love”⁹promotedbythe London-based Bund derKommunisten(Communist Lea-
gue) and similar groups.Inacircular distributed around the same time, they
mocked socialist agitators like HermannKriege(1820–1850) of the NewYork-
basedVolks-Tribunfor having succumbed to“fantastic emotionalism”while pre-
senting himself as an“apostle of love”and turning communism intoaform of
lovesickness.¹⁰Concerned about the long-term political implications, Marx ac-
cusedafaction in the Communist Leagueheaded byKarl Schapper (1812–
1870)ofadvertising the revolution with the same false promises found in conser-
vative appealsto somemysticalversion of folk.“Just as the word‘people’(Vo lk)
has been givenanauraofsanctity by the democrats, so youhavedone the same
for the word‘proletariat,’”¹¹he wrotetoSchapper,displaying uncannyforesight
about the corruption of the proletarian dream by twentieth-century forms of
state socialism. In speaking out against strongemotions, however,Marx also
triedto cometo termswith his own personal attachments to socialism. This in-
cludesashort poem written at the ageofeighteen and filled withromantic long-
ing and rebellious spirit.Called“Empfindungen”(1836,Feelings), it contains the
following lines:
Iamcaughtinendless strife,
endless ferment,endless dream.
Icannot conform to life,
will not travelwith the stream.
Heaven Iwould comprehend,
Iwould drawthe world to me.
Loving, hating,Iintend
thatmy star shine brilliantly.¹²Addingagendered dimension to the earlyattacksonemotional socialism, En-
gels used his contributions to the discussion on socialist literatureto chastise
two socialist women writers for their heavyreliance on emotionality asaconduit
to character identification. His letters to MinnaKautsky,the author ofDieAlten
und die Neuen(1884,The Old and the New),and to the English socialist novelist
and critic Margaret Harknessare on the surface concerned solelywith the all-im-
portant question oftendency and intentionality.Yet asacontributionto the de-
Friedrich Engels,“On the History of the Communist League,”MECW26:319.
Karl Marx andFriedrich Engels,“Circularagainst Kriege(1846),”MECW6: 34–51.
Karl Marx,“Revelations Concerning the CommunistTrial in Cologne,”MECW11:403.
Karl Marx,“Fe elings,”https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_
Young_Marx.pdf.On thebeginnings of Marxism andliterature,seePeter Demetz,Marx,Engels,
andthe Poets: Originsof MarxistLiteraryCriticism(Chicago: UniversityofChicagoPress, 1967).
70 Chapter 3