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E. S. Beesly and Karl Marx
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
Extract
Beesly was not only friendly with Marx, but was well acquainted with his circle. He knew Lafargue, he got to know Engels, and there were mutual acquaintances, such as Eugene Oswald. Among workmen, he was not only the friend of Odger, Applegarth and Lucraft, but was on close terms with such working-class confidants of Marx as Jung and Eccarius, and to a lesser extent with Dupont. In the sixties he was a familiar figure, not only in the offices of the Carpenters and Joiners, the London Trades Council or the Bee-Hive, but was also at home in the “Golden Ball” where the most radical of London's workmen talked with continental revolutionaries over a clay pipe and a pot of beer. Here one could get the flavour of European proletarian politics: that other “World of Labour” in whose ideals Beesly was as deeply interested as he was in those of English trades unionism. Indeed, for many years he expressed his desire for the amalgamation of trade unionism – with its implicit recognition of the priority of social questions—, and proletarian republicanism – with its generous enthusiasm and its larger view.
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References
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page 235 note 1 This is not the place for a detailed discussion of Professor Popper's critique of Marx' “historicism,” “Scientism,” “Holism” etc. ( Popper, K.R., The Open Society and Its Enemies [two volumes], London 1945Google Scholar, and The Poverty of Historicism, London 1957). Popper encourages a rather sweeping assimilation of Marx' ideas to those of Comte and others. This line of argument has been taken up and popularised by several other distinguished authorities. (See, for example, Acton, H.B., The Illusion of the Epoch, London 1956Google Scholar; Berlin, I., Historical Inevitability, being the Auguste Comte Memorial Trust Lecture, No 1, London 1954Google Scholar; Von Hayek, E.A., The Counter-Revolution of Science, Illinois, 1952Google Scholar). The fact of Beesly's collaboration with Marx lends some indirect support to the contention made in all these works that Positivism and Marxism belong to the same genus. It has, of course, no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsity of Professor Popper's conclusions respecting the falacious and obnoxious character of Marx' method. Nor does it justify the practice, favoured by some of these writers, of building up selections from Hegel, Comte, Marx, Mill, and others, into a composite body of doctrine, an “Aunt Sally,” which can be knocked down to the accompaniment of loud announcements concerning the “refutation” of Marx.
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“It is the invention of the religious order, as the determining factor in the life of a great nation, that is the magnet which attracts me to Russia. Practically, that religion is Comteism – the religion of Humanity. Auguste Comte comes to his own. Whether he would recognise this strange resurrection of his idea I very much doubt.” ( Cole, M. [Editor], Beatrice Webb Diaries, 1924–1932, London 1956, p. 299).Google Scholar
The allegedly religious aspect of Marxism, whether considered as a body of ideas or an organized movement, has been widely canvassed. Perhaps the best short statement of the argument is to be found in Reinhold Niebuhr's “Christian Politics and Communist Religion” being Chapter III of Part III of Christianity and the Social Revolution, edited by John Lewis, London 1937. Among the other more significant contributions to this topic see Michels, R., Political Parties; a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Illinois 1949Google Scholar; Russell, B., The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, London 1920Google Scholar; Keynes, J. M., What is the Communist Faith?, being Part One of A Short View of Russia, reprinted in: Essays in Persuasion, London 1931, pp. 297–305Google Scholar. Hitherto there has been no attempt to inform this discussion by enquiring into the relationship between Marxism and the rise, in the early nineteenth century, of the first secular religions in the West. It is proposed to make this the subject of a future article.
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