« Peuchet : vom Selbstmord » (Gesellschaftspiegel, zweiter Band, Heft VII, Elberfeld, Januar 1846) is a rather unusual document among Marx writings. It distinguishes itself in several respects - some of which are mentioned in the introductions of Kevin Anderson and Eric Plaut to the English translation, Marx on Suicide (Evanston, Northwestern University, 1999) :

–  It is not a piece written by Marx himself, but mainly composed of - translated - excerpts from another author. Marx used to fill notebooks with such excerpts, but he never published them.

–  The author chosen is neither an economist, nor an historian, nor a philosopher, not even a socialist, but a former head of the French police archives under the Restoration !

–  The excerpted work is not a scientific one, but a loose collection of “life incidents”, anecdotes, small stories, followed by some comments.

–  The subject-matter of the article does not belong to what is usually considered to be the political or economical spheres, but has to do with private life : suicide.

–  The main social issue discussed (in connexion with suicide) is women’s oppression in modern societies.

Each one of these traits is unusual in Marx’s bibliography, but by their combination this piece is unique.

Considering the nature of the article - translated excerpts from Peuchet’s “Du suicide et de ses causes” (a chapter of his Memoirs) - how far can it be considered as belonging to Karl Marx’s writings ? In fact, he left his imprint in the text in several ways : by his introduction, by the comments with which he peppered the piece, by his selection of the excerpts, and by the modifications introduced through the translation. But the main reason why the piece can be considered as expressing Marx own views is that he introduced no distinction whatsoever between his own comments and the excerpts from Peuchet, so that the whole document appears as a homogeneous piece of writing, signed by Karl Marx.

The first question one has to ask is, of course, why Marx picked up Peuchet? What interested him so much in this piece?

I’m afraid I can’t agree with the hypothesis suggested by Philippe Bourrinet, the editor of the French edition of the article in 1992, and taken up by Kevin Anderson in his otherwise excellent introduction : the document is a veiled critique of the “true socialist” editors of the Gesellschaftsspiegel, such as Moses Hess. In fact, there is not a single word in the paper which may suggest such an orientation. True, Marx hails the superiority of French social thinkers, but he does not compare them to German but to English socialists. Moreover, he and Engels - the other editor of the Gesellschaftsspiegel - had excellent relations with Moses Hess during those years (1845-46), and even asked him to cooperate in their common polemical endeavor against neo-hegelian idealism, The German Ideology.

Part of the explanation is suggested by Marx himself in his introduction to the excerpts : the value of French social criticism against modern life conditions, and particularly against the established property, family and other private relations - “in one word, private life”. To use a modern expression, a social criticism based on the understanding that the private is political. Marx emphasized the interest of such critique when expressed in a litterary or semi-litterary form : novels and memoirs. His enthousiasm for Balzac is well known, as well as his assertion that he learned more about bourgeois society from his novels than from hundreds of economic treatises. Of course, Peuchet is no Balzac, but his memoirs certainly had a sort of litterary quality : it is enough to recall that one of his stories inspired Alexandre Dumas’ celebrated Count of Monte Cristo.

In fact, what attracted Marx so much in Peuchet’s chapter is not an “unconcious” interest in suicide - I must disagree with Eric Plaut’s hypothesis, based on too little evidence - but his well known interest in radical social criticism of bourgeois society as a “un-natural” (Marx own words in the introduction) form of life.

Suicide is, both for Marx and Peuchet, mainly significant as the symptom of a sick society, much in need of radical transformation. Modern society, writes Peuchet quoting Rousseau, is a desert, inhabited by wild beasts. Each individual is isolated from the others, alone among millions, in a sort of mass solitude. [1] People are strangers to each other, and mutually hostile : in this society of struggle and merciless competition, of war of all against all, the only choice left for the individual is to become a victim or a hangman. This is the social context which explains desperation and suicide. The classification of the causes of suicide is a classification of the evils of modern bourgeois society - evils that cannot be suppressed (here is Marx that speaks) without a radical refoundation of the social and economic structures.

This sort of ethical and social critique is obviously of romantic inspiration. Peuchet’s sympathy for Romanticism is documented not only by his reference to Rousseau, but also by his sharp indictement of the bourgeois philistine - whose soul is his business, and whose God is his commerce - who has nothing but contempt for the poor victims of suicide and the romantic poems of despair which they leave behind.

One should keep in mind that Romanticism is not only a litterary school, but - as Marx himself often suggested - a cultural protest against the modern capitalist civilization, in the name of an idealized past. While far from being a Romantic himself, Marx much admired the Romantic critics of bourgeois society - writers such as Balzac and Dickens, political thinkers such as Carlyle, economists such as Sismondi - and often incorporated their insights in his own writings.

Most of them, like Peuchet, were not socialists. [2] But, as Marx argues in his introduction to the article, one has not to be a socialist in order to criticize the prevailing social order. Romantic tropes such as those present in the Peuchet excerpts - the inhuman and beastly nature of bourgeois society, the soulless bourgeois egoism and greed - are often present in Marx early works, but here, in this piece, they take an unusual character.

While mentioning the economic evils of capitalism which explain many of the suicides - low salaries, unemployment, misery - Peuchet emphasizes rather those forms of social injustice which are not directly economical, and who affect the private life of non-proletarian individuals.

Could it be that this is only Peuchet’s viewpoint and not Marx’s ? Not so ! Marx himself, in his introduction, sarcastically refers to the bourgeois philantropists who believe - like Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss - that we live in the best of possible worlds, and want to give some bred to the workers, “as if only workers suffer from the present social conditions”.

In other words : for Marx/Peuchet the critique of bourgeois society cannot be limited to the issue of economic exploitation - however important. It has to take a broad social and ethical character, encompassing all its deep and manysided evil aspects. Capitalist society’s inhuman character hurts individuals of various social origins.

Now - and here we come to the most interesting aspect of the essay - who are those non-proletarian victims, driven to desperation and suicide by bourgeois society ? There is one social category which takes a central place both in the excerpts and in Marx commentaries : women.

This piece is, in fact, one of the most powerful indictments of womens’ oppression ever published under Marx’s signature. Three of the four excerpted cases of suicide deal with women, victims of patriarchy, or, in Peuchet/Marx words, family tiranny, a form of arbitrary power which was not been overthrown by the French revolution. [3] Two of them were “bourgeois” females, and the third of more popular origin (daughter of a taylor). But their fate was sealed by gender, rather than by class.

The first case, the girl droven to suicide by her parents, illustrates the brutal patriarchal authority of the pater (and mater) familias - vehemently denounced by Marx, in his comment, as the cowardly revenge of individuals usually forced to submission in bourgeois society, against those weaker than themselves.

The second exemple - the young women from Martinique closed behind doors by her husband until she commits suicide - is by far the most important, both in its length, and in Marx passionate comments. It appears, in his eyes, as paradigmatic for the absolute patriarchal power of men over their wifes, and for their attitude of jealous private property owners. In Marx indignant remarks, the tyrannical husband is compared to a slave driver. Thanks to the social conditions that ignore true and free love, and to the patriarchal nature of both the Civil Code and property laws, the male oppressor was able to treat his wife like a miser his gold-coffer closed behind lockers : as a thing, an object, as “part of his inventary”. Capitalist reification and patriarchal domination are associated by Marx in this radical indictement of modern bourgeois male-dominated family relations.

The third case deals with an issue that will become one of the main banners of the feminist movement after 1968 : the right to abortion. It is about a young women who became pregnant against the sacred rules of patriarchal family, and was driven to suicide by social hypocrisy, by reactionary ethics and by bourgeois laws that forbid abortion.

In its treatment of these three case-studies, the Marx/Peuchet essay - i.e. both the selected excerpts and the comments of the translator, inseparably (because not separated by Marx) - amounts to a passionate protest against patriarchy, the enslavement of women - including “bourgeois” ones - and the oppressive nature of bourgeois family. It has little equivalents in Marx later writings, with few exceptions. [4]

Inspite of its obvious limits, this small and almost forgotten article by Marx is a precious contribution to a richer understanding of the evils of modern bourgeois society, of the suffering that its patriarchal family-structure inflicts on women, and of the broad and universal emancipatory scope of socialism.

Notes

1. For a brilliant Marxist essay on this issue in the works of French writers, see Robert Sayre, Solitude in Society. A sociological study in French literature, Harvard University Press, 1978.

2. On Marx and Romanticism, see M. Löwy and R. Sayre, Revolte et Melancolie. Le romantisme à contre courant de l’histoire, Paris, Payot, 1996.

3. Only one of the four suicide stories selected by Marx is a man - an unemployed ex-member of the Royal Guard.

4. Such as, for instance, his article from 1858 on Lady Bulwer-Lytton, committed to an asylum by her patriarchal Tory husband (see K.Anderson’s introduction).