KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYsuspended for several months. A few were published at the end of 1861
and the beginning of 1862 , but in March 1862 Dana wrote to Marx that
the Civil War had come to occupy all the space in the newspaper and
asked him to send no more articles. In all the Tribune published 487
articles from Marx, 350 written by him, 125 written by Engels (mostly
on military matters) and twelve written in collaboration.
Marx's articles were not merely a means of earning his living: in spite
of his low opinion of his own work, he consistendy produced highly
talented pieces of journalism and was, in the words of the Tribune's
editor, 'not only one of the most highly valued, but one of the best-paid
contributors attached to the journal'.^204 Marx was far removed from the
conventional sources of news and so made much more use of official
reports, statistics, and so on, than the majority of journalists. In addition
he managed to tie a large number of his articles in with his 'serious'
research, which gave them added depth. Some of his press articles on
India, for example, were incorporated almost verbatim into Capital. Con-
sidering the strong views he held, his articles were remarkably detached
and objective. In many areas - opposition to reactionary European
governments, for example - he saw eye to eye with the Tribune and could
express himself forcefully, but where there was a divergence he contented
himself with the straight facts.^205
Although Marx started writing exclusively on England (about which
he was exceptionally well informed), by 1853 he was dealing with Europe
too, where the dominant topic was the approach of the Crimean War.
Here he was concerned broadly to defend the values of Western European
civilisation, as expressed in the 'bourgeois' revolutionary movements of
1789 and later, against the 'asiatic barbarism' of Russia. His almost patho-
logical hatred of Russia led him to his bizarre view of Palmerston as a
tool of Russian diplomacy and prompted an 'exposure', in a series of
articles, of Palmerstonian duplicity.^206 Some of these articles were written
for the Free Press, run by David Urquhart, a romantic conservative poli-
tician whose Russophobe views Marx characterised as 'subjectively reac-
tionary' but 'objectively revolutionary'.^207 In writing for the Press, Marx
was particularly anxious to combat Herzen's faith in the socialist vocation
of Russia and the writings of his old friend and colleague Bruno Bauer
who saw Russian absolutism as the rebirth of Roman statecraft, the incar-
nation of a living religious principle as opposed to the hollow democracies
of the West. This was the one point on which Dana was critical of Marx,
considering his attitude to France and Russia as exhibiting 'too German
a tone of feeling for an American newspaper'.^208
Marx also devoted a considerable number of articles to the Far East
and particularly India. In general he regarded the phenomenon of col-