Overview of the Lives of Marx and Engels

Karl Marx (1818-83) was born into an upper-middle class German-Jewish family from Trier, an old city in the Rhineland, the third of nine children, five of whom died in infancy, of Heinrich and Henriette (née Pressburg) Marx. Marx's parents came from families possessing wealth and learning, of many rabbis. Although Henriette was religious, Heinrich, whose father was an Orthodox rabbi, became a disciple of the Enlightenment, an admirer of French culture, a deist and democrat, particularly influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire (Franois Marie Arouet), John Locke, and Immanuel Kant. Furthermore, to escape religious restrictions by Prussia (it annexed the Rhineland after the fall of Napoleon) on German Jews, who, although citizens, could not practice law or attend public schools, Heinrich converted to the Prussian Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in 1817, the children following in 1824 and wife in 1825.

Marx, a brilliant student, received an excellent education: He was tutored at home to age twelve, graduated from the Trier high school in 1835, studied law at the University of Bonn in 1835-36, attended the University of Berlin from 1836-41, concentrating on history, philosophy, and jurisprudence. He was awarded the Ph.D. in 1841 at the University of Jena. His dissertation, indicating his love of Hellenic civilization and philosophy, was entitled "Differences between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature." He also could fluently read four foreign languages – Greek, Latin, French, and English.

Soon after the completion of his university studies, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in June 1843, the daughter of Ludwig von Westphalen, a Prussian government official who was not only a good intellectual, but also a St.-Simonian; he befriended the young Marx who considered him his second father. The marriage at first was stormy, but became pacific with time. Marx and Jenny had six children, three of whom survived, Jenny, Laura, and Eleanor; he also had a son, Fred Demuth, with the family's live-in maid, Hélène Demuth.

After graduation, Marx embarked towards radical journalism in 1842-43, moving to Cologne, serving as an editor-in-chief of the Rheinisch Zeitung. In its columns, he courageously attacked the Prussian Monarchy's opposition to democracy and its stifling press censorship and delved into the poverty of the Rhineland's peasantry. The government closed the paper in late 1843 for its bold actions, Marx resigning just before, traveling to Paris with Jenny.

It was in the 1843-44 period that Marx broadened his intellectual horizon by reading the works of French utopian socialists, particularly impressed by the Comte de Claude Henri de Rouveroy Saint-Simon.

Fredrick Engels (1820-95), Marx's intimate collaborator, was born into a wealthy Rhineland German family from Barmen, of pious Calvinists, his father Caspar being a successful textile manufacturer. Engels was not as formally educated as Marx, leaving high school before graduation at age seventeen. This did not, however, detract from his intellectual brilliance. Like Marx, an omnivorous reader, he was well versed in science, history, and philosophy, with an unusual ability to master languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and other Slavic languages, including Arabic and Persian.

Engels, unlike Marx, never married, but was a lifelong companion of Mary Burns, an Irish worker in his Manchester textile mill; for reasons of respectability, they did not live together; when she died in 1863, her sister Lydia became his companion – Engels married her on her deathbed in 1878.

Like Marx, Engels spent most of his adult life in England, from 1842-1844 and from 1850 to his death in 1895: in Manchester, managing the family's textile mill with a partner; in London, soon after his retirement in 1869, living close to Marx, seeing him daily. Engels, an able manager/businessman was quite wealthy. By 1860, his income was a thousand English pounds per year (an average English worker in 1875 earned under forty pounds per year). In 1864, he inherited a small fortune of ten thousand pounds from his father. On retirement, he invested his money in railroads and gas and water works, receiving 4.5 percent annually. Engels was very generous to the Marx family, donating money periodically, and when retiring providing Marx a 350-pound annuity.

Engel's socialist activity began in 1842 as a communist, influenced in this decision by Moses Hess, a German-Jewish socialist and early Zionist, also important in contributing to Marx's understanding of economics and sociology. Engels, as will be observed, was instrumental in Marx's becoming a communist in 1844.

Before proceeding, an important question: Why did Marx become a communist? There is perhaps no one answer to resolve this question. In fact, it might be unanswerable. Marx did not have a severe Oedipus complex that would rail against patriarchal authority; indeed, he loved his father and disliked his mother. He had all the advantages of a wealthy family and a splendid education, a promising journalistic or academic career being a certainty, yet he gave this up for a revolutionary socialism. Ultimately, it was Marx's great empathy/sympathy for the oppressed working class that best explained his Communism.

Notes

A) The Lives of Marx and Engels

1) There are many excellent biographies on Marx: The latest by Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life(New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), presents a lively and sympathetic portrait of his life, which includes many of his faults, like constant begging for money, quickness to take offence, cantankerousness with friends, and addiction to smoking and alcohol. The classic one is by Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1962); first published in 1918. Three rather recent ones sympathetic to Marx include: Maximilian Rubel and Margaret Manale, Marx Without Myth: A Chronological Study of His Life and Work (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976). Saul K. Padover, Karl Marx: An Intimate Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978); and Jerrold Seigel, Marx's Fate: The Shape of a Life (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978). These two are hostile to Marx, but contain valuable information: Robert Payne, Marx (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968); and Fritz J. Raddatz, Karl Marx: A Political Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1978). On Engels, see W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 2 vols. (London: Frank Cass, 1976).

B) Works of Marx/Engels

Marx and Engels have a large corpus of writings. Among the principal works are: Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy: Vol. I, The Process of Capitalist Production, trans. From the German by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1906); Vol. II, The Process of Circulation of Capital, trans. from the German by Ernest Untermann (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1907); Vol. III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, trans. from the German by Ernest Untermann (Chicago: Charles H. Herr, 1909). Vols. II and III of this work are extensively edited by Engels from Marx's drafts and notes after his death. Hereinafter, Capital, I, II, and III. Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value (Selections) (New York: International Publishers, 1952). Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. from the German and Foreword by Martin Nicolaus (New York: Random House, 1973). Hereinafter, Grundrisse. David McLellan, editor and translator, The Grundrisse (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971), is an excellent condensation of this long work. Referred to as McLellan, Grundrisse. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (New York: International Publishers, 1948). Hereinafter, Manifesto. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, Parts I and III, edited with an introduction by R. Pascal (New York: International Publishers, 1947). Karl Marx, Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 (New York: International Publishers, 1964). Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (New York: International Publishers, 1926). Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, 1933). Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Library Publishing Co., 1904). Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring or Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975); parts of this work are in a more popular version, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (New York: International Publishers, 1935). Fredrich Engels, The Peasant War in Germany (New York: International Publishers, 1926). Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1968) Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, introduction and notes by Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York: International Publishers, 1972). If other editions of these works are employed, they are duly noted with appropriate endnotes.

Almost all of the works of Marx and Engels, which have been prepared by editorial commissions in Great Britain, the United States, and Russia, have been published by 1999. In English the title is Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works in English, in fifty volumes. Publication in the U.S. is by International Publishers in New York, 1975. Hereinafter, MECW. Other notable collections include Lloyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, editors and translators, Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1967). Hereinafter, Young Marx. Lewis S. Feuer, Marx and Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959).

C) Works on the Ideas of Marx/Engels

Richard N. Hunt, The Political Ideas of Marx and Engels: Vol. I: Marxism and Totalitarian

Democracy, 1818 – 1850; Vol. II ; Classical Marxism, 1850-1895 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1974, 1984). Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution; Vol. I: State and Bureaucracy; Vol. II: The Politics of Social Classes; Vol. III: The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'; Vol. IV: Critique of Other Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977, 1981, 1986, 1989). George Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961). David McLellan, The Thought of Karl Marx (London: Macmillan, 1971). Istvan Meszaros, Beyond Capital; Towards a Theory of Transition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1995).

Roots of Marxism: The Western Radical Tradition

It is a truism that Marxism is a synthesis of German philosophy, French materialism, and English economics. But from a broader perspective, Marxism may also be seen as embodying the progressive aspects of the principal sources of the Western tradition, like the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman experiences; the socioeconomic, cultural, and political struggles of the masses against elites from antiquity on (Spartacus was Marx's favorite hero) in various revolutions, including religious, but particularly since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England, the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, and of the 19th century utopian socialism and radical Romanticism.

Since Marxism is a socialist movement, we begin with a brief definition of socialism and a few generalizations on human history before delving into the Western radical tradition. Socialism, as it has developed through the millennia, advocates a society of a general socioeconomic, political, gender, and cultural equality based on the principles of direct or representative democracy where technology is in the hands of cooperative and public bodies in various proportions. Although not against the private ownership of small individual/ family property, socialism rejects employing the labor of others for profit. It also believes in the freedoms of speech, press, religion, and assembly, and insists on the cooperative brotherhood of all people.

Forms of socialism have been the norm of the human condition, certainly until the New Stone Age beginning ten to twelve thousand years ago – Marx's "primitive communism." But with the advent of civilization or class/oppressive societies, the first large scale attempt to effect a general equality, a form of proto-socialism occurred in the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.E., with the Hebrew Prophetic Revolution. Its principal social critics and visionaries (Amos, Micah, and Isaiah) launched a sustained criticism of a society based on a divisive socioeconomic and political inequality, viewing it as an abomination displeasing God, leading to the destruction of Israel and Judah through foreign conquest. However, a righteous remnant would be ultimately saved to live in a society of equality and abundance, of peace and joy.

This was the first recorded instance of the millenarian social psychology of the oppressed poor who employed God as a vehicle to aid them in establishing a just society. Examples: of Amos, a "herdsman and fruit picker," who characterized the rich and powerful, as those who "lie on ivory beds surrounded with luxury," and "trample on the poor and steal their smallest crumb by ... taxes, fines, and usury." Of Isaiah: "How dare you grind my people in the dust like this," and "You buy property so others have no place to live. Your homes are built on great estates so you can be alone in the midst of the earth."

The great Old Testament law codes, of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, outgrowths of the Prophetic Revolution, called for progressive measures (applicable only to Hebrews), including abolishing interest on loans, canceling all debts every seven years (for instance, if one borrowed money in the fifth year it would be canceled in the seventh), freeing of debt slaves after six years, with resources to begin a new and independent life, a tithe to aid the indigent, election of officials ("Judges") by the people, and restoration of property to owners/descendants every fifty years. These laws (some might have been practiced for a generation) permitted private property of the small-type variety, ensuring a general equality. Indeed, the prophets promised a utopian future of justice and general abundance, an end to physical suffering, a cooperative nature in which "deserts bloom," and peace and tranquility for everyone as nations will "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks."

Greek philosophy, in which Marx and Engels were well versed, was the second great stream of Western culture/tradition. Some background: Heraclitus (c. 535-475 BCE), a pantheistic mystic and father of the dialectical method of philosophy, held that permanence is an illusion, that the only certainty within the cosmos was change, and that everything or any unity originated and ended with antithetical opposites in strife within it, ever evolving into new combinations.

Democritus (460-370 BCE), a strict materialist, denied any spiritual non-material world, including the soul. His atomic theory postulated that atoms or unseen building blocks of nature always existed which could not be created or destroyed (we now know that the primordial element of which the other elements come from is hydrogen). The observable material world, then, becomes an illusion. These atoms combined to form our and other worlds, either growing or decaying, governed by natural laws allowing for no deviance. He also had a theory of human progress based on technology, postulating that early humanity lived in a nomadic hunter-food gathering mode, but that with the taming of wild grasses or agricultural revolution, humanity settled down. Mining, metallurgy and other signposts of civilization soon developed.