Karl Marx Oration brochure 2012

2012 Karl Marx Oration

by Javier Moreno President of the Forum for Memory Presidente del Foro por la Memoria

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Praxis is a bi-annual Marx Memorial Library publication, which not only illustrates the work of the Library throughout the year, but also publishes essays, articles and reviews on aspects of Marxism, Socialism, and the Working Class Movement.

Get your copy for just £4 inc p&p.

Marx Library hosts the International Brigade archive in Britain which includes battalion rolls, medical records from the front, personal letters, diaries, news clippings, pamphlets, songbooks, and posters.

Many of the resources contained within the Spanish collection are now available for the first time online on the Marx library website at:

www.marxlibrary.org.uk Printed & published by Manifesto Press, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Rd, London CR0 1BD. MP 070/B/03-12

n Chapter I of "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" Karl Marx quotes Hegel to say that, somewhere, the thinker claimed that "all great events and personalities in world history appear as it were twice"; Marx adds that Hegel forgot to add: once as tragedy, then as farce.

In the third edition in the preface of the same work, written by Frederick Engels in 1885, reminds us that "it was precisely Marx who first discovered the great law that governs the course of history, law, according to which, all historical struggles, developed in the political, the religious, philosophical or the other ideologically any, are not, in fact, rather than the more or less clear

expression of struggles between social classes, and that the existence, and therefore also impact on these classes, are conditioned in turn by the degree of development of their economic situation. " The dark and violent history of Spain makes all these ideas are cutting edge.

Last spring we attended to the revolt of the Spanish

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n el capítulo I de “El dieciocho de brumario de Luís Bonaparte” Karl Marx nombra a Hegel para decir que, en alguna parte, el pensador afirmaba que “todos los grandes hechos y personajes de la historia universal aparecen como si dijéramos dos veces”; Carlos Marx añade que Hegel se olvidó de agregar: una vez como tragedia y otra como farsa.

En la tercera edición en el prólogo de la misma obra, escrito por Federico Engels en 1885, nos recuerda que “fue, precisamente Marx, el primero que descubrió la gran ley que rige la marcha de la historia; la ley, según la cual todas, las luchas históricas ya se

desarrollen en el terreno político, en el religioso, en el filosófico o en otro terreno ideológico cualquiera- no son, en realidad, más que la expresión más o menos clara de luchas entre clases sociales, y que la existencia, y por tanto también los choques de estas clases, están condicionados, a su vez por el grado de desarrollo de su situación económica”.

La negra y violenta historia de España hace que todas estas reflexiones sean de rabiosa actualidad.

Acudíamos en la pasada primavera a la rebelión de la juventud española, conocida con el nombre de “indignados”; recorriendo los estrechos pasillos que dejaban las tiendas de campaña acampadas en la Puerta del Sol de Madrid se escuchaban afirmaciones de reinventar la historia.

Muchas veces se despreciaba el pasado en multitudinarias asambleas apostando por construir el futuro.

youth, known as "outraged" walking the narrow aisles of the camping tents in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, were heard statements to reinvent history. Where often in mass meetings, past was despised only betting to build the future.

Meanwhile, we watch with horror as some of the assemblies of these young people are an inspiration to advertising of multinational corporations.

While waiting for new demonstrations/social mobilizations in Spain, there is now the highest rate of unemployment in Europe, we close the call for general strike on March 29 to combat the terrible economic and labour reforms that seek to destroy the union movement in Spain.

It is possible that in Spain we have now the "farce" of which Marx talked about, while a part of youth unemployed are debating about the end of the ideologies and claim that all the policies are the same thing, the Spanish class unions , with its progress and failures, with its lights and shadows, is dying in front of Rajoy´s neo-liberal steamroller , who on the other hand, refuses to condemn the Franco regime, the "tragedy" of Spanish history.

Meanwhile Spanish judges who investigate the crimes of Francoism are disqualified by it, the bulldozers are removing the remains of murdered Republicans in ditches throughout the state.

Remains of Republicans executed, tortured and disappeared. These remains are not just bones, are worthy people killed only for being organized, for being aware of their class and for knowing that the struggle against Franco was the "tragedy".

Marxism gives us the tools to adapt to new historical stages and the effort we have to do is use them, marxism gave us consciousness and class pride.

When the Spanish Republican families killed by Franco recover his remains, they talk about they have regained their dignity. That's a lie, they never lost their dignity. They resisted and fought against the "tragedy" of fascism.

We need an aware Spanish and European youth , by knowing the truth of the past and not betting on the "farce" because this "farce" may end up again in "tragedy."

Mientras tanto, observamos con horror como algunas de las asambleas de estos jóvenes sirven de inspiración para publicidad de grandes empresas multinacionales.

A la espera de nuevas movilizaciones en España, actualmente existe el índice más alto de paro de toda Europa, tenemos próxima la convocatoria de huelga general el 29 de marzo para combatir las terribles reformas económicas y laborales que pretenden destruir a los movimientos sindicales en España.

Es posible que en España nos toque la “farsa” que afirmaba Carlos Marx, mientras parte de la juventud sin empleo debate sobre el fin de las ideologías y en afirmar que todas las políticas son iguales, el movimiento sindical de clase español con sus avances y sus errores, con sus luces y sus sombras, agoniza frente a la apisonadora neo-liberal de Rajoy que, por otro lado, se niega a condenar al régimen franquista, “la tragedia” de la historia española.

Al mismo tiempo que los jueces españoles que investigan los crímenes del franquismo son inhabilitados por ello, las máquinas excavadoras siguen sacando restos de republicanos asesinados en cunetas por todo el Estado.

Restos de republicanos ejecutados, torturados y hechos desaparecer. Estos restos no son sólo huesos, son dignos restos asesinados por estar organizados, de tener conciencia de clase y conocer que en la lucha contra Franco estaba la “tragedia”.

El marxismo nos da las herramientas para adaptarnos a las nuevas etapas históricas y el esfuerzo que tenemos que hacer es utilizarlas, nos dio conciencia y orgullo de clase.

Cuando algunos familiares de republicanos españoles asesinados por Franco recuperan sus restos, hablan de que han recuperado su dignidad. Eso es mentira, nunca perdieron su dignidad. Resistieron y lucharon contra la “tragedia” del fascismo.

Es necesario que los jóvenes españoles y europeos tomen conciencia, conozcan la verdad del pasado y no apuesten por la “farsa”, porque esta “farsa” puede terminar de nuevo en “tragedia”.

Marx Oration

by Freidrich Engels, 17 March 1883 "On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep -- but for ever.

An immeasurable loss has been sustained both by the militant proletariat of Europe and America, and by historical science, in the death of this man. The gap that has been left by the departure of this mighty spirit will soon enough make itself felt.

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.

But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the

present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations, of both bourgeois economists and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.

Two such discoveries would be enough for one lifetime. Happy the man to whom it is granted to make even one such discovery.

But in every single field which Marx investigated -and he investigated very many fields, none of them superficially -- in every field, even in that of mathematics, he made independent discoveries.

Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the man. Science was for Marx an historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez*.

For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or

another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat, which he was the first to make conscious of its own position and its needs, conscious of the conditions of its emancipation. Fighting was his element. And he fought with a passion, a tenacity and a success such as few could rival. His work on the first Rheinische Zeitung (1842), the Paris Vorwarts! (1844), Deutsche Brusseler Zeitung (1847), the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848-49), the New York Tribune (1852-61), and in addition to these a host of militant pamphlets, work in organisations in Paris, Brussels and London, and finally, crowning all, the formation of the great International Working Men's Association -- this was indeed an achievement of which its founder might well have been proud even

if he had done nothing else.

And, consequently, Marx was the best-hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories.

Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultrademocratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellowworkers -- from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America -- and I make bold to say that though he may have had many opponents, he had hardly one personal enemy.

His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work!"