The Dissemination of Marx in England: a Quantitative Assessment

This paper adopts the synthetic control method to empirically tests Willis thesis that †the major breakthrough" (Willis, 1977, p. 420) in the dissemination of Marx in England was the publication of the first volume of Capital in English in 1887. The specificities of late Victorian society and the fact that Marx wrote his theoretical works in German contributed to his anonymity in England up the 1880s-1890s. The liberal-radical roots of the left-wing intellectuals and of the working class movements together with the strong parlamentary tradition constituted a challenging environment for the spread of Marxism. After having downloaded data from Google Ngram, I run the SC model. Findings reveal that the 1886 is the breakthrough year for the quotations of Marx in England. Willis’s thesis on 1887 as the decisive year is thus slighlty anticipated by the quantitative result. Rather, two events that possibly revived Marx’s quotations were the publication of the first 10 chapters of ‘Capital’ in Hyndman’s newly bought and renamed “To-Day: Monthly Magazine of Scientific Socialism†and the Trafalgrar Riots (also known as West end riots or Pall Mall riots) of February 1886, an event that broadened the perception of socialist imminence to the average public.