Karl Marx: A Biography

4 ° TRIER, BONN AND BERLIN 41

restless Jewish penetration pushed every proposition of Young Hegelian

doctrine to its final conclusion and was already then, by his concentrated

study of economics, preparing his conversion to communism. Under

Marx's leadership the young newspaper soon began to speak very

recklessly...^172

In his first task as editor, however, Marx showed himself very circum-

spect: he was faced with accusations of communism brought against the

Rheinische Zeitung by the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, probably inspired

by Hoeffken, one-time editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, who had already

attacked the Rheinische Zeitung in March for printing an article by Bruno

Bauer. The basis for the accusation was that in September the Rheinische

Zeitung had reviewed two articles on housing and communist forms of

government, and that in October it had reported a conference at Stras-

bourg where followers of Fourier had put forward their ideas. All these

items had been written by Hess. In his reply, Marx criticised the Augsburg

paper for trying to neglect what was an important issue, but denied that

the Rheinische Zeintung had any sympathy with communism:

The Rheinische Zeitung, which cannot even concede theoretical reality

to communistic ideas in their present form, and can even less wish or

consider possible their practical realisation, will submit these ideas to

thorough criticism. If the Augsburger wanted and could achieve more

than slick phrases, the Augsburger would see that writings such as those

by Leroux, Considerant, and above all Proudhon's penetrating work,

can be criticised only after long and deep study, not through superficial

and passing notions.^173

But these notions had to be taken seriously, for ideas were very powerful:

Because of this disagreement, we have to take such theoretical works

all the more seriously. We are firmly convinced that it is not the

practical effort but rather the theoretical explication of communist ideas

which is the real danger. Dangerous practical attempts, even those on

a large scale, can be answered with cannon, but ideas won by our

intelligence, embodied in our outlook, and forged in our conscience,

are chains from which we cannot tear ourselves away without breaking

our hearts; they are demons we can overcome only by submitting to

them.^174

This reply reflected the general policy of the Rheinische Zeitung, which
certainly treated poverty as a social and not merely a political question,
but which did not see the proletariat as a new social class but only as the
innocent victim of bad economic organisation.
It was not among the German working classes that socialist ideas either
originated or initially took root. Germany was only just beginning to