history explained to the disinherited class its place and function in particularly the bourgeois revolution and society in general. In the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" ("New Rhenish Gazette"), a daily newspaper, Marx sought to erect a beaconlight of the extreme democratic and communist wing of the revolution. The first number of this paper was published on June 1st, 1848, and the last issue appeared on May 19th, 1849. The short but stormy life of the paper, therefore, begins and ends with the fortune and misfortune of the revolution respectively. The paper was founded as an "Organ of Democracy"; however, under the editorship of Marx, it soon became an undaunted and fearless advocate of communist theories, viewing and criticising current events from the basic premises as formulated in the "Communist Manifesto" and conceived with the aid of Historical Materialism. Here the Materialist Conception of History was submitted to the acid test and, needless to state, the theory's application to current occurrences and the results obtained thereby furnished convincing evidence of its soundness. By the light of Historical Materialism, Marx explained the revolution as a normal and legitimate historical process, a process which was but the political reflex of an economic revolution that had but shortly preceded it. Marx, again with the aid of the Materialist Conception of History, was able to combine his passionate revolutionary temperament with a cool and well-balanced historical intellect: he appreciated and judged the present by the past, and was thus able to intelligently vision the future.
Marx was a journalist and editor in the broader conception of the term, and in this connection he was ably assisted by Frederick Engels, the two Wolffs, Ferdinand Freiligrath, the genial poet, and others. Equipped with a clear insight and creative revolutionary vitality, the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" was able to show the way to the democratic and Socialist forces. And the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" was a fighting organ, that engaged and grappled actively with the problems of the day. As emphasized
