The BBC travesties Marx
Our attention has been drawn to an imaginary interview with Karl Marx which appeared in BBC Television, in the “Return and Answer” series, on January 3rd. The interviewer was represented by Edgar Lustgarten and the ghost of Karl Marx by Sir Donald Wolfit.
Who was responsible for the dialogue we don’t know, but as it was No. 5 of “The Verdict of History,” by Geoffrey Bridson, we assume, rightly or wrongly, that he was, whilst the others were just the actors in the interview.
This long interview is cheap and nasty; like a mangy cur snapping at Marx’s heels. Marx is depicted as angry, sullen, evasive and making grudging admissions; all quite out of character. Some of the phrases he is saddled with in replies are simply absurd, as anyone familiar with his writings, and the vast amount of knowledge and experience behind them, would realise. The BBC appears to have swallowed uncritically the Bolshevik distortions of Marx.
The whole slant of the interview was to make Marx appear as an advocate of violence and terrorism and to pretend that Capitalism was not as bad as Marx had shown it to be, as he had been allowed to live in England unmolested for thirty years, and was even given the freedom of the British Museum to make the investigations that resulted in the production of his major work Capital.
There is no criticism of his investigations of Capitalism; of its rottenness, its hypocrisy, its warmongering, its wastefulness of human life, its utter ruthlessness and its cynical exploitation of the workers for the benefit of a privileged class that lives like a leech on the backs of the workers. All this was brushed aside under the pretence of clever questioning.
Before the interview commenced there was an opening statement that gave the direction the interview would follow: “If he were alive today there are many parts of the world where Karl Marx would be liable to arrest for incitement to violence.” This was obviously intended to weigh the scales against Marx before the interview commenced. However, this is just a fatuous statement. One could just as well say: “There are many parts of the world today where Macmillan and Kennedy would be liable to arrest for incitement to violence!”
Phrases from Marx’s writings are torn from their historical context in order to give some semblance of truth to the claim that he was in favour of violence. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 is drawn upon for this purpose as well as references to his address to the Communist League in 1850.
The Communist Manifesto contains an accurate examination of the conditions of the time and of their historical development. Its fundamental principles are as accurate today, and apply just as forcibly to present conditions, as when it was written. Nothing of this, however, comes out in the interview, though there are references to the Manifesto preaching violence in spite of the tact that the Manifesto stated that the first step in the revolution by the working class was “to win the battle of democracy.” It further forecast that the enriching of the capitalists and the subjection of the workers as an exploited class in miserable conditions would lead to outbreaks of violence – violence on the part of capital and on the part of exasperated labour.This in fact happened during the following half century or so.
When the Manifesto was written Marx was filled with passion against the oppressive conditions suffered by the workers of his day. The only hope at the time of securing some amelioration of those conditions was by revolutionary uprisings against them, just as the traders and small manufacturers of the pre-capitalist era took part in revolutionary uprisings against feudal oppression.
During the greater part of Marx’s activity the workers were poorly paid, lived in shocking conditions, worked long hours (women and children worked long hours in mines, factories and in agricultural gangs), educational opportunities were meagre, and they were denied political representation. Is it any wonder that Marx was stirred by these deplorable conditions and set about investigating the source of them and publishing the evidence of the rottenness of capitalism and the only solution for its evils. For this he was hounded from one country to another and held up as an enemy of society—and the BBC seeks to perpetuate this latter fable. When and where the workers had achieved a sufficient measure of representation Marx pointed out that it was possible to achieve the social revolution without violence. Speaking in Holland on one occasion he said that if he understood their constitution aright it would be possible to achieve the social revolution there peaceably.
He foretold that the clash of the sectional interests of capitalists would continue to breed wars, and he was right. In 1854-56 there was the Crimean trade war, followed by the second Chinese war, under the treaty the defeated Chinese were forced to accept the legal importation of opium. There followed the many wars in India, Africa and elsewhere, aimed at fostering the trade interests of different sections of international capital. At the end of the century the South African war which served the interests of the gold and diamond magnates. But we need not go so far back. Since Marx’s day there have been two terrible world wars and a greater one than ever hovers on the horizon, all of them concerned with markets, trade routes and sources of raw material -the most recent being oil and uranium.
All of this was ignored by the interrogator who appeared to be trying to give the impression that Marx was an irresponsible supporter of terrorism whilst we were living in quite a decent kind of world.
Marx was opposed to terrorism. That was one of the reasons for his bitter struggle with Bakunin and the anarchists in the International Working Men’s Association.
In the course of time political changes put the idea of revolutionary uprisings out of the picture. In their joint preface to the issue of the Communist Manifesto in 1872 Marx and Engels wrote the following:
“However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today.”
Engels, in the Introduction to “The Class Struggles in France” in 1895, has this to say:
“The time of the surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair . . .
In the Latin countries, also, it is being more and more, recognised that the old tactics must be revised.
Everywhere … the German example of utilising the suffrage, of winning all posts accessible to us, has been imitated. . . . even in France the Socialists are realising more and more that no lasting victory is possible for them, unless they first win the great mass of the people, i.e., in this case the peasants. Slow propaganda work and parliamentary activity are being recognised here, too, as the most immediate tasks of the Party . . .
The irony of history turns everything upside down. We, the ‘revolutionaries’, the ‘rebels’—we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolts. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves.”
There is much more we could quote to show that for Marx and Engels, violence and terrorism was not the way to achieve Socialism.
As we pointed out at the beginning the way the interview was framed was a travesty of Marx’s outlook. The BBC does not treat capitalist economists and historians in the same flippant and biassed way. If they had intended to give a fair idea of Marx’s social contribution they would have dealt with his theory of value, Materialist Conception of History, the class struggle, and his contention that the workers must understand Socialism before it can be achieved.
It is significant that though we have approached the BBC repeatedly to be allowed to put the Marxist case for Socialism on TV or Radio, we have always been turned down. Yet the BBC sponsors this travesty of Marxism.
There were some references to the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” This phrase was never used by Marx in any of the writings he had published. He mentioned it in two private letters. One of these was in a criticism of the Gotha Programme. He there referred to a time when a working class which understood what Socialism involved had obtained control of political power for the purpose of establishing Socialism. He did not mean dictatorship by a group at the top over a mass of people who had no knowledge of Socialism. The latter was what Lenin and the Bolsheviks tried to attribute to Marx.
We may conclude with our conviction that, were Marx alive today, with his clear and incisive appraisement of facts and social development, his views would be in accordance with ours—that the workers are now in a position in the politically advanced countries, where they comprise the vast majority of the voters, to conquer political power through the vote and then set about establishing Socialism without the violence depicted in the interview being involved.
GILMAC.