Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx (Penguin Classics)

Marx always wrote as a revolutionary and as a socialist, but not necessarily as a philosopher. This volume collects some of the more accessible journalism that he wrote for the New York Tribune from 1852-61. It is divided into sections that deal with British Imperialism in China and India, the aftermath of the Revolutions of 1848, British and French Politics and Economy, and the American Civil War. As a general rule he had two purposes in each of these articles. The first was to explain a facet of the European political scene to an American audience, and the second was to heap scorn and ridicule on the powers that be.There are at least three things that stand our about almost every one of these pieces. The first is the sheer vituperation involved. Marx heartily hated most of the people he was writing about, and he wanted his readers to hate them too. No doubt many of them deserved it. Politicians and financiers have always been rich targets for black comedy, but once the laughter has died away we are left with a fairly bleak picture of the world. It seems there are only two types of people on Marx's horizon - the rich, powerful, foolish and corrupt on the one hand, and the suffering, innocent, oppressed, and powerless on the other. It's not an especially attractive view of the world, either from an intellectual standpoint (things can't be that simple) or from a practical one (if the rich and powerful are all fools, why are they rich and powerful?)Another thing that stands out about these pieces is the author's erudition. It's clear that Marx was an immensely-learned commentator, and well-able to perceive the essential issues involved in complex political questions. Marx's articles on the causes of the American Civil War are particularly illustrative. They can be read in an hour or two, and explain the issues involved far more succinctly and accurately than many text books. The economic interpretation of history is an immensely powerful tool for interpreting complex events, and, at least to me, seems more or less self-evident. While Marx's particular system of class struggle, revolution, and economics has been shown to have been at best inadequate, and at worst total nonsense, it shouldn't require any particular strain of the intellect to understand that the prospect of making or losing money is a powerful motivation to virtually all political actors. Probably a more powerful motivation than religion, morality, freedom, "civilization," or any of the other fine phrases that have been used to cloak self-interest throughout the centuries. That's not to say that these concepts are completely meaningless - but the world would be a very different place if the great and powerful believed in them with half the conviction they show in asserting their financial interest. As a practical matter, justice and idealism usually only enter into official calculations when they can be combined with some financial or security interest. The lust of politicians for power at any cost, and through any means, has been an open secret since Machiavelli, but it remained for Marx to point out that the industrial revolution had brought financial interests to the forefront for the first time. The insight is as valid today as it was in the 1850's.The last thing that stands out about these pieces is the tone of moral indignation in which they are written. Marx amply and vividly illustrates the barbarism of European imperialism in Asia, the callous indifference of "civilized" Europeans to the massive scale of misery and want which surrounded them, the desperation of the poor, the cruel brutality of the police, and the hypocrisy and stupidity of the great and powerful. Disreali, Palmerston, and Napoleon III came in for particular and repeated abuse. Indeed, Marx was against pretty much all the governments of his day. The only one he had a kind word for was the Federal government of the United States, but that had more to do with its struggle against "the slavocracy" than any love of bourgeois republics as such. Rather, he saw the northern industrial economy as "historically progressive" in so much as it represented an advance as against the southern agrarian economy, and toward the inevitable future status of all industrial economies - i.e. communism.At least for me, the value of these pieces was the opportunity to listen to an eloquent exponent of 19th century radicalism as he explained his point of view on then-current events. It helped me to understand how he saw the world, and what kind of assumptions he made about it. When reading a book like this, it's hard to keep from one's mind the knowledge of how his own political philosophy turned out. It's important to remember, though - at least if one wants to give the author a fair hearing - that in the 1850's the Soviet Union hadn't happened yet. Marx couldn't have known the future, any more than you or I can. Certainly he couldn't have known that it would be used to perpetrate crimes far worse than those which he was writing about.What he was focused on wasn't the theoretical iniquities of the future, but rather the real and tangible crimes of his present. Perhaps he erred, as radicals often do, in focusing so much on removing the old regime that they fail to make adequate preparations for the new. As a general rule revolutions make things worse, rather than better - but again, at the time he wrote, that hadn't become clear yet. The great progress of his own time - that toward democracy and industrialization - had come about as a direct cause of revolution (i.e. the French Revolution.) It wasn't unreasonable to expect that the trend would continue into the future.In any case, the reader doesn't have to subscribe to Marx's weird eschatological notions of class struggle and the stateless society in order to appreciate these pieces. They capture an authentic voice from the past, and a very influential one at that. For people who really want to understand modern history, it's worth the trouble of giving him a fair hearing.

when i was in college, i read some of marx's political and economic essays, but the ones i enjoyed the most were the historical essays, e.g. "the eighteenth brumaire of louis bonaparte". my regret, however, was that there were very few of them. in this little volume, ledbetter and wheen (the author of the best short biography of marx) have collected the dispatches written in the 1850's and '60's for the new york tribune. these cover crucial topics of nineteenth century foreign affairs, including the opium war in china, the crimean war in the near east, british politics, the credit mobilier crisis in france, the mutiny against the raj in india, and the american civil war and the british cotton trade. what could be more important? while marx's english is awkward (he had used it for only a few years), the assiduous analysis and penetrating criticism is there for all to see and read. this book is a treasure that still educates us 150 years later.

I’ve read a lot of Marx over the years, but this book is a bit different because it reveals Marx in journalistic mode. It contains a selection of the articles he wrote between 1852 and 1862 for the New York Tribune, which then had a readership of over 200,000 – the highest figure in the world at the time, according to Ledbetter’s Introduction.The thing that really stands out in the articles is Marx’s hatred of injustice, exploitation, inequality, oppression and imperialism. And Marx can be (often amusingly) very sharp and cutting about the exploiters and those who try to defend them.One example is the article on the Duchess of Sutherland. In 1853 this “philanthropist” was President at a meeting of the “Stafford House Assembly of Ladies” at which slavery in America was condemned. Marx is absolutely scathing about the Duchess’s breathtaking hypocrisy. She was the person who had cleared 15,000 people from her vast estates in Scotland and replaced them with 29 large sheep farms, each one inhabited by just one family.Marx ends this article: “The enemy of British Wages-Slavery has a right to condemn Negro-Slavery; a Duchess of Sutherland, a Duke of Atholl, a Manchester Cotton Lord – never!”And here is an example of Marx’s cutting humour. This is part of his description of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert:“Prince Albert is…connected with most of the absolute and despotic Governments of the Continent. Raised to the rank of Prince-Consort…he has devoted his time partly to fattening pigs, to inventing ridiculous hats for the army, to planning model lodging houses of a peculiarly transparent and uncomfortable kind, to the Hyde Park Exhibition, and to amateur soldiery. He has been considered amiable and harmless, in point of intellect below the general average of human beings…”The tragedy is that Marx, who was so clearly totally opposed to tyranny, has become associated in many people’s minds with the tyranny of the regimes that have claimed to be “Marxist”: China today, the old USSR and its satellite states etc. These regimes actually have/had nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or genuine communism. Rather, they are/were exploitative and oppressive bureaucratic state capitalist systems.For Marx, socialism meant the “self-emancipation of the working class”, freedom and democracy. His model for a workers’ state was the (sadly short-lived) Paris Commune, where all officials were elected, subject to recall at any time, and paid the average worker’s wage. A workers’ state like that would be much more democratic than the “democracy” we have today, which is totally distorted by the power of the capitalist ruling class through its control of wealth, the economy and the media.If you want to read the comments of a great revolutionary on the world-wide events of his day, then I strongly recommend this book.

A great way to get introduced to Marx - meant for the general public, this collection of columns from the New York Herald Tribune are easy to read and we can see a great many parallels to what is going on in our world today with crisis in Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, and elsewhere.

I’ve read a lot of Marx over the years, but this book is a bit different because it reveals Marx in journalistic mode. It contains a selection of the articles he wrote between 1852 and 1862 for the New York Tribune, which then had a readership of over 200,000 – the highest figure in the world at the time, according to Ledbetter’s Introduction.The thing that really stands out in the articles is Marx’s hatred of injustice, exploitation, inequality, oppression and imperialism. And Marx can be (often amusingly) very sharp and cutting about the exploiters and those who try to defend them.One example is the article on the Duchess of Sutherland. In 1853 this “philanthropist” was President at a meeting of the “Stafford House Assembly of Ladies” at which slavery in America was condemned. Marx is absolutely scathing about the Duchess’s breathtaking hypocrisy. She was the person who had cleared 15,000 people from her vast estates in Scotland and replaced them with 29 large sheep farms, each one inhabited by just one family.Marx ends this article: “The enemy of British Wages-Slavery has a right to condemn Negro-Slavery; a Duchess of Sutherland, a Duke of Atholl, a Manchester Cotton Lord – never!”And here is an example of Marx’s cutting humour. This is part of his description of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert:“Prince Albert is…connected with most of the absolute and despotic Governments of the Continent. Raised to the rank of Prince-Consort…he has devoted his time partly to fattening pigs, to inventing ridiculous hats for the army, to planning model lodging houses of a peculiarly transparent and uncomfortable kind, to the Hyde Park Exhibition, and to amateur soldiery. He has been considered amiable and harmless, in point of intellect below the general average of human beings…”The tragedy is that Marx, who was so clearly totally opposed to tyranny, has become associated in many people’s minds with the tyranny of the regimes that have claimed to be “Marxist”: China today, the old USSR and its satellite states etc. These regimes actually have/had nothing in common with Marxism, socialism or genuine communism. Rather, they are/were exploitative and oppressive bureaucratic state capitalist systems.For Marx, socialism meant the “self-emancipation of the working class”, freedom and democracy. His model for a workers’ state was the (sadly short-lived) Paris Commune, where all officials were elected, subject to recall at any time, and paid the average worker’s wage. A workers’ state like that would be much more democratic than the “democracy” we have today, which is totally distorted by the power of the capitalist ruling class through its control of wealth, the economy and the media.If you want to read the comments of a great revolutionary on the world-wide events of his day, then I strongly recommend this book.

Karl Marx was an exceptional journalist; his writings for the New York Tribune offer sharp and profound insight, wit, and a wonderful literary style. His penetrating analyses of, and far-seeing prognosis for, British rule in India, and his assessment of the American Civil War, and reactions to it, are the product of a great intellectual and revolutionary. They show that high-quality journalism can be done, in exceptional cases, without witnessing.

Karl Marx the journalist shows us a mind engaged with his time without needing to burden us with just political theory.