Disentangling another WSWS web of deception

by the Permanent Revolution Editorial Board 

We beg our readers’ indulgence concerning the lengthy polemical exchange that has erupted between Permanent Revolution and the World Socialist Web Site.  The ICFI (full name: International Committee for the Fourth International), which publishes the WSWS, is well known for both its bulldog tenacity and its loose approach to the facts, not to mention its paranoid worldview.  So it’s hard not to get dragged into the ICFI labyrinth.

 

Gerry Healy, who falsely accused David North of being a "CIA agent".

In the past couple of weeks we have been bombarded with several iterations of increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories in response to the fact that we mistakenly published a letter alleging a security lapse on the part of the ICFI.  When we learned that the information we published was false, we immediately took down the letter and issued an apology.  Ever since, the WSWS has been tossing accusations our way, escalating the level of slander with each iteration, while at the same time hiding some very significant facts from their readers.  

 

It’s worth pointing out that the website’s latest contribution, “Alex Steiner’s tangled web of political deceit,” contains an important admission with regard to Dan Reznik, the ex-ICFI associate who triggered the controversy by accusing the International Committee of a major security lapse concerning Bogdan Syrotiuk, the Trotskyist who is currently on trial on entirely spurious charges of “high treason” to the Ukrainian state.

 

The admission concerns the ICFI accuser’s political identity.  As we noted on Feb. 7 (“Scurrilous libel from the WSWS”), we now believe that Reznik was spreading false tales because he had been left “demoralized like so many others have been over the years after falling foul of the ICFI leadership” and was therefore taking revenge.  Since we know how the ICFI chews such people up and spits them out, we believe  that was the case in this instance as well.  It is still our best understanding of how this incident arose.

 

But now, after nearly two weeks of silence, WSWS has finally come up with its own explanation for Reznik’s behavior.  Rather than someone who was angry and upset, it now seems that he was “an agent-provocateur, who most likely was working on behalf of the Ukrainian state.” 

 

The WSWS elaborates:

 

Reznik is an agent provocateur, adopting and deleting identities in accordance with whatever operation he is engaged in.  In 2022 he wrote to the WSWS, declaring full support for the ICFI and offering to translate articles into Serbo-Croat.  There are many individuals who contact the WSWS and offer assistance for translations.  As is now evident, Reznik,’ aka Daniel Bukvasevic, was attempting to infiltrate the ICFI.  His activities serve as a warning of the need for vigilance against the activities of state agents.  Reznik was unsuccessful.  He was never a member of a section of the International Committee or any party organization.  Reznik never held a personal meeting with a single party member.  His association with the party was limited to occasional online discussions and the exchange of emails.

 

This account is a significant distortion.  As we noted on Feb. 7, Reznik, used the handle “@DanReznikWSWS,” published voluminously on Twitter/X and contributed regularly to the r/Trotskyism Reddit page.  We published a screenshot of his Reddit page in which he identifies himself as a “a member of the International Committee for the Fourth International” and lists more than 1,300 posts.  Yet not only did the ICFI make no attempt to correct what it now says is a misrepresentation, but prominent members regularly “liked” and re-tweeted his posts.  The ICFI gave every impression that he was an active and prominent member of the organization.

 

But now the long-time ICFI internet warrior turns out to be a Ukrainian agent.  The WSWS says it sensed something was amiss when Reznik tweeted in support of a Stalinist assassination of a Croat nationalist writer in 1978.  “The ICFI was attentive to signs of Reznik’s political instability,” its latest article declares.  Therefore, Alex Lantier, a leader of the ICFI’s French section, wrote to Reznik demanding that he take the tweet down.  According to the WSWS, Lantier wrote:

 

This tweet is not Trotskyist.  The Trotskyist perspective for the ‘extinction’ of the nation-state system is a world socialist revolution by the international working class.  It is not for the physical extermination of everyone who, at one or other point in time, supports the nation-state system or his or her nation-state.  Nor do Trotskyists outsource the political struggle against nationalism to the murderers in the Stalinist intelligence services, which were staffed by virulent nationalists.  If you have any question about this, you can read Stalin’s Gangsters by Trotsky.

 

Lantier added that he was “concerned about you tweeting what will be seen as an endorsement of the Stalinist assassination of a literary figure” and for that reason “insisted that Reznik delete his tweet.”

 

But that was in October.  While accusing him of a political blunder, Lantier said nothing about Reznik serving as an agent-provocateur on behalf of the Ukrainian state for the better part of two years.  There is nothing in the WSWS account indicating the slightest suspicion in this regard.

 

The ICFI allowed itself to be duped.  Unlike David North and his collaborators, we are not in the habit of tossing about charges of bourgeois intelligence activities without proper evidence.  But if the WSWS’s suspicions are correct, then, by its own standards, it is guilty of a significant security lapse.  From early 2022 until October 2024, it entered into an active relationship with a hostile agent.  It promoted his internet posts, supported his views, and allowed him to pass himself off as a bona fide member – even though they now say that  he was an enemy agent attempting to penetrate its ranks.

 

To be sure, Reznik misled us as well.  But where we have taken responsibility, the WSWS has not.  Rather than conducting a thorough inquiry into how it supposedly fell victim to a hostile intelligence operation, it has sought to minimize and conceal its role.   This is yet another example of the ICFI school of historical falsification that has made the ICFI a byword for mendacity in international socialist ranks.

 

The WSWS engages in other distortions that, while less serious, are still worthy of attention.

 

Alex Steiner, a member of the Permanent Revolution editorial board, stated in his original article that he emailed David North twice seeking a comment on Reznik’s allegations prior to publication.  On Feb. 4, the WSWS accused Steiner of lying on the grounds that no email was ever sent.  “The WSWS has conducted a search of all its email addresses, as well as those of David North,” it declared.  “No such letter was received.”

 

But now it says Steiner was merely guilty of using an email address that was out of date: “The email address used by North is not located on the WSWS server.  Due to technical problems, North ceased using it well over a year ago.”  So did the website conduct a search of all its email addresses as it originally stated or not?  After two weeks of saying that it did, it now appears that it did not.

 

The latest WSWS article - likely written by David North - further states that Steiner “received what he claims to have been an anonymous communication ... on December 17,” but then goes on to say that it was “not an anonymous communication” because “[i]t bears the name “danielbukvasevic” and the email address danielbukvasevic@proton.me.”  But all Steiner said was that he received an unsolicited letter from someone “who wished to remain anonymous.”  So what is the point?

 

Indeed, a WSWS contact form that North helpfully reproduces in his latest article assures individuals writing to the website that “[w]e will protect your anonymity.”  North seems to be confused about the difference between an anonymous letter and one written by someone wishing to have his or her name withheld.

 

The article goes on to make other bizarre accusations. It would be a fool’s errand to deal with all of them. But to cite one example,  the author of the article – likely David North himself – states that Steiner was lying when saying that he had no previous acquaintance with the author of the letter - that Steiner must have had a long-standing relationship of “familiarity” with the letter-writer because the person addressing Steiner wrote “Dear Alex” in the salutation portion of an email.  Needless to say even a six-year-old can unravel the stupidity of such an inference.

 

Elsewhere North says of Sam Tissot that he “was expelled from the French section of the ICFI last year for refusing to respect the confidentiality of internal party communications.”  But as Tissot made clear on this website last September,   in the official account provided by the ICFI at the time, he was expelled  for “denying the historical continuity of Trotskyism,”. In fact he was actually expelled for doing nothing more than raising questions within the leadership of the French section about policies and practices of the ICFI and asking for a discussion on those issues. So this claim from North is false as well.

 

The WSWS article   concludes with a 630-word disquisition on the “major investigation” that the ICFI has conducted since 1975 concerning,

…the death of its founder Leon Trotsky in 1940, the infiltration of his household by agents of the GPU, and the subsequent infiltration of the Trotskyist movement and in particular the American Socialist Workers Party, by agents of imperialism.

 

The investigation has already produced irrefutable evidence of such infiltration,

the article adds. 

 

Bravo! 

 

But then how come they could not discover that someone who was publicly representing them for over two years was in fact, according to them, “an agent-provocateur, who most likely was working on behalf of the Ukrainian state”?

And why did they hide this information for more than two weeks after we made public the identity of Dan Reznik? 

And why do they even now try to whitewash his past deep involvement with the ICFI?

 

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More unhinged slanders from the WSWS

In yet another unhinged attack on us that is featured prominently at the top of the World Socialist Web Site home page, an article titled, Oppose the Steiner-Tissot smear campaign! Defend Comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk!, claims that we launched a “provocation” that

… is a deliberate attempt to undermine the defense of Comrade Syrotiuk, the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, and the International Committee as a whole.

This adds another slander to the list that the WSWS has already issued.  To those who have not been following this saga, what the article calls a “provocation” was our initial publication of a letter that alleged that the ICFI committed a serious lapse in security in their reporting about Ukrainian political prisoner Bogdan Syrotiuk.  We learned shortly after we published the letter that the information was false and immediately took it down, issuing a retraction titled, A correction and an apology. Shortly afterwards, the WSWS published an article accusing us of deliberately forging the letter in question. Our response, A scurrilous libel from the WSWS,  demonstrated that the WSWS deliberately slandered us in at least three instances. 

1.    The website claimed that we never gave the WSWS editorial board an opportunity to comment before we published the letter.

2.    It claimed that we knew the author of the letter was a provocateur who went by the handle of “Alexander Goldman”.

3.    It further claimed that in fact we never received a letter from a source that wished to remain anonymous but that we actually fabricated the letter.

We conclusively refuted each one of these defamatory statements.  We provided evidence that anyone can check showing that:

1.    We sent two emails to David North asking for a comment prior to our publication of the letter.

2.    We presented conclusive evidence that we received a letter from Anonymous, aka “Daniel Bukvasevic” and that we did not fabricate the letter.

3.    We provided conclusive evidence that the letter we received was sent to us some two weeks before the provocateur “Alexander Goldman” started broadcasting his tweets.   This established that our source of information was not connected to “Alexander Goldman”, of whose existence we were not aware. 

We also provided evidence showing that the ostensible author of the letter, “Daniel Bukvasevic” was a long-time ICFI member or close supporter named Dan Reznik.  It was only when we discovered the identity of the letter writer - who in the meantime had ceased to communicate with us - that we felt the allegations had sufficient credibility to warrant publication.  While we were mistaken in that belief, it was not an “irrational” decision on our part since the letter actually came from a long-time collaborator of the WSWS.

A recap of the evidence:

Screenshot #1: Our emails to David North asking for a comment prior to publication

.

Screenshot #2: Letter from "Daniel Bukvasevic/Anonymous" received on Dec. 17, 2024, two weeks prior to the emergence of the provocateur "Alexander Goldman".

               

 

Screenshot #3: End of email from "Daniel Bukvasevic/Anonymous" signed "Anonymous" 

Screenshot #4: The Reddit account showing that "Bukvasevic" and "Dan Reznik" is the same person.

On the basis of the evidence we presented, we insisted that the WSWS correct the record and retract their slanderous accusations.

What was the reaction of the WSWS to our demand?

Not only has the WSWS failed to respond to our takedown of their slanders, but the site has also not even acknowledged that we did in fact respond to them.  Instead of retracting their libelous allegations or, for that matter, challenging our refutation,  WSWS has doubled down on its slanders by engaging further and more extreme slanders.

That is the significance of their latest attack on us.

Let us examine some of their statements in detail

They write:

In its initial publication, Sam Tissot claimed that they decided to “hide” the real name of the source. But why conceal the author of a fabricated letter? The only logical explanation is that the publisher knew the author well and understood his political physiognomy. If the audience were aware of the author’s identity, they could examine his past statements, exposing his broader political agenda.

This argument makes no sense.  We posted the letter and attributed it to an anonymous author because that is how he wanted to be identified.  This was the basis of what the WSWS article represents as a sinister action on our part of “hiding”  and “concealing” the identity of the author.  Is it possible that these people have never heard that it is standard journalistic practice to attribute information to an anonymous source if the person providing that information does not wish to be identified?

When we published the letter, we were unaware that the author provided us with false information. Once we became aware that the information was false, we took down the letter and published our apology.  Furthermore, when we learned several days later that the author of the letter was an anti-communist provocateur, we no longer felt obligated to maintain his anonymity and published everything we knew about him, including the fact that he was, until very recently, a member or close supporter of the ICFI named Dan Reznik.   We explained all this in our article, A scurrilous libel from the WSWS, but the WSWS makes no reference to our explanation.

The WSWS article also repeats again the slander that we “fabricated” the letter. There is no acknowledgement that we published screenshots showing beyond any doubt that we did in fact receive a letter signed “Anonymous” from which the content of what we later published was taken.

The statement continues,

In fact, this individual also contacted a comrade of the YGBL in a clear attempt to sow confusion and discord among Bogdan’s comrades. At the time, we recognized it as a transparent provocation and assumed that this person was acting in coordination with the Ukrainian secret service (SBU). This was the only rational conclusion for anyone committed to Bogdan’s defense and even remotely familiar with the politics and history of the ICFI. Yet Alex Steiner chose to publish this letter. Why?

This was NOT the only rational conclusion. Our conclusion, even if it was mistaken, was not irrational but was the product of an extended investigation on our part as we explained in our article. Although our investigation was flawed, we took full responsibility for our error and published an apology. That is also a standard journalistic practice, one, I might add, that you cannot find in the pages of the WSWS as they have never, even once, published a retraction. On the other hand, in the very same paragraph of the WSWS article, we find the admission that someone from the YGBL also received the same letter with the same allegations.  Doesn’t  that fact blow up the WSWS conspiracy theory that we “fabricated” the letter?

The statement then goes on to raise the stakes in the slander campaign against us by accusing us of attempting to sabotage the defense campaign of Bogdan Syrotiuk.

Even if the accusations against the International Committee had been true—which they were not—publishing such a letter could only serve to undermine Bogdan’s defense. He is being persecuted by the Ukrainian state and faces a potential life sentence. Such actions violate not only the most fundamental principles of defending the democratic rights of those persecuted by the state but also basic political decency.

While our publication of the letter was a mistake how would it undermine Bogdan's defense? There was nothing in that letter that the prosecution did not already know. 

The statement continues,

Goldman’s abrupt disappearance from X on February 3 made clear that he was attempting to cover his tracks as the source of the smear campaign. Fortunately, international comrades preserved screenshots of his posts, allowing them to reconstruct a profile of the author and his role in orchestrating this provocation. His posts made it evident that the primary objective was to discredit the ICFI, particularly in relation to the struggle for Comrade Bogdan’s liberation. Yet, even after the International Committee exposed this fabrication, Steiner continued to defend his reckless provocation.

This is yet another slander.  What the WSWS labels  “Steiner’s…reckless provocation”, i.e. the letter that we published, was not “defended” but was immediately taken down with an apology when we learned its contents were false. Several days later, when the WSWS published its slanderous accusations against us, we responded through a meticulous exposure of their lies backed up with solid evidence. By way of a dishonest journalistic sleight of hand, the WSWS article conflates these two actions to make the case that we “defended” our publication of the letter.

The WSWS then goes on to deliver their ultimate accusation,

Only the International Committee and the YGBL have waged this struggle, which is why they now face the full force of state repression. Through their reckless and despicable provocation, Alex Steiner and his allies have exposed their political alignment—with the enemies of the Trotskyist movement and the democratic rights of the international working class.

What is despicable is the baseless accusation that we are connected to the state repression of the Zelensky regime that has victimized Bogdan Syrotiuk. In engaging in such filth, the ICFI has crossed a line.  Its smear campaign against us, now going on two decades, graduated into outright agent-baiting recently with the publication of the book, The Party is Always Right. [1]  They have now elevated their slander campaign to another level by accusing us of being accomplices of the Ukrainian secret service.

These unhinged denunciations are being tossed around to cover over the inconvenient truth that the WSWS cannot respond to our proof that they made false and defamatory statements against us.  To repeat them once more:

1.    They lied in claiming that we never attempted to contact the WSWS prior to the publication of the letter.

2.    They lied in claiming that we “fabricated” the letter.

3.    They lied in claiming that we knew that the author of the letter was the provocateur “Alexander Goldman”.

Up till now there has been no response to our documentation of these slanders.

To this list can now be added two new slanders:

1.    The slander that we “deliberately” tried to undermine the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk.

2.    The slander that the letter contained information that could help the prosecution.

Finally, we have to ask, why is the WSWS remaining silent about our exposure that the author of the letter was actually a member or close supporter of the WSWS named Dan Reznik, an individual who was associated with the WSWS for a number of years?

What does it say about the ICFI that they harbored someone within their ranks for years who turned out to be a provocateur working, in their own words, “in coordination with the SBU”? 

 

---

[1] For a summary of North’s decades-long smear campaign against us see, The devil that never dies: Calumnies in the service of historical falsification, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2023/11/the-devil-that-never-dies-calumnies-in.html. For our response to North’s agent-baiting, see, Agent baiting: A hysterical slander from David North, http://forum.permanent-revolution.org/2024/09/agent-baiting-hysterical-slander-from.html.

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WSWS moderators spread slander and ban response to slander on r/Trotskyism subreddit

On Feb 15,  I posted an article responding to defamatory accusations against myself and Sam Tissot on the r/Trotskyism subreddit.  The slanderous material. reprinted from the WSWS,  A provocation that failed: On Alex Steiner’sattempt to discredit the ICFI’s defense of Ukrainian Trotskyist Bogdan Syrotiuk, had been lurking there for 10 days.  I posted a response to the slanders that had been published in the permanent revolution website, Scurrilous libel from the WSWS. 

When I checked a couple of hours later my post had disappeared.  I then found a message from the moderators of that subreddit informing me that I am permanently banned.  The message read,

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/Trotskyism because your post violates this community's rules.

There was no explanation of what rule my post violated.  The rules posted for this subreddit state  “No slander, no death threats”.  But  my post was responding to a slander, whereas there seemed to be no problem posting the WSWS slanders against us as far as the moderators were concerned!

I tried to appeal this blatant act of censorship, writing to the moderators,

Please explain why you allowed an article to be published that contains defamatory and libelous statements against me, namely, "A provocation that failed: On Alex Steiner’s attempt to discredit the ICFI’s defense of Ukrainian Trotskyist Bogdan Syrotiuk."

When I posted an article responding to these slanderous accusations, namely, "A scurrilous libel from the WSWS", you deleted the article without any explanation. You then banned me from the r/Trotskyism subreddit and again provided no explanation. I am demanding that you reinstate me in the Trotskyism subreddit and cease censoring content that is critical of the World Socialist Web Site.

 Alex Steiner

The moderators never responded. 

Considering that the WSWS has published many articles against censorship on the Internet,  this act of censorship by moderators who are spokesmen for the WSWS reveals an incredible level of cynicism and hypocrisy.   Here are just a sample of the WSWS protestations against Internet censorship:

 

Meta maintains censorship regime in Canada a year after passage of Online News Act

WSWS writer Evan Blake banned from “Badass Teachers Association” Facebook group

Meet the Censored: Andre Damon

YouTube censors David North’s lecture on the death of Aaron Bushnell

Oppose Facebook’s shutdown of the WSWS in Portuguese page, an act of political censorship!

And finally, how about being banned from a Reddit subreddit?

Why is the World Socialist Web Site banned from the subreddit r/coronavirus?

 

In the inverted word of the WSWS and its mouthpiece on Reddit, the r/Trotskyism subreddit, up is down and down is up. Slander is legitimate news and a reply to slander is, … well, slander.

One final piece of irony is the slogan of the WSWS apparatchik who posted the  WSWS slander against us.  It is signed by someone with the moniker, “JohnWilsonWSWS”. The slogan he associates with that name is:

Organizing resistance against Internet censorship.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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Marx’s Struggle against Defamation: A 150th Anniversary Tribute to Herr Vogt

We are reprinting an article that was first published in the online journal With Sober Senses on Dec. 23, 2010.  It is available at: https://marxisthumanistinitiative.org/philosophy-organization/marxs-struggle-against-defamation.html. 

 

The essay by Andrew Kliman is a reflection on the historical significance of a little-known work of Marx, his Herr Vogt.  It is an eloquent defense of Marx’s principled struggled against the cancer of libel and defamation that too often overtakes groups on the left.

 

Our time is a time of retreat and defensive maneuvers by the left in the face of an international offensive by the right.  It bears some similarity to the situation confronting Marx in the years following the defeat of the revolutions of 1848. Many of the participants of the 1848 revolutions, including Marx and Engels, were forced into exile and subject to political persecution.  Under conditions of increasing isolation, longstanding political and theoretical weaknesses of some of the generation of 1848 gestated into an “us vs. them” outlook.   Conspiracy theories replete with false accusations of treachery against political opponents thrived in this atmosphere.  That was the case with Carl Vogt in Marx’s day as Kliman’s essay explains. Marx did a masterful job in responding to Vogt's slanderous accusations. But he did not stop there. He went on to demonstrate that Vogt was acting in the service of Louis Bonaparte. Ten years after Marx wrote Herr Vogt irrefutable evidence that Vogt had been a paid agent of Louis Bonaparte’s government was made public.

As in the period of political exile following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, we see a similar turn to defamatory agent-baiting within the left in our own time.  This is the background behind the  increasingly unhinged defamatory accusations in the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) leveled against Alex Steiner and the permanent revolution website. 

Explosions of false accusations of agent-baiting within the left become especially destructive under conditions where the employment of genuine police provocateurs are growing.  This is what impels us to return to a consideration of Marx’s principled struggle against libel and defamation. The republication of Kliman’s essay on Herr Vogt is our contribution to that effort.

Also read: A scurrilous libel from the WSWS

A.S.

 

Marx’s Struggle against Defamation:

A 150th Anniversary Tribute to Herr Vogt

by Andrew Kliman

In 1857, Karl Marx resumed work on his critique of political economy, a process that culminated in the publication of Capital a decade later. He wrote a rough draft (the Grundrisse) in 1857 and 1858, parts of which he then reworked into the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which was published in June 1859. Then, in 1861 through 1863, he wrote a revised draft of the whole of Capital, which was followed by a more polished draft written during 1864 and 1865. Finally, he revised the first volume yet again, during 1866 and 1867. It appeared in September, 1867.

The careful reader will have noticed a rather lengthy gap in this chronology. From the second half of 1859 through 1860, Marx was not working on his critique of political economy. What was he doing instead? What was so important, so much more of an urgent priority than his theoretical work?

The answer is that Marx was fighting back against Carl Vogt’s defamatory attack. He fought back in order to defend his reputation and that of his “party.” This month marks the 150^th anniversary of Herr Vogt, the book Marx wrote in order to set the record straight.

Vogt was a prominent radical German politician and materialist philosopher who had emigrated to Switzerland, where he served in parliament and was also a professor of geology. His position on the 1859 war over Italian unification had a pro-French tilt, which resulted in the publication of a newspaper article and an anonymous pamphlet that alleged­­–correctly–that Vogt was being paid by the French government. Vogt believed that Marx was the source of the allegation and that he had written the pamphlet. (The first belief was partly correct; the second was incorrect.)

Vogt fought back by attacking Marx. He published a short book that described Marx as the leader of a band of blackmailers who demanded payment in return for keeping quiet about their victims’ revolutionary histories. The book also contained other false and harmful allegations against Marx. “M[arx]’s future [was] at stake, since Vogt [went] all-out to destroy his reputation” (Draper 1985, p. 93).

Yet these personal attacks were not merely personal. When it comes to someone like Marx, the personal is political. And Vogt, who had come to repudiate the cause of social revolution,

resorted to falsification of the facts and to barefaced lies to libel the Communist League, portraying its members as conspirators in secret contact with the police and accusing Marx of personal motives. The libel was taken up by the European bourgeois press and also by a number of German papers published in the USA.”  [editors’ Preface 1985, p.  xxxiii]

Ferdinand Lassalle warned Marx that Vogt’s book “will do great harm to yourself and to the whole party, for it relies in a deceptive way upon half-truths,” and said that “something must be done” in response (quoted in Rubel 1980, p. 53). Frederick Engels also urged Marx to respond quickly, and he provided a good deal of assistance when Marx wrote Herr Vogt.

But the writing of Herr Vogt was only the last resort. At first, Marx tried to restore his reputation and that of his “party” by going to court. Two publications–the National-Zeitung of Berlin and the Daily Telegraph of London—had reprinted Vogt’s libelous accusations, so Marx sued them for defamation of character. In a February 23, 1860 letter to Ferdinand Freiligrath, he argued that these lawsuits were “crucial to the historical vindication of the party and its subsequent position in Germany” (emphasis in original).

When Marx referred to “the party,” he did not mean the Communist League, which was then defunct. In a follow-up letter of February 29 to Freiligrath, who refused to assist in the struggle against defamation on the grounds that he no longer belonged to the party, Marx explained that “by ‘party’ I [did not mean] a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense.”

Thus, Marx took legal action, and eventually wrote Herr Vogt, in order to vindicate the philosophical and theoretical perspectives for which the party stood. As Raya Dunayevskaya pointed out, these perspectives continued to guide Marx’s thought and activity, and thus “the party” lived on, even though a specific organizational expression of those perspectives was defunct:

Because … an independent proletarian organization, and one that would be both international and have the goal of revolution and a new society–was so central to his views, Marx kept referring to “the Party” when all that was involved was himself and Engels.

What Marx called “party in the eminent historical sense” (Letter to Freiligrath, 29 February 1860) was alive to Marx throughout the entire decade when no organization existed in the 1850s with which he could associate. [Dunayevskaya 1991, p. 155]

Unfortunately, Marx’s legal actions did not succeed. The Berlin court threw out the case against the National-Zeitung and its editor, citing “insufficient evidence” and stating that “no discernible public interest was involved” in the case. Marx appealed this decision multiple times, but the higher courts refused to reverse it.

A court’s declaration that Vogt’s accusations against Marx were false would have been more effective than his own protestations. It is simply to be expected that the victim of reputation-destroying charges will claim that they are false. It is a “dog bites man” story; who pays attention?  But when a disinterested body studies the evidence, deliberates, and then concludes that the charges are false, that is true vindication. It is a “man bites dog” story; people sit up and take notice.

But the bourgeoisie did not want to help Marx restore his reputation. On the contrary, as he noted in an April 24, 1860 letter to Engels, after the Berlin court stated that “no discernible public interest was involved” in the case, “It is, of course, ‘an issue of public importance’ to the Prussian government that we should be traduced [i.e., humiliated by means of malicious and false statements] to the utmost.” So, in order to try to set the record straight, Marx had only one option left–to write Herr Vogt. It came out on December 1, 1860.

Marx received a good deal of support in his battle against defamation. For instance, Engels helped defray his legal expenses and assisted him with Herr Vogt. The German Workers Educational Association “immediately supported him vigorously” (Mehring 1962, p. 297) and unanimously passed a resolution condemning Vogt’s libelous allegations. Charles Anderson Dana, editor-in-chief of the New York Daily Tribune, assisted Marx’s legal action against defamation by providing a testimonial letter. And Ernest Jones, the former Chartist leader, wrote a letter (included in an appendix to Herr Vogt) which stated,

I have read a series of infamous articles against you in the National-Zeitung and am utterly astonished at the falsehood and malignity of the writer. I really feel it a duty that every one who is acquainted with you, should, however unnecessary such a testimony must be, pay a tribute to the worth, honour and disinterestedness of your character. … Permit me to hope that you will severely punish your dastardly and unmanly libeler. [Jones, quoted in Marx 1981, p. 323]

In marked contrast to this, many intellectuals have evinced a shockingly hardhearted and dismissive attitude toward Herr Vogt and Marx’s struggle against defamation. Such intellectuals do not seem outraged by the fact that Vogt published untrue things about Marx, nor by the fact that his lies threatened the reputation of Marx and his “party.” Expressions of support for Marx’s actions in defense of himself and the “party,” or even signs of simple human sympathy, are rare.

For example, Francis Wheen (2000, p. 238), a recent biographer of Marx, refers to Marx’s struggle against defamation as “a spectacular, pointless feud against one Karl Vogt” and an “absurd interlude.” David McLellan (1977, p. 311), another biographer of Marx, calls it a “quarrel” and “a striking example both of Marx’s ability to expend tremendous labour on essentially trivial matters and also of his talent for vituperation.” And in his chronology of Marx’s life and works, Hal Draper (1985, p. 92) dismissed the controversy as a “time-consuming foofaraw”–i.e., a great disturbance over a very insignificant matter–even though he recognized that Vogt was engaged in “a massive campaign to discredit M[arx] personally,” and that “M[arx]’s future [was] at stake, since Vogt [went] all-out to destroy his reputation” (Draper 1985, p. 93). It is unclear why Draper regarded Marx’s future and reputation as insignificant.

Many of these intellectuals seem miffed that the struggle against defamation was a more urgent priority for Marx than was his theoretical work, and that this may have caused Capital to appear in late 1867 instead of in early 1866. Marcello Musto (2008, p. 394, p. 395), a political scientist, charges that the Vogt affair made Marx “neglect his economic studies” and “lose sight even of his project of critique of political economy”; Musto’s evidence seems to consist of the fact that Marx interrupted his work on that project. Wheen (2000, p. 254) alleges that Marx’s work on Capital was “catastrophically interrupted by the feud with Vogt,” but provides no evidence that the interruption led to any catastrophe.

Robin Fox (2004, p. 36), a Rutgers University anthropologist, cites the fact that Marx’s work on Capital was interrupted as evidence that “the future of Socialism was less important to Marx than the countering of heresy and libel.” Given that academics are supposed to be dedicated to the search for truth, Fox’s dismissive attitude toward the countering of libel is no small matter. But what is especially bizarre about his conclusion is the fact that he counterposes “the future of Socialism” to Marx’s struggle against Vogt’s libelous charges–as if the future of socialism depends only on theoretical works while the reputation of Marx’s “party,” and Marx himself, were irrelevant.

I do not at all mean to imply that Capital, or theoretical work generally, is unimportant, or unimportant to the future of socialism. I have spent a great deal of time studying and writing about Capital, and I have fought hard to help reclaim it from the myth that its value theory and law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit are internally inconsistent (see, e.g., Kliman 2007). But when crises arise, they take priority. And it makes no sense to me to treat Capital and Marx’s struggle against defamation as opposites. Marx was no “armchair radical.” Capital, and his “party,” and his personal reputation were all necessary and inseparable parts of the struggle for a new human society. After all, what would have been the fate of Capital, or the Marxian conception of socialism, if Vogt’s vile allegations had been accepted as true because Marx offered no defense against them?

The problem is not that intellectuals such as those quoted above dislike Marx.  Almost all of them like Marx. But one gets the sense that some of them like Marx in the way that people in certain Asian countries like dogs: not as friends and companions, but hacked into pieces and served to them as something to consume and digest. In contrast to Marx’s theoretical work, Herr Vogt offers them no benefits–Marx wrote it to benefit himself and “the party,” not readers–so they regard it as a worthless expenditure of his time and energy.

And one gets the sense that very few of them have any personal experience with libel. The fact that I am the victim of a libelous review recently published in the Review of Radical Political Economics–about which I hope to write more later–perhaps explains in part why I am more sympathetic to Marx’s struggle against defamation and less willing to second-guess his priorities.

Carl Vogt and the circumstances that gave rise to his defamatory attack against Marx and his “party” are dead and gone. But Herr Vogt and Marx’s battle against defamation remain living exemplars of how one responds in a genuinely Marx-ian way–i.e., the way of Marx. Do not separate theory from practice, or philosophy from organization. Do not retreat to the ivory tower or suffer attacks in silence; set the record straight. Use the bourgeois courts if necessary. Enlist the assistance of others.

References

Draper, Hal. 1985. The Marx-Engels Chronicle. Vol. 1 of the Marx-Engels Cyclopedia. New York: Schocken Books.

Dunayevskaya, Raya. 1991. Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, 2nd ed. Urbana, IL and Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press.

Editors’ Preface, 1985. “Preface” to Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 41. New York: International Publishers.

Fox, Robin. 2004. “Sects and Evolution,” Society 41:6 (Sept./Oct.) 2004, pp. 36-46.

Kliman, Andrew. 2007. Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A refutation of the myth of inconsistency. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

McLellan, David. 1977. Karl Marx: His life and thought. New York: Harper Colophon.

Marx, Karl. 1981. Herr Vogt. In Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 41, pp. 21-329. New York: International Publishers.

Mehring, Franz. 1962. Karl Marx: The story of his life. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ. of Michigan Press.

Musto, Marcello. 2008. “Marx in the Years of Herr Vogt: Notes toward an intellectual biography (1860-1861),” Science & Society 72:4 (Oct.), pp. 389-402.

Rubel, Maximilien. 1980. Marx: Life and works. London: Macmillan.

Wheen, Francis. 2000. Karl Marx: A life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

 

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