numbers of Socialists exist the capitalists will be most lavish in the distribution of reforms in an attempt to retain their privileged position.

We recommend this book for reading by Socialists, and for all social reformers we suggest it as an “awful warning” to them for their future activities.

B.

Bradlaugh’s Slanders on Marx (1934)

From the December 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Secularists Condone Murder of the Communards
In his superficial and prejudiced life of Marx (“ Karl Marx : A Study in Fanaticism," reviewed in our July issue), Mr. E. H. Carr attempted to escape responsibility for his inadequate knowledge and preparation by pleading the inaccessibility of documents. He complained of his inability to get hold of periodicals containing “Marx's letters and lesser-known writings," and wrote: —

  To quote one example, I have been completely unable to trace in this country any copy of a short-lived journal called the “Eastern Post," which contained in 1871 a spirited controversy between Marx and Bradlaugh on the Paris Commune.

Why Mr. Carr was “completely unable to trace" the “Eastern Post" is hard to explain, except on the assumption that he did not seriously try. So far from being short-lived, the “Eastern Post" is still in existence, and has been since its first issue on October 18th, 1868. Mr. Carr could have found this out with surpassing ease, and at the British Museum he could have gleaned all the information he required instantly. However, we can be grateful to Mr. Carr's negligence since it has led the present writer to look up the interesting controversy referred to. Here we see Marx, the mental giant, at grips with Bradlaugh and others of the individualists, who, while asserting their loyalty to the cause of “freedom," were enemies of the working-class movement. These men, Bradlaugh, G. J. Holyoake, and G. W. Foote were the personification of bourgeois reaction.

Marx’s “Civil War in France.”
The cause of the dispute between Bradlaugh and Marx was Marx's “Address on the Civil War in France." After the suppression of the Commune in 1871, “Republicans" and “Secularists” fell over one another to express their sympathy for the victims of the cold-blooded slaughter, carried out by the French Government, but while G. W. Foote, for example (“National Reformer," June 11th, 1871, page 378) was condemning the Communards for having endeavoured “forcibly to organise a regular Government in the name of a new social order," it was in reality the idea of the new social order itself—the idea of Socialism, to which they were opposed.

Marx delivered his address, and it was ordered to be published by the General Council of the International Working Men's Association. It described the terror; the slaughter of defenceless women and children in their thousands, so horrifying, in fact, that the correspondents of the English Press exposed the actions of the “government" of France. “The Times," “Daily News,” and other papers, were condemnatory in every way against the butchers of the workers. Marx, in his address, singled out—one of several instances— the bloody guilt of Jules Favre, the Foreign Minister in the Thiers Government—which was, by the way, sanctioned by Bismarck. The Government left Paris, but due to an oversight, some of the private correspondence that passed between the Ministers was overlooked. Favre, in a private letter to Gambetta, admitted that they were NOT defending Paris from the Prussian soldiers, but against the working class, this after his public assertion that we “will not cede an inch of your territory, nor a stone of your fortresses." As a consequence of the seizure of these letters, M. Milliere published a series of legal documents proving that Jules Favre, “living in concubinage with the wife of a drunkard resident in Algiers, had, by a most daring concoction of forgeries, spread over many years, contrived to grasp in the name of the children of his adultery, a large succession, which made him a rich man, and that, in a lawsuit undertaken by the legitimate heirs, he only escaped exposure by the connivance of the Bonapartist tribunals." When Favre returned to Paris after the suppression of the Commune, Milliere was shot!

On July 9th, 1871, on page 1 of the “National Reformer," Charles Bradlaugh, in a review of Marx*s address,

  Deeply regretted that a strong case had been weakened, as we believe it to be, by the introduction into the address of coarse and useless personalities. Surely the reference to Jules Favre’s domestic relations can have but. . ., etc.

In the following issue of the “National Reformer" a reply appeared from George Harris, Joint Secretary of the “ International," in which Harris said: —

  Now, sir, I hold ... it was of the highest importance and imperatively necessary to refer to Jules Favre’s domestic relations, because without such reference his forgery and crime could not have been exposed. Therefore, instead of repeating the real burden of Dr. Marx’s charge, Mr. Bradlaugh simply misleads his readers by speaking only of “reference to Jules Favre’s domestic relations.” Is “forgery,” I would ask, a domestic relation?

This attack produced neither apology nor reply from Bradlaugh. Nothing else was to be expected from him, for his attitude throughout the Commune—and after—was that of a steady supporter of the vile and treacherous Jules Favre. Bradlaugh tried to get out of this mess by saying it was a terrible thing, and asked for pity for the murderer, Favre. He attempted, under the guise of being a "lover of freedom," to protect Favre, who, apart from arranging the cold-blooded murder of Milliere, betrayed the Parisians to Bismarck, carried out Bismarck's instructions, and was also responsible for the massacre of thousands of women and children. This was Favre's friend! No wonder Bradlaugh—after the Franco-Prussian War —hated Marx. Marx had exposed his (Bradlaugh's) friends.

Bradlaugh, no doubt, realised the growing power of the International in European affairs, and the increasing importance of Marx. Bradlaugh had lived on his reputation as a reformer, and saw how his “Republican" propaganda was fizzling out. He therefore began attacking the International and Marx.

Hales, who was Corresponding Secretary of the International, also replied to Bradlaugh. A week later the latter notified his friends through the “National Reformer" (September 30th, 1871), that he was not a member of the International, and that the organisation had few members, and had little influence.

During the second week in December Bradlaugh again attacked the Communards. He protested against class government; he wanted an aristocracy of intellect! On December 16th, 1871, in the “Eastern Post," Bradlaugh, replying to a charge of poking his nose into the private domestic circumstances of a lady refugee from Paris, sought to obscure the issue by ending his letter as follows: —

  I feel indebted to Karl Marx for his enmity. If I were one of his own countrymen he might betray me to his government, here he can only calumniate.

As this letter has never been issued in any work on Marx we take pleasure in giving it the necessary publicity. (Perhaps the Director of Marx/Engels/Lenin/Stalin Institute will note and see to it that the index of the "Karl Marx; Chronik Seines Lebens" is altered accordingly?) Marx replied as follows: —

   Sir,—In his last epistle to you, Mr. Charles Bradlaugh makes the report of the sitting of the General Council of December 12th—a sitting from which I was absent in consequence of illness—the pretext for discharging on me his ruffianism. He says, “I feel indebted to Karl Marx for his enmity.” My enmity to Mr. Charles Bradlaugh! Ever since the publication of the “Address on the Civil War in France” Mr. Bradlaugh’s voice has chimed in with world-wide chorus of slander against the “International” and myself. I treated him like the other revilers, with contemptuous silence. This was more than the grotesque vanity of that huge self-idolator could stand. I “calumniated” him because I took no notice of his calumnies. My silence drove him mad; in a public meeting he denounced me as a Bonapartist because in the “Address on the Civil War” I had forsooth laid bare the historic circumstances that gave birth to the Second Empire. He now goes a step further and transforms me into a police agent of Bismarck. Poor man! He must needs show that the lessons he has recently received at Paris from the infamous Emile de Gerardin and his clique are not lost upon him. For the present, I shall “betray him” to the German public by giving the greatest possible circulation to his epistle. If he is kind enough to clothe his libels in a more tangible shape I shall “betray him” to an English law court.

I am, Sir,

Yours obediently,

Karl Marx.

John Hales, Secretary of the International, supplemented this letter with another: —

  With reference to Mr. Bradlaugh’s insinuation against Dr. Marx, I say that it is as lying as it is malicious, and with that I leave the matter, knowing that Dr. Marx needs no vindicator. But I would make one remark about Mr. Bradlaugh, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Mr. Bradlaugh has been on one or two missions to Paris lately. I know of no workmen’s organisations which employ secret emissaries, and as Mr. Bradlaugh has not a reputation for working for nothing, I would ask whether there was any connection between his visits and the recent Bonapartist intrigues. Dirty tools are usually employed to do dirty work, and it is well known that the Bonapartists are not particular as to what instruments they use.

Bradlaugh’s Hostility towards Socialism.

A few days later, on December 19th, Marx was present at a meeting of the International, and called attention to these facts, and also the fact that Bradlaugh, to “prove” a case against Marx, had stripped a quotation from its context. This falsification, said Marx, “was deliberate and intentional.” Marx pointed out that when in Paris, Bradlaugh resorted and dined with the most infamous men in France. Referring to Bradlaugh’s political attitude, Marx said: —

   He could understand the secret of the man’s malignity; he was opposed to a labour movement; he only wished to see a little shuffling of the cards, a little re-distribution of political power, just sufficient to enable him to rise to a higher position, and that he knew he (Marx) represented the labour struggle, a struggle that would effect the emancipation of the people by abolishing classes and class distinctions; that was not what Bradlaugh wanted; hence his opposition.

Following this, "Le Soir,” the reactionary Parisian paper, deemed it necessary to aid Bradlaugh, and circulated a feeble apology for him, as he was a contributor to its columns. The attitude of Bradlaugh’s friends in Paris might be understood when the reader is reminded that when Victor Hugo stood as candidate he demanded a political amnesty for the Communards. Victor Hugo polled 93,423 votes. Bradlaugh’s paper, “Le Soir," opposed Hugo solely on the grounds that he favoured the amnesty. The voters were called “brigands and assassins” by “Le Soir.” 

Marx, on January 20th, 1872, enters the lists once more, and writes to the Editor of the “Eastern Post” : —

   Sir,—In the- “National Reformer” of January 10th, Mr. Bradlaugh says : “We only meant to allege that Dr. Marx had, in former times, given information to his own Government.”
    I simply declare that is calumny as ridiculous as it is infamous. I call upon Mr. Bradlaugh to publish any fact that could afford him even the slightest pretext for his statement. For his personal tranquillity I add that he shall not be challenged 

                                                                                                                Yours, etc.,

January 16th, 1872.                                                                                 Karl Marx.

Bradlaugh realised the trouncing he had received and was anxious to call off the hostilities, and on January 22nd, 1872, was desirous of “submitting the whole question between myself on the one hand and Dr. Marx and the International on the other to a Council of Honour. . . .”

Marx’s final word after the request of Bradlaugh was as follows : —

To the Editor of the “Eastern Post,” February 3rd, 1872.
Sir,
   [Owing to printing errors the opening is omitted.] . . . lous as it is infamous. I did so in order not to justify myself, but to expose him. With the low cunning of a solicitor’s clerk he tries to escape this liability by inviting me to a “ Court of Honour.” Does he really fancy that a Bradlaugh or the editors of the Paris demi-monde Press, or those of the Bismarckian papers at Berlin, or the “Tages Presse” at Vienna, or the “ Kriminal Zeitung” at New York, or the “ Moscow Gazette,” have only to slander me, in order to make me amenable to clear my public character, and even do so before a “Council of Honour ” of which the friends of these “ honourable ” gentlemen must form part.
  I have done with Mr. Charles Bradlaugh, and leave him to all the comforts he may derive from the quite contemplation of his own self.

I am,

Yours obediently,

Karl Marx.

So ended the heroics of the “great” Bradlaugh. We need only add in conclusion a word about one of his supporters, another trickster—George Jacob Holyoake, who, because of Marx’s address, repudiated and attacked the International in a letter to “The Daily News.” This was after Holyoake had tried to enter the organisation, but the General Council refused him membership. This Holyoake denied, but the minutes proved the truth. Weston, who moved the acceptance of Holyoake’s membership, was compelled to withdraw it, and Holyoake was so informed by Weston himself.

Moses Baritz