About him as a person, his historical conditions, his life, his loved ones. Does anyone have any favorite biographies or even just passages from primary or secondary sources? Alternatively, if anyone has the time, what do you think is most important or interesting to understand about Karl Marx as a person, or perhaps about the historical context he lived in?
I’m gonna post three (probably) replies, this will be the first one. Second will address some interesting points that I've noticed in my quest to read all the Marx biographies, will take longer. Last will be a bunch of quotes about Marx and will take even longer. This first one will answer the question of “Does anyone have any favorite biographies” by giving brief reviews of the Marx biographical literature I have read bc i love all of them. Starting with more contemporary sources, I need to begin by explaining the social character of the Marxes (Engels and his wives included in this circle). The Marxes kept a lot of stuff secret from their political comrades, and even friends. Many of their friends had no idea how dire their financial situation often was, and Karl even hid this from his future son in law Lafargue during periods when he was living with the Marxes (he wouldn’t find out about the financial situation until well after marriage) as just one example. This means that, when considering contemporary sources on Marx, it is wise to divide into at least three ‘categories’ for analysis: 1. accounts by Marxes (and Engels, Lizzy and Mary ofc need to be treated slightly differently as they lived in a different city for ~2 decades, but they were in on the secrets), 2. accounts by other close friends and close political allies and 3. accounts by everyone else (could be divided more ofc). All accounts are useful, but this aids in preventing one from taking the Prussian police report of Marx’s character during the Soho period(the worst and most miserable years of his life) as characteristic of Marx through his entire life, or taking Marx at his word when he says his financial situation is alright, for example.
The best place to start imo is with Eleanor Marx’s writings. After her father’s death in 1883 she wrote two brief articles in Progress, a newspaper, the first of which is a brief biography of Karl Marx. The second is a brief summary of Marx’s key theoretical points and is also cool and good. She also wrote some biographical notes about more personal information in his early life. Eleanor is obviously very biased, being Karl’s daughter, but she’s also probably the person who knew him best at that point. Most later biographies of Karl use Eleanor’s works as the basis for their accounts of the key points, which they then add to using more sources. Paul Lafargue and Wilhelm Liebknecht also wrote more personal reminiscences of Karl, both of which offer a look at some of his less politically relevant qualities. As far as I’m aware, these are the three biggest ‘biographies’ of Marx written by people who knew him personally, and all can be found on marxists.org.
When we discuss biographies by people who didn’t know him, we need to discuss the publishing of Marx’s hoard of unpublished articles, notes, letters, and the like.This process is still ongoing in the Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe 2, the project to publish all of Marx’s and Engels’ writings, including writings in margins, notes, letters (even more than what is currently published in MECW), literally everything they can find. This means biographies written in 2018 have much better access to sources than those written even just 20 years prior. However, we don’t actually have all the personal letters: Engels destroyed many of the letters to/from himself that Marx had preserved which dealt with strictly personal matters. So regardless of how complete any biography claims its research into Marx’s letters is keep firmly in mind that there are missing letters, and many biographers are unaware of this. Also bare heavily in mind that the people with the time and money to research and write a biography of Marx are going to be academics with bad takes on AES, also often without full comprehension of his ideas, let alone Marxism after Marx so they’ll often have horrible takes there too.
In terms of these more recent biographies, the most focussed on the Marxes’ personal lives is Love and Capital. If you want a readable modern book giving you an idea of what Karl Marx (and his family) were like this is a good choice. It engages a lot with letters from what I remember– including Jenny Marx sr.’s and the childrens’ which are often overlooked. This allows it to get much closer to a ‘personal’ Karl Marx than others. The book is also (vaguely) structured around a tragic narrative centered on the writing of Capital, which makes it more engaging to read, but gives Gabriel a tendency to attribute motivations and present her interpretations as facts. On the occasion she tries to delve into history or theory, she often gets things mixed up or misunderstood, but this isn’t much of a failing imo bc it isn’t the focus of the book.
The two most general biographies I’ve read are Jones’ Greatness and Illusion and Liedman’s A World to Win. The first one has some of the worst takes on Marx’s theory ever, and also tends to interpret things very negatively towards Marx. However it presents the most exhaustive examination of the day-to-day life of Karl Marx so it’s still definitely worth reading if you want more concrete details wrt that. A World to Win is a very, very general biography; it tries to explain Marx’s theoretical development, personal life, and the historical context. This makes it a bit lighter on details, and I don’t think the author fully understands the theory he’s writing about. However it is a very solid general introduction to Karl Marx as a whole, looking at least a bit at every aspect of his life. It’s also written by a multilingual Swedish author who has examined sources in several languages including English and German giving it access to sources the books written by Anglos generally won’t have.
Rachel Holmes’ Eleanor Marx is a biography of Eleanor, but this means it (at least until 1883) examines Karl from the perspective of the daughter who he claimed was so similar to him that she was him: “Jenny [jr] is most like me, but Tussy[Eleanor]…is me.” Holmes is even more focussed on a narrative (and an agenda) than Gabriel, which again leads imo to some uncharitable interpretations of Karl, but this is also a book that aims to expose Edward Aveling (Eleanor’s commonlaw husband) as her murderer after almost a century of her death being ruled a suicide so I firmly think her heart is in the right place (and also think she’s right about Aveling being a murderous shithead); her uncharitable interpretations of Karl are usually because she’s taking Eleanor’s side in an argument.
The Frock Coated Communist by Hunt (former labour MP, no good political takes to be found) is the most recent biography of Friedrich Engels. There are some absolutely terrible opinions here and it needs to be read very critically and with a truck of salt, however if you want to understand Karl Marx, understanding Friedrich Engels is important. There’s also Carver’s Engels and Marx and Engels which are older and push the “Engels is an evil revisionist” narrative a bit, but they’re less prone to launching personal attacks on Engels’ character so may be more readable in that regard.
As @solaranus mentioned, Musto wrote a biography of very late Karl Marx addressing both personal and theoretical development. Musto is a “the fall of the USSR was good for Marxism” academic radlib, but he also REALLY likes writing and editing books about Marx so I do trust his research, if not the conclusions he comes to from that research. His edited books (Marx and Le Capital, Marx’s Capital After 150 Years and Rethinking Alternatives With Marx are the ones I’ve read) also generally feature people with much better takes than his, many of those contributions weave in information about how Marx did his research, especially later in life.
Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society by Michael Heinrich is very ambitious, and when completed will likely be the single most comprehensive biography of Karl Marx. The first volume, published 2018 and translated from German to English the next year, covers 1818-1841 in exhaustive detail. However, the second volume, which will cover 1841-1845, will not be published until this August. No estimated dates for future volumes, and, if 1841-45 is going to be one volume, I am assuming we are looking at at least 10 volumes tbh because the number of sources to examine only increases as Marx’s life goes on.
All of the above (and every volume of MECW including those with (some of the) letters if you wanna look at them) can be found on libgen
First thing I want to point out is that Marx changed over time. This seems obvious, but a lot of people overlook the changes in circumstances and personality Marx saw during his lifetime and sorta imagine an unchanging Marx; whether it’s as a devoted researcher, a politician or a young drunken student. Over the course of his life Marx was, among other things, a teen worrying about his future, an irresponsible student in Bonn, a hyperfixated scholar in Berlin, a radical journalist in Cologne, unemployed in Paris, revolutionary journalist in Cologne, refugee in London, international correspondent for the New York Tribune, lower class man trying desperately to pass as middle class, doting father and grandfather. Some key periods I might outline in Marx’s life would be “baby marx; his life until around November 10th 1837,” “Theological Marx; from 1837 to around 1844,” “early Marx; 1844-51,” “treading water; 1851-59,” “Capital; 1859-72ish,” and “late Marx; 1872-83” but other divisions are possible (this one is based more on his personal life than theory, despite some of the names), and there’s similarities and differences across and between all of these Marxes.
Someone else in the thread pointed towards ADHD and that’s possible, but another possibility (and they aren’t mutually exclusive ofc) is autism; his research gives me more the impression of a special interest. Another suggestive indication is how often Marx is misunderstood in his letters when they’re analysed by biographers. For example, his 1837 letter to his father is called “rambly,” “unrelated to his father’s concerns,” etc but when read carefully, after Karl realised he spent 1-2 pages detailing his theoretical legal system he’d already discarded as silly, he seems to have planned out the letter a bit. Many of the things that biographers read as “excuses,” feel to me (as an autist) like an autistic person explaining the exact reasons we do what we do. Most of the people in Karl’s most immediate family seem to have understood this and other such behaviours much better than those more distant, and this is visible in letters and relationships. One thing Marx biographers often forget is literally everyone in the inner Marx circle had, as far as I’m aware from what I’ve read, not once expressed such doubts about his intentions or about his behaviours (in writing that we have at least); they stuck with him for decades because he was very dear to them. Other indications of Marx’s autism/ADHD/neurodiversity generally include pacing, his violent outbursts, ‘rude’ (really, “direct” is a better word imo) tone, repetitive behaviour, inability to ‘drop’ a topic or agree to disagree, ‘black and white’ view of things (especially evident when he’s angry), etc. Eleanor Marx gives me a similar impression (also egg vibes).
Marx’ work also wasn’t really done in bursts, however. It appears that way looking at publication, but when Marx isn’t publishing books he’s basically writing manuscripts, notes, reading other books and making notes on them, editing manuscripts, getting sick, writing articles for the New York Tribune, etc. He does seem to have had a hard time with larger projects (e.g. Capital) getting out of hand, and him being unsure where to cut stuff off as “irrelevent.” Getting volume one published took a MASSIVE toll on his mental and physical health leading to breaks, but if he was able, Marx was generally reading and writing.
One interesting point is Marx’s relationship to religion. When he was young, both in the gymnasium and in his 1837 letter, he seems to have been at least vaguely believing in God and such. Based on the phrasing of his free choice essay (and his choice to bring God into it) he seems to have been some sort of deist (his father also seems to have been a deist). This would change into overt hostility to religion as Marx threw himself into religious polemics. However, after writing the unpublished articles criticising German philosophy with Engels that would later be edited together, re-arranged and added to to create The German Ideology in the 30s, Marx turned away from this sort of academic philosophical abstract non-concrete metaphysical debates. When he died, Marx had a copy of the Bible as well as the Torah, and according to Eleanor Marx began acknowledging that some people have spiritual needs; Eleanor says he told Jenny sr. she would do better to seek spiritual fulfilment in the Torah than a secular church when she went to such a church.
Someone else mentioned Marx’s nickname of ‘Mohr’ (used by his children as well as his friends) and darker skin. This likely played a role in Marx’s experiences with bigotry in his early London years, intersecting with his foreignness, poverty, Jewish heritage and disabilities ([probably] ND, inherited shitty health). There’s an account (I’ll try and find it for the third reply) of him attempting to pawn one of Jenny sr.’s plates (with her permission, they needed food), but when the pawnbroker saw the ragged immigrant with the huge nose and not-pale skin trying to sell it he called Marx a thief. Marx tried to explain in bad English that it was his wife’s. Don’t remember offhand how it ended. Marx seems to have tried to downplay his Jewish heritage’s role in people’s views; but there’s lots of circumstantial evidence that suggests it played at least something of a role, at least at times. Eleanor Marx would explicitly claim her Jewish heritage years after his death.
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Passages from sources, a few contemporary to Marx, some written by Marx, and some recent ones written by folks who've had the chance to extensively study his work.
ON HEGEL 1 Since I have found the Highest of things and the Depths of them also, Rude am I as a God, cloaked by the dark like a God. Long have I searched and sailed on Thought's deep billowing ocean; There I found me the Word: now I hold on to it fast. 2 Words I teach all mixed up into a devilish muddle, Thus, anyone may think just what he chooses to think; Never, at least, is he hemmed in by strict limitations. Bubbling out of the flood, plummeting down from the cliff, So are his Beloved's words and thoughts that the Poet devises; He understands what he thinks, freely invents what he feels. Thus, each may for himself suck wisdom's nourishing nectar; Now you know all, since I've said plenty of nothing to you! Early Literary Experiments 3 Kant and Fichte soar to heavens blue Seeking for some distant land, I but seek to grasp profound and true That which — in the street I find. 4 Forgive us epigrammatists For singing songs with nasty twists. In Hegel we're all so completely submerged, But with his Aesthetics we've yet to be Purged.” (First Line is title of the Poem, Marx, Berlin Period pre-nov10, 1837)
“TO THE MEDICAL STUDENTS Damned philistino-medico-student crew, The whole world's just a bag of bones to you. When once you've cooled the blood with Hydrogen, And when you've felt the pulse's throbbing, then You think, "I've done the most I'm able to. Man could be very comfortable, too. How clever of Almighty God to be So very well versed in Anatomy!" And flowers are all instruments to use, When they've been boiled down into herbal brews.” (First Line is title of the Poem, by Marx, written while in Berlin but before the November 10th Letter)
“They rest on the misunderstanding to the effect that Marx seeks to define where he only explains, and that one can generally look in Marx for fixed, cut-and-dried definitions that are valid for all time. It should go without saying that where things and their mutual relations are conceived not as fixed but rather as changing, their mental images, too, i.e. concepts, are also subject to change and reformulation; that they are not to be encapsulated in rigid definitions, but rather developed in their process of his- torical or logical formation” (Engels, preface to Capital Volume 3)
“When Marx has answered a question, he keeps looking for inconsistencies, often not confident in his own judgement” -Carl-Erich Vollgraf (one of the editors of MEGA2)
“Marx did not rush to judgement, or assume that what he had written…could simply be extended to Russia. Rather, as he later wrote, “in order to reach an informed judgement of the economic development of…Russia, I learned Russian and then spend several long years studying official publications and others…”” -Ian Angus “Marx and Engels and Russia’s Peasant Communes”
““Here it was, where Mrs Marx after the death of one of her children born in London, of little “Foexchen,” in 1852, wrote with her heart’s blood on a loose sheet of paper: “My grief was so great. It was the first child I lost And on the same sheet added some years later: “Alas! I did not suspect, then, what was in store for me, before which everything else would sink into nothingness!” She is speaking of the death of poor “Moosh.” A few months after Foxy’s death little Franciska died. And on one of the loose diary leaves, found only recently on sifting the papers, we read: On Easter of the same year, 1852, our poor little Francisca died of severe bronchitis. Three days the poor child was struggling with death. It suffered so much. Its little lifeless body rested in the small back room, we all moved together into the front room, and when night approached, we made our beds on the floor. There the three living children were lying at our side, and we cried about the little angel who rested cold and lifeless near us. The death of the dear child fell into the time of the most bitter poverty ... (The money for the burial of the child was missing.) I went to a French refugee living in the vicinity who had visited us shortly before. He at once gave me two pounds sterling with the friendliest sympathy. With this money the little coffin was purchased, in which my poor child now slumbers peacefully. It had no cradle when it entered the world, and the last little abode also was for a long time denied to it. What did we suffer, when it was carried away to its last place of rest!”” -From Liebknecht’s memoirs
Marx was a passionate smoker. Like everything else, he carried on smoking with impetuousness. English tobacco being too strong for him, he provided for himself, whenever he had any chance of doing so, cigars which he half-chewed in order to heighten the enjoyment or to have a double pleasure. As cigars are very dear in England, he was continually on the hunt for cheap brands. And what kind of stuff he secured in this way may be imagined; “cheap and nasty” is an English expression, and Marx’s cigars were consequently dreaded by his friends.” -From Liebknecht's Memoirs
“But at my first visit, when I saw him in his study in Maitland Park Road, he appeared before me, not as the indefatigable and unequaled socialist agitator, but as the man of learning. ... He would never allow anyone to arrange (really, to disarrange) his books and papers. The prevailing disorder was only apparent. In actual fact, everything was in its proper place, and without searching he could put his hand on any book or manuscript he wanted. Even when conversing, he would often stop to show a relevant passage or figure in the book itself. He was at one with his study, where the books and papers were as obedient to his will as were his own limbs.
He took no account of external symmetry when arranging his books. Quarto and octavo volumes and pamphlets were placed side by side; he arranged his books not according to size but according to content. To him books were intellectual tools, not luxuries. “They are my slaves,” he would say, “and must serve my will.” He had scant respect for their form, their binding, the beauty of paper or printing; he would turn down the corners of the pages, underline passages, and cover the margins with pencil marks.” (Lafargue memoirs)
“By September 25 ...Marx was at the point of selecting a title for his now two-hundred-page book. He suggested Da-Da-Vogt, an obscure reference to an Arab writer who was used by Napoleon in Algiers as Vogt had been used in Geneva. Marx said the meaning would become clear about halfway through the book,114 and in a letter to Engels defended the title, saying it “will PUZZLE your philistine, pleases me and fits in with my SYSTEM OF MOCKERY and CONTEMPT.”” (Garbiel, Love & Capital)
“For a long time I believed that it would be possible to overthrow the Irish regime by English working class ascendancy. I always expressed this point of view in the New York Tribune. Deeper study has now convinced me of the opposite. The English working class will never accomplish anything before it has got rid of Ireland. The lever must be applied in Ireland.” -letter from marx to engels, dec 11 1869