Books: Red Father

KARL MARX—Franz Mehring—Covici, Friede ($5).

In 1836 a homesick, 18-year-old poet at the University of Berlin sent his sweetheart in his home town three exercise books filled with bad verse, which he soon afterward denounced as “all flat and formless in feeling; nothing natural about them; everything up in the air.” The poet was Karl Heinrich Marx, stocky, dark-haired, active son of a well-to-do Jewish lawyer from the Rhineland town of Trier. His 22-year-old sweetheart was Jenny von Westphalen, close friend of his older sister, daughter of a highly-placed official whose family had won its title for military service in the Seven Years War. Disliking the university, Marx signed up for lectures which he did not attend, fitfully studied a remarkable variety of subjects, tried to found a new philosophy of law, drafted a new metaphysical system, yearned to return to Trier to be married. Although he did not live extravagantly, he spent more money than the sons of rich men, since “everyone swindled him” and he never learned to keep track of his money. His father, who discouraged his ambitions to be a poet or an original thinker, wrote bitterly about his son who “invents new systems every week and scraps them the next,” refused to let him come home to marry Jenny.

In the next few years Marx studied jurisprudence, Greek philosophy, Hegel, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Democritus and Epicurus, came into conflict with the Prussian censor, became widely known in radical intellectual circles. At the age of 24 he was editor of a radical paper in Cologne, helped to boost its circulation in six months from 885 to 3,200, before it was suppressed. While editor of the paper he met Friedrich Engels, tall, good-natured son of a wealthy manufacturer, famed for drinking bouts and for philosophic and economic articles in obscure journals. Engels had also begun his literary career by writing bad verse. Their first meeting was unfriendly, since Marx identified Engels with a group of irresponsible Berlin bohemians who had advocated Socialism by getting into fights in brothels and playing tricks on clergymen. In 1843 Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, took her to Paris, met Heine, Proudhon and other Socialists, continued his attacks on the Prussian State until the Prussian Government succeeded in having him expelled from France. Living in Brussels, he met Engels again, collaborated with him, was arrested after the French revolution of 1848, when the King of the Belgians feared an uprising. Jenny was also arrested, placed in jail with prostitutes. Released, Marx returned to the Rhineland after the outbreak of the German revolution. In Cologne the 30-year-old rebel met two U. S. newspapermen, Albert Brisbane (father of Arthur) and Publisher Charles Dana of the New York Tribune. He deeply impressed them with his “great energy,” with the daring spirit evident behind his moderation and reserve.

Association with these two enterprising newspapermen proved helpful after the German revolution had been suppressed and Marx was living in exile in London. U. S. readers of Franz Mehring’s biography are likely to be surprised at the number of close connections that Marx and Engels maintained with the U. S., to learn that some of Marx’s most important works were first published in New York. Living in London, with a well-bred wife and four children to support. Marx’s only certain income was the two or four pounds a week he received as foreign correspondent to the Tribune. But Dana paid only for what he published, threw many of Marx’s contributions in the wastebasket, printed others as editorials for which he did not pay. Although he contributed to the Tribune for eleven years, no complete collection of Marx’s U. S. writing has been made.

Marx’s domestic life was constantly troubled. “The classic theoretician of money,” says Biographer Mehring, “could never quite make his own tally.” Once the family lived for ten days on bread and potatoes. Once Marx could not leave the house because he had no clothes. Once, after a publisher had agreed to take one of his books, he could not raise money enough to mail the manuscript. In five years three of the children died, Marx suffered from piles, boils, indigestion, liver trouble. His wife broke down after the death of her favorite son. In this, as in most crises, Engels saved them. Determining to make money, Engels became a manufacturer in Manchester, a member of the Stock Exchange, on the surface lived the typical life of a well-to-do Englishman, which included frequent fox-hunts with conservative companions. Behind this façade, Engels supported Marx financially, arranged for the publication of his work, kept an Irish mistress, studied military strategy in preparation for the World Revolution. Reading constantly, Engels learned “to stutter in 20 languages,” learned Persian in three weeks, once wrote that he was going to take a fortnight off to master Gothic before studying Old Nordic and Old Saxon. Less ambitious, Marx merely studied Russian, Serbian, Slavic. In one period when he could not work, the scholar read for recreation two volumes on physiology, Kolliker’s Histology, Spurzheim’s The Anatomy of the Brain and the Nervous System, Schwann & Schleiden’s On Cell Matter.

Although Franz Mehring writes in detail of Marx’s opinions on the U. S. Civil War, readers who know The Education of Henry Adams may be disappointed with his account. In that book Henry Adams describes how his father, Charles Francis Adams, then Minister to England, successfully prevented English intervention on the side of the Confederacy, pays a tribute to Marx and the First International for having swung English public opinion to the Northern cause.

The Civil War brought more hard times for Marx and Engels. Fired from the Tribune, Marx tried to get a job on a railroad. His daughter secretly attempted to go on the stage to help her parents. Increasingly absent-minded about money, Marx once signed a note, forgot all about it until it came due. While writing Capital and A Critique of Political Economy he fought savage battles with the Russian Anarchist Bakunin and the German Socialist Lassalles over questions of theory, is accused by his biographer of having been unjust to both men. Outliving his wife, all but two of his children and most of his rival revolutionaries, Marx continued his work until his death in 1883, habitually worked from nine in the morning until midnight. Stubborn, proud, quick-tempered, the one stable relationship in his life, aside from his family, was his friendship with Engels. Their only quarrel came when Engels’ Irish mistress died. Hurt because Frau Marx had not written to express her sympathy, Engels was offended at Marx’s formal note. Never distinguished for tact or graciousness, Marx nevertheless displayed both, wrote a conciliatory message which soothed Engels at once. “Women,” wrote the philosopher earnestly, “are funny creatures, even the most intelligent.”