f158 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYby which the bourgeoisie drags it in its wake'.^136 And Marx went on to
issue a categorical statement - to be revised in his later works - that with
the increase in productive capacity and machinery wages would fall. In
February Marx started writing up these lectures for publication, but was
to be interrupted by his expulsion from Belgium.
Marx was also active in the Democratic Association to which, on his
return to Brussels, he read the reply from the Fraternal Democrats that
declared: 'Your representative, our friend and brother Marx, will tell you
with what enthusiasm we welcomed his appearance and the reading of
your address. All eyes shone with joy, all voices shouted a welcome and
all hands stretched out fraternally to your representative.... We accept
with the liveliest feelings of satisfaction the alliance you have offered
us.'^137 Marx helped to found a new branch in Ghent and was prominent
in the meeting to celebrate the New Year where Jenny was complimented
on her social capacity. It was on one of these occasions, too, that Jenny
Marx refused categorically to be introduced to Mary Burns, Engels's
mistress, whom Engels had had the temerity to bring with him. Stefan
Born recalled that 'in matters of honour and purity of morals the noble
lady was intransigent'.^138 He also introduced Bakunin and d'Ester into the
Democratic Association. Bakunin, however, would have nothing to do
with the League or even with the Workers' Association. In his view Marx
was 'spoiling the workers by making logic-choppers of them' and it was
'impossible to breathe freely"^39 in the company of Marx and Engels.
Nevertheless, Marx managed to get his ideas across to the Democratic
Association in a speech on Free Trade he delivered on 9 January (it was
along the same lines as one that he would have delivered at the September
economic Congress, had he been allowed to speak). He summed up his
thesis as follows: 'At the present time the system of protection is conserva-
tive, whereas the system of free trade is destructive: it dissolves old
nationalities and pushes to the extreme the antagonism between bour-
geoisie and proletariat. In a word, the system of commercial freedom
hastens the social revolution."'^10
Meanwhile Marx had been working on the Manifesto. The London
communists had supplied him with a sheaf of material that included at
least three separate tentative drafts for the Manifesto. Engels had com-
posed a draft incorporating the views of the first League Congress in
June 1847 and this draft was discussed in the various groups in late
summer and autumn.^141 Moses Hess had proposed an alternative version
which Engels ironically described as 'divinely improved'.^142 Hess's ver-
sion does not survive but two 'confessions of faith' that he composed
around this time^143 show differences from Marx and Engels both in ideas
(in that Hess believed in appealing to eternal principles to justify his