KARL MARX

LONDON 243
the British in the Punjab, Sind and other newly conquered parts of East
India - it could be that the crisis is postponed until 1853. But then its
outbreak will be frightful.' 177 In September 1853: 'I think that the commercial
crash, as in 1847, will begin early next year.' 178 Marx expected
this movement, like the last, to occur first in France 'where' (he was
saying in October 1853) 'the catastrophe will still break out'. 179 The Hyde
Park demonstration of 1855 led him to think that the Crimean War
might precipitate a crisis in England, where 'the situation is bubbling and
boiling publicly'. 180 He tended to be cautious as regards Germany, fearing
that a revolt in the Rhineland might have to turn to foreign help and so
appear unpatriotic. 'The whole thing', he wrote to Engels in the spring
of 1856, 'will depend on the possibility of backing the proletarian revolution
by some second edition of the Peasants' War.' 181 His predictions in
this field caused amusement to his friends: Wilhelm Wolff actually took
bets on them. 'Only on the subject of commercial crises', wrote Liebknecht,
'... did he fall victim to the prophesying imp, and in consequence
was subject to our hearty derision which made him grimly mad.' 182
In one respect Marx was not unhappy to see the crisis forever receding
before him: it would enable him to finish his magnum opus on economics.
In August 1852 he wrote to Engels: 'the revolution could come sooner
than we wish', 18 ' and Engels agreed that the uneasy calm 'could last until
1854. I confess I wish to have time to slog away for another year.' 184
Marx's first studies in the British Museum were concerned with the
two problems of currency and rent, subjects to which he was led by his
view that in France the chief beneficiary of the 1848 revolution had been
the financial aristocracy and that in Britain the key to the future development
lay in the struggle between the industrial bourgeoisie and the large
landowners. Marx noted the accumulation of precious metals by the Bank
of France and the consequent expansion of credit controlled by the
Bank. As regards Britain he was concerned to refute Ricardo's theory that
income from land necessarily declined unless there was an increase in the
price of corn. He considered that this was demonstrably untrue in the case
of Britain during the previous fifty years and that the progress of science
and industry could reverse the natural tendencies that would lessen
incomes.
During the whole of 1851 Marx read voraciously. In January he was
studying books on precious metals, money and credit; in February, the
economic writings of Hume and Locke, and more books on money; in
March, Ricardo, Adam Smith and books on currencies; in April, Ricardo
again and books on money; in May, Carey, Malthus, and principles of
economics; in June, value, wealth and economics; in July, literature on the
factory system and agricultural incomes; in August, population,