Confrontation with his nemesis Lassalle and "Critique of the Gotha Platform" "Learning from the Lives and Ideological Backgrounds of Marx and Engels" (59)
In the above article, we have provided a brief chronological overview of the lives of Marx and Engels, but in this series, "Learning from the Life and Thought Background of Marx and Engels," we will look at the lives and thought of Marx and Engels in more detail.
I will now refer to the book by Tristram Hunt.Engels, The Man Marx Called General.This is a biography of Engels called.
What makes this book excellent is that it explains in an easy-to-understand manner which ideas influenced Engels and how his writings were produced from them.
It is very easy to understand the flow of history because you can learn along with the historical background of the time and the ideas that were popular at the time. It is easy to understand how the ideas of Engels and Marx were developed. The book also gives me a road map of what to read next to learn more about Marx and Engels. I appreciated this.
And this book made me realize how much Engels had influenced Marx's writings. It is quite amazing.
Although this book is a biography of Engels, it also goes into great detail about Marx. It was such a great biography that I thought I could learn more about Marx by reading this book than by reading a biography or commentary on Marx.
We may use other Marx biographies to supplement some of Marx's life and interesting episodes, but basically we will focus on this book and take a closer look at the lives of Marx and Engels.
For other reference books, see the following articles"List of 12 recommended Marx biographies--to learn more about the life and thought of Marx Engels."Please refer to this page for a summary.
So let's get started.
Who is Lassalle, a German Jewish thinker?
Fat Bakunin was not the only charismatic ideologue that Marx and Engels had to intimidate.
An eccentric figure, Ferdinand Lassalle also became a new rival for the hearts and minds of the European workers' movement.
Lassalle, the son of a washed-up Jewish tailor and a product of Berlin's young Hegelian school, was a philosopher and activist who never fully graduated from the chivalric tale of "young Germany.
After his failure in 48, Lassalle became involved with various proletarian organizations and eventually founded the All-German Workers' Association in 1863.
Lassalle was not the type to worry about a crisis of confidence, and wherever he began his political career, allegations of misappropriation of funds and mistreatment of colleagues followed.
Such behavior is actually too much," Engels wrote to Marx in 1856 after the Düsseldorf communist complained about Lassalle's coercive methods.
'He was a man who had to be on his guard at all times. And as a real Jew from the Slavic borderlands, he was always willing to use the party as an excuse to use anyone for his own personal ends."
Marx was often willing to tolerate Lassalle because of his help in finding a publisher for Capital, but Engels had a permanent falling out with him over the Franco-Austrian War of 1859.
While Engels put the struggle against Napoleon III above all else, Lassalle feared that an Austrian victory would only accelerate the nationalist backlash in Germany.
Chikuma Shobo, Tristram Hunt, translated by Erika Togo, Engels: The Man Called General by Marx, p. 335-336
Some line breaks have been made.
Bakunin was not the only formidable opponent of Marcus Engels.
Bakunin was a very dangerous figure who "saw that Marx's communism would become a dictatorial state authoritarianism" and was a difficult opponent who annihilated the International, which Marx Engels was trying to exploit.
The rassals introduced here are no less of a nuisance to them.
Lassalle's Thought and Political Activity - Relationship with Marx and Engels
Lassalle was not long in Marx's good graces. In 1861, Marx traveled to Prussia in an attempt to regain his citizenship, and while waiting for the decision (of refusal), he enjoyed a summer of high society with Lassalle and his Berlin outlandish friends.
The following year, Lassalle returned the favor by staying with the poverty-stricken Marx family in London for three weeks, thereby ruining their precarious finances in one fell swoop. The great philosopher resented this profligate and vain looker. When they fell out, all their political differences came to the surface.
The Malthusian-based "iron law of wages" (wages are naturally kept low as the children of the working class enter the labor market further) led Lassalle to argue for a Proudhonist future of producer cooperatives established by the state.
Along with this economic policy, there was also a Chartist dedication to the expansion of voting rights, which was a necessary step toward the creation of a modern nation-state.
None of them, in Marx's view, failed to appreciate the vitally important task. Namely, to abolish the existing capitalist order.
In fact, Lassalle always held a Romantic, almost Hegelian, belief in the state. He believed that the state was the highest form of human organization and, therefore, the best agent for the emancipation of the working class.
He even had a secret meeting with Chancellor Bismarck, thinking that he could build this ideal state by concluding a grand pact over elections. It was a pact that would unite the working class and the Junker aristocracy against the exploiting bourgeois class, which both he and Bismarck despised.
But before he could realize this grand political plan, Lassalle was overcome by his own Don Juan tendencies. In 1864, the fiancée of a young woman he was courting became so angry that she shot him in the stomach.
Suddenly, Engels had some admiration for the man. Whatever else Lassalle was as a person, as a writer, and as a scholar," Engels wrote upon hearing his obituary, "as a politician he was without doubt an extremely important figure in Germany.
'And yet, what an outlandish way to die. ...... Such a thing could only happen to Lassalle. Only Lassalle, with his strange and unique blend of frivolity and sentimentality, Jewishness and chivalry, could have done such a thing.
But as soon as he was informed of Lassalle's secret alliance with Bismarck, he quickly reverted to insults such as "Baron Izzy," "Lazarus," "Clever Ephraim," or, in reference to his sallow complexion, bitterly "Negro Jewish."
Chikuma Shobo, Tristram Hunt, translated by Erika Togo, Engels: The Man Called General by Marx, p. 336-337
Some line breaks have been made.
It can be seen here that Lassalle's personal humanity was problematic. The episode in which he stayed with the impoverished Marx family for three weeks has quite an impact. This biography is written rather lightly because it is a biography of Engels, but in other biographies of Marx, this episode is written quite harshly. I can understand why Marx was furious.
He was also dangerous, not only in his personal humanity, but also in his ideology. This has already been explained in the above section, but let us continue to look at it in more detail.
Why Lassalle was a threat to Marx Engels
Lassalle's intellectual legacy, whether it is attributed to "Jewish cunning" or not, undoubtedly bequeathed a profound influence on the policies of the German working class.
Engels wrote with regret after his death, "Izzy has given the movement a Tory-Chartist character that will be hard to shake off."
This was especially dangerous given the direction in which the German states were heading. Bismarck had apparently learned from his former enemy, Napoleon III, and was now deftly imitating the Bonapartist style of authoritarianism that pandered to the masses. By controlling elections and creating a strict political balance, "actual state power" was deftly placed "in the hands of a special class of officers and bureaucrats.
Bismarck's worship of state absolutism was now shrouded under public opinion and the expansion of suffrage. It seems that Lassalle and his followers have happily and properly fallen into that trap.
Chikuma Shobo, Tristram Hunt, translated by Erika Togo, Engels: The Man Called General by Marx, p. 338
Some line breaks have been made.
Lassalle's ideas were supposed to benefit "Bismarck of Prussia," whom Marx considered a powerful enemy. This was very threatening to Marx. The problem was not so much that Lassalle himself was a threat, but rather that his ideas were leading many people in the direction that Bismarck wanted them to go.
Bismarck was the Prussian Chancellor who began to rapidly rise to power in the 1860s. His presence would have a tremendous impact on later European history, and the foreshadowing of World War I in 1914 had already begun here.
The most recent example is the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. The Franco-Prussian War broke out as a result of Bismarck's scheming, a historic event that led to the collapse of the Second Empire of France under Napoleon III. Immediately after this, the Paris Commune was born, which also had a huge significance in Marx's life.
Please take a look at the following reference books on Bismarck as they are highly recommended.
The most highly recommended depiction of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune is by the great French writer Emile Zola.Ruined."It is. Anyway, it is an interesting work!
It is a masterpiece of war literature. The translator also praises it as follows
It should be called "literature of defeat," with the two defeats of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune as the backdrop of the story. It is a goldmine of 19th century French literature, which is unique for this reason but has hardly been read in Japan to this day, and is still unknown.
Ronsosha Publishing Company, Translation of Mitsuo Oda's "Nekketsu..
I too was shocked when I read this piece. It is very rare to see a work of this caliber. I highly recommend this work.
The Critique of the Gotha Platform, written to counter Lassalleanism
Fortunately, Marx and Engels had a party that could counter the Bismarck Compromise by Lassalle. Or so they thought.
Huge infrastructure projects in railroads, roads, and shipping, along with dramatic advances in the chemical, metal, and electrical industries, led to an unprecedented expansion of the urban working class in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was a period of booming activity in the Ruhr River basin.
They are factory production lines, vast foundries, cartels, and joint stock companies backed by the four major banks - Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, Darmstadt Bank, and Disconto Gesellschaft.
Along with massive industrialization and urbanization, radical policies found new support in the densely populated working districts of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, and Frankfurt.
By 1869, these voters had a voice in the German Social Democratic Workers' Party, founded by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht in Eisenach.
Marx and Engels were proud of Eisenach's party, which they saw as the most orthodox and practical embodiment of the ideals of the International, partly because it opposed alliances with middle-class parties, partly because it was suspicious of Prussian expansion, and partly because it espoused a decidedly Marxist approach to socialism. Marx and Engels were proud of the party and saw it as the most authentic and practical embodiment of the ideals of the International.
There was no laziness that undermined the English working class movement, no confusion with Proudhonism as seen in the French and Belgians, and no adverse effects of the Bakuninism that infested Spain and Italy.
Of course, the founders [of scientific socialism] were quick to point out what they considered to be Eisenachian misdirection, and they often posed particular challenges to Liebknecht in connection with the various compromises that inevitably accompany the operation of a democratic party.
Their criticism reached its zenith in 1875. It was at a conference in Gotha when Liebknecht merged the Eisenach faction with the All-German Workers' Association in Lassalle under the banner of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (Sozialistiche Arbeiterpartei Deutschland/SAPD).
On Regent's Park Road, Engels was skeptical. While Marx wrote his scathing "Critique of the Gotha Platform," highlighting each and every Lasserrean dodge with which the Eisenachites had been duped, Engels harshly criticized Böbel for abandoning his commitment to trade unionism, accepting the flawed idea of the "iron law of wages," and supporting the fanciful nonsense about the elimination of social and political inequality. He harshly criticized Böbel's support for the
A free-spirited lover of the high life, Engels was by no means an egalitarian.
The standard of living always reveals some inequality, which can be minimized but never eliminated. The standard of living of the inhabitants deep in the mountains will always be different from that of the people on the plains. The notion of a socialist society as a world of equality is a one-sided French concept."
When Liebknecht, a shallow follower of Lassalleanism, showed signs of wanting to remain ideologically unbound, Engels arrogantly warned Böbel: "Marx and I cannot permit the formation of a new party on such grounds. Marx and I cannot permit the formation of a new party on such a basis, and we will have to consider very seriously what attitude - public or private - we should take toward it. Do not forget that abroad we are responsible for all the statements and activities of the German Social Democratic Workers Party.
They directed most of their fury at Leibknecht, who was in dire need to "achieve unity and pay any price to do so" and had not consulted them beforehand.
Chikuma Shobo, Tristram Hunt, translated by Erika Togo, Engels: The Man Called General by Marx, p. 338-340
Some line breaks have been made.
The party that Marcus Engels had seen as promising in Germany had been strongly influenced by Lassalle. This was unbearable for them.
The result was Marx's "Gotha Critical Platform.
And there was one part of this section that caught my attention. That is here.
Engels, a free-spirited lover of the high life, was never an egalitarian.
The standard of living always reveals some inequality, which can be minimized but never eliminated. The standard of living of the inhabitants deep in the mountains will always be different from that of the people on the plains. The notion of socialist society as a world of equality is a one-sided French concept."
never yet (with negative verb)The Communist Manifesto.Where has Engels gone, who held communism in high esteem, trying to overthrow the bourgeoisie in the
When this happened, it became difficult to know what Marx-Engels was basing his theory on at this time and where he was headed. This happened some time after the publication of the first volume of Capital.
Although "Capitalism" and Marxism are often imagined as teachings to help poverty-stricken workers, I am finally beginning to wonder if Marx Engels really meant that.
What were they really trying to accomplish?
Apparently, looking at their lives so far, it seems to me that their "ideology" is a tool of political struggle.
This is not an easy question to answer, so I can't say much more about it here, but I think the question of what Marxism is has finally become a complex one.
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