KARL MARX

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SELECT CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 335
by the German Workers' Educational Association and he was himself
elected by them shortly afterwards. Turning to its main business, after 'a
very long and animated discussion' 10 the Committee could not agree on
a programme - not surprisingly in view of its size (over fifty when the
co-options had been completed). Marx had already left the meeting when
he was elected to a sub-committee of nine to draw up a declaration of
principles. At the sub-committee meeting three days later, Weston, an
old and agreeable but long-winded Owenite, read out a statement of
principles; and Major Wolff, a former aide of Garibaldi and now secretary
to Mazzini, proposed the Rules of the Italian Working Men's Association
as a basis. Marx missed this meeting owing to illness and also the subsequent
meeting of the General Committee at which the proposals of
Weston and Wolff were referred back to the sub-committee. Eccarius
anxiously wrote to Marx: 'You absolutely must impress the stamp of your
terse yet pregnant style upon the first-born child of the European workmen's
organisation.' 11 Odger and others, continued Eccarius, were very
dissatisfied with the proposed drafts and had remarked that 'the right
man in the right place would be Dr Marx'. 12 Cremer himself wrote urging
Marx to attend. However, Marx also missed the next meeting of the subcommittee
claiming that he was not informed of the rendezvous in time.
At this meeting Le Lubez was deputed to synthesise the drafts made by
Wolff and Weston.
Marx finally put in an appearance at the General Committee which
met on 18 October to consider this synthesis. Marx wrote that he was
'really shocked when I heard the worthy Le Lubez read out an appallingly
verbose, badly written and completely crude preamble pretending to be
a declaration of principles in which Mazzini was everywhere evident,
crusted over with the vaguest tags of French socialism'. 13 Marx managed
to get the drafting once more referred back to the sub-committee, which
met two days later in his own house. His aim was if possible 'not to let
one single line of the thing stand' and, in order to buy time, he suggested
that they begin by discussing the rules. The strategy worked: by one
o'clock in the morning they were still on the first rule and were forced
to postpone the meeting of the General Committee until they had had
time for a further sub-committee meeting. The papers were left for Marx
to work on. His brief was merely to give expression to the 'sentiments'
of Le Lubez's draft which the General Committee had already approved.
Ii) justify what he himself admitted to be the 'extremely peculiar way' in
which he went about this, he wrote an Address to the Working Classes which
he described as 'a sort of review of the fortunes of the working classes'
since 1845. 14 He also reduced the number of rules to ten. At the subcommittee
meeting Marx's draft was approved except that, as he wrote to