Marx: A (very) selective time-line
1818 – 1835: Trier.
Childhood and early youth.
Legacies of French Revolution, Napoleonic invasion, monarchical restoration – Trier
marked by liberal politics.
Marx exposed to Enlightenment, radical and Romantic values and attitudes through the
influence of family, friends and acquaintances.
1835-1836: University of Bonn.
Heavy drinking, gambling debts, duels, etc. Father intervenes to move him to Berlin.
1836-1842: University of Berlin.
Develops and cultivates a wide range of intellectual interests: jurisprudence, history, and
especially philosophy.
Involved in Left-Hegelian circles and debates.
1842-1849: Cologne, Paris, Brussels, Paris, Cologne, Paris.
Years marked by perpetual political exile and flight: Paris acts as a magnet because of its
role as epicentre of radical European politics.
Marx tries to earn a living through journalism, but is hounded by state censors.
Beginning of lifelong friendship and intellectual partnership with Friedrich Engels.
Develops a critique of (while remaining deeply indebted to) the thought of Hegel and the
philosophical tradition of German Idealism.
Marries Jenny von Westphalen.
Central political event of these years: European revolutions of 1848.
Marx engaged in political agitation; begins to develop his lifelong encounter with, and
critique of, political economy.
1849-1883: London.
German Idealism: The 'Big Four':
1. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
2. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814)
3. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854)
4. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
The French bourgeoisie balked at the domination of the working
proletariat; it has brought the lumpenproletariat to domination, with
the chief of the Society of December 10 at the head. The bourgeoisie
kept France in breathless fear of the future terrors of red anarchy;
Bonaparte discounted this future for it when, on December 4, he
had the eminent bourgeois of the Boulevard Montmartre and the
Boulevard des Italiens shot down at their windows by the
liquor-inspired army of order. It apotheosised the sword; the sword
rules it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; its own press has been
destroyed. It placed popular meetings under police supervision; its
salons are under the supervision of the police. It disbanded the
democratic National Guards; its own National Guard is disbanded.
It imposed a state of siege; a state of siege is imposed upon it […] It
transported people without trial; it is being transported without
trial. It repressed every stirring in society by means of the state
power; every stirring in its society is being suppressed by means of
the state power. Out of enthusiasm for its purse, it rebelled against
its own politicians and men of letters; its purse is being plundered
now that its mouth has been gagged and its pen broken.
MARXIST LEGACIES:
1. Eric Hobsbawm:- distinction between 'vulgar-Marxism' and Marx's own thought
- vulgar-Marxism, however, the form in which Marx's thought affected historical thinking
in the twentieth century.
- ambiguities of a simplified, deterministic Marxism: on the one hand it led to mechanical
notions of historical development; on the other, it 'represented concentrated charges of
intellectual explosive, designed to blow up crucial parts of the fortifications of traditional
history'
('Karl Marx's Contribution to Historiography', 1968)
2. Walter Benjamin: history as the redemption of unrealized, radical possibilities
from the past.
3. Raphael Samuel: history as the 'playground of the Communist unconscious'.
4. Historians initially associated with CPGB Historians' Group:
- Rodney Hilton: studies of medieval peasant revolts.
- A.L. Morton and Christopher Hill: studies of radical and utopian movements and
ideologies during the English Revolution and Civil War (1640-1660): Levellers (ideologues
of political democracy); Diggers (social equality; common ownership); Ranters (sexual
freedom)
- E.J. Hobsbawm: studies of social banditry, guerrillas, agrarian rebels during Industrial
Revolution.
- E.P. Thompson: democratic, 'humanist' Marxism.