Who Was Karl Marx?
I presume that somewhere in this blog should be a brief statement about Karl Marx, the hero of socialists and the deity of communists. My book, Socialism, addresses the life, the writings and theories of Marx in some detail, since he is so important. Even the socialist who claims he is not a follower of Marx generally follows the same principles and evinces the same preferences as other socialists who follow Marx. I reproduce below an introduction to this topic which appears as a synopsis of a chapter on Marx from the book.
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. For political reasons, he was not able to become a professor, so he went into journalism. Because of the opposition stirred up by his radical views, he spent time 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 also received help from his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels, thanks to the Engels textile factory and its exploited workers. From them Marx received a pittance insufficient for all his family to survive.
Marx’s 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 Engels. Critics tend to believe the publication postponement 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.