The Case of Brentano vs. Marx
I. THE INCRIMINATED QUOTATIONS
1. The Inaugural Address (of the First International)
2. Capital, Vol. I
II. BRENTANO AND MARX
3. The Charge
4. Karl Marx replies
5. Retort by Anonymous
6. Marx's second reply
7. The rejoinder of Anonymous
III. SEDLEY TAYLOR AND ELEANOR MARX
8. Attack by S. Taylor
9. Eleanor Marx's reply
10. Sedley Taylor's retort
11. Eleanor Marx's second reply
IV. ENGELS AND BRENTANO
12. From Engels' preface to the fourth German edition of Marx's Capital, Vol. I
13. Brentano's reply
14. From the Appendices to Brentano's reply
15. From the Parliamentary Reports of the London Press or April 17, 1863
16. Gladstone to Brentano
17. Engels' reply to No. 17
The original edition is entitled: "Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Men's International Association, established September 28, 1864, at a Public Meeting held at St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, London." Price one penny. Printed at the "Bee-Hive" Newspaper Office, 10, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 1864. * The address begins: "It is a great fact that the misery of the working masses has not diminished from 1848 to 1864, and yet this period is unrivalled for the development of its industry and the growth of its commerce." By way of proof, facts are quoted from the PUBLIC HEALTH Reports about the poor nutrition of various groups of urban workers and agricultural day labourers in the country. It then continues:
"Such are the official statements published by order of Parliament in 1864, during the millennium of free trade, at a time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that
"'the average condition of the British labourer has improved in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any age.'
"Upon these official congratulations jars the dry remark of the official Public Health Report:
"'The public health of a country means the health of its masses, and the masses will scarcely be healthy unless, to their very base, they be at least moderately prosperous.'
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy:
'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is entirely confined to classes of property.'" *
In German translation: [Now gives German translation of the above six paragraphs.]
After these few examples one understands the cry of triumph of the Registrar-General of the British people:
"Rapidly as the population has increased, it has not kept pace with the progress of industry and wealth." [101]
Let us turn now to the direct agents of this industry, or the producers of this wealth, to the working class.
"It is one of the most melancholy features in the social state of this country," says Gladstone, "that while there was a decrease in the consuming power of the people, and while there was an increase in the privations and distress of the labouring class and operatives, there was at the same time a constant accumulation of wealth in the upper classes, and a constant increase of Capital." [102]
Thus spoke this unctuous minister in the House of Commons of February 13th, 1843. On April 16th, 1863, 20 years later, in the speech in which he introduced his Budget:
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent.... In the 8 years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased from the basis taken in 1853, by 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible ... this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... entirely confined to classes of property ... must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population because it cheapens the commodities of general consumption. While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say." [104]
How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained "poor", only "less poor" in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class "an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power", then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. As to the cheapening of the means of subsistence, the official statistics, e. g. the accounts of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, show an increase in price of 20% for the average of the three years 1860-1862, compared with 1851-1853. In the following three years, 1863-1865, there was a progressive rise in the price of meat, butter, milk,, sugar, salt, coals, and a number of other necessary means of subsistence. Gladstone's next budget speech of April 7th, 1864, is a Pindaric dithyrambus on the advance of surplus-value-making and the happiness of the people "tempered by poverty". He speaks of masses "on the border of pauperism", of branches of trade in which "wages have not increased", and finally sums up the happiness of the working-class in the words: "human life is but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence". Professor Fawcett, not bound like Gladstone by official considerations, declares roundly:
"I do not, of course, deny that money wages have been augmented by this increase of Capital" (in the last ten years), "but this apparent advantage is to a great extent lost, because many of the necessaries of life are becoming dearer" (he believes because of the fall in value of the precious metals) "...THE RICH GROW RAPIDLY RICHER, whilst there is no perceptible advance in the comfort enjoyed by the industrial classes.... They (the labourers) become almost the slaves of the tradesman, to whom they owe money.")
(Footnote #104) See the official accounts in the Blue book: "MISCELLANEOUS STATISTICS OF THE UN. KINGDOM", PART VI, LONDON, 1866, pp. 260-273, passim. An addition to the second edition. Instead of the statistics of orphan asylums &c., the declamations of the ministerial journals in recommending dowries for the Royal children might also serve. The greater dearness of the means of subsistence 15 never forgotten there.
(Footnote 105) "THINK OF THOSE, WHO ARE ON THE BORDER OF THAT REGION (PAUPERISM)", "WAGES... IN OTHERS NOT INCREASED ... HUMAN LIFE IS BUT, IN NINE CASES OUT OF TEN, A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE." (Gladstone, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 7th April, 1864). The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the following quotation from Molière:
"Voila' l'homme en effet. Il va du blanc au noir.
Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.
Importun a' tout autre, a' bi meme incommode,
Il change a' tous moments d'esprit comme de mode."
(The Theory of the Exchanges etc., London, 1864, p. 135).
(Footnote 106) H. Fawcett, l. c., [The Economic Position of the British Labourer] pp. 67-68 As to the increasing dependence of labourers on the retail shopkeepers, this is the consequence of the frequent oscillations and interruptions of their employment.
The following passage may be found in the Inaugural Address [note by Brentano: Reprinted in the Volksstaat, No. 5 of January 17, 1872] of the International Working Men's Association written by Karl Marx.
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: 'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853,20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is entirely confined to classes of property.'"
This quotation by Marx has become famous. We have discovered it in a considerable number of writings. However, the authors rarely quoted the Inaugural Address of the International as the source upon which they had drawn. They inferred that they had themselves read Gladstone's budget speech. To what extent this was the case may be seen from the following comparison with Gladstone's speech (see Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, Vol. 170, p.243 ff.):
"The Income Tax, at 7d. in the pound, in the year 1842 3, attaching to Great Britain only, and in Great Britain only to incomes of £150 and upwards, was assessed upon an aggregate amount of income in the schedules I have named reaching £156,000,000. Upon the very same area, with the same limitations, in 1860-1 the amount of assessed income was £221,000,000. Further, I am not aware that there has been any change in the machinery of the tax, or any improvement in the powers of levying the tax, as compared with the powers of escaping it, that will in any way account for the difference. On the contrary, certain concessions and relaxations have from time to time been enacted by the Legislature, which, as far as they go, would rather tell in the opposite direction. The difference, however, amounts to no less than £65,000,000 of annual income, or two-sevenths of the whole annual taxable income of the country within the area described. That is a most remarkable result; but there is a certain feature of that result which, when carefully examined, is yet more remarkable; and that is the accelerated rate of increase in the latter portion of that period. I again invite the attention of the Committee for a few minutes. I compare two periods -- one of them before 1853, and the other since 1853, the year when the basis was altered. In eight years from 1842 to 1852 inclusive, the liable to tax income of the country, as nearly as we can make out, increased by 6 per cent; but in eight years, from 1853 to 1861, the income of the country again increased upon the basis taken by 20 per cent. That is a fact so singular and striking as to seem almost incredible. [...]
"Such, Sir, is the State of the case as regards the general progress of accumulation; but, for one, I must say that I should look with some degree of pain, and with much apprehension, upon this extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth, if it were my belief that it is confined to the class of persons who may be described as in easy circumstances The figures which I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income tax; or, in other words, sufficiently accurate for general truth, they do not take cognizance of the property of the labouring population, or of the increase of its income. Indirectly, indeed, the mere augmentation of Capital is of the utmost advantage to the labouring class, because that augmentation cheapens the commodity which in the whole business of production comes into direct competition with labour. But, besides this, a snare direct and a larger benefit has, it may safely be asserted, been conferred upon the mass of the people of the country. It is matter of profound and inestimable consolation to reflect, that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have become less poor. I will not presume to determine whether the wide interval which separates the extremes of wealth and poverty is less or more wide than it has been in former times. But if we look to the average condition of the British labourer, whether peasant, or miner, or operative, or artisan, we know from varied and indubitable evidence that during the last twenty years such an addition has been made to his means of subsistence as we may almost pronounce to be without example in the history of any country and of any age."
What is the relationship between this speech and the quotation by Marx? Gladstone first makes the point that there has undoubtedly been a colossal increase in the income of the country. This is proved for him by the income tax. But income tax takes notice only of incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over. Persons with lower incomes pay no income tax in England. The fact that Gladstone mentions this so that his yardstick can be properly appreciated is utilised by Marx to have Gladstone say: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property." Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. It says quite the opposite. Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!
A friend has sent me, from Germany, Concordia. Zeitschrift für die Arbeiterfrage, No. 10, dated March 7, in which this "organ of the German Manufacturers' Association" publishes an editorial entitled "How Karl Marx Quotes".
In the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association I quote, amongst other material, a portion of
Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, which is not contained in Hansard's semi-official report of parliamentary debates. On this basis, with comfortable manufacturers' logic the Concordia concludes: "This sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech", and jubilates in the fullness of its heart with this mocking sentence in manufacturers' German, printed in mocking bold face:
"Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!"
It would, in fact, be extremely strange if the Inaugural Address, originally printed in English in London under Gladstone's very eyes, had placed in his mouth a sentence interpolated by me, a sentence that, for seven and a half years, circulated unchallenged in the London press, to be finally detected by the "learned men" of the German Manufacturers' Association in Berlin.
The sentence in question of the Inaugural Address reads as follows:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property" (p.6, Inaugural Address etc.). (In the German translation literally: )
In an article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), which attracted great attention and was discussed by all the London press, Mr. Beesly, Professor of History at the university here, quoted as follows, p. 518:
"An intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, as Mr. Gladstone observed, entirely confined to classes of property." (In the German translation: )
Yet Professor Beesly's article appeared six years later than the Inaugural Address! Good! Let us now take a specialised publication, intended solely for the City and published not only before the appearance of the Inaugural Address, but even before the International Working Men's Association was founded It is entitled: The Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844 London 1864, published by T. Cautley Newby, 30, Welbeck Street. It examines Gladstone's budget speech at length and p. 134 gives the following quotation from this speech:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property." (In the German translation: ...)
That is, word for word, exactly what I quoted.
This proves irrefutably that the German Manufacturers' Association "lied both in form and in content" in decrying this "sentence as a fabrication "by me"!
Incidentally: honest old Concordia printed in bold face another passage, in which Gladstone prattled about an elevation of the English working class, over the last 20 years, that was supposedly "extraordinary and unparalleled in all countries and in all periods". The bold-face type is supposed to indicate that I had suppressed this passage. On the contrary! In the Inaugural Address I emphasised most strongly the screaming contrast between this shameless phrase and the "APPALLING STATISTICS" as Professor Beesly rightly calls them, contained in the official English reports on the same period. [Marx note: Other whimsical apologetics from the same speech are dealt with in my work Capital (p.638, 639).]
The author of The Theory of the Exchanges quoted, like myself, not from Hansard, but from a London newspaper which, on April 17, published the April 16 budget speech. In my collectanea of cuttings for 1863, I have searched in vain for the relevant extract and thus, also, for the name of the newspaper that published it. This is, however, not important. Although the parliamentary reports of the London newspapers always differ from one another, I was certain that none of them could completely suppress such a striking quotation from Gladstone. So I consulted The Times of April 17, 1863 -- it was then, as now, Gladstone's organ -- and there I found, on p.7, column 5, in the report on the budget speech:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy circumstances. [Marx note: The words "EASY CLASSES", "CLASSES IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" were apparently first introduced by Wakefield for the really rich portion of the propertied class.] This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described, and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns. n an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property."
In the German translation: ...
So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared "both in form and in content" in the House of Commons, as reported in his own organ, The Times, on April 17, 1863 that "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property", and his apprehension gives him a sort of shiver, but only because of his scruples that this was confined to one part of this class, the part in really easy circumstances.
Italiam, Italiam! Finally we arrive at Hansard In its edition, here botchily corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the passage that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is, incidentally, traditional English parliamentary practice, and by no means the invention of little Lasker versus Bebel. A careful comparison of Gladstone's speech itself, as it appeared in The Times, and its subsequent form, as distorted by the same Gladstone, would provide an amusing description of this unctuous, phrase-mongering, quibbling and strictly-religious bourgeois hero, who timidly displays his piousness and his liberal "ATTITUDES OF MIND".
One of the most infuriating things in my work Capital consists in the masses of official proof describing how manufacturers work, something in which no scholar could previously find a thing wrong. In the form of a rumour this even reached the ears of the gentlemen of the German Manufacturers' Association, but they thought:
"Was kein Verstand der Verstländigen sieht,
Das über in Einfalt ein kindlich' Gemüt."
No sooner said than done. They find a suspicious-looking quotation in the Inaugural Address and turn for information to a business friend in London, the first best Mundella, and he, being a manufacturer himself, rushes to despatch overseas, in black and white, the extract from Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Now they have my fabrication secret. I manufacture not only the text, but the quotations too. Drunk with victory, they trumpet out to the world "How Karl Marx Quotes!" So my wares were discredited, once and for all, and, as is fitting for manufacturers, in the way of normal business, without the expense of Teamed men.
The irksome subsequent events will perhaps teach the Manufacturing Associates that, however well they may know how to forge goods, they are as well fitted to judge literary goods as a donkey is to play the lute.
London, May 23, 1872
Karl Marx
Our readers will perhaps recall the article "How Karl Marx Quotes" in No. 10 of this paper on March 7 this year. In it we dealt with a passage from the Inaugural Address of the International, written by Karl Marx, a passage which has won a certain fame and is frequently quoted by the Social Democrats as convincing proof of the irrevocable ruin of the working class should the state and social conditions of today persist. Here Marx quotes Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863. In this speeds Gladstone first notes that there has been "an extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth" of the income of the country, and he uses the increase in income tax [revenue] to prove this. But the figures he quotes for this purpose "take little or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income tax"; they "do not take cognizance of the property of the labouring population, or of the increase of its income". Persons with an income under 150 pounds sterling, in fact, pay no income tax in England. And the fact that Gladstone had mentioned this to allow a proper appreciation of his yardstick was utilised by Marx in order to have Gladstone say: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property. However, this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. On the contrary, Gladstone said that he did not believe this augmentation "had been confined to the class of persons who may be described as in easy circumstances". And indignant at the impudence with which Marx quoted distortingly, we exclaimed: "Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!"
This was a serious charge; combined with the convincing evidence provided, it was absolutely devastating for the widespread trust amongst our Social Democrats in the unparalleled and thorough learnedness, truthfulness and infallibility of the London oracle. It could therefore not be allowed to pass without a refutation, or at least something which looked like a refutation. In number 44 of the Volksstaat dated June l, * Marx attempted to give such a refutation. But our opponent has by no means been able to wash himself clean of the charge of mala fides in his quotations. In fact, the ways and means of his defence are more suitable than anything to prove his mala fides. The brazenness, namely, with which he once again abuses the fact that the readers of the Volksstaat have no possibility of checking his claims, this brazenness even exceeds his frivolity in quotation.
* [Brentano note: That is almost a full three months after the article appeared in the Concordia Despite this, the Volksstaat was impudent enough scarcely 14 days after carrying Marx's rebuttal to accuse us of "heroically silencing" this rebuttal. We believe that the Volksstaat had no reason to press so hard for the second, and sharper, treatment of its lord and master. Incidentally, the reason for the delay in our reply is partly due to the fact that one of the sources cited by Marx was not available here and had to be obtained from England, partly to the fact that the elucidation of this quotation demanded lengthy extracts from the relevant sources and consequently the above article became unusually long, so that, for reasons of space, we were obliged to postpone publication several times. The editors of the "Concordia".]
Marx naturally does not go so far as to challenge the correctness of our quotation from the shorthand report of Parliament. His immediate aim is to prove his bona fides in quotation, and to this end he refers to the fact that others have quoted like he did. He writes:
"In an article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), which attracted great attention and was discussed by all the London press, Mr. Beesly, Professor of History at the university here, quoted as follows, p. 518: 'An intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, as Mr. Gladstone observed, entirely confined to classes of property.' -- Yet Professor Beesly's article appeared six years later than the Inaugural Address!"
Quite right! Only the addition of another "yet" has been forgotten. This article by Professor Beesly deals, in fact, with the history of the International, and as the author himself informs every enquirer, was written on the basis of material provided him by Marx. And there is still more. At this point it is not Beesly who is quoting Gladstone at all; he is merely saying that the Inaugural Address of the International contains this quotation. "From this alarming statistics," Beesly writes, "the Address turns to the income-tax returns, which show that the taxable incomes of the country have increased by 20% in eight years, 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', as Mr. Gladstone observed, entirely confined" etc. -- A fine way of proof indeed! You trick some person who does not know your dishonesty into accepting a lying statement; this person repeats it in good faith; and then you cite this and the honesty of the person who repeated the statement in order to prove the correctness of the statement and your own honesty. -- Marx continues his defence:
"Let us now take a specialised publication, intended solely for the City and published not only before the appearance of the Inaugural Address, but even before International Working Men's Association was founded. It is entitled: The Theory of Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844, London 1864, published by T. Cautley Newby, 30, Welbeck Street. It examines Gladstone's budget speech at length and p. 134 gives the following quotation from this speech: 'This intoxicating augmentation' etc., that is, word for word, exactly what I quoted. -- This proves irrefutably that the German Manufacturers' Association 'lied in form' in decrying this 'sentence' as a fabrication 'by me'!... The author of The Theory of the Exchanges," Marx then continued, "quoted, like myself, not from Hansard, but from a London newspaper which, on April 17, published the April 16 budget speech."
And in fact the author of this hook, which incidentally is a vulgar diatribe, quoted from Hansard just as little as did Marx. But Marx, as we shall soon show, also did not even quote from a London newspaper. First, however, it must be noted here that when we stated that Marx had lyingly added the sentence in question to Gladstone's speech, we did not claim, either "in form or In content", that he himself had also fabricated it. This would only be the case if Marx himself had been the fabricator of that still very obscure book, though one might be tempted to believe this on account of the ghastly style in which it is written. The source from which Marx quotes this sentence is actually this book itself, and this is also the reason why, as he claims in his "collectanea of cuttings for 1863", he has "searched in vain for the relevant extract and thus, also, for the name of the newspaper that published it"! This origin of Marx's quotation is shown clearly by a comparison of the passage in Capital, his book in which Marx reviews Gladstone's budget speech, and The Theory of the Exchanges There, on p. 639, particularly in Note 103,a this speech is quoted in the absolutely senseless version given verbatim by that book on p. 134. And the glosses too, which Marx bases on the contradiction contained in this version, are already contained in that book, in particular also the quotation from Molière given in Note 105 on p. 640 of Capital; and in the same way the statement of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM about the rising prices of foodstuffs quoted by Marx appears on p. 135 of that book, though Marx bases his claim for its correctness not on that book, but on that book's sources (see Capital, p. 640, Note 104).
Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only when he himself invents an untruth, or does he not tell a lie quite as much when he repeats it contrary to what he knows, or is hound to know better? We believe that the answer is beyond doubt. And secondly, when Marx repeated the untruth contained in The Theory of the Exchanges, did he not do this contrary to his better knowledge, or should he at least not have known better? The answer here is also simple. The first rule for any interpretation, a rule undoubtedly known to Mr. Marx, is to interpret passages which at first glance contain contradictions -- and thus make no sense -- in such a way that the contradiction disappears; and if the available text appears to make this impossible, one should make a textual criticism rather than believe in the presence of a contradiction. And this was all the more imperative in the case of a speech which aroused the interest and admiration of the entire educated world, notably through its mastery of the material and its clarity. And finally it was an act of frivolity bordering upon the criminal to act in any other way than scrupulously when intending to tear Out of context a passage which provides one half of the contradiction in this version and to cast it as a denunciation of the propertied amongst the propertyless all over the world. Karl Marx should have taken umbrage at this version if only on the basis of general learning, science and conscientiousness; and the criminal frivolity with which he accepts this lying quotation is completely inexcusable in his case, since the full text of Gladstone's speech was available to him. On the one hand, the English newspapers reproduced this speech the day after it was delivered, and, if Dot true to the word, then true to the sense. And then, immediately after the delivery of the speech, Gladstone published it verbatim in his book Financial Statements, London, 1863, which attracted great attention; and on p.403 of that book the speech is printed just as we quoted it. Finally, Marx could refer to the shorthand report of this speech in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and it is the custom to always quote a speech to Parliament from the shorthand report, even if it contains no contradictions to the necessarily bungling newspaper reports.
But here we come, to be sure, to Marx's third line of defence, and this far exceeds, in its impudent mendacity, anything which came before. Marx actually does not shrink from citing The Times of April 17, 1863 as proof of the correctness of his quotation. The Times of April 17, 1863, p.7, col. 5, line 17ff, reports, however, the speech as follows:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes finding themselves in pleasant circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described, and the figures of which are based, I think, upon accurate returns, * is entirely confined to classes of property." (Marx quotes The Times to this point; we quote further.) "Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer, because it cheapens the commodity which in the business of production comes into direct competition with labour. (Hear, hear!) But we have this profound, and, I must say, inestimable consolation, that, while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. -- Whether the extremes of poverty are less extreme than they were I do not presume to say, but the average condition of the British labourer, we have the happiness to know, has improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of any age. (Cheers)"
* (Note by Brentano: In his German quotation in the Volksstaat Marx omits this relative clause and instead inserts: "which he" (Gladstone) "had just described as 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power'." This omission and this insertion too are designed to mislead the reader about the sense of Gladstone's words. The omitted relative clause and in addition the general context show that the sense of the speech is as follows: The augmentation of wealth shown by the income tax returns is certainly confined to the classes of property (since this tax is only imposed upon persons with an income of 150 pounds sterling and over), but with regard to the labouring class, we know, etc.)
A comparison of this Times report with the report after Hansard in the Concordia of March 7 will show that both reports fully coincide materially. The report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim. Yet despite the fact that the Times report contains the direct opposite of that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address, and the fact that according to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined to classes in easy circumstances, Marx has the impudence to write in the Volksstaat of June 1:
"So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared 'both in form and in content' that 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property'."
But even more. Since we had already presented to the public the complete text of the speech from Hansard, and this text completely excluded the possibility of any distortion, an attempt is made to delete this very embarrassing circumstance with the phrase in the Hansard "edition, here botchily corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the passage that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer"! All that is lacking is the claim that Gladstone probably did this in deference to the diatribe The Theory of the Exchanges, which did not appear until 1864!
What can one say about such methods? First we are presented, on the basis of an obscure diatribe, with a quotation which was completely forged, and the contradictory substance of which proved that it was forged, even without confronting it with the original. Called to account in this matter, Marx states that others quoted in the same way as he did, and refers to people whom he himself fooled with this lie. Even more: from the fact that his fuzzy sources accord with him, he tries to fashion an argument to excuse himself and show the correctness of his quotation, as though both of them had drawn upon a joint, correct, third source, though in fact one had only copied from the other. And finally he has the impudence to base himself on newspaper reports which directly contradict him. Indeed, to describe these practices we know only one word, a word with which Marx himself is very familiar (see Capital, p. 257): they are simply "nefarious".
Marx closes his defence with these words: "The irksome subsequent events will perhaps teach the Manufacturing Associates that, however well they may know how to forge goods, they are as well fitted to judge literary goods as a donkey is to play the lute."
We confidently leave it to the reader to decide on which side the forgery and the irksomeness ultimately lie. In a further article we shall explain to Mr. Marx the importance which we attach to the content of Gladstone's words.
The second article, Concordia, No. 28, July 11, 1872, contains absolutely nothing of relevance, and is therefore omitted.
In the Concordia of July 4, the German Manufacturers' Association attempted to prove to me that its "learned men" were as well fitted to judge literary goods as the Association was to forge commercial ones.
With reference to the passage from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, as quoted in the Inaugural Address of the International, the manufacturers' organ (No. 10) stated:
"Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content."
It thus declares that I fabricated the sentence in both form and content, with hair and bones. Even more: it knows exactly how I did so. The paper writes: "The fact that Gladstone mentioned this, etc., was utilised by Marx in order to hove Gladstone say, etc." By quoting the sentence from a work published before the Inaugural Address, The Theory of the Exchanges, I exposed the crude lie of the manufacturers' organ. As the paper itself relates, it then ordered from London this work which it did not know, and convinced itself of the facts of the matter. How could it lie itself out of the situation? See here:
"When we stated that Marx had lyingly added the sentence in question to Gladstone's speech, we did not claim, either in form or in content, that he himself had also fabricated it."
Here we obviously have a case of equivocation peculiar to the mind of manufacturers. For example, when a manufacturing swindler, in agreement with business colleagues, sends out into the world rolls of ribbon that contain, instead of the alleged three dozen ells only two dozen, then he has in fact lyingly added one dozen ells, precisely because he "has not fabricated" them. Why, moreover, should lyingly added sentences not behave just like lyingly added ells? "The understandings of the greater part of men," says Adam Smith, "are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments", the understandings of the manufacturer included.
Through the Volksstaat, I extended the erudite materials of the manufacturers' organ, not only with the quotation from The Theory of the Exchanges, but also with the pages from my work Capital concerning Gladstone's budget speeches. Now, from the material with which I provided it, the paper attempts to prove that I did not quote the disputed passage from a "London newspaper", but from The Theory of the Exchanges. The chain of arguments is another sample of manufacturers' logic.
I told the manufacturers' sheet that The Theory of the Exchanges quotes on page 134 exactly as I quoted, and it discovers -- that I quoted exactly as The Theory of the Exchanges quotes on page 134.
And further!
"And the glosses too, which Marx bases on the contradiction contained in this version, are already contained in that book."
This is simply a lie. On page 639 of Capital, I give my glosses to the words in Gladstone's speech:
"While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. Whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say."
My remark on this is: "How lame an anti-climax! If the working class has remained 'poor', only 'less poor' in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have." And these "glosses" are nowhere to be found in The Theory of the Exchanges.
"And the glosses too ... are already contained in that hook, in particular also the quotation from Molière given in Note 105 on p. 640 of Capital."
So, "in particular also" I quote Molière, and leave it up to the "learned men" of the Concordia to detect and communicate to the public the fact that the quotation comes from The 'Theory of the Exchanges. In fact, however, I state expressly in Note 105, p. 640 of Capital that the author of The Theory of the Exchanges "characterises with the following quotation from Molière" the "continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches".
Finally:
"... in the same way the statement of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM about the rising prices of foodstuffs quoted by Marx appears on p. 135 of that book, though Marx bases his claim for its correctness not on that hook, but on that book's sources (see Capital, p. 640, Note 104)".
The Concordia advisedly forgets to inform its readers that "that book" gives no sources. What was it trying to prove? That I took from that "book" a passage from Gladstone's speech without knowing its source. And how does the Concordia prove it? By the fact that I really did take a quotation from that book, and checked it with the original sources, independent of the book!
Referring to my quotation from Professor Beesly's article in The Fortnightly Review (November 1870), the Concordia remarks.
"This article by Professor Beesly deals, in fact, with the history of the International, and as the author himself informs every enquirer, was written on the basis of material provided him by Marx himself."
Professor Beesly states:
"To no one is the success of the association so much due as to Dr. Karl Marx, who, in his acquaintance with the history and statistics of the industrial movement in all parts of Europe, is, I should imagine, without a rival. I am LARGELY indebted to him for the information contained in this article."
All the material with which I supplied Professor Beesly referred exclusively to the history of the International, and not a word concerned the Inaugural Address, which he had known since its publication. The context in which his above remark stood left so little doubt on this point that The Saturday Review, in a review of his article, more than hinted that he himself was the author of the Inaugural Address. [Brentano note: Professor Beesly drew my attention, in writing, to this quid pro quo.]
The Concordia asserts that Professor Beesly did not quote the passage in question from Gladstone's speech, but only stated "that the Inaugural Address contained this quotation". Let us look into this.
Professor Beesly states:
"The address [...] is probably the most striking and powerful statement of the workman's case as against the middle class that has ever been compressed into a dozen small pages. I wish I had space for copious extracts from it."
After mentioning the "frightful statistics of the Blue Books", to which the Address refers, he goes on:
"From these appalling Statistics the address passes on to the income-tax returns, from which it appeared that the taxable income of the country had increased in eight years twenty per cent, 'an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power', as Mr. Gladstone observed, 'entirely confined to classes of property'."
Professor Beesly sets the words: "as Mr. Gladstone observed" outside quotation marks, Saying these words on his own behalf, and thus proves to the Concordia with the greatest clarity that he knows Gladstone's budget speech -- solely from the quotation in the Inaugural Address! As the London business friend of the German Manufacturers' Association, he is the only man who knows Gladstone's budget speeches, just as he, and he alone, knows: "Persons with an income under 150 pounds sterling, in fact, pay no income tax in England." (See the Concordia, Nos. 10 and 27.) Yet English tax officials suffer from the idée fixe that this tax only stops at incomes under 100 pounds sterling.
Referring to the disputed passage in the Inaugural Address, the manufacturers' paper stated:
"Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech." I proved the contrary with a quotation from the "Times" report of April 17, 1863. I gave the quotation in the Volksstaat in both English and German, since a commentary was necessary on account of Gladstone's assertion that he would "look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were" his "belief that it was confined to the CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES". Basing myself on Wakefield, I declared that the "CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" -- an expression for which there is no German equivalent -- means the "really rich", "the really prosperous portion" of the propertied classes. Wakefield actually calls the real middle class "THE UNEASY CLASS which is in German roughly "die ungemächliche Klasse". [Marx note: "THE MIDDLE OR UNEASY CLASS" [E. G. Wakefield] ("ENGLAND AND AMERICA", London, 1833, V.1, p.185).]
The manufacturers' worthy organ not only suppresses my exposition, it ends the passage I quoted with the words: "Marx quotes The Times to this point", thus leaving the reader to suppose that it had quoted from my translation; in fact, however, the paper, leaving my version aside, does not translate "CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" as "wohlhabenden Klassen" but as "Klassen, die sich in angenehmen Verhältnissen befinden". The paper believes its readers capable of understanding that not all sections of the propertied class are "prosperous", though it will always be a "pleasant circumstance" for them to possess property. Even in the translation of my quotation, as given by the Concordia, however, Gladstone describes the progress of Capitalist wealth as "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power", and remarks that here he has "taken no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population", closing with words to the effect that this "augmentation is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property". Once the "learned man" of the German Manufacturers' Association has, in the report of The Times of April 17, 1863, thus had Gladstone say "both in form and in content", the same as I had him say in the Inaugural Address, he strikes his swollen breast, brimming with conviction, and blusters:
"Yet despite this Marx has the impudence to write in the Volksstaat of June 1: 'So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared 'both in form and in content' in the House of Commons, as reported in his own organ, The Times, on April 17, 1863 that 'this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property'."
The "learned man" of the German Manufacturers' Association obviously knows exactly what to offer his readership!
In the Volksstaat of June 1, I remarked that the Concordia was trying to make its readers believe I had suppressed in the Inaugural Address Gladstone's phrases about the improvement in the condition of the British working class, though in fact the exact opposite was the case, and I stressed there with great emphasis the glaring contradiction between this declamation and the officially established facts. In its reply of July 4, the manufacturers' paper repeated the same manoeuvre. "Marx quotes The Times to this point," the paper says, "we quote further." In confrontation with the paper, I needed only to quote the disputed passage, but let us look for a moment at the "further".
After pouring forth his panegyric on the increase of Capitalist wealth, Gladstone turns to the working class. He takes good care not to say that it had shared in the "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power". On the contrary, he goes on, according to The Times: "Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer, etc." He consoles himself further on with the fact "that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor". Finally, he asserts that he and his enriched parliamentary friends "have the happiness to know" the opposite of what parliamentary enquiries and statistical data prove to be the fact, viz.,
"that the average condition of the British labourer has improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be unparalleled in the history of any country and of any age".
Before Mr. Gladstone, all his predecessors "had the happiness" to supplement the picture of the augmentation of Capitalist wealth in their budget speeches with self-satisfied phrases about the improvement in the condition of the working class. Yet he gives the lie to them all; for the millennium dates only from the passing of the Free Trade legislation. The correctness or incorrectness of Gladstone's reasons for consolidation and congratulation is, however, a matter of indifference here. We are concerned solely with this: that, from his standpoint, the pretended "extraordinary" improvement in the condition of the working class in no way contradicts the "intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power that is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property". On the contrary. It is the orthodox doctrine of the mouthpieces of Capital -- Mr. Gladstone being one of the best paid -- that the most infallible means for working men to benefit themselves is -- to enrich their exploiters.
The shameless stupidity or stupid shamelessness of the manufacturers' organ culminates in its assurance: "The report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim." [Marx note: The manufacturers' paper appears actually to believe that the big London newspapers employ no shorthand writers for their parliamentary reports.] Now let us see both reports:
| I | II |
From Gladstone's speech of April 16, 1863, printed in "The Times" of April 17, 1863 debates of March 27 to May 28 1863 |
From Gladstone's speech of April 16, 1863, printed by Hansard, Vol. 170, parliamentary |
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that was confined to the CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. This takes no cogniz- ance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described ... is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property. Now the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer etc. they do not take cognizance of the property (!) of the labouring population, or (!) of the increase of its income. Indirectly, indeed, the mere augmentation of Capital is of the utmost advantage to the labouring class, etc." |
"Such [...] is the state of the case as regards the general progress of accumulation; but, for one, I must say that I should look with some degree of pain, and with much apprehension, it upon this extraordinary and almost intoxicating growth, if it were my belief that it is confined to THE CLASS OF PERSONS WHO MAY BE DESCRIBED AS IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. The figures which I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income tax; or, in other words, sufficiently accurate for general truth (!), |
I leave it to the reader himself to compare the stilted, involved, complicated CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE [From Ch. Dickens' Little Dorrit -- MECW Ed.] style of the Hansard publication with the report in The Times.
Here it is enough to establish that the words of the Times report: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... the augmentation I have described ... is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property", are in part garbled by Hansard and in part completely suppressed. Their emphatic "exact wording" escaped no earwitness. For example:
"The Morning Star", April 17, 1863 (Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863).
"I must say, for one, I should look with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to the CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. THIS GREAT INCREASE OF WEALTH takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. THE AUGMENTATION IS AN AUGMENTATION ENTIRELY CONFINED TO THE CLASSES POSSESSED OF PROPERTY. BUT THAT AUGMENTATION must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, etc."
"The Morning Advertiser", April 17, 1863 (Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863).
"I must say, for one, I should look almost with apprehension and ALARM upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to the CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. THE AUGMENTATION STATED is an augmentation entirely confined to the CLASSES POSSESSED OF PROPERTY. THIS AUGMENTATION must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, etc."
Thus, Gladstone subsequently filched away from the semiofficial Hansard report of his speech the words that he had uttered in the House of Commons on April 16, 1863: "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property." The Concordia did not, therefore, find this in the excerpt provided by their business friend in London, and trumpeted:
"Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content."
It is no surprise that they now weepingly tell me that it is the critical "custom" to quote parliamentary speeches as officially falsified, and not as they were actually delivered. Such a "custom" in fact accords with the "general" Berlin "education", and the limited thinking of the German Manufacturers' Association which is typical of Prussian subjects. Lack of time forces me to end, once and for all, my pleasurable exchange of opinions with the Association, but as a farewell, another nut for its "learned men" to crack. In what article did a man -- and what was his name -- utter to an opponent of a rank at least equal with that of the Concordia, the weighty words: "Asinus manebis in secula seculorum"? ["Thou wilt remain an ass for evermore."]
London, July 28, 1872
Karl Marx
On August 7, in the Volksstaat, Karl Marx replied to the article "How Karl Marx Defends Himself" in No. 27 of the Concordia. Astonishing is the dogged mendacity with which he clings to the distorted quotation from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, astonishing even for someone for whom no means are too base for his subversive plans. In fact this can only be explained by the fear, which must be called forth in the author, of the very embarrassing effect of confessing that this quotation, the bombshell of the Inaugural Address, is false, given the great circulation of the latter.
It will be recalled that in his first defence Marx admitted the shorthand report of Gladstone's speech in Hansard did not contain this quotation. But the reason was: Mr. Gladstone had clumsily excised this compromising passage! Initial proof: Professor Beesly, in an article in The Fortnightly Review had quoted this speech in the same way as the Inaugural Address.
This could lead the reader to believe that Professor Beesly had quoted Gladstone's speech in an essay on some other historical theme than the International. We therefore remarked, firstly, that this article dealt with the history of the International, and was written on the basis of material that Marx himself had provided the author with. And Marx does not now deny this. However, he assures us that the material he provided did not contain a single word referring to the contents of the Inaugural Address, which had been known to Professor Beesly since its publication. However, we never said or insinuated such a thing. And we absolutely believe Mr. Marx's assurance. Had he shown Mr. Beesly The Theory of the Exchanges as the source of his quotation, Beesly would certainly have refrained from reprinting it. Secondly, we replied -- and this is the main rejoinder: it was not Beesly who quoted the passage in question from Gladstone's speech; he only cited it in an analysis of the Inaugural Address. We quoted word for word the relevant sentence from Beesly's article, as can be seen in No. 27 of the Concordia. The fact that Beesly, in his analysis, gave the words "as Mr. Gladstone observed" without quotation marks * is now used by Marx to explain to his readers that Beesly, suddenly interrupting his analysis, said these words on his own behalf!! [Note by Brentano: Additional note on republication: Professor Beesly copied the passage which he quoted from the Inaugural Address exactly as given there. There, however, the inserted clause is naturally without quotation marks.]
Marx sought to find further proof that Gladstone had clumsily excised the words in question from his speech in the fact that The Theory of the Exchanges, a publication which appeared before the Inaugural Address, quoted Gladstone's budget speech word for word as in the Address. We checked with the book, saw that this was correct, but that everything suggests Marx himself took his quotation from this book. The main sign of this was that Capital by Marx, on p.639, especially in Note 103, quotes this speech in the absolutely senseless version given verbatim by The Theory of the Exchanges on p.134. This suggestion that The Theory of the Exchanges was the source of Marx's quotation is further supported by the fact that in the passage in his book Capital where he quotes the Gladstone speech just as The Theory of the Exchanges did on p. 134, he gives other quotations to be found at the same place in that book, and adds glosses like this. How does Mr. Marx reply to this? For a start, that he also added glosses which are not to be found in The Theory of the Exchanges. But neither is this precluded by our remark. Then he states that he specifically named the author of The Theory of the Exchanges as the author of the quotation from Molière. But we did not claim the contrary. Finally, regarding the statement of the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, which Marx quotes on p. 640 of his book just as The Theory of the Exchanges does on p. 135, Marx himself admits that he quoted verbatim from this book, but that he checked the correctness with the original sources. Marx thus testifies himself that part of the glosses which he appends to the quotation from Gladstone's speech come from The Theory of the Exchanges. He thus bears witness to the correctness of the points with which we supported our main argument that he had also taken from The Theory of the Exchanges the quotation from Gladstone's speech. But he has nothing to say in answer to this main argument, in answer to the remark that he, like The Theory of the Exchanges, quotes Gladstone's speech in the same absolutely senseless version.
Thirdly and finally, Marx attempts to prove his claim that Gladstone subsequently falsified his own budget speech in the shorthand report in Hansard by referring to the report of this speech in The Times of April 17, 1863. But this report shows the exact opposite, since The Times and Hansard fully coincide materially. To obscure recognition of this fact by his readers, Marx utilises various methods. The first method, designed simultaneously to awaken amongst the readers of the Volksstaat new admiration for the erudition of their oracle, was a philological lecture. Gladstone explicitly stated, also according to the Times report, insofar as Marx quoted this, that he believed that the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power of which he had spoken was not confined "TO THE CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES", i.e. the classes finding themselves in pleasant circumstances. Basing himself upon Wakefield, who had written a book entitled The Middle or Uneasy Class, Marx now claimed that Gladstone had said he believed this augmentation was Dot confined to the "really rich", the "really prosperous portion" of the propertied classes; and since we took no notice of this entire argumentation, he now accuses us of suppression. But if we remained silent about this further attempt at falsification, the only reason was that it was, in fact, too manifest. For whatever Wakefield may have meant when he called the middle class THE UNEASY CLASS the whole context of Gladstone's speech, in the Times report too, shows that by the "CLASSES WHO ARE IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES" Gladstone at this point meant those classes which are not part of the working population, since he drew a contrast between them and it.
Marx's second method of obscuring the Times report was simply to suppress, in his German translation of this report, the relative clause which showed that Gladstone had only said that the augmentation of wealth, which was shown by the income tax returns, was confined to the classes of property, since the working classes were not subject to income tax, and that thus nothing about the increase in the prosperity of the working classes could be learned from the income tax returns; not, however, that the working classes in reality had been excluded from the extraordinary augmentation of national wealth. Marx, who, as we just have seen, quite unwarrantably accused the Concordia of suppression, once again quietly suppressed this relative clause, although we had remonstrated with him about his distortion. And even more. We had stated, in accordance with the truth, that the report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim; but he denies this and dares to print side by side the Times report and that from Hansard, though he naturally once again omits this relative clause. But what does it matter? The readers of the Volksstaat, with whom he is concerned, cannot check up on him!
Thirdly and finally, Marx attempted to conceal the agreement between the Times report and the Hansard report by failing to quote those sentences in which, according to The Times too, Gladstone directly and explicitly testified to the elevation of the British working class. We made a remark about this, and quoted in full the relevant passage of the Times report. Despite this, Marx lies to his readers that we had wanted to give the impression that we were quoting The Times according to his translation! But against this, he naturally suppresses our proof (in No. 28) that the glaring contradiction, according to Marx, between Gladstone's claim about the improvement in the condition of the British working class and the officially established facts, does not exist in reality; instead he repeats once again this accusation.
Apart from this, Marx, in his reply in the Volksstaat of August 7, produces two further witnesses to the correctness of his reading of Gladstone's budget speech: The Morning Star and The Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. But we do not need to check whether Marx has quoted the two papers without fresh falsification. [Note by Brentano: Additional note on republication: Here too Marx omits the same sentences which he suppressed in his reproduction of the Times report. See the two reports at the beginning.] For these papers, even as he quotes them, speak for us. After Gladstone had said, according to both papers, that he did not believe this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is confined to the classes which find themselves in pleasant circumstances, he continued: "This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation which I have described is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property." The context and the use of the expression "take cognizance" show clearly that this increase and the augmentation of the increase cited, and the citing, are intended to indicate those discernible in the income tax returns.
But the introduction of these new alleged witnesses is only an expression of the faked thoroughness, intended to perpetuate the faith of Volksstaat readers in their oracle. Marx's article in the Volksstaat of August 7 is a model of this, and worthy of perusal by our readers in person. We need only quote one more example of this, in order to deprive Mr. Marx of the argument that we wished to conceal from our readers that he had corrected us on a point of minor import. We had stated that in England persons with an income under 150 pounds sterling paid no income tax. Mr. Marx taunts us that we do not know this tax only ceases on incomes under 100 pounds sterling. In fact the law of 1842 left all incomes under 150 pounds sterling quite free of tax, but in 1853 the tax was extended downwards to 100 pounds sterling, although the newly included incomes were treated more lightly, since they were subjected to a lower rate of tax than those of 150 pounds sterling and above. In 1863 the favored sector was extended to 200 pounds sterling exclusive upwards, and the tax reduction granted in the manner that for every income from that figure down to 100 pounds sterling inclusive, 60 pounds sterling could be subtracted as tax-free.
Mr. Marx closes his article by telling us that lack of time forces him to end, once and for all, his pleasurable exchange of opinions with us. We understand that Mr. Marx welcomes the opportunity of avoiding somebody who uncovers his forgeries. When Mr. Marx finally ends his article by breaking into abuse, we can assure him that his opponents could desire nothing more than the confession of guilt which lies herein. Abuse is the weapon of those whose other means of defence have run out.
Sir, -- I ask leave to point out in The Times that the Origin of the misleading quotation from Mr. Gladstone's Budget speech of April 16, 1863, which so eminent a publicist as Professor Émile de Laveleye a has been led to reproduce through reliance on German sources, and with respect to which he inserts a correction in The Times of this day, is to be found as far back as 1864 in an address issued by the council of the famous International Working Men's Association.
What appears extremely singular is that it was reserved for Professor Brentano (then of the University of Breslau, now of that of Strassburg) to expose, eight years later in a German newspaper, the bad faith which had manifestly dictated the citation made from Mr. Gladstone's speech in the address.
Herr Karl Marx, who as the acknowledged author of the address attempted to defend the citation, had the hardihood, in the deadly shifts to which Brentano's masterly conduct of the attack speedily reduced him, to assert Mr. Gladstone had "manipulated" (zurechtgestümpert) the report of his speech in The Times of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in "Hansard", in order "to obliterate" (wegzupfuschen) a passage which "was certainly compromising for an English Chancellor of the Exchequer". On Brentano's showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that the reports of The Times and of "Hansard" agreed in utterly excluding the meaning which craftily-isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone's words, Marx withdrew from further' controversy under the plea of "want of time"!
The whole of the Brentano-Marx correspondence is eminently worthy of being unearthed from the files of newspapers under which it lies buried, and republished in an English form, as it throws upon the latter disputant's standard of literary honesty a light which can be ill spared at a time when his principal work is presented to us as nothing less than a fresh gospel of social renovation.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
Sedley Taylor
Trinity College, Cambridge,
November 26th [1883]
This letter appeared in The Times on November 29, 1883. On November 30, Eleanor, Marx's junior daughter, sent her reply to The Times. Her letter did not appear. She again wrote in vain to the editor. Then she addressed herself t9 the Daily News, but once more without success. Then she published both Mr. Sedley Taylor's accusation and her reply in the February 1884 issue of the socialist monthly To-Day. We publish her reply below.
To the Editor of "The Times"
Sir, -- In The Times of November 29th Mr. Sedley Taylor refers to a certain quotation of a speech by Mr. Gladstone,
"to be found as far back as 1864, in an address issued by the council of the famous International Working Men's Association".
He continues: (I here quote Mr. Taylor's letter from "What appears" to "want of time").
The facts are briefly these. The quotation referred to consists of a few sentences from Mr. Gladstone's Budget speech of April 16th, 1863. After describing the immense increase of wealth that took place in this country between 1853 and 1861 Mr. Gladstone is made to say:
"This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property."
An anonymous writer, who turns out to be Professor Brentano, published in a German paper, Concordia, of the 7th March, 1872 a reply in which it was stated:
"This sentence does not exist in Mr. Gladstone's speech, Marx has added it lyingly, both as to form and contents" (formel und materiel hinzugelogen).
This was the only point at issue between my father and his anonymous opponent.
In his replies in the Leipzig Volksstaat, June 1st and August 7th, 1872, Dr. Marx quotes the reports of Mr. Gladstone's speech as follows:
"The Times, April 17th:
"The augmentation I have described, and which is founded, I think, on accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property.
Morning Star 17th April:
"This augmentation is an augmentation confined entirely to the classes possessed of property,
Morning Advertiser, April 17th:
"The augmentation stated is altogether limited to classes possessed of property.
The anonymous Brentano, in the "deadly shifts to which his own masterly conduct of the attack had reduced him", now took refuge under the assertion usual in such circumstances, that if the quotation was not a forgery it was, at all events, "misleading", in "bad faith", "craftily isolated", and so forth. I am afraid you would not allow me space to reply to this accusation of Herr Brentano, repeated now, after eleven years, by Mr. Taylor. Perhaps it will not be required, as Mr. Taylor says:
"The whole of this Brentano-Marx correspondence is eminently worthy of being unearthed from the file of newspapers in which it lies buried and republished in an English form."
I quite agree with this. The memory of my father could only gain by it. As to the discrepancies between the newspaper reports of the speech in question and the report in "Hansard" I must leave this to be settled by those most interested in it.
Out of thousands and thousands of quotations to be found in my father's writings this is the only one the correctness of which has ever been disputed. The fact that this single and not very lucky instance is brought up again and again by the professorial economists is very characteristic. In the words of Mr. Taylor,
"it throws upon the latter disputant's" (Dr. Marx) "standard of literary honesty a light which can ill be spared at a time when his principal work is presented to us as nothing less than a fresh gospel of social renovation".
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
Eleanor Marx
London, November 30, 1883
Gentlemen,
No one can regret more than I do that Miss Marx should have been refused the public hearing to which she was so manifestly entitled. I am, however, far from thinking with her that the question whether a particular sentence did, or did not, occur in Mr. Gladstone's speech "was the only point at issue between" Dr. Marx and Professor Brentano. I regard that question as having been of very subordinate importance compared to the issue whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying, or of perverting, Mr. Gladstone's meaning.
It would obviously be impossible to discuss in this letter the contents of the voluminous Brentano-Marx controversy without making an inadmissible demand on your space. As, however, Miss Marx has in your columns characterised as a "calumny" and "libel" an opinion publicly expressed by me, [Note by Engels: In the covering letter to the Editors of To-Day, not published here.] I feel bound to ask your insertion, side by side, of the two following extracts, which will enable your readers to judge for themselves whether Dr. Marx has quoted fairly or unfairly from the Budget Speech of 1863 in his great work, "Das Kapital". My reason for using the Times report in preference to that of Hansard will be obvious to readers of Dr. Marx' letters in his correspondence with Brentano.
| Times, April 17, 1863 | Capital, 2nd edition, 1872 page 678, note 103 |
"In ten years, from 1842 to 1852 inclusive, the taxable income of the country, as nearly as we can make out, increased by 6 per cent.; but in eight years, from 1853 to 1861, the income of the country again increased from the basis taken by 20 per cent. That is a fact so strange as to be almost incredible.... |
"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent... |
"I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that it was confined to the classes who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognisance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described, and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes possessed of property. Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourer, because it cheapens the commodity which in the business of production comes into direct competition with labour. But we have this profound, and I must say, inestimable consolation, that, while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. Whether the extremes of poverty are less extreme than they were I do not presume to say, but the average condition of the British labourer, we have the happiness to know, has improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of any age." |
|
I invite especial attention to the hearing on Mr. Gladstone's meaning of the passages in the Times report which I have thrown into italics. The sentence, "I must say ... easy circumstances," conveys the speaker's belief that the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power previously described was not confined to those in easy circumstances. There is, it is true, a verbal contrariety with the later sentence, "The augmentation ... property," but the intervening words, "This takes no cognisance... population," unmistakably show what Mr. Gladstone meant, viz., that the figures which he had given, being based on the income-tax returns, included only incomes above the exemption limit, [Note by Taylor: This stood at £150 from 1842 to 1853, and was then lowered to £100.] and therefore afforded no indication to what extent the total earnings of the labouring population had increased during the period under consideration. The closing passage, from "but the average" to the end, announces in the most emphatic language that, on evidence independent of that obtained from the income-tax returns, Mr. Gladstone recognised as indubitable an extraordinary and almost unexampled improvement in the average condition of the British labourer.
Now, with what object were these essential passages almost wholly struck out in the process by which the newspaper report was reduced to the remarkable form in which it appears in Dr. Marx' work? Clearly, I think, in order that the arbitrarily-constructed mosaic, pieced together out of such of Mr. Gladstone's words as were allowed to remain, might be understood as asserting that the earnings of the labouring population had made but insignificant progress, while the incomes of the possessing classes had increased enormously -- a view which the omitted passages explicitly repudiate in favour of a very different opinion.
I must not pass over unnoticed the fact that the German translation of this docked citation in the text of "Das Kapital" is immediately followed there by the expression of Dr. Marx' contemptuous astonishment at the "lame anti-climax" presented by the sentence made to figure as the conclusion of Mr. Gladstone's paragraph, when compared with his previous description of the growth of wealth among the possessing classes.
I am, Gentlemen, yours truly,
Sedley Taylor
Trinity College, Cambridge
February 8th, 1884
Gentlemen,
Mr. Sedley Taylor disputes my statement that, when the anonymous slanderer fell foul of Dr. Marx, the only point at issue was whether Mr. Gladstone had used certain words or not. According to him, the real question was,
"whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying or of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning".
I have before me the Concordia article (No. 10, 7th March, 1872), "How Karl Marx Quotes". Here the anonymous author first quotes the "Inaugural Address" of the International; then the passage of Mr. Gladstone's speech, in full, from Hansard; then he condenses the passage in his own way, and to his own satisfaction; and lastly, he concludes,
"Marx takes advantage of this to make Gladstone say, 'This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes possessed of property. This sentence, however, is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. The very contrary is said in it. Marx has lyingly added this sentence, both as to form and contents."
That is the charge, and the only charge, made against Dr. Marx. He is indeed accused of perverting Mr. Gladstone's meaning by "lyingly adding" a whole sentence. Not a word about "misleading", or "craftily isolated" quotations. The question simply is, "whether a particular sentence did, or did not, occur in Mr. Gladstone's speech".
Of two things, one. Either Mr. Taylor has read Brentano's attacks and my father's replies, and then his assertion is in direct contradiction of what he cannot help knowing to be the truth. Or else he has not. And then? Here is a man who dates his letters from Trinity College, Cambridge, who goes out of his way to assail my dead father's literary honesty in a way which must needs turn out to be a "calumny" unless he proves his case; who makes this charge upon the strength of a literary controversy dating as far back as 1872, between an anonymous writer (whom Mr. Taylor now asserts to be Professor Brentano) and my father; who describes in glowing terms the "masterly conduct" in which Saint George Brentano led his attack, and the "deadly shifts" to which he speedily reduced the dragon Marx; who can give us all particulars of the crushing results obtained by the said St. George "by a detailed comparison of texts"; and who after all, puts me into this delicate position that I am in charity bound to assume that he has never read a line of what he is speaking about.
Had Mr. Taylor seen the "masterly" articles of his anonymous friend, he would have found therein the following:
"Now we ask; does anyone tell a lie only then when he himself invents an untruth, or does he not tell a lie quite as much when. he repeats it contrary to what he knows, or is bound to know better?"
Thus saith the "masterly" Brentano, as virtuous as he is anonymous, in his rejoinder to my father's first reply (Concordia, No. 27, 4th July, 1872, p. 210). And on the same page he still maintains against all comers:
"According to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined to classes of property."
If Brentano thus appears utterly ignorant of what was the real point at issue, is Mr. Sedley Taylor better off? In his letter to The Times it was a quotation made in the "Inaugural Address" of the International. In his letter to To-Day it is a quotation in "Das Kapital". The ground is shifted again, but I need not object. Mr. Taylor now gives us the Gladstonian passage as quoted on pages 678 and 679 of "Das Kapital", side by side with the same passage as reported -- not by Hansard, but by The Times.
"My reason for using the Times report instead of that of Hansard, will be obvious to readers of Dr. Marx's letters and his correspondence with Brentano."
Mr. Taylor, as we have seen, is not of these "readers". His reason for his proceeding may therefore be obvious to others, but upon his own showing at least, it can hardly be so to himself.
Anyhow, from Hansard the Infallible we are brought down to that very report, for using which the anonymous Brentano (Concordia, same page, 210), assails my father as quoting "necessarily bungling (stümperhafte) newspaper reports". At any rate, Mr. Taylor's "reason" must be very "obvious" to his friend Brentano.
To me that reason is obvious indeed. The words which my father was accused of having lyingly added ("an augmentation", etc.), these words are contained in The Times as well as in the other dailies' reports, while in Hansard they are not only "manipulated", but entirely "obliterated". Marx established this fact. Mr. Taylor, in his letter to The Times, still awfully shocked at such unpardonable "hardihood", is now himself compelled to drop the impeachable Hansard, and to take refuge under what Brentano calls the "necessarily bungling" report of The Times.
Now for the quotation itself. Mr. Taylor invites especial attention to two passages thrown by him into italics. In the first he owns:
"there is, it is true, a verbal contrariety with the latter sentence'. the augmentation property; but the intervening words: this takes ... population, unmistakeably show what Mr. Gladstone meant," etc., etc.
Here we are plainly on theological ground. It is the well-known style of orthodox interpretation of the Bible. The passage, it is true, is in itself contradictory, but if interpreted according to the true faith of a believer, you will find that it will bear out a meaning not in contradiction with that true faith. If Mr. Taylor interprets Mr. Gladstone as Mr. Gladstone interprets the Bible, he must not expect any but the orthodox to follow him.
Now Mr. Gladstone on that particular occasion, either did speak English or he did not. If he did not, no manner of quotation or interpretation will avail. If he did, he said that he should be very sorry if that intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power was confined to classes in easy circumstances, but that it was confined entirely to classes of property. And that is what Marx quoted.
The second passage is one of those stock phrases which are repeated, with slight variations, in every British budget speech, seasons of bad trade alone excepted. What Marx thought of it, and of the whole speech is shown in the following extract from his second reply to his anonymous slanderer;
"Gladstone, having poured forth his panegyric on the increase of Capitalist wealth, turns towards the working class. He takes good care not to say that they had shared in the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power. On the contrary, he continues (according to The Times): 'Now, the augmentation of Capital is of indirect benefit to the labourers,' etc. He consoles himself with the fact that while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. He asserts, finally, he and his enriched parliamentary friends 'have the happiness to know' the contrary of what official enquiries and statistical dates prove to be the fact, viz.,
"'that the average condition of the British labourer has improved during the last 20 years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of any age.
"Before Mr. Gladstone, all his predecessors 'had the happiness' to complete in their budget speeches the picture of the augmentation of Capitalist wealth by self-complacent phrases about the improvement in the condition of the working class. Yet he gives the lie to them all; for the millennium dates only from the passing of the Free Trade legislation. But the correctness or incorrectness of Gladstone's reasons for consolation and congratulation is a matter of indifference here. What alone concerns us is this, that from his stand-point the pretended 'extraordinary' improvement in the condition of the working-class is not at all in contradiction with the augmentation of wealth and power which is entirely confined to classes possessed of property. It is the orthodox doctrine of the mouth-pieces of Capital -- one of the best paid of whom is Gladstone -- that the most infallible means for working men to benefit themselves is -- to enrich their exploiters." (Volksstaat, No. 63, August 7, 1872).
Moreover, to please Mr. Taylor, the said passage of Mr. Gladstone's speech is quoted in full in the Inaugural Address, page 5, immediately before the quotation in dispute. And what else but this address did Mr. Taylor originally impute? Is it as impossible to get a reference to original sources out of him, as it was to get reasons out of Dogberry?
"The continuous crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches" form the subject of Note 105 on the same page (679) of "Das Kapital" to which Mr. Taylor refers us. Very likely indeed, that Marx should have taken the trouble to suppress "in bad faith" one of the contradictions! Quite the contrary. He has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he "lyingly" added anything. But he has restored, rescued from oblivion, a particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its way -- out of Hansard.
Eleanor Marx
Meanwhile a complete revision of the numerous quotations had been made necessary by the publication of the English edition. For this edition Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor, undertook to compare all the quotations with their originals, so that those taken from English sources, which constitute the vast majority, are given there not as retranslations from German but in the original English form. In preparing the fourth edition it was therefore incumbent upon me to consult this text. The comparison revealed various small inaccuracies. Page numbers wrongly indicated, due partly to mistakes in copying from notebooks, and partly to the accumulated misprints of three editions; misplaced quotation or omission marks, which cannot be avoided when a mass of quotations is copied from notebook extracts; here and there some rather unhappy translation of a word; particular passages quoted from the old Paris notebooks of 1843-45, when Marx did not know English and was reading English economists in French translations, so that the double translation yielded a slightly different shade of meaning, e.g., in the case of Steuart, Ure, etc., where the English text had now to be used -- and other similar instances of trifling inaccuracy or negligence. But anyone who compares the fourth edition with the previous ones can convince himself that all this laborious process of emendation has not produced the smallest change in the book worth speaking of. There was only one quotation which could not be traced -- the one from Richard Jones (4th edition, p. S62, Note 47). Marx probably slipped up when writing down the title of the book. All the other quotations retain their cogency in full, or have enhanced it due to their present exact form.
Here, however, I am obliged to revert to an old story.
I know of only one case in which the accuracy of a quotation given by Marx has been called in question. But as the issue dragged beyond his lifetime I cannot well ignore it here.
On March 7, 1872, there appeared in the Berlin Concordia, organ of the German Manufacturers' Association, an anonymous article entitled: "How Karl Marx Quotes." It was here asserted, with an effervescence of moral indignation and unparliamentary language, that the quotation from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863 (in the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association. 1864, and repeated in Capital, Vol. I, p.617, 4th edition; p. 671, 3rd edition),c had been falsified; that not a single word of the sentence: "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power ... is entirely confined to classes of property" was to be found in the (semi-official) shorthand report in Hansard. "Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. It says quite the opposite." (In bold type): "Marx has added the sentence lyingly, both in form and in content!"
Marx, to whom the number of Concordia was sent the following May, answered Anonymous in the Volksstaat of June 15. As he could not recall which newspaper report he had used for the quotation, he limited himself to citing, first the equivalent quotation from two English publications, and then the report in The Times, according to which Gladstone says:
"That is the state of the case as regards the wealth of this country. I must say for one, I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to classes who are in easy circumstances. This takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation I have described and which is founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property."
Thus Gladstone says here that he would be sorry if it were so, but it is so: this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property. And as to the semi-official Hansard, Marx goes on to say: "In its edition, here botchily corrected, Mr. Gladstone was bright enough clumsily to excise the passage that would be, after all, compromising on the lips of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is, incidentally, traditional English parliamentary practice, and by no means the invention of little Lasker versus Bebel."
Anonymous gets angrier and angrier. In his answer in the Concordia, July 4, he sweeps aside second-hand sources and demurely suggests that it is the "custom" to quote parliamentary speeches from the shorthand report; adding, however, that the Times report (which includes the "lyingly added" sentence) and the Hansard report (which omits it) "fully coincide materially", while the Times report likewise contains "the direct opposite of that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address". This fellow carefully conceals the fact that the Times report explicitly includes that self-same "notorious passage , alongside of its alleged "opposite". Despite all this, however, Anonymous feels that he is stuck fast and that only some new dodge can save him. Thus, whilst his article bristles, as we have just shown, with "impudent mendacity" and is interlarded with such edifying terms of abuse as "bad faith", "dishonesty", "lying statement", "that lying quotation", "impudent mendacity", "a quotation completely forged", "this forgery", "simply nefarious", etc., he finds it necessary to divert the issue to another domain and therefore promises "to explain in a second article the importance which we" (the non-"mendacious" Anonymous) "attach to the content of Gladstone's words". As if his particular opinion, of no decisive value as it is, had anything whatever to do with the matter. This second article was printed in the Concordia on July 11.
Marx replied again in the Volksstaat of August 7 now giving also the reports of the passage in question from The Morning Star and The Morning Advertiser of April 17, 1863. According to both reports Gladstone said that he would look with apprehension, etc., upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if he believed it to be confined to CLASSES IN EASY CIRCUMSTANCES. But this augmentation was in fact ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES POSSESSED OF PROPERTY. So these reports too reproduced word for word the sentence alleged to have been "lyingly added". Marx further established once more, by a comparison of the Times and the Hansard texts, that this sentence, which three newspaper reports of identical content, appearing independently of one another the next morning, proved to have been really uttered, was missing from the Hansard report, revised according to the familiar "custom", and that Gladstone, to use Marx's words, "had subsequently filched it away". In conclusion Marx stated that he had no time for further intercourse with Anonymous. The latter also seems to have had enough, at any rate Marx received no further issues of Concordia.
With this the matter appeared to be dead and buried. True, once or twice later on there reached us, from persons in touch with the University of Cambridge, mysterious rumours of an unspeakable literary crime which Marx was supposed to have committed in Capital; but despite all investigation nothing more definite could be learned. Then, on November 29, 1883, eight months after Marx's death, there appeared in The Times a letter dated from Trinity College, Cambridge, and signed Sedley Taylor, in which this little man, who dabbles in the mildest sort of co-operative affairs, seizing upon some chance pretext or other, at last enlightened us, not only concerning those vague Cambridge rumours, but also Anonymous in the Concordia.
"What appears extremely singular," says the little man from Trinity College, "is that it was reserved for Professor Brentano (then of the University of Breslau, now of that of Strassburg) to expose ... the bad faith which had manifestly dictated the citation made from Mr. Gladstone's speech in the '(Inaugural)' Address. Herr Karl Marx, who ... attempted to defend the citation, had the hardihood, in the DEADLY SHIFTS to which Brentano's masterly conduct of the attack speedily reduced him, to assert that Mr. Gladstone had 'manipulated' the report of his speech in The Times of April 17, 1863, before it appeared in Hansard, in order to 'obliterate' a passage which 'was certainly compromising for an English Chancellor of the Exchequer'. On Brentano's showing, by a detailed comparison of texts, that the reports of The Times and of Hansard agreed in utterly excluding the meaning which craftily-isolated quotation had put upon Mr. Gladstone's words, Marx withdrew from further controversy under the plea of 'want of time!'"
So that was at the bottom of the whole business! And thus was the anonymous campaign of Mr. Brentano in the Concordia gloriously reflected in the productively co-operating imagination of Cambridge. Thus he stood, sword in hand, and thus he battled, in his "masterly conduct of the attack", this St. George of the German Manufacturers' Association, whilst the infernal dragon Marx, "in deadly shifts", "speedily" breathed his last at his feet.
All this Ariostian battle-scene, however, only serves to conceal the dodges of our St. George. Here there is no longer talk of "lying addition" or "forgery", but of "CRAFTILY ISOLATED QUOTATION". The whole issue was shifted, and St. George and his Cambridge squire very well knew why.
Eleanor Marx replied in the monthly journal To-Day (February 1884) a, as The Times refused to publish her letter. She once more focused the debate on the sole question at issue: had Marx "lyingly added" that sentence or not? To this Mr. Sedley Taylor answered that
"the question whether a particular sentence did or did not occur In Mr. Gladstone's speech" had been, in his opinion, "of very subordinate importance" in the Brentano-Marx controversy, "compared to the issue whether the quotation in dispute was made with the intention of conveying, or of perverting, Mr. Gladstone's meaning".
He then admits that the Times report contains "a verbal contrariety"; but, if the context is rightly interpreted, i.e., in the Gladstonian Liberal sense, it shows what Mr. Gladstone meant to say. (To-Day, March 1884) The most comic point here is that our little Cambridge man now insists upon quoting the speech not from Hansard, as, according to the anonymous Brentano, it is "customary" to do, but from the Times report, which the same Brentano had characterised as "necessarily bungling". Naturally so, for in Hansard the vexatious sentence is missing.
Eleanor Marx had no difficulty (in the same issue of To-Day) in dissolving all this argumentation into thin air. Either Mr. Taylor had read the controversy of 1872 in which case he was now making not only "lying additions" but also "lying suppressions"; or he had not read it and ought to remain silent. In either case it was certain that he did not dare to maintain for a moment the accusation of his friend Brentano that Marx had made a "lying" addition. On the contrary, Marx, it now seems, had not lyingly added hut suppressed an important sentence. But this same sentence is quoted on page 5 of the Inaugural Address, a few lines before the alleged "lying addition". And as to the "contrariety" in Gladstone's speech, is it not Marx himself, who in Capital, p. 618 (3rd edition, p. 672), Note 105 a refers to "the continuous crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863 and 1864"? Only he does not presume à la Mr. Sedley Taylor to resolve them into complacent Liberal sentiments. Eleanor Marx, in concluding her reply, finally sums up as follows:
"Marx has not suppressed anything worth quoting, neither has he 'lyingly' added anything. But he has restored, rescued from oblivion, a particular sentence of one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches, a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its way -- out of Hansard."
With that Mr. Sedley Taylor too had had enough, and the result of this whole professorial cobweb, spun out over two decades and two great countries, is that nobody has since dared to cast any other aspersion upon Marx's literary honesty; whilst Mr. Sedley Taylor, no doubt, will hereafter put as little confidence in the literary war bulletins of Mr. Brentano as Mr. Brentano will in the papal infallibility of Hansard.
London, June 25, 1890
Frederick Engels
On September 28, 1864, a public meeting was held in St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre, London, at which Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Poles and Italians were represented. Karl Marx submitted to this meeting the Provisional Rules of an international workers' organisation which was to be founded, together with the Inaugural Address he had drafted for the same. Both were adopted unanimously, and the Inaugural Address went round the world. It contained a quotation from Gladstone's budget speech of April 16, 1863, which attracted more attention than all the other statements contained therein:
"Dazzled by the 'Progress of the Nation' statistics dancing before his eyes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer exclaims in wild ecstasy: 'From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent; in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it has increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible!... This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power,' adds Mr. Gladstone, 'is entirely confined to classes of property.'"
In the winter of 1871-72, while working on the second volume of my Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, I was obliged to investigate (cf. II, 241) to what extent the oft-heard objection -- that a wage increase diminishes the future demand for labour -- accords with the facts. In the previous decades this objection had repeatedly been used against the English trade associations every time they called for wage increases. Here I recalled this quotation from Gladstone's budget speech. However, it appeared to me to be unwise to quote as a source the Address of the International, as many others had, and the relevant passage in Marx's Capital, Vol 1,1867, p.639. I consulted the shorthand report of Gladstone's budget speech and found that this in fact showed that the wage increases in the period 1842-1861 had not limited the increase in the income of the possessing classes in any way which negatively affected their demand for labour; but that, on the contrary Gladstone had stated in direct opposition to Karl Marx's claim: "The figures which I have quoted take little or no cognizance of the condition of those who do not pay income tax ... of the property of the lahouring population, or of the increase of its income... But if we look to the average condition of the British labourer, whether peasant, or miner, or operative, or artisan, we know from varied and indubitable evidence that during the last twenty years such an addition has been made to his means of subsistence as we may almost pronounce to be without examp]e in the history of any country and of any age.
In view of the great importance of the Gladstone's quotation for the Social Democratic claim that in the framework of the existing state and social order the rich would necessarily become ever richer and the poor ever poorer, I drew the attention of the editors of the Concordia, Zeitschrift für die Arbeiterfrage, at that time appearing in Berlin, to the forgery which had been committed here. They asked me to write an article on the subject, which was published in the Concordia of March 7, 1872. The article was not signed by me; this was done, on the one hand, at the request of the editors in the interests of the reputation of their paper, and, on the other hand, I had all the less objection, since following earlier literary controversies pursued by Marx it was to be expected that this time too he would heap personal insults upon his adversary, and that for this reason it could only be amusing to leave him in the dark as to the identity of his adversary.
Three months later Marx replied in the Volksstaat. In the polemic which then developed it became clear that Marx had not undertaken the forgery himself, but had taken the forged quotation from a diatribe which had been published anonymously in 1864. This work, entitled The Theory of the Exchanges. The Bank Charter Act of 1844. The abuse of the metallic principle to depreciation. Parliament mirrored in Debate, supplemental to 'The Stock Exchange and the Repeal of Sir J. Barnard's Act', London: T. Cautley Newby, 80, Welbeck Street, 1864, is the work of a perverse Thersites and consists largely of garbled quotations from writings and speeches on national economy, bestrewn with Latin, English and French verses and other comments, aimed at derision. Being of such a nature, this book has understandably remained in thorough obscurity.
Had Marx simply admitted that he had been misled by this book, and from then on reproduced the quotation correctly, one might have been surprised that he had relied upon such a source, hut the mistake would at least have been rectified. But for him there was no question of this. And given the wide circulation which had been attained by the Inaugural Address, the loss of this show-piece as the result of this correction, would have been very embarrassing for the agitation. One of the main agitational methods of Social Democracy is that its representatives proclaim themselves the sole proprietors of real science; and as the Party Congress in Halle 148 showed, they prefer to accuse themselves of having utilised the iron law of wages in deliberate untruthfulness simply as a means of agitation, rather than confess that they have been shown to be in error. Instead of withdr;iwing, Marx therefore attempted to prove that Gladstone had subsequently tinkered with the shorthand report of his budget speech; the loutishnesses of his Scurrilous polemics was now directed against the supposed manufacturer, who had attempted to tell him what to do with the help of an English business partner; when it was shown that The Times too, in its issue which appeared on the morning following the night in which Gladstone had made his speech, carried this speech in a sense according with the shorthand report, he acted, as the editors of the Concordia wrote: "like the cuttlefish, which dims the water with a dark fluid, in order to make pursuit by its enemy more difficult, i.e. he tries as hard as he can to hide the subject of controversy by clinging to completely inconsequential secondary itatters; and finally he saves himself with the explanation that for 'lack of time' he cannot go into the matter any further." And for all time he failed to reply to my analysis of his rejoinder published in the Concordia on August 22, 1872.
The fact that I was the author of the articles in the Concordia of March 7, July 4 and 11, and August 22, 1872 was known to a ntimber of people, and in the second edition of Mehring's Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie, which was published while Marx was still alive, I was publicly named as such. Having his attention thus drawn to it, Mr. Sedley Taylor of Trinity College, Cambridge studied the polemic, and wrote a letter about it to The Times. This brought upon the scene Miss Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, who had died in the meantime, and in the socialist monthly To-Day of March 1884 she not only defended her father's loyalty, but closed with the remark that her father had restored and rescued from oblivion a particular sentence from one of Gladstone's speeches, a sentence which had indubitably been pronounced, but which somehow or other had found its way out of the shorthand report in Hansard.
Even at that time I considered replying to this obstinate clinging to the false quotation with the verbatim publication of the entire polemic. But editors often have their own judgement; the specialist journal which I regarded as suitable above all others refused to publish, on the grounds that the dispute lacked general interest. Engels was obviously of a different opinion. In the Preface to the fourth edition of the first volume of Capital, which he undertook, he returned to the polemic, hut reported upon it in such a manner that the dishonesty with which it had been conducted by Marx was, understandablv not made clear in addition he left unchanged the passage in Capital I, 4th edition, p. 617, in which Marx had Gladstone say the opposite of what he really said and Lven more while Marx in his first edition simply referred to "Gladstone in H.o.C. April 16 1863", the 4th edition added "The Morning Star, April 17 1863 as though the report in this newspaper really contained the quotation as given by Marx. But the report in The Morning Star too contains all those sentences omitted by The Theory of the Exchanges and subsequently by Marx, sentences which show that where Gladstone refers in his budget speech to income tax revenue, he is onlv contrasting the incomes of those who pay this tax with the incomes of those who, because of lower incomes, are free of this tax; that he perceives from the income tax lists an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, and remarks at the same time that the increase in income shown by these lists is confined to those in easy circumstances -- quite naturally, since the incomes of the rest are not shown in these lists; but that he does not believe this augmentation is confined to these classes, since it is known from other sources that at the same time the condition of the British labourer has improved to a degree unexampled in any country and any age...
(The remainder has nothing to do with the charge and is simply a "Contribution to the Question" etc. -- F. Engels.)
a) From [H. Roy,] The Theory of the Exchanges, London, 1864, p. 134.
"From 1842 to 1852, the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent ... in the eight years from 1853 to 1861, it had increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! My honourable friend says, it is owing to Australian gold. I am sorry to see that he is lost in the depths of heresy upon the subject of gold. This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property, but must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities of general consumption -- while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor! at any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are lest, I do not presume to say." *
"Voilà l'homme en effet. II va du blanc au noir.
Il condamne au matin ses sentiments du soir.
Importun à tout autre, à lui meme incommode,
Il change a' tous moments d'esprit comme de mode."
"The average condition of the British labourer hat improved during the last twenty years in a degree we know to be extraordinary and unexampled in the history of any country or any age, a matter of the greatest thankfulness, because, etc hardly have earnings given a sufficiency of prime necessaries,..."
Noteworthy for the connection between The Theory of the Exchanges, and Marx's remarks in Capital, I, 1st edition, p. 639 is also the following. Having advanced here the details, quoted from The Theory of the Exchanges, given by the LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM, against Gladstone's sentence "WHETHER THE EXTREMES OF POVERTY ARE LESS EXTREME THAN THEY WERE, I DO NOT PRESUME TO SAY", Marx turns against Gladstone's budget speech of April 7, 1864; The Theory of the Exchanges has an APPENDIX, in which, as a supplement to the pages just printed here, there is also a gloss on the budget of 1864. The style in which this is done is the same as that which is familiar enough from the foregoing. This excursus contains the following passage (p. 234):
"But the Chancellor is eloquent upon 'poverty'... 'Think of those who are on the border of that region...', upon 'wages ... in others it is true not increased... human life is, but, in nine cases out of ten, a struggle for existence'."
Now compare with this Marx, 1, 1st ed., p.640, 4th ed., p. 618. Here too again, instead of the reproduction of the actual budget speech verbatim, [we find the same mosaic of sentences torn from their context as in The Theory of the Exchanges. And here too it is not this source which is referred to, but simply to Gladstone, H.o.C., April 7, 1864. And then the text continues: "The continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863 and 1864 were characterised by an English writer by the following quotation from Molière" (followed by the verse from Molière printed above).
It becomes clear that Marx took not only this quotation, but also the "continual crying contradictions in Gladstone's budget speeches of 1863 and 1864", invented by the author of The Theory of the Exchanges, from this book.
b) At was already remarked in the introduction to this reprint, Engels, in the fourth edition of the first volume of Marx's Capital, p. 617, added "The Morning Star, April 17, 1863" to the now-as-ever falsely reproduced quotation from Gladstone's budget speech. The relevant portions of this speech are given above on pp. 8 and 9 according to Hansard's shorthand report. Although on p.13 the Times report -- completely coincident in sense, with its wording condensed only as is a newspaper's wont, this report, together with that in The Morning Star quoted by Engels, and the wording of the quotation in Marx are presented parallel here:
The Times
|
The Morning Star April 17, 1863"I must say, for one, I should look with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power, if it were my belief that it was confined to the classes who are in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property. But that augmentation must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities which go to the general consumption. So that we have this profound, and I almost say, inestimable consolation -while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor. (Hear, hear.) At any rate, whether the extremes are less extreme than they were I do not presume to say, but the average condition of the British labourer, we have the happiness to know to be extraordinary, and that we may almost pronounce it to be unexampled in the history of any country or any age. (Cheers)" |
Capital I, 1st ed., p. 639, Note 103"From 1842 to 1852 the taxable income of the country increased by 6 per cent. In the eight years from 1853 to 1861 it had increased from the basis taken in 1853, 20 per cent! The fact is so astonishing as to be almost incredible "This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power "is entirely confined to classes of property, but must be of indirect benefit to the labouring population, because it cheapens the commodities of general consumption -- "while the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor! At any rate, whether the extremes of poverty are less, I do not presume to say." Here, in the middle of a sentence, as the reprint above shows, The Theory of the Exchanges breaks off to insert a quotation from Molière; Marx who, as the comparison above shows, did not take the quotation from The Morning Star but -- omitting a passage marked by him with dots -- verbatim from The Theory of the Exchanges, has Gladstone end in the middle of a sentence... |
The comparison above shows us that the arbitrarily thrown-together mosaic of sentences torn from their context, which Marx presents as Gladstone's budget speech, can be found as little in The Morning Star as in The Times or Hansard; on the other hand, it can be found solely in The Theory of the Exchanges. The heavily leaded sentences a are those omitted by Henry Roy, and still more by Karl Marx-compare the last sentence -- in order to have Gladstone say the opposite of what be really said.
Morning Herald. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of opinion that it is confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth which I have described, and which is founded on accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes.
Morning Post. I may say, I for one, would look with fear and apprehension when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of wealth which I have described, and which is founded on accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes.
Daily Telegraph. I may say for one, that I should look almost with apprehension and alarm on this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that it was confined to the masses who are in easy circumstances. This question to wealth takes no cognizance at all of the condition of the labouring population. The augmentation stated is an augmentation entirely confined to the classes possessed of property.
Daily News. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension when I consider this great increase of wealth if I believed that its benefits were confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This augmentation of wealth which I have described, and which is founded upon accurate returns, is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the augmentation of wealth of the poorer classes.
Standard. I may say that I for one would look with fear and apprehension at this intoxicating increase of wealth if I were of the opinion that it was confined to the classes in easy circumstances. This great increase of wealth which I have described, and which is founded on the accurate returns is confined entirely to the augmentation of Capital, and takes no account of the poorer classes.
Message
In number 45 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt Professor Lujo Brentano published an essay My Polemic with Karl Marx", which served at the same time as an introduction to a republication of this polemic as a pamphlet. This polemic dealt mainly with a parliamentary speech delivered by Gladstone in 1863, and which Marx reproduced in a distorted form in his Inaugural Address on the formation of the International Working Men's Association.
Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about the wording of Gladstone's speech than Gladstone himself. It is therefore of special interest that Gladstone, as a result of the republication of Brentano's polemic with Marx, has addressed two letters to Brentano. On November 22 Gladstone wrote to Brentano: "You are completely correct, and Marx completely incorrect", and on November 28: "I undertook no changes of any sort". Thus the affair, which throws a revealing light on the Social Democratic line of argumentation, may finally be decided to the detriment of the Social Democratic standpoint.
By uncovering this deceit Brentano has done a service, and it was very timely that he chose this precise moment to rekindle the memories of this dispute.
In my preface to the fourth edition of Marx's Capital, Vol. I, I was obliged to report upon the course of Mr. Lujo Brentano's favourite anonymous campaign against Marx, a campaign based upon the charge that Marx had forged a quotation from a speech by Gladstone.
Mr. Brentano responded to this with a pamphlet My Polemic with Karl Marx by Lujo Brentano, Berlin, Walter und Apolant, 1890.1 shall reply to this in his own coin.
In the meantime, No. 49 of the Deutsches Wochenblatt, December 4, 1890, carries a further note on this matter, which states:
"Obviously nobody is more qualified to settle this dispute about the wording of Gladstone's speech than Gladstone himself. It is therefore of special interest that Gladstone, as a result of the republication of Brentano's polemic with Marx, has addressed two letters to Brentano. On November 22 Gladstone wrote to Brentano: 'You are completely correct, and Marx completely incorrect', and on November 28: 'I undertook no changes of any sort'."
What is this supposed to mean? In what "are you completely correct" and Marx "completely incorrect"? In what "have I undertaken no changes of any sort"? Why is Mr. Brentano's message confined to these two short sentences?
Either Mr. Gladstone has not given his permission to publish the whole of the letters. This is then proof enough that they prove nothing.
Or else Mr. Gladstone wrote the letters in the first place for the public, and permitted Mr. Brentano to make what use he would of them. Then the publication only of these meaningless extracts proves even more strongly that Mr. Gladstone's testimony in its entirety is unusable for Mr. Brentano, and therefore "bodged together" as above.
In order to know what the two sentences above are worth, we must have before us not only the two letters from Mr. Gladstone, but also the relevant letters from Mr. Brentano. And as long as the whole correspondence in this matter has not been published in the original language, the fragments above are completely insignificant to the question under dispute, and not worth the paper they are printed on.
F. Engels