(separating myth from the reality)

“Karl Marx cheated on his wife with their housekeeper while she was travelling to another country to beg relatives for money after having all their possessions taken away due to debt, in complete poverty, dealing with incredibly ill children (including 2-3 dead children of what would eventually be 4 dead children in childhood). He got the housekeeper pregnant, then because he knew Jenny would leave him if she knew, he gave the baby to Engels to raise and claim to be the father of, and kept his cheating a secret. The reason he did this was not because he loved her, but because she not only did all the childcare and housework, but Jenny Marx is the entire reason we know Marx today. She largely introduced him, then a very young man 4 years her junior to the ideas of socialism and communism, as well as women’s rights (she is the woman who inspired Engels in regards to his views on prostitution and women’s liberation as well, the three of them were in political groups together). Jenny Marx collaborated with Marx in his early writing, they wrote the books and essays together and shared ideas. Then once Jenny had her first child, despite all of Marx’s posturing, like any other man, he expected her to become mother first. And yet while doing so, and increasingly raising more and more children, while struggling with extreme poverty and poor health because Marx’s books we not selling, and he made no other money, she still contributed ideas, edited all his work to actually make sense and be good, and transcripted his completely illegible writing into actual draft books to be published and dispersed. He sat around all day “thinking” and after months to years, just came up with shitty drafts, and she’d turn them into his famous (and less famous) books. She dealt with the entire business side of his philosophy, she made the money. He would sit there and not be able to write anything until she made him so that their family could survive. Even when Marx was imprisoned and exiled, she publicly defended him, continued to spread his (aka their) work, and got kicked out of several countries and towns because of it. She did all of the above, joined and supported all of his political groups and worked non stop in activism even with children her entire life, most of her kids died in childhood, and she lived a miserable life, all for him, and he fucking took all the credit, didn’t follow his own claimed ideals, and cheated on her. Near the end of her life, she came to resent Marx and how he gave her nothing when she gave him everything. He was yet just another man treating a woman like a thing, a tool. How many people know the name Jenny Marx? How many people know that without her, we would know no Karl Marx (because he was such a terrible writer and unmotivated, lethargic man that he never would have finished nor released a single (good) book, admitting it himself in letters to Engels in regards to the affair)? The basis of the most popular communist, socialist, and marxist groups and politicians and activists would not exist. She is likely one of the most influential women in political history and no one knows."