Karl Marx (1818-1883) emerges from among German contemporaries as the most important social theorist who was to help shape social and political thinking of the twentieth century. His writings continued to inform the intellectual discourse, stimulated the imagination of younger generations of social thinkers, and provoked new interpretations which surfaced throughout the twentieth century in numerous reproductions of "Marxism." The emerging theoretical narratives constituted a modern literature of explication, founded on the notion of critique, and intended to offer a liberating perspective on the crisis of modernity. After having defined the political landscape of Europe at the end of World War I, his work inspired the struggle of generations of political activists for social, political and economic change, the goal of numerous liberation movements in many parts of the world until these days.

Consequently, the twentieth century literature of social thought is, by and large, a response to the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, their interpretation of the economic and social conditions of industrialization (and Westernization), and their hopes for a revolutionary new world. Their vision of democracy in its earliest form (during the 1840s) includes specific ideas about public communication, that is, the role of a free press and the need for a free flow of information as constitutive elements of democratic practice.

Although throughout his life Marx must have been keenly aware of the central role of the press in the making of a just society and the consequences of censorship to journalistic freedom, his later theoretical work does not specifically address issues of press freedom or censorship. As a result, topics ranging from press-government relations to commercial pressures on the press, are confined to his early work in Germany as an intellectual, journalist, and editor.

This chapter concentrates on Marx's contribution to issues of press freedom, beginning with his writings as a young journalist and editor of the Rheinische Zeitung (1). Friedrich Engels (1869) observes that after spending "five years in the 'metropolis of intellectuals'" [Berlin] among Young Hegelians, Marx returned to Bonn and Köln to use the Rheinische Zeitung "with unprecedented daring" to attack the deliberations of the Rhine Province Assembly in a series of six articles. His work attracted much attention. When he became editor at the end of 1842, his activities were heavily censored until the Prussian government shut down the Rheinische Zeitung in 1843. Marx resigned immediately.

Engels reports that Marx decided--after criticizing the debates of the Rhine Province Assembly--that since the sphere of civil society rather than the state holds the key to understanding the historical process of human development, political economy must contain the knowledge needed to understand and analyze the evolution of social formations.

Within just a few years, Marx had moved to France to study political economy--and the history of the French Revolution--was expelled, went to Brussels, returned to France, and finally re-emerged in Köln. There he founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, which appeared between June, 1848 and May, 1849 with Karl Marx listed as "Redakteur en Chef" and six editors, including Friedrich Engels, Heinrich Bürgers, Ernst Dronke, Georg Weerth, Ferdinand Wolff, and Wilhelm Wolff. Engels writes about those years that the "freedom of the press of 1848 was probably nowhere so successfully exploited as it was at that time, in the midst of a Prussian fortress, by that newspaper. After the government had tried in vain to silence the newspaper by persecuting it through the courts . . . . it had to close at the time of the May revolts of 1849 when Marx was expelled on the pretext that he was no longer a Prussian subject, and similar pretexts were being used to expel the other editors" (1869).

The reason for settling in Köln (rather than Berlin, for instance) was its prominent position in the Rhine Province, not only as a progressive, industrial, center of Germany, but also because of its previous experiences under the French and the rule of the Code Napoleon, a codex more supportive of a free press, at least implicitly, than Prussian law.

The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was operated under the "dictatorship" of Marx, whose clear vision and personal confidence made it into the most famous German newspaper of the revolutionary late 1840s, according to Engels (Fetscher, 1969, 147). In fact, Engels describes the political conditions, and the predicament of the working class, in particular. Thus, constitutional prerequisites for a democratic social and political existence, like freedom of the press, or freedom of association and assembly, were rights the bourgeoisie had failed to win for itself or the working class. Instead, they had become the editorial mission of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the context of promoting democracy--"but a democracy which emphasized throughout the proletarian character" (Fetscher, 1969, 146)--and in pursuit of a strictly political agenda. In his editorial campaigns, Marx emphasizes two political goals: domestically, a united, democratic German republic after the disintegration of Prussia and the breakdown of Austria and abroad, support of revolutionary peoples and a call for war against Russia, the perceived enemy of the revolution. His use of extra editions is indicative of the strength of his political commitment to inform and prepare readers in support of revolutionary objectives.

The result was a revolutionary newspaper that endorsed democratic movements, including revolutions abroad and at home, and advocated change in the face of heavy military and police presence in the city. It was a hostile environment. Engels recalls that there were eight guns, with fixed bayonets, and 250 rounds of ammunition stashed away in the editorial offices of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and that printers were wearing the red caps of the Jacobines, reminders of the French revolution and evidence of a united and determined newspaper staff. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung would be difficult to take by force; however, on May 18, 1849 the Prussian government closed the newspaper; Marx was considered a non-Prussian and threatened with deportation. Engels reports (1969, 151) that "one half of the editors was under court orders, the other half was non-Prussian and deportable. Nothing could be done as long as an army was supporting the government." Marx thanked his readers for their participation in the newspaper, whose everlasting message remains: "emancipation of the working class." At the time of its suspension, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung had 6,000 subscribers and, according to Engels, there had not been a newspaper before or after which "had the power and the influence and knew how to electrify the proletarian masses like the Neue Rheinische" (1969, 152).

In his description of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Engels charaterizes the tone of the newspaper as neither "celebratory, serious, or enthusiastic." Instead, political opponents were considered despicable and treated with extreme disdain. Individuals, organizations, and institutions could not escape the scrutiny of editorial observation and analysis, while rifts between the petit bourgeoisie and the working class were bridged, because "the less we allowed to petit bourgeoisie to misunderstand our proletarian democracy, the more submissive and pliable it became" (1969, 149).

The newspaper represented the hopes of revolutionary movements; Engels reports that when the French revolution of June 1848 was lost, Marx celebrated the defeated insurgents in a "powerful" article. Afterwards, the last stockholders of the newspaper withdrew their support, and Engels reminisces proudly, "but we had the satisfaction to have been the only newspaper in Germany, and perhaps in Europe, to have raised the flag of the trampled proletariat at a time, when the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie of all countries stifled the vanquished with the power of their defamation" (1969, 150).

In the process, both, the Rheinische Zeitung and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung , chronicled the official attacks--through censorship and legal proceedings--not only against their own editorial staffs, but also against other newspapers in Prussia; their coverage re-created an oppressive atmosphere of mid-nineteenth century journalism in Germany and provided the editorial and political context for Marx and his editors in their struggle for freedom. There was much praise for Marx by his fellow journalists after the publication of his series of articles about the press freedom debates of the Rhine Province Assembly. For instance, the Deutsche Jahrbücher notes, "Nothing more profound and more substantial has been said or could be said on freedom of the press and in defense of it" (Marx-Engels Archives. 2000, 1).

Marx returned to Paris after the demise of his newspaper career, was expelled in the summer of 1849, and took up residence in London, where he continued to produce theNeue Rheinische Zeitung in the form of a monthly review. But while he proceeded to study political economy at the British Museum library, he was also a regular contributor and European political editor of theNew-York Daily Tribune until the outbreak of the American Civil War, therefore, extending his journalistic career into the 1860s.

His involvement with the press--he also wrote occasionally for other American newspapers and granted several interviews to American journalists--suggests the importance he attached to journalism, its reach, and potential effect on readers. He used the press either directly, as a creator of political representations of current European events, or indirectly, as a subject of interviews in later years, when his ideas had begun to spread through various book-length publications and the cause of socialism gained strength in Europe.

The dissemination of his work throughout the English-speaking world, however, proceded haltingly, extending into the twentieth century. The first substantive work (translation and year in brackets) on Marxism (with Engels), Die deutsche Ideologie [The German Ideology ]completed in 1845 to 1846 and published posthumously in 1932, signals Marx's break with the Young Hegelians and his move toward a materialistic conception of history. The work was followed in 1847 by Misere de la philosophie [ Poverty of Philosophy, 1900]--a critical response to Pierre Joseph Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty, 1846--and (with Engels) the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei, 1848 [The Communist Manifesto , 1883]. Next came Die Klassenkämpfe in Frankreich, 1848-1850 in 1850 [The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850, 1924], Der 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon, 1852 [The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1898], and Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, 1859 [A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1904]. The first volume of Das Kapital --the result of his extensive research in England--first appeared in 1867 in Germany [Capital. A Critique of Political Economy, volume I, 1886], while volumes 2 and 3 were published posthumously by Engels (in 1885 and 1894 respectively [1907 and 1909]).

According to Engels (1869), Das Kapital [ contains "the political economy of the working class, reduced to its scientific formulation. This work is concerned not with rabble-rousing phrasemongering, but with strictly scientific deductions. Whatever one's attitude to socialism, one will at any rate have to acknowledge that in this work it is presented for the first time in a scientific manner, and that it was precisely Germany that accomplished this."

II

The early Marx focuses his attention on the idea of freedom, the prerequisite for a democratic way of life, and addresses the specific need for a free press in the context of his professional work as journalist and editor. But the topic of press freedom takes on a particularly relevant and important role with the realization that public communication--realized in the institution of the press--and the social and political well-being of society are closely connected; in fact, the condition of communication in society determines the condition of society itself. For this reason, society must rely on the unimpeded workings of a press system to advance its own cause and reinforce progress. But more importantly, perhaps, the press constitutes a general forum for the exchange of ideas, regardless of an individual's position or reputation. Marx notes that the press is the "most general way for individuals to communicate their intellectual being. It knows no reputation of a person, but only the reputation of intelligence" (RZ 139, 19/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 94).

The appreciation of newspapers as instruments of public communication and the protection of a free flow of ideas constitute relevant dimensions of an open public sphere. This means for Marx that freedom of the press becomes a necessary condition for expressing and reinforcing oppositional ideas and, therefore, a basic circumstance for his editorial mission. Unfortunately, freedom had remained a figment of the imagination for most Germans, or a sentimental idea without a chance to materialize; according to Marx, Germans respect ideas so much that they rarely realize them (RZ 139, 19/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 88-89).

Besides the idea of freedom, truth emerges as yet another objective in the theory and practice of nineteenth century journalism; it is the pursuit of "the way it is" in the social, economic, and political environment of society that defines the work of journalists and the mission of the press. There are two measures of truth, as Marx notes, in the context of Prussian rule. For instance, regarding the differences in press coverage of foreign and domestic affairs, he observes that frequently false and speculative reports from abroad--open to revision the following day--contain "factual lies" raised to the level of truths; as such they remain unassailable and uncontested by public authorities, like censors, while similar domestic reporting results in condemnation and censorial reproach. Marx asks, what is wrong with a press that attempts to share volatile situations and activities abroad with its readers--history in the making--through news from far-away places, while rejecting the representation of similar historical processes in its domestic coverage (RZ 8, 8/1/43; Fetscher, 1969, 122)?

In addition, the reporting of truth as such may not be as significant as shedding light on the process of documenting truth. Marx knows about the difficulties of establishing truth and concludes that truth is more than the fact per se, it is the act of discovery; in other words, "the investigation of truth must be honest itself, the real investigation is the unfolded truth whose disconnected parts are combined in the results" (Fetscher, 1969, 23).

The belief in a pursuit of freedom and truth becomes the cornerstone of resistance to official attempts to manipulate both, the understanding of freedom as license to act, and the notion of truth as relative and determinable by official public authorities. Consequently, censorship appears as official guidance, disguised in the form of instructions to improve the practice of journalism by defining truth.

Censorship of newspapers and other periodical publications was a fact of life in the Prussian state of the 1840s. Edicts proclaiming the power of authorities defined the limits of journalistic practice, including the employment of editors, and reduced the private decisions of publishers to acts of compliance with official pronouncements. Marx ridicules official demands for hiring only "respectable" individuals with scientific expertise as editors, whose "position and character guarantee the seriousness of their activities and the loyalty of their thinking" (Fetscher, 1969, 36). He asks whether censors have such expert backgrounds, and if they do, why don't they act as writers? "What would be better than censorship to end the confusion of the press, when these civil servants--overpowering in numbers, more powerful with their scientific genius--would rise and--with their weight--crush those miserable writers, who practice only in one genre and even then without an officially recognized skill" (Fetscher, 1969, 37)?

Who, then is entitled to be a journalist? Official documents speak of "authorized" and "unauthorized" individuals, suggesting specialization, e.g., the certification of various areas of writing--Marx writes about authorizing the cobbler to write only about shoes and concludes that the result would be a separation of the estates and a fixing of intellectual practices that would end with the creation of authorized and unauthorized readers. He adds sarcastically that it would be "highly expedient that only authorized authors should be permitted to buy and read their own works" (RZ 135, 19/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 93). According to Marx, citizens become both, authorized and unauthorized contributors to the press, depending on their profession and what they write about.

The press in Germany was intimidated and ineffective, fearing censorship and termination by government; Marx writes in one of his frequent editorial reactions to censorship that the "German daily press is the weakest, most lethargic and timid institution under the sun! The greatest injustices could occur before its eyes, or be committed against it, while it remains quiet and secretive; if one would not hear it by chance, one would never hear it from the press. . ." Indeed, when censorship is strengthened by a turn to military censorship, the German press hardly reacts to these changes, and Marx observes, "the press in Breslau, Berlin, and Leipzig takes it like a natural turn of events" (NRZ 246, 15/3/49; Fetscher, 1969, 182-183).

Marx exposes the excesses of Prussian rule over the press, including frequent acts of censorship and suppression of information, as well as various suggestions for how to regulate the press, which range from topical restrictions and the establishment of community newspapers to designating one critical newspaper per province; he also realizes increasingly that without strict control of the press, the German monarchy would be in jeopardy, if not defeated, because it would mean the rise of democratic principles and practices, including a victory of the working class. As Engels once described it, "freedom of the press, the free competition of opinions, is the release of the class struggle on the grounds of the press. . . . while order means suffocating the class struggle and restricting the suppressed classes" (NRZ 283, 27/4/49; Fetscher, 1969, 200).

Although Marx articulates his position vis-a-vis issues of press freedom regularly in the columns of his newspaper, the debates of press freedom in the Rhine Province Assembly constitute the most coherent and sustained argument--offered in a series of articles written between May 5 and May 19, 1842. They provide the political, historical foundation of his arguments concerning a free press in the context of a larger commitment to individual and collective social, political, and economic freedom.

Marx begins with some general observations about personal relations to press freedom by suggesting the importance of knowing what it means to labor under unfettered conditions of freedom. His own experience as well as his knowledge of intellectual working conditions elsewhere--in France, Holland, England, Switzerland or the United States, for instance--and the practice of journalism, specifically, reveal the depth of his passion and constitute the parameters of his insights. He writes that "freedom of the press, like beauty, one must have loved to be able to defend it. I feel that the existence of whatever I really love is necessary and needed, and without which my own being is neither fulfilled, satisfied, nor complete." (RZ 125, 5/5/ 42; Fetscher, 1969, 49). Those who never encounter freedom of the press as a requirement, and whose rational approach prevents an emotional attachment to the notion of a free press, will treat the topic like any other "exotic" phenomenon--as a removed, external event.

But such a passion or intensity of the argument is dangerous, since press freedom is not sufficient by itself and, therefore, cannot (and must not) fulfill alone the needs of individual or a people. In other words, press freedom is a contributing factor to historically grounded social, political, or cultural conditions and forces that must not only overcome specific interests of the estates in a particular kind of freedom, but also realize that a free press may also reflect--and perhaps symbolize--the deficiences of society. The Zeitgeist lives in the pages of the press, journalists articulate its character, and readers absorb its spirit regardless of its sense or purpose. The flaws or failures of the press, including its lies and deceptions, are also the deficiencies of people, state and bureaucracy.

Nevertheless, Marx insists on the centrality of the press in the pursuit of freedom, and he maintains that,the "press, in general, is a realization of human freedom. Where there is a press, there is also press freedom." He implies that freedom is ever present and assailed only when it is someone else's freedom. Thus, since "every kind of freedom has always existed, either as privilege or universal right," the question of press freedom becomes a question of whether it is a privilege or a common right, or, as Marx proclaims, "whether press freedom is the privilege of specific individuals or the privilege of the human mind?" (RZ 132, 12/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 69).

Censorship, on the other hand, constitutes critique as official monopoly, resists an open exchange of ideas, and opposes any notion of critique, or the process of reflection and articulation, that is inherent in the idea of intellectual work and the practice of a free press. Censorship contradicts the very character of the press, it does not emerge from the idea of freedom--which is part of the character of the press to provide access to divergent ideas--but promotes consent by suppression.

Likewise, press laws are expressions of freedom calling into questions specific press practices; censorship, on the other hand, punishes freedom. Marx insists that press laws, for instance, consider freedom a normal condition of the press, and consequently breaking these laws suggests a violation of such a freedom; thus, legal codes are the "bible of freedom of a people" as "press laws are the legal recognition of press freedom." Marx considers press law a right, because it constitutes a positive existence of freedom and must be present, although it may never be applied. Censorship, however, like slavery, cannot become legal, although it may be present as a law (RZ 132, 12/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 77). Thus, censorship is not a law, but a police order; yet even in this form, it is a poor regulation, because "it does not accomplish what it sets out to accomplish, and it does not want to succeed in what it achieves" (RZ, 135, 15/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 79).

In fact, censorship has detrimental effects on society, since every uncensored publication, regardless of its quality, is an extraordinary event and produces martyrs, while press freedom eliminates the aura of fame surrounding a print product in the hands of censors. Moreover, a censored press is demoralizing, since it is inseparable from hypocracy, the source of its problems. Marx notices that under a system of censorship, the government "hears only its own voice, knows that it hears only its own voice, and is yet fixed on the delusion to hear the voice of the people and demands from the people to fall for the trick." The result is a deterioration of the relationship between people and politics and the disillusionment of journalism; both, people and the press must live with and by lies. He concludes, "since people must consider uncensored publications as lawless, they will get used to considering lawlessness as free, freedom as lawless, and lawfulness as unfreedom. Thus, censorship kills the public spirit." Indeed, censorship is the unrelenting attack on the rights of private persons and on ideas, in particular (RZ 135; 15/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 83-84).

The presence of censorship creates instant problems for writers and intellectuals, who are identified with language and the expression of ideas and whose activities extend across cultural or political borders. Marx addresses the problem of authorship--and influence--from outside Germany, reminiscent of his own existence as an expatriate intellectual during the years leading up to his editorship of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung and suggestive of the concrete conditions of intellectual life in Europe. Under such historical circumstances, Prussian authors have a choice; they may either publish their ideas under the threat of censorship at home or move beyond the borders and publish them under the specific conditions of a particular state; in either case, however, authors are under surveillance by the Prussian state. Indeed, Marx notes that publications abroad will meet more frequently with objections from authorities, because they have not been scrutinized by domestic censors and are, therefore. liable to contain injurious material.

In the context of debating censorship and freedom, Prussian authorities created the specter of "good" and "bad" newspapers, thus producing images of either a supportive (good) or jealous (bad) press, while Marx wants to differentiate between the rational and moral (free) press and the shameless, "perfumed miscarriage" of a (censored) press. Moreover, he concludes that "the free press remains good even when its products are bad, because these products are deviations from the nature of a free press." On the other hand, "the censored press remains bad, even when its products are good, because these products are only good insofar as they represent the free press within the censored press, and insofar as it is not in their character to be products of a censored press" (RZ 132, 12/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 72-73).

Official differentiations (good or bad) or characterizations (real or false) imply definitions and intentions that remain unanswered. Thus, Marx wants to know the "real" press, that is, which one represents reality, and which one the favored reality? How are distinctions made, who makes them, and where is the press in these deliberations about its very existence? Differently expressed, labelling is a challenge of press freedom and confronting the existence of the press or its conduct constitutes an interrogation of freedom as such. Marx adds, "Whenever a specific form of freedom is rejected, freedom in general is rejected and can only lead a quasi-existence, and wherever unfreedom will be active happens by pure chance. Unfreedom is the rule, and freedom is the exception to chance and arbitrariness" (RZ 139, 19/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 98).

Marx addresses the relationship of press and people or nation as a crucial connection between the spiritual and material spheres of everyday life. Being an integral part of society also means that a free press represents not only ideas and ideologies of people, but also reflects engagement and participation. This also means, that the German press--as a young press--is a growing institution, united with the people and thinking and feeling like the people. Therefore, this press is "like life, always expanding, never complete. It stands among the people, truly feeling its hopes and fears, its love and hate, its pleasures and pains." Marx concludes that because of its proximity to the people, the press reflects their real life with all of its natural contradictions, trials and errors, and because of its tender age (as a press for the masses rather than special interests), this press is liable to make mistakes, overstate, exaggerate, even distort events, only to learn from its practices. These are shortcomings, and yet, people recognize their own conditions in the flawed performance of their newspapers and know that they will eventually rise to represent their moral spirit. Indeed, Marx concludes that attacks on the people's press is a political acknowledgment and a significant initial recognition of "its presence, its reality, and its power" (RZ 1, 1/1/43; Fetscher, 1969, 117).

Specifically, Marx proposes that the free press is a public institution that unites people, confirms their self-confidence, and provides surveillance. He declares quite polemically that "a free press is the ever-present, vigilant eye of the people's spirit, the embodiment of a people's trust in itself, the communication link that binds the individual to state and world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into spiritual ones while idealizing their crude material form. It is the people's outspoken self-confession, whose redeeming power is well known. It is the spiritual mirror, in which a people discovers itself, and insight is the first prerequisite of wisdom. It is the public spirit, which may be delivered to every cottage cheaper than coal gas. It is multifarious, ubiquitous, and omniscient. It is the ideal world, which emerges from the real world only to return to it as an enriched spirit, newly charged" (RZ 135, 15/5/42; Fetscher , 1969, 80).

Marx repeats his understanding of the role of a responsible press in his first court appearance as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1849 when he concludes his defense (against a libel charge) that "it is the duty of the press in its own milieu to represent the oppressed" and to confront the specific executioners of social and political power. Reflecting on the conditions of the time, Marx suggests that his newspaper has no choice but to attack. "At this moment it is the first duty of the press, to undermine all foundations of the existing political situation" (NRZ 221, 14/2/49; Fetscher, 1969, 175).

The important emancipatory role of communication is confirmed and reinforced by subsequent editorial comments in response to debates about the poster law. This time Engels writes that posters keep the revolutionary spirit of the working class alive, "posters change every street corner into a large newspaper, in which the passing worker notes the events of the day, comments on them, or finds opinions expressed and debated, and where they meet, at the same time, people of all classes and opinions, with whom to discuss the posters, where they have a journal or a club at no cost." (NRZ 283, 27/4/49; Fetscher, 1969, 199). Engels extends the idea of freedom of the press to embrace posters and their contents as collective vehicles of public communication. His arguments are reminiscent of the extensions of the public sphere with the introduction of posters during the Russian revolution, their use by German working-class movements of the 1920s, or by the Chinese Communists in the form of wall-newspapers about one hundred years later.

Differentiating between the "idea" of press freedom and its concrete historical existence, Marx refers to the conditions of freedom in a number of countries and finds that the United States enjoy the "natural phenomenon" of a free press in its purest form. Yet, he concludes that Germany actually furnishes a more significant historical basis for press freedom, because literature and, with it, intellectual growth constitute the real historical determinants of a free press (RZ 135, 15/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 83). In the meantime, however, he also reminds his readers that "Germans know their state only through hearsay, that closed doors are not made of glass, that a secret state is not a public state, and thus, one must not blame newspapers for the mistake of the state, which is the mistake newspapers try to correct" (RZ, 8, 8/1/43; Fetscher , 1969, 122).

Instead, the historical context often arises from remarks about commerce and the definition of the press as a business; elements of trade rather than literature are the constituents of a working model of the press and decide the ways in which the press is conceptualized. Indeed, some of his contemporaries, like Schäffle and Knies, work with a commercial model in their discussions of the press. Marx takes this argument to its logical conclusion by suggesting that even if one sees the press as a commercial enterprise, it must be considered more significant than any other business--since it involves intellectual labor (Kopfarbeit) rather than activities defined as physical labor (Arm- und Beinarbeit). He declares "the emancipation of arm and leg becomes humanly significant with the emancipation of the head" (RZ 139, 19/5/42, Fetscher , 1969, 88).

Consequently, commercial freedom cannot be press freedom, since "every particular sphere of freedom is freedom of a particular sphere, just as a specific way of life is the way of life of a particular nature" (RZ 139, 19/5/42, Fetscher , 1969, 90). Marx insists on separating discussions of freedom that relate, if not combine, different spheres of human activity and, therefore, rejects the idea that press freedom is a category of commercial freedom. For instance, it cannot be that the carpenter, who demands the freedom for his craftsmanship, is given the freedom of the philosopher. In fact, "the first freedom of the press is not to be a business," according to Marx, who continues, that if the press is seen as a business, however, it is an object assigned to the sphere of printers or booksellers rather than writers (RZ 139, 19/5/42; Fetscher , 1969, 92).

The discussions of real or potential threats to press freedom are not only a reaction to the concrete historical situation of authoritarian control over public communication, but they also reflect an interest in protecting personal freedom and intellectual independence through appropriate organizational guarantees. Indeed, Engels writes (in letter to August Bebel) years later that dependence, even on a workers party, "is a tough situation" and thought it actually hopeless for anyone with initiative to be an editor of a party newspaper. He had agreed with Marx since the beginning of their editorial collaboration never to accept such a position, but "to have a newspaper which was also financially independent from the party" (Fetscher, 1969, 234).

III

These theoretical and practical contributions to placing press freedom in the historical context of revolutionary consciousness, political struggle, and commitment to a proletarian democracy define the intellectual position of the young Marx. They are the work of a man in his mid-twenties in his first encounter with the authority of the state. Thus, these writings reflect not only his intellectual abilities and professional determination, but also his firm belief in the importance of freedom as a spiritual and political sphere. The latter is contained in and preserved by the pending transformation of capitalism into socialism and confirmed and strengthened, no doubt, by the victories of the working class.

Nevertheless, most of his comments on the state of press freedom are addressed to the concrete political situation of the press--including his own newspaper--rather than to the rise of capitalism and the consequences of commercial interests for the development of a free press, or to a theoretical or constitutional debate, based on the democratic experiences concerning press freedom abroad. In fact, the notion of commercial power and its effects on the future of journalism in Germany are more clearly expressed by some of his contemporaries, like Knies or Schäffle, who, in turn, seem to be less focused in their own theoretical work on the consequences of the political realities of their times--and their impact on the press--than Marx who is preoccupied with his political mission to liberate the working class.

Consequently, his writings provide ample evidence of threats to his own journalism, but they also shed light on the relations between government and the press, in general, the nature and extent of censorship, and the concrete consequences for the existence of a critical press in Germany, whose editors and journalists could only look elsewhere--to England and the United States, but also France--for models of a free press and an autonomous practice of journalism. Indeed, Marx draws in his arguments for a free press on the experiences of journalism in different countries and introduces concrete examples of how freely journalists operate in other press systems, but also what press freedom means in the political and philosophical context of the respective societies without being idealistic or blind to specific problems. For instance, writing about the French press, he notes that it is not free enough, because it is subjected to oppressive material conditions--the requirement of large bail bonds--which propels newspapers into the sphere of commerce and destroys their independence (RZ 135, 15/5/42; Fetscher , 1969, 83). Little could he know, on the other hand, that only a generation later, socialism in the United States suffered from state censorship and persecution, especially during and after World War I, when First Amendment guarantees were turned into a privilege (by the Supreme Court) for those holding a particular view of democracy that seemed to fit official practices.

Marx treats press freedom as a necessary condition for a democratic society and, together with freedom of association and assembly, for instance, as a political goal. He demonstrates through his editorial practice, including the actual infractions and his numerous court appearances, the concrete foundations of his theoretical discussions of the nature of a free press and the location of press freedom as an unalienable right among other freedoms in the catalogue of rights. His theoretical writings are tied into the political agenda of emancipating the working class.

Indeed, press freedom is a prerequisite condition for competing political beliefs and struggling ideologies in the public sphere. It reinforces conflict and is a crucial element in defining hegemony which relies on communication and exchange. Press freedom suggests access not only to contesting ideas, but also to the public discourse of society. It neither improves participation qualitatively or quantitatively, although it may encourage involvement. Instead, its protection of the process of public communication safeguards the construction of reality by and through a variety of social, political, or cultural forces and guarantees choice. At the same time, however, press freedom works only for those who have the means of communication at their disposal, e.g., access to the media or public or private support to sustain the financial burden of a publishing enterprise.

Marx understood that as a determinant of political processes, the press is produces and reinforces specific ideological positions; in fact, it becomes an instrument of propaganda, agitation, and organization--as Lenin would announce two generations later in his instructions to the Communist press--at a point in history when the era of a Russian bourgeois press comes to an end. However, Marx does not theorize these functions, he merely generates and applies the power of the press based on his intellectual strength, and the tenacity of his staff, to pursue his political mission. He appreciates the potential effectiveness of the press, and the participation of the working class in the process of public communication, but insists on freedom as an unconditional circumstance.

This sentiment is still shared many years later by Engels who expresses his astonishment in an 1891 letter to August Bebel--who tried to suppress an article in die Neue Zeit and threatened censorship and appropriation--"the takeover of your press by the party appears in a rather strange light." He wonders about maintaining a difference to oppressive state actions, reminds Bebel that "no party in any country can silence me," and urges him to be less sensitive and less Prussian, while expressing his suspicion about the circumstances of freedom in the socialist press, like in the Vorwärts. (Fetscher, 1969, 232-233).

Marx is focused in his argument on the political or legal position of the Prussian state rather than on the economic conditions for a free press. Even after his financial backers drop out (for political reasons) and he comes to rely on the financial support of his readers/subscribers, there may still have been a desire to see the Neue Rheinische Zeitung become a permanent fixture in the landscape of the German press. Yet he chooses to ignore the economic aspect of public communication--as a practical matter of support regarding his own newspaper, or as a conceptual problem, relevant to his own pursuit of political economy as a theoretical explanation--and concentrates, instead, on issues of political power and law as an expression of state authority.

His approach to the notion of legal sanctions, in general, is characterized by his interpretation of laws which do not address practice but conscience as positive sanctions of lawlessness. Thus, censorship constitutes lawless behavior, and lawlessness warrants the attention of journalism which represents the spirit and the conscience of the people. Marx allows no compromise and condemns any and all attacks on the press and the work of individual journalists.

Indeed, he insists that "freedom remains freedom, whether it expresses itself in printer's ink, a parcel of land, or consciousness, or a political meeting" (RZ 139, 19/5/42; Fetscher, 1969, 99) and concludes that the members of the Sixth Rhine Assembly condemned themselves by condemning press freedom.

Implicit in these discussions of press freedom, and in his struggle for survival as a critical voice in the sea of bland and conformist Prussian journalism, is a belief in the power of the press to influence and lead people. Newspapers are more than conveyor belts of a new industrial information retrieval system. They reproduce ideologies, create sentiments, and reflect the spirit of the people.

Marx frequently uses the term "Volkspresse" [ people's press] to refer to newspapers as representative examples of social, cultural, and political movements and mirrors of societal growth and intellectual advancement with all of their imperfections, failures and successes. The press of this type functions neither as an elitist organ nor as an authoritative instrument of control, but constitutes a public sphere which accommodates the voice of the people, that is the working class, with its own tolerance for contradiction and dissent. The notion of "Volkspresse" implies a special relationship between people and the press that finds its expression in the editorial attention paid to the interests of people and suggests a specific, nurturing and protective role for newspapers in the process of public communication. Marx shares with his contemporary German colleagues, like Schäffle and Knies, an understanding of the press as a pivotal institution in modern society; he also knows about its potential as a social and political means of persuasion, and therefore, as an attractive, if not indispensable weapon against political authority and for the rule of democratic ideas.

Marx writes on freedom of the press with moral conviction and political determination; he demonstrates the power of his intellect and offers an early glimpse at the logic, style, and persuasive force of his later work. Unlike in later works, however, his thoughts on freedom of the press emerge from the frontlines of a concrete, existential struggle--beyond the survival of his newspaper in a climate of official mistrust and hostility--as a personal challenge to an individual in his roles of journalist and political activist. His response to bourgeois authority is a powerful and noteworthy polemic of an extraordinary mind.

Notes and References

[This is a chapter in a forthcoming book, Social Theories of the Press. German Foundations of Mass Communication Studies in the United States, 1850s-1920s, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield, Boulder, Colorado. It contains chapters on a number of German and American political economists and sociologists and their theoeires of communiation, media, and public opinion].

Note

1. The following translations are by the author; they are based on the original German text provided in Iring Fetscher's (1969) compilation of articles from the Rheinische Zeitung and Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and other documents related to the writings of Marx and Engels on issues of press freedom. The citations also indicate the orginal source, e.g., RZ or NRZ (Rheinische Zeitung or Neue Rheinische Zeitung), number and date, and its location in Fetscher's book.

References

Engels, Friedrich. 1869. Die Zukunft, No. 185 (August 11); Marx-Engels Archives at marxists.firetrail.com/archive/bio/amrx/eng-1869.htm

Engels, Friedrich. 1969. "Marx und die Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1848-1849." In Fetscher, Iring. Hrsg. Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels. Pressefreiheit und Zensur. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 144-152.

Fetscher, Iring. Hrsg. 1969. Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels. Pressefreiheit und Zensur. Frankfurt: Europäische Verlagsanstalt.

Marx-Engels Archives. 2000. marxists.firetrail.com/archive/bio/amrx/eng-1869.htm