THE LAST DECADE 4 iiIt was all very positif, slightly cynical - without any appearance of
enthusiasm - interesting, and often, as I thought, showing very correct
ideas when conversing on the past and the present, but vague and
unsatisfactory when he turned to the future.^121They talked for three hours - of Russia where Marx expected 'a great
but not distant crash' and of Germany where there seemed to him a
strong possibility of mutiny in the army. Marx further explained that the
socialist revolution could be a very long-term affair and expressed his
relief that the German Emperor's would-be assassin, Nobiling, had not,
as he planned, visited him in London beforehand. Grant Duff's general
conclusion was: 'It will not be Marx who, whether he wishes it or not,
will turn the world upside down.'^122
The English socialist with whom Marx had the closest contact in his
later years was H. M. Hyndman, the founder of the Social Democratic
Federation, and a man of considerable private means.^125 Having read the
French version of Capital on a voyage to America he was eager to meet
Marx, to whom he was duly introduced by Karl Hirsch early in 1880.^124
Regularly during the following year Marx, accompanied by Eleanor, would
go to dine with Hyndman in his elegant house in Devonshire Place; and
I lyndman would in turn call on him (revering him as 'The Aristotle of
die nineteenth century')^125 and talk for hours - both men striding up and
down in Marx's study. Hyndman believed in a peaceful revolution in
England and some of his views were distinctly jingoistic; but at least he
understood (to some extent) the labour theory of value; and he was also
violendy anti-Russian, which provided one of the most powerful links
between the two men. The friendship ended, however, with a violent
quarrel in June 1881. Hyndman had just published The Text Book of
I democracy: England for All, which advocated a decentralised self-governing
Empire in which reform would preferably be introduced by the rich and
the powerful. The two chapters in the book dealing with labour and capital
drew extensively on Capital and he duly acknowledged in the Preface his
debt here 'to the work of a great thinker and original writer"^26 - but did
not mention Marx by name. The book was distributed at the foundation
meeting of the Democratic Federation. Marx was angry that Hyndman
bad not made more specific acknowledgement of his work and was also
annoyed that his ideas had appeared in a book with whose general
approach he found himself out of sympathy. When Hyndman excused
himself on the grounds that many Englishmen would have less sympathy
lor the ideas if they knew they were Marx's and that anyway Englishmen
did not learn easily from foreigners, Marx was even angrier and wrote -
with great pleasure - a stinging rebuke which ended their association.^127