KARL MARX

BRUSSELS x 39
dependency. Moreover I have seldom known a woman who in outward
appearance as well as in spirit was so well balanced and so immediately
captivating as Mrs Marx. She was fair-haired and the children (who
were then still young) had their father's dark hair and eyes. Marx's
mother, who lived in Trier, contributed to the expenses of the household,
though the writer's pen no doubt had to find the greater part.. . - 60
After his stay in Brussels Marx made very few close friendships; most of
those he made or strengthened in Brussels remained so for life.
Even before The German Ideology was finished, Marx had started to
establish a Communist Correspondence Committee in which Engels and
Gigot were to take the most active part. This Committee was the embryo
of all the subsequent Communist Internationals. It was designed as an
instrument to harmonise and co-ordinate communist theory and practice
in the European capitals. Marx described the aim as
providing both a discussion of scientific questions and a critical appraisal
of popular writings and socialist propaganda that can be conducted in
Germany by these means. But the main aim of our correspondence will
be to put German socialists in touch with English and French socialists,
to keep foreigners informed of the socialist movements that will develop
in Germany and to inform the Germans in Germany of the progress
of socialism in France and England. In this way differences of opinion
will be brought to light and we shall obtain an exchange of ideas and
impartial criticism. 6 '
This Correspondence Committee, and the subsequent Communist
League which followed it, were Marx's first ventures into practical politics.
The foundation of the Committee was to account for two controversies
that raised questions central to the communist movement of that time.
The first (with Weitling) carried into practical politics the polemic against
'true' socialism in The German Ideology, the second (with Proudhon) continued
for the best part of the century - Proudhon's followers being
particularly active in the First International.
Weitling was the illegitimate son of a French officer and a German
laundry woman and earned his living as an itinerant tailor while absorbing
the writings of the French socialists. His first book, Mankind as it is and
as it ought to be, had been written in 1838 at the request of the League
of the Just in Paris, and he had been very effective in his propaganda
in Switzerland where his imprisonment had earned him the additional
distinction of a martyr's halo. Thus he was widely welcomed on his arrival
in London in 1844. During 1845, however, his preacher's style, the quasireligious
terms in which he expounded his ideas, his demands for immediate
revolution, his proposals for a dictatorship a la Babeuf, and the marked