Marx’s Centenary (1918) in the Light of the Media and Socialist Thought
Christian Fuchs
University of Westminster, London, UK, c.fuchs@westminster.ac.uk, @fuchschristian, http://fuchs.uti.at, christian.fuchs@triple-c.at
Abstract: This article takes a historical view on Marx’s anniversary: It analyses how Marx’s centenary (5 May 1918) was reflected in the media and socialist thought. 1918 not just marked Marx’s 100th anniversary but was also the year in which the First World War ended. It was the year that saw the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the start of the Russian Civil War, the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the formation of the Weimar Republic, Austria’s First Republic, the Czech Republic, the Hungarian Republic, the Second Polish Republic; the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and the independence of Iceland from Denmark. The cultural forms, in which Marx’s centenary was reflected in 1918, included press articles, essays, speeches, rallies, demonstrations, music, and banners. The communists as well as left-wing socialists of the day saw themselves in the tradition of Marx, whereas revisionist social democrats based their politics on a criticism or revised reading of Marx. This difference resulted in different readings of Marx.
Keywords: Karl Marx, centenary, 5 May 1918, bicentenary, 200th anniversary, 5 May 2018, 1818
1. Introduction
We can take Marx’s bicentenary as an occasion
for having a look at some aspects of his centenary in 1918. 1918
marked not
just Marx’s 100th anniversary but also the year in which the First
World War
ended. It was the year that saw the immediate aftermath of the Russian
Revolution and the start of the Russian Civil War, the end of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire; the formation of the Weimar Republic,
Austria’s First
Republic, the Czech Republic, the Hungarian Republic, the Second
Polish
Republic; the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and
the
independence of Iceland from Denmark.
The
communists as well as left-wing socialists of the day saw themselves
in the tradition of Marx, whereas revisionist social democrats based
their
politics on a criticism or revised reading of Marx. This difference
resulted,
as we will see, in different readings of Marx.
2. Communists and Left Socialists on Marx’s Centenary
After the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(SPD) had in August 1914 voted for war credits that had enabled the
mobilisation of the German army in the First World War, Rosa
Luxemburg, Hermann
Duncker, Hugo Eberlein, Julian Marchlewski, Franz Mehring, Ernst
Meyer, Wilhelm
Pieck and Karl Liebknecht founded the Gruppe Internationale (Group
International) that in 1916 became the Spartacus League. Spartacus in
1917
became part of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
(USPD), a
split-off from the SPD, and turned at the end of 1918 into the
Communist Party
of Germany (KPD).
Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring
Rosa Luxemburg was imprisoned from 18 February
1915 until 9 November 1916. She was jailed for two speeches in which
she had
called for conscientious objection. After she had served the sentence,
she was not
immediately released because she was considered a security threat. At
the time
when Marx’s centenary was celebrated, Rosa Luxemburg was a political
prisoner. Writing
was, as one can imagine, difficult in prison, but Luxemburg managed to
secretly
write the Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in
the German Social Democracy (1916)
in 1915.
The pamphlet was published anonymously in 1916 and distributed
illegally in
Germany.
Luxemburg
had written the chapter on Capital
Volumes 2 and 3 for Franz Mehring’s Marx biography that was
published in May
1918 (Mehring 2003/1936). In a letter to
Mehring,
Luxemburg (2011, 458) wrote on December
30, 2017:
“How fine that your Marx […] will
soon appear, which is truly a gleam of light in these sorry times. I
hope the
book will be a stimulus and an encouragement for a great many people
and at the
same time a nostalgic reminder of that lovely time when one did not
yet have to
be ashamed to call oneself a German Social Democrat”. Convinced by the
book’s
excellence, she nonetheless had doubts about its effectiveness, as she
wrote in
a letter to Clara Zetkin on 29 June 1918: “I find it magnificent and
promise
myself it will have a powerful impact on the masses. If only they will
read
it!” (Ibid., 463).
In
her chapter in Mehring’s book, Luxemburg points out that the
achievement of Capital is that “Marx
showed for the first time how profit originated and how it flowed into
the
pockets of the capitalists. He did so on the basis of two decisive
economic
facts: first, that the mass of the workers consists of proletarians
who are
compelled to sell their labour-power as a commodity in order to exist,
and
secondly that this commodity labour-power possesses such a high degree
of
productivity in our own day that it is able to produce in a certain
time a much
greater product than is necessary for its own maintenance in that
time” (Rosa
Luxemburg, quoted in Mehring 2003/1936, 372).
The
second volume of Capital investigates
how a whole is developed from the innumerable deviating movements of
individual
capital” (Ibid., 375). “In the first volume
he [Marx]
deals with the production of capital and lays bare the secret of
profit-making.
In the second volume he describes the movement of capital between the
factory
and the market, between the production and consumption of society. And
in the
third volume he deals with the distribution of the profit amongst the
capitalist class as a whole. […] In the first volume we are in the
factory, in
the deep social pit of labour where we can trace the source of
capitalist
wealth. In the second and third volumes we are on the surface, on the
official
stage of society. Department stores, banks, the stock exchanges,
finance and
the troubles of the ‘needy’ agriculturalists take up the foreground”
(Rosa
Luxemburg, quoted in Mehring 2003/1936, 376,
377).
“The
investigations which Marx pursues in the second and third volumes
of Capital offer a thorough insight
into the nature of crises” (Rosa Luxemburg, quoted in Mehring
2003/1936,
378). One hundred years later after this analysis of Luxemburg
was
published in the year of Marx’s centenary, capitalism has gone through
several
more crisis stages, of which the latest began in 2008 and created a
great
recession. New authoritarianisms and new nationalisms emerged in the
context of
this crisis. Marx and Luxemburg remind us that the capitalist system
is
inherently crisis-ridden and that crises can within that system at a
maximum be
suspended temporarily and sooner or later always come back in new
forms.
So
Franz Mehring was author of one of the first biographies of Karl Marx
(Mehring 2003/1936) and a comrade of
Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Clara Zetkin.
Mehring was one of the people who together with Luxemburg founded the
Spartacus League that became the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
Mehring published
on the occasion of Marx’s centenary an article in Leipziger
Volkszeitung on 4 May 1918. He wrote: “Karl Marx’s
centenary directs our view from a gruesome presence to a brighter
future just
like a bright sunbeam that breaks through dark and apparently
impenetrable
cloud layers […] Tireless and restless critique […] was his true
weapon. […] To
continue working based on the indestructible foundations that he laid
is the
most worthy homage we can offer to him on his one hundredth birthday”[1]
(Mehring 1918, 11, 15).
Max Adler
The Austro-Marxist
philosopher and politician Max Adler was a left socialist who was part
of the
left wing of Austrian social democracy. In May 1918, he published the
pamphlet Die
sozialistische Idee der Befreiung bei Karl Marx (Karl
Marx’s Socialist Idea of Liberation). He wrote: “The poet’s
words ‘For I have been a man, and that Means I have
been a combatant’[2]
has for the proletariat through Karl Marx gained the deeper historical
meaning
that the proletariat only as struggling
class reaches humanity. The World War’s inhumanity has given the
proletariat a terrible object lesson of this circumstance. […] It is
only in
this context that Marx will again become teacher and leader. The true
celebration of his centenary consists not in mere commemoration of his
works
and teachings, but in keeping alive his revolutionary spirit”[3]
(Adler 1918, 489).
Antonio Gramsci
Italy at the time of Marx’s centenary fought
as part of the Allied Powers in the First World War. Antonio Gramsci
was at
that time a member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), lived in
Turin, where
he was PSI secretary, and was the editor of the Socialist Party’s
weekly Il Grido del Popolo (The People’s
Cry). On 4 May 1918,
Gramsci (1918) published the essay “Il
nostro Marx”
(“Our Marx”) on the occasion of Marx’s centenary.
In
this article, Gramsci writes that Marx’s “only categorical
imperative” is, “‘Workers of the world, unite!’ The duty of
organizing, the
propagation of the duty to organize and associate, should therefore be
what
distinguishes Marxists from non-Marxists” (Gramsci
1918,
36). Organisation and political action as such are not
necessarily
progressive. Also fascists organise in political groups and movements
that act
politically in public. So what Gramsci leaves out is that for Marx not
political practice, but praxis – socialist political practice – is
decisive.
Gramsci
stresses that for Marx, ideas are not immaterial or fictitious,
but grounded in the economy: “With Marx, history continues to be the
domain of
ideas, of spirit, of the conscious activity of single or associated
individuals.
But ideas, spirit, take on substance, lose their arbitrariness, they
are no
longer fictitious religious or sociological abstractions. Their
substance is in
the economy, in practical activity, in the systems and relations of
production
and exchange” (Gramsci 1918, 37).
Knowledge
labour has today become a key feature of capitalist society.
The intersection of ideas and labour in the contemporary economy
strengthens
Gramsci’s interpretation of Marx, in which there is no strict
base/superstructure
separation and ideas operate within the economy.
Marx
“is a monolithic bloc of knowing and thinking humanity […] who
constructs iron syllogisms which encircle reality in its essence and
dominate
it, which penetrate people's minds, which bring the sedimentations of
prejudice
and fixed ideas crumbling down and strengthen the moral character” (Ibid., 39). Today, we see the rise of new
nationalisms
and authoritarianisms that use prejudices for trying to divide
humanity and
distract attention from class conflicts and class structures. Marx’s
humanism
and method of ideology critique are today of key importance for
challenging
these developments.
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs was one of the founders of
the International Workers of the World (IWW) and of the Socialist
Party of
America and its predecessor parties. The Socialist Party opposed the
USA’s
entry into the First World War, which resulted in the First Red Scare.
Debs on 4
May 1918, published an article that commemorated Marx for struggling
“to destroy
despotism in all its form” and to emancipate humankind “from the
slavery of the
ages”. In November 1918, Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for
sedition. He was released at the end of 1921. Debs and his socialist
contemporaries struggled against the authoritarian tendencies of their
time. He
considered Marx’s works and life as a guiding light for the struggle
against
authoritarianism. One hundred years later, new authoritarian dangers
have
emerged. Also today, Marx reminds is of the need “to destroy
despotism”.
In
Russia, the Soviet government signed the Peace Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk with Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman
Empire on
3 May 1918. Seven members of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of
the Soviet Union had voted in favour of such a treaty, four against,
four
members abstained. The Central Soviet Executive passed the resolution
with 112
votes in favour, 84 oppositional votes and 24 abstentions. Not
everyone agreed
with this decision. In April 1918, a group of Left Communists led by
Nikolai
Bukharin and Karl Radek published “Theses
on the Current Situation” (Left
Communists 1918),
in which they argued that the Peace Treaty was a “capitulation
to
international imperialism” and had “negative effect on the spiritual
and
psychological development of the international revolution” (Ibid.).
Lenin
On the day of Marx’s centenary, Lenin (1918)
wrote a response to the Left Communists under the
title “Left-Wing” Childishness and the
Petty-Bourgeois Mentality. Lenin disagreed with the Left
Communists’ hasty
call for world revolution: “For, until the world socialist revolution
breaks
out, until it embraces several countries and is strong enough to
overcome international
imperialism,
it is the direct duty of the socialists who have conquered in one
country
(especially a backward one) not to
accept battle against the giants of imperialism. Their duty is to try
to avoid
battle, to wait until the conflicts between the imperialists weaken
them even
more, and bring the
revolution in other countries even nearer” (Ibid.,
327).
Lenin
refers to Marx in order to stress that “Marx was profoundly right
when he taught the workers the importance of preserving the
organisation of
large-scale production, precisely for the purpose of facilitating the
transition to socialism” (Ibid., 345).
“Socialism is
inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the
latest
discoveries of modern science” (Ibid., 339).
Lenin
is certainly right in stressing with Marx that post-capitalism
needs to use modern technologies for establishing a post-scarcity
society so
that emancipation from toil and true freedom become possible. But the
problem
was that Lenin on the occasion of Marx’s centenary did not read Marx
thoroughly
enough. He adopted an uncritical celebration and uptake of Taylorism,
including
its de-humanising aspects such as repetitive, monotonous labour.
Soviet labour
was not less alienated than labour in Western capitalist societies.
The
point is that socialist technology needs to be a sublation of
capitalist technology, i.e. a simultaneous preservation of the best
elements,
elimination of negative design features, and the development of new
qualities. Marx and Engels spoke in this
context
already in The German Ideology of the
appropriation of technology. They make clear that appropriation
means a
transformation that is at the same time
revolution/overthrow/ceasing-to-be and
development/coming-to-be: “The appropriation of a totality of
instruments of
production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality
of
capacities in the individuals themselves. […] This appropriation is
further
determined by the manner in which it must be effected. It can only
be effected
through a union, which by the character of the proletariat itself
can again only
be a universal one, and through a revolution, in which, on the one
hand, the
power of the earlier mode of production and intercourse and social
organisation
is overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops the universal
character
and the energy of the proletariat, without which the revolution
cannot be
accomplished; and in which, further, the proletariat rids itself of
everything
that still clings to it from its previous position in society. Only
at this
stage does self-activity coincide with material life, which
corresponds
to the development of individuals into complete individuals and the
casting-off
of all natural limitations. The transformation of labour into
self-activity
corresponds to the transformation of the earlier limited intercourse
into the
intercourse of individuals as such. With the appropriation of the
total
productive forces through united individuals, private property comes
to an end”
(Marx and Engels 1845/46, 87-88).
Marx
further developed the idea of appropriation as dialectical becoming
in the Grundrisse. Only a dialectic
of old and new elements of technology makes possible that what Hardt
and Negri
(2017) based on Marx call the
appropriation of
fixed capital results in “disposable time”
ceasing to have “an antithetical
existence” (Marx 1857/58, 708), “the powers of
social
production” – including the “general intellect” – becoming “the real
life
process” (Ibid., 706), the “free development
of
individualities” that “then corresponds to the artistic, scientific
etc.
development of the individuals in the time set free” (Ibid.).
Social
production means for Marx that human subjects exist “in mutual
relationships, which they equally reproduce and produce anew” in a
“constant
process of their own movement, in which they even renew themselves
even as they
renew the world of wealth they create” (Ibid., 712).
In
a society of the commons, humans produce truly in an open, dynamic
process and
so do not stop developing technologies, but give new qualities to old
technologies and create entirely new technologies.
Today,
in the age of digital capitalism, we can not simply in a Leninist
manner appropriate capitalist digital technologies by stopping at
socialising the
ownership of Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. One also needs
qualitative
changes of digital technologies. So for example turning Facebook into
a co-operative
ownership does not automatically change its individualistic structures
that
enable the accumulation of online reputation. Socialisation and
co-operation
has to include a qualitative transformation of Facebook’s platform
design
structures and policies.
Socialist Party of Great Britain
Jack Fitzgerald was in 1904 one of the
founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. He was the editor of
the
Party’s journal Socialist Standard, where
he in May 1918 published an article on “The Centenary of Marx”. In it,
Fitzgerald (1918) wrote: “Of Capital
it is no
exaggeration to say that no work ever written on economics has
attracted so
much attention and attempted criticism. Every professor of political
economy
and every petty journalist feels bound to criticise, without having
troubled to
read, Marx’s unanswerable exposure of the present system. The two
great
features of Capital
are the solving of the riddle of Value and the demonstration of the
appropriation of Surplus-Value”. 2017 was the 150th anniversary of the
publication of Capital Volume 1’s
first edition. Fitzgerald’s judgment certainly also holds true one
hundred
years later: Marx and Capital are
heavily discussed, but too many people make claims about both without
having
thoroughly engaged with them.
3. Reformist and Revisionist Social Democracy on Marx’s Centenary
Arbeiter-Zeitung,
the daily newspaper of the Austrian social
democrats, wrote on the day of Marx’s centenary: “And yet, we do not
celebrate
a dead person today when we commemorate Marx. His name is today still
a battle
cry as good as it was then when the thirty-year old threw his
Communist
Manifesto into the world. He is still today awakening sleeping souls
and is
today still collecting, uniting and spearheading the proletarians of
all
countries”[4]
(Arbeiter-Zeitung
1918, 1).
Other
than Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Zetkin, Karl Kautsky did not
clearly oppose the German Social Democrats’ support of war credits.
From 1916
onwards, Kautsky opposed the First World War, which led in 1917 to the
creation
of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD).
Kautsky’s criticism
of Marxists’ nationalist support of the First World War on the
occasion of
Marx’s centenary was at the same time also a piece of self-criticism:
“The
celebration of the 100th birthday of our master will be the first act
since the
outbreak of the World War for which the proletarians of all countries
unite”;
Marxism was “partly dispersed into national parties that abet national
hatred
and the national lust for conquest of their governments and dominant
classes”[5]
(Kautsky 1918, 1). Kautsky reminded the
readers that
Marx had opposed Realpolitik and had favoured revolutionary politics.
For Marx,
the proletariat was revolutionary and therefore “constantly driven by
a wide
goal that transcends existing society”[6]
(Kautsky 1918, 3).
Joseph
Schumpeter was in 1918 professor of
political economy at the University of Graz and worked in a commission
of the
German government that prepared the nationalisation of some parts of
German
industry. He was not a follower of Marx’s theory, but in a newspaper
article
published on the day of Marx’s centenary he praised Marx as political
economist
and sociologist. “What is unique about him is that he was the
inseparable
penetration of researcher and fighter, that he only conducted research
in order
to give direction to struggles and only struggled in order put the
results of
his research into action”[7]
(Schumpeter 1918, 3).
Vorwärts has since 1876 been the
newspaper of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany. Wilhelm Liebknecht was one of the
founding
editors. Die Neue Zeit was the
Party’s theoretical journal and existed from 1883 until 1923. At the
time of
Marx’s centenary, German social democracy was split into the Spartacus
League
that later in the same year became the Communist Party of Germany, the
centrist
Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the rightist
Social
Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Interestingly, Die
Neue Zeit and Vorwärts
formulated different positions on how to think about Marx’s centenary.
Heinrich
Cunow, who in the years from 1917
until 1932 edited Die Neue Zeit –
the academic publication of
German social democracy –, wrote
about Marx’s 100th birthday: “Marx protrudes among the geniuses whose
names are
engraved into the plaques of honour and who lived during the
nineteenth century’s
second half as conquering the realm of the intellectual history. […]
His work
has not come to an end. The spirit of this man, whose mortal remains
have now
been covered by Highgate Cemetery’s lawn since more than 35 years,
still exerts
vital power. […] Marx’s enormous influence on theoretical-political
economy,
the interpretation of history and proletarian struggles in almost all
European
states proves well enough his importance”[8]
(Die Neue Zeit
1918, 97-98).
On
the day of Marx’s centenary, Vorwärts reported on its title page that Marxists
were deeply split: In Russia, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would kill
each
other. In France, the celebrations planned by Marx’s grandson
Jean-Laurent-Frederick Longuet would have been circumvented by
war-supporting
socialists. In Germany, “the split of the Party is an accomplished
fact“[9]
(Vorwärts
1918, 1). “In Germany, the Marx
celebrations must limit themselves to appraisals of the master in the
press and
festivities in closed circles“[10]
(Vorwärts
1918, 1). The article on
the one hand justifies rightist German Social
Democrats’ support of the First World War. On the other hand, it is a
deeply
pessimist piece that expresses sorrow over the bad status of Social
Democracy
and its 1917 split into two parties (the USDP and the SPD). Marx was
in the
article seen as someone who did not matter in 1918, but would matter
again in
the future: “So Karl Marx’s intellectual work can be a measure for the
greatness of the working class at a later time“[11]
(Vorwärts
1918, 2). It becomes evident how
class struggle and socialism formed a mere lip service for revisionist
social
democrats.
At
the time of the split of the Party into a pro- and an anti-First
World War faction in 1915, Rudolf Hilferding was the newspaper’s
chief-editor
and Vorwärts supported the anti-war
position. But Hilferding was replaced by Friedrich Stampfer as
chief-editor in
1916 so that the newspaper at the time of Marx’s centenary represented
the
Party’s mainstream positions of Friederich Ebert and Philipp
Scheidemann.
Scheidemann was Chancellor of the Weimar Republic when right-wing
paramilitaries under Waldemar Pabst murdered Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht
in 1919, which was tolerated by Scheidemann’s Minister of Defence
Gustav Noske.
4. How the News Media Reported on Marx’s Centenary
In London, where Marx lived from 1849 until
his death in 1883, socialists planned a celebration of his centenary
in
Finsbury Park. An advertisement printed in the Daily
Herald on 4 May (see Figure 1) makes clear that
eight trade councils and over one hundred trade union branches and
co-operatives supported the event that was planned to take place in
Finsbury
Park on 5 May. It should have featured speakers on eight platforms.
The Herald
also printed the resolution that the organisers (The North London
Labour
Demonstration Committee) planned to read out on all eight platforms:
This mass meeting of London workers, on the centenary of the birth of Karl Marx, recalls with gratitude his devoted labours on behalf of the cause of International Socialism. Having no quarrel with the workers of any country, it extends fraternal greetings to them all, paying particular tribute to those Russian comrades who have waged such a magnificent struggle for their Social and Political emancipation. It emphatically protests against the continuation of the present Capitalistic war, and urges the workers of all lands immediately to meet in conference and arrange a “Peoples’ Peace” on the basis of “no annexations and no indemnities”. It further vigorously protests against the continued imprisonment of those holding a conscientious objection to military service, and demands their immediate and unconditional release. It demands full political and civil rights for all workers, including soldiers, sailors, and civil servants. Finally, it reaffirms its belief in the solidarity of the workers of all lands, in the cause of International Brotherhood and goodwill amongst all peoples. Workers of London rally behind your Banners! Demonstrate your belief in the Solidarity of the Working Class the World over – of Internationalism, Brotherhood and Goodwill amongst all Peoples. Rally! Rally!! Rally!!!” (Daily Herald, May 4 1918, 11).
The Home Secretary prohibited the public event. In the USA, the New York Herald reported that in London, the “celebration of the centenary of the birthday of Karl Marx, the German Socialist, arranged to be held in a London park tomorrow, has been prohibited by the Home Secretary on the ground that it would be likely to cause disorder and make undue demands on the police. The principal organiser of the meeting was a pacifist weekly paper and several trade unions cooperated. There were to have been bands and banners and speeches, with resolutions against a ‘capitalistic war’” (Marx Celebration Halted, New York Herald, 5 May 1918, 2).
Figure 1: Advertisement for a rally celebrating Marx’s centenary in
London’s
Finsbury Park (data source: Daily Herald,
May 4 1918)
In the USA, the New York Times on the same day ran an
overall appreciative piece
titled Today is 100th Anniversary
of Marx’s Birth: “Few
men have more profoundly influenced the life and thought of their
own and
succeeding generations than the great author of ‘Das Kapital,’ upon
whom the
world has, with questionable accuracy, conferred the title ‘Father
of Modern
Socialism’. […] The great war seems destined to mark the close of
the era of
Marxism in Socialist history. […] The centennial of Marx’s birth may
be
regarded, at the same time, as the end of Marxian socialism” (Spargo
1918, 11-12).
The Globe was a London-based
newspaper owned by
William Maxwell Aitken, who at that time was Britain’s Minister of
Information
in David Lloyd George’s government. It is of course interesting but
not surprising
that the Minister of Information at that time was a media baron who
controlled
the Daily Express and The Globe. At
the same time, Alfred
Harmsworth, who owned the the Daily
Mirror and The Times and had
founded the Daily Mail (that at that
time was owned by his brother Harold Harmsworth), was the British
government’s
Director of Propaganda. Putting the owners of large newspapers in
control of
propaganda and information policies constitutes a direct
state-capital-nexus
that undermines the freedom of the press and makes sure that there is
pro-government reporting. In this particular case, the political
appointments
served the purpose of war propaganda and the opposition to socialism
and
pacifism.
This
circumstance becomes evident in a piece printed in Aitken’s The
Globe on 2 May 1918, under the title
“Pacifists Seek Trouble” that reported there is “every indication”
that in
respect to the planned “Pacifists’ demonstration […] arranged to be
held in
Finsbury Park […] the British public will take the matter in their own
hands and
give the demonstrators a short shrift […] unless the authorities step
in and
prohibit the meeting” (The Globe, 2 May
1918, 3). So the newspaper called on the state to prohibit the Marx
meeting and
on anti-socialists to violently disrupt it. Tellingly, next to this
report The Globe featured a large call with the
title “HELP to advance the British Financial Front” that calls the
readers to
buy National War Bonds. “YOUR COUNTRY needs £25,000,000 every week
from the sale
of National War Bonds. The money must be found. Are you doing
your
utmost to help? […] Find out where you can cut expenses, and lend your
country
the money saved. […] You are personally responsible for some part of
that
£25,000,000. Rich or poor – man or woman – it is to you that
our sailors
and soldiers look to provide the means of victory. They have faith in
you.
Prove that your faith is well-founded. Give them your support” (The
Globe, 2 May 1918, 3).
Also
The Times that was owned
by the UK-government’s Director of Propaganda Alfred Harmsworth
reported
negatively on Marx’s centenary. On 2 May,
it reported The Times reported that
“Labour’s May Day will be next Sunday, the centenary of Karl Marx,
when there
will be a procession to Highgate Cemetery, and flowers will be
placed on Marx’s
grave”. The conservative newspaper titled this short news piece “May
Day.
Anti-Socialist Demonstrations at Glasgow” and wrote in it that the
May Day
demonstrations in Glasgow were “one of the largest of recent years”,
but that
there were “a number of exciting incidents”, including spectators
shouting “go
and join the Army” (The Times, 2 May 1918,
3). On May 1, The Times ran a short
news item titled “Karl Marx Unhonoured” that reported that in
France, a
“proposal to celebrate the centenary of Karl Marx [born 5 May 1818]
has been
rejected by the executive committee of the Federation of the Seine”.
The
Chicago
Daily Tribune reported about a celebratory event in Chicago,
writing that
an “admission charge of 35 cents and a wardrobe tip of 15 cents
straight
assured the exclusion of many and limited the attendance of the
‘Gigantic Karl
Marx Celebration’ to the 150 who had the price”. The article spoke in
its
headline of the attendees as “elite Bolsheviki” and wrote that “every
third tie
was of crimson” (Chicago Daily Tribune,
6 May 1918, 3). To remind its readers of what should happen to
socialists, the
newspaper right next to this article printed one titled “Socialists
Here Face
Inquiry for Anti-War Stand”.
The Scotsman reported on May 6
that the “peace
demonstration, widely advertised as rank and file labour celebration
of the
centenary of Karl Marx […] was prohibited by an order of the Home
Secretary.
Nevertheless, a crowd numbering between 500 and 1000 people assembled
at
half-past three, and grouped themselves around improvised stands” (The Scotsman, 6 May 1918, p. 7).
In
Germany, the liberal Berliner
Volkszeitung published an article about Marx’s centenary that
criticised
“the self-indulgent overestimation of this centenarian”[12].
“The number of owners has not just not continuously decreased, but has
(thanks to
the development of stockholding) steadily become larger. The
1,000-year Reich
of the Proletarians is deferred to the distant future”[13]
(Fiedler 1918, 3). “For decades to come,
the idea of
the International, his favourite organisational plan, seems to be
buried in the
abyss that the World War has ripped up between the nations”[14]
(Ibid.).
Overall,
we can see from this incomplete review that the reactions to
Marx’s centenary ranged from taking his work and life as an
inspiration for the
struggles of the time on the one side of the spectrum to on the other
side radical
dismissals of Marx’s works and politics that also featured calls for
the use of
violence to impede celebrations.
5. Conclusion
The cultural forms, in which Marx’s
centenary was reflected in 1918, included press articles, essays,
speeches,
rallies, demonstrations, music, and banners. One hundred years later,
we can
find besides all of these cultural forms of commemorating Marx’s
bicentenary
also expressions of engagement, inspiration, interest and rejection
that take on the form
of memes, social media, documentaries, radio and television reports,
movies,
novels, exhibitions, souvenirs, books, collected volumes, etc. One
should in
this context not turn Marx into a depoliticised cultural spectacle
(Marx for
Marx’s sake), but rather take the opportunity to treat him as undead
and as
capitalism’s walking dead, who reminds us of the necessity to
critically
theorise and politically criticise capitalism and to struggle for
alternatives
(Marx for the sake of a commons-oriented society). We need to repeat
Marx
today.
References
Arbeiter-Zeitung. 1918. Karl Marx. 5 May: 1-3.
Debs, Eugene, V. 1918. Karl Marx the Man: An Appreciation. St. Louis Labor 900 (May 4, 1918): 1.
Die Neue Zeit. 1918. Karl Marx. 3 May 1918. 36: 97-103.
Fitzgerald, Jack. 1918. The Centenary of Marx. Socialist Standard, May 1918. https://www.marxists.org/archive/fitzgerald/marxcentenary.htm
Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2017. Assembly. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1914. West-Eastern Divan. London: Dent & Sons.
Left Communists. 1918. The Left Communists’ Theses on the Current Situation. https://libcom.org/library/theses-left-communists-russia-1918
Marx, Karl. 1857/58. Grundrisse. London: Penguin.
Mehring, Franz. 2003/1936. Karl Marx: The Story of His Life. Abingdon: Routledge.
Spargo, John. 1918. Today is 100th Anniversary of Marx’s Birth. New York Times, 5 May 1918, 11-12.
Vorwärts. 1918. Zum 100. Geburtstag von Karl Marx. 5 May 2018: 1-2.
About the Author
Christian
Fuchs
Christian
Fuchs is a
critical theorist of communication and society. He is co-editor of the
journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism &
Critique and a professor at the University of Westminster.
@fuchschristian http://fuchs.uti.at