Karl MarxArticle Free Pass Early years in London pure will as
the motive power of revolution instead of actual conditions.
While we say to the workers: “You have got to go through
fifteen, twenty, fifty years of civil wars and national wars not
merely in order to change your conditions but in order to change
yourselves and become qualified for political power,” you on the
contrary tell them, “We must achieve power immediately.” The
militant faction in turn ridiculed Marx for being a
revolutionary who limited his activity to lectures on political
economy to the Communist Workers’ Educational Union. The upshot
was that Marx gradually stopped attending meetings of the London
Communists. In 1852 he devoted himself intensely to working for
the defense of 11 communists arrested and tried in Cologne on
charges of revolutionary conspiracy and wrote a pamphlet on
their behalf. The same year he also published, in a German-
American periodical, his essay “Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des
Louis Napoleon” (The Eighteenth Brumai