Marxism Page

Marxism and Birds *

The material on this page initially opened with a comment on the tenousness of the links between Marxism and bird watching. Recent research has, however, led to a revision of this assessment. It has demonstrated that the relationship in fact deepened over time.

Both Marx and Engels made early references to domesticated birds. The Engels family in Barmen kept chickens. In 1838, while a commercial apprentice in Bremen, Friedrich wrote home to his sister about breeds of chickens and pigeons he had seen.1 Marx mentioned French roosters in A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right2 and items in the Neue rheinische Zeitung and roast pigeons in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.3 While in prison, the Georgian Bolshevik Kamo actually undertook a program of domestication, taming a sparrow.4 Trotsky continued this tradition in his comparison between British Labour politicians and shortbilled pigeons, bred by fanciers, which were incapable of breaking out of the shell.5 Unfortunately, it must also be conceded that Trotsky's ornithological interests included duck hunting.

These examples are, it must be conceded, some distance from bird watching. But, by 1874, Marx's ornithological interests were more profound. While recovering his health at the spa resort of Karlsbad (now Karlowy Vary in the Czech Republic), Marx wrote the following to Engels

The surrounding district is very pretty and one can't get enough walking through and over the wooded granite mountains. But not a bird lives in these woods. Birds are healthy and don't like the mineral vapours.6

It seems that the elaboration of historical materialism was associated with a rising interest in ornithology, not to mention ecology. In Karlsbad, therefore, Marx drew attention to a significant absense. Of course Marx's comment implies interest in the subject on Engels's part. And direct written evidence of Engels's concern with bird anatomy emerged a couple of years later, in a comparison between human and parrot mouths as organs for speech, in his discussion of the evolution of humankind.7

It was surely no coincidence (from a materialist perspective) that the Zimmerwald Conference of 2-4 September 1916, the first international conference of anti-war socialist organisations during World War I, went under the cover of a bird watching outing.8 This had, no doubt, inherent plausibility as there are good views of the autumn migration in some mountainous areas of the Canton of Bern.

Lenin was a participant in the Zimmerwald Conference. In 1922 he compared Rosa Luxemburg favourably with the German Social Democrats of the 1920s by quoting a Russian fable 'Eagles may at times fly lower than hens, but hens can never rise to the height of eagles.'9 Earlier, the most prominent reformist Social Democrat in southern Germany, Georg von Vollmar, was much less flattering in using bird metaphors to describe her, accusing Luxemburg of 'squawking', and laying 'gaseous eggs'.10

Rosa Luxemburg, herself, was probably the prominent Marxist most involved in ornithology. She had some university training in botany and zoology and 'though not to be her life's work, these subjects always retained a strong and almost professional fascination for her'.11 While imprisoned in Germany, between 1915 and 1918, for her revolutionary and anti-war activities, Luxemburg took particular pleasure in watching and listening to birds within and beyond prison walls. In letters to friends she mentions reading a study of bird migration and encounters with Sparrows, Blackbird, Nightinggale, Green Finch, Cat Finch and Blue Titmouse.12

Several Marxists have reflected on Hegel's ornithological contention that 'The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering'.13

* I am grateful to Eric Petersen for many of these references amd to Peter Storm for a pointer to Luxemburg's comments. return

1. Letter from Frederick Engels to Marie Engels 28 August 1838. References are to the editions on the Marxists Internet Archive, unless otherwise indicated.return

2. Karl Marx A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right 1844; 'Counter-revolution in Berlin' Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 141, 12 October 1848; 'The Revolutionary Movement', Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 184, 1 January 1849. return

3. Letter from Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge, written September 1843 published in Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February 1844. return

4. Nadheza Krupskaya Reminiscences of Lenin International Publishers, New York 1970. return

5. Leon Trotsky 'The Fabian 'theory' of socialism' in Trotsky's Writings On Britain New Park, London 1975. return

6 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Werke volume 33, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1966 pp. 112-113. Also see Walt Contreras Sheasby 'Marx at Karlsbad' Capitalism Nature Socialism 12 (3) September 2001 pp. 91-97. return

7. Frederick Engels The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man written 1876, first published 1896. return

8. John Kenneth Galbraith Age of uncertainty Haughton Mifflin, Boston 1977 p. 147. return

9. V. I. Lenin 'Notes of a publicist' Collected Works volume 33 pp. 210-211, written at the end of February 1922, first published in Pravda 16 April 1924. return

10. J. P. Nettl Rosa Luxemburg Oxford University Press, London 1969 p. 110. return

11. J. P. Nettl Rosa Luxemburg volume 1 Oxford University Press, London, 1966, p. 62. return

12. Rosa Luxemburg The letters of Rosa Luxemburg Westview, Boulder, 1978, pp. 195-196, 206-208, 228-230, 235. On Luxemburg's grasp of ornithological ecology also see Sheasby 'Marx at Karlsbad' op. cit. p. 96. return

13. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 'Preface' to The Philosophy of Right Berlin 1821, translated by S. W. Dyde, 1896. Observations on Hegel's conclusion have been made by Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov, critically, 'For the Sixtieth Anniversary of Hegels Death' 1891, English edition Selected Works of G V Plekhanov, Volume I Lawrence & Wishart, London 1961. Leon Trotsky was particularly keen on the Minervan owl: 'The Military Specialists and the Red Army', December 31, 1918, translated by Brian Pearce; comparative comments on the nightingale and the owl Literature and Revolution 1924; The Third International after Lenin 1928; History of the Russian Revolution translated by Max Eastman 1932; 'German Buonapartism' 1932; Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects chapter 8, 1930; The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it going? translated by Max Eastman 1937. Also see György Lukács 'Class Consciousness' in History and Class Consciousness 1923, Merlin, London 1967. return