KARL MARX

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210 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
Association) a new and politically more moderate committee. Although
these efforts (which were renewed in the following April) failed, they did
lead to the reconstitution of the original committee - with Engels and
Willich elected to the two vacant seats and a change of name to the
Social-Democratic Committee for the Assistance of German Refugees.
(This disagreement was part of a wider split among the refugees, for the
orthodox republicans, led by Struve and Heinzen, formed a Workers'
League in opposition to the Association.) The new committee, of which
Marx became President and Engels Secretary, was very active during the
following year: It raised over £300 and helped more than 500 refugees,
though the original generous donations decreased as numbers grew. A
hostel was set up in the summer of 1850 to house eighteen refugees and
feed about forty: the plan was to make the hostel self-supporting by
turning it into a multi-purpose factory staffed by refugees. But these ideas
never materialised: the committee in fact ceased to function when the
split in the Communist League occurred in September 1850.
Marx also participated in other activities of the Association: as well as
attending the picnics and dances it organised and participating in its
fencing and chess, he delivered a course of lectures entitled 'What is
bourgeois property?' - beginning in November and continuing through
the first half of 1850. He had started to give a few private lectures in his
house to a small circle of friends, and was persuaded to make them
available to a wider audience by addressing crowded meetings in the
Association's first-storey premises in Great Windmill Street. A vivid
description of Marx's pedagogical method is given by Wilhelm Liebknecht,
the future founder of the German Socialist party who had become
an unwavering disciple of Marx after their meeting at one of the Association's
picnics:
Marx proceeded methodically. He stated a proposition - the shorter
the better, and then demonstrated it in a lengthier explanation, endeavouring
with utmost care to avoid all expressions incomprehensible to
the workers. Then he requested his audience to put questions to him.
If this was not done he commenced to examine the workers, and he
did this with such pedagogic skill that no flaw, no misunderstanding,
escaped him. On expressing my surprise about his dexterity I learned
that Marx had formerly given lectures on political economy in the
workers' club in Brussels. At all events he had the qualities of a good
teacher. He also made use of a blackboard, on which he wrote the
formulas - among them those familiar to all of us from the beginning
of Capital
Another account of more lurid discussions in Great Windmill Street
is contained in the following description by a Prussian government spy