Preface to Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume (13)

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Volume 13 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels contains articles written by them in the period from February 13, 1854 to February 6, 1855. For the most part these articles were published in the New-York Daily Tribune, to which Marx and Engels had begun to contribute in August 1851. Many were also reprinted in the newspaper’s special issues, the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune and the New-York Weekly Tribune; some of them also appeared in the Chartist People’s Paper. In January 1855 Marx began to publish his articles in the democratic German newspaper, the Neue Oder-Zeitung, using as a rule material intended for the New-York Daily Tribune. Marx’s and Engels’ newspaper articles in this period deal with a broad range of contemporary socio-economic and political problems, as well as with questions of the bourgeois-democratic and working-class movement, and are an important part of their literary legacy.

Marx’s and Engels’ journalism is an outstanding phenomenon. Their articles written more than a century ago about specific events and in a language not their own, have not lost their importance and interest for later generations. Their analysis of contemporary events showed up their causes and inner connections, explained their sometimes apparently fortuitous succession, and made clear their meaning in terms of contemporary history. Marx and Engels were not content with only superficial current information. Their articles reflect the results of many years of study in economics, politics, history, military science, and language. When circumstances compelled them to turn to subjects with which they did not consider themselves fully conversant, they would undertake special researches. Thus, in 1854, in connection with the beginning of the fourth bourgeois revolution in Spain, Marx embarked upon a study of the country’s language and history, in particular, of the three revolutions which had taken place there earlier. His surviving five notebooks with excerpts on the Spanish history bear eloquent witness to the depth and thoroughness of these studies. A great deal of literature on the history of the Slavs, Greeks and other peoples inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula, the history of Turkey and its social structure, the Orthodox Church and other problems was studied by Marx and Engels in 1854 in connection with the events in the Balkans.

At the same time Marx and Engels were not merely academic commentators. They wrote on the basis of very close contacts with their contemporaries, with influential political and public figures, and particularly with the proletarian and democratic émigrés of various nationalities in London. Marx’s visits to sessions of the British Parliament and Engels’ daily contact with Manchester business circles provide cases in point.

In 1854, their journalism was for Marx and Engels practically the only way to disseminate among the democratically-inclined reading public in general, and the workers in particular, the results of their own studies in various spheres of history, political economy and military science.

All that took place in the international arena or in the domestic life of this or that country was evaluated by Marx and Engels from the point of view of their steady aim to establish and equip a revolutionary working-class party; and the experience and knowledge accumulated by them in this connection has enriched the treasury of working-class revolutionary theory. The contents of the present volume illustrate most clearly Marx’s and Engels’ ability unfailingly to represent the interests of the proletariat in the process of the not yet completed bourgeois-democratic transformations in Europe, as well as the separation, which had just begun, of the working-class movement from the general democratic movement. In their articles strictly scientific analysis is accompanied by invective against the representatives of the ruling classes: the cupidity and mediocrity of the ruling circles, their hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness and corruption are exposed with mordant wit and sarcasm.

The central political event in Europe in 1854 was the military conflict between Russia and Turkey, which broke out in 1853 and in 1854 developed into a war of Britain, France and Turkey against Russia — the Crimean War. Marx and Engels devote the utmost attention to the history of this conflict, the analysis of its causes, and the policies of the individual states. They approach the analysis of the foreign policy of the European powers in the period of the Crimean War, the diplomatic negotiations in Vienna, and the actual course of the military operations, from the viewpoint of the revolutionary proletariat. In examining the events taking place, they always bear in mind the prospects for the development of the working-class movement in Europe and the future of the national liberation and unification movements.

Proceeding from concrete historical conditions, Marx and Engels saw in Tsarism the bulwark of feudal absolutist reaction in Europe. They regarded Tsarism’s collapse and the consequent removal of its reactionary influence on Europe as an essential precondition for the victory of a proletarian revolution in Britain and France and for a democratic settlement of the fundamental questions of the historical development of Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary and other European countries—questions which remained unsolved during the revolution of 1848-49.

At the same time Marx and Engels saw clearly that, in spite of their political and military rivalry, Tsarist Russia and oligarchical Britain and Bonapartist France, who were fighting against it, as well as the “neutral” reactionary regimes of Austria and Prussia, in fact held the same counter-revolutionary position.

The aim of the Western powers was the removal of Russia as a rival in the struggle for supremacy in the Near East, the consolidation of their own influence in the Balkans and the Black Sea area, the weakening, but by no means the collapse, of the military power of Tsarist Russia, and the pursual, under the pretext of defending Turkey, of a policy aimed at strengthening its colonial dependence on the Western powers. “A feeling of doubt, mistrust and hostility against their western allies is gaining possession of the Turks,” Marx writes in April 1854. “They begin to look on France and England as more dangerous enemies than the Czar himself...” (p. 160).

Marx and Engels paid special attention to exposing the foreign policy of the British ruling classes and their parties, the Whigs and the Tories. In articles dealing with debates in the British Parliament in connection with the publication of documents relating to the pre-history of the Eastern conflict—”The Documents on the Partition of Turkey”, “The Secret Diplomatic Correspondence” and several others, Marx exposed the “infamy” (p. 466) of British diplomacy, which was allegedly striving to keep intact the Ottoman Empire and the “balance of power ... in Europe”, but was in fact defending its own mercenary interests in the Eastern question. Marx shows that if the partition of Turkey had not, in the last analysis, contained the spectre of revolution, “Her Majesty’s Government would be as ready to swallow the Grand Turk [i.e., the Sultan] as his Cossack Majesty [i.e., Nicholas I ] “ (p. 97). Throughout the article runs the idea that the allies were conducting a “mock”, “sham” war. Both sides, write Marx and Engels in the article “That Bore of a War”, “are ruled more by diplomatical than strategical motives” (p. 336).

Considerable space in this volume is devoted to the domestic and foreign policy of Bonapartist France. Marx and Engels believed that the ruling clique in this country had acted as one of the main instigators of the Crimean War and that it regarded foreign policy adventurism and wars of aggrandisement as a means of strengthening the shaky Bonapartist regime. “Bonaparte,” writes Marx in February 1854, “is of course in good earnest in embarking in the war. He has no alternative left but revolution at home or war abroad” (p. 33). The representatives of the Bonapartist clique were, moreover, using the war as a means of helping themselves from public funds, as an excuse, to quote Marx, “to remove the last weak barriers yet standing between themselves and the national treasury” (p. 52).

In a number’ of articles Marx and Engels engage in a polemic (directly and indirectly) with the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois émigrés, individual representatives of whom regarded the war against Russia as “a war between liberty and despotism” (p. 228). The fundamental difference between this point of view and the position of Marx and Engels was that the latter advanced the battle-cry of a revolutionary war against Tsarism. Marx’s and Engels’ tactical position during the Crimean War was essentially a continuation of their tactics in 1848-49 when, in the columns of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, they had called for a revolutionary war against Tsarism. As Lenin pointed out (Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 300), these tactics were dictated by the historical conditions of the whole period 1789-1871, when the task of finally destroying absolutism and feudalism came to the fore.

In outlining the tactics of the proletariat at the time of the Crimean War, Marx and Engels proceeded from the fact that if the war against Tsarism were to assume a European character, it could produce a new revolutionary upsurge in the countries of Europe and lead to the collapse of the anti-popular, despotic regimes in these countries and to the liberation of the oppressed nationalities in Europe; in these conditions the war which had broken out would turn into a revolutionary war of the peoples against Tsarism. This war could hasten the maturing of a revolutionary situation in Russia itself and bring closer a revolution aimed against autocracy and serfdom.

Marx’s and Engels’ belief in the possibility of a new revolutionary upsurge during the Crimean War was based on their conclusion from the experience of the revolution of 1848-49 that a new revolutionary upsurge was possible only after a new economic crisis. In 1853-54 signs of crisis began to be observed in the economy of the European countries. At this time Marx engaged in a thorough study of the problem in question, compiled the large conspectus “Money, Credit, Crises” (extant in one of the notebooks of excerpts), which he later used for his Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie. He also studied and drew conclusions from information on the state of industry and trade published by the journal The Economist. In the articles “British Finances”, “The Crisis in Trade and Industry”, “The Commercial Crisis in Britain” and certain others, Marx writes about the first symptoms of the approaching economic crisis: a certain degree of overproduction, general stagnation in trade and industry, suspension of payments, bankruptcies, etc. Marx not only records these symptoms, but also notes a number of most important factors. He pays special attention to these phenomena in the economy of Britain where the capitalist mode of production was most highly developed. The crisis in the economy of Britain, which still continued to hold its monopolist position in the world market, was of decisive importance for social and economic development throughout the world. Marx examines these symptoms of crisis as a manifestation of the general laws inherent in the capitalist mode of production with its antagonistic contradictions. “The crisis may be traced to the same source—the fatal working of the English industrial system which leads to overproduction in Great Britain, and to over-speculation in all other countries” (p. 588). In the signs of crisis in 1853-54 Marx detected the approach of the acute economic crisis of 1857.

Marx and Engels believed that the impending economic crisis and the Crimean War were together creating the conditions for a new revolutionary upsurge in the European countries, preparing the downfall of their anti-popular despotic regimes and the liberation of the oppressed nationalities of Europe. Marx and Engels also showed how the future of both the peoples oppressed by the Austrian Empire, and the Slav and other peoples who formed part of the Ottoman Empire, was integrally bound up with the revolutionary-democratic transformations in Europe, and with a revolutionary war which would lead to the collapse of these empires and the formation of independent democratic states in the Balkans.

Contrary to the opinion of many West-European politicians, in particular, the English conservative writer and journalist David Urquhart, who supported the preservation of the reactionary Turkish state, Marx and Engels regarded the feudal Ottoman Empire as a great obstacle to historical progress, and supported the demand for national independence of the Slav and other peoples under the rule of their Turkish conquerors. In the article “The Policy of Austria.—The War Debates in the House of Commons” Marx calls Turkey “that keystone of the antiquated European system” (p. 324).

Many of the articles in the present volume are devoted to the description and analysis of the course of the military operations, the alignment of forces on both sides, the military organisation, and questions of the art of war.

In the military articles published in the New-York Tribune, usually in the form of leaders, Engels analyses the strength and organisation of the armies of Russia, Austria, Britain, France and Turkey, and gives a description of their men and officers. He concludes that the allied armies are commanded by “strategical mediocrities and routine generals” (p. 513). In the articles “The Present Condition of the English Army—Tactics, Uniform, Commissariat, &c” , “The Formation of a Special Ministry of War in Britain.—The War on the Danube.—The Economic Situation”, “Reorganisation of the British War Administration.—The Austrian Summons.— Britain’s Economic Situation.— St. Arnaud”, “British Disaster in the Crimea”, and a number of others, Marx and Engels criticise the organisation of Britain’s war department, and the Coalition Government’s conduct of the war.

Engels drew attention to the gross incompetence of the British and French Army and Navy Commands. Their confusion in orders issued, and preservation of an antiquated system of Army and Navy organisation, together with routine and perfunctory training of the lower ranks, led to needless casualties, epidemics and hunger for the ranks, and great loss of life in Gallipoli, Varna and the Crimea. These shortcomings, he writes, “are still aggravated by the oligarchic character of the English Administration, which entrusts the most important offices to men, who, although their parliamentary support may be needed by the set of place-hunters just in power, are altogether destitute even of elementary professional knowledge and fitness” (pp. 212-13).

In the articles “The Siege of Silistria”, “That Bore of a War”, “The Battle of the Alma”, “The Battle of Inkerman”, “The Crimean Campaign”, and many others, Engels—while praising the heroism of the Russian soldiers—points to the backwardness of the art of war in the Russia of landowners and serfs, the mediocrity of a considerable section of the officers, and the “parade-drill” of the lower ranks in the Tsarist army.

The military operations in the Danube region and in the Crimea gave Engels the opportunity not only to analyse them from the point of view of the art of war, the comparative merits of the armies and their leaders, but also to develop a number of important questions of military theory, strategy and tactics. Engels’ erudition as a military theoretician enabled him, in spite of the extreme scarcity of information and contrary to generally accepted judgments and forecasts, to give a correct assessment of individual episodes in the war and to make a number of assumptions which were later in all respects confirmed. Engels refuted the communiques that boasted of a “formidable” victory over the Russians in the Danube theatre (see “News from the European Contest”) or of the capture of Sevastopol by the allies in September 1854 (“The News from the Crimea”, “The Sevastopol Hoax”, “The Sevastopol Hoax.—General News”). At the very beginning of the war Engels demonstrated the impossibility of Russian troops marching on Constantinople, and explained the landing of Russian troops in the Dobrudja as a strategical manoeuvre aimed at reducing the front line. As early as October 1854 he correctly judged the importance for the outcome of the whole campaign of the battle of Sevastopol, which would remain “unparalleled in military history” (p. 509).

Engels revealed the inner laws of the war, established the dependence of a country’s military potential on the extent of its industrial development and the deployment of its economic resources, and showed how the actual conduct of war and the tactical manoeuvrability of the troops corresponds to the level of development of the country’s socio-economic and political structure. Thus these articles written by Engels in 1854 constitute an important stage in the development of Marxist military thought. The analysis of military operations was later generalised by him in a number of articles for the New American Cyclopaedia (see this edition, Vol. 18).

The exposure of the foreign policy of the British oligarchy was combined in the writings of Marx and Engels with a revelation of the anti-popular nature of the bourgeois-aristocratic system in Britain. Marx draws attention to the disparity in Britain between the political system and economic and social development, which was brought out particularly clearly by the Crimean War. In the articles “On the Ministerial Crisis”, “Fall of the Aberdeen Ministry”, “The Defeated Government” Marx speaks of the crisis of the traditional two-party system, and the breaking down of the old aristocratic parties of the Whigs and Tories which was in process. “The old parliamentary parties that had been entrusted with a monopoly of government now exist merely in the form of coteries,” Marx writes in the article “The Parties and Cliques” (p. 643), and their internal contradictions are no longer of a party nature, but are “only due to personal whims and vanities” (p. 638).

Many articles (“Debates in Parliament”, “The War Debate in Parliament”, “The War.—Debate in Parliament”, and others) deal with the proceedings of the British Parliament, the analysis of debates on the causes, outbreak and course of the Crimean War, the activity of the war departments, the state of the army, the Budget, and various draft reforms, etc. In this concrete material is revealed the class essence of British parliamentarianism, the limited nature of British bourgeois democracy, the hypocrisy and pretence of the representatives of the main political groupings, their opposition to any reforms which might affect the interests of the ruling oligarchy (for example, electoral reform), and the cumbersome and routine nature of parliamentary procedure itself. “Then why remains Parliament?” Marx asks in the article “The Treaty Between Austria and Prussia.— Parliamentary Debates of May 29”, “Old Cobbett has revealed the secret. As a safety-valve for the effervescing passions of the country” (p. 219).

The criticism by Marx and Engels of the position of the bourgeois Free Traders and their ideologists Bright and Cobden is of fundamental importance. These representatives of the so-called Manchester school, which expressed the interests of the British industrial bourgeoisie, opposed the war with Russia, arguing that the two states had interests in common. As in his earlier works, Marx exposes the hypocrisy of these bourgeois ideologists, stressing that behind their feigned love of peace lay the conviction that Britain was capable of establishing its monopoly on the world market without military expenditure. Their “philanthropy”, says Marx, disappears as soon as it is a question of the working class; in that case the self-same Free Traders support the uncontrolled exploitation of the workers, opposing the restriction of the working day and the protection of female and child labour by law (p. 576). The latter is one of Marx’s first demands for labour legislation. He engages in an open polemic with Cobden and Bright also on the question of crises, refuting the assertion of the Free Traders that the repeal of the Corn Laws and Free Trade are a panacea against economic crises.

Marx continues to denounce the eviction of tenants from land belonging to big landowners in Scotland and Ireland. “The process still continues,” he writes, “and with a vigor quite worthy of that virtuous, refined, religious, philanthropic aristocracy of this model country” (p. 197).

As ever, the position of the working class and its struggle with capital remained at the centre of the attention of Marx and Engels. For a number of reasons Marx was able in 1854 to study the position of the working class and observe the working-class movement mainly in Britain, which is why he writes primarily about the British proletariat in his articles of this period.

He speaks of its lack of political rights, its difficult economic position and its resort to strike action (“Debates in Parliament”, “British Finances.—The Troubles at Preston” and others). He carefully traces the processes taking place in the working-class movement following structural changes in the capitalist economy and new developments in the socio-economic life of Europe and America, and studies the special features of the growth and spread of the working-class movement itself.

Marx notes with satisfaction the signs of political activity in the British working class, which were particularly significant with the decline of the Chartist movement after 1848. This is why he paid special attention to the opening of the Labour Parliament in Manchester, which was convoked on the initiative of the Chartists led by Ernest Jones with the aim of creating a broad working-class organisation, a “Mass Movement”, to unite trade unionists and unorganised workers. Marx and Engels, who had been closely connected with the Chartists for many years and had greatly assisted Ernest Jones in the fifties in his struggle to revive Chartism on a new, socialist basis, welcomed the creation of this organisation. Marx was invited to take part in the Labour Parliament as an honorary delegate. In connection with its convocation he wrote two articles and one address (“Opening of the Labour Parliament.—English War Budget”, “The Labour Parliament”, “Letter to the Labour Parliament”). In them he maintains that the Labour Parliament, whatever its outcome, was an important milestone in the history of the working class because it was convoked on the initiative of the workers themselves. Marx points out, however, that the success of the movement as a whole depended on whether the British workers could create “organisation of the labouring classes on a national scale” (p. 60).

In the article “Evacuation of the Danubian Principalities.—The Events in Spain.”—A New Danish Constitution.—The Chartists” Marx gives a detailed account of a speech by Ernest Jones at a workers’ meeting in Bacup (near Rochdale, Lancashire), in which he touched upon the question of the need for the working class to gain political power and implement the People’s Charter at the new stage of the working-class movement. Thus, having defined the revolutionary tendency in the development of the mass working-class movement, Marx sees its task as the creation of its own mass political, genuinely revolutionary party. And although Marx’s hopes that the convocation of the Labour Parliament would pave the way for the founding of such a party in Britain were not justified, because the British workers in fact turned increasingly to programmes of limited reform and the trade unions grew increasingly indifferent to politics, his deductions were none the less of theoretical and practical value for the subsequent development of the working-class movement. These deductions, important not only for British workers but for the workers of other countries, were later developed in the programme of the First International.

A number of other articles collected in this volume are devoted to an analysis of the policies of the French Government. They reveal the Bonapartist regime as one of adventurism in foreign policy and demagogy, deception and repression at home. Marx and Engels show how the processes of corruption and decay, integral features of the Bonapartist regime, were also affecting its mainstay—the army. In the article “Reorganisation of the British War Administration.—The Austrian Summons.—Britain’s Economic Situation.—St. Arnaud” Marx denounces the moral degeneration of the French army command, using the example of War Minister Marshal St. Arnaud who carved out his career in the Foreign Legion at Algiers, the nucleus of which was formed by “notorious desperadoes, adventurers of broken fortune, deserters from all countries, the general offal of the European armies” (p. 232). Napoleon III himself, intoxicated by the theatrical illusion of his own greatness, appears before the reader in the articles of Marx and Engels as the “actual official apery of a great past” (p. 473), i.e., of Napoleon I.

Marx and Engels relentlessly attacked pro-Bonapartist feeling among the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats, both in emigration and in France itself, individual representatives of whom (Barbes, Kossuth, and some of the Polish émigrés) were inclined to believe Napoleon Ill’s demagogic protestations about the defence of the freedom and interests of the oppressed nationalities. In this connection Marx and Engels ridiculed Barbes’ belief in “Decembrist civilization” (p. 491). The chauvinist position adopted by Barbes during the Crimean War placed him outside the working-class movement and from then on he “ceased to be one of the revolutionary chiefs of France” (p. 491). In the article “The Sevastopol Hoax.—General News” Marx and Engels contrast Barbes with Auguste Blanqui whom they consider a true revolutionary.

A number of articles in the present volume are devoted to an analysis of the domestic and foreign policy of Prussia and Austria. Marx and Engels associated the participation of these countries in the Crimean War with the settlement of the problem of the revolutionary-democratic unification of Germany, with the possible collapse of the Prussian monarchy and the Austrian Empire, the formation by the enslaved peoples of independent states, and the democratic reorganisation of a number of European countries. They hoped that Prussia’s entry into the war against Tsarist Russia would serve as a stimulus for a new upsurge of the revolutionarydemocratic movement in which the decisive role would be played by the working class. From this point of view Marx and Engels denounce the policy of reactionary Prussian, and also Austrian ruling circles, for whom the main task was to ensure the inviolability of counter-revolutionary systems, maintain their rule in the captured territories, and enjoy “undisturbed possession of Posen, of Galicia, of Hungary, and of Italy” (p. 216).

Marx and Engels devoted considerable attention to Austria, for in the diplomatic intrigues around the conflict between Russia and Turkey it played the role of armed mediator and held “the post of honor and of advantage” (p. 255). Marx makes a detailed examination of Austria’s position, the state of its finances, and its military potential. He shows the internal instability of the Habsburg Empire. An analysis of the Austrian monarchy’s budget and the state of its finances in the article “Austrian Bankruptcy” leads Marx to the conclusion that “on the possession of Hungary and Lombardy depends not only the political but the economical existence of the Austrian Empire, and that with their loss the long-delayed bankruptcy of that state becomes inevitable” (p. 49). Marx and Engels believed that Austria was, on the one hand, interested in preventing the spread of the influence of Tsarist Russia in the Balkan Peninsula, but, on the other, thought it impossible to permit any serious weakening of Tsarism “because in that case the Hapsburgs would be left without a friend to help them out of the next revolutionary slough” (p. 255). This also determined Austria’s policy of being “treacherous to either of the belligerents or to both” for the sake of its own interests, the interests of the Habsburg dynasty (p. 256), while outwardly acting as a mediator (the Vienna conferences, the occupation of the Danubian Principalities by Austrian troops, etc.).

Marx and Engels assumed that the drawing of Austria into the war would mean the transfer of military operations to Europe, which would produce an upsurge in the national liberation movement of the oppressed peoples. “The populations most immediately interested in the issue of the eastern complications are, besides the Germans, the Hungarians and Italians” (p. 156), writes Marx in the article “Reshid Pasha’s Note,—An Italian Newspaper on the Eastern Question”.

Denunciation of the anti-democratic policies of the ruling classes in the European states is accompanied in Marx’s and Engels’ articles by sharp criticism of the government and bourgeois press which acted as the apologist and bearer of these policies. They castigate the press for its sensationalism, its incorrect and sometimes deliberately falsified information, its professional incompetence, and its “mean servility” (p. 308) to the powers-that-be.

Considerable space in the present volume is taken up by articles on Spain. A section of them is devoted to the events of the revolution of 1854. In addition, a series of articles printed in the New-York Daily Tribune in the form of leaders from September to December 1854 is published under the general heading “Revolutionary Spain”. This work, which deals with the history of the three preceding Spanish revolutions of the nineteenth century (1808-14, 1820-23, 1834-43), was published by the newspaper in part only; the last three articles in the series have not been discovered, but one can get an idea of their contents from the draft contained in the present volume (pp. 654-59). Marx’s articles on Spain, in particular, his work “Revolutionary Spain”, not only provide a key to the explanation of the essential features of the country’s history, but are also important for an understanding of the general problems of bourgeois revolutions.

On the basis of his study of the most important events in Spain’s earlier political and civic history: the period of the Reconquest, the creation of the united Spanish kingdom, the establishment of absolutism, the relations of the monarchy with the townspeople, the nobility and the Church, Marx reveals the causes, character and specific features of the Spanish bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century.

Marx came to the conclusion that modern Spanish history deserved a very different appreciation from what it had hitherto received (p. 286). He emphasises that in Spain absolutism did not play the role of a centralised state as it did in other large-scale European absolutist regimes. “The absolute monarchy in Spain,” he writes, “bearing but a superficial resemblance to the absolute monarchies of Europe in general, is rather to be ranged in a class with Asiatic forms of government. Spain, like Turkey, remained an agglomeration of mismanaged republics with a nominal sovereign at their head” (p. 396). Marx maintains that already in the reign of Charles V Spain “exhibited all those symptoms of inglorious and protracted putrefaction” (p. 395). Describing the pernicious influence of Spanish absolutist rule on the country’s history, he remarks that as a consequence of this in Spain “the aristocracy sunk into degradation without losing their worst privilege, the towns lost their medieval power without gaining modern importance” (p. 396).

However, the national liberation struggle of the Spanish people against Napoleon I showed that if the Spanish state was moribund, the popular masses, on the contrary, were possessed of revolutionary energy, a sense of national dignity and the ability to resist. Marx emphasises that the resistance to the Napoleonic invasion in 1808 “originated with the people, while the ‘better’ classes had quietly submitted to the foreign yoke” (p. 399). He devotes considerable space to the heroic guerrilla struggle of the Spanish people against the Napoleonic invasion and describes the various stages of this national liberation movement.

Marx reveals the inner contradictions of this Spanish national liberation movement; the combination of the spirit of political and social regeneration with the spirit of reaction, a feature of all the wars against Napoleonic France, was particularly characteristic of Spain (p. 403). National in character, the first bourgeois revolution in this country was aimed not only against the foreign yoke, but also against the putrescent regime of the Spanish Bourbons. In this respect its aim was achieved on a national scale. At the same time the national liberation struggle took on superstitious and fanatical forms and was exploited by reactionary ruling circles in order to return Ferdinand VII to the throne and restore the Inquisition. Marx notes the same phenomenon in the third revolution and the Carlist War, when the struggle between capitalism, which was establishing itself, and feudalism, which had become obsolete—the struggle of two social systems—assumed the form of a struggle of opposing dynastic interests.

Marx sees the root of this contradictory phenomenon in the backwardness of the popular masses, above all the peasantry, and in the weakness of the national bourgeoisie, the interests of which, due to lack of development in industry and the home market and to agricultural backwardness and decline, were linked with the interests of the ruling circles, the bureaucracy, and the preservation of the colonial empire. Marx describes the limitations and weakness of the Spanish bourgeoisie most vividly in his analysis of the Constitution of 1812, in which radical demands were combined with sombre vestiges of the age of clerical domination. He draws attention to the fact that “it was almost the chief principle of that Constitution not to abandon any of the colonies belonging to Spain” (p. 369).

Marx’s study of the Spanish revolutions enabled him to reveal a number of features characteristic of bourgeois revolutions, particularly in countries with poorly developed capitalism and a large number of feudal vestiges. He showed the role of the popular masses as the driving force of these revolutions, but at the same time wrote also of their prejudices and ignorance, their political limitations, their belief in “a sudden disappearance of their social sufferings from mere change of Government” (p. 437).

Marx emphasised that in a country with a low level of socio-economic development, the political immaturity of the masses and the weakness of the national bourgeoisie can lead to a situation in which the army becomes the spokesman of national interests and the instrument of insurrection. However, this exceptional position of the army, in cases when it is divorced from the popular masses, contains the danger of its becoming a Pretorian Guard—an instrument in the hands of ambitious generals. Marx’s analysis of all four Spanish revolutions bears out this truth.

The events of 1854 in Spain enabled Marx to conclude that pressure must be exerted on the military by the revolutionary masses to make them adhere to a more radical programme. He writes: “It is a fact, then, that the military insurrection has obtained the support of a popular insurrection only by submitting to the conditions of the latter” (p. 310).

In the fighting at the barricades in 1854 in Madrid and other Spanish towns Marx and Engels recognised a revival of this form of struggle against government troops, which had seemed to have lost its importance after the defeats of 1848. “That prejudice has fallen,” we read in the article “That Bore of a War”. “We have again seen victorious, unassailable barricades” (p. 338).

Marx repeatedly returns to the idea of the objective prerequisites for a bourgeois-democratic revolution and the impossibility of importing it. At the basis of a bourgeois-democratic revolution lie deep-seated social, economic and political causes, the struggle between the obsolete feudal system and elements of emergent and growing capitalism. A state of “revolutionary crises” (p. 369) has to develop for the success of a revolution in any given country. Marx illustrates this tenet with the example of the second revolution in Spain. It began with an armed uprising by Rafael Riego’s detachment of 1,500 men in January 1820. In March Riego was forced to disband the remnants of the detachment, but by then the movement had already enveloped the whole country, and on March 9 Ferdinand VII was compelled to swear in the Constitution. “Notwithstanding its [the military insurrection’s] failure,” writes Marx, “the revolution proved victorious” (p. 444).

For a revolution to be successful the most decisive action is required from its leaders. “At the outset,” writes Marx of the events of 1808, “the Spanish revolution failed by its endeavor to remain legitimate and respectable” (p. 409). Marx stresses the importance of a strong central revolutionary authority, capable of carrying out profound social and political transformations at home, abolishing existing feudal institutions, and renouncing all the debts and financial obligations of the former government. In the surviving preliminary draft from the series of articles “Revolutionary Spain”, Marx writes that the alliance of the peasantry with the urban revolutionary masses is of paramount importance (pp. 657, 658). Speaking of the causes of the defeat of the second revolution, Marx emphasises that, by failing to link the interests of the peasantry with the interests of the urban population, the revolutionary party alienated the peasant masses from the revolution, thereby narrowing the social basis of the movement.

Marx demonstrates the negative role of the liberal leaders of the revolution, their limitations, their close link with the ruling circles, their fear of a radical solution of cardinal problems. As can be seen from Marx’s letter of October 10, 1854 to Engels, the description which Marx gave of such Spanish leaders as Espartero and O’Donnell was used by him in his broad generalisations, and criticism not only of the Spanish liberals, but also of the leaders in the War of Independence of the North American colonies and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century (Washington, Lafayette, and others) (present edition, Vol. 39).

In his articles on the fourth bourgeois revolution in Spain, the bulk of which are published in this volume (the rest, written at a later date, are in Volume 15 of the present edition), Marx notes the characteristic features of this revolution which distinguish it sharply from the preceding ones. They stem from the development of modern industry in Spain, the formation of a working class, and the greater activity of the peasant masses. Marx notes the participation of the Spanish proletariat in the revolutionary fighting of 1854-56. Although in this revolution the working class did not advance its own social and political programme and was close to the radical wing of the bourgeoisie, its appearance in the political arena had a considerable influence on the revolution, depriving it, unlike preceding ones, of a dynastic and military character. The first three revolutions gave Marx grounds for maintaining that “the social question in the modern sense of the word has no foundation in... Spain” (p. 376). After the experience of the events of 1854-56 he came to the conclusion that “the next European revolution will find Spain matured for co-operation with it” (present edition, Vol. 15). This forecast of Marx’s was proved correct by the events of the fifth bourgeois revolution in Spain of 1868-74. The events of 1854-56 were also one of the first signs of the instability of the reaction which had reigned on the European continent since the defeat of the revolution of 1848-49, and heralded new revolutionary upheavals.

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The present volume contains 94 works in all, of which about 40 have not been reproduced in English after their initial publication in the New-York Tribune; 16 articles are published in English for the first time (14 articles from the Neue Oder-Zeitung and two articles by Engels “The Fortress of Kronstadt” and “The Russian Army”, which were not published during his lifetime). The manuscripts contained in the section “From the Preparatory Materials” are published in full in English for the first time.

In the course of work on the present volume the authorship of the articles “The European War”, “The Turkish War” and “News from the European Contest” was established for the first time.

Throughout, authorship and dating of the articles have been

carefully checked on the basis of Marx’s Notebook in which their despatch to New York was recorded, of Marx’s and Engels’ correspondence with each other and with third persons, of the sources which they used in writing articles, as well as of other materials. Any changes are indicated in notes to the respective works.

In the case of articles which were published both in the New-York Daily Tribune and The People's Paper, and in the New-York Daily Tribune and the Neue Oder-Zeitung all discrepancies of substance are indicated in footnotes.

As is known from letters of Marx and Engels, the editors of the New-York Daily Tribune frequently treated the text of their articles in an arbitrary fashion, particularly those which were printed as leaders. This applies in particular to Engels’ military reviews. In the present volume all known cases of editorial interference with the texts of Marx and Engels are indicated in the notes.

In studying the historical material quoted in Marx’s and Engels’ articles, it must be borne in mind that they made use of newspaper information which in a number of cases proved to be inaccurate.

In texts written in English proper names and geographical names have been reproduced on the basis of the nineteenthcentury reference books; obvious misprints and errors in figures, dates, etc., discovered in the preparation of the present volume have been silently corrected.

In cases where an article has no title, the editors have provided one which is given in square brackets.

The volume was compiled, the text prepared and the preface and notes written by Valentina Smirnova and edited by Lev Churbanov (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). All the indexes were prepared by Galina Voitenkova; the index of periodicals and the glossary of geographical names with the help of Vasily Kuznetsov and Yuri Vasin respectively (Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU). The translations were made by Susanne Flatauer and Barrie Selman and edited by Richard Abraham and Frida Knight (Lawrence and Wishart) and Salo Ryazanskaya, Natalia Karmanova and Margarita Lopukhina (Progress Publishers) and Norire Ter-Akopyan, scientific editor (USSR Academy of Sciences).

The volume was prepared for the press by the editors Natalia Karmanova, Margarita Lopukhina, Mzia Pitskhelauri and the assistant editor Natalia Belskaya (Progress Publishers).