Karl Marx: A Prolet-Play
(Reported to have been written for the WPA theater by a member of the League of American Writers.)
The von Westphalens’ garden in Trier, Germany. Young Karl Marx comes in, a fine manly lad of fifteen.
KARL MARX (calling up to a window on the second floor of the house). Comrade Jenny! Oh, Comrade Jenny!
JENNY VON WESTPHALEN (putting her head out the window). Hello, Karl: I’m coming right down.
Ferdinand Lassalle skulks in, a boy of about Marx’s age. He wears spectacles, a mustache and a pointed beard, and has a mane of black hair, which stands up on his head.
LASSALLE. One moment, Comrade Marx: let me give you a word of warning. Your attentions to Jenny von Westphalen are beginning to verge on class betrayal. Remember that Fraülein von Westphalen belongs to the feudal nobility: your solidarity is with the workers!
MARX. No, Comrade Lassalle: you are mistaken. The correct line is a popular front which will take in the liberal nobility as well as the militant working class. You have been misled into a left deviation.
Jenny appears from the house. Lassalle slinks away, with a look of hate.
JENNY. I don’t like that Lassalle boy hanging around here. Papa says he is a potential fascist,
MARX. Oh, Ferdinand is a good comrade, I think. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt.
JENNY. He tried to flirt with me at the rally last week, and I can tell that he’s peeved with me now because I showed that I wasn’t interested. And now he is chasing after that reactionary Sophie Hatzfeldt.
MARX. Hm: not very consistent!—And I don’t like his trying to cut me out,
JENNY. Nobody could do that, Comrade Karl!
MARX. Have you thought about what I asked you? Will you share my struggles and exile?
JENNY. I will always be your comrade, Karl.
He embraces her.
MARX. But we must not yield to romantic escapism. There is a meeting of the fraction at five, and we must not weaken the discipline by lateness,
Bonn University, Germany. Office of Professor Hegel. Marx and Engels come in arm and arm, in the costume of German students. They are fine vigorous laughing young fellows. They find Bruno Bauer, a young professor, who stands looking out the window.
MARX. Why, Bruno, old boy!—why so gloomy? You ought to be mustering all your forces to liberate Germany from the reactionary feudal government of Friedrich Wilhelm IV!
BRUNO BAUER. Old Hegel has violated my academic freedom. He hates me on account of my bold championship of the Young Hegelian League, which was named after him but which he now repudiates. He has summoned me to dismiss me from my chair; and I hear that he is going to put in my place a lackey of the interests named Sidney Cook, who teaches a mishmash of Dialectic and Pragmatism.
MARX. How shameful! We must unmask old Hegel!
Hegel enters. He wears a mask, but his identity is betrayed by his slight stooping figure, his spectacles, his white mustache, and a small tuft of hair that stands up on the back of his head.
HEGEL (unctuously, rubbing his hands). Well, well, young men: what a beautiful sunny morning! We must all believe in the Dialectic on a lovely sunny morning like this!
MARX. Haven’t you been letting the Dialectic get a bit rusty lately, Professor? It has been lying on your desk for months without your even taking it out of its case!
ENGELS. Everybody knows that you are teaching nothing but petty bourgeois Instrumentalism, and that your so-called educational methods are merely the result of intellectual disorientation!
HEGEL (raging). I will suppress your right of student opinion!
MARX AND ENGELS. Ha ha!
Joyously they unmask him and stand him on his head.
MARX (snatching the Dialectic from the desk). Ours is the Dialectic now!—Come, Bruno: you have not joined the YHL, although you have defended it so courageously. You must get your card today!
The three march out arm in arm, singing, Hold the fort, for we are coming!
The Revolution of 1848: just behind the barricades. Shots and sounds of fighting. Enter Engels, Lassalle and Proudhon. Engels has a bloody bandage around his head.
ENGELS. Phew! that’s hot work! Now that we’ve joined forces with the liberal bourgeoisie to overthrow the feudal monarchy, we must bring pressure on the lickspittles of liberalism to grant our just demands.
Marx emerges from the doorway of a house.
MARX. What, Friedrich: still fighting in the streets? Don’t you know that we must turn the intellectual weapons which we have acquired through our bourgeois education against the institutions of our own class?
LASSALLE. Intellectual weapons! What we need is a coup d’état!
MARX. Always a careerist, Comrade Lassalle! That way lies counter-revolution.
PROUDHON. Why can’t we just have coöperatives, so that we won’t have to do any more fighting?
MARX. That’s the poverty of your philosophy, Proudhon. We must not shrink from violence to achieve our ends. But, Friedrich, your place is there with me (pointing toward the house where he has been working). Remember we have the Dialectic in our keeping. Have you drafted the Communist Manifesto?
ENGELS (taking a manuscript from his pocket). What do you think of this for an opening? “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Communism.”
MARX. No, Friedrich: that will never do. That’s not the way to put it. Make it: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of Progressivism.”
A congress of the Workers’ International. Lassalle and Bakunin, looking furtively about them, slip into the empty hall.
BAKUNIN. I’ve got the bomb ready and will stand right here by the door. When Marx comes in, I’ll throw it.
LASSALLE. There’s nothing like individual terrorism!
The delegates begin to gather, Bruno Bauer and Proudhon among them.
BRUNO BAUER (to Proudhon). They say that Comrade Marx is going to announce a change of policy,
Marx and Engels come in, Engels with his lifelong companion, Mary Burns.
PROUDHON (with a lewd French leer). And how is the petite mademoiselle?
MARY BURNS. Faith, Misther Proudhon, us Irish may have been the bribed tools of British imperialism once, but today we’re in the vanguard of the proletariat, an’ I’ll thank ye to keep a civil tongue in yer head an’ not be callin’ me anny of those filthy French names!
ENGELS. You must be careful, Comrade Marx: remember that the mad dogs of reaction are trailing you.
MARY BURNS. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! There’s that spalpeen Lassalle again!
ENGELS. HOW many times must I tell you, Mary, that religion is the opium of the people?
MARX. No, Friedrich: that’s what I said when I was young, but today we must not exclude the possibility of a broad popular front with the Vatican.
LASSALLE (to Bakunin). Why don’t you throw the bomb?
BAKUNIN. That will always be unexplained.
ENGELS (addressing the audience). Our beloved leader, Comrade Marx, will announce a new directive.
Prolonged applause, Marx appears on the platform. Tumultuous applause and cheering.
MARX. Comrades, we must combat the menace of Bourbonism, which is threatening Europe today. We must support the people of France under the progressive leadership of Napoleon III in their struggle against monarchism in Italy.
ENGELS. Long live the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte!
Prolonged applause and tumultuous cheering.
MARX. We must stamp out the gangsters of Bourbonism!—and for this we have our weapon ever-ready, the spearhead of the proletariat: the Marxist-Hegelist Dialectic! (He opens the leather case and takes out the Dialectic, which is in the form of a gleaming revolver. He points it at Bruno Bauer.) Confess, Bruno Bauer: have you been in contact with Bourbon agents?
BRUNO BAUER. I stewed in my own juice and took orders from the Duc de Guise in the Hotel Adlon in Paris.
MARX (shoots him with the Dialectic, then points it sternly at Proudhon). And you, M. Proudhon—confess!
PROUDHON. I conspired to give Alsace-Lorraine to the Italians in return for aid against Louis Bonaparte and our leader, Comrade Marx.
Marx shoots him.
MARX (to Bakunin). And you!
BAKUNIN (reduced to abject terror). I promised the traitor Lassalle to assassinate you.
MARX. And where is Lassalle, the Bourbonist bandit?
BAKUNIN. He has fled the country, the reptile.
MARX (shooting Bakunin). Good: he may live to take a treacherous part in some even more sensational conspiracy.
ENGELS (snatching the Dialectic from Marx). I, too, have been disloyal to Comrade Marx! I take full responsibility for everything! I did not know about the plot and failed to prevent it. (He shoots Mary Burns and himself.)
MARX. And now we may tear up the Gotha Program prepared by the mad wolf Lassalle and poisoned with the counterrevolutionary demand for equal pay for officials and workers. Forward to socialist inequality and democracy!
Marx takes off his heard and reveals the smiling face of Comrade STALIN.
CURTAIN