ration. Virgil implies that the only possible reasons the pilgrim would not
enter Hell would be mistrust of his “master and author” – something we
know Dante could not admit – or cowardice. This classic rhetorical strat-
egy – “What? Are you chicken?” – is still used to high effect on school-yards
everywhere.
It is also used by Marx in the 1859 Preface, though he faces obstacles Virgil
did not. First, the average reader in Germany didn’t know him from Adam.
As a journalist and polemicist, he was known in socialist and democratic cir-
cles, but he was hardly a household name. Virgil can use the pilgrim’s avowed
adoration to his advantage. When Virgil says, “Trust me,” Dante does. If
Marx’s audience were to stop at the threshold and say, “I’m not sure.. .,”
what trust could Marx possibly draw upon to lure them on? Second, those
readers who do know his previous work – mostly the Manifesto– are less
devotees who will follow Marx anywhere than wary, embattled radicals suf-
fering through a long hangover from 1848. This new dispatch from the expa-
triate Marx would be noted, but perhaps with skepticism. Finally, the readers
who probably know Marx best, and to whose reactions he must attend before
all others, are the Prussian censors. Nearly two generations have passed since
A. M. Prinz indicated the effects of censorship upon Marx’s presentation in
the 1859 Preface, reminding us that “censorship had produced the art of read-
ing between the lines and thus induced authors to practice the art of writ-
ing between the lines” (1969:439).
It seems to me that Marx attempted to placate the censors, encourage the
supporters, and establish himself as a trustworthy guide, all in the space of
a few pages. His statements about his own past are ambiguous, open to dou-
ble readings (Marsden 1999:107). His conclusions are couched in utterly imper-
sonal terms, and revolution is depicted as an abstract social process, in no
way suggesting violent struggle. The only conflict mentioned is between “the
social forces of production and the relations of production” (Marx 1970:21).
It is a great irony of Marxology that so much orthodox and academic Marxism
takes as its absolute touchstone a characterization of Marx’s project deliber-
ately written to allay fears of revolution, to seem absolutely unthreatening,
and to be completely acceptable to Prussian censors in a time of reaction.
Yet, securing his critique’s arrival at its audience is only the first hurdle for
Marx’s Preface. The primary task remains enlisting the readers’ trust. Here
Marx exploits the fact that most of his audience doesn’t know him from
Adam, or from Adam Smith. Since moderns trust no one so much as they
The Origin of Political Economy and the Descent of Marx • 39