I 42 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYthis lengthy circular condemned Kriege's ideas as 'not communism': they
were 'childish and pompous' an 'imaginary and sentimental exaltation'
that 'compromised the communist movement in America and demoralised
the workers'.^69 There followed sections in which derision was poured on
Kriege's metaphysical and religious phraseology, his use of the word 'love'
thirty-five times in a single article, and his naive scheme of dividing up
the soil of America equally between all citizens which aimed at 'turning
all men into owners of private property'.^70 Weitling was the only member
of the Correspondence Committee who voted against the circular; he left
Brussels immediately for Luxembourg and then some months later moved
to New York on Kriege's invitation. The circular aroused a considerable
volume of protest. Hess wrote to Marx about Weitling: 'You have made
him quite crazy and don't be surprised. I want to have nothing more to
do with the whole business; it's enough to make one sick.'^71 And a week
later he wrote that he himself wished 'to have nothing more to do with
your party'.^72 The London communists also reacted strongly against the
circular.
This attack on Kriege was apparently only one of many such pam-
phlets, for Marx wrote later:
We published at the same time a series of pamphlets, pardy printed,
partly lithographed, in which we subjected to a merciless criticism
the mixture of French-English socialism or communism and German
philosophy, which at the time constituted the secret doctrine of the
League. We established in its place the scientific understanding of
the economic structure of bourgeois society as the only tenable theoreti-
cal foundation. We also explained in popular form that our task was not
the fulfilment of some Utopian system but the conscious participation
in the historical process of social revolution that was taking place before
our eyes.^7 '
At the same time Marx tried to forge links with Paris where the most
influential socialist was Proudhon. His position as a French thinker was
peculiar in that he shared the atheistic approach to communism of the
German Young Hegelians and rejected the patriotic Jacobinism that made
Paris so impenetrable to German ideas. In early May 1846 Marx wrote
to Proudhon describing the aims of the Correspondence Committee and
inviting him to act as its Paris correspondent 'since as far as France is
concerned we can find no better correspondent than yourselP.^74 In a
postscript Marx warned Proudhon against Grtin, whom he described as
'a charlatan ... who misuses his acquaintances'. Gigot and Engels also
added postscripts saying how pleased they would be if Proudhon could
accept the invitation. Proudhon's reply cannot have pleased Marx. He was
willing to participate in Marx's project, but he had several reservations: