Karl Marx: The Socialist Revolutionary,biography of Karl Marx

                                                        

          Karl Marx: The Socialist Revolutionary

His writings inspired the great revolutionary movements of the 20th Century, leading to the dictatorial rise of men like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. He lived a life of poverty and obscurity,content to let others take the limelight and aware that his ideas would not be realizedduring his lifetime. We remember him as the Father of Communism,yet the version that took hold in Soviet Union and China bore little resemblance to what he had envisioned. 

Early Years Karl Marx was born on May 5th, 1818 in the historic German town of Trier. His was an upper middle-class family, with his father, Heinrich, doing well as a lawyer. Karl’s mother, Henrietta, was from a wealthy Dutch family. The family was Jewish, but Heinrich had converted to Christianity the year before Karl was born in order to avoid the harsh laws that were being imposed upon Jews. Karl was the third of nine children. He became the oldest son when his brother,Moritz, died in 1919. The young Karl was a lively child who was prone to getting into trouble. He was home schooled by his father to the age  of twelve, at which time he entered Trier High School. The headmaster of the school, Hugo Wyttenbach,took an instant liking to the inquisitive young Marx and helped to mold his early philosophicalideas. Wyttenbach taught liberal ideas to his students and employed young liberal humanists as teachers. As a result, the school developed a reputationas a fomenter of dangerous ideologies. In 1832, Wyttenbach was placed under surveillanceby the authorities, with the school being searched for subversive materials. 

Off to UniversityKarl graduated from the school at the age of 17. He furthered his studies at Bonn University,enrolling as a law student in October, 1835. He found the workload during his first semesterto be extremely challenging. By the beginning of 1836, he had reduced hisattendance to a part time level. He spent most nights at local pubs and oftenwoke up the next day with a hangover, limiting the amount of focus he could give to his studies. On one occasion he was arrested for publicintoxication. After a year of wasting his efforts at theUniversity of Bonn, Marx’s father put his foot down. He transferred his wayward son to the Universityof Berlin and ordered him to start getting serious about his education. The summer before his transfer to Berlin University,Karl returned home to Trier. He began a romance with a young woman namedJenny von Westphalen, who he had known since childhood. Before leaving for University in October,Karl proposed and the two were engaged. The move to Berlin University served its purposeof encouraging Marx to get serious about his studies. He replaced late night carousing with membershipin a number of philosophical societies. He became interested in the ideas of Germanphilosopher G.W.F Hegel, and the ideas that he mulled over saw expression in a numberof essays and treatises that he began working on. Karl’s bright academic star was diminishedin May, 1838 with the death of his father. He had a great deal of respect and love forHeinrich and was shattered by the loss. 

His father had been supporting him financiallyand the sudden loss of this support imposed a financial hardship on him. This was a great concern to the Westphalens,who were now convinced that Karl would not be able to support their daughter as his bride. But the young couple continued their courtship,albeit by long distance, anyway. Focusing on PhilosophyFollowing his father’s death, Marx shifted the focus of his studies from law to philosophy. His goal was to graduate with honors and thensecure a position at the university as a philosophy lecturer. On order to help fund his studies, he soughtwork as a journalist. He secured a position with the most controversialnewspaper in the region, the Rheinische Zeitung, or Rhineland News. The paper expressed vocal opposition to thePrussian occupation of the Rhineland. On October, 1842, Karl Marx became the editor-in-chiefof the paper. It was through this paper that Marx firstbegan writing about Communism and what form a possible Communist government could take. But, when he openly criticized Russian monarch,Tsar Nicholas I, it was a step too far. 

The Prussian authorities moved in and shutdown the paper. Marx was now an unemployed journalist. But that didn’t stop he and Jenny from marryingon June 19th, 1843. The ceremony took place in a Protestant church,and was attended by members of both families, though many of the Westphalen clan mutteredthat Jenny was marrying below her station. However, the marriage was to last until thecouple were parted by death. France BeckonsKarl and Jenny moved in with Jenny’s mother. They lived off the mother’s stipend as Karltried to restart his writing career. He managed to get a gig working for a Frenchbased newspaper called Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher that had as its audience far leftistsin the Rhineland. The paper had been started by German socialistArnold Ruge who was based in Paris. In October, 1843, Marx and his wife movedto Paris and boarded with Ruge and his wife. In 1844, Jenny gave birth to their first child. This made the living conditions extremelycramped and so the Marx’s moved into their own apartment. As well as publishing the newspaper, Marxand Ruge worked together on two treatises, that would become very controversial. The second of them was called ‘On the JewishQuestion’. 

Even though Marx was of Jewish ancestry himself,the pamphlet comes across as quite anti-Semitic. In it, he wrote for the first time of theproletariat, a working-class band of revolutionaries, who would throw off the yoke of religion andother cultural bonds to finally unite the masses. Soon after, Marx moved on from working withRuge, finding employment with the Pairs based newspaper Vorwarts, of Forward, which targetedGermans living in France. The paper was sponsored by the League of theJust, made up of German immigrants who believed in a Communist system where everyone enjoyedeconomic equality. It was while working for Vorwarts that Marxmet and formed an alliance with Friedrich Engels. The two men immediately gelled, with theirideas converging into what would be called Classical Marxism. Marx was inspired by a report that Engelshad written called ‘The Conditions of the Working Class in England’, being convincedmore than ever that the working class would eventually rise up to overthrow their oppressors. Engels came from a wealthy family and, overthe years, he would prop up Marx financially time and again. The revolutionary ideas that Marx was espousingthrough his writings soon came to the attention of the Prussian authorities, who put pressureon him to leave France. 

The Interior Ministry shut down Vorwarts andMarx was given 24 hours to leave the country. He decided to relocate to Brussels, Belgiumwith his wife and baby joining him a few days later. BrusselsBelgium was a liberal, free thinking country and so was a natural fit for the leftist philosophiesof Karl Marx. Soon after, settling in Brussels, Jenny becamepregnant with the couple’s second child. Back in Germany, Marx’s mother-in-law becameconcerned that her daughter wouldn’t be able to cope with the stress of starting anewwith one small child and another one on the way. She sent her maid-servant, Helen Demuth, toBrussels to help her cope. Helen would, from then on be a permanent memberof the Marx household. Unknown to Marx, the Prussian government wasputting pressure on the Belgians to kick him out. As a result, he experienced frustrating delaysin his efforts to obtain permanent residency. In order to get residency granted, he hadto promise not to get involved in local political issues or espouse his political views. He then proceeded to find loopholes that wouldallow him to spread his ideas. In 1847, he published a treatise entitledThe Poverty of Philosophy, which challenged an earlier tract by French leftist Pierre-JosephProudhon called The Philosophy of Poverty. 

The Poverty of Philosophy was a stepping stonetoward Marx’s most impressive and famous work, The Communist Manifesto. In order to get direct experience of the conditionsof the working class, he traveled to England in 1845 along with Friedrich Engels. They toured factories and slums, witnessingthe terrible working and the even worse living conditions. After six weeks in England, Marx returnedto Brussels fully equipped to produce his magnum opus. Two weeks later, the 30-page pamphlet wasready for the presses. The Communist Manifesto was published on February21, 1848. In it, Marx stated that the bourgeoisie were‘their own grave diggers’, with their exploited workers rising up to overthrow them. Hard TimesSoon after the Manifesto’s publication, the second French revolt broke out. The monarch was cast aside and a democraticgovernment put in place. Back in Belgium, Marx was arrested for subversiveactivity. Upon his release, he made the decision tohead to a reinvigorated and freer France. 

The Marx family’s relocation was helpedby the belated inheritance he received from his father’s estate. Most of that money, though, was poured intostarting another newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Engels worked on the paper, providing thelatest news and happenings from Europe. Soon after moving to France, Marx joined theCommunist League, which had been formed by members of the Jacobin Club after the revolutionto prevent the aristocracy from reasserting itself. Their methods of doing so were so drasticthat the time period became known as the ‘reign of terror’. The French authorities viewed the CommunistLeague as the reinstituted Jacobin Club under a different name. This brought official scrutiny upon the League,with Marx being arrested several times. Initially the police were unable to directlylink him to any subversive activity and no prosecution was brought against him. But things changed when Prussian king, FredrickWilliam IV, took a personal interest in stomping out every leftist movement in his realm. It didn’t take long for his attention togo to the Paris based leftist newspaper run by Karl Marx.

 For the second time in his life, he was expelledfrom France. Marx had poured all of his financial resourcesinto the paper. With it shut down, he was left with nothing. Just to get enough money for passage out ofFrance, he had to visit a pawn shop and hock the family silver. He received support from a couple of Germansocialists who raised money to help the Marx family get reestablished. However, the help turned out to be a double-edgedsword. The benefactors had painted Marx to be insuch a poor, demoralized condition in order to secure support that Karl was treated asa laughing stock when he returned. Marx was not pleased with this reception. He stated that . . .The greatest financial difficulties are preferable to public begging! London In June, 1849, the Marx family of four relocatedyet again. The destination this time was London, England. It was their final move, with the famous Germanspending the rest of his life amongst the English. Not long after the Marx’s resettled in London,the disbanded French Communist League reformed in the city. The leaders of the movement wanted to bringabout an immediate revolt of the working classes in London, which would, ideally, spread acrossthe entire continent. 

Marx viewed these goals as unrealistic andlabeled the leaders of the Communist League as unrealistic dreamers. He was firmly convinced that overthrow wouldcome but believed that it had to evolve gradually. He wasn’t concerned if the revolution didn’toccur in his own lifetime. He was happy to plant the seeds that wouldcome to fruition at a later time. As it turned out, the first Communist revolutiondidn’t happen for another 68 years. In London, Marx focused on bringing reformson a small scale. He championed the rights of the poor and advocatedfor voting rights and freedom of speech. For their first few months in London, theMarx family were among the poor of London, only surviving thanks to the financial supportprovided by Friedrich Engels. The financial strain was lifted in 1851 whenMarx secured a position as a European correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. At the start, Engels had to translate thearticles that Marx wrote. Before long, Karl taught himself English andwas able to translate for himself. At the time, the New York Daily Tribune wasthe most widely read newspaper in the United States.

 The paper paid him two hundred pounds peryear in order to provide two articles per week. Still, it was never quite enough, and thefamily struggled to make ends meet. In 1852, Marx was concerned with what wastaking place across the English Channel. A second French Revolution had erupted anda new Napoleon, the nephew of the first, seized power, establishing himself as the new emperor. Marx was frustrated at how the French workingpeople could allow another dictator to rule over them. He wrote a book called The Eighteenth Brumaireof Louis Napoleon, which mocked the new emperor. In it, he placed the blame on both the Frenchworking class for being sucked in by the dictator and on the proletariat for being gullibleto Napoleon’s promise to keep the masses in check. In his book, he summed it up this way . . .The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all classes, equally impotent andequally remote, fall on their knees before the rifle butt. New York CorrespondentAs a correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, Marx was in a unique position togive an outside perspective on the American Civil War. 

He predicted that the election of AbrahamLincoln would lead to civil war and that the war would greatly impact the British economy,with its textile industry relying on exports of cotton from the American south. He was right on both counts, with the slowdownin trade being termed the Cotton Famine. Many British factory workers lost their jobs,providing the British government with the incentive to provide financial aid to propup the Confederate cause. Marx was quick to point out the hypocrisyin Britain’s position. Having outlawed slavery itself, Britain wasnow supporting the slave owning Southern states in order to boost her own economy. His articles were published in the Tribunewithout dissent until the paper changed its pro-Abolitionist stance and began callingfor an immediate cessation to hostilities. From now on, articles had to be neutral intheir tone. This was a disaster for Marx, who, unwillingto compromise his principles, tendered his resignation. Once more, Karl Marx was unemployed. 

It was terrible timing, with financial pressureshaving mounted even before his leaving the paper. On top of that, Jenny was sick with a boutof smallpox. With nowhere else to turn, Marx sought relieffrom Friedrich Engels. However, Engels was grieving the recent deathof his wife and the letter from Karl requesting relief was not taking kindly. After three days of stewing on the matterhe sent the following reply . . . You will find it natural that my own troubleand your frosty reception of it made it positively impossible for me to answer you earlier. All my friends . . . have shown me on thisoccasion, which was bound to touch me very nearly, more sympathy and friendship thanI could expect. You found the moment suitable to enforce thesuperiority of your cold thought processes. Marx was surprised and upset that he had unwittinglyinsulted Engels. He quickly wrote back, in the process givingus insight as to just how desperate his situation was . . .My wife and children will bear me witness that when your letter came, I was much shatteredby the death as one of those nearest to me. But when I wrote to you in the evening, itwas under the impression of very desperate conditions. I had the landlord’s broker in the house,the butcher protesting my cheque, shortage of coals and food, and little Jenny in bed. In such circumstances, I can generally savemyself only by cynicism. Das KapitalThe two men quickly made up and Engels once more provided financial support to keep theMarx family afloat. Before long, however, Marx faced a new crisis. While his wife’s health improved, his ownbegan to deteriorate. Boils erupted all over his body, causing greatpain and discomfort. He suffered on as he completed his latestwork, Das Kapital. The work was published in Berlin in 1867. In it, he emphasized the surplus value oflabor and the impact that machines would have on the workforce. 

Das Kapital was a success but that didn’ttranslate to financial stability for the ever-struggling family. Marx’s mother once made the salient comment. . . If only Karl had made capital, instead ofjust writing about it. When Marx’s daughter Laura got engaged toa struggling medical student named Paul Lafargue, her protective father sought to save her fromthe same mistake her mother had made – marrying a man who was ill-prepared to care for her. He strongly objected to the marriage, onlyrelenting when he gained the assurance that the young man was able to care for his daughterfinancially. By 1869, Marx was actively working as an ambassadorfor an organization called International Working Men’s Association, which endeavored to bringthe world of communism together under a single umbrella. In 1870, France declared war on Germany. Among the International Working Men’s Associationthere was division between those who were in favor of the war and those who were againstit. Marx was keen for Germany to ‘give the Frencha good drubbing’, believing that it would lead to resurgence of socialism in France. Following the defeat of Napoleon III, a coalitionof International Worker’s members and French citizens combined to take control of Paris. After two months they were overthrown by theFrench authorities. For that short period of time, Marx saw theembodiment of his proletarian revolt. 

It’s overthrow by the establishment convincedhim that . . . The working class cannot simply lay hold ofready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. For a take-over of power to be successful,Marx reasoned, there had to be an existing infrastructure ready to replace the old one. The Final YearsFor the last decade of his life, Karl Marx struggled with health problems and financialsurvival. During this period, he produced just one workof note, in which he commented on what he termed the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. He expressed his firm belief that the massesneeded to work together in the coming revolution without allowing for a dominant leader torise. Unfortunately, that is precisely what happenedin many of the Communist revolutions of the 20th Century. On December 2, 1881, Karl’s life-long companion,Jenny, died. She had been in terrible pain with cancerof the liver for months. 

Her last words to Karl were ‘good’, indicatingthat she was happy that her pain was at an end. Following Jenny’s death, Marx fell intoa deep depression. At the prompting of his life-long friend,Friedrich Engels, he took a holiday to Algiers. After two months he returned to England. Just as he was beginning to get back on hisfeet, he received another blow when his daughter Jenny Caroline died of bladder cancer at theage of 38. With the loss of his two Jenny’s, Marx gaveup the will to live. He hung on for another two months, rackedby pain and living in poverty. The end came on March 14, 1883, when his bodysuccumbed to a combination of bronchitis and pleurisy. The man was gone but his ideas survived tohave a massive impact on the coming century.