Marx in London ( Chartist movement)- contd - 1

While in London, Marx devoted himself to the task of revolutionary organising of the working class. For the first few years, he and his family lived in extreme poverty. His main source of income was his colleague, Engels, who derived much of his income from his family's business. Later Marx and Engels both began writing for six different newspapers around the world, in England, the United States, Prussia, Austria and South Africa. Most of Marx's journalistic writing, however, was as a European correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. In earlier years, Marx had been able to communicate with the broad masses of the working class by editing his own newspaper or editing a newspaper financed by others sympathetic to his philosophy. Now, in London, Marx was unable to finance his own newspaper and unable to put together financing from others. Thus, Marx sought to communicate with the public by writing articles for the New York Tribune and other "bourgeois" newspapers. At first Marx's English-language articles were translated from German by Wilhelm Pieper; eventually, however, Marx learned English well enough to write without translation.

The New York Daily Tribune had been founded in New York City in the United States of America by Horace Greeley in April 1841. Marx's main contact on the Tribune wasCharles Dana. Later, in 1868, Charles Dana would leave the Tribune to become the owner and editor-in-chief of the New York Sun, a competing newspaper in New York City.However, at this time Charles Dana served on the editorial board of the Tribune.

Several characteristics about the Tribune made the newspaper an excellent vehicle for Marx to reach a sympathetic public across the Atlantic Ocean. Since its founding, the Tribune had been an inexpensive newspaper—two cents per copy. Accordingly, it was popular with the broad masses of the working class of the United States. With a run of about 50,000 issues, the Tribune was the most widely circulated journal in the United States.Editorially, the Tribune reflected Greeley's anti-slavery opinions. Not only did the Tribunehave wide readership with the United States and not only did that readership come from the working classes, but the readers seemed to be from the progressive wing of the working class. Marx's first article for the New York Tribune was on the British elections to Parliament and was published in the Tribune on 21 August 1852.

Marx was just one of the reporters in Europe that the New York Tribune employed. However, with the slavery crisis in the United States coming to a head in the late 1850s and with the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the American public's interest in European affairs declined. Thus Marx very early began to write on issues affecting the United States — particularly the "slavery crisis" and the "War Between the States."

Marx continued to write articles for the New York Daily Tribune as long as he was sure that the Tribune's editorial policy was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy. No longer was the Tribune to be a strong abolitionist paper dedicated to a complete Union victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in the Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and, in 1863, was forced to withdraw as a writer for the Tribune.

From December 1851 to March 1852, Marx wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, a work on the French Revolution of 1848, in which he expanded upon his concepts of historical materialism, class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat, advancing the argument that victorious proletariat has to smash the bourgeois state.

The 1850s and 1860s also mark the line between what some scholars see as the idealistic, Hegelian young Marx from the more scientifically minded mature Marx writings of the later period. This distinction is usually associated with the structural Marxism school, and not all scholars agree that it exists. The years of revolution from 1848 to 1849 had been a grand experience for both Marx and Engels. They both became sure that their economic view of the course of history was the only valid way that historic events like the revolutionary upsurge of 1848 could be adequately explained. For some time after 1848, Marx and Engels wondered if the entire revolutionary upsurge had completely played out. As time passed, they began to think that a new revolutionary upsurge would not occur until there was another economic downturn. The question of whether a recession would be necessary to create a new revolutionary situation in society became a point of contention between Marx and certain other revolutionaries. Marx accused these other revolutionaries of being "adventurists" because of their belief that a revolutionary situation could be created out of thin air by the sheer "will power" of the revolutionaries without regard to the economic realities of the current situation.

The downturn in the United States economy in 1852 led Marx and Engels to wonder if a revolutionary upsurge would soon occur. However, the United States' economy was too new to play host to a classical revolution. The western frontier in America always provided a relief valve for the pent-up forces that might in other countries cause social unrest. Any economic crisis which began in the United States would not lead to revolution unless one of the older economies of Europe "caught the contagion" from the United States. In other words, economies of the world were still seen as individual national systems which were contiguous with the national borders of each country. The Panic of 1857 broke the mould of all prior thinking on the world economy. Beginning in the United States, the Panic spread across the globe. Indeed, the Panic of 1857 was the first truly global economic crisis.

Marx longed to return to his economic studies. He had left these studies in 1844 and had been preoccupied with other projects over the last thirteen years. By returning to his study of economics, he felt he would be able to understand more thoroughly what was occurring in the world.
(Marx's birthplace in Trier. It was purchased by the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1928 and now houses a museum devoted to him)

Chartism was a working-classmovement for political reform in Britain which existed from 1838 to 1858. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, theEast Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country, and theSouth Wales Valleys. Support for the movement was at its highest in 1839, 1842, and 1848, when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though there were some who became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in south Wales and Yorkshire.

The People's Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic:

1. A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
2. The Secret Ballot – To protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
3. No Property Qualification for Members of Parliament – thus enabling the constituencies to return the man of their choice, be he rich or poor.
4. Payment of Members, thus enabling an honest trades-man, working man, or other person, to serve a constituency; when taken from his business to attend to the interests of the country.
5. Equal Constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing small constituencies to swamp the votes of large ones.
6. Annual Parliament Elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since as the constituency might be bought once in seven years (even with the ballot), no purse could buy a constituency (under a system of universal suffrage) in each ensuing twelvemonth; and since members, when elected for a year only, would not be able to defy and betray their constituents as now.

Chartism can be interpreted as a continuation of the 19th century fight against corruption and for democracy in an industrial society, but attracted considerably more support than the radical groups for economic reasons including wage cuts and unemployment.

The leaders and workers of the Chartist movement had strong influence on the ideas of Karl Marx. In 1850 they published the first English Version of the Communist Manifesto in their news paper " The Red Republicsan". Marx helped Arnest Jones in his weekly magazine " The Peoples Paper" and contributed to the first edition published in 1852. He also contributed 17 essays to the different issues of the magazine.