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Karl Marx death anniversary: Interesting facts about Father of Marxism
Father of Marxism -- the critical theory about society, economics and polity -- Karl Marx lived a significant part of his life in exile and in poor economic condition.
Remembered by the common man as the propagator of scientific socialism, Karl Marx is perhaps one of the most popular figures in history. Father of Marxism -- the critical theory about society, economics and polity -- Karl Marx lived a significant part of his life in exile and in poor economic condition.
Born on May 5, 1818, Karl Heinrich Marx breathed his last on March 14, 1883 in London, England. The German philosopher was born to a classical liberal Heinrich, an attorney, who was aligned to the thought process of Kant and Voltaire. Heinrich made Karl study the philosophers since an early age.
He grew up in an atmosphere where literature advocating political liberalism was being hounded by a conservationist government. Police also raided Marx’s school in an attempt to catch revolutionaries hiding there.
Marx’s college life was characterized by drunkenness and disorderly conduct. He was jailed for a day for his association with the Trier Tavern Club, a drinking society that worked against some of the aristocratic organizations on the University of Bonn campus. Marx refused to bow down to the Prussian leadership and societal norms.
He got engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, daughter of his father’s friend when he was only 19. Not only did Jenny belong to a different social class, she was also 4 years senior to him. Marx’s revolutionary writings saw him get banned from several countries. Starting with his home country Prussia, Marx was subsequently banned from France and Belgium. He spent his life as a stateless man and only a handful people came for his funeral in 1883.
Being alienated by nations and capitalist regimes did not stop the revolutionary from publishing his prolific writings. While staying in Paris, he met Friedrich Engels and began a life-long friendship.
It is believed that in the year 1846, the duo wrote a few manuscripts –‘Theses on Feuerbach’ and the Introduction to the ‘Critique of Political Economy’ –but failed to find a publisher. It was compiled in The German Ideology and published through the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in 1932.
His most popular work on socialism, The Communist Manifesto, was co-written with Engels. In Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ own words, The Communist Manifesto covered “The history of all hitherto existing society”, which is “the history of class struggles”. Published in 1848, it dealt with their idea of how the capitalist society would eventually be replaced by socialism.
Also, Engels backed Marx financially, lending him money for sustenance and helped him publish Das Kapital. Engels was also the one to edit the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx’s demise.
In Das Kapital, Marx goes deeper into the nature of capitalist society, the relationship between the worker and the capitalist, wages and commodities. Capped with the historical instances of capitalist exploitation, Marx concludes that such a system cannot last forever and its end was inevitable.
Although a “weak chest” had saved Marx from attending to his mandatory military service, he suffered from various other ailments. Headaches, eye problems, insomnia, liver and gallbladder problems, joint pain and depression-related symptoms were part of his life.
Though Marx is mostly remembered due to his political writings, he took part in fictional literature as well. Aside from several love poems dedicated to Jenny, Marx wrote a satirical novel called Scorpion and Felix and a drama. But Marx could not see his works getting published during his lifetime.
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