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Only in the sixties did his fortunes improve. Small family inheritances, Wilhelm Wolff's legacy of over £800, and Engels' more plentiful and regular help, which from 1869 onward amounted to about £350 annually, enabled Marx to write his "Capital," the first volume of which, as is well known, is dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff.
To these relatively happy times belong Paul Lafargue's reminiscences—("Neue Zeit," 9th year, Vol. I., pp. 10-17, 37-42)—of his intercourse with the [53]Marx family. In particular he depicts the personality of the author of "Capital." In the bosom of his family and among the circle of his friends on Sunday evenings Marx was a genial companion, full of wit and humour. "His dark black eyes sparkled with mirth and with a playful irony whenever he heard a witty remark or a prompt repartee." He was a tender, indulgent father, who never asserted the parental authority. His wife was his helper and companion in the truest sense of the word. She was four years older than he, and notwithstanding her aristocratic connections and in spite of the great hardships and persecutions which for years she had to suffer by the side of her husband, she never regretted having taken the step which linked her destiny with that of Marx. She possessed a cheerful, bright disposition and an unfailing tact, easily winning the esteem of every one of her husband's acquaintances, friends, and followers. "Heinrich Heine, the relentless satirist, feared Marx's scorn; but he cherished the greatest admiration for the keen, sensitive mind of Marx's wife. Marx esteemed so highly the intelligence and the critical sense of his wife that he told me in 1866 he had submitted all his manuscripts to her and that he set a high value upon her judgment." Six children were born to the Marxes, four girls and two boys, of whom only three of the girls grew up—Jenny, who married Charles Longuet; Laura, who became the wife of Paul Lafargue; and the unhappy but highly-gifted Eleanor, who spent 14 sad years of her life by the side of Dr. Edward Aveling.
The sixties were undoubtedly the happiest years of Marx's life, and seemed to promise an abundant [54]harvest in his later life. But his health soon began to fail, and did not allow him to complete his work. The most productive years of Marx's life were between 1837 and 1847 and between 1857 and 1871. All his valuable work falls within these years: the "Poverty of Philosophy," the Communist Manifesto, his activity in the International, "Capital," the Civil War in France (the Commune).
The economic studies necessitated by his book "Capital" led Marx into the study of the social history of England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and gave him an insight into the working-class movements of those times such as but few scholars, English or foreign, have acquired. He became familiar with the modes of thought and expression of the working-class revolutionary movements, and especially of the Chartist movement, with the surviving leaders and adherents of which he was personally acquainted. Always eager to obtain knowledge of the actual working-class movement and to take part in it, he watched the activities of the English working class, which in the fifties was mainly occupied with purely trade unionist questions, being, politically, still in the Liberal camp. A change seemed imminent, however, about the beginning of the sixties. The London Labour leaders began to think about a Parliamentary reform movement, about starting a campaign for universal suffrage, which was an old Chartist demand. Likewise they manifested [55]an interest in the fate of Poland and in other international questions concerning liberty.
At the International Exhibition held in London in 1862, the Labour leaders made the acquaintance of a deputation of French working men, with whom they afterwards carried on a correspondence. In 1863 and 1864, in the course of this correspondence, the idea of founding an international union of workers was mooted; and in the fourth week of September, 1864, this idea was carried into effect. Labour delegates from Paris and London held a conference in London from the 25th to the 28th of September, and the event was celebrated by a public gathering in St. Martin's Hall on the evening of the 28th. Marx received an invitation to this meeting in order that the German workers might be represented there. This conference and meeting resulted in the formation of the International Working Men's Association. Committees and sub-committees were elected to draw up a declaration of principles and outline the constitution. One of Mazzini's followers and a Frenchman submitted schemes which were handed over to Marx to be elaborated by him. He consigned them to the waste-paper basket and wrote the "Inaugural Address," giving a history of the English workers since the year 1825, and deducing the necessary conclusions. The declaration of principles is entirely the work of Marx, and it is by no means a subtly and diplomatically conceived composition designed to please English and French working men; it consists essentially of Marxian ideas expressed in terms, however, which would appeal to English working men of that time. "It was difficult," writes Marx to Engels—("Correspondence," Vol. [56]III., p. 191)—"so to arrange matters that our view should appear in a form which would prove acceptable to the working-class movement with its present outlook.... It needs time before the reanimated movement will allow of the old boldness of speech. One must go fortiter in re, suaviter in modo (firmly maintaining essential principles with a pleasant manner)."
The Inaugural Address sums up the history of the English working class from 1825 to 1864, and shows that from its struggles, as indeed from modern social history in general, the following lessons may be learnt by the proletariat: independent economic and political action by the working class; the turning to account of reforms forced out of the ruling classes by the proletariat; international co-operation of workers in the Socialist revolution and against secret, militarist diplomacy.
Marx devoted a great deal of his time during the years 1865 to 1871 to the International. Its progress awoke in him the greatest hopes. In 1867 he writes to Engels: "Things are moving. And in the next revolution, which is perhaps nearer than it seems, we (i.e., you and I) have this powerful machinery in our hands."—("Correspondence of Marx and Engels," Vol. III., p. 406.)
The International passed through three phases: from 1865 to 1867 the followers of Proudhon held sway; from 1868 to 1870 Marxism was in the ascendant; from 1871 to its collapse it was dominated and ultimately broken up by the Bakunists. The followers of Proudhon, like those of Bakunin, were against political action and in favour of the federative economic form of social organisation, only the [57]Bakunists were also Communists, whereas the followers of Proudhon had an antipathy to Communism. Both groups were in agreement with Marx only on the one point—that he made economics the basis of the working-class movement. Both groups, however, accused him of being dictatorial, of attempting to concentrate the whole power of the International in his own hands. Besides insurmountable theoretical differences, racial and national prejudices crept into the International as disintegrating factors. The Romance and Russian Anarchists looked upon Marx as a pan-German, and conversely, some Marxians considered Bakunin a pan-Slav. Even as late as 1914, in the first months of the war, Professor James Guillaume, the last of the Bakunists, wrote a pamphlet entitled "Karl Marx, Pangermaniste" (Paris).
