t>198 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYWe consider that the present organisation of Democratic Associations
contains too many heterogeneous elements to allow of an activity
profitable to the aims of the Cause. We are rather of the opinion that
a closer connexion between workers' associations is preferable as their
composition is homogeneous; therefore, as from today, we are resigning
from the Rhineland Committee of Democratic Associations."The reasons for Marx's decision were probably complex. The Demo-
cratic Association had debated at length the question whether it should
change its title to Democratic and Republican Association, but it had
rejected the proposals and had in consequence been bitterly attacked by
Anneke's Neue Kolnische Zeitung. Probably also the refounding of the
Communist League and criticism from within the Workers' Association
of his temporising attitude led Marx to break with the Democrats. The
content of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had been reaching towards this
'left turn' for some time: in March Wolff had started a series of articles
on the misery of the Silesian peasantry and on 5 April Marx began to
publish the lectures that he had given two years before to the German
Workers' Association in Brussels on Wage Labour and Capital.^80 The
articles were prefaced with a reference to the reproach addressed to the
paper 'from various quarters' of'not having presented the economic relations
which constitute the material foundation of the present class struggle
and national struggles'.^81 Three days before Marx left the Democratic
Association, the Cologne Workers' Association had invited all the Rhine-
land Workers' Associations to unite on a regional basis; on 16 April
the General Assembly decided to cease co-operating with Democratic
Associations in the Rhineland; and on 26 April the leaders of the Workers'
Association summoned a Congress of the Workers' Associations of the
Rhineland and Westphalia to meet in Cologne on 6 May. One of the tasks
of this Congress was to be to elect delegates to attend the all-German
Workers' Congress in Leipzig the following month. This Congress was
called by the Verbriiderung (Brotherhood), the only national workers'
organisation in Germany.^82 This change of tactics further weakened the
Cologne Workers' Association: a section of the members resigned and
sent a letter to Gottschalk asking him to return, saying that recent policy
changes only showed that 'the present leaders of the Association were
not, and are not, clear as to what they want'.^8 '
All this, however, happened in Marx's absence. For the past two months
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had been perpetually on the verge of bank-
ruptcy. Immediately on resigning from the Democratic Association Marx
went on a three-week trip through North-West Germany and Westphalia
to collect money for the newspaper and also, no doubt, in view of the
policies just adopted, to make contacts with workers' groups: he spent a