New translation of Das Kapital (2024)

Book Review from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capital. Critique of Political Economy, volume 1. By Karl Marx. Translated by Paul Reitter. (Princeton University Press. £24.50.)

The fruit of five years’ work, Paul Reitter’s new translation of Das Kapital was published last month. It lives up to its claim to be a translation into colloquial (American) English, especially as regards the descriptive and historical parts. It really does read like something written this century as opposed to the now rather clunky original 1887 translation by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling under Engels’s direction.

However, there are some words that cannot be said to be colloquial, in particular valorization, metabolize and subsumption which don’t appear in the 1887 translation and, in the case of the first two, could not have done. They first appeared in the 1976 Penguin translation by Ben Fowkes. Reitter has added a fourth — thingly. The 1887 version translates them as, respectively, ‘production of surplus value’, ‘material change (or circulation)’, and ‘subjection’. These are clearly more colloquial. As to thingly, this was translated as ‘material’, but most people will probably read it as ‘thingy’, which won’t be too wide of the mark.

Reitter has taken great care and there can be no doubt that his translations here are an accurate literal translation of the native German words, but, as with all translations, the question is who is the translation for. At one time Capital was read and studied in the working class movement. Now, unfortunately, it is read mainly by academics in the field of Marx studies. For them, such words present no problem and interpreting their meaning provides ample room for learned disputations, and, for those whose first language is English, puts them in a position to follow the arguments by those whose first language is German. Fair enough, but they don’t make it easier for ordinary working-class militants who want to understand how capitalism works and how they are exploited.

Metabolism is now acceptable and perhaps subsumption too but not valorization. It hardly existed in 1887 and is now used, in economics, to mean the same as ‘monetarization,’ making money out of something. Of course this is what capital is used for too but so are many other things that have nothing to do with workers being used to produce surplus value for capitalists (and all to do with putting a price on everything). The word ‘valorization’ blunts, even obscures, that what’s involved is the exploitation of workers.

For example, in Reitter’s (and Fowkes’s) translation, the title of the chapter which introduces the concept of surplus value is ‘The Labor Process and the Valorization Process’. In the 1887 translation it’s ‘The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus Value’. Further, even of itself, ‘valorization’ doesn’t bring out in a clear and immediately comprehensible way what Marx was getting at. The 1887 translation defines capital as ‘self-expanding value’, which conveys the idea of capitalist production as a spontaneous process of producing surplus value. For Reitter, it is ‘self-valorizing value’. Thus, Reitter’s ‘capital’s life process is nothing but its own movement as self-valorizing value’ (p. 280) compares unfavourably, in terms of easier understanding, with 1887’s ‘the life-process of capital consists only in its movement as value constantly expanding, constantly multiplying itself’ (end of the chapter on ‘The Rate and the Mass of Surplus-Value’).

This is not to dismiss the usefulness of Reitter’s work. Not at all. You just need to read ‘expansion of value’ every time the words ‘valorization’ or ‘valorize’ occur. His translation reads well and is accompanied by 50 pages of very useful end-notes to explain his choice of words as well as Marx’s citations (in Latin, Greek, French and Italian) and references to now obscure persons. It will stand the test of time and can be recommended for those who want to read in modern English Marx’s own exposition of his abstract-labour theory of value and his description, from a working-class point of view, of how the working class in England came into being, its working and living conditions in and up to the 1860s, and struggles to limit the working day.

It is unfortunate that the publishers haven’t let readers simply read Marx in his own words. Instead they have chosen to introduce the new translation with both a 15-page Foreword and a 30-page Editor’s Introduction, both claiming to set out what Marx meant. Both are decidedly unhelpful and undermine the rest of the book. The Preface is mainly gibberish by someone who dismisses as ‘fantasy’ what she calls ‘a perfectly rational, controlled and transparent communist political economy on the far side of a capitalist epoch’; according to her, Capital is a work of philosophy, a ‘deep ontological and epistemological critique of capitalism’. The Editor, too, sees Marx as basically a philosopher and opines that in Capital ‘nowhere really does Marx condemn the capital system or call for revolution’. But, then, both of them are philosophers who only want to interpret the world.

Reitter’s translation is of the 2nd German edition (1873), the 1887 translation is of the 3rd German edition (1883) while Fowkes’s was of the 4th German edition (1890). So now all three German re-editions are available in English. Not that there is any significant difference between them. One inconvenience, though, is that the chapter numbers in Reitter’s translation don’t always correspond to those in the other two which readers in English of Marx have become used to.

Adam Buick

Blogger's Note:

The April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a review of Ben Fowkes' translation of Capital by the same reviewer.

Film Review: Miss Marx (2024)

Film Review from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Miss Marx. Director: Susanna Nicchiarelli.

Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen had 3 children who survived into adulthood: young Jenny, Laura and Eleanor. This film is about the latter. The film starts in March 1883 with Karl’s funeral, and ends in March 1898 with Eleanor’s suicide. The film shows Eleanor (nicknamed ‘Tussy’) meeting the socialist playwright Edward Aveling at her father’s funeral, and charts how he neglected her, over the next 15 years.

Miss Marx was written and directed by the Italian Susanna Nicchiarelli and is an Italian-Belgian co-production. The biggest problem with the film is you have to do your homework before watching it. The first time I saw it, I was constantly asking: ‘who is that?’ and ‘how do these characters know each other?’ Once I did some research, the film was much more enjoyable on second viewing. The final half-hour of it is too slowly paced, and also features a bizarre scene in which Eleanor smokes opium and dances around her house to punk-rock music (really). The most glaring omission from Miss Marx is that there’s no William Morris and no mention of the Socialist League (the party they helped to found as a breakaway from the increasingly reformist Social Democratic Federation).

Nicchiarelli crosses the creative-licence-line when it comes to (Karl Marx’s housekeeper) Helene’s son, Freddy. In the film, Engels is depicted as being Freddy’s father, however, the former confesses (on his deathbed) that Karl is the latter’s real father. While it’s up for debate whether or not Freddy was Karl’s son, Engels did not adopt him.

Moving on to the positives: the film has an amazing punk-rock soundtrack (provided by the band the Downtown Boys); the acting is excellent; it’s a wonderfully made motion picture; and it includes some great moments of the titular character delivering some of Eleanor Marx’s real speeches/writings (either directly to the camera, or to an audience within the film).

The best moment in the film was when young Jenny’s son, Johnny, is upset about his grandpa (Karl Marx) dying, so he asks Eleanor if she’s sure there isn’t an afterlife. Eleanor tells him that there isn’t, and, to comfort him, she says: ‘Think of it this way, if we’re wrong and there really is a life after this one, then Grandpa is surely burning in hell.’

Matthew Shearn

Darwin’s Origin of Species (2006)

Book Review from the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Darwin’s Origin of Species by Janet Browne. (Atlantic Books, 2006)

In a New York Times poll in November 2004, 55 percent of respondents agreed that God had created human beings in their present form. Clearly the Darwinian revolution has some way to go. Darwin’s revolutionary work was first published in November 1859 with the full title: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. And yet the theory of evolution could have been known under a different name. In the previous year the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had sent Darwin an essay in which he set out the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin’s friends hurriedly arranged for both works to be published at the same time, so the theory should really be known as the Wallace-Darwin theory, if not the Wallace theory of evolution. In any event, Wallace and Darwin became good friends and Wallace collaborated with Darwin in his research and helped in the revised editions of Origin of Species.

Origin of Species went through six editions during Darwin’s lifetime and he made many corrections and alterations. In the fifth edition (1869), at Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin first introduced the notorious phrase “survival of the fittest.” Wallace had taken this phrase from the writings of Herbert Spencer, a well known atheist and supporter of capitalism in late nineteenth century Britain. Spencer’s ideas would became known as “Social Darwinism” and he maintained that society was an organism exactly the same as a biological organism. From his perspective he argued against the building of lighthouses around the British coastline because, so he claimed, shipwrecks were “nature’s” (i.e. capitalism’s) way of sorting out the fit from the unfit. Darwin had never taken any of Spencer’s ideas on social evolution seriously and the phrase “survival of the fittest” is at odds with Darwin’s own ideas about natural selection by adaptation.

Browne ends her account of Wallace by saying that he went on to become a “utopian socialist.” In fact he became a supporter of utopian capitalism. He advocated land nationalisation and was an enthusiast for Edward Bellamy’s state capitalist vision of the future in his novel Looking Backward (1888). When Darwin died in April 1882 aged seventy-three, Origin of Species had truly become one of the “Books That Shook The World,” the publisher’s title for this series of biographies which includes Marx’s Das Kapital (see the review in the October Socialist Standard). There is a slight link between the two books. Marx thought very highly of Origin of Species and sent Darwin a presentation copy of Das Kapital. But he did not, as sometimes claimed, offer to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin. Rather it was Marx’s son-in-law, Edward Aveling, who offered to dedicate one of his books to Darwin. Darwin never read Das Kapital and he rejected Aveling’s offer.

Lew Higgins

Mary Gray and Eleanor Marx (1999)

Eleanor Marx

From the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of papers of Mary Gray (1854-1941), an active member of the Social Democratic Federation before the First World War, have been donated to us. They contain some interesting material, including two previously unpublished letters from Marx’s daughter Eleanor.

The SDF had been founded in 1881, mainly on the initiative of H. M. Hyndman, as the Democratic Federation, a federation of London Radical (i.e. leftwing Liberal) clubs. In 1883 it proclaimed Socialism as its aim and changed its name to Social Democratic Federation. However, it kept its programme of “advanced” reforms to be achieved within capitalism, or what its 1892 Programme and Rules (which are amongst these papers) described as “measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society”. In 1884, over this issue of retaining a reform programme as well as over the authoritarian behaviour of Hyndman, part of the membership (including William Morris) broke away to form the Socialist League. However, the SDF survived, and was always the bigger organisation.

After the demise of the Socialist League following its take-over by bomb-throwing anarchists, the SDF was the only organisation in Britain propagating the ideas of Marxian Socialism. Most of the early members of the SPGB had been members of the SDF, the Socialist Party being a breakaway from the SDF in 1904 for the same reasons that had led to the SL breakaway 20 years earlier.

Mary Gray joined the SDF in 1890. She had been born Mary Rogers near Wokingham in Berkshire, the daughter of a baker, in January 1854; in 1876 she married Willie Gray, a stonemason, and lived in Reading where their daughter, Florence, was born in 1879. Later the family moved to Battersea in London.

Mary Gray became a very active member of the SDF. In 1895 she stood as an SDF candidate, and was elected, as a member of the Battersea Board of Poor Law Guardians. She was a speaker and lecturer for them, and not just in London. Amongst the papers is a handbill advertising two meetings by her in Coventry in November 1896, one on “Socialism, The Only Hope of the Worker” and the other on “The Economic Position of Women”. There is also a press cutting from an Ilkeston paper of an outdoor meeting she addressed in the market square there in July 1897 on “Society As It Is”. For a time she was on the Executive Committee of the SDF.

As the title of the second lecture in Coventry shows, Mary Gray was interested in what was then called “The Woman Question”, not just votes for women but also the economic position of women generally under capitalism. She was on friendly terms with two other prominent women members of the SDF, Marx’s daughter Eleanor and Edith Lanchester.

Eleanor Marx lived with fellow Socialist Edward Aveling without getting formally married. This was a daring thing to do in the 1890s as Edith Lanchester found to her cost. A schoolteacher who at the time lodged with Mary Gray, she stood as SDF candidate in West Lambeth for the London School Board elections in 1894. The next year, when she decided to follow Eleanor Marx’s example and live with a man without getting married, her family found a doctor to certify her and she was locked up in a private mental asylum. As a result of the outcry and campaigning that followed she was released after three days. Various items in connection with this campaign are included in the papers.

The papers also contain two letters from Eleanor Marx, or Eleanor Marx Aveling as she called herself. Eleanor Marx was not simply Karl Marx’s daughter but an active Socialist in her own right. She had been amongst those who had left the SDF in 1884 to found the Socialist League but had resigned a few years later because she disagreed with the anti-parliamentary position it eventually took up. She rejoined the SDF in 1896 and was a frequent attender at the classes at the SDF offices at 337 The Strand, where Aveling lectured on economics.

Eleanor Marx’s letters to Mary Gray are not political but we reproduce them as they have not been published before. The first, dated 25 September 1896, is a short note which reads:

Dear Mrs Gray,

As you cant come Wedy you + Florrie must fix some other day. But try & come tomorrow night to 337. First because of classes, but also to fix up an evening to come here.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

Florrie was Mary Gray’s daughter, who was then aged 17, and “here” was The Den, Jews Walk, Sydenham, London, where Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling lived.

The second letter, dated 24 January 1898, is longer:

My dear Mrs Gray,

I had a letter from Edith on Saturday — + if you have any news of her please let me know. I’ve written to Sullivan to ask if I cd see Edith. Is n’t her boy lovely? I am quite in love with this delightful little man.

I shd have been to see you — but as you know, Edward has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble seems better, it seems certain that he must soon — in a week or so — undergo a most dangerous operation for the abcess he has so long suffered from. The operation is so serious that there is the utmost danger. But without operation there seems no hope at all.

So you will see, dear Mrs Gray, that I have very great trouble. Of course, I have not said anything to Edith in my letter of this — it wd be unwise for her, but I tell you, as I am so sure of your kindly sympathy.

Hearty greeting to Mr Gray + Florrie + you, + a big kiss to the sweet little man.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

“Edith” is Edith Lanchester and “Sullivan” is James Sullivan, the man she lived with and the father of the baby boy mentioned in the letter. What is poignant about this letter is that within two months Eleanor Marx was dead. While he was on the South Coast, Aveling—who had never been highly regarded in the Socialist movement for his personal integrity—married an actress he knew. Eleanor felt she had no alternative but to commit suicide, at the age of 41. Those who believe in some form of immanent justice will be reinforced in their belief by the fact that Aveling did not survive the year.

Mary Gray is credited with founding the first Socialist Sunday School, in Battersea in 1892. Battersea happened to be one of the SDF branches which contained many of the founding members of the SPGB—the protest meeting which eventually led on the founding of the Socialist Party was held in Battersea Town Hall—and it is interesting to note that the Battersea branch of the SPGB continued the Socialist Sunday School tradition, a report from the branch in the Socialist Standard for November 1904 reading: “A Sunday School class for the children is held every Sunday afternoon, and is well attended, and after the school a communal tea is provided to which all comrades are most heartily invited”.

There existed a Socialist Sunday School Union, organised from Glasgow, though it seems to have been more of an ILP rather than an SDF movement, using progressive teaching methods and preaching a kind of “ethical socialism” but which was still recognisably socialist in general terms. For instance, a handbook published in 1923 which is amongst Mary Gray’s papers gave two definitions of socialism, one of which was:

Socialism is the co-operative ownership and control of the vital industries (connected with food, clothing, housing, transport, etc) and the means of education by all the adults of a national community, and it implies the abolition of rent, interest, profit and the wages system.

Also, a model lesson on “Money” ends as follows:

When the fields and factories, the trams and the houses, and all the material wealth of the world shall belong to all the people, and shall be used for the happiness and welfare of the people, no money will then be needed nor any millionaires.

At least this shows that socialism, as we have always defined it, is not our own invention but was once the more or less widely accepted definition.

Mary Gray was well-entrenched on the reformist wing of the SDF and wouldn’t have had any sympathy whatsoever for those who broke away from the SDF to set up the SPGB. The papers include a poem she wrote in 1903 on the first birthday of her grand-daughter which contains twelve excruciating lines describing an SDF meeting held to celebrate Hyndman’s recovery from an illness at which “the cheers that went up showed the love and reverence” of “his comrades and friends”.

The papers have nothing on her political views after 1903 but she remained in Battersea until at least 1935 before moving to Hampshire and then Wiltshire. She died in 1941.

Adam Buick

100 Years of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (2004)

From the July 2004 issue of the News From Nowhere newsletter

We would like to congratulate the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) on its 100th anniversary. The SPGB is the founding party of the World Socialist Movement of which both the SPC and WSPUS are members. It is not only a party of revolutionaries, but a party of working class intellectuals.

Formed by workers in London, the SPGB’s Principles sprang from the strands of Marxism closest to Marx. At its founding, a number of its most active members had studied Marxism under the tutelage of Marx’s daughter, Eleanor and her partner, Edward Aveling. Early issues of the Socialist Standard magazine contained interviews with Marx’s son-in- law, Paul Lafargue. Also influential was the work of William Morris and the Socialist League (which Eleanor Marx also participated in.) It is from Morris’ famous socialist utopian novel, News From Nowhere, from that book this newsletter takes its name.

But it was the founders of the SPGB, who gave the working class its most concise and liberatory vision of socialism. Building on the Socialist League’s work, they continued the socialist ideal that socialism will be not an continuation of capitalism, but a fundamentally different society. From Aveling, etc, they took a fundamental understanding of Marx’s critique of capitalism and expanded upon it to analyze new developments in the growth of capitalism.

And their analysis has been eerily correct. The SPGB was the first political grouping to understand the capitalist nature of the Bolshevik revolution. They critiqued Keynesian economics as it was developing in the 1930s, with the SPGBs main economics writer a post office worker. Again, the SPGB critiqued the development of the Labour Party’s Welfare State in post-world war 2 era. Arguing from a perspective of the liberation of the working class, rather than a political strategy, the SPGB explained why each of these methods of capitalism to control workers rebellion would fail. And in every case the SPGB’s analysis was correct.

That the SPGB has continued intact for 100 years, without major splits, without leaders, and democratically intact is another case in its favor. In this day of thuggish leftist parties and the bazillions of splits who each form their own 44th international, it is inspirational that a working class party of some size has done its work for a century. Who else can claim this?

F.N. Brill (WSP)

The Death of Comrade Jack Fitzgerald (1929)

Jack Fitzgerald (c. 1873-1929)

Obituary from the May 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the sad news that Comrade J. Fitzgerald passed away, following a serious operation, in St. Peter’s Hospital, Covent Garden, on Tuesday, April 16th, at seven o’clock in the morning.

Comrade Fitzgerald was a part of the Socialist movement, and his death is like the tearing away of a limb. He died at the comparatively early age of 57, and from his youth to his dying day he took his place in the front rank of the fighters for Socialism.

To those who have only known him in his later years a little of his early history may be interesting.

A bricklayer by trade, he took an active part in the Operative Bricklayers’ Union, was at one time on their Executive Committee, and on at least two occasions acted as one of their delegates to the Trades Union Congress.

He joined the Social Democratic Federation (afterwards the Social Democratic Party) in the ‘nineties, and attended some of the classes run by Edward Aveling, the son-in-law of Karl Marx. Along with a few others he fought against the Reformist tendencies inside the S.D.F., and sought to convert that body into a fitting instrument for the inauguration of Socialism. He urged the formation of economics and other classes to further the education of the workers, but was jeered at by the official group, who tried to silence him by the charge of “impossibilism.” He, and the group that was with him, were confronted by a solid wall of opposition, which was the more difficult to get over because the officials held the strings, and meetings were closed to the unauthorised. The S.D.F. was committed to a policy of compromise and also to reformist activity through the association of its prominent members with reactionary trades unionism and with the Twentieth Century Press, many of whose shareholders were outside the ranks of the working and out of sympathy with the Socialist movement.

Matters came to a head at the Burnley Conference of the S.D.F. in 1904, when Fitzgerald and another member were expelled, by means of a trick, on general charges that were shown to exist only in the imagination of prominent members of the S.D.F. of the time.

The general dissatisfaction with the reactionary policy of the Social Democratic Federation led to the secession of a number of its members, who, together with some others, formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain on the 12th June, 1904. Fitzgerald took a leading part with these in hammering out the policy of the Party, a policy that has withstood the fierce assaults of all opposition for twenty-five years.

He was a member of the first Executive Committee of the Party, and since that day, with short lapses, of late on account of illness, he has always figured on that body. He was a first-class speaker, writer and debater, as the columns of the “Standard” through the years bear eloquent testimony. Two of his debates with Liberal and Tory have appeared in pamphlet form, and are as fresh to-day in principle and policy as if they had only occurred yesterday.  In the view of those who were present the finest debate was many years ago with Lawler Wilson, the best debater the Anti-Socialist Union ever had.  The calibre of his opponent made such an impression on Lawler Wilson that, subsequently, in a book entitled “The Menace of Socialism,” and published in 1909, he wrote of the Party :—

  The Socialist Party of Great Britain, a young organisation and an offshoot from the Social Democratic Party, is spreading about London and challenging the older organisations in such districts as Battersea and Tottenham. The members are Marxians and Revolutionaries, preaching the Class War. The catechumens of the party are put through a rigid course of training in the principles of their creed, which they must be prepared to defend at the risk of their liberty. What is most remarkable and disquieting about this dangerous organisation is the fact that the members are unquestionably higher-grade working-men of great intelligence, respectability and energy. They are, as a whole, the best-informed Socialists in the country, and would make incomparable soldiers, or desperate barricadists. As revolutionaries, they deserve no mercy: as men they command respect.

It is difficult for those who have not come into close touch with all phases of the internal work of the Party to realise the tremendous industry of Fitzgerald, his accuracy and comprehensiveness, and the energy and thoroughness with which he tackled every job that came his way, and no “donkey work” was shirked by him. Whether it was folding “Standards” in days gone by, selling them, preparing for street corner meetings, or helping a fellow worker to unravel the intricacies of some form of knowledge, it was always the same ; he was ready, willing and anxious to give a hand.

On the Editorial Committee he toiled for years, giving the best that was in him, and often only finishing preparing matter for the printer long after the midnight hour had struck.

All his life he has worked hard to spread among his fellow workers a knowledge of the principles formulated by Karl Marx, and which are the foundations of the scientific Socialist Movement. It is, therefore, fitting that his last published writing was a Review in the March “S.S.” of a new translation of Marx’s great work, “Capital.” To do this review Fitzgerald read through again, and compared carefully the older and the new translations, and he did this while sinking under the effects of his illness. He received the book about the end of November, and was operated on twice before he finished the review.

If anyone desires to gauge Fitzgerald’s consistency let them glance at the first page of the first number of the “Socialist Standard” for September, 1904, and the advertisement of the Economics Class, and then, in the next number the article on taxation. Then let them turn to his last few articles and the Review in the March number. There is a quarter of a century of ceaseless activity between the two periods, but the position outlined is the same. That was Fitzgerald : fearless, sturdy, consistent and solid as a rock, a fitting instrument to be used by the workers in the struggle for emancipation.

We are not hero-worshippers, and we are keenly conscious of human frailty. Fulsome flattery and empty phrases are not our way, but we know how to estimate the worth of a man. No man worked harder than Fitzgerald to dispel the illusions of the “Great Man” theory and to impress upon his fellows that they must depend on themselves and acquire the necessary knowledge if they would free themselves from bondage; that, in the words of Marx, “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.”

Fitzgerald was by nature a teacher in the best sense of the word, an imparter of knowledge. In an educational direction, quite outside the Party, he inspired respect for his work. For the past sixteen years he was on the teaching staff of the London County Council School of Building in Brixton. When they heard of his death they sent the following resolution to one of his friends :—

  "We, the members of the full-time staff of the School of Building, learn with deep regret of the death of our colleague and friend, Mr. J. Fitzgerald.
“We desire to place on record our appreciation of his able, conscientious and untiring services to this school during a period of over 16 years. We feel that his loss to the school is a heavy one, but we are glad to record that his work has resulted in substantial progress and paved the way for further developments in Building Education.
“We further desire to convey our sincere sympathy to his relatives and close friends.”‘

The future will show the fruit of the work of Fitzgerald and others like him, and when posterity comes to reckon its debt to the forerunners who worked so hard for Socialism we can rest assured that Fitzgerald will not be forgotten. His comrades, who have fought beside him, and drawn wisdom and aid from him, will carry his memory with them always.

The best tribute we can pay to him is to emulate his unfailing energy, industry and enthusiasm, and profit by the spade work of him and his fellows to give greater impetus to the movement towards the final extinction of wage slavery.

Those who have worked with him for years know his value, and the keenness, penetration, and power of the brain that is gone.

The working class movement is poorer today by the loss of one of its worthiest champions.

#    #    #    #

Note.

Comrade Mrs. Gostick wishes to thank all those who so kindly assisted at our late Comrade Fitzgerald's funeral, and also the Camberwell and Clerkenwell branches for their wreaths.

50 Years Ago: Forerunners of Marx (1964)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The author claims that the great forerunners of Marx—standing between the Utopians and the latter— was an Irishman named William Thompson, who, among numerous notable statements, laid bare the source of value in his work entitled, “An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most conducive to Human Happiness”, etc., published 1824, where it is laid down that all labour can be reduced to unskilled labour of the average kind at a given time.

Miss Potter says Marx took his notion of “homogeneous human labour” from Thompson and incorporated it in “Capital”.

The author says, “In the English speaking world the work of this Irish thinker is practically unknown, but on the Continent of Europe his position has long him established'" (p 115)

Now what is common to both Connolly and Miss Potter is the curious fact that neither of them state who established Thompson's position and made him known on the Continent. The uninstructed reader may learn with surprise that the person responsible was—Karl Marx!

Many years ago Dr. Aveling pointed out in a little book called “Darwin Made Easy”, that the various “objections” by ignorant Christians and parsons to Darwin's work were all first formulated by Darwin himself in the “Origin of Species”, and no opponent had ever brought forward any other. So with Marx. All the opponents of Marx who are so loud in their claims to have discovered “forerunners” of his work and ideas are all of them—German, English and Irish alike—indebted to Marx, who first discovered and gave full credit to them in his various works, particularly in the “Poverty of Philosophy” and the “Critique of Political Economy”.

And among others he points out that Benjamin Franklin had already in 1721 stumbled on the secret of undifferentiated labour as the source of value, though he (Franklin) did not work the idea out to any extent.

However, it is the fashion today among the shallow critics of scientific Socialism who are unable to refute the case or show a flaw in the arguments of Marx to pretend to demolish that genius by finding someone who “anticipated” him, and keeping “gradely dark” the fact that the very person they are indebted to for such discovery is Marx himself.

(From the Socialist Standard, June, 1914. Extract from a review of “Labour in Irish History" by James Connolly)

Papering over the cracks (1996)

Theatre Review from the November 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wallpaper by Sophia Kingshill (Bridewell Theatre)

In 1913 Lenin, James Joyce and the founder of the Dadaist school of art all chanced to be in Zurich at the same time. And in Travesties Tom Stoppard imagines them becoming unavoidably involved in a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest which is managed by staff at the British Embassy. The result is an irresistible verbal pyrotechnic in which revolutionary politics, avant-garde art and literature, and the day-to-day lunacies of so-called diplomacy are hilariously admixed courtesy of Wilde's play.

In Wallpaper Sophia Kingshill  attempts something similar and largely succeeds. She imagines that William Morris and Bernard Shaw "encounter one of Shaw's creations, Liza Doolittle the upwardly mobile flower seller (of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady) and try to turn her into a socialist". Wallpaper is described as "a Shavian melodrama portraying the adventures of Mr William Morris, Miss Eleanor Marx and Miss Eliza Doolittle". The title suggests that it is Morris and his popular image as a designer of wallpaper who is the focus of the play, but this is not the case. It is Shaw rather than Morris who stands at the play's centre.

Kingshill is clearly anxious to put the record straight and to acknowledge Morris’s activities as a revolutionary socialist, but in this she is only partially successful. The play fails to give the audience more than an inkling of Morris's political thinking and it avoids, almost completely, an examination of the way in which Morris's position as a social revolutionary stands opposed to Shaw's attachment to reformism And she is not helped in the latter enterprise by articles in the programme by Stan Newens MEP, Denis McShane MP and other Labour Party luminaries, which claim Morris as a key figure in their movement. It's rather like members of the Flat Earth Society enrolling Copernicus as an honorary member.

Kingshill is at her best when dealing with her characters as people rather than when dealing with their political views. There is a convincing truthfulness about the bluff, avuncular Morris, the mordant, ironic Shaw, and the selfless, benevolent Eleanor Marx, which allows us better to understand their behaviour. And Eleanor’s travails at the hands of fellow socialist(ic) Edward Aveling, should give us cause to ponder. How can those whose own behaviour is based on the selfish pursuit of their own inclinations act as credible advocates of a society founded on fraternity, cooperation and mutual self-interest?

If it seems odd to involve Eliza Doolittle in the seemingly real-life activities of Morris, Shaw, Aveling and Eleanor Marx, Kingshill uses Shaw's authorship of Pygmalion to good effect. Aveling seems a model for the fictional Henry Higgins, and Alfred Liddle (a friend of Morris) re-emerges as Freddie, Eliza’s rejected swain. Moreover, Kingshill parodies several of the songs and set pieces of My Fair Lady to stunning effect. Higgins's song in celebration of Eliza’s mastery of upper-class pronunciation "By gosh, she’s doneit", becomes “You've done it. You've really gone and done it", sung by three policemen before a chilling parody of the Ascot racing scene now transformed into the infamous Trafalgar Square siege of 1887. And who would have thought to hear "Get me to the church on time" turned into a celebration of the revolutionary potential of the international working class?

On the night I saw the play a small and inept audience seemed to miss most of the humour and sat silent and passive. Those on stage deserved better; perhaps especially Julia Stubbs who played Eleanor Marx with illuminating sensitivity. and Russell Churney whose reptilian Aveling was splendidly convincing.

People expecting a political polemic will be disappointed — but then perhaps the theatre is not the place for such an enterprise? This said, Wallpaper seems to me to be a considerable achievement. Given more attention to the ideas which inform the revolutionary and reformist positions of the major players, and a more sophisticated realisation of the text, what is already a drama of considerable merit might become a truly significant piece of theatre.

Michael Gill

The Partnership of Marx and Engels (1936)

From the May 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our March issue, in the review of the life of Frederick Engels, reference was made to the articles appearing under Marx's name or attributed to him, which were realty written for him by his friend, Engels. In the interests of accuracy it is desirable that Engels' share in the great life partnership should be properly estimated, and it is evident that Gustav Mayer, Riazanov and others, have all erred in greater or less degree.

There is, of course, no question of belittling Marx's great work for the Socialist movement, but only of placing on record that Engels’ help entitles him to greater credit than has been allowed by many who have written on the subject in the past. We are indebted to Moses Baritz for the information below, based on a full examination of the correspondence that passed between Marx and Engels. This shows that the articles published in the New York Tribune and republished under the title Revolution and Counter-Revolution were all written by Engels at Marx’s request. Some of these, and later articles, were sent off by Marx — quite unaltered.

Engels wrote articles for the New York Tribune in this fashion from 1851 to 1862, and none of them appeared in Engels’ name. The last article (on the Civil War in America) was asked for by Marx in a letter written on March 3rd, 1862. Marx says: “The Tribune will print it as a letter from a Foreign Officer." It is evident, therefore, that Riazanov is wrong in suggesting that Marx wrote his own articles from 1852 onwards. It is true that Marx wrote to Engels on January 29th, 1853, saying that he had for the first time on the previous day risked writing an article in English for Dana of the New York Tribune, but of some 50 requests for articles that have been traced the majority are after that date. Eleanor Marx was quite wrong in attributing the Revolution and Counter-Revolution articles to her father, and it is strange that she should have given currency to this error. According to a statement made by Engels to Danielson (in a letter as yet unpublished in the original form) she was engaged on typing copies of her father's original letters addressed to various correspondents throughout the world, and can hardly have missed his numerous requests to Engels.

Adoratski, director of the Marx-Engels Institute of Moscow, states in a footnote to "Karl Marx: Ausgewahlte Schriften," that Engels wrote the Revolution and Counter-Revolution articles between September, 1851, and September, 1852. While the error here is not great, another publication for which the Institute is responsible, "Karl Marx; "Chronik Seines Lebens" contains many errors and should be revised. Scores of articles attributed to Marx in the N.Y. Tribune, Neue Oder Zeitung and Die Presse, Vienna, should be attributed to Engels.

Riazanov appears to have blundered when he asserts concerning the articles republished as "The Eastern Question," that Engels was responsible for the military articles and Marx for the ones on diplomatic and economic questions. Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling, in their preface, say the same. The correspondence indicates that Engels did more than that. Marx writes, for example, in a letter dated March 10th, 1853, saying to Engels : “Above all, this question is military and geographical and, therefore, not in my department. You must once again write this. The Turkish question is 'Spanish' to me. I cannot give you any standpoint (on this subject)." Marx went on to ask Engels to write on the encroachments of Russia in Turkey, the treachery of Austria, the ambition of France, the interests of England, and the commercial and military importance of the conflict.

Engels replied on March 12th, promising the article in a couple of days. Marx wrote on March 22nd acknowledging the article: “Your article on Turkey. Splendid. It has been sent.” Moses Baritz points out, in conclusion, that this very article on Turkey is the first one which Eleanor Marx says was written by her father!

Editorial Committee.

"Capital," by Karl Marx: A Review. (1929)

Book Review from the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

A New Translation of Marx’s famous work, "Capital,” by Eden & Cedar Paul, from the Fourth German Edition, the final edition revised by Engels. Published by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., Museum Street, London, W.C.l. Price 12/6 net.

The first volume of Karl Marx’s masterly analysis of capitalist production, entitled “Capital,” was published in German in 1867. In the preface he stated that other volumes were in preparation, and outlined the portions of the subject with which each would deal. Unfortunately he did not live long enough to see these latter volumes through the press, and it was left for his life-long friend and co-worker, Frederick Engels, to construct volumes 2 and 3 out of the mass of material left by Marx, aided to a very large extent by his own great knowledge both of the subject itself and of Marx’s views and intentions.

A second edition of volume 1 appeared in German in 1873 and Marx was preparing the materials for a third edition in 1883 when he died. Engels saw this third edition through the press, with such alterations as Marx had indicated in the manuscript, in November, 1883.

It was from this edition that the first translation of volume 1 into English was made in 1886 by Mr. Samuel Moore and Dr. Aveling, under the general editorship of Engels (who took responsibility for the work as a whole) and published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., of London. A fourth edition in German was published by Engels in 1890. In the meantime, Engels had published Volume 2 in 1885 (a second edition in 1893), and Volume 3 appeared in 1894. From the materials left behind by Marx and Engels, Karl Kautsky has published three volumes under the title “Theories of Surplus Value.”

The Sonnenschein edition has been out of print for some years and now a new translation from the fourth German edition has been prepared by Eden and Cedar Paul, and published by George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.

For some reason not easy to discover, these publishers have gone out of their way in a stupid attempt to disparage the translation supervised by Engels. On the paper cover to the book they state:—

  This great work has hitherto been available only in a somewhat unliterary translation made from the third German edition, which was not the final edition.

What is “literary” or “unliterary” may be a matter of opinion, but we are quite certain that the majority of readers will hold that the present translation—as far as comparisons can be made—is no way superior, if as good as, the Sonnenschein edition. Thus the use of the ugly word “machinofacture” in place of “modern industry” will hardly seem an improvement to many. Neither is the word “febrile” in any way superior to the word “feverish” as used by Engels, while to talk of the “spiritual” wants of the workers (p. 232), where Engels says “intellectual” is in contradiction to Marx’s essential views. And it may be remarked that the Sonnenschein edition was translated from the latest German edition available at the time.

Neither is it entirely true to say that only the Sonnenschein edition has been available in English. For, if it is agreed that the American language is English, then Kerr & Co., of Chicago, published a translation of the third German edition “revised and amplified according to the fourth German edition by Ernest Untermann," in 1906 that has been on sale here. Untermann also translated the second and third volumes of “Capital" into English. Therefore the matter, if not a word for word translation of the fourth German edition, has been available here. Following the Russian fashion of numeration, we may perhaps call it the three and a half edition!

The chief additions in the fourth edition as compared with the third are the footnote on Bimetallism (p. 126); the footnote on the Factory and Workshops Act (p. 546), four pages of text (642-645) on “Surplus Value Transformed into Capital," and three pages of text (691-694) on “Law of Capitalist Accumulation." The latter section is of special interest because, in addition to treating of credit, it deals with a detail of development—centralisation of capital into the hands of a few—that Marx had been accused of failing to foresee by certain Fabian critics. 

While the present translation is a new one direct from the fourth German edition, it is interesting to note the translators' statement in their preface :—

   Of course Moore & Aveling’s translation, which appeared in 1886, and J.B.’s translation of the first nine chapters (Bellamy Library), have not been ignored; the former, in particular, deserved close study, as it was published under the auspices of Frederick Engels . . . .  In the present version we have relied throughout upon the definitive German text as final arbiter.

It may be mentioned that “J. B.’s" translation is a very poor one and was severely criticised by Engels when it appeared.

The translators are to be congratulated on one decision. “Capital" is a book intended primarily for working-class readers, the majority of whom have little or no opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of foreign languages. Marx’s work abounds in quotations from Greek, Italian, French, etc., that form stumbling-blocks to the average worker. The translators decided to give all these quotations in English without unduly burdening the volume with the original languages, a course which, in our opinion, was the right one to take.

Some printer’s errors occur that should receive attention when the next edition is being prepared. On page 15 the word "twice" is, of course, redundant. The word "being," page 49 (sixth line from bottom) is a misprint for "bring." In the second paragraph, page 102, the word “ diminishes " should be replaced by "increases." On page 391 the description of one of the mechanical powers as an "oblique" plane is incorrect, the proper term being “inclined" plane. The word "not" on page 437 is a misprint for “now."

This new volume, with its black cover and gold lettering, has a striking appearance and is well bound and printed, but one wishes at times that the paper had been a little more opaque, as in several places the print from the other side of the sheet shows through. The price of 12s. 6d., though, unfortunately, high for a worker’s pocket, is certainly cheap for a technical work as books are priced to-day.

But the importance of its contents and the vast store of information it contains renders it a volume well worthy of some sacrifice on the part of a worker to obtain a copy.

Jack Fitzgerald

Marx's Daughter (1968)

Book Review from the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Life of Eleanor Marx. 1855-1898 A Socialist Tragedy by Chushichi Tsuzuki. (O.U.P. 45/-)

Born 16th January, 1855, Eleanor Marx was the sixth child of Karl Marx, co-founder of the scientific socialist movement. Marx took care to provide his daughters with the best education he could afford. Eleanor developed with unusual rapidity, at the age of nine writing letters to her uncle, Lion Philips, commenting on the international political situation. Later on, no doubt at least partly due to the influence of her father, her main concern became the socialist and working class movements.

Her main political work was achieved with the co-operation of Dr. Edward Aveling, a secularist lecturer who became interested in Socialism in the early 1880’s. It is not known exactly when Eleanor and Aveling met, but it was probably in 1882. Soon after they began to live together in free association. Both were opposed to a formal marriage, which was not possible anyway since Aveling was already married but separated from his wife (who, according to Engels, was highly religious and ran away with a priest!)

By 1884 Eleanor and Aveling associated themselves with the recently organised Social Democratic Federation, while Aveling was still President of the North Western (London) Branch of the National Secular Society.

The SDF, though claiming to be socialist, was in fact a basically reformist organisation dominated by its leader, H. M. Hyndman. Largely as a result of a disagreement over Hyndman's dictatorial position a group, including Eleanor Marx, and Edward Aveling, left the Federation toward the end of 1884 in order to form a separate organisation. This was the Socialist League, which tended to oppose parliamentary action. Despite the presence in it of such as Eleanor Marx and Aveling, this organisation was eventually taken over by the anarchists and soon became defunct. Later, Aveling participated in the formation of the Independent Labour Party, a definitely reformist organisation, at a conference in Bradford in 1893. Only a few years later, Eleanor was to meet her tragic end. On 31st March, 1898 she committed suicide, taking prussic acid.

The movements such as the SDF in which Eleanor Marx became involved were essentially reformist and therefore, non-socialist. As with all such movements, these became completely reformist, concerned only with patching up the capitalist system. Eleanor Marx made an invaluable contribution to the evolution of the working-class movement, industrial as well as political, in Britain.

D. S.

Tussy in her time (1977)

Book Review from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eleanor Marx. Vol. 2: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898 by Yvonne Kapp. Lawrence & Wishart, £12.00.

We are bound to be interested in Eleanor Marx. She helped her father and Engels; she translated some of Marx’s work; she spoke in the streets, took part in agitations, was in William Morris’s Socialist League and the SDF from which the Socialist Party of Great Britain sprang.

The first volume of Yvonne Kapp’s biography, published in 1972, reconstructed the life cf the Marx family and Eleanor’s until she went to live with Edward Aveling, and was stunning. This one is twice as big, even more assiduously detailed, and not quite as good. In particular, there is an overweight middle section. Aiming to give a comprehensive account of Eleanor’s political and trade-union activities, Mrs Kapp explains why she was speaking at Stratford or Beckton or Clapham Common; this produces lengthy accounts of the gas-workers’, dockers’ and match- girls’ wages and conditions, and the unrest of the time; and in turn, the feeling that much of it can be and has been read elsewhere.

The people in the story come alive. As in the first volume, Engels — “the General” — emerges as a superb character. He is not only scholarly, industrious, far-seeing and generous, which we knew, but immensely lovable and put-upon by females. Of Morris, Mrs. Kapp says his stature was so great that a biographer of his associates wants to echo Alice in Wonderland : “All persons mere than a mile high to leave the court." The writer does not conceal her likes and dislikes. She finds H. M. Hyndman and several of the other well-to-do radicals of the time to have been detestable, and has a poor opinion of Eleanor's sister Laura and her husband Paul Lafargue. As the translator of the Engels-Lafargue correspondence twenty years ago she revealed the astonishing extent to which Lafargue sponged on “the General”; here she suggests plainly that he was politically inept too.

Mrs. Kapp argues against the established picture of Aveling as a dishonest adventurer who lived above his means and caused — even arranged, in some versions — Eleanor’s suicide. She successfully shows that Hyndman and some of his colleagues did all they could to promote the picture, and questions the evidence on various incidents. At the same time she acknowledges that hardly anyone liked Aveling; she presents him as weak and lacking sophistication in some ways, though a masterly public speaker. In fact some of the founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain had attended Aveling’s economic classes while in the SDF. According to our late comrade Gilbert McClatchie they described him as a first-class tutor and a “bad hat” in his private life; whether the latter was first-hand knowledge or SDF reputation is not known.

The book is a mine of sidelights and quotations. It accounts of the wheeling and conniving in the SDF and the short unhappy life of the Socialist League are vivid, and the writer is sharply aware of what happened when the labour leaders Eleanor helped to raise took over: “She could not foretell that the word ‘socialism’, still a beacon to millions of working men and women, would — unlike that ‘spectre haunting Europe’ — be misappropriated to make capitalism more viable, for which service feudal honours, lordships and knighthoods, would be conferred upon the low-born; nor that ‘Marxism’ would become one of the most popular parlour games to be played at universities . . .” Mrs. Kapp conveys to the reader her sympathy with the old watchwords “educate, agitate, organize” — perhaps with too much emphasis on “agitate”, as if despite her own lesson. But her two volumes together are a fine piece of work. It is not the fault of author or publisher that the price of this volume is going to confine ownership of it largely to those university parlours until or unless there is a cheaper reprint; can that be hoped for?

Robert Barltrop

Tussy - Eleanor Marx and the Early Socialist Movement in Great Britain (2012)

Eleanor Marx

From the Marx, the Cold War and the Spooks blog

In January, 1855, Karl and Jenny Marx, their daughters, Jenny and Laura, and their son, Edgar, were living in two rooms at 28 Dean St. Soho Square, London. In 1851, a third daughter had been born, but only lived for one year. But in January, 1855, a fourth daughter, who they named Eleanor, was born. In March, however, much to Karl and Jenny Marx's distress, the nine year old Edgar died. Nevertheless, the arrival of Eleanor was a great joy to them. "Tussy", as she was later called, was soon the "idolised darling of the whole house". And of her, Jenny Marx wrote in a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer in America, on the 11th of March, 1861:

"The child was born when our poor little Edgar died, and all the love and tenderness we bore him was transferred to his little sister, and the older girls looked after her and nursed her with almost motherly care. But then it would really be difficult to find a more lovable child, as pretty as a picture and sweet tempered...the child has learned German, and speaks it with remarkable accuracy and grammatical precision, and , naturally, she has learned English as a matter of course. The child is Karl's favourite, and her laughter and her merry chatter dispel any of his worries". 

Karl Marx was a great lover of children. He was no authoritarian. The girls treated him more as a playmate than a father; and they called him "the Moor", a nickname given to him on account of his jet-black hair and dark complexion. "Children must educate their parents", he would say. And during this period he remained completely aloof from all political activities, and concentrated on his studies and journalism.

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Marx would take his three daughters, Jenny, Laura, and young Eleanor, for outings into the country on Sundays; their favourite destination being Hampstead Heath, with a magnificent view of London, and the hills and valleys surrounding the city, from Jack Straw's Castle.

At home, Marx would read to Eleanor the stories of Bluebeard or Rumpelstilzchen by the brothers Grimm. And he would recount his version of the life of Jesus, in which he depicted Jesus as a poor carpenter's son who had been unjustly executed by the rich and powerful. In 1856, the Marx family moved to Grafton Terrace, Haverstock Hill, near Hampstead Heath.

When Eleanor was sixteen, a French radical, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, who later wrote a history of the Paris Commune of 1871, in whose ranks he fought, fell in love with her , courted her, and proposed marriage. Eleanor seems to have been favourably inclined towards Lissagaray; but Karl was doubtful about his reliability, despite Eleanor's mother, Jenny, approved the match, and in the end, after much hesitation, nothing came of it. Eleanor was obliged to remain at home. As she got older, she became her father's secretary, and conducted much of Marx's correspondence with the International Workingmen's Association. Eleanor Marx loved to recite poetry and to act, and her father encouraged her to take dramatic lessons. In 1875, the family moved again, to Maitland Park Road, in the same area.

In autumn of 1878, Marx's wife Jenny, became dangerously ill. She was suffering from incurable cancer. In June 1881, Karl went down with a violent attack of pleurisy, complicated with bronchitis and pneumonia. Eleanor nursed them both. She wrote:

" Mother lay in the big front room and the Moor lay in the little room next to it. The two who had grown used to each other, whose lives had completely intertwined, could no longer be in the same room together. The Moor got over his illness once again. I shall never forget the morning when he felt himself strong enough to get up and go into my mother's room. It was as though they were young again together - she a loving girl, and he an ardent youth starting out together through life, and not an old man shattered by ill-health and a dying old lady taking leave of each other for ever"

And on the 2nd of December, 1881, Karl Marx's wife, Jenny died. There was no ceremony at her funeral, although Frederick Engels spoke at the graveside.

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In June, 1881, a small book, England for All, was published. It was written by Henry Myer Hyndman, who claimed it to represent the programme of an organisation called the Democratic Federation, which he had just formed. This annoyed Marx, as much of the book consisted of English translations of extracts from Marx's Capital, together with a few summaries of Marx's ideas; but Hyndman mentioned neither Capital or Marx, and merely commented at the conclusion of the Preface that he was indebted "to the work of a great thinker" for much of the material. Marx broke off all relations with Hyndman.

Following his wife's death, Karl Marx's health again deteriorated; his daughter, Jenny also died on the 11th of January, 1883, and in the afternoon of the 14th of March, whilst sitting in his easy chair, Karl Marx fell asleep for the last time. As with his wife, there as no ceremony at the funeral, but again Engels spoke at the graveside. Laura had married Paul Lafargue in 1867.

Eleanor Marx was now alone. She, therefore, soon became more socially and politically active. Shortly after the death of her father, Eleanor met Beatrice Potter (later to become Mrs Sidney Webb) who was involved in charity work and freethinking. In 1883, W.G. Foot, the editor of the The Freethinker, was jailed for blasphemy. Eleanor was, in the words of Potter, "very wrath". It was useless argueing with her, she noted in her diary:

"She refused to recognise the beauty of the Christian religion. She thought that Christ if he had ever existed, was a weak-headed individual, with a good deal of sweetness of character, but lacking in heroism...The aim of socialists was to make people disregard the mythical next world and live for this world, and insist on having what will make it pleasant for them."

Potter added that Eleanor Marx "lives alone, and is much connected with the Bradlaugh set". Charles Bradlaugh, although not a socialist, was a well-known radical, republican and freethinker. But within a year of Karl Marx's death, Eleanor had entered into a "free association", or liaison, with one of this "set", Dr. Edward Aveling, a physician and, at the time, a teacher of science, who with Bradlaugh and Annie Beasant, was a leading secularist. Eleanor had by then a secretarial job in "a better class boarding-school"; but when she openly announced the situation, they said that they regretted to have to sack her. "I need work much", she informed Havelock Ellis, " but find it difficult to get. 'Respectable' people won't employ me"

A number of Eleanor's friends tried to discourage her interest in Edward Aveling, but without success. But following their association, Aveling became active in the emerging socialist and social-democratic movement, and, in fits and starts, became a lecturer and writer, and later on a translator of some of Karl Marx's writings. But according to Edmund Wilson there was something odd about Aveling:

"...he was extremely undependable about money::he not only skipped out of hotels without paying the bills, but he borrowed money from his friends right and left, and even when he knew they had little, without ever paying it back; and he did not hesitate to use for his own purposes the funds which had been given to the cause"(To the Finland Station)

At one time, Aveling tried being an actor;he wrote several one-act plays, in which he and Eleanor acted. He also had luxurious tastes

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Eleanor Marx joined the Democratic Federation in 1883, as did William Morris who hoped that it would become a socialist organisation. And in August, 1884, at its conference, the Democratic Federation became the Social-Democratic Federation. Its "ultimate" objective was:

"The establishment of a free condition of society based on the principle of political equality with equal social rights for all and the complete emancipation of labour"

To this ultimate objective, the Social-Democratic Federation added a number of immediate demands which it called "palliatives"; these included the abolition of a standing army, free compulsory, secular education, and the means of production, distribution and exchange to be treated as collective or common property. But neither the SDF's immediate or ultimate objective included the abolition of the wages system as proposed by Karl Marx as early as 1865.

Edward Aveling had also applied for membership of the [Social-]Democratic Federation; and, although the Executive Council, and Hyndman, did not want him in the organisation, they deferred to pressure by Eleanor and a number of her French and German friends, who wrote letters to the Council on Aveling's behalf, and he was admitted. They, together with William Morris, Robert Banner, E Belfort Bax, and a number of other members of the Council, soon came into conflict with the autocratic leader, Hyndman, whom Frederick Engels called an "extreme chauvinist"

The break with Hyndman, and the Social-Democratic Federation, came at a stormy meeting on the 27th of December, 1884, at which Morris read out a statement which , in part, read:

"...We believe that to hold out as baits hopes of amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be rung out of the necessities of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous. For carrying out our aim of education and organisation no over-shadowing and indispensable leader is required, but only a band of instructed men, each of whom can learn learn to fulfil, as occasion requires it, the simple functions of the leader of a party of principle.We say that on the other hand there has been in the ranks of the Social-Democratic Federation a tendency to political opportunism, which if developed would have involved us in alliances, however temporary, with one or other of the political factions, and would have weakened our propagandist force by driving us into electioneering, and possibly would have deprived us of the due services of some of our most energetic men, by sending them to our sham parliament, there to become either nonentities, or perhaps our masters, and it may be our betrayers. We say also that among those who favoured these views of political adventure, there was a tendency towards National assertion, the persistent foe of socialism; and it is easy to see how dangerous this might become in times like the present.Furthermore, these views have led, as they ere sure to lead, to attempts at arbitrary rule inside the Federation;for such a policy as above demands a skillful and shifty leader, to whom all persons and opinions must be subordinated, and who must be supported (if necessary) at the expense of fairness and fraternal openness...
....our view of duty to the cause of socialism forbids us to cease spreading its principles or to work as mere individuals. We have, therefore, set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with no intention of acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation, but determined to spread the principles of socialism by the only means we deem effectual."

The first two signatories to the statement were those of Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx.

The Socialist League was formally founded on the 30th of December, 1884. Following the "To Socialists" statement, partly quoted above, " The Manifesto of the Socialist League", which as largely written by William Morris, was published in The Commonweal, which as edited by Morris with Aveling as sub-editor. The Manifesto set out in some detail the ideas of not just Morris, or Eleanor Marx, but the emerging, still contradictory, socialist movement of the 1880s in Britain. Its main arguments and conclusions are worth quoting.

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It begins :

"We come before you as a body advocating Revolutionary International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.

As the civilised world is at present constituted there are two classes in society: the one possessing wealth and the instruments of production, the other producing wealth by means of those instruments, but only by the leave and the use of the possessing class.

The two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one another. The possessing class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on the unpaid labour of the producers - the more unpaid labour they can wring out of them, the richer they will be; therefore the producing class - the workers - are driven to strive to better themselves at the expense of the possessing class and the conflict between them is ceaseless."

And the Manifesto of the Socialist League continues:

"All the means of the production of wealth must be declared treated as the common property of all...Nationalisation of land alone, which many earnest and sincere persons are now preaching, would be useless so long as labour was subject to the fleecing of surplus value under the capitalist system.

No better solution would be State Socialism, by whatever name it may be called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages in operation: no number of merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of all political power, would make any real approach to Socialism

The Socialist League therefore aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all civilisation...

...To the realisation of this change the Socialist League addresses itself with all earnestness. As a means thereto will do all in its power towards the education of the people in the principles of this great cause, and will strive to organise those who will accept this education...."

At the same time as the Manifesto of the Socialist League was written, a draft constitution was prepared, with encouragement by Engels, by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. It committed the Socialist League to "striving to conquer political power by promoting the election of Socialists to Local Governments, School Boards and other administrative bodies". Their draft, however, was rejected by a majority of the membership at the League's first annual conference in July, 1885

Despite the Socialist League's official policy of the working class conquering "political power", and opposition to "palliatives", or what socialists now refer to as "reformism", the organisation soon demonstrated that, among its active members, were anarchists whose main concern was the destruction of the state, and reformers whose policies included the passing of the Eight Hour Bill. Furthermore, the Socialist League was not entirely opposed to the idea of nationalisation; and socialists such as William Morris and Eleanor Marx, and the socialist movement generally, had not, as yet, completely rejected the notion of leadership as a principle, although they ere opposed to the "arbitrary" leadership of people like Hyndman; this was partly understandable at the time, and was due to the fact that many workers, including active Trade Unionists, were still illiterate or , at least, only semi-literate. Another weakness of such people as Eleanor Marx, William Morris and Edward Aveling, was that although they had left the Social-Democratic Federation, and formed the Socialist League, they had "no intention of acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation". It was twenty years before socialists realised that a party organised solely for the establishment of socialism would have to oppose other parties, including the SDF.

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The Socialist League appeared to get off to a good start; indeed, just before its founding, Engels wrote to Karl Kautsky that Ernest Belfort Bax and Edward Aveling had "the best intentions and learn a lot too; but everything is confused and by themselves these literary people can do nothing; they are both thoroughly sound, intelligent and sincere although needing great assistance". However, by 1886, Engels noted that Bax was strongly influenced by the anarchists. Indeed, Engels wrote in April, 1886, that "...the anarchists are making rapid progress in the Socialist League". The main arguments were between those who considered that the working class, through a socialist organisation or party, could, or should, use parliament as a means to emancipation, which included Eleanor Marx, and those such as the anarchists, who did not. Morris attempted to reconcile both camps, writing in 1887:

" I am trying to get the League to make peace with each other, and hold together for another year. It is a tough job." 

Edward Aveling had already resigned as sub-editor of Commonweal early in 1886. He had been encouraged in this by Eleanor, who, by 1887, was calling the League "a swindle". And Bax, whom Engels had accused of being influenced by the anarchists, and who had succeeded Aveling as sub-editor of Commonweal also resigned, and supported the policy of the League contesting elections. William Morris was concerned with "making socialists", and considered that the only time that socialists should enter parliament was when a majority had become socialists and parliament should be abolished or "broken up". Morris was also opposed to the Socialist League advocating palliatives [he changed his mind some time later]

By the time of the 1888 conference, the various factions within the League had grown even more irreconcilable. However, while the various factions were tearing the League apart, working-class discontent was growing. John Quail comments:

"In the Trade Unions a sharper, more militant note was being struck. At the TUC conference the young Keir Hardie clashed with the Liberal's lap-dog, Broadhurst. A determined attempt to get an Eight Hour campaign under way in the Engineering Union and the TUC was made. John Burns and Tom Mann were active in this campaign. New organisations in the provinces, the Labour Federation on Tyneside and the Knights of Labour in the Midlands, proved surprisingly effective and grew rapidly. New organisational attempts also met with some success among the seamen. This new militancy was both spread by socialists and proved responsive to them" (The Slow Burning Fuse)

Not surprisingly, this included Eleanor Marx.

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In 1883, in his The Historical Basis of Socialism, H.M. Hyndman explained his, and to some extent the SDF's, view of Trade Unions. he wrote:

"The waste of the Trade Union funds on strikes or petty benefits to the individuals who compose them is deplorable. Enormous sums have been lost, directly, or indirectly, in consequence of strikes which, if applied by Unionists to active propaganda against the existing system...would long since have produced a serious effect."

However, others, including Eleanor Marx, held a view that workers should resist the attempts by employers to depress their standards of living and, here circumstances were favourable, improve them, yet at the same time they should, through a political organisation or party, strive for the abolition of the system, capitalism, which exploits them.

Nevertheless, a "new" unionism was beginning to take over from the "old" unionism; the general from the craft. In 1888, the mainly female workers of the match factory of Bryant and May went on strike, which was largely successful. The dock strike of 1889 was probably the most dramatic conflict of th period, as it was a struggle of the most depressed section of the working-class who, hitherto, were considered unorganisable. The victory of the dockers was a victory for elementary Trade Union rights which led to a vast movement among both skilled and unskilled workers. The Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union was formed out of the strilke. Even agricultural workers revived their unions.

During the dock strike of I889, writes Tom Mann,

"Offers of clerical help were numerous during the strike. One of these volunteers who rendered valuable service was Eleanor Marx Aveling, the daughter of Karl Marx, a most capable oman. Possessing a complete masterly of economics, she was able alike in conversation and on a public platform, to hold her own with the best. Furthermore, she was ever ready, as in this case, to give close attention to detailed work, when by doing so she could help the movement" (Tom Mann Memoirs)

The Gasworkers and General Labourers Union was the first of the "new" unions for mainly unskilled workers. Formed in 1889, by sheer eight of numbers, the union exchanged their twelve-hour shifts for an eight hour day without a strike. Although, they subsequently lost it again, the old hours were never resumed. Shortly after the union's founding, Eleanor Marx became a member and, later, as a member of its first women's branch became a member of its Executive. Will Thorne, the union's general secretary, had no education as a child; and he recounted ho Eleanor helped him to improve his reading and writing, "which was very bad at the time"

In 1892, a Preamble To The Rules of the GGLU as drafted by Eleanor Marx and probably Edward Aveling. It reads:

"Trade Unionism has done excellent work in the past, and in it lies the hope of the workers for the future; that is the Trade Unionism which clearly recognises that today there are only two classes, the producing working-class and the possessing Master class. The interests of these two classes are opposed to each other. The Masters have known this a long time; the workers are beginning to see it, and so thay are forming Trade Unions to protect themselves, and to get as much as they can of the product of their labour. They are beginning to understand that their only hope lies in themselves, and that from the masters as a class they can expect no hope; that divided they fall, united they stand...the interests of all workers are one, and a wrong done to any kind of labour is a wrong done to the whole of the Working Class, and that victory or defeat of any portion of the Army of Labour is a gain or a loss to whole Army, which by its organisation and Union is marching steadily and irresistibly forward to its ultimate goal - the Emancipation of the Working Class - that Emancipation can only be brought about by the strenuous and united efforts of the Working Class itself. Workers Unite!

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Eleanor Marx was not, however, blind to the limitations of Trade Unionism; nor to the necessity of workers studying the economics of the system that exploited them. Far from it.

From the 16th of August, 1856, to the 1st of April, 1857, Karl Marx wrote a series of articles, under the title of "Revelations of Diplomatic History of the 18th Century" for the Free Press. These articles were later edited by Eleanor Marx in a book, "Secret Diplomatic History of the 18th Century" was published in 1899. Eleanor also published, under the title of the "Eastern Question", a series of articles Marx wrote in 1855 for the New York Tribune.

More importantly, from the working-class viewpoint however, was the debate that Karl Marx had with John Weston, a member of the General Council of the First International, in 1865, in which he read a paper on wages, profit, prices, value, labour and labour-power, and the production of surplus value. At the time, Marx did not agree to its publication, as he had not finished his studies on Capital. The manuscript was then forgotten until after Engel's death in 1895, when it was discovered by Eleanor Marx, who edited it, with assistance from Edward Aveling, under the title of Value, Price and Profit; and it was published early in 1899.

It was in the ultimate paragraph, and well-known to Eleanor, that Marx had expounded his view on Trade Unions, wherein he wrote:

"Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organised forces a a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system"

It was during the mid-1890s that Eleanor Marx, again with some assistance from Aveling, conducted economics classes. These, or at least some of them, were held at 337 Strand, London, which at the time was the head office of the SDF. (see, for example, Eleanor's letter to Mary Gray, a prominent member of the SDF, dated, 25.9.96, regarding "classes" ) Indeed, it was at such classes that Jack Fitzgerald and two or three other younger members of the SDF, who later founded the Socialist Party, first learned their Marxian economics in general and the theory of value in particular

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Frederick Engels was devoted to "Tussy", as he called Eleanor, and often continued to entertain both Eleanor and Edward Aveling when other guests told him that if Aveling came they would not. Edward Bernstein seems to have found Aveling "very clever", and that he and Eleanor were of "great service to the socialist movement"; but Olive Schreiner wrote to Havelock Ellis, saying "I am beginning to have a horror of Dr. Aveling. To say I dislike him doesn't express it at all. I have a fear and horror of him when i am near. Every time I see him this shrinking grows stronger...I love her, but he makes me so unhappy".

He also made Eleanor unhappy; but she did not desert him. In 1893, the "disretable" Edward Aveling joined the newly-formed Independent Labour Party. Engels was, by then, living in London. He would have nothing to do with Hyndman, who he accused of taking money from the Tories. However, Engels enjoyed his remaining years in London; and he entertained freely. But by 1894, he was aware that he was suffering from cancer of the oesophagus, and was unable to speak, but could still write. He died on the 5th of August, 1895.

Aveling was unfaithful to Eleanor. Every so often he disappeared. Towards the end of 1897, he disappeared again. On the 24th of January, 1898, Eleanor Marx wrote to Mary Gray, in which she said:

" I would have been to see you, but as you know, Edward has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble seems better, it seems certain that he must soon - in a year or so - undergo a most dangerous operation...the operation is so dangerous that there is the utmost danger. But without the operation there seems no hope at all."

Eleanor nursed him following his operation until he was well, although she was, by then, aware that he was in love with another woman. Aveling informed her that, during the time that he has been away in Hastings, he had - his first wife having in the meantime died - married a young actress. On receiving the news, Eleanor Marx committed suicide by taking poison. Aveling inherited the small amount of money that Engels had left Eleanor, and went to live with his new wife. A few months later he too died - in an easy-chair, in the sunshine , reading a book.

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Just four years after the death of Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, Jack Fitzgerald, who had been one of Eleanor's students at her economic classes, together with a number of other London members of the SDF, rebelled (they also had been, like Eleanor Marx holding economic classes!) and, by early 1904, had either been expelled or had resigned; and, together with around 150 others former members of the Social-Democratic Federation, founded the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which opposed the advocacy of reforms or palliatives. It adopted an object and declaration of principles, largely drawn up by Fitzgerald. It was socialism - and nothing else!

Peter E. Newell