Herman Schlüter was a vital link, politically, personally, generationaly, and geographically between the project of Marx and Engels in Europe and in the United States. Marxist historian and editor Herman Schlüter (1851-1919) was born in Schleswig-Holstein and joined the left wing of German Social Democracy as a teen and helped publish newspapers and magazines of the SPD. As a publisher he began his relationship with Engels which was strengthened when Schlüter emigrated to the US in 1889. Here he joined the editorial board of the New Yorker Volkszeitung. At first he was a member of the the Socialist Labor Party, later he joined the Socialist Party, which he represented at the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in 1904. He was, with Adolph Sorge, the foremost correspondent and collaborator with Engels in the U.S. This appreciation of Marx was written near the end of Schlüter’s own life in January, 1919.

‘The 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Karl Marx’ by Hermann Schlueter from Truth (Duluth) Vol. 2 No. 18. May 3, 1918.

A hundred years ago, on the 5th of May, 1818, at Trier, in the Rhineland, KARL MARX was born, a man, to whom the working class of the world owes more than to any other human being. Despite the raging of the war and despite the thunder of battle, he will, therefore be remembered during these days in all countries and in all tongues, on this and on yonder side, as a man, who has devoted all his rich knowledge, all his great abilities towards the one aim:

The Emancipation of the Working Class!

His rich knowledge! As Darwin has discovered the law of evolution of the organic nature, so has Karl Marx discovered the law of evolution of human history. It was Marx, who established the simple historical fact that all the various forms of human society depend upon how people eat, drink, live and clothe themselves and how they obtain the means of subsistence. Each step of economic evolution of a people or of a period, therefore, forms the basis “from which the political structure of the State, the conception of law, art and even the religious idea of people in question have developed and out of which they must also be explained- not, as has heretofore been the case, but the contrary.” (Engels.)

Besides this great scientific discovery, by which human history was put upon its real basis and by which particularly the class-character of all previous society was put into the proper light, Marx has established the special law of evolution of the present capitalistic production and the bourgeois society created by it. He discovered that all social wealth is accumulated surplus values: surplus value, which the worker has created above his pay; value, which the capitalist pockets without giving the worker any compensation for it; value, accumulated for that purpose to “exploit the worker with it and by it still more.” The materialistic conception of history and the theory of surplus value- these are the two most important scientific discoveries of Karl Marx. Both of them still form the basis of the entire Socialistic theory of today and without them the labor movement of the world would not, even now, have an insight into their real task and no perception of their actual aim. And therein Karl Marx saw his life’s task: he wanted to enlighten the workers of their historical mission; wanted to show them the road to their final emancipation! He pursued his scientific researches not for the sake of science- and there he differed from the ordinary representative of science- but he wanted to put his knowledge at the service of the working class. “Science for Marx a motive, a revolutionary force” and to have placed this revolutionary force at the disposal of the labor movement of the world- that is the great merit of this great thinker and fighter.

And from his early youth the great knowledge of this extraordinary man has been at the service of the labor movement of the world.

There hardly existed-outside of England- a movement of the working class, when the eagle eye of Marx already perceived its historic importance. At that time already he gave to the workers the famous motto: “Proletarians of all Nations, Unite!”, which has since become the battery of the workers of the entire world. At that time he already began to devote his entire knowledge and his whole power to the realization of this sentence and to prepare the working masses for this revolutionary task. “Because Marx was above all a revolutionist. To co-operate, in this or any other manner, in the overthrow of capitalistic society and the political institutions created by it, to aid in the emancipation of the modern proletariat, to which he had first given the conscience of the conditions for its emancipation- that was his true life vocation.” (Engels.)

And this vocation he followed when he created the International Workingmen’s Association and gave it aim and substance. And he has filled this vocation with his numerous writings, with his work, with all his actions to the end of his life.

And, therefore, today, on his hundredth anniversary, he will be remembered in every hut, factory and workshop, from the icy fields of Siberia to the sunny coast of the Pacific. And, therefore, today all clear-sighted workers of all countries reach hands across the battle fields and gain consolation and hope for the future from the great words of Marx, which will become reality for all that and all that: “WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!”

Truth emerged from the The Duluth Labor Leader, a weekly English language publication of the Scandinavian local of the Socialist Party in Duluth, Minnesota and began on May Day, 1917 as a Left Wing alternative to the Duluth Labor World. The paper was aligned to both the SP and the I.W.W. leading to the paper being closed down in the first big anti-I.W.W. raids in September, 1917. The paper was reborn as Truth, with the Duluth Scandinavian Socialists joining the Communist Labor Party of America in 1919. Shortly after the editor, Jack Carney, was arrested and convicted of espionage in 1920. Truth continued to publish with a new editor J.O. Bentall until 1923 as an unofficial paper of the C.P.

Access to PDF of full issue: https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/lccn/sn89081142/1918-05-03/ed-1/seq-3