Marks, God of the class war

“Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image” – so says the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament. But in the family of the Trier lawyer, Heinrich Marx, that was one of the Lord’s Commandments that was rashly ignored.

It was a mistake that was to be repeated at different times by the German aristocrat, Jenny von Westfalen; the owner of a number of textile mills in Manchester, Friedrich Engels; the Russian nobleman, Vladimir Ulyanov; and, last but by no means least, the proletariat of the world.

The person who played king for such a numerous and ill-assorted suite was the failed lawyer and philosopher, Karl Heinrich Marx, better known as the father of political economy and the theory of the class society.

Yet all those who succumbed to the power of his charm and the assurance of his own exclusiveness, remained by his side forever. He seemed to exude a magnetism that attracted the kind of people who were ready to give him their faithful service. And Marx with true royal magnanimity would accept the sacrifices that his entourage continually laid at his altar. But the proletariat’s best friend was inclined to a noble style of living himself and, whenever the opportunity arose, he would fulfil his dreams of the life of luxury lived by the class he despised – with a fine home, costly drinks and cigars, lavish meals, and servants...

Enfant terrible

What it means to be an idol, Karl had known from the moment he came into the world. He was born on May 5, 1818 and was the second of nine children born to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx. His mother called him the ‘lucky one’, cosseted him, and danced to almost every whim the little Wunderkind had. His father had high hopes that it would be Karl and not Herman or Eduard that would make the name of Marx famous beyond the confines of Trier. Unlike his younger sons, whom he saw as fulfilling more prosaic roles in life, Heinrich dreamed of seeing ‘his Karl’ become a great lawyer or a university professor. And Heinrich would stop at nothing to realize this dream. The son of a local rabbi himself, Heinrich Marx had converted to the Lutheran Church in 1816, and in so doing had changed his name from Girschel to Heinrich. In 1824 his offspring swelled the ranks of the Christian flock –and in so doing became fully entitled to study at any university in Germany.

Karl himself came to believe in his own exclusiveness and accepted the privileges that his parents had given him as his due. All the very best was given to him and his mother and father bent over backwards to ensure that he lacked for nothing.

In the autumn of 1835 ‘his father’s white hope’ entered the faculty of law at Bonn University, but the following year transferred to Berlin University. Not that the change of university did much to change his lifestyle: he was not particularly conscientious about attending lectures and in nine terms enrolled for only twelve courses, deigning to put in an actual appearance on even fewer occasions; and when he was not “studying”, his time was largely spent in jovial company.

The young Marx’s living expenses exceeded the salary of a councillor at the Berlin town council. In a letter to his son, Heinrich Marx wrote: “You behave as if money were on tap from a vein of gold. And despite all our agreements and the dictates of common sense you, my dear son, manage to spend 700 thalers a year, when even the richest students get by on 500. How is this possible?” Karl declined to give his father an answer: the latter’s scrupulousness over money was something the young Marx could not understand. And he had no intention of explaining to a provincial lawyer the vast sums that were required for life in the capital: for good living quarters, for good food and drink, for good drinking bouts to which he, as chairman of the student com_ munity, frequently treated all his fellows, for good Cuban cigars, to which he had recently taken a liking – there was no end to the things a young genius might have need of!

Marx asked his parents for money without telling them anything about what he wanted it for. As he saw it, his parents were there to provide him with a high standard of living, and that was all there was to it. What that “high standard of living” actually involved was no concern of theirs.

The beliefs of the young Marx could perhaps be summed up in the words vino and veritas (wine and truth): it was not only the parties that captured the enthusiasm of the 18-year-old Marx, but the ideas of the young Hegelians. And following in the footsteps of his new friends, Marx proclaimed himself a materialist and an atheist. With views of this kind he could forget about an academic career – the Prussian government did not encourage the ideas of Ludwig Feurbach and Bruno Bauer, Marx’s “spiritual fathers”. And as a result, he had to defend his doctoral dissertation on the philosophy of Epicurus and Democrates at the University of Jena. None of this disturbed the young man unduly – the prospect of becoming a desk-bound scholar no longer held any attraction for him: if he were one of the chosen, then he should not be restricted by the limitations of a petty-bourgeois family from Trier. Karl had no intention of playing by the rules of the game; his idea was to change them. In other words, it was his intention to exchange the life of a philosopher for that of a politician, to replace contemplation with direct action. And in that, one might say, he was eminently successful.

Lyrical digression

Marx’s energy and his faith in his own exclusivity had a hypnotic effect on those around him. The future leader of the world proletariat accepted the sacrifices made by his family and friends with the sangfroid of a banker receiving payment for a loan. For Karl’s sake, Jenny von Westfalen was ready for any ordeal: she would disobey her parents, who had planned for her to marry a man from their own circle, resign herself to a long engagement, and accept the prospect of an extremely murky future.

Jenny came from an aristocratic family and was considered the most beautiful woman in Trier. Privy Councillor von Westfalen rightly  expected to find a good match for his daughter. But while he was trying to make up his mind between the relative virtues of a young officer and a banker, his daughter fell under the spell of a lawyer’s son. Despite the fact that he was four years younger than his bride-to-be, Marx had her firmly under his control. They were engaged secretly so that the parents of both parties should not make too much trouble too soon, but one way or another the secret got out.

The first to find out about the matrimonial plans was Heinrich Marx, and the lawyer’s house on Brucken Strasse was daily the scene of furious rows. The privy councillor was also somewhat less than jubilant at the prospect of a convert from Judaism as a son-in-law. But Marx had made up his mind to marry the queen of the Trier ballrooms, whatever the objections, and – more to the point – Jenny had already plighted her troth and was ready to wait for him all her life, if necessary.

Fortunately, an extravagant sacrifice of this kind was not necessary – the waiting time between the engagement and the marriage was a “mere” seven years. During which, each of the spouses engaged in their own favourite pastimes: Marx lived the good life in Bonn and Berlin, while Jenny continued to turn down would-be suitors from Trier. The patience of Karl’s militant girlfriend was ultimately rewarded with three notebooks of sonnets and a wedding. Heinrich Marx and Ludwig von Westfalen had at long last ceased their opposition to the coming misalliance, but only for the simple reason that the former had gone the way of all flesh in 1838 and the latter had followed suit four years later. The remaining relatives had no further resistance to put up – having withstood a seven-year siege, the fortress was now surrendered to the mercy of the conquerors. On June 19, 1843 Karl and Jenny were married.

“My fiancée,” Marx wrote later, “has fought hard – one might even say – life-threatening battles for my sake. Partly with her venerable aristocratic relatives, for whom God is in his Heaven and the Master is in Berlin – idols of approximately equal importance. Partly with my own family.” But this was only the beginning – from then on a peaceful life was some_ thing Jenny only knew in her sleep. Once she’d “plighted her troth” to Marx, she exchanged the ballrooms for the station waiting rooms, the peace of mind brought by financial security for the worries of financial fluctuation, the lounges of the aristocratic houses for the attics and basements of the London slums and the pawnshop queues, and mixing with high society for hanging out with revolution groups. The Marx family led a nomadic existence, as they kept moving from town to town, and everywhere they were pursued by the debts and loans, which they couldn’t pay back despite letters sent continually to relatives asking for help. Jenny’s entire existence was subordinated to the lifestyle of her husband. She supported Karl in everything he did – decoding his illegible writing, retyping his articles, bearing him children, collecting his archives, and showing considerable talent for borrowing money (she was trusted far more than her husband). Even Marx’s unfaithfulness did not break up their marriage: Jenny had the courage and sense to close her eyes to her husband’s peccadilloes.

When Jenny died after several gruelling months in pain from cancer of the liver, Karl did not go to the cemetery: he had only just got over a serious bout of pneumonia himself and the doctors advised him not to go out. More than anything in the world Marx valued his own fragile health. Jenny was buried by the faithful Engels.

Expropriating the expropriators

Shortly before marrying Jenny von Westfalen, Marx had obtained a source of income of his own (a unique event for him). His young Hegelian friends got the idea of publishing an opposition newspaper in Cologne, the Rheinische Zeitung. As editor, Marx was paid a salary of 500 thalers a year. This anti-government publication was not liked by the Prussian government, and shortly before the wedding it was closed down and the newlyweds were forced to emigrate to France.

But despite the fact that he found himself without the means of support and with a wife in the latter stages of pregnancy, the head of the family was nevertheless in no hurry to acquire a permanent source of income. The remains of his paternal inheritance and his wife’s dowry made it possible for him to lead a comfortable existence, but an inclination on the part of the author of political economic theory to live in style rapidly led to financial ruin.

The growing Marx family in emigration were soon virtually starving: it was not until two years after the start of his itinerant existence that he would make the acquaintance of Engels and financial assistance from that quarter would not be forthcoming immediately.

It would be untrue to say that the critique of Proudhon concerned him more than what he would eat for dinner – the anti-bourgeois campaigner valued his bourgeois comforts and, if there was anything that he was well versed in, it was the finer points of the epicurean philosophy to which he had devoted much time during his university days. But to cease from political activity for the sake of earning a crust was tantamount to a rejection of his own historical mission – to establish socialism and communism as the only true social structures, and thus to change the world. And that was something that the leader and teacher of the world proletariat could not allow himself to do. It is probably for this reason that over a period of thirty years Marx made only two attempts to get a job. The first was when he tried to become a partner in a company supplying chemicals to the United States (the scheme turned out to be a confidence trick and the business collapsed). The second attempt was when he tried for a job as a railway clerk, but failed to be taken on because of his atrocious handwriting. After that, Marx never once turned aside from the production of righteous revolutionary and philosophical works, and the world saw Das Kapital and the Communist Party Manifesto.

For any other person the contradiction between the desire to find a universal formula for society and a love of the dolce vita would have been irreconcilable. But not for Marx. Quite frequently he even managed to find the means to satisfy his bourgeois needs. Relatives, friends, acquaintances and fellow comrades-in-arms were called upon to finance comfortable conditions for the creation of political and economic treatises. But the money that came easily, was just as easily spent: Marx changed his flat and his furniture, hired dancing instructors for his daughters, and... once again ended up broke.

Not that the family were always able to live in the style of what one of Karl Marx’s better-known followers would subsequently describe as the expropriation of the expropriators. The worst time for Marx was the period he spent in London. For six years the Marx family lived in Soho – at the time one of the poorer quarters of the British capital. Consumed by debt and plagued by carbuncles and haemorrhoids (Marx had to work leaning against his writing desk), Marx would go out – if his frock coat had not been pawned – to the British Museum Library to do his research for Das Kapital, since it was impossible to work at home. The Marxes, a family of six, were crammed into two tiny rooms, and forced to eat nothing but potatoes and bread without cutlery – the von Westfalen family silver was more often than not held by the pawnbroker. And on one occasion the bailiff took the bed, the bedding and even the cradle for the little baby Francesca in payment for an unpaid debt.

When a year later the little baby died of bronchitis, there was no money to give her a proper burial. Jenny went to see a French émigré and borrowed the money to buy a small coffin and a place at the cemetery. In a letter to a friend, Jenny wrote: “When Francesca was born, she hadn’t got a cradle, and when she died they even refused for a long time to give her a grave. How do you think we felt when we carried our daughter to her last resting place!”

But even these sad events could not compel Marx to stop working on Das Kapital and start earning some real capital. Writing a work on global economic theory had a kind of psychotherapeutic effect on him: being himself continually in need of small amounts of money, Marx wanted to discover the reasons why some could afford a personal secretary and beef on the dinner plate, while others were forced to rely on their own efforts and eat potatoes. Incidentally, the royalties on the first volume, according to Marx, were not even enough to cover the cost of the cigars he’d smoked while writing it. But Marx still had the selfless help given by friends to rely on, and one stroke of luck – a legacy. This stroke of luck definitely helped him out of his difficulties for a short time, and it occurred when Frau von Westfalen died and left Jenny a legacy of Ј100. The Marx family quit the detestable Soho and bought a house. “Finally,” Marx wrote to Engels, “we have found a place to live – a whole house, which we will have to furnish ourselves. The ground rent is Ј36 per year. We’re in a bit of difficulty, as we still have to pay a further Ј26 in the city and spend a lot more on the new place. In other words, we need another Ј1015.” (For reference: the wages of a skilled British worker at the time were Ј3 per year). Almost the whole of Jenny’s inheritance went on the new place and paying off debts. The family silver was once again pawned.

Hoping against hope for the death of relatives that might leave him and Jenny at least something became somewhat of an obsession with Marx: with another five, well... seven thousand marks they could go to the medicinal springs, furnish the flat, hire governors for the children and continue the revolutionary struggle. Marx wrote to Engels: “We got some good news from my sister-in-law, the minister’s wife. It concerns my wife’s uncle, a man of seemingly vibrant health, who is ill. If the old scoundrel dies, it’ll get me out of a difficult situation.” Engels only egged his friend on: “Congratulations on the news about the old man in Braunschweig, who has stood in the way of your getting a legacy. One hopes the worst will at last happen.” Soon afterwards Engels received a triumphant reply: “A very happy event! Yesterday we heard the news of the death of my wife’s uncle – a very happy event indeed! My wife will get 100 pounds – maybe more, if the old dodderer hasn’t left part of it to his housekeeper.”

Even when sending his condolences to Engels on the death of his lady friend, Mary Berns, Marks managed to touch on the matter that was of most concern to him: “The news of Mary’s death astounded me as much as it shook me. She was so clever, bright and kind, and devoted to you. Why couldn’t it have been my mother in place of her? As it is, she only drags out a miserable existence, suffering from every ailment under the sun. She’s lived long enough – it must be time to call it a day!” When Henrietta Marx did eventually die, her darling son sent Engels a note, which contained not a word of grief at her passing, and only griped that he was practically at death’s door himself due to the damn carbuncles. But this was immediately followed by a note in a much more buoyant mood: “Got to rush. I’m off to Trier for the legacy” – the carbuncles, which had supposedly prevented him from going to his mother’s funeral, did not appear to stop him from collecting his money.

Marx was not embarrassed by the fact that he owed money everywhere. On the contrary, demands to repay his debts only served to sincerely bewilder the champion of the proletariat and arouse him to righteous anger – as the quarrel with Ferdinand Lassalle bore witness.

The founder of the German Social-Democratic Party had frequently loaned Marx money, though the latter had not always returned the debt. Unlike Engels, Lassalle possessed little generosity of spirit and hardly dreamed of becoming Marx’s sponsor for the rest of his life. In the end he did agree to loan Marx money, but only on the condition that someone would act as a guarantor. Marx took the money, but he also took offence. In his letters to Engels, he described Lassalle rather bluntly as a ‘Jewish nigger’: “Now it’s quite clear to me – as the shape of his head and the kind of hair he’s got shows – that he’s of Negroid origins and his ancestors joined the people of Moses, when the Jews came out of Egypt.” The upshot was that the ‘arrogant pig’, as Marx referred to his creditor, never saw a cent of his money back. But not everyone was as uncompromising as Ferdinand Lassalle on money matters. The Marx family got a lot of help from the old Dutchman, Karl Phillips, and there were many others who believed that Marx was a genius in need of constant investment. One of these was Friedrich Engels, who never asked Marx to repay his debts. And Marx accepted this patronage as his due: there would always be  people, to whom the great honour of taking care of a genius would fall.

The proletariat and the bourgeoisie

The friendship between Engels and Marx was (according to the tenets of historical materialism) a phenomenon in world history. When they met, Engels was an owner of the means of production – that is, from the point of view of Marxist theory, a typical bourgeois. On the other hand, the future author of Das Kapital was trying his hardest to become a member of the proletariat, if only for the fact that he was basically a hired worker, who owned none of these same means of production. According to Marx’s own theory, “water and rock, verse and prose, ice and flame are not so different from each other” as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Well, that’s the way dialectics sees it: a conflict of opposites or contradictions and their subsequent resolution. And so instead of class hatred, the contradictions between Marx and Engels were resolved in a friendship lasting many years.

It is of no consequence whatsoever whether the cause of their unity was Engels’ sympathy for the working classes or Marx’s inclination to the much criticized bourgeois way of life; what is important is that their creative and financial union proved to be exceptionally stable and fruitful. Incidentally, as young men, the two held similar views not only on the historical process, but on the sources of the means of their existence – both had a preference for obtaining funds from the pockets of their relatives.

In a letter to Marx, Engels wrote: “My old man has made a ridiculous demand – to reduce my expenses. Obviously, I shan’t obey it.” To which Marx replied: “Dear Engels! It is now essential that you make demands on your old man.” Or another extract from Marx’s correspondence: “I got a reply from the old lady yesterday – nothing but tender phrases and no money. Apart from which, she tells me – as if I didn’t know – that she’s seventy five and suffering from all manner of ailments that affect the aged.”

Henrietta Marx’s financial severity was partially compensated for by Engel’s friendly response. Marx’s genius was turned into Engels’ hard cash with Friedrich helping the Marx family at difficult moments many times, and from 1869 he provided Karl with an annuity of seven thousand marks, which was magnanimously increased several times over the years.

Only one serious disagreement ever affected their relationship. Engels was never officially married to the Irish spinner, Mary Berns, whom he met in Manchester and with whom he lived twenty years. Despite the fact that she was virtually ostracized by the Marx family who, if they mentioned her at all, referred to her as ‘that woman’, Engels took no notice. But the reaction of the Marxes to her death almost destroyed their long friendship. Jenny’s response was an icy silence, but Marx, after writing a couple of lines of condolence, launched into a description of his own troubles – there was no money, his daughters had to come out into society, but he couldn’t afford it, and so on and so forth in the same vein. Marx’s expressions of concern for his own well-being instead of the words of consolation that Engels had expected sent him into a fury: even distant acquaintances expressed more compassion than his closest friend and comrade. Marx hastened to redeem himself, and in his next letter wrote all the details of his and Jenny’s sorrow at Mary Berns’ death. Engels forgave him.

Engels’ devotion and desire to become the genius’ guardian angel at times went too far. The Marx family housekeeping was done by a certain Helene Demuth, who had been recommended by Marx’s aunt (who paid Demuth’s salary) shortly before they emigrated to London. Lenchen, as the Marxes called her, was a second mother to his children, a friend to Jenny and a partner for Karl at the chess board – and not only there.

While Jenny was on a visit to see her mother, Marx started an affair with the maid. When the maid became pregnant, Friedrich, the family friend, assumed paternity for the boy, Frederick Demuth, without saying a word. He also paid the maid to keep silent and paid for the child’s board at a refuge. So it remains uncertain whether it was Engels’ material or moral support that was the most valued.

He remained a true friend to Marx to the last minutes of the latter’s life – he paid for his doctors and supported him after the death of his wife and his eldest daughter.

“The Moor has done his work, the Moor can go”

Schiller

As distinct from his odious life, Marx’s death was an ordinary affair and resembled more the blissful passing into the world beyond of some Biblical elder than the martyrdom of the apostle of a new religion. But all the torments of hell that passed Marx by were visited upon his nearest and dearest, as if by some balance sheet drawn up on high others should foot his bill. Of the six children born to Jenny, only three survived: Heinrich, the son, died in infancy; the baby, Francesca, lived no more than a year, and Edgar, the family favourite, died of tuberculosis at the age of ten. Jenny herself suffered a long and agonizing death from cancer of the liver, and Engels’ closest friend was also stricken with cancer of the throat. Two of Marx’s three daughters, Leonora and Laura, committed suicide. Marx’s eldest and favourite daughter, Jenny, became seriously ill after the birth of her fifth child and died.

Marx outlived his wife by a little over a year. After a long journey to Paris (before her death Jenny had wanted to visit her daughters) Marx went down with pleurisy. His condition was only worsened by the fact that he was an avid smoker – despite his worsening health and the ban imposed by his doctors, Marx continued to smoke his favourite Cuban cigars. In his last years he could afford them, and he’d spent too long having to make do with poor quality tobacco.

Marx was sent by his doctors to breathe the dry, warm air of the Mediterranean, but “occasions did inform against” the originator of the theory of surplus value: wherever he went, it was either cold or damp. And as he moved from place to place to try to escape the cold, his pleurisy returned. He spent the winter and spring in Algiers, but the weather there was unusually rainy and harsh. And it was not much better in Monte Carlo, when Marx arrived in his search for a warm environment.

He only started to feel a bit better, when he went to France to stay with his eldest daughter, Jenny. When Marx returned to London in the September, he looked a little better, and the doctors allowed him to spend the winter in England, but on the south coast he went out in a fog and caught a cold. In January, the news of his eldest daughter’s death sent him into shock, and he returned to London suffering from bronchitis and inflammation of the larynx.

The medicines he was prescribed ceased to have any effect on him; they merely served to weaken his appetite and upset his digestive system. On March 14, 1883 he sat in a chair and fell asleep – and never woke up. The Times carried a small obituary with inaccuracies in every line. On March 17, 1883 Marx was buried next to his wife. The funeral procession, headed by Engels, consisted of eleven persons.