Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

48 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

correspondent's assertions, the two published articles were largely instru-

mental, in Marx's view, in the suppression of the paper. The conditions

in the Mosel valley were due to objectively determined relationships:

In the investigation of political conditions one is too easily tempted to

overlook the objective nature of the relationships and to explain every-

thing from the will of the person acting. There are relationships, how-

ever, which determine the actions of private persons as well as those of

individual authorities, and which are as independent as are the move-

ments in breathing. Taking this objective standpoint from the outset,

one will not presuppose an exclusively good or bad will on either side.

Rather, one will observe relationships in which only persons appear to

act at first."^0

To remedy these relations, Marx argued, open public debate was neces-
sary: 'To resolve the difficulty, the administration and the administered
both need a third element, which is political without being official and
bureaucratic, an element which at the same time represents the citizen
without being directly involved in private interests. This resolving
element, composed of a political mind and a civic heart, is a free Press.'^191
Marx must already have had the impression that the days of the
Rheinische Zeitung were numbered. On 24 December 1842 , the first anni-
versary of the relaxed censorship, the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung, one of
the most important liberal newspapers in Germany, published a letter
from Herwegh protesting against the fact that a newspaper he had hoped
to edit from Zurich had been forbidden in Prussia. In reply, Herwegh
was expelled from Prussia and the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung was sup-
pressed; on 3 January 1843 , under pressure from Frederick William IV,
the Saxon Government suppressed the Deutsche Jahrbiicher, and on 21
January the Council of Ministers presided over by the King decided to
suppress the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx wrote to Ruge:

Several particular reasons have combined to bring about the suppression

of our paper: our increase in circulation, my justification of the Mosel

correspondent which inculpated highly placed politicians, our obstinacy

in not naming the person who informed us of the divorce law project,

the convocation of the parliaments which we would be able to influence,

and finally our criticism of the suppression of the Leipziger Allgemeine

Zeitung and Deutsche Jahrbiicher.^192

In addition, the Tsar had personally protested to the Prussian Government
against anti-Russian articles in the Rheinische Zeitung. Marx had offered
to resign earlier in the hope of saving the paper, but the Government's
decision was final.^19 ' The date picked for the final issue of the paper was
31 March 1843 , but the censorship was so intolerable that Marx preferred