She was a ferociously hard worker, not only cleaning and scrubbing, but managing the family budget Marx never paid her a penny In Marx refused to acknowledge his responsibility, then or ever, and flatly denied the rumors that he was the father… [The son] was put out to be fostered by a working-class family called Lewis but allowed to visit the Marx household [to see his mother].
He was, however, forbidden to use the front door and obliged to see his mother only in the kitchen. But Engels In temperament, Marx could be cruel and authoritarian. He treated people with whom he disagreed in a crude and mean way, often ridiculing them in public gatherings.
Marx had no hesitation about being a hypocrite; when he wanted something from someone he would flatter them in letters or conversation, but then attack them in nasty language behind their backs to others. He often used racial slurs and insulting words to describe the mannerisms or appearance of his opponents in the socialist movement.
For instance, in an letter to Frederick Engels, Marx described leading nineteenth-century German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, in the following way:. The Jewish Nigger Lassalle Now this combination of Germanness and Jewishness with a primarily Negro substance creates a strange product. The pushiness of the fellow is also nigger-like. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? What is his worldly god? Money is the jealous god of Israel before whom no other god may exist.
Money degrades all the gods of mankind and converts them into commodities What is contained abstractly in the Jewish religion — contempt for theory, for art, for history, for man as an end in himself The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Jewishness. Marx was also what some might label as a plagiarist. Marx found it too burdensome to grind out the expected two articles per week, for which he was relatively well paid. Instead, he spent his time participating in revolutionary intrigues and researching, reading, and writing for what became his famous work, Das Kapital.
The report the spy wrote was shared with the British Ambassador in Berlin. The report said, in part:. Washing, grooming and changing his linen are things he does rarely, and he is often drunk.
Though he is frequently idle for days on end, he will work day and night with tireless endurance when he has much work to do. He has no fixed time for going to sleep or waking up. He often stays up all night and then lies down fully clothed on the sofa at midday, and sleeps till evening, untroubled by the whole world coming or going through [his room] There is not one clean and solid piece of furniture. Everything is broken, tattered and torn, with half an inch of dust over everything and the greatest disorder everywhere Everything is dirty and covered with dust, so that to sit down becomes a hazardous business.
Here is a chair with three legs. On another chair the children are playing cooking. This chair happens to have four legs. Another report on meeting Marx was given by Gustav Techow, a Prussian military officer who had joined the Berlin insurrectionists during the failed revolution of Techow had to escape to Switzerland after being sentenced and imprisoned for treason. Marx saw this social evolution as inevitable. It only became revolution when the kings and their minions refused to reform.
By the s, the industrialists had gained political power after revolts across Europe in caused kings to view proto-capitalists as allies against radicalized lower classes. The wheels of industry were humming, as were the halls of finance, where a new breed of speculator was born, addicted to risk in his quest for ever greater profit.
Marx quickly recognized that capitalism would institutionalize social and economic instability. The system's inherent hunger for new markets, new consumers, new and cheaper methods of production in order to increase the flow of capital would result in a destructive system of boom and bust.
After each cataclysm, he predicted, the number of capitalists at the top of the pyramid would be smaller, while the base of disaffected workers grew. Gradually even the middle class would be included. Marx believed that industrial capitalism had also created a new system of repression and exploitation. Politically and socially men were no more equal under this new order than they had been under a monarchy. Rights belonged to those with money and property; those with only a strong back or skilled hands could not even vote.
Financially, those filling the ranks of the industrial workforce were arguably worse off. There was evidence aplenty to support Marx's assessment.
He lived in London, the richest city in the world. And yet as great as was its wealth, much greater was its poverty. In Marx's neighborhood, some people rented a space in a bed and called it comfort.
Others paid for a few inches on a stairwell and called it home. Marx summed up the situation saying, "There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery. This is the field where Marx's ideas grew. He famously spent year after year in the British Museum Reading Room, trying to understand this new system, predict its course, and, finally, offer an alternative. Throughout the 16 years before he produced his greatest literary work Das Kapital, Marx's family lived in near continual destitution.
Their sole consolation was that they believed Marx's work was noble and important, and that their suffering was small compared with the majority of people who sacrificed their lives so someone else could live in luxury. Das Kapital and Marx's other political-economic writings were only one aspect of his work. He was also an organizer and educator. Through various small groups, he tried to teach workers, who had neither formal education nor viewed themselves as a political force.
The courses included language, literature and history, but mostly politics and economics. One of the principal statements of European socialist and communist ideology, the manifesto described Marx's conception of history in terms of class struggle, from medieval feudalism to 19th-century capitalism.
In the document, Marx predicted that communists would overthrow the bourgeoisie and accomplish the "abolition of private property," before raising "the proletariat to the position of ruling class. The "Manifesto of the Communist Party" is now considered one of the most significant political works in history and contains famous lines such as: "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism," and, "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite! Between and , Marx published " Das Kapital ," a huge, three-volume analysis of the economic and social failings of capitalism. Focusing on economic arguments, "Das Kapital" argued that capitalism was ultimately doomed because it could not endlessly sustain profits. Marx died of bronchitis and pleurisy at his home in London on March 14, At the time of his death he was officially a stateless person and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, north London.
Marx is buried with his wife Jenny, who died two years earlier, his daughter Eleanor, the family servant Helena Demuth, and his grandson Harry Longuet who tragically died just six days after Marx. Marx's writings gained popularity in the late 19th century, after Marxism became the official ideology of the German Social Democrats, which is Germany's oldest political party, according to Deutsche Welle.
Vladimir Lenin was heavily influenced by Marx's work and became the leading figure of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Communist revolutions influenced by Marx's writing spread elsewhere in the world during the 20th century, most notably in China, North Korea, Cuba and southeast Asia.
This eventually led to the onset of the Cold War, a period of geopolitical tension for nuclear dominance between democratic, capitalist governments such as the U. Related: North Korea: A hermit country from above photos. In , approximately 1. Marx's association with the enemies of the U. Historians continue to debate about the extent to which Marx can be blamed for the governments that claimed inspiration from his writings.
Regimes associated with Marxism committed many atrocities over the century, although Marx himself never advocated such measures.
0コメント