Karl Marx. John Jabez Edwin Mayal/WikipediaCommons • JOHN JABEZ EDWIN MAYAL Two centuries after his birth, on May 5, 1818, the figure of Karl Marx is for us associated with the severe mien and the thick white beard immortalized by the pioneer of photography, John Mayall, around 1870. To the point that he It's hard for us to imagine that behind the icon there once existed a young man. But what is certain is that before writing the Communist Party Manifesto in 1848, at the age of 30, Marx had political, intellectual and personal experiences that marked all his work. The circle of Hegel's admirers Marx, who grew up at a time when Romanticism was at its height, was the epitome of a rebellious young man. His father, a wealthy lawyer of Jewish descent who had converted to Christianity a year before the birth of his son, introduced him to the liberal thought of the Age of Enlightenment and to the criticism of the Prussian absolutist regime (the Rhineland, Marx's native region, then belonged to Prussia). At 17, the young Karl entered the University of Bonn. There he fights a duel, spends a day in jail for getting drunk and causing trouble, and joins a poets club. The following year, he entered the University of Berlin to study law and philosophy. This is where he comes into contact with the thought of Hegel, the most influential philosopher of the time. Marx quickly aligned himself with the current of the young Hegelians, a circle of disciples of Hegel who gave a democratic and secularist interpretation of the thought of their master. Among them stand out the Bavarian philosopher and theologian Ludwig Feuerbach (who declared:"To have no religion, such is my religion"), the Saxon writer and journalist Arnold Ruge and the young professor of theology Bruno Bauer, who became tutor of the young Marx. At first, the young Hegelians identified with liberalism and advocated loyal opposition to the regime, but the constant clashes with the authorities pushed them to become radicalized. As a result, the government closes the doors of the university to the members of the group, who find themselves forced into the most precarious personal and professional paths. In a certain sense, they are a lost generation of German intellectual life. "I can't do anything in Germany" The year 1841 marks for Marx the transition to adulthood. "There are moments in life," he wrote to his father, "which signal, like milestones on the ground, the end of an era, but at the same time decisively indicate a new direction. Forced to give up an academic career, Marx became a freelance writer thanks to the project of jurist Robert Jung and radical intellectual Moses Hess, who launched a journal on politics and economics called Rheinische Zeitung , the “Rhenish Gazette”. This is where Marx begins to hone his own path, a singular blend of philosophy and political criticism. One of his first collaborations was a defense of freedom of the press, which he described as "a spiritual mirror in which a people contemplates itself" and which, along with freedom of trade, was one of the causes he then defends with the most vigor. Marx soon joined the editorial team and became the unofficial director of the gazette, whose circulation, thanks to him, tripled, which is why he attracted the suspicions of the government. Marx writes on local subjects such as the situation of the winegrowers of Moselle or the law prohibiting the collection of firewood in the old communal forests, but he criticizes the substance of the Prussian State, which reacts by prohibiting the publication in March 1843. "I can't do anything in Germany," complained Marx. Still, it's been a momentous year for him. He begins to write his first theoretical work, a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law , in which he outlines his ideas on alienation and expresses his republican and democratic convictions, moving away from the master. In June, he married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Johann Ludwig von Westphalen, an aristocrat and senior Prussian official, friend of Marx's father and protector of Karl himself, to whom he introduced the works of Shakespeare. The marriage raises doubts in both families, due to the couple's age difference (she is four years older than him) and their uncertain economic future. But Jenny, a woman full of talent, charm and intelligence, does not hesitate; she will be his companion in life and in intellectual combat until his death in 1881, two years before him. In the effervescence of Paris In the meantime, Arnold Ruge has decided to found a new publication in Paris, far from the Prussian censorship, the Annales franco-allemandes , and he wants Marx to work on the project. Accepting his invitation, at the end of October, Karl and Jenny leave for France. Paris is then the "great magic kettle, in which the history of the world is boiling", as Ruge describes it. A bustling city, with a social, political and cultural life unique in Europe. Marx reads with avidity the French socialists Saint-Simon, Cabet and Fourier, as well as the British economists Ricardo and Smith. He frequents the poet Heine, Proudhon (author of the pamphlet What is property? , with his famous answer:“Property is theft”) and the anarchist Bakunin, who would later be one of his main opponents. He began to frequent working-class circles and admired their capacity for organization:among them, he affirmed, "human fraternity is not […] an empty phrase, but a truth, and the nobility of humanity shines on these figures hardened by work”. On the other hand, he is very critical of the theories that develop around these groups, judging them utopian or romantic, and he sets himself the task of developing a "scientific" communist doctrine. In August 1844, Marx met the man who was to become both his best friend and his protector:Friedrich Engels. In May 1844, Jenny and Karl had their first daughter, whom they also named Jenny. Between August and September, they meet the man who will become the family's best friend and protector:Friedrich Engels. The son of a wealthy textile industrialist, he wrote a work that Marx studied in depth and which provided him with the data he needed for his theory of history:The Condition of the Working Classes in England . It was the beginning of a great friendship and intellectual collaboration, the first fruit of which appeared in 1845 under the title The Holy Family , a settling of scores with Marx's Hegelian heritage and, in particular, with his former mentor, Bruno Bauer. Finally, a single issue of the Annales is published, but the two articles written by Marx constitute important stages in the development of its vision of the world. In the first, “Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,” he views religion as an alienated expression of humanity. It is "the opium of the people". But it doesn't stop there. Criticism of heaven is thus transformed into criticism of earth, criticism of religion into criticism of law, criticism of theology into criticism of politics. In the second, entitled “On the Jewish question”, sometimes unfairly accused of anti-Semitism, he states for the first time the idea that human emancipation is linked to the end of capitalism. Expelled from France After the abortive experiment of the Annales , the Marxes contribute to bringing out Vorwärts (“En avant”), a workers’ newspaper published without prior official authorization. This is the reason why the Minister of the Interior forbids it and decrees the expulsion from France of its steering committee:Marx, Heine and Ruge. In February 1845, the Marx family moved to Brussels. She only spent 15 months in the French capital, but they were decisive. And these are almost the only ones during which Karl met men with whom he maintained cordial ties, fertile exchanges, and even a certain intimacy. Cordiality and restlessness have always been present in the life of the Marxes in Brussels, a welcoming city where a certain freedom reigned and where Laura, their second daughter, was born. The family's economic situation is becoming increasingly precarious. Only the help of Engels and his friends and followers in Germany enabled him to get back on his feet. This did not prevent Marx, who slept only four hours a night, from continuing to study political economy, history and socialist theories. Those who knew him at that time noted a character trait that will not abandon him:intellectual arrogance. Thus, the Russian literary critic Pavel Annenkov describes him as an energetic man, endowed with strong convictions and an unshakeable will, with clumsy but fearless movements, awkward and devoid of manners, with a metallic voice, acerbic tone and harsh judgments about people and things. In short, "a democratic dictator". In contact with the working world In Brussels, Marx prepared, with Engels, two important works which would only see the light of day posthumously:The German Ideology and the Theses on Feuerbach . With the first title, we know a series of manuscripts in which Marx develops his materialist conception of history, according to which societies are the reflection of their economic and material relations:when relations change, societies are transformed, directed by a ruling class. It is then the bourgeoisie, but behind it must rise a new class, the proletariat, to overthrow the established order and put an end to class oppression. This is also Marx's personal mission, as a famous passage from the Theses on Feuerbach says. “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, what matters is to transform it. » On his own initiative, Marx traveled to Manchester and London in June 1845 to establish contacts with German exiles and English activists of Chartism, a British labor movement that flourished in the 1840s. On his return, he founded a Committee communist correspondence, in order to weave an international network extending its ramifications in France, England and Germany. It is the embryo of the League of Communists, born in June 1847. The Manifesto takes shape in London By then Marx had already broken violently with other forms of socialism and communism, believing that his was the only valid one. For example, he vociferously opposes the working-class tailor and orator Wilhelm Weitling, who despises theory and prefers to appeal to the feelings of the people. “To this day, ignorance has not helped anyone! retorts Marx. It also responds to the Philosophy of misery of Proudhon by an acid criticism entitled Misery of philosophy . These gestures earned him not only many enemies, but also a reputation as a relentless thinker. This is why, during the second congress of the League of Communists, held in December 1847, the London committee instructed Marx and Engels to draft a document setting out the group's aspirations. They accepted the challenge and, back in Brussels, Marx finished writing the Communist Party Manifesto at the end of January 1848. , which recapitulates, in a forceful and comprehensible language of all, the Marxist theory of the history and the revolution. A few days later, in Paris, a revolution broke out which soon spread throughout Europe. The Manifesto of Marx had little repercussion in this revolutionary cycle, any more than during the following decades. But, from 1880, the “ghost” of communism and the call for the union of “proletarians of all countries” began to spread in Europe and the rest of the world. Find out more Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Flammarion (GF), 1998.Karl Marx, man of the 19 th century, by Jonathan Sperber, Piranha, 2017. Timeline 1818 Karl Marx was born on May 5 in Trier, Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy. At 17, he entered the University of Bonn.1842 Marx starts working for the Rhine Gazette . He harshly criticized the Prussian state, which forbade the publication.1843 He moved to Paris after his marriage. There he came into contact with the Communist circles of the city and with Friedrich Engels.1845 Expelled from France, Marx went into exile in Brussels, where he founded the Communist Correspondence Committee with Engels.1848 Marx writes the Communist Party Manifesto before taking up residence in London.
