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KARL MARX: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

relatively limited knowledge at his disposal. He also was aware that the workers were only powerful against the exploiters when organized upon class lines—a form and spirit of organization which presupposed class-consciousness. In order to awaken and generate this class-consciousness in the international proletariat, the individual worker had first to recognize his economic status. i.e., to conceive that he was but a commodity under capitalism. Animated, yes whipped on by the compelling command of the hour, Marx set to work to provide the intellectual weapons for the working class in its struggle for emancipation.

III.

Buried amongst the dusty tomes and intellectual treasures of the British Museum, years passed in which Marx once more devoted himself exclusively to investigation and study. They were years of intellectual joys but material privations to Marx and his family. The press as well as the publishers in Germany had instituted a tentative boycott against Marx, and this meant bitter poverty to him and his beloved ones. For example, his brilliant essay "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" had to be published in New York in a periodical issued by his friend Weydemeyer. Also the brochure dealing with the trial of some of Marx's comrades before the jury in Cologne and entitled "Enthüllungen über den Kölner Kommunistenprozess" ("Revelations on the Communists' Trial in Cologne") had to be published in America, 1852. During this year, Marx also accepted an offer of the "New York Tribune" to act as its London correspondent; he was expected to contribute an article every week, for which he received the flat rate of five dollars. This meagre but welcome income was practically for years the only regular source of revenue of the Marx family. In the "New York Tribune" Marx published various reviews and criticisms of social and, political conditions in Europe, and also a series of articles which afterwards appeared in pamphlet form under the name of "Revo-