Marx- A Complete Introduction

by Gill Hands

  French Revolution (1789–94) Revolution by the people against the French aristocracy. After a bloody uprising, the nobility were overthrown and replaced by a bourgeois democracy.

  Industrial Revolution Term used by historians to describe the development of industry, and the factory system that began in Britain around 1750.

  Manifesto A public statement of aims and policy.

  Proletariat The property-less working class in a capitalist system.

  Radical A person who wants fundamental change in a political system, usually through altering the basis of society.

  Revolution The overthrow of one ruling class by another, resulting in major changes to the structure of society.

  Things to remember

  • Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 at Trier in Germany, which was then part of Prussia.

  • The Industrial and French Revolutions meant that Europe was going through major social and political upheavals at that time.

  • Not much is known about Marx’s early childhood.

  • He was intelligent and witty in character but sometimes moody and irritable and often fell out with friends.

  • He studied law at university but changed to the study of philosophy.

  • On leaving university he began work as a journalist and soon came to the notice of the authorities with his controversial writings on the plight of peasants.

  • He married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of a cultured and aristocratic family friend in 1843.

  • In 1843 he moved to Paris where he mixed with radicals and revolutionaries and joined the Communist League.

  • Friedrich Engels became his life-long friend and co-writer at this time and together they wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1847.

  • Marx was exiled from France, Prussia and Belgium and so he moved to England.

  Fact check

  1 In which year was Marx born?

  a 1907

  b 1830

  c 1818

  d 1874

  2 In what area of Prussia did Marx spend his early years?

  a Hungary

  b The Rhineland

  c Austria

  d The Black Forest

  3 What subject did Marx study at Bonn University?

  a Law

  b Philosophy

  c History

  d Mathematics

  4 Who did Marx marry in 1843?

  a Jenny von Westphalen

  b Bettina von Arnim

  c Bettina von Westphalen

  d Jenny von Arnim

  5 Which editor of Rheinische Zeitung employed Marx?

  a Bruno Bauer

  b Moses Hess

  c Adolf Rutenberg

  d Ferdinand von Westphalen

  6 Where did Marx move to in 1843?

  a Berlin

  b Cologne

  c London

  d Paris

  7 Which of these answers best describes anarchy?

  a Class war

  b Social chaos

  c Political unrest

  d A state without government

  8 What early writing by Engels impressed Marx?

  a The Condition Of The Working Class In England

  b A History Of Prussian Industry

  c The German Ideology

  d The Holy Family

  9 What was the first piece of writing that Marx and Engels produced together?

  a The Holy Family

  b The Communist Manifesto

  c The Condition Of The Working Class In England

  d Das Kapital

  10 What year was The Communist Manifesto published?

  a 1914

  b 1850

  c 1848

  d 1897

  Dig deeper

  Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment, Oxford University Press, 2002

  Rolf Hosfeld, Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography, Berghahn Books, 2012

  Ruth Kinna, Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide, Oneworld, 2005

  David McLellan, Karl Marx – A Biography, Macmillan, 2006

  Jonathon Sperber, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life, W.W. Norton/Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2002

  Francis Wheen, Karl Marx, Fourth Estate, 2010t

  2

  Marx’s later life

  In this chapter you will learn:

  • key facts about Marx’s later life and work in London

  • about his friendship and working partnership with Engels

  • about his work on Das Kapital and with the International

  • about the end of his life.

  The move to London

  When Marx came to live in London in August 1849 he only expected to be there for a few months at the most. As things turned out he ended up living there for 35 years until his death in 1883. He was buried in Highgate cemetery, so it could be claimed that he never left London.

  London welcomed many refugees and was a place of sanctuary for many political dissidents. It was the largest city in the world at that time and there was a marked contrast between the lives of the rich and the poor.

  The world of the poor was a sprawling industrial wilderness filled with factories spewing out smoke, sewers that poured into the river Thames and slum housing where people crowded together in unhygienic conditions without clean drinking water or proper toilets. Disease was rife, cholera epidemics were frequent and mortality rates were high.

  ‘Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of the towns …’

  Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845, The Great Towns http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch04.htm

  Marx observed this world at first hand. His early years in London were spent in poverty and this had some effect on his family life. Three of his children died and one was stillborn. Although this was not uncommon at the time in all social classes, it was most often the poor who died young. Marx’s own life and his observation of the lives of those around him meant that his writing about poverty was often vivid and full of hatred against a system that allowed people to live in such terrible conditions.

  It must have been particularly hard for Jenny, his wife, to come to terms with the reduction in their circumstances as she was used to an aristocratic life of wealth and privilege. In September 1849 she arrived in London with their three young children, Jenny (Jennychen), Laura and Edgar, and was heavily pregnant with their fourth child who was born on 5 November.

  Spotlight

  November the Fifth is also known as Guy Fawkes night in the United Kingdom; it commemorates a foiled attempt by revolutionaries to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Traditionally fireworks and bonfires with burning effigies are part of the celebrations. Marx rather liked the idea that his son was born on this special day and named him Heinrich Guido in memory of the chief conspirator. He was often known in family circles as Fawkesy.

  Family life in London

  Marx is such a well-known icon that it is easy to forget he was also a human being and a family man.

  At first, the family lived in various temporary lodgings around Soho, where many other refugees lived. They were evicted on one occasion and the bailiffs came round and took all their meagre possessions, including the children’s toys. They left Jenny Marx nursing little Fawkesy on bare boards, while their furniture was put onto the pavement outside. Poor Fawkesy was a sickly child and prone to convulsions and he died in December 1850. By this time Jenny Marx was pregnant again and their daughter Franziska was born in March 1851.

  Franziska died when she was just a year old after a bout of severe bronchitis and her father could not afford to pay for th
e funeral. A kindly French neighbour finally lent the family money to hire an undertaker and see that she was laid to rest with dignity.

  The family moved to more permanent lodgings at 28 Dean Street at the end of 1850. These were at the top of the house and consisted of only two rooms. This must have been very cramped for a man and wife, children, a housekeeper (Helene Demuth) and sometimes a male secretary (Wilhelm Pieper). Helene Demuth, known as Lenchen, became pregnant and it is alleged that Karl Marx was the father of her son.

  The boy, born in June 1851, was known as Freddy Lewis Demuth. He was given to foster parents and lived most of his life in Hackney, London. There was no father’s name on his birth certificate and many people at the time believed that Engels was the father, although the boy was said to look very like Marx. Engels said in later life that he had only let this story be circulated because he wanted to spare the Marx family from embarrassment. Although there is no conclusive proof, there are several family letters that hint at the paternity of the boy and most academics now believe that Freddy was indeed the son of Marx. It is no wonder that a Prussian police spy reported that Marx was living the life of a ‘real bohemian’.

  The Marx family had been systematically spied on by agents of the Prussian police because they were believed to be dangerous revolutionaries who wanted to bring down the governments of several European states and guillotine their ruling classes and monarchs. As Jenny’s half-brother Ferdinand von Westphalen was the Prussian interior minister there was also an element of bad family feeling involved. He had been against her marriage to Marx in the first place.

  These spies were not very efficient and Marx and Engels usually managed to spot them as they followed them or loitered about taking notes. They were not fooled by attempts to invite them into fake conspiracies either. However, one spy did infiltrate their household and wrote a report about the terribly dirty state of the place and of Marx in particular, who he describes as being an unwashed, heavy smoking, heavy drinking individual who kept irregular hours. Visitors wrote that the place was in a state of chaos with broken furniture, papers scattered everywhere, books, pipes, tobacco and toys lying about, all covered in a layer of dirt.

  The bohemian air of the house was added to by the many visitors and members of the Communist League who dropped in for political discussion with Marx day and night. It was further cramped because Marx employed a secretary to help keep his papers in order, even though he had little money to pay him and the young man, Wilhelm Pieper, was not very efficient.

  Spotlight

  Pieper fancied himself as a rather flamboyant Byronesque Romantic and although he was supposed to translate papers for Marx, his translations were so bad that Engels usually redid them. Jenny Marx did not think much of him and was convinced that she could do his work easily and save the family some money, but Marx rather liked the idea of a secretary, even if he was useless and disappeared on romantic adventures time and time again. Pieper lived with the Marx family on and off for several years and often shared a bed with Marx because conditions were so overcrowded. Finally he left to become a teacher and Jenny was able to prove that she was an excellent secretary at last.

  It was in this strange household that the children grew up, often living on a diet of nothing but bread and potatoes for days on end. Marx was not able to pay the bills on many occasions and could not afford to buy medicine when the family were ill. There was no kind of welfare state at that time and doctors’ bills and medicines had to be paid for. The poor conditions and lack of good food meant that the family fell ill frequently. There were no antibiotics then either so infections took hold of people very quickly and they died of illnesses that are easily cured today.

  All through his life Marx was dogged with a bad chest and had recurrent bouts of bronchitis. He was a heavy smoker and often joked that the money he made from Das Kapital was not enough to pay for the cigars he smoked while producing it. He suffered from carbuncles, which he complained about frequently in his correspondence; these were boils that flared up when he was angry or stressed and sometimes they were so bad that he could not sit down. They were probably made worse by poor diet and his liver problems caused by drinking too much. He also suffered from what would probably be called stress today. Trying to support a family, write, and organize a political movement led to bouts of insomnia and headaches, which recurred repeatedly.

  Marx became a frequent visitor to the pawn shop where he took the family silver his wife had inherited, and sometimes even the coat off his back, to raise a little cash. On one occasion he was imprisoned overnight because it was believed that the scruffy little refugee who came to pawn such fine silver must have stolen it. He was only released when Jenny went to the police to explain. Engels was a great help to them at this time and he sent money from the offices of his father’s factory to try to keep them solvent.

  When creditors and angry tradesman came to the door Marx would often send his children down to tell them he wasn’t in. Little Edgar was especially good at throwing them off the scent and, as the only boy, he was his father’s favourite. Family life was chaotic but warm-hearted as Marx delighted in his children and spent a lot of time with them, which was unusual in those times. They all called him by his old nickname of Moor. He read classics and Shakespeare to them and made up fairy tales and stories about the poor triumphing over evil landlords.

  Another child was born in 1855, a daughter Eleanor, who was a frail and ill child. At the time of her birth Edgar was only six years old and he also became very ill and weak with some kind of fever. Doctors eventually confirmed that he had consumption, as tuberculosis was called then. This is a highly infectious disease and at that time there was no cure. Edgar wasted away and died in April 1855.

  Although the whole family was grief-stricken, Marx took Edgar’s death very badly and could not be consoled. Engels took the family on a short holiday, but on their return the sight of Edgar’s toys lying around made Jenny and Marx even more upset and they decided they had to move away from the place that had seen the deaths of three of their children. A blue plaque now commemorates their life there.

  They moved to a much bigger house in a nicer part of London, near Hampstead Heath. This was only possible because one of Jenny’s uncles had died and left them some money and shortly afterwards her mother died. It meant that they could redeem their possessions from the pawn shop and live a life of more ease. The girls all went to a private school and had dancing lessons as befitted young ladies of the time, who were supposed to be decorative and to marry well. These were happier times for the children as they had a garden where Marx often played with them, carrying them on his back like a horse. Sometimes they would go to the heath for picnics and laugh at their father when he hired a donkey and rode around the park on it.

  Jenny Marx gave birth to a stillborn child not long after they moved in and she found that the house was isolated compared to the bustle in the centre of the city. She felt very run down for a long time and quite lonely, especially as the older girls were now at school and Marx was busy with his writing and socialist meetings.

  The family still drifted in and out of debt and sometimes the girls couldn’t go to school because their clothes were at the pawn shop. Engels kept them going with as much money as he could send. He was always a true friend to the family even though Jenny Marx did not really approve of him.

  Marx and Engels

  When Marx was expelled from Prussia in the summer of 1849 he began to rely more and more on his friendship with Engels. Engels was an excellent linguist, he claimed he could stammer in 12 languages, and Marx relied on him a great deal to help with translations. It was a friendship that lasted for 40 years, quite a surprising length of time considering Marx’s volatile personality. He often fell out with people he had declared to be his close companions and Engels remained his one and only true friend. It helped that Engels had a fairly easy-going nature and idealized Marx and his intelligence. In later years he wrote to a friend, ‘I sim
ply cannot understand how anyone can be envious of genius.’

  Engels, for all his intelligence, could not write with the same imaginative flair as Marx and he was happy to help him in any way he could in order to further the cause which they both believed in. He was a well-organized and clear writer though, and his The Condition of the Working Class in England had greatly impressed Marx and influenced some of his writing. Their working partnership was a useful one because Engels enabled Marx to put some of his more fanciful and chaotic thoughts into simpler and more orderly fashion.

  Case study: The Condition of the Working Class in England

  Engels began to write this in the years 1842–44, when he was sent by his family to work in Manchester at the offices of Victoria Mill. The family were worried about articles he had begun writing that criticized working conditions in factories and they hoped that working for the family thread mill would make him change his radical views. This plan backfired as Engels used his time in Manchester to visit slum areas and to do a vast amount of research into government reports and newspaper articles. Through this he realized that there was a marked difference in mortality rates in the northern cities of Liverpool and Manchester compared with the national average, and by looking at mortality rates in cities before and after the introduction of mills and factories he was able to prove that mortality rates for children and adults had gone up significantly after mills were introduced, and that deaths from infectious diseases like smallpox and measles were much higher in urban areas. The terrible working conditions of Victorian England are well known to us today from historical accounts, but Engels was one of the first people to actually go and do first-hand research at the time, and then write descriptions of the terrible living and working conditions of the poor. He was especially horrified by the working conditions for children in factories and mills. His experiences and research were turned into articles that were eventually collected into book form, The Condition of the Working Class in England, first published in German then translated into English and published in London in 1891.