‍Resurrecting the Ghost – Victorian Fictions of Revolution:

‍Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities & George Eliot, Romola

‍‘Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa […]’ (Marx & Engels 1848, 2). This arresting

‍statement opens The Communist Manifesto, first published in February 1848,

‍and is usually translated as ‘A spectre is haunting Europe […]’ (Marx &

‍Engels, 1967, 218). ‘Gespenst’ is clearly related to ‘ghost’, and also to ‘Geist.’

‍The initial English translation however, written by a Chartist and Communist

‍revolutionary, Helen Macfarlane, and published in The Red Republican,

‍November 1850, begins with an even more startling statement: ‘A frightful hobgoblin stalks throughout Europe’ (Black, 2004,138). This is not as extraordinary as it sounds. Hobgoblins are often represented as helpful but troublesome household sprites, and sometimes in more modern comics and 1980s cinematic versions they belong to the dark creatures, and the shades of the undead. In John Bunyan’s famous hymn, To Be a Pilgrim, originally included in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684), the hobgoblin is associated with the satanic. Bunyan’s third verse reads: ‘Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend | Can daunt his spirit | He knows he at the end | Shall life inherit’ (Bunyan, 2009, 231). The hobgoblin, like the Revolution, is double-edged: a dangerous antagonist, but one that must be faced. Hobgoblins are still part of our Marxist-Communist heritage. The Hobgoblin is the paper published by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization.  

‍Stalking the Ghost 

‍Charles Dickens and George Eliot in their respective fictions are resurrecting the ghost of Revolution. But do ghosts need to be resurrected? Ghosts are vengeance figures: they deal in justice and warnings. They are always engaged in unfinished  business. Why, if you were dead, would you want to walk the earth again? Only if the dangerous fate of the living or their past deeds required you to act. According to Marx and Engels, that wandering spectre is Communism – the once and future ghost of the Revolution that is still to come, the new order that rises from the overthrow of unequal, oppressive social hierarchies, the unfinished business of the French Revolution. The ghost that still stalks Europe in The Communist Manifesto is the source of terror among those who live comfortably in large houses and behind locked doors. The Revolution embodies their fear of loss and radical change. And those fears were built upon a solid foundation.

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