Karl Marx - The Political Writings

THE POLITICAL WRITINGS

Volume I. The Revolutions of 1848

Volume II. Surveys from Exile

Volume III. The First International

KARL MARX

Foreword by Tariq Ali

Introductions by David Fernbach

Manifesto of the Communist Party first published in English 1850

This translation of the above first published 1888

This edition published by Verso 2019

Selection and notes New Left Review 1974, 2019

Introductions David Fernbach 1973, 2019

Foreword Tariq Ali 2010, 2019

Translations: The Demands of the Communist Party in Germany and the Minutes of the Central Committee Meeting of 15 September 1850 Joris de Bres 1973, 2019; Articles from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Ben Fowkes 1973, 2019; Addresses of the Central Committee to the Communist League (March and June 1850), Articles on the North American Civil War, The Class Struggles in France, the German-language articles on Britain, Reviews from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung Revue, Speeches on Poland (29 November 1847) Paul Jackson 1973, 2019; Speeches on Poland (22 February 1848) Rosemary Sheed 1973, 2019

Critique of the Gotha Programme Joris de Bres 1974, 2019; Conspectus of Bakunins Statism and Anarchy, Introduction to the Programme of the French Workers Party, and Letter to the Brunswick Committee of the SDAP David Fernbach 1974, 2019; Circular Letter to Bebel, Liebknecht, Bracke et al., For Poland, the letters on Germany and on Ireland, The Prussian Military Question, and Speech on the Hague Congress Paul Jackson 1974, 2019; Political Indifferentism Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 1970, 2019 (reprinted here from the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, no. 20, spring 1970); The Alleged Splits in the International and The General Council to the Federal Council of French Switzerland Rosemary Sheed 1974, 2019

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ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-686-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-687-9 (UK EBK)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-688-6 (US EBK)

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Contents

References to Marx and Engelss works in the most frequently quoted editions have been abbreviated as follows:

The recession caused by the capitalist crisis of 2008 triggered a revival of interest in Marxs Capital and his other writings on the specific dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. That this system was the central subject of his work is indisputable, but he never thought of the economy in isolation. Capitalism was, for him and Engels, above all a socio-economic or social formation. Politics, as one of Marxs more gifted followers from a subsequent generation wrote, is concentrated economics. What was true, if only partially visible during the first few decades of the twentieth century, can now be seen in full-frontal view. In the traditional capitalist states, democracy is being hollowed out by a process globalization that systematically subordinates politics to economics, reducing the basic differences between centre-left and centre-right so that there is virtually no difference between existing mainstream political parties. For all practical purposes, the West is in the grip of a political system that has both the incentive and the means to become increasingly despotic. Whether it does so will depend on the degree and nature of the opposition that it encounters from below.

It is this relegation of politics and its Siamese twins, history and philosophy, which makes the republication of Marxs political and historical writings all the more necessary at this time. We are living in a period of historical transition that began with the overwhelming triumph of capitalism in the last decade of the preceding century. As a result Marxs interventionist essays have suffered in recent years, but not, as is sometimes stated on the right, because their premises have been exploded. Marxs political writings have been a casualty of the downgrading and dumbing-down of politics, sociology and history as scholarly disciplines on both a secondary and tertiary level, especially, but not exclusively in English-speaking cultures.

Many of the new radicals of the present generation find it sexy to read Capital while ignoring the politics underlying the project. This would have angered Marx, who regarded his work as a unity, which is how it was read by some of his most astute opponents a century later. Joseph Schumpeter, to take one example, wrote in his classic work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy that:

We have seen how in the Marxian argument sociology and economics pervade each other. In intent and to some degree also in actual practice, they are one. All the major concepts and propositions are hence both economic and sociological and carry the same meaning on both planes.

In other words, it is difficult to grasp the essence of Capital without understanding Marxs revolutionary approach to politics and the understanding of history. How could it be otherwise? He belonged to a generation that came of age in the historical period that followed the French Revolution. The cyclical pattern of victorydefeatrestorationnew revolutionsnew defeats, and so on, taught him that every historical epoch is a period of transition, of ebb and flow, of crash and renewal, of annihilation and resurgence. The socialism he favoured was based on a society of abundance; its political institutions a reflection of radical, popular sovereignty on every level; its culture transcending the confines of a single nation and creating a world-view. Most importantly, Marx visualized a state that, far from becoming huge, unwieldy and authoritarian, would be pushed to near oblivion. The contrast between this and what became the reality of actually existing socialisms needs little commentary.

Cosmopolitan by nature, revolutions have no respect for borders and can never remain the exclusive property of the country in which they first occurred. This fact also shapes the counterrevolution. Marx observed that this was certainly the case for Europe and, possibly, North America, where the rise of capitalism, he thought, would produce midwives impatient to drag out new children from the womb of the system. As David Fernbach points out in his introductory text, it didnt quite turn out like that; the the rock of Soviet civilization proved to be hollow. Still, the universality of the revolution, or its originality, was never in doubt. It leapt over the heartlands of capital and moved eastwards: first Russia, then China, later Vietnam and, last of all, the American hemisphere. Ignoring the mainland, it alighted on a small Caribbean island, which, at time of writing, remains the only space where capitalism has not yet been permitted to return.