자본주의 사회주의 대안적 경제사회(학): May 2024

Monday, May 20, 2024

Kwi Ewha
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다음주 금요일(11월 24일) 오후4시에 이화여대 한국여성연구원에서 월례포럼을 진행합니다. <전환의 시대와 지역위기: 젠더관점에서의 대안적 생활양식을 향하여>라는 주제로 진행되는 이번 월례포럼에 관심있으신 분들의 많은 참여바랍니다.

알라딘: 우리는 지구를 떠나지 않는다, 에코페미니즘 연구센터 달과나무 2023

알라딘: [전자책] 우리는 지구를 떠나지 않는다

종이책의
미리보기
입니다.

[eBook] 우리는 지구를 떠나지 않는다
죽어가는 행성에서 에코페미니스트로 살기
에코페미니즘 연구센터 달과나무 (지은이) 창비 2023-11-20

종이책
15,300원 (+850원)

9.8

252쪽 (종이책 기준)
책소개
지구가 불탄다고 화성으로 떠날 건 아니잖아요?
이 땅에 발붙이고 살고 싶은 여성들이
기후위기시대에 지구를 돌보는 법

여성환경연대 부설 에코페미니즘 연구센터 달과나무의 신간 『우리는 지구를 떠나지 않는다: 죽어가는 행성에서 에코페미니스트로 살기』가 출간되었다. 경제성장의 가치로 무장하고 달려온 한국사회에서 지속가능성을 고민하며 에코페미니즘을 연구하고 실천해온 지은이 15인의 이야기를 한데 모았다. 2023년 7월 유엔 사무총장은 ‘지구온난화’의 종식을 선포했다. 지구를 위협하던 기후위기가 해결되었다는 뜻은 아니다. 이제는 지구가 데워지는 것을 넘어 불타오르는 ‘지구가열화’의 시대가 도래했다는 의미다. 자본주의, 성장주의, 인간중심주의가 초래한 기후위기의 시대 앞에서 지은이들은 묻는다. 지구가 망가졌다면, 지구를 버리고 우주로 떠나는 것이 답일까? 지구를 살 만한 곳으로 다시 되돌릴 방법은 없을까? 모든 생명이 공존할 수 있고 기후정의와 젠더정의가 실현된 지구, 그런 지구를 만들기 위해 지은이들이 제시하는 획기적인 전환책은 바로 에코페미니즘이다. 이 책은 한국의 전환 담론장에 아직 낯선 에코페미니즘을 소개하는 입문서이자, 내가 발붙이고 살아가는 ‘지금, 여기’에서 변화를 이끌어내는 방법을 알려주는 실천 안내서로, 기후우울증에 굴복하지 않고 앞으로 나아가고 싶은 독자들에게 희망적인 미래상을 제공한다.
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목차

에코페미니스트의 다짐
여는 글

1부 기후위기시대 에코페미니즘
김현미: 우리는 우주로 떠나지 않는다
박혜영: 우리 삶은 왜 외롭고 취약해졌는가?
김은희: 불타는 지구에서 페미니스트로 얽혀 살기
정은아: 정의로운 전환을 탈성장 돌봄사회로 이끌기

2부 흙과 자급의 기쁨
나희덕: 인류세의 퇴적물과 흙의 시학
김신효정: 땅에서 시작되는 여성소농운동
김혜련: 자급하는 삶과 몸의 기쁨
강지연: 도시농업이 이끄는 생태전환

3부 몸의 안팎을 통과하기
유서연: 여성의 시간 동물의 시간
이안소영: 월경을 통해 지구와 공생하기
황선애: 트랜스 경험과 퀴어 상상력
이미숙: 『모비-딕』의 고래와 여성의 몸

4부 인간과 비인간의 얽힘
장우주: 비인간 존재에 응답하는 돌봄
이현재: 고양이와 함께 되기
홍자경: 도시에서 새의 삶과 죽음을 알아보고 응답하기

지은이 소개
주
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밑줄긋기
P.14dangle
기후위기로 ‘불타는‘ 지구에서 누군가는 도피를 꿈꾸고, 누군가는 ‘바로, 여기‘에서 지구 돌봄을 선택한다

P.42dangle
근대문명은 자아 과잉의 문명이다.

P.152dangle
월경혐오와 터부가 여전한 이 사회에서 환경보호라는 명분으로 여성에게만 추가적인 부담을 요구하는 것이 지나치다고 느끼기도 했다.

P.206dangle
멸종의 위기에 처한 것은 지구가 아니고, 비인간 존재들도 아니며, 인간이 속한 호모 사피엔스라는 종임을 잊어서는 안 될 것이다.

저자 소개
지은이: 에코페미니즘 연구센터 달과나무
저자파일 신간알리미 신청
최근작 : <우리는 지구를 떠나지 않는다> … 총 2종 (모두보기)
여성환경연대가 2020년에 설립한 연구자 네트워크입니다. 에코페미니즘의 역사와 쟁점을 아우르는 대중강좌와 북토크, 세미나 등의 교육, 이론 및 정책 연구, 관련 도서의 출판, 선언문 발표 등 다양한 활동을 통해 에코페미니즘 지식 생산과 담론 확산에 앞장서고 있습니다. 여성환경운동과 협력하고 지역 에코페미니스트 현장과 네트워크를 구축해 이론과 실천을 연결합니다.

이 책을 함께 지은 사람들 (수록순)
김현미 박혜영 김은희 정은아 나희덕 김신효정 김혜련 강지연 유서연 이안소영 황선애 이미숙 장우주 이현재 홍자경
접기

Hyo-jeong Kim

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작년에 한살림 모심과 살림 연구소 지원을 받아 진행했던 연구가 논문으로 출판되었습니다. 이번 농촌사회 학술지에 실린 <기후재난에 대응하는 여성농민 공동체의 농생태학 실천 연구>는 국제사회에서 기후위기 대응이자 탄소감축으로 주목받고 있는 농생태학 담론과 실천이 한국사회에서는 어떻게 논의되고 실천되는지를 여성농민운동을 중심으로 분석하고자 노력하였습니다. 다시 한번 인터뷰에 참여해주신 여성농민 활동가분들, 모심과 살림 연구소, 익명의 심사자분들께 감사의 마음 전합니다!!

기후재난에 대응하는 여성농민 공동체의 농생태학 실천 연구

KCI 등재
기후재난에 대응하는 여성농민 공동체의 농생태학 실천 연구
Agroecology Practices of Peasant Women Communities In Response to Climate Disasters

저자
김효정 (이화여자대학교 한국여성연구원)
홍자경 (서울대학교 농업자원경제학과)

주제 분류사회과학 > 사회학 > 인구/노인/지역사회학
학술지농촌사회

권호 정보2024, vol.34, no.1, pp. 55-96 (42 pages)

발행 기관한국농촌사회학회

초록

본 연구는 농업의 기후재난에 대응하는 여성농민 공동체의 농생태학 실천 연구를 통해 농업의 지속가능성을 위한 실질적 대안을 모색하고자 한다. 기후재난으로인해 농업의 생산량이 급감하는 가운데, 이에 대한 일회적이고 단기적인 대응을넘어서 토양의 회복과 작물의 생태계 다양성, 재난을 예방하기 위한 농업 실천, 먹거리와 생태적 지속가능성을 위한 먹거리 사슬과 먹거리체계 등 장기적인 관점에서 기후재난 대응 방안을 모색하는 일이 긴급히 요구된다.

이에 본 연구는 기후재난의 대안으로써 농생태학에 주목하며, 특히 한국사회 여성농민 중심 농생태학 실천이 어떻게 기후재난에 대응하는지를 분석하기 위해

언니네텃밭 여성농민 생산자 협동조합 사례를 중심으로 설문조사와 사례 연구를 수행하였다. 연구결과 대부분의 연구참여자들은 기후재난과 이로 인한 다층적 어려움을 경험하면서도 언니네텃밭 공동체를 중심으로 농생태학을 실천하고

지역적 차원에서 먹거리 돌봄과연대를 이어가고 있었다.

그러나 심화되는 기후재난 아래 농민들의 농생태학 실천은 공적 정책과 지원체계 없이 농가 단위에서 개별적으로 지속하기 어려운 상황이다. 본 연구는 농민을 단순히 기후재난의 피해자로 설정하는 것에서 나아가 농생태학을 통해 탄소를 감축하는 적극적인 행위자로 보고, 공적 제도와 지원체계 마련을 제언한다.

This study explores the agroecology practices of South Korean peasant women in response to the climate disaster. There is an urgent need to seek long-term climate disaster response strategies, as agricultural production faces a sharp decline due to climate disasters. This entails exploring solutions from a long-term perspective, for instance, focusing on soil restoration, crop diversity, agricultural practices for disaster prevention, and food chains and systems for food security and ecological sustainability. Therefore, this study focuses on agroecology as a comprehensive alternative measure to address the social, ecological, and political issues of climate disasters, which include soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, cycle collapse of food and rural areas, decline in agricultural population, and patriarchal entrenched in agriculture and food systems. This study conducted a mixed-methods approach on the case of the ‘Sisters’ Garden’ peasant women community in South Korea. We utilized nationwide surveys and case studies in two regions to analyze the actual experiences and practices of peasant women who have been practicing agroecology for the past decade. The results showed that most of the research participants were experiencing climate disasters and therefore facing multi-layered difficulties. Nevertheless, they were practicing agroecology centered on the ‘Sisters’ Garden’ community, building food justice and solidarity at the local level. However, peasants' agroecological practices under climate disasters are difficult to respond to individually at the farm level without public policies and support systems. However, in the face of worsening climate disasters, their agroecology practices are unsustainable without public policies and support systems. Therefore, we argue that public policies and support systems to facilitate this transition should be established in order to view peasants not simply as victims of climate disasters but as proactive agents in carbon reduction through practicing agroecology.

키워드
기후재난, 여성농민, 공동체, 농생태학, 대안먹거리체계, 언니네텃밭

Climate disaster, Peasant women, Community, Agroecology, Alternative food systems

학술지 정보2022 KCI IF (2년) 0.68
학술지 명농촌사회ISSN1226-0541eISSN2713-9433발행 기관한국농촌사회학회주제 분류사회과학 > 사회학 > 인구/노인/지역사회학
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Thursday, May 9, 2024

손민석 - 일본 학자들의 마르크스 문헌 재해석

(2) 손민석 - 일본 학자들이 마르크스 문헌 재해석하는 걸 보면 자기네들의 경험에 기초해서 어쨌거나 꾸준히 해석을 내놓는다는... | Facebook

손민석

일본 학자들이 마르크스 문헌 재해석하는 걸 보면 자기네들의 경험에 기초해서 어쨌거나 꾸준히 해석을 내놓는다는 점에서 부럽다는 생각이 든다. 왜 그런지 모르겠는데 한국은 '원형'이 무엇이냐에 확실히 집착하는 게 있다. "진짜" 마르크스가 무엇인가에 좀 집착하는 경향이 있는데 반해서 일본은 고증학적인 그런 연구도 많이 하기는 하지만 좀 틀리게 해석을 할지라도(사이토 고헤이 같이) 자기네들의 역사적 경험에 기초해서 현재의 일본 사회의 공동체성의 붕괴라든지 이런 걸 자본주의로 인한 문제로 인식하면서 마르크스의 사회주의론을 대안으로 내세우려는 어떤 그런 시도들을 계속 한다. 내가 좀 부럽다고 느껴지는 게 그런 부분이다.

한국에서는 그런 해석이 안 나오거든. 마르크스주의 경제학 연구하신 분들 중에 훌륭하신 분들 많지만 한국적인 역사 경험이랄까 이런 게 반영되어서 마르크스를 근원에서 비틀어버리는 그런 해석은 보지를 못했다. 내가 자꾸 '전제주의' 얘기하는 것도 우리의 경험에 기초해서, 맨날 좌파들이 무슨 촛불 혁명이니 이러는 것 좀 그만하고. 촛불혁명이라 생각되면 그 역사적 경험에 기초해서 마르크스를 독해해봐야 하지 않겠나. 그런건데..

안 하니까 그냥 에이, 내가 하나 써야겠다 하고 쓴 게 지금 800 페이지짜리 하나, 1천 페이짜리 하나 이렇게 두 권이 되었다. 전자는 내가 진짜 애정을 많이 가져서 제목을 <전前자본론 : 마르크스와 엥겔스의 역사이론>이라고 가제를 붙였을 정도로 야심이 담긴 글이고, 후자는 근대사회론인데 제목은 비밀. 흐흐. 아.. 나는 너무 좋거든. '한국적인 마르크스 독해'라고 했을 때 이게 첫 사례가 되었으면 하는 바람을 갖고 있다.

봉건제적인 일본 사회와 전제주의적인 한국 사회의 역사적 경험에 따라 다르게 읽어야 대화가 되지 않을까. 나중에 그런 걸 해보고 싶다. 각각의 사회 유형에 따른 독해의 차이를 짚어보는 작업도 재밌을 듯하다.

Stalin's internal quasi-colony- Vladimir Tikhonov | Facebook

(3) These photos are from Kuznetsk of the early... - Vladimir Tikhonov | Facebook

Vladimir Tikhonov
oroentSsdp1f91i9ug81m7uu9457g31f26l0ht6cfh35hmcmgah20961h919 ·

These photos are from Kuznetsk of the early 1930s. The Party was building a huge metal works there. The design was done by Americans: Freyn Engineering Company was working there until 1933. Both Americans and Soviet engineers and cadres were living in decent redbrick houses. The workers, however, inhabited the barracks and dugouts, like the ones you can see below. The thing was that there was NO budget at all assigned for workers' housing in the beginning. In a word, the workers were asked to arrange their housing themselves in the best way they could. The result resembled....yes, exactly, the slums one could find in the developing countries of East Asia and which still are in abundance in, say, Latin America. The workers, for the most part, were former peasants who fled collectivization.
The more one studies early Soviet history the more one is struck by obvious similarity one finds there with the developmental regimes otherwise known as "normal" capitalist, especially on the (semi-)periphery.

There collectivised/runaway peasants were Stalin's internal quasi-colony, of sorts - they were to be squeezed hardest in the process of Soviet-style primitive accumulation.

And then you find slums, (forced/unpaid) overwork, sky-high industrial accident rate, horrible child mortality and extremely tangible inequality between the different categories of employees (uneducated/unskilled vs educated/skilled) literary inhabiting different worlds - just like in South Korea in the 1960-70s. Just forget for a moment the "socialist" label and you will see just a very, very typical early industrial capitalism - with all its horrors.

20년간의 세대 간 사회이동 변화: 불평등연구회

[신규논문] 20년간의 세대 간 사회이동 변화: 30-49세 두 남성 코호트 비교 분석 | 불평등연구회

불평등연구회
내비게이션 토글

[신규논문] 20년간의 세대 간 사회이동 변화: 30-49세 두 남성 코호트 비교 분석

박현준(펜실베니아대 사회학과)·정인관(숭실대 정보사회학과)

21세기 이후 한국에서 부모의 계급 배경과 자녀의 계급 지위 간의 상관성은 어떻게 변했을까?

저자들은 이 연구에서 지난 20년 간 한국의 세대 간 사회이동이 어떻게 변화했는지 살펴보고 있다. 자료의 한계로 인해 비교적 긴 시간적 간격을 지닌 둘 이상의 시기를 비교하기 어렵다는 것이 세대 간 사회이동 연구의 난점 중 하나였다. 또한 서로 다른 시기를 비교할 때에도 같은 출생 코호트 성원들이 다른 시기에 중복되어 포함되는 경우가 많았다.

이 연구는 1998년과 2018년 <한국노동패널조사> 자료를 이용, 1998년에 30-49세(1949년-68년생)에 해당하는 남성들과 2018년의 30-49세(1969-88년생) 남성들을 비교함으로써 이런 한계를 극복하고 있다.

연구의 결과는 다음과 같이 요약될 수 있다.

첫째, 한국사회의 절대적 이동률은 여전히 높은 편이다. 20년 사이 계급의 상승이동률은 감소하였으나 이는 부모들 중 농민에 해당하는 사람들의 감소에 따른 자연스러운 변화로 볼 수 있다.

둘째, 한국사회의 상대적 이동률은 지난 20년 사이 오히려 증가한 것으로 나타났다. 1998년 아버지-아들의 계급 연관성에 비해 2018년의 연관성은 30% 가량 약화되었다.

셋째, 핵심유동성 모형을 이용하여 상대적 이동률의 증가 원인을 살펴본 결과 개방성의 증대는 서비스 계급과 비육체 노동자 계급의 세습 약화로부터 기인함을 확인할 수 있었다.

끝으로, 여섯 개의 계급 분류 대신 직업별 지위를 점수화하여 측정하는 국제 사회경제지위 지수(ISEI)를 활용해서 보더라도 같은 결과를 발견할 수 있어 위의 결과가 직업의 지위를 어떻게 측정하는가와 상관없이 발견되는 견고한 양상임을 확인할 수 있었다.

이런 결과는 이전에 발표되었던 정인관과 박현준의 연구(2019, “Educational Expansion and Trends in Intergenerational Social Mobility among Korean Men” Social Science Research 83:102307)와 박현준의 연구(2021, 『세대 간 사회이동의 변화』, 박영스토리)와 일치하는 결과다. 다만 본 연구는 보다 일관된 데이터를 기반으로 동일한 결론을 재확인하는 동시에 사회이동 증가의 세부적인 기제를 확인하고 있다는 점에서 추가적인 의미를 지닌다.

논문정보:
<한국사회학> 55 권 3호(2021년): 159-191쪽
https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART002755325

♣ 위 글은 아래 링크를 통해 PDF로도 보실 수 있습니다.

보도자료5_박현준_정인관_2021_한국사회학

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

알라딘: 사랑과 자본 카를과 예니 마르크스, 그리고 혁명의 탄생 메리 게이브리얼

알라딘: 사랑과 자본

사랑과 자본
카를과 예니 마르크스, 그리고 혁명의 탄생
메리 게이브리얼 (지은이),
천태화 (옮긴이) 모요사 2015-05-05

8
100자평 0편
리뷰 1편
세일즈포인트 160
사회운동가/혁명가 주간 36위

원제 Love and Capital (2011년)양장본
992쪽

책소개
2011년 전미도서상 논픽션 부문 최종후보에 오르며 화제가 되었다. 미국에서 한 해 동안 홍수처럼 쏟아져 나온 수많은 도서들 중에서 이 책이 다섯 손가락에 꼽힐 만큼 훌륭하다는 것이다. 이 책은 지금껏 출간된 마르크스의 여느 전기와는 판연히 다르다. 죽었지만 죽지 못하고 유령이 되어 지상을 떠돌던 마르크스에 관한 이야기가 아니라 살이 있고 피가 도는 살아 있는 마르크스를 비로소 이야기하고 있는 것이다.

인간 마르크스의 맨 얼굴은 사랑의 신열에 달뜬 청년, 아이의 재롱에 헤벌쭉 웃는 아버지, 생활의 무게에 짓눌린 가장, 숱한 좌절 속에서도 꾸역꾸역 살아갈 수밖에 없는 평범한 우리 이웃들의 초상이다. 거기에는 경외나 적의 없이 담담한 시선으로 바라볼 수 있는 낯설지 않은 삶이 있다. 카를 마르크스 역시 우리와 별반 다르지 않은 인간이었던 것이다.

전문 전기 작가인 메리 게이브리얼이 그리는 마르크스는 배경과 완벽하게 융화되어 살아 숨 쉰다. 저자는 마르크스의 특별함을 칭송하는 대신, 시대 속에서 고뇌하는 지식인을 말한다. 그리고 때로는 역사책을 방불케 할 정도로 세세한 배경과 사건 묘사에 많은 노력을 기울이지만 전혀 따분하지 않다. 독자는 저자의 안내에 따라 시끌벅적한 런던의 빈민굴에, 피비린내 풍기는 파리 코뮌의 현장 한가운데 서는 경험을 하게 될 것이다.
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목차

서문
프롤로그 1851년 런던
1부 마르크스와 남작의 딸
1 1835년 독일 트리어
2 1838년 베를린
3 1842년 쾰른
4 1843년 크로이츠나흐
2부 망명가족
5 1843년 파리
6 1844년 파리
7 1845년 파리
8 1845년 봄, 브뤼셀
9 1845년 런던
10 1846년 브뤼셀
11 1847년 브뤼셀
12 1848년 브뤼셀
13 1848년 파리
14 1848년 봄, 파리
15 1848년 쾰른
16 1848년 6월, 파리
17 1849년 쾰른
18 1849년 파리
3부 빅토리아 여왕 시대 영국에서의 망명생활
19 1849년 런던
20 1850년 8월, 네덜란드 잘트보멀
21 1851년 겨울, 런던
22 1852년 런던
23 1853년 런던
24 1855년 런던
4부 보헤미안 생활의 끝
25 1855년 가을, 런던
26 1857년 런던
27 1859년 런던
28 1861년 런던
29 1862년 런던
5부 『자본론』에서 코뮌으로
30 1864년 런던
31 1866년 런던
32 1867년 런던
33 1868년 런던
34 1869년 런던
35 1870년 가을, 파리
36 1871년 파리
37 1871년 여름, 프랑스 바녜르-드-뤼숑
6부 붉은 테러리스트 박사
38 1871년 런던
39 1872년 가을, 헤이그
40 1875년 런던
41 1880년 런던
42 1881년 런던
43 1882년 런던
44 1883년 런던
7부 마르크스 사후
45 1883년 봄, 런던
46 1885년 런던
47 1887년 런던
48 1889년 런던
49 1891년 런던
50 1892년 런던
51 1895년 런던
52 1897년 런던
53 1910년 프랑스 드라베이
감사의 말
인용문 저작권
주
참고문헌
옮긴이의 말
부록
-등장인물
-정치적 연대기
찾아보기
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추천글
동아일보: 동아일보 2015년 5월 16일자 '책의 향기'
한겨레: 한겨레 신문 2015년 5월 22일자 '출판 새책'

저자 소개
지은이: 메리 게이브리얼
저자파일 신간알리미 신청
최근작 : <사랑과 자본> … 총 19종 (모두보기)
베테랑 저널리스트이자 작가. 파리 소르본 대학과 메릴랜드 미술연구소에서 수학했으며, 아메리칸 대학에서 저널리즘 석사 학위를 받았다. 이후 20년 넘게 워싱턴과 런던에서 로이터통신의 국제부 편집자로 일했다. 첫 책 『악명 높은 빅토리아: 빅토리아 우드헐의 생애(Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored)』는 1998년 『뉴욕타임스』에 주목할 책으로 선정되었고, 2002년에 출간된 두 번째 책 『수집의 기술: 에타와 클레리벨 콘의 초상(The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone)』은 미국의 근대 프랑스 미술 컬렉션에 관한 가장 확실한 고전으로 평가받았다. 그녀는 현재 이탈리아에 살고 있다.
로이터통신을 그만둔 이후 그녀는 장장 8년 동안 카를 마르크스와 그의 가족의 삶을 추적하는 데 보냈다. 독일, 영국, 프랑스, 러시아, 아일랜드 등 마르크스와 그의 가족이 관련된 곳이라면 어디든지 달려가 편지와 자료들을 샅샅이 수집하고 분석했다. 특히 그동안 많은 연구자들이 간과했던 마르크스의 여인들(그의 아내와 성년까지 살아남은 세 딸)이 쓴 편지들에 주목했다. 그 결과 세상을 바꿀 혁명적 이론을 잉태한 한 남자의 가족에 관한 보기 드문 역작을 탄생시켰다.
일찍이 마르크스 전기는 많았으나, 그의 아내 예니와 딸들, 그리고 가족이나 다름없었던 프리드리히 엥겔스와 헬레네 데무트의 삶에 대해서까지 온전히 주의를 기울인 책은 없었다. 이 책은 마르크스 가족에게 평생 따라다녔던 가난과 박해, 그리고 숱한 자녀들의 죽음에 대한 철저한 고증을 거쳐 남편으로서, 아버지로서 그리고 인간으로서의 마르크스의 초상과 그의 가족의 인생 역정을 한 편의 대하드라마로 완성시킨 대작이다. 2011년에 전미도서상(National Book Award) 최종작으로 선정되었으며, 2012년에는 퓰리처상 전기 부문 최종작으로 지명되었다.

접기

옮긴이: 천태화
저자파일 신간알리미 신청
고려대학교 독어독문학과를 졸업하고 프리랜서 번역가로 활동 중이다. 『자기계발의 덫』, 『사랑과 자본』, 『미셸 오바마』 등을 번역했다.
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출판사 제공 책소개

신성도 마성도 벗어던진 ‘인간’ 마르크스

이 책은 2011년 전미도서상(National Book Award) 논픽션 부문 최종후보에 오르며 화제가 되었다. 미국에서 한 해 동안 홍수처럼 쏟아져 나온 수많은 도서들 중에서 이 책이 다섯 손가락에 꼽힐 만큼 훌륭하다는 것이다. 무엇이 이 책을 특별하게 만드는가.
이 책은 지금껏 출간된 마르크스의 여느 전기와는 판연히 다르다. 죽었지만 죽지 못하고 유령이 되어 지상을 떠돌던 마르크스에 관한 이야기가 아니라 살이 있고 피가 도는 살아 있는 마르크스를 비로소 이야기하고 있는 것이다. 인간 마르크스의 맨 얼굴은 사랑의 신열에 달뜬 청년, 아이의 재롱에 헤벌쭉 웃는 아버지, 생활의 무게에 짓눌린 가장, 숱한 좌절 속에서도 꾸역꾸역 살아갈 수밖에 없는 평범한 우리 이웃들의 초상이다. 거기에는 경외나 적의 없이 담담한 시선으로 바라볼 수 있는 낯설지 않은 삶이 있다. 카를 마르크스 역시 우리와 별반 다르지 않은 인간이었던 것이다!
마르크스는 인류 역사상 가장 많은 오해를 받은 인물 중 한 사람일 것이다. 그의 필생의 저작, 『자본론』이 스스로 말하기 시작하면서 역설적이게도 저자는 잊혀갔다.『자본론』은 지구의 반에서 경전이 되었고, 나머지 반에서는 금서가 되었다. 한쪽에서는 동상이 세워지고 다른 한쪽에서는 연일 저주와 악담이 쏟아져 나왔다. 그러므로 『자본론』이 말을 멈추기 전까지 우리가 보았던 인물은 실제로 이승에 살았던 마르크스가 아니었다. 그것은 『자본론』이 자신의 형상으로 빚어낸 창조물이었다. 그 속에는 “『자본론』은 그걸 쓰면서 피웠던 담배 값도 벌어주지 못할 것”이라고 투덜거리던 인간 마르크스는 없었다.

사랑과 혁명, 그리고 마르크스의 여인들

『자본론』이 아닌 마르크스에게 눈을 돌리자마자 우리에게는 그의 가족이 보인다. 허랑한 남편 또는 아버지로 인해 곤궁한 삶 속에 시들어버렸을 것이라고 추단, 또는 고의적으로 왜곡되었던 그들의 인생이 실은 마르크스의 사업과 얼마나 긴밀히 그리고 능동적으로 연관되었는지 이 책은 아주 잘 보여주고 있다. 저자에게 중요했던 것은 『자본론』이 아니라 그것의 완성에 바쳐진 한 가족의 삶이었다. 그래서 이 책의 주인공은 마르크스가 아니라 그와 그의 가족들이다.
사실 마르크스의 자녀들은 빈곤에 익숙해져 있었다. 마르크스가 『자본론』을 집필하기 시작한 1851년까지 자식 중 둘이 영양 결핍으로 죽었고, 그 작은 시신들은 다른 아이들이 먹고 뛰놀던 방 안에 궤짝같이 허름한 관 속에 눕혀져 있었다. 한때 프로이센 남작의 딸로 미모에 대한 찬사를 한 몸에 받던 마르크스의 아내, 예니는 빚쟁이들에게 돈을 갚기 위해 은식기부터 신발까지 세간살이를 가지고 전당포를 전전하는 신세로 전락했다.
아이들이 노는 공간은 항상 망명객들로 북적였는데, 그곳은 늘 시가와 파이프 담배 연기로 자욱했으며, 아이들의 귀는 상스러운 대화와 혁명의 단어들로 채워졌다. 그런 환경에서도 마르크스의 장난꾸러기 아들 에드가는 술 취한 도망자들의 이야기를 즐겼으며 친구들이 가르쳐준 혁명가를 목청껏 불러 젖혀서 마르크스를 기쁘게 했다(그러나 불행히도 에드가는 여덟 살을 채 넘기지 못하고 사망한다). 하지만 예니와 마르크스에게 가장 큰 걱정거리는 딸들이었다. 딸들이 평생의 가난을 모면할 유일한 희망은 상류사회의 아가씨들과 어울릴 수 있는 부르주아적 교육이라는 사실을 모를 리 없었다. 그들은 딸들이 머릿속엔 급진적인 사상으로 가득하지만 배 속은 텅 빈 채 집으로 돌아오는 남자와 일생을 함께하며 비참하게 사는 것을 원치 않았던 것이다. 그러나 아버지를 사랑하고 존경했던 딸들은 그들의 기대와는 달리 자신들과 대의를 함께할 혁명가와 결혼하며 마르크스와 예니의 삶을 되풀이한다.
특히 이 책에서는 마르크스의 가족을 돌보았던 하녀 헬레네 데무트의 삶에 상당 부분을 할애하고 있다. 그녀 역시 마르크스 가족과 빈곤을 함께 겪으며 함께 울고 웃었던 가족의 일원이었던 것이다. 마르크스를 질타할 때 가장 큰 흠으로 삼는 헬레네 데무트와 마르크스 사이에서 태어난 아들 프레데릭 데무트에 대해서도 비교적 자세한 얘기를 풀어내고 있다. 후에 프레데릭은 마르크스의 막내딸 엘레아노르의 절친한 친구가 되었으며 마르크스의 자식들 가운데 가장 오래 살아남아 마르크스의 세 딸들의 비극적인 생의 마지막을 지켜보는 유일한 사람이 된다.

가족의 희생을 대가로 탄생한 『자본론』

『자본론』은 천재적 사상가 마르크스가 어느 날 뚝딱 써낸 책이 아니다. 이 책은 난산에 난산을 거듭한 끝에 탄생했다. 밤마다 담배 연기 자욱한 골방에서 새벽까지 머리칼을 쥐어뜯는 외골수와 그런 사람을 가장으로 둔 한 가족의 오랜 신산한 삶을 대가로 탄생한 것이 바로 『자본론』이다. 그 오랜 기다림의 시간은 가족으로서의 의무적 헌신만으로는 설명되지 않는다. 아무리 무책임하고 독선적인 가장이라도 가족의 후원 없이 그 긴 세월을 오롯이 집필에만 투자할 수는 없다.
『자본론』은 마르크스 ‘가족’의 작품이다. 그래서 이 책의 저자는 여태까지 어느 누구도 주목하지 않았던 마르크스의 가장 가까운 동지인 가족들을 무대의 주인공으로 올려놓는다. 그것을 통해 저자는 오히려 마르크스와 그의 사상을 온전히 이해할 수 있는 길을 터놓았다.
애초의 기한을 한참 넘긴 후 마침내 『자본론』의 출간을 눈앞에 두었을 때 마르크스는 지인들에게 보낸 편지들에서 “그것을 위해 나는 건강, 행복, 내 가족까지도 희생했습니다”라고 썼으며, 책을 쓰는 동안 마르크스의 경제적인 삶을 책임졌던 엥겔스에게는 “일 년 안에 나는 성공하게 될 것으로 희망하고 또 확신하고 있네. 내 경제적 문제들을 근본적으로 뜯어고칠 수 있을 것이고 마침내 자립하게 될 거란 말일세”라고 잔뜩 기대감에 부풀어 말한다. 그러나 결과는 전연 딴판이었다. 『자본론』은 아무런 반향도 불러일으키지 못했다. 세상은 『자본론』이 나오기 전이나 후나 아무런 변화도 없이 믿을 수 없을 정도로 조용하기만 했다. 마르크스와 예니는 뜻밖의 상황에 당황했다.
예니는 엥겔스에게 보낸 편지에서 “우리가 오랫동안 카를의 책에 걸어왔던 은밀한 희망까지도 이제 독일인들의 ‘침묵의 음모’로 인해 물거품이 되어버렸군요”라고 말한다. 여기서 ‘은밀한 희망’이란 물론 『자본론』이 가져다줄 수익이었다. 가사를 꾸려야 했던 주부에게는 당연한 기대였다. 하지만 예니는 거기에 머무르지 않는다. “(『자본론』) 제2권은 게으름뱅이들을 깜짝 놀라게 만들어서 무기력에서 끌어낼 거예요. 그리고 그 작품의 과학적 성격에 관해 그간 침묵했었기 때문에 이제 더욱 격렬하게 그 사상의 맥락에 대해 공격을 퍼붓겠지요. 꼭 그렇게 될 거예요”라고 그녀는 덧붙였다. 예니는 단순히 『자본론』 저자의 아내가 아니라 스스로 제2의 저자였던 것이다(실제로 그녀는 남편의 지독한 악필을 사람들이 읽을 수 있는 문자로 옮겨 적었다). 그리고 그녀는 결국 ‘침묵의 음모’가 걷히고 『자본론』이 사람들의 관심을 끌기 시작할 때, 침대 맡에서 남편이 읽어주는 “『자본론』은 경제학에서 교조적인 이론의 틀을 깬 작품으로서, 그 혁명적 성격과 파급효과의 중요성은 천문학에서 코페르니쿠스의 이론, 또는 중력과 물리학의 법칙에 견줄 만하다”는 한 잡지의 서평을 들으며 “크고, 사랑스럽고, 그 어느 때보다도 반짝”이는 눈으로 남편을 올려다본다. 그리고 이틀 뒤 조용히 숨을 거두었다. 그런 예니를 알지 못하고는 마르크스의 삶을 온전히 이해할 수 없으며, 그의 사상에 대한 이해도 반쪽짜리일 수밖에 없다. 마르크스의 가족은 마르크스주의를 낳은 생산관계였던 것이다!

전문 전기 작가인 메리 게이브리얼이 그리는 마르크스는 배경과 완벽하게 융화되어 살아 숨 쉰다. 저자는 마르크스의 특별함을 칭송하는 대신, 시대 속에서 고뇌하는 지식인을 말한다. 그리고 때로는 역사책을 방불케 할 정도로 세세한 배경과 사건 묘사에 많은 노력을 기울이지만 전혀 따분하지 않다. 독자는 저자의 안내에 따라 시끌벅적한 런던의 빈민굴에, 피비린내 풍기는 파리 코뮌의 현장 한가운데 서는 경험을 하게 될 것이다.
이 책은 연구실에서 자료를 뒤적이며 쓴 책이 아니다. 저자가 발로 뛰며 마르크스의 인생 궤적을 되짚어서 복원해낸 삶의 기록이다. 저자는 마르크스 가족이 살았던 아파트 다락방을 방문했고 후손들과 대화도 나누었다. 그러므로 그의 설명과 통찰은 믿어도 좋다. 방대한 분량이지만 소설책 읽듯 책장이 술술 잘 넘어가는 것은 저자의 탁월한 기량 덕분일 것이며, 그것은 단순히 재미를 선사하는 차원을 넘어 시대와 인물에 대한 더 풍부한 이해로 우리를 인도한다.

“그는 인간이 할 수 있는 가장 위대한 학문적 업적을 남겼다. 마르크스는 세상의 마음을 바꾸어놓았다.” -조지 버나드 쇼

네오 2015-05-16
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네,,다시 마르크스의 계절입니다만,,기존의 선동만 하던 유형에서 탈피한 다른 접근 방식의 스토리입니다,,사랑와 자본은 마르크스와 예니에 대한 '사랑'이야기입니다만,,여기에는 양념으로 마르크스와 렌넨의 차마 주위에서는 입에 담지 못할 불륜드라마가 있습니다만,,최근의 막장드라마보다는 대단히 낭만적이면서도 섬세하게 그리고 있죠,,헌재에서 간통이라는 죄명이 형법조문에서 사라졌다고 해도 그 위법성까지 인정한건 아니죠,,이혼소송이라도 하면 그 이혼사유가 그 간통을 저지른 배우자에게 고스란히 귀책사유로 넘어가기 때문에 어마어마한 위자료를 물러줘야할지도 모릅니다만,,그동안 쌓아놓은 재산이 많다면 모험을 즐기는 것도 나쁘지 않다고 생각합니다만,,물론 마르크스가 살았던 시대는 젠틀한'맨'들의 시대였기 때문에,,불륜을 저지를만도 했을련지도 모르겠군요,,마르크스의 사랑은 그야말로 그가 저술한 책따위는 잊어버릴 정도로 지고지순한 것이었습니다,,참,,이렇게 보헤미안기질이 있던 사상가가 돈에 찌들어 살았다니 얼마나 가슴아픔 일이 겠습니다까..만약에 제가 그 당시에 살아다러면 그의 스타기질을 알아보고 재빨리 슈퍼스타 k에 출연신청을 대신해주고 싶을 정도인데요,,물론 그의 인세수입에 한몫할 생각도 있습니다만,,그가 남긴 저서들을 모조리 모으는 저같은 그의 추종자는 이루말을 할수 없을 정도의 비통함이죠,,이 책이 2011년 전미도서상 최종후보까지 올랐다는 홍보글을 읽고 도대체 수상작이 어덯길래 이런 훌륭한 책을 제챠쓸까라는 호기심에 그년도에 수상작을 찾아봤습니다,,네,,스티븐 그린블렛의 1417년 근대의 탄생이었습니다,,이,,책은 그당시에 번역도 상당히 빨리되어 구입해서 읽어본 기억이 남지만,,그렇게까지,,인상적인 느낌은 전혀 들이 않았습니다,,더불어 다름이 아닌 퓰리처상 인물부분에도 최종후보였습니다,,그 당시에는 아직 이책은 번역이 되지는 않았지만..조지캐논이 수상을 하였더군요,,이 책은,,냉전시대의 국무장관이었던 그의 세계를 전체적으로 조망한겁니다만,,번역이 될지는 미지수네요,,좋은책임에도요,,물론 어느책이 좋다고 우열을 가리는 것은 미련한 일이 아닐수 없죠,,책은 다 좋은 거니깐요,,아무튼,,마르크스가 사랑을 가지고 있는 뜨거운 열정의 남자라는 것은 보여줍니다,,그가 단지 자본론에서 논리만 세운 사람이었다면 결코 보봐리부인같은 사람을 불가능했을 것입니다,,약간 이분 즉흥적인 면도 있는 예술가시죠,,그러나,,다만 아쉬운것은 그 사랑늘 하기 위한 총탄이 언제나 부복했습니다,,지금같았으면,,민폐남이라고 불리며 어느 여성도 거들떠 보지 않았을텐제요,,데이트비용을 내지 않는 남성 매력없잖습니까,,거,탁하고 호기롭게 스파케티도 즐기면서 와인도 한잔해야하는데,,그때도 이런식사비용이 전혀 저렴한것이 아니었기에 항상 그는 빚에 쪼들리면서까지 낭비하는 버릇은 있어서 가끔은 그와 같은 부르조아 흉내는 낼수 있었습니다..자 이책을 읽는 것은 지금은 속물을 벋어던지는 로맨스을 한다는 것은 현실과 동떨어진 공산주의와 비견할 만큼의 시대가 되었습니다,,
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마르크스의 아내 예니 마르크스와 그 가족을 다룬 책이 연이어 나왔다. 이번주에 나온 건 예니 마르크스의 평전 <레드 예니>(오월의봄, 2015)이고, 얼마전에는 마르크스 가족의 이야기를 방대한 분량에 담은 메리 게이브리얼의 <사랑과 자본>(모요사, 2015)가 나왔었다. 마르크스 평전이 다루지 않은 더 깊은 속 이야기가 있는 듯싶다.

Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel | Goodreads

Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

Mary Gabriel

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Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, LOVE AND CAPITAL is a heartbreaking and dramatic saga of the family side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death.
Drawing upon years of research, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel brings to light the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. We follow them as they roam Europe, on the run from governments amidst an age of revolution and a secret network of would-be revolutionaries, and see Karl not only as an intellectual, but as a protective father and loving husband, a revolutionary, a jokester, a man of tremendous passions, both political and personal.
In LOVE AND CAPITAL, Mary Gabriel has given us a vivid, resplendent, and truly human portrait of the Marxes-their desires, heartbreak and devotion to each other's ideals.

GenresHistory Biography Nonfiction Politics Philosophy Economics Biography Memoir
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709 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2011
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Mary Gabriel24 books131 followers

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Mary Gabriel was educated in the United States and France, and worked in Washington and London as a Reuters editor for nearly two decades. She is the author of two previous biographies: Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored, and The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone. She lives in Italy.

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Isadora Paiva
119 reviews · 77 followers

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October 13, 2020
As a daughter of two Marxist political economy professors, I grew up with this picture on the wall of our living room, which we called "uncle Marx". No joke.

A couple of years ago, my mom and dad read this biography and couldn't stop talking about it for months. I said I'd read it eventually, so they'd stop telling me about every single thing in the book, but to be honest I wasn't really looking forward to it. It's so looong. I'd never read a biography before (plenty of autobiographies and memoirs, though), because it seemed like they could either be boring recitations of facts, or go way overboard in the other direction and speculate in a sensational manner over things the author just can't know about. Boy, am I glad I decided to give it a go.

This is one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read. A story of deep commitment to a cause, but also to other people. As a feminist who writes about the fact that the public/political and the private/personal are actually one and the same, I was so happy to find that this biography did not erase the women in this family, quite the contrary. Marx's wife Jenny and their daughters, together with their housekeeper Lenchen, all worked tirelessly to further the socialist cause, but in a way that is usually overlooked. Though Engels certainly receives a lot more credit, he is still not given his proper due. What a man! I think I fell in love. What to say of someone with so little vanity he sacrificed his life to furthering his friend's work, both economically and in editing Marx's writings instead of his own. He would say: "I simply cannot understand how anyone can be envious of genius; it's something so very special that we who have not got it know it to be unattainable from the start; but to be envious of anything like that one must have to be frightfully small minded".

I don't think I've ever heard of a friendship as deep as Engels and Marx had for each other, and a love like what he had for his wife is almost equally as rare, especially at that time. Though their lives were not without hardship, and Marx could be an insensitive asshole, it is undeniable that this was a group of people who shared an incredibly close bond. This is what Marx had to say in a letter to his wife, over 20 years after they had first fallen in love: "There are actually many women in the world, and some among them are beautiful. But where could I find again a face whose every feature, even every wrinkle, is a reminder of the greatest and sweetest memories of my life? Even my endless pains, my irreplaceable losses I read in your sweet countenance, and I kiss away the pain when I kiss your sweet face".

Though I'm sure a lot of biographies do fall in either of those camps I mentioned, Mary Gabriel's work on the Marx family is masterful. There is precious little speculation, and when it is unavoidable the bases for her thinking are clearly stated in a way that leaves the final say to the reader. It reads like a perfect mix of history book (lengthy portions are concerned with giving the reader the historical context for their lives, especially on big events such as The Springtime of Peoples in 1848), classic novel (the tone of the writing is as engaging, and there is certainly enough love and tragedy in this to compare to the greatest 19th century classics), and political and economic theory (the air that the Marx Family lived and breathed). Though a book of this size and subject could have easily become boring, I was gripped throughout. I fell in love with these people, and each death left me sobbing uncontrollably, in a way I faintly realized was ridiculous (these people have been dead for over a hundred years!), but I didn't care.

The one criticism I have of the book is that the footnotes are not very illuminating. Whenever the author quoted a letter that was published in Marx and Engels' Collected Works (and most of them are), she just points to the page, and we're often left to guess who the letter was sent to and when. As an obsessive checker of footnotes (I just can't ignore them), it started driving me nuts after a while.
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Adam McPhee
1,317 reviews · 238 followers

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March 14, 2023
This was amazing. Highly, highly recommend this for anyone with an interest in left wing history.

A surprisingly heartwarming book. Reads like a 19th century novel. You struggle along with the Marx family when they're suffering (which is most of the time) and feel a great catharsis on their few triumphs. It explains all the famous anecdotes and provides context for the life and times of not just Marx and his works but also for his whole family. That's no small feat when you consider that Marx has always been surrounded by bad writing: there are the scurrilous attacks of reactionaries, the censorship and self-censorship of his defenders, not to mention the various language barriers. The story is mostly told through the letters Marx et al were constantly sending each other, and the amount of research the author put in is insane.

A surprisingly non-ideological look at Marx (settle down, Zizek). Published in 2011 at the end of the end of history, that was probably the last time you could get away with a bio that isn't really a defence or attack. Her criticisms of Karl are basically of what she sees as his sexism, despite also being a loving family man. First off, I don't think it's really fair to imply that anyone chooses the kind of poverty that they lived through. What's more, his wife and daughters were both highly literate and at the forefront of what was possible for women at the time, but you don't see them pinning the blame on Karl. As for Freddy, yeah Karl was in the wrong for cheating on Jenny, but considering the hate that his enemies still have for him to this day, I don't really see what other option there was than to occlude the Freddy's origins.

That said, I found the subtitle a bit misleading, Jenny inevitably doesn't have a whole lot to do once they're married and the children are along. Her voice is all over the book, because she's as much a correspondent as the others, but mostly she's just helping Marx. The focus is more on Marx and his three surviving daughters. His sons-in-law all come off like grand Victorian villains, btw. Especially Lafargue but especially Aveling.

I've gotta get better at taking notes, because there were so many parts of this I knew I should be jotting down, but my kindle is old and doesn't handle highlighting well and I'm too lazy when I'm reading on it to write with a pen. Alas.

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Matthijs Krul
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August 20, 2012
The genre of the personal biography, when applied to famous historical figures, more often than not falls in the traps of sensationalism, moralism, or hagiography. This is not least the case when it comes to persons of considerable political controversy, such as Karl Marx and his friends and family. However, Mary Gabriel’s personal biography of the Marx-Engels clan studiously and brilliantly avoids all cliches and all sensationalism, portraying the characters ‘warts and all’, sympathetically but without making saints of them. Its almost 600 pages are unflaggingly interesting, intelligent, and informative even to those who are very well acquainted with Marxism’s theory and the chronology of its origins. But what’s more important is that it is virtually unique in its emphasis on the personal life of Karl and Jenny Marx, their children, their friends (not least of course Engels), and their many associates.

Although Gabriel makes sure to make clear the significance and substance of the various works Marx, Engels, and the family wrote or worked on during their life, this is not yet another political-romantic biography of the theoretical heroes of socialism. On the contrary, this book is a chronicle of their private hopes and pleasures, their struggles, and their difficulties. Also uncharacteristic for the many biographers of the Marx-Engels extended family is Gabriel’s courageous and timely decision to emphasize the significance of the lives and work of the women of the group: Jenny Marx, Karl’s wife; their three daughters, their only children to survive infancy; Freddy Demuth, the illegitimate son of Karl Marx; and the daughters’ partners, children, and friends. In the usual biographies of Marx and/or Engels, his wife appears merely in the background and his daughters are a footnote, but in Gabriel’s biography, they come into their own as serious and dedicated revolutionary thinkers and doers in their own right. In the process Mary Gabriel finally also clears up a number of small errors and confusions that have been copied from one biography to another, and she is to be commended for the great thoroughness with which she has conducted and presented her research on a topic many would think has been too fully mined to lead to any new gold.

In an era when both Marxism and the cause of women’s equality seem more under attack than ever before, and yet are more needed than ever, it is fitting and just that a great new biography should revive the founders of Marxism as human beings in all their glories and failings, and that for the first time the women in the family should play an equal role in the narrative. While the political and theoretical histories of Marx and Engels’ lives tend to be a story of triumph against adversity, Gabriel’s book makes it clear that this cannot by any means be said of the private lives of the family. More than anything else, it stands out clearly for the first time what a sad, difficult, and often despairing life they led, the women of the family especially. It has often been remarked on, but it only becomes clear from this work why the Marx women all died early, several to suicide; and it is clear that their lives were not as happy or as fulfilling of their own great talents, no less than those of the men, as they should have been.

Two great forces of their age made their lives more confined and more frustrated in its potential than anyone ought to accept of any society: on the one hand, Victorian moralism and the enduring power of patriarchal values; on the other hand, the more physical but no less destructive power of disease. The former held the women in restricted positions, endlessly sacrificing their wishes, their talents, and their very happiness to the cause of the men; the latter robbed them – the men no less than the women – of their strengths, energy, and future. In Gabriel’s book, there is rarely a moment that some member of the great Marxist family is not gravely ill. Many of Marx’s children as well as of his grandchildren died in childhood of vague diseases, caused by the poverty and inequality of their times, and incurable by the low level of medical expertise and the difficulty of affording it. In a time when both these great hostile forces, patriarchy and disease, are the prime enemies of the emancipation of humanity in most of the world, it is a sad but useful reminder of their impact to read about how they destroyed the Marx family. Even Marx himself may well have lived longer and been much more productive, to the lasting benefit of our knowledge of socialism, had he not been perpetually ill and taken such medication as mercury and arsenic, never mind much alcohol, to alleviate it.

Love and Capital is therefore not necessarily a happy read. But it is a fascinating read, full of lively detail, engaging writing, and sound judgements. It does without the hypocrisy or moralism of many hostile biographers but also free of the pretense that the Marx family was flawless in their personal life. The author also does not shy away from the real revolutionary commitment of all the participants, not just Marx and Engels but their wives, Marx’s children and husbands also, and does not try to reinvent them as ‘democratic’ egghead theorists or irrelevant Victorian ranters. If one has to have an objection, it is some very minor errors and that the copious endnote apparatus often contains no further explanation of the many interesting and illuminating details first mentioned in the text. But those are just quibbles. On the whole, this book by a respected Reuters editor (of all people) is of enormous benefit to our understanding of the historical reality of the founding family of Marxism, and in particular of the real contribution of Marx’s wife and daughters to setting this great movement of history in motion. It deserves to be widely read and will surely become a classic in the history of Marxism.

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Clif
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February 22, 2012
Any useful history must be written with thorough knowledge of the subject but this one adds sensitivity and affection to make the subjects breathe.

I was given this book and opened it with little more knowledge of Marx than of his appearance on the marker at his grave and the fact that he wrote a huge book. Engels was his sidekick.

Such "knowledge" is typical. It's a big world and we have only the most superficial concept of most things in it. Love and Capital was a wonderful revelation and education for me.

The Marx family endured poverty for decades but was tightly knit and dedicated to the success of the man and his ideology. But far from merely enduring in the face of adversity and continual disappointment, the family had many happy moments and the rich intellectual environment produced children with exceptional talents.

The book succeeds on many grounds - you will learn of the plight of women in 19th century Europe as Jenny Marx and her three girls deal with the limitations on their sex, the high infant mortality rate and the often cavalier behavior of men allowed by society to do as they wished within or without marriage.

In the background, the awful conditions for the masses resulted in violence continually as royalty and the business elite struggled to retain wealth and privilege. Revolutions, labor strife and fierce repression by reactionary forces all swirl about the Marx family.

Friedrich Engels is revealed as a man who lives a life guided by his philosophy. Though he is a businessman and makes good money at the head of a firm inherited from his father, he has no sense that his income is his alone, unstintingly sharing it to support many others in the service of socialism. Without him, Marx would not have been able to write Capital (over 17 years!) or his other works. Engels, from the start, had complete faith that Marx was uniquely qualified to describe the capitalist economic system in a scientific manner that would educate the world, but particularly the proletariat, and bring the revolution necessary to better their lives.

The bond between all members of the Marx household and Engels is strong and withstands every adversity over decades. His patience is phenomenal and when tragedy strikes he is always on hand, one of the most admirable men I've encountered in my readings of history.

And Karl Marx! What a character. Obsessed with his work, he is also a loving father ever willing to play with his children. He and his wife impart their love of Shakespeare to the children, who learn scenes so well that family enactments are common and a source of fun and laughter. Marx and his wife Jenny deeply love each other - one account telling of how it wasn't uncommon to find them avoiding each others gaze for fear of breaking into uncontrollable laughter. For several years the family is crammed into a two room unit when the children are very young, yet they support each other as a tight unit even through the death of a male sibling. One is made aware of the constant presence of death brought on with what might seem the most minor ailment, and of course there is routine infant mortality.

Characters are always dropping in on the Marx home and often stay for some time to enjoy the company or enjoy the food. You couldn't be more involved with it all, or feel the emotion more deeply.

The pairing off of the three daughters to questionable suitors is a story in itself.

There is intrigue. Marx is unfaithful in one instance, Engels comes to his aid and the family continues to thrive though a child is abandoned by his mother.

Far from being an advocate of violence, Marx is dismayed when violence occurs, believing that only by working democratically can the change he hopes to see arrive.

I couldn't help noting that such things as daycare for infants of workers was being asked for even in the 1840's!

One wonders about the durability of the elite. At one time it was royalty, then those in business. Here we are still dealing with the same inequality of wealth (growing in fact) in the 21st century and just now with a huge economic plunge that those of the 1800's would instantly recognize, and it arrived for reasons that Marx described as endemic to capitalism. The great rise of the unions has been rolled back and the 1% are firmly in the saddle again. The name Marx brings revulsion to many Americans. Socialism is a dirty word. Love and Capital will have you thinking about the present as well as the past.

Mary Gabriel easily earns five stars for this great read.
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Paul H.
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March 13, 2023
I'm not even particularly interested in Marxism, but it's impossible not to be fascinated by the story of Marx and his wife, and the writing is absolutely first-rate.

One of the more surreal sections involves an account of Marx's father-in-law -- Ludwig von Westphalen, a liberal aristocrat -- converting an impressionable teenage Karl Marx to socialism (you have to wonder how Ludwig would have felt about the historical results of this decision!) . . . somewhat similar to whichever Tsarist official ordered the killing of Lenin's brother, thus radicalizing him and indirectly causing the destruction of his own country.
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Kenghis Khan
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November 24, 2014
Five stars should be reserved for books like this.

A marvelous, beautiful and utterly amazing work by Gabriel, this book is without question the best book I have read in years. Written with wry humor, engaging tone, and incredible suspense that builds up to the magnificent tragedy that was the private life of the Marx family. One would be hard-pressed to find a more fitting reminder of the immense power of nonfiction. The book has all the trappings of a Jane Austen or even Tolstoy - a family, devoted to a single altruistic vision, who ironically struggle to find happiness for themselves. And yet, what makes it even more incredible is that it is all true. The author's impeccable research is evident in the brilliant use of source material to structure this grand epic. Ostensibly initiated as a biography of Marx's wife Jenny, the author traces the Marx family from its early beginnings in Trier between two family friends who become unlikely lovers, to the mysterious and untimely death of the last of Marx's daughters.

There is no shortage of gripping plot in this work. Perhaps most incredible of all is the ordeal that Marx's daughters and grandchildren had to go through in the Pyrenees. Their midnight escape from France to Spain following the fall of the Paris Commune, their attempts to sneak back into France, and how they played a cat and mouse game with the murderous French regime until they reached the safety of England - it is all the more incredible that these were a bunch of young women in their teens and twenties in an era when polite ladies were to be locked up in their gilded cages.

Indeed, as engaging as these incredible adventures are, the most striking aspect of this book is its characters, in all their glorious humanity.

The book is deeply respectful of all the family, but there are heroes with whom the author's admiration cannot escape the reader's attention that really make this book shine. Perhaps more than anyone before or since, Gabriel once and for eternity cements Friedrich Engels as the giant that he was. A towering intellect in his own right and an Atlas, the constant theme throughout the book is Engels' humanity. Where Marx could be self-absorbed and narcissistic, and Jenny Marx stoic as would befit an aristocrat, Engels was a man who wore his emotions on his sleeves. What makes him even more incredible in this book is the fact that unlike Marx he found a job, and never begrudged anyone else for relying on him to be the family breadwinner. His devotion to Marx extended to Jenny and Marx's daughters and knew no bounds. Engels was a revolutionary and a dreamer, but he had his foot firmly planted in the affairs of the world, becoming a skilled businessman. And yet he never lost sight of his ideals, and well into his old age he fought for the dream of his youth.

Yet for all the praise the book subtly bestows on Engels, Engels is ultimately not without his blindspots, which become most apparent with the book's second hero: Eleanor Marx. The author relates how Marx characterized his daughter Jenny as being most like him, but characterized Eleanor as him. Yet Eleanor lacked two important advantages of her father: his gender, and a loving spouse. Eleanor Tussy Marx ultimately broke off an engagement to pursue a life with Edward Aveling, a charlatan and, aside from Bismark and Marx's persecutors, the clear villain of this work. All of Marx's daughters married charlatans, but it was with Aveling that Engels failed his friend most by failing to protect Eleanor from him. A precocious revolutionary who was a rebel to the bone, but who also harbored an immensely compassionate soul, Eleanor emerges as the true heir to the father she so revered throughout her life. It is in one of the final chapters that we see Engels forced to reckon with the damage he had wrought and the disastrous consequences many of Engels' rare shortsightedness had for Eleanor Marx.

This is what makes this book such a delight - Engels is not perfect, and neither were any of the characters of the book. But they all meant incredibly well. Which is why the book is such a painful retelling of an incredible tragedy. People of such incredible compassion, who had their admirers, but yet none appear to have achieved much private happiness. Their lives, beginning with Jenny Marx who gave up her considerable upper-class privileges to marry the man of her dreams, were ultimately sacrificed for the calling of a man who, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, managed to change the world's mind. For this incredible contribution, they were rewarded with contempt, betrayal, poverty, and in the end what shines through is how the only thing that kept them going was each other.

That all this is told so lovingly and respectfully, yet engagingly, is a credit to the author. Easily one of my favorite books of all time, Love and Capital will be a classic that will be admired by many for decades to come.

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Christine Bonheure
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February 17, 2020
Last year I saw Johan Heldenbergh at work as Karl Marx. In a stunning epilogue, he orated that Marx's theory is still very much alive, the century we live in is a false copy of the nineteenth and a new revolution is on the way. Reason enough to delve into the life of Marx, his wife Jenny, children, friends and enemies. What a terrible life that family led! Poverty, deprivation, diseases, infant mortality, suicide... Workers were the playthings of the capitalists and there was no such thing as social security yet. Fortunately, Friedrich Engels, friend of Marx, remained a financial safety net for the family throughout his life. Marx's life was completely dominated by his revolutionary ideas. With his work he stood at the cradle of emerging socialism and thus changed the spirit of the time, an achievement that can count. Impressive portrait of the times and family history.

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BookishStitcher
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June 11, 2019
Wow, I now know so much about Karl Marx and I like him a lot less than I did before I read this book. What he put his family through was awful. Engels was a much more interesting character and as involved in the movement. I much preferred the parts about him and Marx's daughters. Poor Jenny, his wife had such a hard life because of his refusal to get an actual job.

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Courtney Johnston
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January 2, 2012
You know how you can feel quite comfortable you know a reasonable amount about a topic, say, for example, socialism and Marxism - enough, anyway, to get you through a casual conversation - and then you crack open a biography of Karl Marx and your first discovery is that he's not Russian like you always thought, but actually German? Yeah.

The fact that I clearly actually know NOTHING AT ALL about this period of history or basic economic theory is what kept me ploughing through this 600 page behemoth. It certainly wasn't because I'd developed a liking for Karl Marx or his wife Jenny von Westphalen, because they increasingly incensed me.

Karl and Jenny spent most of their married life running from creditors, borrowing money off friends, living off the capitalist spoils of Friedrich Engel's father's cotton business, and bringing up their three daughters in a nice bourgeois style. And being ill - god, these people spent a lot of time being ill.

[London, 1880] Marx, Jenny, Lenchen [Helen Demuth, the woman who lived with them for decades, helping Jenny run the household and mother of Marx's unacknowledged illegitimate son], and Tussy [Marx and Jenny's youngest daughter, Eleanor] were also ill and considered going to [the spa at Karlsbad] but the cost was too dear even for Engels, who paid the Marxes' medical bills on top of a living stipend. Marx's doctor suggested a less expensive spa at Bad Neuenahr, in western Germany. Marx delivered Lenchen to her family nearby and then he and Jenny and Tussy proceeded to the resort in the Ahr Valley and later farther into the Black Forest. The family was gone from London for a full two months, but Jenny and Marx returned in not much better health than when they left.

When he wasn't being ill (and, to be fair, when he was - especially with particularly unpleasant sounding carbuncles) Marx was hanging out in his study and the reading room at the British Library, teaching himself languages, researching more and more recherche subjects, and successfully failing in getting his pamphlets and books out in time to capitalise (hah!) on the events they chronicled. Volume I of Das Kapital, for example, was reluctantly delivered 16 years after Marx said it would be ready, and sold about 80 copies.

Snarkishly, I began to feel that Marx really lived out 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' vis-à-vis Engels and Jenny. He took and took and took, and seemed to give very little in return. He did truly love Jenny, but that didn't stop him from spending several extended periods overseas and writing home (very occasionally) with accounts of the charming young ladies who were keeping him amused and well looked after. Engels bailed the family out over and over again, not just financially, but also by completing and taking over writing jobs that Marx had committed to but characteristically couldn't finish.

Having said that, Marx was a devoted father (you can't help but be Freudian about the fact that all three of his daughters tied themselves to men who were equally hopeless at real life and ground them down: one daughter died at 38, worn out by tough living and childbirth; another committed suicide; the third died in a suicide pact with her husband in her late 60s) and an even more devoted grandfather. The Marx family offered endless help to other refugees in London, and Marx's friendships were deep and close, if few: he was a deeply divisive personality, and it seems to say a lot that there were 11 people at his funeral, but 6,000 at the memorial of the second anniversary of his death.

Every time I got pissed off with Marx and Jenny, something tragic would happen - usually the death of a child or grandchild. This extract captures both reactions - from 1855, it documents the weeks after their six year old son, nicknamed Musch, died:

Marx called their situation agony, observing that even the "unremittingly awful" weather seemed one with the family's consuming grief. But there was one bright spot. They had learned that Jenny's uncle, the "cur" Marx had hoped would die earlier, finally died. With his passing they anticipated an inheritance of at least one hundred pounds, enough to see them through the year if they stayed within a budget. The inheritance, though, was bittersweet. Had it come earlier, who knows what could have been done to save Musch?

At two thirds the length (Gabriel could have, for example, sacrificed some of the repeated references to Jenny and her daughters' beauty, Marx's appearance) this could have been a very interesting book. And on quick reflection, it occurs to me that I would have enjoyed a dual biography of Marcx and Engels more (although I doubt it would have been as easy a sell for the publishers). I've learned a lot, but I've not enjoyed the process much, and I'm really just rather relieved it's over.
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Chrissie
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May 24, 2014
I have decided to not continue with Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. It is not a bad book, but it deals primarily with Marx and his philosophy, not his family relationships nor his personality. It is very factual, a bit dry, filled with quotes and footnotes, a good history book. I read 20% and felt it was not giving me what I personally was looking for - who was he as a person?

My husband is going to read it instead, and then we can discuss it.

I have removed it from my "relationships" shelf. Now you know why.
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Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

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Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution Kindle Edition

by Mary Gabriel (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 147 ratings 4.3 on Goodreads 754 ratings

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Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, Love and Capital reveals the rarely glimpsed and heartbreakingly human side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death.

Drawing upon previously unpublished material, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel tells the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. Through it, we see Karl as never before: a devoted father and husband, a prankster who loved a party, a dreadful procrastinator, freeloader, and man of wild enthusiasms -- one of which would almost destroy his marriage. Through years of desperate struggle, Jenny's love for Karl would be tested again and again as she waited for him to finish his masterpiece, Capital.

An epic narrative that stretches over decades to recount Karl and Jenny's story against the backdrop of Europe's Nineteenth Century, Love andCapital is a surprising and magisterial account of romance and revolution -- and of one of the great love stories of all time.

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"Mary Gabriel brings the tragic Marx family saga blazingly to life for a new generation of readers. She also makes a compelling argument that, following the demise of communism in Eastern Europe and the economic meltdown of Western capitalism, the economic analysis of Marx and Engels has a continuing relevance in the 21st century."―Gillian Gill, author of We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals

"Love and Capital is a huge, often gripping book. It gives an entertaining and balanced portrait of Marx, Engels, their colorful milieu of exiles, freaks and revolutionaries, and the little-known Marx family, dominated by Karl's political obsession. It also details illicit love affairs, the deaths of children and financial struggles, all based on vast research and narrated with empathetic passion...[It's] enjoyable...because of the details of family life and family politics that Gabriel offers up - her vivid portrait of a struggling, obsessional bohemian intellectual in the capitals of mid-19th-century Europe."―Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times Book Review

"Mary Gabriel provides a fresh approach to this oft-examined topic... a gripping tale of intellectual abundance coupled with physical poverty."―Jennifer Siegel, Wall Street Journal

"Those interested in European political development of the 19th and 20th centuries will be fascinated by the story of the monocled, bearded, poverty-stricken lecturer on economics and his small, powerless audiences of refugees."―Carl Hartman, Associated Press

"Beautifully written...The particular attraction of Love and Capital resides in the book's unsparing portrait of a brilliant man who would never claim responsibility for his own failures when he could easily fob them off on financial, familial, or political obstacles."―Michael Washburn, Boston Globe

"Love and Capital, which was nominated for a National Book Award, is also a thrilling story, heroically researched, with passages on every page so startling, exact, moving or perceptive that I wanted to quote them all. Hard to imagine that a weighty book on Karl Marx could be a page-turner, but this one is."―Elaine Showalter, The Washington Post

"Love and Capital is a page turner, an erudite, sensitive look at the world-changing man and, most of all, the overlooked women in his life, who sacrificed much happiness to help him evangelize his vision of class equality."―Slate

"Absorbing, affectionate and altogether exemplary."―Craig Seligman, Bloomberg News

"A magisterial account of the lives of Karl Marx and his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, remarkable for the ease with which it moves between the domestic and the political spheres...Gabriel offers us the human, family side of a character more usually seen as a calculating theoretician, and in doing so offers an intimate glimpse into the trials, tribulations, and passions of a man who, more than any other thinker, has shaped our modern notions of work, money, and social relations."―Publishers Weekly

"[Gabriel] offers a rich, humanizing portrait of the Marx family....A saga as richly realized as a fine Victorian novel."―Kirkus Reviews

"A serious and tremendously well-researched biography of a remarkable family who worked together to change the world... Mary Gabriel tells their story with great empathy and verve...to illuminate what Karl called his "microscopic world" of home and family. Gabriel also provides plenty of excursions into the "macroscopic world" of 19th-century revolutionary politics, as well as some lucid explanations of Karl's earthshaking ideas."―Mark Doyle, Bookpage

"This is the first seriously researched study of the relationship-the passionate love story-between the philosopher and his wife, Jenny von Westphalen...Gabriel draws heavily upon extensive Marx family correspondence to create a compelling story of love and heartbreak, following the Marx family across Europe through hard times and tragedy. She reveals not only the intellectual and revolutionary Karl Marx, but also the husband, father, and very human being...Recommended for serious general and specialist readers interested in understanding Karl Marx more deeply, the development of Marxist doctrine, and humanized 19th-century European history."―Leslie Lewis, Library Journal

"Gabriel blends Marx's radical political activities and summaries of his major writings into an unblinking account of his marriage in a book-lengthening strategy that eventuates in much minutiae of socialist history while still showing the causes of the Marxes' chronic marital crisis... Gabriel's comprehensive research yields a new standard work about the private Marx."―Gilbert Taylor, Booklist

About the Author

Mary Gabriel is the author of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as of Ninth Street Women, Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored, and The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone. She worked in Washington and London as a Reuters editor for nearly two decades and lives in Ireland.

Love and Capital

Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a RevolutionBy Gabriel, Mary

Little, Brown and Company

ISBN: 9780316066112

Prologue: London, 1851

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery

—Karl Marx

IN THE IMPENETRABLE fog they appeared as ghosts. Haunting the doors and alleyways along Soho’s Dean Street, they had come to London by the tens of thousands—Queen Victoria’s London, the richest city in the world. Generous, liberal, it had signaled like a beacon in the black and roiling North Sea waters, offering sanctuary to the unfortunate and the friendless. The earliest among them had been the Irish fleeing poverty and famine, but after continent-wide revolts, Germans, French, Hungarians, and Italians dressed in the outlandish costumes of their homelands disgorged onto London’s streets by the boatload. These were political refugees on the run after failed attempts to topple monarchs and win the most basic freedoms. Now, in the lashing rain and bitter cold, the very notion of battling for one’s rights would have seemed preposterous. The beacon that was London had proved a mirage; the city had opened its doors but offered them nothing. They were starving.

Day and night a cacophony of anguished voices strained to be heard amid the din of the capital. To survive, the newcomers sold what they could—scraps of cloth, buttons, shoelaces. Most often, however, they sold themselves, by the hour or by the day, in labor or prostitution. These men and women wore their despair like a rough cloak, the misery driving some of the industrious among them to crime. Carts ferrying steaming carcasses of meat and pungent cheeses destined for richer districts picked up speed through the neighborhoods of Soho Square and St. Giles to avoid their notorious thieves and cutthroats. But in reality, most of the refugees were too weak to fight or steal. They had made the long journey to England brimming with hope; what remained of those dreams was all they had left to sustain them.

In a two-room attic three stories above Dean Street, an obscure thirty-three-year-old Prussian exile sat busily declaring war on the very system that condemned those below to their wretched existence. He made no attempt to conceal his purpose. Hunched over his family’s only table, piled high with sewing, toys, broken cups, and other debris, he scribbled out a blueprint for revolution. He was oblivious to the domestic hubbub around him or the children who, having made his bulky figure part of their game, clambered up his back.

In rooms throughout England men of vision were similarly hard at work: Darwin was considering barnacles, Dickens had just given birth to his favorite offspring David Copperfield, and Bazalgette was imagining the vast underground sewage network that would flush away London’s deadly waste. And in this room in Soho, cigar clenched in his teeth, Karl Marx plotted the overthrow of kings and capitalists.

Marx’s revolution would not be the kind he mocked as beer-house bluster, advocated by émigrés in secret societies where they divided the spoils of a war won in their imaginations. And it would not be the utopian uprising expounded by French socialists who dreamed about a model society without any notion of the tangible steps needed to construct it. No, his revolution would be rooted in the basic premise that one man did not have the right to exploit another, and that history moved in such a way that the exploited masses would one day triumph.

But Marx fully understood that those masses did not even recognize themselves as having a political voice, much less power. They also had no conception of how the economic or political system worked. Marx was convinced that if he could describe the historical path that led to conditions in the midnineteenth century, and thus reveal the mysteries of capitalism, he would provide a theoretical foundation on which to build a new, classless society. Without that kind of foundation, the result would be chaos. In the meantime his own family would have to sacrifice; until he finished his book, Capital, they would have to do without.

In fact Marx’s young family was already well acquainted with want. The distance between the Marxes and those less fortunate on the street was much less than the three stories that separated them. By 1851, when Marx began writing his book, disease resulting from deprivation had killed two of his children, their small bodies laid out in paupers’ coffins in the very rooms where the other children ate and played. His wife, Jenny, a Prussian baron’s daughter celebrated for her beauty, was reduced to pawning the family’s belongings, from silver to shoes, to pay off creditors who hammered relentlessly at their door. And Marx’s rascally son Edgar readily absorbed the lessons of the street from poor Irish children who taught him how to sing and then taught him how to steal.

But most worrisome of all for Jenny and Marx were their daughters. The men who visited their father day and night were nearly all fugitives. The children rarely had a place to play that was not crowded with exiles who fogged the room with cigar and pipe smoke, and filled their ears with coarse talk and revolutionary ideas. Edgar thrived in that environment. He relished the stories of drunken escapades and, to Marx’s joy, bellowed at top volume the rebel songs his father’s friends taught him. But both parents knew the girls’ only hope of escaping a lifetime of poverty was a bourgeois upbringing in the company of genteel young women. No matter how committed they were to the cause, neither Marx nor Jenny wanted to see their daughters condemned to a life with the kind of men who climbed the narrow Dean Street steps, arriving at their door with empty stomachs but heads full of radical dreams.

Jenny cursed the fates that condemned her children to a life of indigence in a miserable flat full of someone else’s broken furniture. But as bad as it was, she was also terrified that one more missed payment to the landlord might force the family onto the street below. There was but a vapor of income, a vacuum of savings; their very survival depended on the kindness of a friend or the mercy of a shopkeeper.

Marx assured Jenny that she and the children would not have to endure such suffering forever. Once his book was published, they would be flush and the world would thank them for their selflessness. In a rush of optimism in April 1851, Marx told his closest friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, “I am so far advanced that I will have finished the whole economic shit in five weeks time.” In fact Capital was not finished for another sixteen years, and when it was published, far from sparking the revolt of the workingman, it caused barely a ripple.

The Marx family sacrificed everything for that ignored masterwork. Jenny buried four of her seven children, saw her three surviving daughters robbed of anything approaching a proper girlhood, had her once lovely face ravaged by disease, and suffered the ultimate betrayal when Karl fathered a child by another woman. She did not live to see her daughters’ final sad chapters—two of the three committed suicide.

In the end, all the family owned—all it would ever own—was Marx’s ideas, which for most of their lives existed solely as a storm brewing inside his turbulent brain, and which almost no one else acknowledged or even understood. Yet as improbable as it might have seemed during those years of hunger, Marx did what he set out to do: he changed the world.

Part I

Marx and the Baron’s Daughter

Trier, Germany, 1835

She required a true passion to relish, and above all some interesting weakness to protect and support

—Honoré de Balzac

JENNY VON WESTPHALEN was the most desirable young woman in Trier.

There were others, to be sure, from much wealthier families, whose fathers had attained higher ranking among the nobility. And no doubt there were some who were considered more physically attractive. But it was generally agreed there was no one who combined such rare beauty with such a vibrant wit and intellect, as well as a respectably high social standing among the local aristocracy—both those born to it and the new class of men who had earned it. Her father, Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, was Trier’s government councilor, which made him the leading Prussian authority and highest paid official in the town of twelve thousand, nestled like a fairy village on the banks of the Mosel. Ludwig’s father had been ennobled for his service in the Seven Years’ War and had married the daughter of a Scottish government minister who was descended from the Earls of Argyll and Angus. It was to this Scottish grandmother that Jenny owed her first name, her green eyes and dark auburn hair, and also the rebellious streak that gave her features fire: Archibald Argyll was a Scottish freedom fighter beheaded in Edinburgh, and another relative, the reformer George Wishart, was burned at the stake in that same city.

In 1831, however, far from being a political rebel, seventeen-year-old Jenny was a fixture at the elaborate balls around Trier, where women dazzled in their gowns and elegantly arranged coiffures while men attempted to seduce them with finely cut evening coats and exquisite manners, but most of all with their most prized commodity, their wealth. It was a candlelit marketplace where young ladies were bought and sold, and Jenny danced from partner to partner, fully aware of the value of her appearance. The social expectations and boundaries were unmistakably clear—a velvet rope separated aristocrats like Jenny from other elements on the dance floor.

In a letter to their parents in April, her half brother Ferdinand remarked on the numerous men who courted her but said Jenny exhibited appropriate reserve. This changed, however, at a party that summer. There Jenny met a young lieutenant, Karl von Pannewitz, who ended an evening of intimacies in a fiery passion, asking for her hand in marriage. Jenny surprised her family, especially her father and the protective Ferdinand, by saying yes. It was a rash decision that she quickly regretted: within months she violated social protocol and broke her engagement.

News of the scandal spread through Trier. Ferdinand’s wife, Louise, described Jenny in December as shut off from the world, cold, uncommunicative, and withdrawn while her father negotiated an end to the affair. But by Christmas Eve, Jenny’s spirits had returned, and the entire family seemed happy to put the failed romance behind them. In a letter to her parents, Louise expressed shock and disapproval at what she called the strangely lavish festivities at the Westphalen home. “There must be no feelings at all in Jenny’s nature, otherwise she would have strongly rejected such an inappropriate festivity, alone due to sympathy for her unhappy (former) fiancé…. How long will it take until the first successor that comes along will replace Mr. von Pannewitz… the possible candidates have been made a bit shy by the treatment that befell him.”

By first accepting and then ending the engagement, however, Jenny had in fact temporarily exorcised the demon marriage that possessed her peers. She returned to the social circuit, but there were now no special men to attract gossip or the notice of her family. Instead, under the tutelage of her father, she began a program of study—a heady mix of the Romantics and a new utopian philosophy from France called socialism. Jenny particularly immersed herself in the former, dominated as it was by German authors, musicians, and philosophers. For them the highest good was to live for one’s ideals, to reject all that impinged upon one’s freedom, and—most important—to create, whether that creation be a new philosophy, a work of art, or a better way for men to interact with one another. It was not even necessary to succeed; the critical thing was to follow a dream to its conclusion, no matter the cost. Light, previously seen as emanating from a distant deity, became internal; man’s personal quest was now divine.

For Jenny, attempting to recover from her seemingly tiny rebellion against her engagement (which at that time in that society would have been a major revolt), Romanticism was heroic and exhilarating. And beyond her immediate circumstances, she saw another reason to embrace the movement: some of the Romantics espoused equal rights for women. German philosopher Immanuel Kant had declared, “The man who stands in dependence on another is no longer a man at all, he has lost his standing, he is nothing but the possession of another man.” Applying Kant’s statement to women, that possession was multiplied a hundredfold. The Romantics therefore offered nothing less than the prospect of true freedom for men and women—freedom not only to break rigid social bonds but to ultimately challenge the kings who had ruled virtually unchecked for centuries because they claimed to be God’s emissaries on earth.

By her eighteenth birthday, in February 1832, Jenny had begun absorbing these lessons at the very time the world around her seemed to be dividing into two camps—those who wanted to force the kings and their ministers to better serve a changing society, and those who wanted to protect the status quo. That division was evident even in her family: though a Prussian official, Jenny’s father admired Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon, the founder of French socialism. The father’s passions would inspire his daughter, though he could never have foreseen how much.

Ludwig von Westphalen had long before been introduced to the French credo of equality and fraternity. He was eight years old when Napoleon won control of western Prussia, where Ludwig lived. With that conquest the lessons of the 1789 French Revolution and the Napoleonic Code were enshrined in the region, including equality before the law, individual rights, religious tolerance, the abolition of serfdom, and standardized taxation. But the French influence in western Prussia went well beyond the way society functioned at that time; it spoke to a changed future. French Revolutionary and Enlightenment philosophers believed in the inherent goodness of men and held that they would create a better society if they were freed from leaders who kept them ignorant in order to retain control. In this new order, achievement would be based on merit, not birth—a doctrine with enormous appeal to an emerging business class.

As with the imposition of any foreign laws, however, the citizens of the occupied region grew resentful, and many worked to defeat the French. In 1813 Ludwig, who was among the agitators, was convicted of treason and sentenced to two years in a Saxon fortress. He was released soon after sentencing, however, when Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig, and though Ludwig had seemingly turned against the French, he, like many of his western Prussian countrymen, continued to practice their way of thinking.

In 1830 trouble again emanated from France. An uprising that July overthrew King Charles X after he ignored the demands of the new grand bourgeoisie—bankers, bureaucrats, and industrialists whose power derived from money, not necessarily titles or land—and tried to undo steps his predecessor had taken toward granting the people a limited constitution. Charles was replaced by the “Citizen King,” Louis-Philippe, whom French historian Alexis de Tocqueville described as seeking to “drown revolutionary passion in the love of material enjoyment.” The bourgeoisie and educated classes throughout Europe were inspired by this French monarch, who saw the virtue in extending some freedoms in order to increase the flow of cash through France’s economy. These admirers soon took to the streets clamoring for reform in their own countries.

The subsequent revolts that year were in the main put down quickly and savagely, most notably in Poland. But there were some lasting victories: Belgium won independence from Holland, and significant changes occurred below the state level, where important new players emerged. Leading the charge were the grand bourgeoisie, whose members believed a liberal, industrial society inevitable. Also appearing was a previously unrecognized army of laborers, the proletariat, whose hands would actually build the new industrial world. And the French revolt was the first fought by socialists, then a middle-class movement that identified man as a member of a broader society, with all the responsibilities for his fellow man that this entailed.

In this early manifestation, socialism was a benign philosophy, reassuringly Christian for Catholic Frenchmen. Outside France, however, it and the swelling chorus calling for change raised alarms. Fearful German leaders responded to events on their western border with brutal repression. Throughout the thirty-nine states, dominated by Prussia and Austria, that fell under the German Confederation (or “Bund”), doors to increased freedom, development, and opportunity slammed shut with an iron finality, the nobility unwilling to relinquish one bit of its privileged status.

Nevertheless a group calling itself Young Germany agitated for more rights, tapping into long-simmering resentment in a population that felt betrayed by Prussia’s king Friedrich Wilhelm III, who fifteen years earlier had dangled the promise of a constitution if the people helped defeat Napoleon. The people had answered his call to arms, the rising business class helped finance the battle for the perennially cash-poor aristocrats, and Napoleon was defeated. But the Bundestag that emerged after 1815 was a federal assembly of kings and princes—or, as one observer called it, “a mutual insurance society of despotic rulers.” They built statues to fallen liberation fighters but did not reward the living with reform. Indeed, those rulers used their powers to further suppress dissent, instituting a crackdown on already limited freedoms. Riots erupted and sporadic violence lasted for almost a year as agitators were hunted down and arrested.

Jenny’s half brother Ferdinand was fifteen years her senior and the son of Ludwig’s late first wife, Lissette. He was as conservative as his father was liberal. In 1832 Ferdinand was building a career as a Prussian government official and a proud servant of the king. His father, however, was studying the very socialists the government wanted to suppress. In them Ludwig von Westphalen heard the familiar call of fraternité et égalité of his youth. He found merit not only in the coherence of the socialist ideal, but justification for its implementation in the street: the number of poor in Trier had grown dramatically, partly as a result of trade and tariff reforms. By 1830, one in four residents was said to be dependent on charity, and all the usual social maladies associated with extreme poverty surfaced—crime, begging, prostitution, and contagious disease. Ludwig believed society could not simply let people fail, it had a responsibility to alleviate such suffering. He began proselytizing those beliefs to anyone who would listen. Besides Jenny, his most eager student was the son of a colleague. The boy’s name was Karl Marx.

In 1832 Marx was fourteen and attended the state-run Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium along with Ludwig’s youngest son, Edgar. Though Karl had shown an aptitude for Greek, Latin, and German, he was weak in math and history, and did not stand out particularly among his classmates. He had a lisp, which he struggled to overcome and which may have made him shy. Under Ludwig’s guidance, however, he developed a passion for literature, especially Shakespeare and the German Romantics Schiller and Goethe. Marx also began to absorb the early utopian socialist ideas, which in those days were as fanciful as the plays and poetry he devoured. Sixty-two-year-old Ludwig and his young friend roamed the hills above the wide and languid Mosel River, through forests of towering pines, discussing the latest thinking. Marx remembered those times as some of the happiest in his life. He was treated as a man and an intellectual by a learned and distinguished aristocrat. Ludwig apparently also delighted in their talks, because they continued for years. Given Marx’s middling academic performance, Ludwig may have been surprised at how quickly the boy at his side absorbed his lessons, but he shouldn’t have been: for centuries—as far back as fourteenth-century Italy—Marx’s family tree on both sides included some of the most prominent rabbis in Europe. If the Westphalens descended from Prussian and Scottish men of action, Marx descended from a line of Jewish thinkers whose authority in religion extended into politics.

In Trier the Marx family had included rabbis since 1693. One, on Karl’s father’s side, was Joshua Heschel Lvov, who in 1765, several years before the American War of Independence and more than two decades before the French Revolution, wrote Responsa: The Face of the Moon, which advocated democratic principles. So great was his reputation that it was said no important decision was made in the Jewish world at that time without Lvov’s opinion. Karl’s grandfather, Meyer Halevi, who died in 1804, was known in Trier as Marx Levi and eventually adopted the surname Marx after he became the city’s rabbi. And the family’s rabbinical tradition continued into Karl’s own boyhood: his uncle Samuel was senior rabbi of Trier until 1827, and Karl’s maternal grandfather was a rabbi in Nijmegen in Holland. These men’s duties combined the spiritual and the practical; as their communities’ rafts amid waves of social change, they were effectively the civic authorities for Jews.

Before and after the French occupation of western Prussia, Jews were often looked upon with suspicion, if not open hostility, as outsiders in the Christian kingdom. But during the period from 1806 to 1813, when the region was under French control, a sliver of equality was extended to Jews. Heschel Marx, Karl’s father, took advantage of the opportunity to get legal training and become the first Jewish lawyer in Trier, taking his place in civil society and even serving as president of the local bar association. He, like Ludwig von Westphalen, was perhaps more French in his thinking than Prussian. He knew Voltaire and Rousseau by heart, and no doubt saw his future through their rational lens, expecting it would be free of the fear and prejudice that had prevented Jews from entering a profession or government service. But with the defeat of Napoleon, the Prussian government repealed the rights given to Jews and in 1815 officially excluded them from public office. A year later the government banned Jews from the legal profession. Only three men in Prussia’s westernmost province, the Rhineland, were affected by the ruling. Heschel Marx was one of them, and thus forced to decide whether to convert to Christianity and continue practicing law or remain a Jew. He chose his profession. In 1817, at the age of thirty-five, Heschel became a Lutheran named Heinrich Marx.

At that time Heinrich had been married for three years to Henrietta Presburg, who was neither educated nor cultured but came from a wealthy Jewish family in Holland. The couple already had two children, and a year later, in 1818, they had another boy, this one named Karl. Out of respect, Henrietta did not convert while her parents were alive, and the children did not do so until 1824. Once again conversion was not a religious decision but a practical one: Karl, who was six that year, could not attend public school as a Jew.

Thus, young Karl grew up in the crosscurrents of conflicting cultures. He was Lutheran in a Jewish household in an overwhelmingly Catholic city, raised by a father and tutored by a mentor, both of whom outwardly served the Prussian crown and abided by its repressive laws while secretly admiring the French philosophers who championed individual liberty—and, more treacherously in the case of Westphalen, their radical offspring, the socialists.

Many biographers have said the Marx family and the Westphalens were neighbors. Heinrich’s family did briefly live several streets away from the Westphalens the year Karl was born. But the Marxes then purchased a smaller home in 1819 on Simeonstrasse, just off Trier’s bustling market square and yards from the massive Roman edifice the Porta Nigra, a dark concretion that seemed to groan under the weight of its sixteen centuries. The Westphalens lived south, across town, nearer the river on Neustrasse, in a tall house with elegant long windows that gave passersby a glimpse into the rich life inside.

The two households were divided by both distance and culture. The Westphalen home sparkled in a whirl of social activity, with Dante, Shakespeare, and Homer frequently introduced to the festivities by Ludwig (who could recite Homer from memory and the Bard in English), and Latin and French floated into conversation as naturally as if they were mere extensions of the family’s native German. Guests were entertained with dramatic sketches and poetry as the household staff laid the table for sumptuous dinners that stretched late into the evening and spilled out noisily onto the street as guests rattled away in liveried carriages.

By contrast the Marx home, which by 1832 had grown to include eight children, was still. Karl’s father was a cautious intellectual, one who spent his time reading rather than reciting, while his mother spoke German poorly and with a heavy Dutch accent. She was not part of Trier society and appeared not to have any inclination to extend her world beyond the immediate needs of her family. The home was loving but not particularly joyous, moderately prosperous—Heinrich’s hard work and the family’s thrift had allowed them to buy two small vineyards—but without a sense of abundance. Marx respected his father, even if he often rebelled against his advice. But from an early age his relations with his doting mother were strained. He seemed to blame her for the gloom that pervaded the household.

Despite the differences between the two families, however, their lives were intertwined. Ludwig von Westphalen and Heinrich Marx were among the city’s mere two hundred Protestants and belonged to the same select social and professional clubs. Karl Marx and Edgar von Westphalen were classmates; in fact Edgar was the only lasting friend Karl made in school. And Sophie Marx, Karl’s oldest and closest sister, was friends with Jenny von Westphalen. The children roamed from one house to the other, and it may have been Karl’s friendship with Edgar, rather than his relationship with Jenny’s father, that first brought him to her attention. Edgar, who was five years younger than Jenny, was her only full sibling, and she confided to a friend many years later that he was “the idol of my childhood… my sole beloved companion.”

Edgar was fine featured and handsome with unruly hair that suggested poet, but he was not an intellectual; he was boyishly reckless and therefore protected (and spoiled) by his parents and older sister. The relatively studious Marx may have been seen as a good influence. Whatever the case, Karl was quickly absorbed into the family: by Edgar, who would become Marx’s first disciple; by Ludwig, who was charmed by the young man’s remarkable brain; and by Jenny, who could not have remained indifferent to this teenager who so impressed the two men she loved most.

In 1833 and 1834 the government’s crackdown on dissent struck close to the two families. Up to that point, schools in Prussia had been left remarkably free of official interference as long as the debates therein were about German philosophy. (The government hoped to counter the influence of corrupt French ideas with healthy German ones.) But after the death in 1831 of Germany’s greatest living scholar, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, some of his followers drifted into more dangerous territory, focusing on Hegel’s theory that change was inevitable. Prussian officials began looking more closely at universities and schools to root out radicals who might interpret “change” to mean “political change.” A government spy’s report on Trier identified some of the teachers at Marx’s school as too liberal, saying their students read banned literature and wrote political poetry. Eventually one boy was arrested and a popular headmaster sidelined.

In the midst of this, Marx’s father brushed up against the government over a speech he delivered at a club to which he and Ludwig von Westphalen belonged. The Casino Club, Trier’s most exclusive private association of professional, military, and business men, met in January 1834 to honor liberal members of the Rhineland diet (provincial assembly). Heinrich Marx had helped organize the gathering and addressed the group, thanking the king for allowing the diet to meet as a representative body of the people and applauding him for listening to the wishes of his subjects. But while his speech was sincere, it was interpreted as ironic and raised alarms among government officials. Weeks later the club met again, and this time the speeches (some in tribute to the 1830 French uprising) gave way to banned “songs of freedom,” among them France’s “Marseillaise,” which monarchies considered an incitement to revolt tantamount to raising a red flag. What alarmed officials was not only who sang the rebel songs—the pillars of the Trier community—but that they knew the lyrics by heart. The “frenzy of revolutionary spirit” (as described by a military officer at the event) could not be dismissed as an aberration. The club was put under surveillance and Heinrich Marx regarded with suspicion by the government.

Karl was an impressionable sixteen-year-old when his headmaster was demoted and his law-abiding father unjustifiably scrutinized. It is easy to imagine the impact the state’s repression would have had on him. If the notions of freedom of speech and equality before the law were previously abstract concepts for him, they were so no longer. Marx now experienced at first hand the Berlin government’s terrifying and seemingly arbitrary reach, and the anger and indignity a man felt when he realized he was powerless to confront it.

Marx scholar Hal Draper has noted that Prussia’s heavy-handed control had the unintended consequence of making “revolutionaries of very mild reformers.” Indeed, government efforts to suppress talk of democracy and socialism only ensured that the concepts were discussed—if sometimes in whispers—from the schoolhouse to the dinner table, across the social spectrum. And the more they were discussed, the less they were viewed as French imports; they became ideas that had relevance and representatives in Germany.

In 1835 a pamphlet by the father of German socialism, Ludwig Gall, appeared in Trier. It described society as divided between laborers, who produced all the wealth, and a ruling class, who reaped all the benefits. Heinrich Heine had become the most popular poet in Germany, despite a ban on his work. He had moved to Paris after the government issued a warrant for his arrest (one minister called for his execution), and his lamentations on this forced exile were enthusiastically copied and read in schools and universities where students were awakening to the potential of organized dissent.

Not surprisingly the atmosphere at the Westphalen home was charged. Jenny, Edgar, and Karl had all been schooled not only in the Romantics, who screamed out to them to recognize and confront injustice, but also the socialists, who blamed the ills of society in part on an exploitative new economic system that drove farmers off their land and artisans into factories. Germany still lagged far behind Britain in industrial development, but the Rhineland was its most industrialized area, and the effects could be seen in the new wealth on display in Trier and the new poverty. Marx needed only to look around to see the shapes that cast the shadows.

In 1835 Karl, now seventeen, prepared to leave Trier for university. In a school essay on choosing a career he carefully examined the allure of ambition, the inadequacy of his own experience, and what he called “relations in society,” which had already limited his aspirations to some extent because of his father’s social position. Concluding, he wrote:

The chief guide which must direct us in the choice of a profession is the welfare of mankind and our own perfection… man’s nature is so constituted that he can attain his own perfection only by working for the perfection, for the good, of his fellow men…. If he works only for himself, he may perhaps become a famous man of learning, a great sage, an excellent poet, but he can never be a perfect, truly great man….

If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.

That was the Romantic rebel Jenny von Westphalen fell in love with. This provincial man-child, who dared to declare himself a tool for the improvement of all mankind, embodied the heroes in the books her father gave her—he was Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister and Schiller’s Karl von Moor, and he would be Shelley’s Prometheus, chained to a precipice because he dared to challenge a tyrannical god. In the young man four years her junior who stood before her bursting with self-confidence and courage, absolutely convinced of the powers of his intellect (even if he wasn’t sure where those considerable powers and that intellect would take him), she recognized her idol.

Despite scattered calls for gender equality, the most an early-nineteenth-century woman with Romantic aspirations could hope for was to bravely, and with much self-denial, provide emotional and domestic support to the man who chose to pursue his bold dreams. Such was the commitment Jenny made to herself and Karl. It is not known whether they declared their love for each other that summer before he left Trier for the university in Bonn, but within a year they had: in 1836 Jenny von Westphalen secretly agreed to marry Karl Marx.

Berlin, 1838

Set me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Germany shall spring a republic compared to which Rome and Sparta will be but as nunneries

—Friedrich von Schiller

MARX’S FIRST YEAR at university was drowned in alcohol. The seventeen-year-old who left Trier declaring himself ready to sacrifice all for the good of mankind rented the most expensive student apartment available in Bonn, joined the university’s Poetry Club, and became president of the bourgeois Tavern Club. He grew a wispy beard, wore his black curly hair long and disheveled, and on one occasion was imprisoned overnight for drunken rowdiness. He was threatened with arrest for carrying a pistol and fought saber duels against members of a rival aristocratic club. He also spent freely amid his champagne-quaffing fellow students. The few letters he sent home were generally appeals for money as he sank deeper and deeper into debt.

That was not the start Marx’s father had envisioned for his son. Karl was the first member of his family to attend university, and the day he left for school, on October 15, 1835, the entire clan went to the riverboat at four in the morning to bid him farewell. As the oldest boy, he represented the Marxes’ future: he would be the support—moral and financial—for his five sisters and his mother, and the rock upon which Heinrich Marx’s legacy would be built. He would also be the first man in the family to construct a life completely outside the confines of the Jewish tradition, and his father saw avenues of opportunity from law to literature to politics awaiting him. This proud father told Marx shortly after the young man arrived in Bonn, “I should like to see in you what perhaps I could have become, if I had come into the world with equally favorable prospects. You can fulfill or destroy my best hopes.”

But it is unlikely Marx was listening as he plunged into his new student life. He enrolled in the law faculty, signing up for ten courses for the year. He was drawn to philosophy and literature, and he had discovered his voice as a poet. His father worried that in addition to an overly active social life, he was taking on too much academically, and warned, “There is no more lamentable being than a sickly scholar.” He also frankly said he did not understand Marx’s poetry: “In short, give me the key, I admit that this is beyond me.” And he wondered incredulously, “is dueling then so closely interwoven with philosophy?”

Heinrich was at times terrified by the unbridled egotism that impelled his son. He struggled to comprehend as he watched Karl lash out in disparate intellectual directions—he wanted to be a lawyer, a playwright, a poet, a theater critic. Both he and Henrietta implored their son to show restraint, out of regard for his health, his and their reputations, the family’s finances.

In the spring of 1836 Karl fought a saber duel and was cut above the eye. It was more a badge of honor than a serious injury, but it was enough to make his parents insist he leave Bonn and enroll at the more respected and serious University of Berlin. School officials at Bonn released him on August 22, 1836, with a letter noting his excellent or very diligent attention to his studies, but said by way of character reference, “He has incurred a punishment of one day’s detention for disturbing the peace by rowdiness and drunkenness at night…. Subsequently, he was accused of having carried prohibited weapons in Cologne.” To Karl’s credit, however, it was added that he had not engaged in any forbidden association—that is, political association—with his fellow students.

Jenny von Westphalen had no doubt been kept abreast of Marx’s antics by her friend Sophie Marx, whose postscripts to her father’s letters sounded breathless in anticipation of the next installment from her beloved brother. Karl’s adventures were wildly cosmopolitan and bold compared with life in Trier. If he was spending the family’s modest fortune in the meantime, so be it—living vicariously did not come cheap.

It had been only ten months since he set off from Trier, but the boy who left returned an eighteen-year-old man—more physical, more intellectual, and more exotic. Jenny too had changed. She was twenty-two and at the height of her beauty. The two who had known each other so well as family friends, and more intimately as students of Jenny’s father, were shy when they rediscovered each other. In a letter to Karl, recalling their encounter, Jenny wrote, “Oh, my darling, how you looked at me the first time like that and then quickly looked away, and then looked at me again, and I did the same, until at last we looked at each other for quite a long time and very deeply, and could no longer look away.”

Sometime between August and October, when Karl left for Berlin, the two became engaged. They told Marx’s family but not the Westphalens: there were so many possible objections on their side, from the difference in the couple’s ages to the fact that Karl had no money and no clear future. The unspoken objection, however, was social. In the rigid hierarchy of Prussian society it was permissible to associate across the stratosphere of the higher classes, but condescending to marry outside the aristocracy was a sacrifice most parents would not want their daughters to make. There was also the question of religion. Karl reacted furiously years later to the suggestion that his having been born a Jew impeded his marriage. But throughout his life Marx was regarded by friend and foe alike as Jewish, and it was unlikely his father’s conversion erased this heritage from the minds of Trier society. (In the Rhineland even marriage between Catholics and Protestants was controversial.) Heinrich Heine, a Jew who did not change religions, called conversion an “entry card into the culture of Europe.” It did not, however, guarantee acceptance.

Karl and Jenny, with the connivance of the Marx family (Heinrich Marx said he felt like a character in a romance novel), agreed to keep their engagement secret and not correspond directly until a way could be found to make the marriage palatable to Jenny’s parents. Fueled with a passion he said consumed him, Marx set out on a five-day journey by coach for Berlin, resolved to study diligently, find a career, and establish himself as an independent man and worthy husband. For her part, Jenny began her wait. She was no longer the seventeen-year-old who impetuously agreed to marry a military man, only to realize she had no interest in him beyond his appearance and skill on the dance floor. She was committed to Marx. Being forced to battle society to have him only made the affair more delicious.

Still, it would have helped considerably in persuading her parents to accept the match if Marx had distinguished himself at university, proving he was destined for the brilliant career Jenny knew awaited him. There is no doubt he understood that. But as would happen throughout their lives when Marx felt under pressure to produce or perform, he was paralyzed by distractions. There would always be one more book to study, some new data to digest, a language to learn in order to study crucial texts in the original. And in Berlin, Karl would find distractions to last a lifetime.

During his first term Marx succumbed to what one writer called the romantic “cult of isolated genius.” Perhaps it was a response to the size of the school—at two thousand students the university was nearly three times larger than the one in Bonn. Or it could have been Berlin: the city had about three hundred thousand residents and was the Bund’s second largest city after Vienna. Or Marx might simply have absorbed the academic culture in which he’d been immersed: Berlin was one of the most distinguished universities in Europe, and emphasized individual study and original research. Likely all of those factors, as well as Marx’s longing for Jenny, turned him into the haunted figure his father described in a fit of pique: “Disorderliness, musty excursions into all departments of knowledge, musty brooding under a gloomy oil-lamp; running wild in a scholar’s dressing-gown and with unkempt hair instead of running wild over a glass of beer; unsociable withdrawal with neglect of all decorum… in this workshop of senseless and inexpedient erudition.” Heinrich beseeched his son to straighten up. He tried to convince Karl of the poetry inherent in fulfilling one’s duty. But by then his son was already well beyond the reach of his father’s advice.

Marx explained what he called his “moment of transition” in a long letter to Heinrich written after his first year at Berlin, the only letter to his father from his university days to have survived.

Dear Father,

When I left you, a new world had come into existence for me, that of love, which in fact at the beginning was a passionately yearning and hopeless love. Even the journey to Berlin, which otherwise would have delighted me in the highest degree… left me cold. Indeed, it put me strikingly out of humor, for the rocks which I saw were not more rugged, more indomitable, than the emotions of my soul, the big towns not more lively than my blood, the inn meals not more extravagant, more indigestible, than the store of fantasies I carried with me, and, finally, no work of art was as beautiful as Jenny.

He described breaking off all personal relations in Berlin and throwing himself into study and creative experimentation. His first inclination was to write poetry, and he produced three volumes for Jenny, but he said they were inadequate in expressing the “extent of a longing that has no bounds.” Next he devoured the law and the classics. He studied criminal, civil, and canon law, translated into German the first two books of ancient Roman civil law, the Pandect, and wrote his own three-hundred-page philosophy of law. He translated part of Aristotle’s Rhetoric from the original Greek, the historian Tacitus’s Germania and the poet Ovid’s Songs of Sadness, or Tristia, from Latin. He also began to teach himself English and Italian, and wrote a humorous novel, Scorpion and Felix, and a Faust-inspired play, Oulanem. And yet, he said, despite these multitudinous pursuits, “at the end I emerged not much enriched.”

What in fact resulted was a physical and mental breakdown. A doctor ordered Marx to leave the city for a stay in the countryside. Taking his advice, Karl walked nearly four miles from the university southeast to the fishing village Stralau on the River Spree. There he found accommodations, went hunting with his landlord, and, he offhandedly told his father, “While I was ill I got to know Hegel from beginning to end, together with all of his disciples.” The German philosopher had been dead for six years, and though his star had waned slightly among the younger professors and students at the University of Berlin (where he had been a professor), if Marx was going to advance on his intellectual quest, he had to pass through Hegel.

The most basic premise of Hegel’s philosophy was that the history of mankind was the result of conflict. Two ideas clash and the result is a third idea, which in turn comes into conflict with another and gives birth to something new. The nature of life is therefore dynamic; change is at its very core. Hegel saw this as inevitable, and called it the dialectic. Though the root of the dialectical process was based on tension, this was actually reassuring, because it said, in effect, that conflict was not arbitrary but necessary to historical progress. Hegel’s dialectic gave conflict meaning—or, as Engels would say, “mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence.” Hegel also advanced the notion of the Geist, or Spirit, which he held pervaded a people grouped together by historical circumstances, and its alternative, alienation, which occurred when a man did not recognize himself in the greater world or his productive contribution to it.

Hegel’s eloquent philosophy dominated the Romantic era in Germany and spawned dozens of “Hegelians” who discussed his theories until they, as he would have expected, produced something new. It is easy to see how exciting the hope inherent in his dialectic would have been to the generation studying in Berlin, where the movement was headquartered. They had witnessed initial calls for reform repressed and basic freedoms reversed in favor of stasis. And yet they could see beyond their borders to the west, in France, Belgium, and England, that political, artistic, and economic advances were being made because kings were not afraid to allow their people to speak, write, and, in some cases, vote. They saw steel being turned into rails that sent trains screaming deep into virgin countryside at previously unheard-of speeds of sixty miles per hour, and they heard the crackle of electric current, which had produced the first battery and stimulated the invention of a new and seemingly magical way of communicating called a telegraph. Applying Hegel’s teachings to this new world, the Young Hegelians saw in his conflict theory the potential not just for change but for social revolution.

Hegel had made Berlin a magnet for restless souls from within Germany but also countries east, most notably Russia, whose people strained under the feudal yoke of an even more repressive system. When Marx regained his health and returned to Berlin from Stralau, his romantic isolation was over. He joined a group of Young Hegelians in the bohemian Doctors’ Club, where he combined two of his favorite activities—philosophical debate and drinking.

Marx’s difficult first months in Berlin were matched by Jenny’s back in Trier. Because they had agreed out of deference to her parents not to correspond, she fell victim to jealousy and presumed neglect. Imagining that Karl in faraway Berlin had forgotten her, she became ill, exhibiting a lethargy her parents believed was physical but Heinrich Marx identified as depression. (Karl used the news of Jenny’s illness as a partial excuse for his own breakdown.) Heinrich, who acted as epistolary go-between for the young lovers, was nearly as tormented as she. In letter after letter to his son he spoke of Karl’s sacred duty toward Jenny and how only his efforts to win people’s goodwill and favor would ensure that “she is exalted in her own eyes and the eyes of the world.” He described the “priceless sacrifice” Jenny had made when she agreed to become his wife, and added, “Woe to you, if ever in your life you could forget this!”

Karl answered with the three volumes of poetry he had written for Jenny, which he sent to her via his family at Christmas in 1836. The first two were called “The Book of Love,” and the third “The Book of Songs.” They were dedicated “To my dear, eternally beloved Jenny von Westphalen.” Years later Jenny, who kept the volumes, laughed at his adolescent expressions of passion, but that December, on receiving the verses as her first messages from Karl after months of silence, she wept tears of delight and pain. Karl’s sister Sophie assured Marx of Jenny’s love and said Jenny would gradually try to prepare her parents for the news of their engagement.

That preparation, however, was only a new source of torment. No letters exist from Jenny during this period, so we hear of her struggles only through Heinrich, whose correspondence with his son increasingly included not only admonitions for him to set his sights on a career, but also advice on how to court and soothe the troubled Jenny. On the one hand, he was an exceedingly loving father trying to rescue and guide what he saw as an intellectually and morally dissolute son. On the other, Heinrich himself was not unlike a disappointed, if necessarily distant, suitor who saw the object of his love offering her youth and beauty to an unworthy rival. In one particularly poignant (and prescient) letter to Karl in March 1837, Heinrich wrote:

At times my heart delights in thinking of you and your future. And yet at times I cannot rid myself of ideas which arouse in me sad forebodings and fear when I am struck as if by lightning by the thought: is your heart in accord with your head, your talents? Has it room for the earthly but gentler sentiments which in this vale of sorrow are so essentially consoling for a man of feeling? And since that heart is obviously animated and governed by a demon not granted to all men, is that demon heavenly or Faustian? Will you ever… ever be capable of truly human, domestic happiness? Will—and this doubt has no less tortured me recently since I have come to love a certain person like my own child—will you ever be capable of imparting happiness to those immediately around you?…

I note a striking phenomenon in Jenny. She, who is so wholly devoted to you with her childlike, pure disposition, betrays at times, involuntarily and against her will, a kind of fear, a fear laden with foreboding, which does not escape me, which I do not know how to explain, and all trace of which she tried to erase from my heart, as soon as I pointed it out to her. What does that mean, what can it be? I cannot explain it to myself, but unfortunately my experience does not allow me to be easily led astray.

Heinrich told Karl he had long hoped to see his son’s name held in high repute (and though he never mentioned it, he may have seen the alliance with Jenny as raising the entire family’s social status), but now he wanted only to know that his son was capable of love. “Only then would I find the happiness that for many years past I have dreamed of finding through you; otherwise I would see the finest aim of my life in ruins.” As for Jenny, he said, “only a lifetime full of tender love can compensate her for what she has already suffered…. It is chiefly regard for her that makes me wish so much that you will soon take a fortunate step forward in the world, because it would give her peace of mind… you see, the bewitching girl has turned my old head too, and I wish above all to see her calm and happy. Only you can do that and the aim is worthy of your undivided attention.”

But Marx’s attention was divided, between this romance—which he told his children years later made him a wild Roland in his desperation to see and hold his Jenny—and his new circle of friends among the Young Hegelians. It may have been the proximity of those friends, or the blind (one might say obsessional) dedication to things intellectual that he would exhibit all his life, but Marx seemed at least temporarily to have chosen his life in Berlin over his love in Trier.

Marx had been taken under the wing of Adolf Rutenberg, a geography teacher allegedly fired after being found drunk in the gutter but who was more likely relieved of his duties for writing provocative newspaper articles. Karl also fell under the influence of the radical theologian Bruno Bauer. Bauer picked up where an earlier follower of Hegel, David Friedrich Strauss, left off in his 1835 book, The Life of Jesus, which argued Christianity was based on a historical myth. Hegel had held that God, a rational force, directed the dialectic of history. The Young Hegelians disagreed. Harking back to the Romantics, they argued that man was the author of his own destiny, that it was not imposed upon him by an unseen, however benevolent, being. And, if one followed that train of thought, the next logical but dangerous conclusion would be that if God was not the puppet-master, the king was not activated by his hand. Instead the king was a mere man whose authority could be—and should be—challenged by other men.

This was political dynamite, and nineteen-year-old Marx was at the center of the debate. He had been quickly accepted as a leader among his peers, even though most of them were not peers at all but established professors and writers at least ten years his senior. (One of these elders said without equivocation that young Marx was Rousseau, Voltaire, Heine, and Hegel combined in one person.) In these fervent and subversive discussions Marx was developing the uncompromising style that would earn him so many enemies, while also beginning to formulate, fragment by tiny fragment, the philosophy that decades later would come to be known as Marxism. Karl must have felt himself on fire. Ludwig von Westphalen’s reading of the utopian socialists while he and Marx walked the hills of the Rhineland would have seemed like the recitations of fairy tales compared with the debate that rumbled like a storm through Berlin coffeehouses and beer halls.

The Karl Marx who was being hatched in that heady environment was known as Mohr. This was an allusion to his jet-black hair and dark complexion, but also a reference to Schiller’s murderous but charismatic Robin Hood–like character Karl von Moor in The Robbers, who led a band of brigands waging war on a corrupt aristocracy. For the rest of his life, all of Marx’s intimates would address him by that nickname.

Heinrich Marx, however, did not recognize this son, this Mohr, sensing only the growing distance between Karl, his family, and, he feared, Jenny. In August 1837 Heinrich wearily accused Karl of neglecting his home, where his eleven-year-old brother Eduard was gravely ill (he would die four months later), his mother was frantic with worry, and where Heinrich himself had been unwell for seven or eight months. He said he could not entirely rid himself “of the thought that you are not free from a little more egoism than is necessary for self preservation.” In December, still trying to get through to his distracted child, he spelled out Karl’s obligations in numbered points. Under category number 1, “Tasks of a young man,” it said regarding Jenny: “procure her a future worthy of her, in the real world, not in a smoke-filled room with a reeking oil-lamp at the side of a scholar grown wild.” Heinrich said Karl owed a great debt to Jenny’s father, who had consented that spring to the marriage despite much familial opposition. “For, in truth, thousands of parents would have refused their consent. And in moments of gloom your own father almost wishes they had done so, for the welfare of this angelic girl is all too dear to my heart.”

Angrily, Heinrich declared that he and Karl had “never had the pleasure of a rational correspondence” and he blamed his son, whom he described as self-consumed to the point of irreverence. He rejected a letter from Karl that contained a few lines and an extract from a diary entitled “The Visit” as a “crazy botch-work which merely testifies how you squander your talents and spend your nights giving birth to monsters.” And he accused “Herr Son” of spending more money in one year than the richest of men, mockingly asking how “a man who every week or two discovers a new system and has to tear up old works laboriously arrived at, how can he, I ask, worry about trifles?”

Heinrich’s fury was exacerbated by the knowledge that he was dying. He had pinned his life’s hopes on his son, but he would not live to see them realized, and worse than that, could not imagine that they ever would be. In his last full letter to Karl, in February 1838, Heinrich did not apologize for his irritation and said he was only laying down his arms at that point because he was too tired to fight. But he wanted Karl to know that the source of his anger was love: “Always believe, and never doubt, that you have the innermost place in my heart and that you are one of the most powerful levers in my life…. I am exhausted, dear Karl, and must close. I regret that I have not been able to write as I wanted to. I would have liked to embrace you with all my heart.”

Marx had not planned to visit Trier for Easter. He had already spent more money in Berlin than his father earned that year, and his parents agreed the five-day journey by mail coach would be too costly. But his father’s deteriorating health, reported in letters over the winter by his mother and sister, convinced Karl he had to return home. He did so in late April and stayed in Trier until May 7, shortly after his twentieth birthday. Heinrich died of tuberculosis and inflammation of the liver three days later and was buried on May 13.

Some biographers have accused Marx of inexcusable callousness toward his father, claiming he did not attend his funeral because he said he had better things to do. That is a misrepresentation of events. Having just left Trier, Karl did not return for the funeral because it would have been impossible to make it there on time, and in any case, he had said his good-byes. And while there are no letters from this period in which Marx described his loss, there is no doubt it was profound. Throughout his life Marx carried a daguerreotype image of his father in his breast pocket, and at Marx’s own death forty-five years later, Engels would place the worn photo in Marx’s grave.

With Heinrich gone, there were no more appeals from the Marx family for its gifted but wayward eldest son to stop dabbling in dangerous philosophy and become a man worthy of society’s respect. But a new, more critical voice emerged, this time from the Westphalen household, and it did not appeal, it threatened.

Continues...

Excerpted from

Love and Capital

Gabriel, Mary

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Paul Y. Gelman

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2011

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This is a book which merits the most prestigious prizes in biography, history or anything else. It was written by a master storyteller and researcher who has managed to do one thing which is extremely rare in books like this: to make the reader live and re-live the events and the characters populating it. Or, to put it in the words of Joseph Conrad: she lets you see it all.

It is a brilliant account of Karl Marx, his wife, Jenny and their family. It is about revolutions, about personal tragedies, about great ideas, about spies, intrigues, trials, socialism, communism, economics written in the style of a great Victorian novel. We get a vast picture about Marx, who was almost everything: a thinker, a journalist, a lover, a husband, a father and grandfather, a fighter who stood uo for his rights and beliefs, a philosopher, a procrastinator, a prankster, you name it. Marx was one of those individuals who managed to make his point in the unfolding of human history by spreading the creed of Communism. To put it in George Bernard Shaw's words: " Marx changed the mind of the world".

London was the place where most of the greatest personal tragedies occurred. The Marx flat in Soho was a refuge for revolutionaries and bohemians of all nationalities. The city's fog was so impenetrable the sun did not appear to rise. Thousands of horses plied London's muddy streets, and their smell mixed with the choking odor of human waste that arose from the cesspools in cellars where Londoners disposed of their night soil. For the Marx childern Soho was home, but they were not allowed out in the late afternoon or evening without escort, because of the many unsavory types who were to be found there. Here Marx begun instilling a love for for literature and language in his children at the earliest age. He used to read the children the great classices such as Dante, Shakespeare and Blazac and the Marx house washold was rich in things intellectual, "which likely helped make its complete lack of material comforts bearable".

One report, written by a Prussian spy who was sent to find out about Marx's deeds in Londodn wrote that " Marx lives in one of the worst quarters of London. He occupies two rooms...In the whole apartment there is not one clean and solid piece of furniture. Everything is broken down, tattered and torn...To sit down becomes a thoroughly dangerous business and if you sit down, you risk a pair of trousers".

After getting a reader's card at the British Museum Reading Room, Marx started writing his masterpiece, "Das Kapital", in which he foresaw antagonisms among capitalists, who would destroy one another in their pursuit of wealth by hungrily absorbing their competition to create monopolies and business empires stretching across countries and continents. While the laborer might be abused and exhausted, he was not without power and the very nature of capitalist production created a breeding ground for resistance. The second volume went to press in January 1885, eighteen years after Marx promised it to his publisher. During the interim he had written two complete manuscripts and six partial texts-all of them having been edited by Engels.

Marx's name and fame became known to the large public after the Franco-Prussian War and he was regarded as the evil architect of the Paris Commune, the father of revolution. Death threats and denunciations in papers were abundant in papers as far away as Chicago. It was Friedrich Engels, who worked at his father's textile factory in Manchester who would finance and support Marx and his family. He lived a double life, both businessman and revolutionary.

Marx died on March, 1883 and only eleven people attended his funeral in London. Marx's coffin bore two red wreaths and, as the small group stood around it, Engels reminded them of his friend's long career and his place in world history. Laura Lafargue, Marx's daughter lived with her husband in France and she was busy translating her father's and Engels's works, haunted by the death of her three children.

As Engels said, "He (Marx) was indeed what he called himself, a Revolutionist. The struggle for the emancipation of the class of wage-laborers from the fetters of the present capitalistic system of economic production, was his real element. And no more active combatant than he ever existed".

This book is also about the love story and romance between Karl and his wife, their endless economic hardships and personal tragedies, losses, financial troubles and their many diseases. It all happenned in London, Paris, Bruxelles and Trier in Germany-all against the backdrop of Europe's nineteenth century, a period of conspirators, kings, secret societies, revolutions, where plots, rivalries and personal dramas took place. Poverty, destitution and social ostracism were part of the Marx family everywhere. To a great extent, this is also a history of ideas, of philosophers,of writers and poets who were part of Marx's life, among them the great Heine.

Indeed, this is a story about love and revolution. Read it and you will do, I am certain, what I did: I started rereading it.

Bravissimo, Mary Gabriel!

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Bakari Chavanu

5.0 out of 5 stars Well written, engaging, but sad story for grand thinker

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2014

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"The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: They taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.” V.I. Lenin, excerpt from a speech read at the funeral for Eleanor Marx, one of his daughters.

I finally finished this biography last night, and for the most part the story of Marx and his family is nothing less than tragic. This biography helped me to appreciate the sacrifice that Marx, his family, and Engles made to building working-class consciousness, and working class movements in general.

But page after page in this biography tells the story of a family struggling with poverty, illness, and deaths of numerous children. Some readers of this biography conclude that Marx’s dependence on other people’s money, especially Engles, reflects on how his economic and political theories and predictions are wrong or misguided. But this is certainly not the case. The poverty and tragedies of Marx and his family reflect more so the plight of tens of thousands of working class people, and peasants, of his day. He and Jenny, as well as other activists and people who spoke out against the monarchs of the day, were hounded by political repression and oppressive economic conditions. One could say that Marx could have been a professor, but what university in Prussia or Germany would have to hired him? I imagine that there were not too many jobs he could do and still be a left political activist and theoretician. It is however unfortunate that he, like many of other men of his time, tried to maintain a family while living on the margins of society.

Even though Marx’s daughters grew up to make their own significant contributions to the working-class movement, they both paid a hefty price to do so. The lessons we can take from Marx’s life is that while he valued his family greatly, he failed to understand that his aspirations and political choices were in conflict with needs of his family, particularly in a feudalistic, bourgeois environment. He would have perhaps been better off remaining single without children as Engels was for most of his life. But on the other hand we don’t always make conscious decisions about the direction of our personal life. For the most part we simply survive within a myriad of choices put before us.

Though I read the Communist Manifesto and a few other books by Marx and Engels back in my college days, I don’t think a personal biography is important to understanding Marx’s political and economic theories. Certainly understanding the historical conditions in which he wrote his books, pamphlets, and articles is definitely important, but learning about his personal life and tragedies doesn’t shed much light, for me anyway, about the necessity of a working class revolution.

It is interesting though to read about the history of the second half of the 19th century, and how we are still facing economic oppression, poverty, and even political repression. (Of course, Marx would have been able to write all three of volumes of Das Kapital without a problem in the age of computers and the internet.) The ruling class is even stronger and more vicious than the monarchs and their armies were in Marx’s day. The obscene personal wealth, competition, and profit-driven nature of capitalism still holds back humanity, though it did for a while help build a middle-class, as Marx predicted. As I was reading this biography, I realized and am saddened about how little has changed in terms of power relationships in this world. Thus, the contributions of Marx and Engles, has helped us understand the contradictions inherent in the dominate political and economic system that shapes and exploits our lives and institutions.

I close with an excerpt from from Engle’s obituary of Marx:

"'Marx was more than mere activists,' Engels continued, 'he was a groundbreaking theoretician. Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human society: the single fact, hitherto concealed by an outgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art religion etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved….

"But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present day capatilist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem, in trying to solve which all previous investigations of both bourgeois economist and socialist critics, had been groping in the dark.'"

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Shawn Thompson aka the intimate ape

5.0 out of 5 stars Marx in his human context

Reviewed in Canada on February 15, 2014

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This is a lively and readable account of Marx and his theories because of the way it puts the man in the context of his time and relationships. It is hard to imagine Marx becoming the person he was without his wife Jenny, his friend Engels, and all the chance events that produce history.

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Manali

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book a must buy

Reviewed in India on July 27, 2014

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I already have a copy and actually have bought several more to gift it to friends. Have not read such an inspiring book for a very long time.

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M. A. Krul

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful personal biography of the Marx-Engels family

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 19, 2012

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The genre of the personal biograph, when applied to famous historical figures, more often than not falls in the traps of sensationalism, moralism, or hagiography. This is not least the case when it comes to persons of considerable political controversy, such as Karl Marx and his friends and family. However, Mary Gabriel's personal biography of the Marx-Engels clan studiously and brilliantly avoids all cliches and all sensationalism, portraying the characters 'warts and all', sympathetically but without making saints of them. Its almost 600 pages are unflaggingly interesting, intelligent, and informative even to those who are very well acquainted with Marx and Engels theoretical thoughts and the chronology of their life. But what's more important is that it is virtually unique in its emphasis on the personal life of Karl and Jenny Marx, their children, their friends (not least of course Engels), and their many associates.

Although Gabriel makes sure to make clear the significance and substance of the various works Marx, Engels, and the family wrote or worked on during their life, this is not yet another political-romantic biography of the theoretical heroes of socialism. On the contrary, this book is a chronicle of their private hopes and pleasures, their struggles, and their difficulties. Also uncharacteristic for the many biographers of the Marx-Engels extended family is Gabriel's courageous and timely decision to emphasize the significance of the lives and work of the women of the group: Jenny Marx, Karl's wife; their three daughters, their only children to survive infancy; Freddy Demuth, the illegitimate son of Karl Marx; and the daughters' partners, children, and friends. In the usual biographies of Marx and/or Engels, his wife appears merely in the background and his daughters are a footnote, but in Gabriel's biography, they come into their own as serious and dedicated revolutionary thinkers and doers in their own right. In the process Mary Gabriel finally also clears up a great number of small errors and confusions that have been copied from one biography to another, and she is to be commended for the great thoroughness with which she has conducted and presented her research on a topic many would think has been too fully mined to lead to any new gold.

In an era when both Marxism and the cause of women's equality seem more under attack than ever before, and yet are more needed than ever, it is fitting and just that a great new biography should revive the founders of Marxism as human beings in all their glories and failings, and that for the first time the women in the family should play an equal role in the narrative. While the political and theoretical histories of Marx and Engels' lives tend to be a story of triumph against adversity, Gabriel's book makes it clear that this cannot by any means be said of the private lives of the family. More than anything else, it stands out clearly for the first time what a sad, difficult, and often despairing life they led, the women of the family especially. It has often been remarked on, but it only becomes clear from this work why the Marx women all died early, several to suicide, and it is clear that their lives were not as happy nor as fulfilling for their own great talents, no less than those of the men, as they should have been.

Two great forces of their age made their lives more confined and more frustrated in its potential than conscionable: on the one hand, Victorian moralism and the enduring power of patriarchal values; on the other hand, the more physical but no less destructive power of disease. The former held the women in restricted positions, endlessly sacrificing their wishes, their talents, and their very happiness to the cause of the men; the latter robbed them - the men no less than the women - of their strengths, energy, and future. In Gabriel's book, there is rarely a moment that some member of the great Marxist family is not gravely ill. Many of Marx's children as well as of his grandchildren died in childhood of vague diseases, caused by the poverty and inequality of their times, and incurable by the low level of medical expertise and the difficulty of affording it. In a time when both these great hostile forces, patriarchy and disease, are the prime enemies of the emancipation of humanity in most of the world, it is a sad but useful reminder of their impact to read about how they destroyed the Marx family. Even Marx himself may well have lived longer and been much more productive, to the lasting benefit of our knowledge of socialism, had he not been perpetually ill and taken such medication as mercury and arsenic, never mind much alcohol, to alleviate it.

"Love and Capital" is therefore not necessarily a happy read. But it is a fascinating read, full of lively detail, engaging writing, and sound judgements. It does without the hypocrisy or moralism of many hostile biographers but also free of the pretense that the Marx family was flawless in their personal life. The author also does not shy away from the real revolutionary commitment of all the participants, not just Marx and Engels but their wives, Marx's children and husbands also, and does not try to reinvent them as 'democratic' egghead theorists or irrelevant Victorian ranters. If one has to have an objection, it is some very minor errors and that the copious endnote apparatus often contains no further explanation of the many interesting and illuminating details first mentioned in the text. But those are just quibbles. On the whole, this book by a respected Reuters editor (of all people) is of enormous benefit to our understanding of the historical reality of the founding family of Marxism, and in particular of the real contribution of Marx's wife and daughters to setting this great movement of history in motion. It deserves to be widely read and will surely become a classic in the history of Marxism.

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Juan Pablo Mateo

5.0 out of 5 stars OK

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2019

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pH1520

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on September 3, 2016

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Really good !

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