Revolutions as sensational writing. Karl Marx as London correspondent for The New York Tribune (1852–1861)

Abstract

From the perspective of the 21st century with news agencies and delivery systems of political information in media conglomerates and PR activities, the work of Karl Marx employing newspapers as a tool for political journalism must seem as a curious one-man-entrepreneurship of a revolutionary politician in disguise of a journalist. But it worked sufficiently to cover the interests of both one of the biggest newspapers in the United States and the economic philosopher and his economic concept. Actually, the 19th century is the time of the beginning of politically independent journalism and Marx is an example par excellence for an international approach towards the changes and differences in the Western World, Europe and the United States Marx took in London. This article asks for the concept of exterior factors and events Marx employed and the connection between Marx’s political and journalistic interaction in mass media writings. The connections are differentiated and changed during his career and activities in journalism. The interpretative worldview in his writings Marx developed relatively late in his career; Marx saw its confirmation in the contemporary events he described in The New York Tribune. The articles of this time are descriptive and look at contemporary developments from an ideological viewpoint. This was not a contradiction for his readers in the new world, since Marx and Engels considered the United Sates ahead of Europe. Marx refereed to the readers of the newspaper a state of the old world the United States had already gone through giving them the perspective of looking back in history. Also U.S. American newspapers developed as partisan newspapers and never acted politically neuter.