Brentano vs Marx, Engels 1891

I

In No. 10 of the Berlin Concordia, March 7, 1872, there was a fierce anonymous attack upon Marx as the author of the Inaugural Address of the General Council of the International in 1864. In this Address, it was stated, Marx had falsified a quotation from the budget speech made by Gladstone, at that time English Chancellor of the Exchequer, on April 16, 1863.

The passage from the Inaugural Address is printed in the appendix, Documents, No. 1. The article from the Concordia also there, document No. 3. In the latter, the charge is formulated as follows:

"What is the relationship between this speech and the quotation by Marx? Gladstone first makes the point that there has undoubtedly been a colossal increase in the income of the country. This is proved for him by the income tax. But income tax takes notice only of incomes of 150 pounds sterling and over. Persons with lower incomes pay no income tax in England. The fact that Gladstone mentions this so that his yardstick can be properly appreciated is utilited by Marx to have Gladstone say: 'This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property.' Yet this sentence is nowhere to be found in Gladstone's speech. It says quite the opposite. Marx has added the sentence lyingly. both in form and in content!"

This is the charge and, let it be noted, the only charge, that Anonymous, who has now admitted he is called Lujo Brentano, makes against Marx.

No. 10 of the Concordia was sent to Marx from Germany in May 1872. The copy still in my possession today bears the inscription "Organ of the German Manufacturers' Association". Marx, who had never heard of this sheet, assumed the author to be a scribbling manufacturer, and dealt with him accordingly.

Marx demonstrated in his reply in the Volksstaat (Documents, No.4) that the sentence had not only been quoted in the Same way by Professor Beesly in 1870 in The Fortnightly Review, but also before the publication of the Inaugural Address in [H. Roy,] The Theory of the Exchanges, London, 1864; and finally that the report in The Times on April 17, 1863 also contained the sentence, in form and in content, as he had quoted it:

"The augmentation I have described" (namely as "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power") "is an augmentation entirely confined to classes of property."

If this passage, a passage which is certainly compromising in the mouth of an English Chancellor of the Exchequer, is not to be found in Hansard, this is simply because Mr. Gladstone was clever enough to get rid of it, in accordance with traditional English parliamentary practice.

In any case, proof was given here that the sentence allegedly lyingly added is to be found verbatim in The Times of April 17, 1863 in its report of the speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone the evening before. And The Times was a Gladstonian organ at that time.

And what is the reply now from Mr. "Modesty" Brentano? (Concordia, July 4, 1872, Documents, No. 5.)

With an impertinence he would never have dared under his own name, he repeats the charge that Marx lyingly added the sentence: this charge, he adds, is

"serious, and combined with the convincing evidence provided, absolutely devastating".

The evidence was nothing but the passage in Hansard in which the sentence is missing. It could thus at the most be "devastating" for this selfsame ill-fated sentence, which appeared in The Times and not in Hansard.

But this victorious crowing was only intended to help negotiate this same unpleasant fact that the "lyingly added" sentence had been confirmed as authentic by the Times report. And with the feeling that this evidence for the prosecution was pretty "convincing", and that it would become "absolutely devastating" in time, our anonymous would-be professor now zealously attacks the quotation in Beesly and in The Theory of the Exchanges, causes a big stir, claims that Beesly quoted from the Inaugural Address and Marx from The Theory of the Exchanges, etc. All these are minor points. Even if they are true, they prove nothing on the question as to whether Gladstone spoke the sentence or Marx invented it. But by their very nature they could not be settled with absolute finality, either by Mr. Brentano at that time, or by me today. On the other hand, they serve to divert attention from the main point, namely from the fatal Times report.

Before venturing to deal with this, Anonymous flexes his muscles by using various items of strong language, such as "frivolity bordering upon the criminal", "this lying quotation", etc.; and then he lays in with gusto as follows:

"But here we come, to he sure, to Marx's third line of defence, and this far exceeds, in its impudent mendacity, anything which came before. Marx actually does not shrink from citing The Times of April 17, 1863 as proof of the correctness of his quotation. The Times of April 17, 1863, p.7, page" (should be column) "5, line 17 et seq., reports, however, the speech as follows:

And here follows the Times report, which runs:

"The augmentation I have described" (namely as "this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power") "and the figures of which are founded, I think, upon accurate returns, is entirely confined to classes of property."

And now we can only stare wide-eyed at the "impudent mendacity" of Marx, who still dares to claim that the Times report contained the sentence: This intoxicating augmentation, etc., is entirely confined to classes of property!

The Inaugural Address states:

"THIS INTOXICATING AUGMENTATION OF WEALTH AND POWER IS ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES OF PROPERTY."

The Times states:

"THE AUGMENTATION THERE DESCRIBED" (which not even Mr. Brentano, anonymous or not, has so far argued is not the "AUGMENTATION" in the phrase "THIS INTOXICATING AUGMENTATION OF WEALTH AND POWER") "AND WHICH IS FOUNDED, I THINK, UPON ACCURATE RETURNS, IS AN AUGMENTATION ENTIRELY CONFINED TO CLASSES OF PROPERTY."

And now that Mr. Brentano has pointed out in The Times, with his own index finger, the sentence which Marx allegedly lyingly added because it was missing in Hansard, and has thus taken upon himself Marx's alleged impudent mendacity, he declares triumphantly that

"both reports" (Times and Hansard) "fully coincide materially. The report in The Times just gives, formally more contracted, what the shorthand report by Hansard gives verbatim. Yet despite the fact that the Times report contains the direct opposite of that notorious passage in the Inaugural Address, and the fact that according to the Times report, too, Mr. Gladstone said he believed this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined to classes in easy circumstances Marx has the impudence to write in the Volksstaat of June 1: 'So, on April 16, 1863, Mr. Gladstone declared both in form and in content in the House of Commons, as reported in his own organ, The Times, on April 17, 1863, that this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to the classes possessed of property.'"

Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem. When two do the same, it is not the same.

When Marx has Gladstone say: This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property, this is "lyingly added", a notorious passage", "completely forged". When the Times report has Gladstone say:

"This augmentation I have described as an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to classes of property,"

then this is only "formally more contracted" than the Hansard report, in which this sentence is missing, and the "direct opposite of that" (exactly the Same) "notorious passage in the Inaugural Address". And when Marx then quotes the Times report in confirmation of this passage, Mr. Brentano states:

"...and finally he has the impudence to base himself on newspaper reports which directly contradict him".

This really does demand great "impudence". However, Marx has his on his face, and nowhere else. [Play on words: "Stirn" means forehead and impudence.-- MECW Ed.]

With the aid of "impudence" which may easily be distinguished from that of Marx, Anonymous, alias Lujo Brentano, then manages to have Gladstone say that

he "believes this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power not to be confined to classes in easy circumstances".

Actually, according to The Times and Hansard, Gladstone says he would look with pain and apprehension upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if he believed it was confined to the classes in easy circumstances, and he adds, according to The Times, that it is, however, "confined to classes of property".

"Indeed," the righteously indignant Anonymous finally exclaims, "to describe these practices we know only one word, a word with which Marx is very familiar (see Capital, p. 257): they are simply 'nefarious'."

Whose practices, Mr. Lujo Brentano?