In January, 1855, Karl and Jenny Marx, their daughters,
Jenny and Laura, and their son, Edgar, were living in two rooms at 28 Dean St.
Soho Square, London. In 1851, a third daughter had been born, but only lived
for one year. But in January, 1855, a fourth daughter, who they named Eleanor,
was born. In March, however, much to Karl and Jenny Marx's distress, the nine
year old Edgar died. Nevertheless, the arrival of Eleanor was a great joy to
them. "Tussy", as she was later called, was soon the "idolised
darling of the whole house". And of her, Jenny Marx wrote in a letter to
Joseph Weydemeyer in America, on the 11th of March, 1861:
"The child was born when our poor little Edgar died,
and all the love and tenderness we bore him was transferred to his little
sister, and the older girls looked after her and nursed her with almost
motherly care. But then it would really be difficult to find a more lovable
child, as pretty as a picture and sweet tempered...the child has learned
German, and speaks it with remarkable accuracy and grammatical precision, and,
naturally, she has learned English as a matter of course. The child is Karl's
favourite, and her laughter and her merry chatter dispel any of his
worries".
Karl Marx was a great lover of children. He was no
authoritarian. The girls treated him more as a playmate than a father; and they
called him "the Moor", a nickname given to him on account of his
jet-black hair and dark complexion. "Children must educate their
parents", he would say. And during this period he remained completely
aloof from all political activities, and concentrated on his studies and
journalism.
Marx would take his three daughters, Jenny, Laura, and young
Eleanor, for outings into the country on Sundays; their favourite destination
being Hampstead Heath, with a magnificent view of London, and the hills and
valleys surrounding the city, from Jack Straw's Castle.
At home, Marx would read to Eleanor the stories of Bluebeard
or Rumpelstilzchen by the brothers Grimm. And he would recount his version of
the life of Jesus, in which he depicted Jesus as a poor carpenter's son who had
been unjustly executed by the rich and powerful. In 1856, the Marx family moved
to Grafton Terrace, Haverstock Hill, near Hampstead Heath.
When Eleanor was sixteen, a French radical, Prosper Olivier
Lissagaray, who later wrote a history of the Paris Commune of 1871, in whose
ranks he fought, fell in love with her, courted her, and proposed marriage.
Eleanor seems to have been favourably inclined towards Lissagaray; but Karl was
doubtful about his reliability, despite Eleanor's mother, Jenny, approved the
match, and in the end, after much hesitation, nothing came of it. Eleanor was
obliged to remain at home. As she got older, she became her father's secretary,
and conducted much of Marx's correspondence with the International Workingmen's
Association. Eleanor Marx loved to recite poetry and to act, and her father
encouraged her to take dramatic lessons. In 1875, the family moved again, to
Maitland Park Road, in the same area.
In autumn of 1878, Marx's wife Jenny, became dangerously
ill. She was suffering from incurable cancer. In June 1881, Karl went down with
a violent attack of pleurisy, complicated with bronchitis and pneumonia.
Eleanor nursed them both. She wrote:
"Mother lay in the big front room and the Moor lay in
the little room next to it. The two who had grown used to each other, whose
lives had completely intertwined, could no longer be in the same room together.
The Moor got over his illness once again. I shall never forget the morning when
he felt himself strong enough to get up and go into my mother's room. It was as
though they were young again together - she a loving girl, and he an ardent
youth starting out together through life, and not an old man shattered by
ill-health and a dying old lady taking leave of each other for ever"
And on the 2nd of December, 1881, Karl Marx's wife, Jenny
died. There was no ceremony at her funeral, although Frederick Engels spoke at
the graveside.
In June, 1881, a small book, England for All, was published.
It was written by Henry Myer Hyndman, who claimed it to represent the programme
of an organisation called the Democratic Federation, which he had just formed.
This annoyed Marx, as much of the book consisted of English translations of
extracts from Marx's Capital, together with a few summaries of Marx's ideas;
but Hyndman mentioned neither Capital or Marx, and merely commented at the
conclusion of the Preface that he was indebted "to the work of a great
thinker" for much of the material. Marx broke off all relations with
Hyndman.
Following his wife's death, Karl Marx's health again
deteriorated; his daughter, Jenny also died on the 11th of January, 1883, and
in the afternoon of the 14th of March, whilst sitting in his easy chair, Karl
Marx fell asleep for the last time. As with his wife, there was no ceremony at
the funeral, but again Engels spoke at the graveside. Laura had married Paul
Lafargue in 1867.
Eleanor Marx was now alone. She, therefore, soon became more
socially and politically active. Shortly after the death of her father, Eleanor
met Beatrice Potter (later to become Mrs Sidney Webb) who was involved in
charity work and freethinking. In 1883, W.G. Foot, the editor of the The
Freethinker, was jailed for blasphemy. Eleanor was, in the words of Potter,
"very wrath". It was useless arguing with her, she noted in her
diary:
"She refused to recognise the beauty of the Christian
religion. She thought that Christ if he had ever existed, was a weak-headed
individual, with a good deal of sweetness of character, but lacking in
heroism...The aim of socialists was to make people disregard the mythical next
world and live for this world, and insist on having what will make it pleasant
for them."
Potter added that Eleanor Marx "lives alone, and is
much connected with the Bradlaugh set". Charles Bradlaugh, although not a
socialist, was a well-known radical, republican and freethinker. But within a
year of Karl Marx's death, Eleanor had entered into a "free association",
or liaison, with one of this "set", Dr. Edward Aveling, a physician
and, at the time, a teacher of science, who with Bradlaugh and Annie Beasant,
was a leading secularist. Eleanor had by then a secretarial job in "a better
class boarding-school"; but when she openly announced the situation, they
said that they regretted to have to sack her. "I need work much", she
informed Havelock Ellis, "but find it difficult to get. 'Respectable'
people won't employ me"
A number of Eleanor's friends tried to discourage her
interest in Edward Aveling, but without success. But following their
association, Aveling became active in the emerging socialist and
social-democratic movement, and, in fits and starts, became a lecturer and
writer, and later on a translator of some of Karl Marx's writings. But
according to Edmund Wilson there was something odd about Aveling:
"...he was extremely undependable about money::he not
only skipped out of hotels without paying the bills, but he borrowed money from
his friends right and left, and even when he knew they had little, without ever
paying it back; and he did not hesitate to use for his own purposes the funds
which had been given to the cause" (To the Finland Station)
At one time, Aveling tried being an actor; he wrote several
one-act plays, in which he and Eleanor acted. He also had luxurious tastes
Eleanor Marx joined the Democratic Federation in 1883, as
did William Morris who hoped that it would become a socialist organisation. And
in August, 1884, at its conference, the Democratic Federation became the
Social-Democratic Federation. Its "ultimate" objective was:
"The establishment of a free condition of society based
on the principle of political equality with equal social rights for all and the
complete emancipation of labour"
To this ultimate objective, the Social-Democratic Federation
added a number of immediate demands which it called "palliatives";
these included the abolition of a standing army, free compulsory, secular
education, and the means of production, distribution and exchange to be treated
as collective or common property. But neither the SDF's immediate or ultimate
objective included the abolition of the wages system as proposed by Karl Marx
as early as 1865.
Edward Aveling had also applied for membership of the
[Social-]Democratic Federation; and, although the Executive Council, and
Hyndman, did not want him in the organisation, they deferred to pressure by
Eleanor and a number of her French and German friends, who wrote letters to the
Council on Aveling's behalf, and he was admitted. They, together with William
Morris, Robert Banner, E Belfort Bax, and a number of other members of the
Council, soon came into conflict with the autocratic leader, Hyndman, whom
Frederick Engels called an "extreme chauvinist"
The break with Hyndman, and the Social-Democratic
Federation, came at a stormy meeting on the 27th of December, 1884, at which Morris
read out a statement which, in part, read:
"...We believe that to hold out as baits hopes of
amelioration of the condition of the workers, to be rung out of the necessities
of the rival factions of our privileged rulers, is delusive and mischievous.
For carrying out our aim of education and organisation no over-shadowing and
indispensable leader is required, but only a band of instructed men, each of
whom can learn learn to fulfil, as occasion requires it, the simple functions
of the leader of a party of principle.
We say that on the other hand there has been in the ranks of
the Social-Democratic Federation a tendency to political opportunism, which if
developed would have involved us in alliances, however temporary, with one or
other of the political factions, and would have weakened our propagandist force
by driving us into electioneering, and possibly would have deprived us of the
due services of some of our most energetic men, by sending them to our sham
parliament, there to become either nonentities, or perhaps our masters, and it
may be our betrayers. We say also that among those who favoured these views of
political adventure, there was a tendency towards National assertion, the
persistent foe of socialism; and it is easy to see how dangerous this might
become in times like the present.
Furthermore, these views have led, as they were sure to
lead, to attempts at arbitrary rule inside the Federation; for such a policy as
above demands a skillful and shifty leader, to whom all persons and opinions
must be subordinated, and who must be supported (if necessary) at the expense
of fairness and fraternal openness...
....our view of duty to the cause of socialism forbids us to
cease spreading its principles or to work as mere individuals. We have,
therefore, set on foot an independent organisation, the Socialist League, with
no intention of acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation, but determined
to spread the principles of socialism by the only means we deem
effectual."
The first two signatories to the statement were those of
Edward Aveling and Eleanor Marx.
The Socialist League was formally founded on the 30th of
December, 1884. Following the "To Socialists" statement, partly
quoted above, "The Manifesto of the Socialist League", which as
largely written by William Morris, was published in The Commonweal, which as
edited by Morris with Aveling as sub-editor. The Manifesto set out in some
detail the ideas of not just Morris, or Eleanor Marx, but the emerging, still
contradictory, socialist movement of the 1880s in Britain. Its main arguments
and conclusions are worth quoting.
It begins:
"We come before you as a body advocating Revolutionary
International Socialism; that is, we seek a change in the basis of Society - a
change which would destroy the distinctions of classes and nationalities.
As the civilised world is at present constituted there are
two classes in society: the one possessing wealth and the instruments of
production, the other producing wealth by means of those instruments, but only
by the leave and the use of the possessing class.
The two classes are necessarily in antagonism to one
another. The possessing class, or non-producers, can only live as a class on
the unpaid labour of the producers - the more unpaid labour they can wring out
of them, the richer they will be; therefore the producing class - the workers -
are driven to strive to better themselves at the expense of the possessing
class and the conflict between them is ceaseless."
And the Manifesto of the Socialist League continues:
"All the means of the production of wealth must be
declared treated as the common property of all...Nationalisation of land alone,
which many earnest and sincere persons are now preaching, would be useless so
long as labour was subject to the fleecing of surplus value under the
capitalist system.
No better solution would be State Socialism, by whatever
name it may be called, whose aim it would be to make concessions to the working
class while leaving the present system of capital and wages in operation: no
number of merely administrative changes, until the workers are in possession of
all political power, would make any real approach to Socialism
The Socialist League therefore aims at the realisation of
complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in
any one country without the help of the workers of all civilisation...
...To the realisation of this change the Socialist League
addresses itself with all earnestness. As a means thereto will do all in its
power towards the education of the people in the principles of this great
cause, and will strive to organise those who will accept this
education...."
At the same time as the Manifesto of the Socialist League
was written, a draft constitution was prepared, with encouragement by Engels,
by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling. It committed the Socialist League to
"striving to conquer political power by promoting the election of
Socialists to Local Governments, School Boards and other administrative
bodies". Their draft, however, was rejected by a majority of the membership
at the League's first annual conference in July, 1885
Despite the Socialist League's official policy of the
working class conquering "political power", and opposition to
"palliatives", or what socialists now refer to as
"reformism", the organisation soon demonstrated that, among its
active members, were anarchists whose main concern was the destruction of the
state, and reformers whose policies included the passing of the Eight Hour
Bill. Furthermore, the Socialist League was not entirely opposed to the idea of
nationalisation; and socialists such as William Morris and Eleanor Marx, and
the socialist movement generally, had not, as yet, completely rejected the
notion of leadership as a principle, although they were opposed to the
"arbitrary" leadership of people like Hyndman; this was partly
understandable at the time, and was due to the fact that many workers,
including active Trad Unionists, were still illiterate or , at least, only
semi-literate. Another weakness of such people as Eleanor Marx, William Morris
and Edward Aveling, was that although they had left the Social-Democratic
Federation, and formed the Socialist League, they had "no intention of
acting in hostility to the Social-Democratic Federation". It was twenty
years before socialists realised that a party organised solely for the
establishment of socialism would have to oppose other parties, including the
SDF.
The Socialist League appeared to get off to a good start;
indeed, just before its founding, Engels wrote to Karl Kautsky that Ernest
Belfort Baxand Edward Aveling had "the best intentions and learn a lot
too; but everything is confused and by themselves these literary people can do
nothing; they are both thoroughly sound, intelligent and sincere although
needing great assistance". However, by 1886, Engels noted that Bax was
strongly influenced by the anarchists. Indeed, Engels wrote in April, 1886,
that "...the anarchists are making rapid progress in the Socialist
League". The main arguments were between those who considered that the
working class, through a socialist organisation or party, could, or should, use
parliament as a means to emancipation, which included Eleanor Marx, and those
such as the anarchists, who did not. Morris attempted to reconcile both camps,
writing in 1887:
"I am trying to get the League to make peace with each
other, and hold together for another year. It is a tough job."
Edward Aveling had already resigned as sub-editor of Commonweal
early in 1886. He had been encouraged in this by Eleanor, who, by 1887, was
calling the League "a swindle". And Bax, whom Engels had accused of
being influenced by the anarchists, and who had succeeded Aveling as sub-editor
of Commonweal also resigned, and supported the policy of the League contesting
elections. William Morris was concerned with "making socialists", and
considered that the only time that socialists should enter parliament was when
a majority had become socialists and parliament should be abolished or
"broken up". Morris was also opposed to the Socialist League
advocating palliatives [he changed his mind some time later]
By the time of the 1888 conference, the various factions
within the League had grown even more irreconcilable. However, while the
various factions were tearing the League apart, working-class discontent was
growing. John Quail comments:
"In the Trade Unions a sharper, more militant note was
being struck. At the TUC conference the young Keir Hardie clashed with the
Liberal's lap-dog, Broadhurst. A determined attempt to get an Eight Hour
campaign under way in the Engineering Union and the TUC was made. John Burns
and Tom Mann were active in this campaign. New organisations in the provinces,
the Labour Federation on Tyneside and the Knights of Labour in the Midlands,
proved surprisingly effective and grew rapidly. New organisational attempts
also met with some success among the seamen. This new militancy was both spread
by socialists and proved responsive to them" (The Slow Burning Fuse)
Not surprisingly, this included Eleanor Marx.
In 1883, in his The Historical Basis of Socialism, H.M.
Hyndman explained his, and to some extent the SDF's, view of Trade Unions. He
wrote:
"The waste of the Trade Union funds on strikes or petty
benefits to the individuals who compose them is deplorable. Enormous sums have
been lost, directly, or indirectly, in consequence of strikes which, if applied
by Unionists to active propaganda against the existing system...would long
since have produced a serious effect."
However, others, including Eleanor Marx, held a view that
workers should resist the attempts by employers to depress their standards of
living and, here circumstances were favourable, improve them, yet at the same
time they should, through a political organisation or party, strive for the
abolition of the system, capitalism, which exploits them.
Nevertheless, a "new" unionism was beginning to
take over from the "old" unionism; the general from the craft. In
1888, the mainly female workers of the match factory of Bryant and May went on
strike, which was largely successful. The dock strike of 1889 was probably the
most dramatic conflict of th period, as it was a struggle of the most depressed
section of the working-class who, hitherto, were considered unorganisable. The
victory of the dockers was a victory for elementary Trade Union rights which
led to a vast movement among both skilled and unskilled workers. The Dock,
Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union was formed out of the strilke.
Even agricultural workers revived their unions.
During the dock strike of I889, writes Tom Mann,
"Offers of clerical help were numerous during the
strike. One of these volunteers who rendered valuable service was Eleanor Marx
Aveling, the daughter of Karl Marx, a most capable woman. Possessing a complete
masterly of economics, she was able alike in conversation and on a public
platform, to hold her own with the best. Furthermore, she was ever ready, as in
this case, to give close attention to detailed work, when by doing so she could
help the movement" (Tom Mann Memoirs)
The Gasworkers and General Labourers Union was the first of
the "new" unions for mainly unskilled workers. Formed in 1889, by
sheer eight of numbers, the union exchanged their twelve-hour shifts for an
eight hour day without a strike. Although, they subsequently lost it again, the
old hours were never resumed. Shortly after the union's founding, Eleanor Marx
became a member and, later, as a member of its first women's branch became a
member of its Executive. Will Thorne, the union's general secretary, had no
education as a child; and he recounted who Eleanor helped him to improve his
reading and writing, "which was very bad at the time"
In 1892, a Preamble To The Rules of the GGLU as drafted by
Eleanor Marx and probably Edward Aveling. It reads:
"Trade Unionism has done excellent work in the past,
and in it lies the hope of the workers for the future; that is the Trade
Unionism which clearly recognises that today there are only two classes, the
producing working-class and the possessing Master class. The interests of these
two classes are opposed to each other. The Masters have known this a long time;
the workers are beginning to see it, and so thay are forming Trade Unions to
protect themselves, and to get as much as they can of the product of their
labour. They are beginning to understand that their only hope lies in
themselves, and that from the masters as a class they can expect no hope; that
divided they fall, united they stand...the interests of all workers are one,
and a wrong done to any kind of labour is a wrong done to the whole of the
Working Class, and that victory or defeat of any portion of the Army of Labour
is a gain or a loss to whole Army, which by its organisation and Union is
marching steadily and irresistibly forward to its ultimate goal - the
Emancipation of the Working Class - that Emancipation can only be brought about
by the strenuous and united efforts of the Working Class itself. Workers Unite!”
Eleanor Marx was not, however, blind to the limitations of
trade unionism; nor to the necessity of workers studying the economics of the
system that exploited them. Far from it.
From the 16th of August, 1856, to the 1st of April, 1857,
Karl Marx wrote a series of articles, under the title of "Revelations of
Diplomatic History of the 18th Century" for the Free Press. These articles
were later edited by Eleanor Marx in a book, "Secret Diplomatic History of
the 18th Century" was published in 1899. Eleanor also published, under the
title of the "Eastern Question", a series of articles Marx wrote in
1855 for the New York Tribune.
More importantly, from the working-class viewpoint however,
was the debate that Karl Marx had with John Weston, a member of the General
Council of the First International, in 1865, in which he read a paper on wages,
profit, prices, value, labour and labour-power, and the production of surplus
value. At the time, Marx did not agree to its publication, as he had not
finished his studies on Capital. The manuscript was then forgotten until after
Engel's death in 1895, when it was discovered by Eleanor Marx, who edited it,
with assistance from Edward Aveling, under the title of Value, Price and Profit;
and it was published early in 1899.
It was in the ultimate paragraph, and well-known to Eleanor,
that Marx had expounded his view on Trade Unions, wherein he wrote:
"Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance
against the encroachments of capital. They fail from an injudicious use of
their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war
against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to
change it, instead of using their organised forces a a lever for the final
emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of
the wages system"
It was during the mid-1890s that Eleanor Marx, again with some
assistance from Aveling, conducted economics classes. These, or at least some
of them, were held at 337 Strand, London, whichat the time was the head office
of the SDF. (see, for example, Eleanor's letter to Mary Gray, a prominent
member of the SDF, dated, 25.9.96, regarding "classes"
http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1999/no-1139-july-1999/mary-gray-and-eleanor-marx
) Indeed, it was at such classes that Jack Fitzgerald and two or three other
younger members of the SDF, who later founded the Socialist Party, first
learned their Marxian economics in general and the theory of value in
particular
Frederick Engels was devoted to "Tussy", as he
called Eleanor, and often continued to entertain both Eleanor and Edward
Aveling when other guests told him that if Aveling came they would not. Edward
Bernstein seems to have found Aveling "very clever", and that he and
Eleanor were of "great service to the socialist movement"; but Olive
Schreiner wrote to Havelock Ellis, saying "I am beginning to have a horror
of Dr. Aveling. To say I dislike him doesn't express it at all. I have a fear
and horror of him when I am near. Every time I see him this shrinking grows
stronger...I love her, but he makes me so unhappy".
He also made Eleanor unhappy; but she did not desert him. In
1893, the "disreputable" Edward Aveling joined the newly-formed
Independent Labour Party. Engels was, by then, living in London. He would have
nothing to do with Hyndman, who he accused of taking money from the Tories.
However, Engels enjoyed his remaining years in London; and he entertained
freely. But by 1894, he was aware that he was suffering from cancer of the
oesophagus, and was unable to speak, but could still write. He died on the 5th
of August, 1895.
Aveling was unfaithful to Eleanor. Every so often he
disappeared. Towards the end of 1897, he disappeared again. On the 24th of
January, 1898, Eleanor Marx wrote to Mary Gray, in which she said:
"I would have been to see you, but as you know, Edward
has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble
seems better, it seems certain that he must soon - in a year or so - undergo a
most dangerous operation...the operation is so dangerous that there is the
utmost danger. But without the operation there seems no hope at all."
Eleanor nursed him following his operation until he was
well, although she was, by then, aware that he was in love with another woman.
Aveling informed her that, during the time that he has been away in Hastings,
he had - his first wife having in the meantime died - married a young actress.
On receiving the news, Eleanor Marx committed suicide by taking poison. Aveling
inherited the small amount of money that Engels had left Eleanor, and went to
live with his new wife. A few months later he too died - in an easy-chair, in
the sunshine, reading a book.
Just four years after the death of Eleanor Marx and Edward
Aveling, Jack Fitzgerald, who had been one of Eleanor's students at her
economic classes, together with a number of other London members of the SDF,
rebelled (they also had been, like Eleanor Marx holding economic classes!) and,
by early 1904, had either been expelled or had resigned; and, together with
around 150 others former members of the Social-Democratic Federation, founded
the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which opposed the advocacy of reforms or
palliatives. It adopted an object and declaration of principles, largely drawn
up by Fitzgerald. It was socialism - and nothing else!
