Waarlam Tcherkesoff
A Very Scientific Plagiary!
About two manifests — The plagiarism by Marx
About two manifests:
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Principles of Socialism; Manifesto of Democracy in the Nineteenth Century, Second Edition (1847), by Victor Considerant;
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Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848, by Karl Marx and Frédéric Engels.
"What must be attacked are the selfish leaders and the blind organs which lead and exploit us through the parties, striving to keep them in narrow and exclusive ideas, and in a state of hostility, the better to dominate them".- Victor Prosper Considerant. (1843).</quote>
In one of my articles where I discussed labor-based theory of value, I demonstrated, through numerous quotations,[1] that Marx’s claim to claim authorship for this theory so admirably expounded by Adam Smith just a century before the emergence of Capital, that this claim was not very “scientific”.
No more than this assertion made by Engels, and repeated by all Social Democratic publications, by all the pretentious “scientists” to know that the surplus value defined by Sismondi, exposed by W. Thompson (1824), adopted by Proudhon in 1845, had also been discovered by Marx; or that the explanation evolutionist history conceived by Vico, formulated by the encyclopedists, by Volney and by Augustus County; developed so masterfully by Bentham, in our time by Herbert Spencer and by all evolutionist philosophy, that this explanation, strangely called by Engels materialist, is also due to the exceptional genius of Marx and Engels himself.
It was astonishing to see this eff ronterie so long practiced by two characters blinded by a nefarious feeling of great mania. But their German readers could not notice it, simply because they did not know the existence of all this English literature and French. On the other hand, MM. the leaders of social democracy of all countries, being engaged in parliamentary intrigues, are glad to have to read only two or three brochures from Engels and some popular exposition of Capital, in order to be able to then parade in front of the workers as the only ones, the real representatives of modern science. All was well, and the [glory of Marx, as the founder of a science social all his own, spread throughout the world. It happened that every Communist revolutionary who was based in his arguments on the true science of mankind was immediately proclaimed bourgeois ignorant, and often even called an agent provocateur. For, it was said, outside of Marxism, neither science nor socialism exists; all that contemporary socialism teaches was formulated and expounded by Marx and Engels, especially in their famous Manifesto of the Communist Party.
Such was until recently this prejudice that the ignorant Kautsky could publish in his journal (Neue Zeit, 9th year, no.8 ) and other ignorant people repeat in Russian, French and other languages, that this manifesto was a true bible of socialism. Two years ago, in all European languages, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. All the “scientific” deputies declaimed pompous speeches in which they glorified the appearance of this manifesto which, to hear them, would mark a new era in the world-development of science and even of humanity.
Who could contradict them? Didn’t Engels write to Dühring (1879) that “... if Dühring hears say that the whole economic system these days ... is the result of antagonism between classes, of oppression ... so he repeats truths that have become commonplace since the emergence of the Communist Manifesto”?
No one has the right to doubt it, for it is the “great” Engels himself who asserts, and with him the “scientific” deputies, including Guesde, Lafargue, Vandervelde, Ferri and other scientists, who testify that this new revelation, this New Testament was given to humanity by Marx in the New Bible of mankind, in the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party. Imagine, readers, the state of faith of the Prophet accustomed to repeating:
“God is great and Muhammad is his prophet! ” — and who, one fine day, finds on his couch, instead of his sacred Koran, the work of a infi dèle giaour where everything that is most sacred in the book of Muhammad is exposed with much more clarity, precision, breadth of vision, depth of ideas, but above all with an incomparably superior literary talent ... And he knows, this stunned, indignant, humiliated faithful giaour appeared before the Koran, and that Muhammad, that great prophet of fatalism, had known him. Like this faithful, I felt stunned, indignant and even humiliated, about a year ago, when I had the chance to read Victor Considerant’s book:
Principles of Socialism; Democracy manifesto in the nineteenth century, written in 1843, published in 1847. There was something to be. In a brochure of 143 pages, Victor Considerant exposes, with his usual clarity, all the bases of Marxism, of this socialism “Scientific” that parliamentarians want to impose on everyone.
Strictly speaking, the theoretical part, where Considerant deals with questions of principle, does not exceed the first fifty pages; the rest is devoted to the famous lawsuit that the government of Louis -Philippe brought to the newspaper of the Fourierists, Democracy pacified, and that the jurors of the Seine acquitted. But, in these fifty little pages, the famous Fourierist, like a true master, gives us so many deep, clear and brilliant generalizations, that only a small part of his ideas completely contains all the Marxist laws and theories, including the famous concentration of capital and the entire Communist Party Manifesto. This famous manifestly, this bible of legally revolutionary democracy, is a very poor paraphrase of the numerous passages from the Manifesto of Victor Considerat. Marx and Engels not only drew on the content of their Manifesto in the Manifesto of V. Considerat, but also the form, the titles of the chapters were retained by imitators.
The paragraphs of the second chapter (p.19) in V. Considerant bear the title: The current situation and 89: the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. Bourgeois et Prolitaires is the title of the first chapter in M. & En.[2]
V. C. examines various socialist and revolutionary parties under the general name of democracy (the Fourierists are called pacific democracy) and its paragraphs bear the titles: — The immobilist democracy (p.33); -Retrograde democracy (p.41); — Socialist Party of Retrograde Democracy (p.44).
The titles at M. & En. are: — Reactionary socialism (p.25); — Conservative and bourgeois socialism (p.31); — Critical-utopian socialism and communism (p.32).
Wouldn’t you think that all of these titles belong to the same book? By comparing the content, we will see that really these two manifests are quite the same.
Before starting the comparison of the texts, the reader must be informed about historical good faith. from Engels. At the beginning of their manifesto, M. & En. declare that: “already (in 1848) communism is recognized by all the powers of Europe as a power “(p.1).
At the Zurich Congress of 1893, the same Engels said: “At that time (1843–45), socialism was not represented only by small sects ... ”. Small sects or power! Who is right here: M. & En. Where Engels alone? ...
(To be continued).
Waarlam TCHERKESOFF.
[1] See les Temps Nouveaux (the New Times), n° 16 and 17 of August 14 and 21, 1897.
[2] Manifesto of the Communist Party, edition of the New Era, Paris. — To avoid countless repetitions, we will use: V.C., for Victor Considerant; M. & En., For Marx and Engels; M.D., for Democracy Manifesto; M, C., For Communist Manifesto.