Karl Marx
To understand why Marxian socialism is bitter and negative, one should understand Marx’s life. Somewhat surprisingly, it was founded upon a secure childhood. Since he never held a job, Marx was never an exploited worker. As a student he studied philosophy and religion, but thought very little of religion. He married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, but there was little class struggle in the marriage.
Because of his radical views, he was not able to become a professor, so he went into journalism. Because of the opposition he tended to provoke, he spent time moving to and living in various places in Germany, France and England. For quite some time, Marx’s unwilling parents supported him and his family. As a library researcher, writing radical tracts and tomes on economic theory, he usually had no income at all, but in addition to help from his parents, he received help from his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels. Engels’s father was a textile capitalist and his textile factory and its exploited workers provided some financial help. From them Marx received a pittance; unfortunately, however, it was insufficient for all his family to survive his chosen poverty.
His most famous writings were The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, the latter being a three-volume critique of capitalism. The first volume of Kapital took him ten years to complete and the next two volumes were published posthumously by Friedrich Engels. Critics tend to believe the postponement of the publication of Das Kapital beyond Marx’s death was a result of the author’s dissatisfaction with his own attempt to resolve the incongruities in his theory of value. He never could free the theory of contradiction. To understand Marx’s theoretical problem requires a few moments of concentration. The interested reader is invited to consult my book, Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States, which treats the problem in detail. The book also addresses Marx’s basic approach to economic theory, his philosophical theories, and the theories he borrowed from pre-Marxian scholars.