If the officer had not known better he would never have guessed that the bushy-bearded man who sat before him was a graduate of a university with a Ph.D. degree. Nor that the wife who had just hustled the children into a back room was the daughter of a German aristocrat. Yet such was the case. This was the residence of Dr. and Mrs. Karl Marx.
At the moment Karl Marx was a political fugitive—having been driven from Germany, France and Belgium. England had granted him domicile along with other revolutionary leaders from the Continent and for this Marx was grateful. It gave him a lifelong base from which to continue his revolutionary work.
On this particular day the presence of the officer was no cause for alarm. It was the routine check which the British Government made on all political exiles living in England. Nor was the officer hostile. He found the Marxes strange but interesting people who could engage in very lively conversation on world problems while sitting blissfully in a domestic environment of incomprehensible confusion. The officer later included his puzzled observations concerning the Marxes in his official report:
“(Marx) lives in one of the worst, therefore one of the cheapest, neighborhoods in London. He occupies two rooms. The room looking out on the street is the parlor, and the bedroom is at the back. There is not one clean or decent piece of furniture in either room, but everything is broken, tattered and torn, with thick dust over everything and the greatest untidiness everywhere. In the middle of the parlor there is a large old-fashioned table covered with oilcloth. On it there are manuscripts, books and newspapers, as well as the children’s toys, odds and ends and his wife’s sewing basket, cups with broken rims, dirty spoons, knives and forks, lamps, an ink-pot, tumblers, some Dutch clay-pipes, tobacco ashes—all in a pile on the same table…. But all these things do not in the least embarrass Marx or his wife. You are received in the most friendly way and cordially offered pipes, tobacco and whatever else there may happen to be. Eventually a clever and interesting conversation arises which makes amends for all the domestic deficiencies.”{1}
Thus we are introduced to one of the most dramatic personalities to cross the pages of history during the nineteenth century. And one who would have a greater impact dead than alive. Biographers would grapple with the enigma of Marx’s life. At one moment Marx would be called “the greatest genius of this age,” and a moment later even his disciples would feel forced to call him “a violent, quarrelsome, contentious man, a dictator and a swashbuckler, one at feud with all the world and continually alarmed lest he should be unable to assert his superiority.”{2}
Such were the contradictory, surging forces of human dynamics which found expression in the turbulent personality of Karl Marx.
Karl Marx: “If we can but weld our souls together, then with contempt shall I fling my glove in the world’s face, then shall I stride through the wreckage a creator.”
The Early Life of Karl Marx
Karl Marx first saw the light of day at Treves, Germany, May 5, 1818. He certainly had no need to apologize for his progenitors. For many generations his male ancestors on both sides had been outstanding scholars and distinguished rabbis. However, the father of Karl Marx decided to break the ties of the past both religiously and professionally. He withdrew his family from the local synagogue to join the congregation of a local protestant faith and then reached out after professional recognition as a practicing attorney. Karl Marx was six years of age when the traditional moorings of the family were thus uprooted, and some biographers of Marx attribute his rejection of religion in later years to the conflicts which this sudden change in his life precipitated.
In elementary school young Karl revealed himself to be a quick, bright scholar. He also revealed a quality which would plague him the rest of his life—his inability to keep a friend. Seldom, in all of Marx’s writings, do we find a reference to any happy boyhood associations. Biographers say he was too intense, too anxious to dominate the situation, too concerned about personal success, too belligerent in his self-assertiveness, to keep many friends. However, Karl Marx was not lacking in sentiment and genuine hunger for affection. At 17, when he began his university career, the letters which he wrote to his parents occasionally unveiled deeply sentimental, woman-like feelings. Here is an example:
“In the hope that the clouds which hang over our family will gradually disperse; that I shall be permitted to share your sufferings and mingle my tears with yours, and, perhaps, in direct touch with you, to show the profound affection, the immeasurable love, which I have not always been able to express as I should like; in the hope that you, too, my fondly and eternally loved Father, bearing in mind how much my feelings have been storm-tossed, will forgive me because my heart must often have seemed to you to have gone astray when the travail of my spirit was depriving it of the power of utterance; in the hope that you will soon be fully restored to health, that I shall be able to clasp you in my arms, and to tell you all that I feel, I remain always your loving son, Karl.”
Such expressions must have puzzled the elder Marx. Throughout his career as a father he was never able to counsel or cross this hot-tempered son without precipitating an emotional explosion. The letters of Karl Marx make frequent reference to the violent quarrels between himself and his parents; the letters from Karl’s parents complain of his egoism, his lack of consideration for the family, his constant demands for money and his discourtesy in failing to answer most of their letters.
Marx as a Young Man
It was in the fall of 1835 that Marx entered the University of Bonn to study law. This was a hectic year. He scandalized his parents by joining a tavern club, running himself deeply in debt and almost getting himself expelled for “nocturnal drunkenness and riot.” His studies were most unsatisfactory and he threatened to become a professional poet instead of a lawyer. In the summer of 1836 he fought a duel and received a wound over the eye. It was finally decided that it would be better for the University of Bonn if Karl Marx transferred to some other university. The elder Marx heartily agreed. Karl was sent to Berlin.
It was at the University of Berlin that the intellectual forces in Karl Marx became sinews and the whole pattern of his life began to take shape. Although he complied with his father’s wishes and studied law, it was a half-hearted camouflage to cover up his avid exploration of philosophy. In the midst of this exploration his father died and Marx immediately came out in the open with his announcement that he would seek an academic career. He wanted to occupy a chair of philosophy at some university. Marx chose for his doctoral dissertation: “The Difference between the Natural Philosophy of Democritus and of Epicurus.”
In this study he favored the materialism of Epicurus because it allowed for an energizing principle in matter. He thought that if matter were auto-dynamic it would do away with the need for a Creator, a designer or a governing force in the universe. The anti-religious sentiments of Marx found further expression in his thesis when he chose for its motto the cry of Prometheus: “In one word—I hate all the gods!” During this period of intellectual incubation three things dominated the thinking of Karl Marx: his desire to discover a philosophy of nature; his desire to completely repudiate all forms of religion; his desire to win the hand of the daughter of Baron von Westphalen.
While Marx was at the University of Berlin he fell in with a left-wing school of Hegelians who were followers of the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Hegel. At the moment their whole energy was consumed by a desire to liquidate Christianity. David Friedrich Strauss had published his Life of Jesus in 1835 and shocked all Germany with his contention that the Gospels were not true historical documents but were merely myths which he believed evolved from the communal imagination of early Christians. A close associate of Marx, Bruno Bauer, wrote on the same theme in 1840 under the title, Historical Criticism of the Synoptic Gospels. In this book he claimed the Gospels were forgeries. He said Jesus had never existed, that he was a figure of fiction and therefore Christianity was a fraud.
At this point Bauer
and Marx decided they would boldly publish a Journal of Atheism, but the magazine lacked financial sponsorship and died in gestation.
Nevertheless, the anti-Christian campaign gained another eloquent protagonist named Ludwig Feuerbach who came out in 1841 with his Essence of Christianity. He not only ridiculed Christianity but presented the thesis that man is the highest form of intelligence in the entire universe. This exotic flash of speculation fascinated Marx. He had written the same idea into his thesis for a doctorate. Marx had bluntly said it is necessary “to recognize as the highest divinity, the human self-consciousness itself!”
The government’s reaction to this anti-Christian campaign took a serious turn; therefore Marx decided it would not be prudent to present his thesis to the University of Berlin where he had been studying. His friend, Bruno Bauer, suggested that he go to the University of Jena. Marx followed this suggestion and consequently received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy from that institution in April, 1841.
Shortly afterwards, however, a leveling blow wiped out his passionate ambition to become a professor of philosophy at some German university. This resulted from the fact that Marx collaborated with Bauer in writing a pamphlet which was vigorously investigated because of its revolutionary flavor. When the Prussian officials identified the authors, Bauer was summarily dismissed from the University of Bonn and Marx was assured that he would never be allowed to teach at any university in Germany.
Now the revolutionary spirit flamed high in Marx; somehow he must start a movement to remake the world. However, to succeed in such a task he felt he must have the companionship of Jenny von Westphalen, the attractive and popular daughter of a German aristocrat who lived in Marx’s hometown. For seven years he had corresponded with her. One of his letters made it clear that if she married him she would become the wife of a revolutionary. Said he: “Jenny! If we can but weld our souls together, then with contempt shall I fling my glove in the world’s face, then shall I stride through the wreckage a creator!”{3}
In June, 1843, the wedding took place. At the time the bridegroom was unemployed and Jenny von Westphalen soon discovered that this was to be a permanent characteristic of their entire married life. Karl Marx never acquired the slightest comprehension of the responsibilities which a husband assumes as the head of a family. Nevertheless, Jenny von Westphalen remained loyal and devoted to Karl Marx under circumstances which would have crushed a woman of weaker mettle. After the marriage they had a five month honeymoon following which they went to Paris, where Marx hoped to collaborate in publishing a revolutionary organ called The Franco-German Year Books. The publication collapsed after its first issue and Marx spent the next fifteen months in the pleasant task of “studying and writing.”
This was to be the pattern of his whole life. In later years while his family was starving he could be found at the library devoting himself to the interesting but, for him, completely unremunerative study of higher mathematics. Voltaire referred derisively to the breed of men who cannot run their own families and therefore retreat to their attics so that from there they can run the whole world. Marx seemed to fit this pattern. Although he seemed physically indolent, Marx was actually capable of prodigious quantities of intellectual work if it dealt with a subject which interested him. Otherwise, he would not stir. As a result of these personal characteristics, Marx never did acquire a profession, an office, a regular occupation or a dependable means of livelihood. Concerning this phase of his career a friendly biographer states:
“Regular work bored him; conventional occupation put him out of humor. Without a penny in his pocket, and with his shirt pawned, he surveyed the world with a lordly air…. Throughout his life he was hard up. He was ridiculously ineffectual in his endeavors to cope with the economic needs of his household and family; and his incapacity in monetary matters involved him in an endless series of struggles and catastrophes. He was always in debt; was incessantly being dunned by creditors…. Half his household goods were always at the pawnshop. His budget defied all attempts to set it in order. His bankruptcy was chronic. The thousands upon thousands which Engels handed over to him melted away in his fingers like snow.”{4}
This brings us to the only close friend Karl Marx ever had—Friedrich Engels.
Friedrich Engels, Marx’s collaborator in the development of Communist theory: “We say: ‘A la guerre comme a la guerre’; we do not promise any freedom, nor any democracy.”
Friedrich Engels
In many ways Engels was the very opposite of Karl Marx. He was tall, slender, vivacious and good natured. He enjoyed athletics, liked people and was by nature an optimist. He was born in Barmen, Germany, November 28, 1820, the son of a textile manufacturer who owned large factories both in Barmen, Germany, and in Manchester, England. From his earliest youth Engels chafed under the iron discipline of his father, and he learned to despise the textile factories and all they represented. As he matured it was natural that he should have lined himself up with the “industrial proletariat.”
For the son of a bourgeois businessman, young Engels had a surprisingly limited education; at least it did not include any extensive university training. But what he lacked in formal training he supplied through hard work and native talent. He spent considerable time in England and learned both English and French with such facility that he succeeded in selling articles to liberal magazines of both languages.
Biographers have emphasized that while the hearty and attractive Engels differed in personal traits from the brooding, suspicious Marx, nevertheless, the two of them followed an identical course of intellectual development. Engels, like Marx, quarreled bitterly with his father, took to reading Strauss’s Life of Jesus, fell in with the same radical left-wing Hegelians who had attracted Marx, became an agnostic and a cynic, lost confidence in the free-enterprise economy of the Industrial Revolution and decided the only real hope for the world was Communism.
Engels had been an admirer of Marx long before he had a chance to meet him. It was in August, 1844, that he traveled to Paris for the specific purpose of visiting Marx. The magnetic attraction between the two men was instantaneous. After ten days both men felt it was their destiny to work together. It was during this same ten days that Marx converted Engels from a Utopian Communist to an outright revolutionist. He convinced Engels that there was no real hope for humanity in the idealism of Robert Owen or Saint-Simon but that conditions called for a militant revolution to overthrow existing society. Engels agreed and proceeded back to Germany.
Six months later Marx was expelled from France, along with other revolutionary spirits, and took up residence in Brussels, Belgium. Here Marx and Engels wrote The Holy Family, a book designed to rally around them those Communists who were willing to completely disavow any connection with the so-called “peaceful reforms” of philanthropy, Utopianism or Christian morality. The red flag of revolution was up and Marx and Engels considered themselves the royal color-guard.
The strange relationship which rapidly developed between Marx and Engels can be understood only when it is realized that Engels considered it a privilege to be associated with such a genius as Marx. Among other things, he counted it an honor to be allowed to assume responsibility for Marx’s financial support. Shortly after Marx was expelled from France, Engels sent him all the ready cash in his possession and promised him more: “Please take it as a matter of course that it will be the greatest pleasure in the world to place at your disposal the fee I hope shortly to receive for my English literary venture. I can get along without any money just now, for my governor (father) will have to keep me in funds. We cannot allow the dogs to enjoy having involved you in pecuniary embarrassment by their infamous behavior.”
This new partnership between Marx and Engels gave them both the courage to immediately launch an International Communist League based on the need for a violent revolution. They planned to use the workers in Germany and France as the backbone for their new political machine but this proved bitterly disappointing. Aft
er spending several months among the French workers Engels castigated them because they “prefer the most preposterous day-dreaming, peaceful plans for inaugurating universal happiness.” He told Marx that the tinder for a revolution in France was nonexistent. Having thus failed in their plan to build their own revolutionary organization, Marx and Engels decided to take over one that was already in existence. In August, 1847, they succeeded in gaining control of the “Workers’ Educational Society” in Brussels. This immediately gave them prestige among reform organizations in Europe. It also gave them the first opportunity to extend their influence in England. At this point Marx and Engels would have been surprised to know that England rather than the Continent would become the headquarters for their revolutionary work.
The Communist Manifesto
During November, 1847, word came from London that the “Federation of the Just” (later known as the Communist League) wanted Marx and Engels to participate in their second congress as representatives of the Communist organizations in Brussels. Marx and Engels not only attended the congress but practically took it over. By staying up most of the night laying their plans and by using shrewd strategy at each of the meetings, they succeeded in getting the congress to adopt all of their basic views. Marx and Engels were then commissioned to write a declaration of principles or a “Manifesto to the World.” They returned to Brussels and immediately set to work with Marx pouring into the text his passionate plea for a revolution. When they were through they had announced to mankind that the new program of International Communism stood for: 1. the overthrow of capitalism, 2. the abolition of private property, 3. the elimination of the family as a social unit, 4. the abolition of all classes, 5. the overthrow of all governments, and 6. the establishment of a communist order with communal ownership of property in a classless, stateless society. To accomplish this, the Communist Manifesto was crystal clear as to the course to be taken:
The Naked Communist Page 2