Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

242 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

sleeps till evening, untroubled by the whole world coming and going

through the room.^171

Eleanor wrote that she had heard tell how, in the front room in Dean

Street, 'the children would pile up the chairs behind him to represent a

coach to which he was harnessed as horse and would "whip him up" even

as he sat at his desk writing'.^172

In spite of all these impediments, Marx began to lay the foundation

of his economic work and produce a considerable amount of high quality

journalism. During 1850-5 1 Marx spent long periods in the British

Museum, resuming the economic studies that he had been forced to

neglect since his Paris days of 1844. In his articles in the Neue Rheinische

Zeitung-Revue he had already analysed the historical and political con-

clusions to be drawn from the failure of the 1848 revolutions, the cyclical

process of overproduction and consequent overspeculation of 1843-45,

the financial panic of 1846-47, and the recovery in England and France

during 1848-50. The result of the analyses of the 1848 revolutions was

not to make Marx any less sanguine about the next outbreak but only the

circumstances in which it would occur. During the early 1850 s Marx did

not differ from the other German refugees in London in his belief that

a revolution was imminent. He oudined his views in December 1849 in

a letter to Weydermeyer:

Another event on the Continent - as yet unperceived - is the approach

of a tremendous industrial, productive and commercial crisis. If the

Continent puts off its revolution until the outbreak of this crisis,

England will perhaps be forced from the start to be a companion, albeit

a reluctant one, of the revolutionary continent. An earlier outbreak of

the revolution - if not motivated direcdy by Russian intervention -

would in my opinion be a misfortune.^17 '

What Marx did become convinced of in late 1850 was that a commercial
and financial crisis would be the inevitable precondition of any revolution.
He was therefore constandy on the look-out for signs of this approaching
crisis - and he found them in great number. Already in 1850 he had
calculated that 'If the new cycle of industrial development that began in
1848 follows the same path as that of 1843-47, the crisis will break out
in the year 1852';^174 and he duly produced indications that this would be
the case. In December 1851 : 'According to what Engels tells me, the city
merchants also share our view that the crisis, held back by all sorts of
chance events ... must erupt by next autumn at the latest.'^175 In February
1852 he spoke of 'the ever more imminent crisis in trade whose first signs
are already bursting forth on all sides'.^176 A few weeks later: 'Through
exceptional circumstances - California, Australia, commercial progress of