The Opposition of Marx to Freemasonry
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
Author's Note: Marx blamed the clandestine activities of the freemasons to for collapse of the First International, and the destruction of the 1871 Paris Commune. Interestingly, despite Marx mentioning freemasonry numerous times throughout his collected works (and within his correspondence), the English versions of these texts published outside of the USSR make no mention of freemasonry whatsoever in the numerous Index, and one is left wondering whether we are seeing the hidden hand of freemasonry influence within Western Marxism. Marx (and Engels) are very clear about the destructive nature of freemasonry, and its equally destructive support for imperialism, colonisation and predatory capitalism! It seems incredible that such an organisation would be ‘missing’ or ‘excluded’ with Western, Marxist discourse unless an outside force decreed it so. Furthermore, Marx points-out the anti-Semitic nature of freemasonry – with branches being closed-down that allowed Jewish members entry – and yet whilst freemasonry still excludes Jewish members – it has very good relations with Zionist movements (with rightwing Zionism being considered the acceptable arm of Jewish-inspired freemasonry). As usual I have turned to Chinese language sources, a in Communist China, the full range of Marxist teaching is available. Beware of Trotskyism, as Trotskyism is the preferred doorway of freemasonry infiltrating genuine movements of Marxist-Leninism. The core of this text started as an email to my academic colleague currently working in Romania. ACW (16.6.2020)
Dear Gillian
I have carefully spent a few days looking through the work of Marx (in English) to see if he mentioned the freemasons specifically, and I cannot find an exact reference. As all secret societies are reactionary and bourgeois, they are automatically banned in any sensible Socialist State. Marx may have mentioned freemasonry in his private correspondence or his newspaper articles, but I suspect not. I have also looked through three biographies of Marx, and one of Engels. Below is the data I have discovered which might be of interest to you:
Das Kapital – Vol. One
Footnote 4
The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after William Petty, who saw through the same of value, says: “Trade in general being nothing else but exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is... most justly measured by labour.” (“The works of B Franklin, &,” edited by Sparks. Boston, 1836, Vol. II, p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of everything in labour, by makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour. But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of “the one labour,” then of “the other labour,” and finally of “labour,” without further qualification, as the substance of the value of everything. (Marx)
RC Tucker (Editor), The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Page 316
This is how Marx correctly explains the labour process:
‘The elementary factors of the labour-process are (1), the personal activity of man, .i.e., work itself, (2), the subject of that work, and (3), its instruments.’
RC Tucker (Editor), The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Page 345
UK Socialism in the late 1800s:
‘The pioneers of 1890s English socialism were a class apart from those they hoped to emancipate. There was the Christian, or ‘sacramental,’ socialist grouping around Stewart Headlam’s Guild of St Matthew; Edward Carpenter’s Millthorpe commune of New Lifers, manly comradeship, and Eastern mysticism; Thomas Davidson’s vaguely Owenite Fellowship of the New Life (which would, in turn, sprout the Fabian Society); and an eclectic range of other societies, from the East End-based Labour Emancipation League to the Land Reform Union to the National Secular Society. What drew all these Bohemian radicals and angst ridden bourgeois toward socialism, according to the Fabian grande dame Beatrice Webb, was “a consciousness of sin... a growing uneasiness, amounting to conviction, that the industrial organisation, which had yielded rent, interest, and profits on a stupendous scale, had failed to provide a decent livelihood and tolerable conditions for a majority of the inhabitants of Great Britain. For numerous other English socialists, it was a spiritual conveyor belt from Nonconformity to secularism and then to a religion of humanity built upon an ethical notion of socialism and friendship. Few had read Das Kapital, their political connections with Continental communism were minimal, and their grasp of dialectical materialism was abysmal. Just one among the English socialists could honestly count himself a convinced Marxist – the tall-hatted and good-gloved Hyndman, founder of the most influential socialist sext in 1880s London, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). There was only one problem: Engles couldn’t stand him.’
T Hunt: Marx’s General – The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Metropolitan, (2009), Page 321
And then there are the odd coincidence that litter the lives of the great:
‘At the end of August 1844, Engels passed through Paris on his way back to Germany. His historic meeting with Marx occurred on 28 August in the Café de la Regence, one of the most famous Parisian cafes of the time, which had counted among its clients Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Diderot, Grimm, Louis Napoleon, Sainte-Beuve and Musset.’
D McLellan: Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 113
This looks like a place where a number of freemasons congregated over the years! The following is the state of play in Britain from the late 1880s to around 1920:
‘The fact that Marx lived and worked in Britain for more than thirty years did little to aid the implantation of his ideas on the British Left. Until 1880 Marx’s doctrines were, with very few exceptions, unavailable to those who did not read German or French. In 1881 the Social Democratic Federation was formed to revivify the Chartist ideas. The SDF was not formally Marxist, but its leader HM Hyndman did much in, for example, England for Al, to publicise the ideas of Marx to which he had been converted after reading Capital. The SDF was the leading British Marxist organisation until the First World War but never seems to have achieved an active membership of more than about one thousand. The Independent Labour Party, formed by Kier Hardie and his friends in 1883, avoided ideas of revolution and class confrontation and embodied a more ethical, non-conformist approach to socialism. The Labour Party, which grew out of the Labour Representation Committee formed at the instigation of the TUC in 1900, grew immensely in the pre-war years. But, unlike other workers’ parties affiliated to the Second International, it was staunchly anti-Marxist in outlook.
By the time of the Bolshevik victory in Russia there were three main Marxist organisations in Britain, although all of them were minute compared with the Labour Party. The largest, the British Socialist Party, was formed in 1911 by a merging of the SDF with dissidents from the ILP. The Socialist Labour Party was an English version of its American namesake and propagated the Industrial Unionism of de Leon as interested by its main spokesmen, the Irish Marxist James Connolly, the Clydeside leader John Maclean, and JT Murphey. The smallest of the three was the Workers’ Socialist Federation, inspired by Sylvia Pankhurst and particularly strong in the East End of London. All contributed members to the Communist Party of Great Britain which, after its foundation in 1920, became the leading Marxist organisation in Britain.’
D McLellan: Marxism After Marx, MacMillan, (1998), Page 338
Reading through the articles of Marx for the New York Daily Tribune about India, and a selection of his private correspondence with Engels (1853-1862), it is evident that Marx clearly opposes the cruelty of the free market economics that the freemasons advocate and support. Opium was grown in India by the British on land that was formerly used to grow food crops that fed the Indian people. Indian people starved to death whilst the English sold their opium crops to the Chinese – who were forced to ’buy’ them or face military action. The overflowing stores of opium made it cheap to consume and reduced large sections of the Chinese population to fee-paying zombies, so on and so forth. Marx and Engels confronted head-on this unjust economic system, and identified its roots as being within the bourgeoisie. As the freemasons are bourgeois, and given that there are thousands of such devious manifestations, Marx did not waste his time putting out fires, but went straight for the source. By the working class seizing the means of production and overthrowing the bourgeoisie is also the overthrowing of such groups as the freemasons. I suspect that the Catholic Church, in its antagonism toward freemasonry, sees much of its own functionality mirrored in the bizarre and pointless ritual of it all, which is preserved within a middle-class sense of excess and power.
Turning to Chinese language sources (my preferred medium), I have discovered straightaway Chinese scholarship upon this subject (link to Chinese language article at the end). My instincts were correct in regards to Marx criticising freemasonry in his private correspondence, and I enclose this letter by Marx for your convenience. Indeed, Marx negatively critiques ‘freemasonry’ 21 times throughout 16 articles, from within his complete works. Now, although I do not want to encourage conspiracy theories, it is interesting to note that within my library of ‘English’ books on Marx published in the West (but outside the USSR), not one ‘Index’ mentioned ‘freemasonry’. The article consists of 10 works by Marx, 4 works by Engels, and 2 works by Mann. In the above letter, Marx states "Lugger attacked Kinkel in his letter as an agent of the Prince of Prussia and a member of Freemasonry." Furthermore, in his "Criticism of Hegel's Philosophy of Law", Marx states that “the law examination is nothing more than a masonic set, nothing more than a legal confirmation of political knowledge as a privilege. It is nothing more than a ‘logical, pantheistic mysticism’ which is also advocated by freemasonry.”
Marx is also of the opinion that the First International Organization (International Workers’ Association) was destroyed from within by the hidden hand of freemasonry. In the "Reports and Documents Published by the Socialist Democratic League and the International Workers’ Association in accordance with the decision of the International Hague Congress", Marx talked about "freemasonry" in two places. Marx clearly stated: "Hidden behind the international Geneva branch is the Central Bureau of the Secret League; behind the international branches of Naples, Barcelona, Lyon and Jura, the secret branches of the freemasons are hidden. This is a freemasonry organization, and ordinary members of the international community and their leadership centres should have no doubts about such a (destructive) organization."
Marx observed that there was also a masonic intervention behind the Paris Commune movement in 1871. In two manuscripts about the "French Civil War", Marx pointed out: "Some chapters and individuals affiliated to French Freemasonry infiltrated the Paris Commune." "There were also Republican and Freemasonry chapters, and their delegates held demonstrations." According to historical data, the French Oriental Freemasonry Division - "Philosophy's Beehive" - is a large distribution point for French Freemasonry, and some of their members were actively attempting to undermine Commune fighters.
According to the "Record of the Dialogue between Karl Marx and the Journal of the World", Marx admitted that there are "many (International Workers' Association) members in the Commune's organs, but there are also many masonic members.” In response to the opinion of the Pope at that time that the Paris riot was a conspiracy by the Workers’ International, Marx pointed out: “there are the same reasons to think that this is also a conspiracy of the freemasonry, because there are no small number of freemasonry members who participate in the activities of the Commune as individuals.” Marx also pointed out: "Really, if the Pope announced that the entire uprising was initiated by freemasonry members, I would not find it strange." In a letter from Marx to Engels (April 28, 1870), Marx said, referring to Parisian worker leader Francois: "Last night, the French branch of freemasonry, and other parties hosted a banquet to invite him and Tibaldi. Lu Blanc, Thalandie and others also want to attend."
In the "Numbers of News" written by Marx for a newspaper (November 28, 1848), there is a narrative about the Prussian Freemasonry: "Today we think it is necessary to report a more conclusive fact. Freemasonry's "Three Monarchs" of Berlin general branch-you know that the Prince of Prussia is the highest head of the Prussian Freemasonry, just like Friedrich-William IV is the highest head of the Prussian Church-and he has announced the cessation of all activities of the freemasonry branch in Cologne' Why? Because this branch has absorbed Jews as members. The Jews are hereby notified!”
Marx clearly pointed out here: "the Prince of Prussia is the highest head of Prussian Freemasonry". Marx also pointed out that the Freemasonry Hall has always been a "holy place" to promote "freedom, peace and friendship", and the "trade peace theory" advocated by the Manchester School. This is all only "coincidentally" using these concepts as a front, but only as pawns under the direction of freemasonry. Through free trade, the United Kingdom can incorporate more countries and nations into its colonial system, exploiting the surplus value of workers from all over the world in an attempt to seek European and world hegemony.
Marx pointed out (In the third volume of "Capital"): "We are here to obtain a mathematically accurate evidence: why the capitalists in their competition show that each other is a false brother, but in the face of the entire working class can be formed a true freemasonry (brotherhood) group."
Engels also mentioned in the Preface to the Fourth Edition of his "Family, Private Ownership, and the Origin of the State" (in German), the "brotherhood" relationship between freemason members, pointing out-if "because people call Catholic priests and nuns (and the abbot-abbesses of the monastery) by the titles of father and mother, while the monks and nuns are called brother and sister. This is why freemasonry members – as well members of the British Chamber of Commerce at the solemn assembly - are commensurate with each other as brothers and sisters, insisting that even parents and those who are older or more experienced are still referred to by this ridiculous title.”
From the perspective of political economy, Marx and Engels pointed out that it is precisely because of the economic foundation of the alliance between the international bourgeoisie that determines the existence of the bourgeois fraternal alliance with freemasonry. A whisper to the freemasonry: Brothers all over the world, Marx put forward the slogan of the Communist League: The proletarians of the world unite!
Chinese Language Reference:
https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404206025522718924
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.
I have carefully spent a few days looking through the work of Marx (in English) to see if he mentioned the freemasons specifically, and I cannot find an exact reference. As all secret societies are reactionary and bourgeois, they are automatically banned in any sensible Socialist State. Marx may have mentioned freemasonry in his private correspondence or his newspaper articles, but I suspect not. I have also looked through three biographies of Marx, and one of Engels. Below is the data I have discovered which might be of interest to you:
Das Kapital – Vol. One
Footnote 4
The celebrated Franklin, one of the first economists, after William Petty, who saw through the same of value, says: “Trade in general being nothing else but exchange of labour for labour, the value of all things is... most justly measured by labour.” (“The works of B Franklin, &,” edited by Sparks. Boston, 1836, Vol. II, p. 267.) Franklin is unconscious that by estimating the value of everything in labour, by makes abstraction from any difference in the sorts of labour exchanged, and thus reduces them all to equal human labour. But although ignorant of this, yet he says it. He speaks first of “the one labour,” then of “the other labour,” and finally of “labour,” without further qualification, as the substance of the value of everything. (Marx)
RC Tucker (Editor), The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Page 316
This is how Marx correctly explains the labour process:
‘The elementary factors of the labour-process are (1), the personal activity of man, .i.e., work itself, (2), the subject of that work, and (3), its instruments.’
RC Tucker (Editor), The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Page 345
UK Socialism in the late 1800s:
‘The pioneers of 1890s English socialism were a class apart from those they hoped to emancipate. There was the Christian, or ‘sacramental,’ socialist grouping around Stewart Headlam’s Guild of St Matthew; Edward Carpenter’s Millthorpe commune of New Lifers, manly comradeship, and Eastern mysticism; Thomas Davidson’s vaguely Owenite Fellowship of the New Life (which would, in turn, sprout the Fabian Society); and an eclectic range of other societies, from the East End-based Labour Emancipation League to the Land Reform Union to the National Secular Society. What drew all these Bohemian radicals and angst ridden bourgeois toward socialism, according to the Fabian grande dame Beatrice Webb, was “a consciousness of sin... a growing uneasiness, amounting to conviction, that the industrial organisation, which had yielded rent, interest, and profits on a stupendous scale, had failed to provide a decent livelihood and tolerable conditions for a majority of the inhabitants of Great Britain. For numerous other English socialists, it was a spiritual conveyor belt from Nonconformity to secularism and then to a religion of humanity built upon an ethical notion of socialism and friendship. Few had read Das Kapital, their political connections with Continental communism were minimal, and their grasp of dialectical materialism was abysmal. Just one among the English socialists could honestly count himself a convinced Marxist – the tall-hatted and good-gloved Hyndman, founder of the most influential socialist sext in 1880s London, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). There was only one problem: Engles couldn’t stand him.’
T Hunt: Marx’s General – The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels, Metropolitan, (2009), Page 321
And then there are the odd coincidence that litter the lives of the great:
‘At the end of August 1844, Engels passed through Paris on his way back to Germany. His historic meeting with Marx occurred on 28 August in the Café de la Regence, one of the most famous Parisian cafes of the time, which had counted among its clients Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, Diderot, Grimm, Louis Napoleon, Sainte-Beuve and Musset.’
D McLellan: Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 113
This looks like a place where a number of freemasons congregated over the years! The following is the state of play in Britain from the late 1880s to around 1920:
‘The fact that Marx lived and worked in Britain for more than thirty years did little to aid the implantation of his ideas on the British Left. Until 1880 Marx’s doctrines were, with very few exceptions, unavailable to those who did not read German or French. In 1881 the Social Democratic Federation was formed to revivify the Chartist ideas. The SDF was not formally Marxist, but its leader HM Hyndman did much in, for example, England for Al, to publicise the ideas of Marx to which he had been converted after reading Capital. The SDF was the leading British Marxist organisation until the First World War but never seems to have achieved an active membership of more than about one thousand. The Independent Labour Party, formed by Kier Hardie and his friends in 1883, avoided ideas of revolution and class confrontation and embodied a more ethical, non-conformist approach to socialism. The Labour Party, which grew out of the Labour Representation Committee formed at the instigation of the TUC in 1900, grew immensely in the pre-war years. But, unlike other workers’ parties affiliated to the Second International, it was staunchly anti-Marxist in outlook.
By the time of the Bolshevik victory in Russia there were three main Marxist organisations in Britain, although all of them were minute compared with the Labour Party. The largest, the British Socialist Party, was formed in 1911 by a merging of the SDF with dissidents from the ILP. The Socialist Labour Party was an English version of its American namesake and propagated the Industrial Unionism of de Leon as interested by its main spokesmen, the Irish Marxist James Connolly, the Clydeside leader John Maclean, and JT Murphey. The smallest of the three was the Workers’ Socialist Federation, inspired by Sylvia Pankhurst and particularly strong in the East End of London. All contributed members to the Communist Party of Great Britain which, after its foundation in 1920, became the leading Marxist organisation in Britain.’
D McLellan: Marxism After Marx, MacMillan, (1998), Page 338
Reading through the articles of Marx for the New York Daily Tribune about India, and a selection of his private correspondence with Engels (1853-1862), it is evident that Marx clearly opposes the cruelty of the free market economics that the freemasons advocate and support. Opium was grown in India by the British on land that was formerly used to grow food crops that fed the Indian people. Indian people starved to death whilst the English sold their opium crops to the Chinese – who were forced to ’buy’ them or face military action. The overflowing stores of opium made it cheap to consume and reduced large sections of the Chinese population to fee-paying zombies, so on and so forth. Marx and Engels confronted head-on this unjust economic system, and identified its roots as being within the bourgeoisie. As the freemasons are bourgeois, and given that there are thousands of such devious manifestations, Marx did not waste his time putting out fires, but went straight for the source. By the working class seizing the means of production and overthrowing the bourgeoisie is also the overthrowing of such groups as the freemasons. I suspect that the Catholic Church, in its antagonism toward freemasonry, sees much of its own functionality mirrored in the bizarre and pointless ritual of it all, which is preserved within a middle-class sense of excess and power.
Turning to Chinese language sources (my preferred medium), I have discovered straightaway Chinese scholarship upon this subject (link to Chinese language article at the end). My instincts were correct in regards to Marx criticising freemasonry in his private correspondence, and I enclose this letter by Marx for your convenience. Indeed, Marx negatively critiques ‘freemasonry’ 21 times throughout 16 articles, from within his complete works. Now, although I do not want to encourage conspiracy theories, it is interesting to note that within my library of ‘English’ books on Marx published in the West (but outside the USSR), not one ‘Index’ mentioned ‘freemasonry’. The article consists of 10 works by Marx, 4 works by Engels, and 2 works by Mann. In the above letter, Marx states "Lugger attacked Kinkel in his letter as an agent of the Prince of Prussia and a member of Freemasonry." Furthermore, in his "Criticism of Hegel's Philosophy of Law", Marx states that “the law examination is nothing more than a masonic set, nothing more than a legal confirmation of political knowledge as a privilege. It is nothing more than a ‘logical, pantheistic mysticism’ which is also advocated by freemasonry.”
Marx is also of the opinion that the First International Organization (International Workers’ Association) was destroyed from within by the hidden hand of freemasonry. In the "Reports and Documents Published by the Socialist Democratic League and the International Workers’ Association in accordance with the decision of the International Hague Congress", Marx talked about "freemasonry" in two places. Marx clearly stated: "Hidden behind the international Geneva branch is the Central Bureau of the Secret League; behind the international branches of Naples, Barcelona, Lyon and Jura, the secret branches of the freemasons are hidden. This is a freemasonry organization, and ordinary members of the international community and their leadership centres should have no doubts about such a (destructive) organization."
Marx observed that there was also a masonic intervention behind the Paris Commune movement in 1871. In two manuscripts about the "French Civil War", Marx pointed out: "Some chapters and individuals affiliated to French Freemasonry infiltrated the Paris Commune." "There were also Republican and Freemasonry chapters, and their delegates held demonstrations." According to historical data, the French Oriental Freemasonry Division - "Philosophy's Beehive" - is a large distribution point for French Freemasonry, and some of their members were actively attempting to undermine Commune fighters.
According to the "Record of the Dialogue between Karl Marx and the Journal of the World", Marx admitted that there are "many (International Workers' Association) members in the Commune's organs, but there are also many masonic members.” In response to the opinion of the Pope at that time that the Paris riot was a conspiracy by the Workers’ International, Marx pointed out: “there are the same reasons to think that this is also a conspiracy of the freemasonry, because there are no small number of freemasonry members who participate in the activities of the Commune as individuals.” Marx also pointed out: "Really, if the Pope announced that the entire uprising was initiated by freemasonry members, I would not find it strange." In a letter from Marx to Engels (April 28, 1870), Marx said, referring to Parisian worker leader Francois: "Last night, the French branch of freemasonry, and other parties hosted a banquet to invite him and Tibaldi. Lu Blanc, Thalandie and others also want to attend."
In the "Numbers of News" written by Marx for a newspaper (November 28, 1848), there is a narrative about the Prussian Freemasonry: "Today we think it is necessary to report a more conclusive fact. Freemasonry's "Three Monarchs" of Berlin general branch-you know that the Prince of Prussia is the highest head of the Prussian Freemasonry, just like Friedrich-William IV is the highest head of the Prussian Church-and he has announced the cessation of all activities of the freemasonry branch in Cologne' Why? Because this branch has absorbed Jews as members. The Jews are hereby notified!”
Marx clearly pointed out here: "the Prince of Prussia is the highest head of Prussian Freemasonry". Marx also pointed out that the Freemasonry Hall has always been a "holy place" to promote "freedom, peace and friendship", and the "trade peace theory" advocated by the Manchester School. This is all only "coincidentally" using these concepts as a front, but only as pawns under the direction of freemasonry. Through free trade, the United Kingdom can incorporate more countries and nations into its colonial system, exploiting the surplus value of workers from all over the world in an attempt to seek European and world hegemony.
Marx pointed out (In the third volume of "Capital"): "We are here to obtain a mathematically accurate evidence: why the capitalists in their competition show that each other is a false brother, but in the face of the entire working class can be formed a true freemasonry (brotherhood) group."
Engels also mentioned in the Preface to the Fourth Edition of his "Family, Private Ownership, and the Origin of the State" (in German), the "brotherhood" relationship between freemason members, pointing out-if "because people call Catholic priests and nuns (and the abbot-abbesses of the monastery) by the titles of father and mother, while the monks and nuns are called brother and sister. This is why freemasonry members – as well members of the British Chamber of Commerce at the solemn assembly - are commensurate with each other as brothers and sisters, insisting that even parents and those who are older or more experienced are still referred to by this ridiculous title.”
From the perspective of political economy, Marx and Engels pointed out that it is precisely because of the economic foundation of the alliance between the international bourgeoisie that determines the existence of the bourgeois fraternal alliance with freemasonry. A whisper to the freemasonry: Brothers all over the world, Marx put forward the slogan of the Communist League: The proletarians of the world unite!
Chinese Language Reference:
https://www.weibo.com/ttarticle/p/show?id=2309404206025522718924
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.