THE 'ECONOMICS' 269II. 'HERR VOGT'Immediately after sending off the manuscript of the first part, Marx had
set to work on the chapter on capital. Duncker declared himself willing
to continue with the publication, but the whole project was engulfed by
the enormous dimensions taken on by Marx's quarrel with Karl Vogt.^71
This quarrel, which occupied Marx for eighteen months, is a striking
example both of Marx's ability to expend tremendous labour on essentially
trivial matters and also of his talent for vituperation. Vogt had been a
leader of the left wing in the Frankfurt Assembly - though not left enough
to avoid being attacked by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung - and on the
dissolution of the Assembly he had emigrated to Switzerland where he
taught geography at the University of Berne. He was the author of several
works preaching a crude materialism and was a member of the Swiss
Diet. On the outbreak of the Franco-Austrian War, which had been
engineered by Bonaparte and Cavour to loosen Austria's hold on North
Italy, Vogt started a paper in Switzerland whose main editorial line was
that Germany would benefit from Austria's defeat and ought to support
Bonaparte. In early May 1859 Marx was on the platform of an Urquhartite
meeting to protest at the supposed Russian menace caused by the war.
Also on the platform was Karl Blind who informed Marx that Vogt was
being subsidised by Bonaparte, that he had attempted to bribe printers
in Germany and London, and that he had recently been in secret conclave
with Prince Jerome Bonaparte to forward the establishment of the Tsar's
brother on the throne of Hungary.
Marx mentioned these accusations to Elard Biskamp, editor of Das
Volk, who promptly printed them and even sent a copy to Vogt. Das Volk
was the successor to a small paper edited by Edgar Bauer on behalf of
the German Workers' Education Association which collapsed when Kinkel
offered its printer a more lucrative contract to print his own paper. When
asked by the Association to accept a commission to step into the breach,
Marx informed Engels that he had replied that 'no one but ourselves had
bestowed on us our position as representatives of the proletarian party;
but this position had been countersigned by the exclusive and universal
hatred accorded us by all factions and parties of the old world'.^72 But in
spite of his decision ten years previously to have nothing more to do with
the Association, Marx let himself be persuaded to support the paper,
pardy from compassion for the honest but incompetent Biskamp and
partly from a desire to get at Kinkel. He refused at first to contribute
direcdy to any paper he did not edit, but became increasingly involved,
spent a lot of time and energy in organising support for the paper and,