"A large German colony also existed in Paris, estimated at a hundred thousand persons, in many ranks of life, from the poet Heine and the physician Hermann Ewerbeck to artisan of all kinds -- carpenters, shoemakers, tailor -- many of whom eventually returned to Germany. The more politically advanced among them belonged to the League of the Just. Suppressed after the insurrection of 1839, it continued to exist in groups that met in different cafes; their leaders were Ewerbeck and Herman Maurer, the latter living in the same house into which Marx and his wife had moved. Marx never joined their organization with its confused ideology of Blanquism, Icarianism, Christian socialism, Feuerbach humanism, and Wietlin communism, but he enjoyed their company, as well as that of their French comrades -- to the amazement and disgust of Ruge. Here Marx tasted, as so many intellectuals have after him, the bracing atmosphere of proletarian solidarity, the jo of life and the thirst for knowledge typical of militant workers, undaunted by all possible handicaps. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, as well as in The Holy Family, Marx expressed his elation in no uncertain terms. Here, he wrote, was an indication of the way in which, through the struggle for proletarian emancipation, alienation could finally be overcome."
Has anyone done a study of this specific period - the political practices of this "bracing atmosphere" Marx may have encountered? I was also wondering how much of his might be projection?
I don't really remember that part of The Holy Family since I was usually laughing too hard at Marx's and Engel's mockery of critical critics.
shag
-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)