Page:Karl Marx The Man and His Work.pdf/29

Rh dismissal of his friend Bruno Bauer in Bonn showed this anticipation to be a dream: a fata-morgana in a desert of bureaucratic intolerance. And when we today compare these events with conditions in our universities and other seats of learning, when we take the disciplining and the spectacular and unwarranted dismissal of Scott Nearing from the University of Pennsylvania as an analogy, we will be compelled to conclude that these institutions are as of yore dominated by class interests of the bourgeoisie and everything else but agencies of free thought and investigation. Academic liberty always was and is a fetish upon whose altar high-sounding phrases are sacrificed, but which like so many of our "inalienable rights" is in reality but one of the many conventional lies. In the face of these insurmountable obstacles, Marx decided to become a writer. In 1842, still residing in Bonn, he started to contribute to the "Rheinische Zeitung," published in Cologne, and whose editorship he shortly afterwards assumed. This paper was founded by a circle of class-conscious capitalists of the Rhineland; it was intended to be the official organ of the Rhenish bourgeoisie, and as such advocated in a moderate form such constitutional changes and liberties, as conceived by and were to the benefit of the capitalist class. It sulked against the so-called god-ordained powers of monarchy, aristocracy and bureaucracy; but as a whole the paper presented a somewhat lame opposition—but it was at least an opposition to the forces of reaction so dominant and provokingly brutal in Prussia before the memorable March days of 1848. Under the editorial guidance of Marx, this opposition gained in force and sharpness. He stormed against the censorship and advocated its abolition, voicing the demand for a free and unfettered press. As a political writer, he severely criticized the proceedings of the Rhenish Diet, and we also detect here the first manifestations of an awakening interest in Man: in economic conditions. He earnestly grapples with these problems to obtain a clear conception, but also feels here the insufficiency of Hegel's philosophy. The problem of the lumber thefts and the poverty amongst the