KARL MARX

38
38 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY
become an industrialised country, and industrial workers were far from
being the majority of the population. They did not have sufficient organisation
and, being mostly ex-artisans, were nostalgic for the past rather
than revolutionary. Socialist ideas were spread by a party of the intellectual
6lite, who saw the proletarian masses as a possible instrument of social
renewal. French Utopian socialism began to have an influence inside
Germany during the 1830s.' 75 In Trier itself (where Marx was born),
Ludwig Gall spread Fourierist ideas; but in Berlin the poems of Heine
and the lectures of Gans gained a wider audience. The first book by a
native German communist was The Sacred History of Mankind, written by
Moses Hess, who had picked up communist ideas after running away to
Paris from his father's factory in Cologne. 17 ' The book was mystical and
meandering, but contained quite clearly the idea of the polarisation of
classes and the imminence of a proletarian revolution. Hess went on to
convert Engels to communism and published much covert communist
propaganda in the Rheinische Zeitung. A year later a tailor, Wilhelm Weitling,
active in the expatriate German workers' association in Paris and
Switzerland, published a booklet entitled Mankind as it is and as it ought
to be. It was a messianic work which defended, against the rich and
powerful of the earth who caused all inequality and injustice, the right of
all to education and happiness by means of social equality and justice.
The book which most helped to spread knowledge of socialism was
Lorenz von Stein's inquiry, The Socialism and Communism of Present-Day
France. It was due to Stein's book that socialism and communism (the
terms were generally used interchangeably in Germany at this time) began
to attract attention in 1842. Commissioned by the Prussian Government,
Stein had conducted an investigation into the spread of French socialism
among German immigrant workers in Paris; though the author was far
from sympathetic to socialists, his published report helped enormously to
spread information about and even generate enthusiasm for their cause. 177
The climate of opinion in Cologne was particularly favourable to the
reception of socialist ideas: the Rhineland liberals (unlike their Manchester
counterparts) were very socially-conscious and considered that the state
had far-reaching duties towards society. Mevissen, for example, had been
very struck when visiting England by the decrease in wages, and had
become converted to Saint-Simonianism during a stay in Paris. In the
offices of the Rheinische Zeitung social questions were regularly discussed
at the meetings of a group (founded by Moses Hess) which was effectively
the editorial committee of the paper. Its members also included Jung,
and the future communists Karl d'Ester and Anneke. It met monthly,
papers were read, and a discussion followed among the members, who did
not necessarily share the same political viewpoint but were all interested in