Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/24

22 because they are blended or prompted by a cosmopolitanism utterly foreign to the orthodox sectarian: a cosmopolitanism that tears down the boundaries of creed, color or race, and that expresses itself through the brotherhood of man based on the foundation of economic equality. However, wherever Marx's natural endowments, traits which singularly fitted and are no doubt to a large degree the product of the requirements of the historic hour, may come from matters little, especially when we note that in their manifestations they were always placed into the service of disinterested progress in general and into the cause of that class, ordained to be the vanguard of all progress, in particular—the working-class.

We know that Marx's cradle stood in that part of Germany which had been swept over and thoroughly cleansed of medieval refuse by the liberating and invigorating winds of the French Revolution. And, if we take into consideration that the Rhineland borders closely upon that country, which at the beginning of the fifteenth century was the first to give expression to bourgeois sentiments and interests; a country in which capitalism, still shut up in its feudalic womb, ripened first; a country that in those days produced an Erasmus and a Spinoza—the Netherlands; then it will not surprise you, when I emphasize that the Rhenish Province is today and always has been the most classical seat of capitalism in Germany, ergo, also the most progressive province in Prussia or the German Empire. During Marx's boyhood days, the pulsating throbs of the great French uprising were still felt in the Rhineland, and were graphically visible in the bold stand taken by the bourgeoisie against the powers of reaction—a spirit that remained unbroken and rose to its most magnificent heights in the turbulent days of 1848.

And now we come to a time in which Marx developed and worked to advance his views and ideals: the period of his life, and the period of victorious, advancing capitalism. England had practically achieved the mastery over the markets of the world.