I wouldn't call Marx a deadbeat. A bit of an insensitive layabout at times, and his pattern of frenzied short term crunching followed by fallow periods seems to indicate some kind of attention disorder. But his children all remembered him fondly, and the poverty was pretty much entirely due to Marx's political views preventing more well-paid work.
Maybe he could have taken a job, brought in more money. But I can hardly blame him for sticking to his principles, and Jenny seems to have supported his decision.
There's also the often repeated possible illegitimate child of his maid that Engels claimed parentage of, though I point out there's literally no evidence of that aside from Marx's wife being away at the time (which would also have been required for Engles to have a relationship) and a bunch of belated gossip. Could have actually been Engles, could have been Marx, could have been a third party.
I wouldn't call Marx a deadbeat. A bit of an insensitive layabout at times, and his pattern of frenzied short term crunching followed by fallow periods seems to indicate some kind of attention disorder. But his children all remembered him fondly, and the poverty was pretty much entirely due to Marx's political views preventing more well-paid work.
Maybe he could have taken a job, brought in more money. But I can hardly blame him for sticking to his principles, and Jenny seems to have supported his decision.
There's also the often repeated possible illegitimate child of his maid that Engels claimed parentage of, though I point out there's literally no evidence of that aside from Marx's wife being away at the time (which would also have been required for Engles to have a relationship) and a bunch of belated gossip. Could have actually been Engles, could have been Marx, could have been a third party.