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Karl Marx, by Francis Wheen
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A major biography of the man who, more than any other, made the twentieth century. Written by an author of great repute.
The history of the 20th century is Marx's legacy. Not since Jesus Christ has an obscure pauper inspired such global devotion – or been so calamitously misinterpreted. The end of the century is a good moment to strip away the mythology and try to rediscover Marx the man. There have been many thousands of books on Marxism, but almost all are written by academics and zealots for whom it is a near blaspemy to treat him as a figure of flesh and blood.
In the past few years there have been excellent and successful biographies of many eminent Victorians and yet the most influential of them has remained untouched. In this book Francis Wheen, for the first time, presens Marx the man in all his brilliance and frailty – as a poverty-stricken Prussian emigre who became a middle-class English gentleman; as an angry agitator who spent much of his adult life in scholarly silence in the British Museum Reading Room; as a gregarious and convivial host who fell out with almost all his friends; as a devoted family man who impregnated his housemaid; as a deeply earnest philosopher who loved drink, cigars and jokes.
- Sales Rank: #512590 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-06-28
- Released on: 2012-06-28
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Karl Marx, whose influence on modern times has been compared to that of Jesus Christ, spent most of his lifetime in obscurity. Penniless, exiled in London, estranged from relations, and on the run from most of the police forces of Europe, his ambitions as a revolutionary were frequently thwarted, and his major writings on politics and economics remained unpublished (in some cases until after the Second World War). He has not lacked biographers, but even the most distinguished have been more interested in the evolution of his ideas than any other aspect of his life. Francis Wheen's fresh, lively, and moving biography of Marx considers the whole man--brain, beard, and the rest of his body. Unencumbered by ideological point scoring, this is a very readable, humorous, and sympathetic account. Wheen has an ear for juicy gossip and an eye for original detail. Marx comes across as a hell-raising bohemian, an intellectual bully, and a perceptive critic of capitalist chaos, but also a family man of Victorian conformity (personally vetting his daughters' suitors), Victorian ailments (carbuncles above all), and Victorian weaknesses (notably alcohol, tobacco, and, on occasion, his housekeeper). But there is great pathos, too, as Marx witnessed the deaths of four of his six children. For those readers who feel Marxism has given Marx a bad name, this is a rewarding and enlightening book. --Miles Taylor, Amazon.co.uk
From Publishers Weekly
"It is time to strip away the mythology," writes Wheen, "and try to rediscover Karl Marx the man." In the first major biography of Marx since the end of the Cold War, Wheen does just that as he looks for the man lurking behind the myths of both enemies and disciples, the misinterpretations and the academic jargon. What he finds is somebody who will suit nobody's purposes--Marx, Wheen argues, lived his life messily. He was neither a clearheaded revolutionary nor an unrepentant hypocrite, but he wasn't the anti-Christ either. More or less incapable of holding down a steady, salaried job, he mooched off of his selfless wife, Jenny (an aristocrat fallen on hard times), and his well-to-do ideological partner, Friedrich Engels, and spent his time obsessively writing unreadable, unmarketable economics tracts. He also spent a good deal of time preaching the imminent revolution of the masses (with whom he appears to have had little affinity). Following Marx from his childhood in Trier, Germany, through his exile in London, Wheen, a columnist for the British Guardian, takes readers from hovel to grand house, from the International Working Man's Association to Capital, from obscurity to notoriety and back again. (Only 11 mourners attended Marx's funeral.) The narrative veers unsteadily from scorn to admiration for the bearded philosopher. Wheen begins by jeering at Marx's cantakerousness and ends by lauding him as a prophet and a brave survivor of poverty and exile. In the end, Wheen's breezy, colorful portrayal is as eccentric as its subject. 16 pages of illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Little about Marx was left undiscovered by David McLellan's highly regarded Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (LJ 3/1/74), but left-leaning British journalist Wheen attempts to add some new understanding. Wheen does correct a small error that McLellan advanced about Charles Darwin's nonrelationship with Marx, but otherwise his book is notable less for the quality of the scholarshipDwhich is solid enoughDthan for his deft portraiture. Wheen's Marx is often charming and likableDand just as often not. An earlier generation of biographers depicted an impoverished Marx dependent upon the generosity of collaborator Frederick Engels, but Wheen demonstrates that Marx actually led a bourgeois lifestyle beyond his meansDmostly for the sake of his daughters, whom he adored. Engels seemed to regard Marx almost as a fortunate younger sibling would a brilliant but unlucky older brother. Wheen's book is engagingly written, but his editors have done him a disservice by retaining an overabundance of British colloquialisms that simply do not travel well across the pond. Still, Wheen's compelling depiction of the truly historic Marx-Engels friendship combines with a bold prose style to commend his book to serious academic and public libraries.DScott H. Silverman, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
High Marx
By E. Payne
In the wake of fresh evidence (the near-fatal financial melt-down of 2007-2010) that whatever else capitalism may be it is not eternally rational, I read two biographies of Marx: the well-regarded one by David McLellan and this one. (Just to insure I wasn't inspired to immediately rush out and storm the barricades, I read a biography of William F. Buckley Jr in-between.)
In my opinion this biography is superior to the one by McLellan. Yes, McLellan attempts to push the reader into the depths of Marx's very deep thoughts, often with soporific effect. On these matters Wheen skates far more lightly. But for background a reader might be better served by reading the Wikipedia articles on Hegel and Dialectics. And Marx neatly summarized the key concepts he spread over thousands of maddening pages of "Das Kapital" in a 30 page address to working men entitled "Value, Price and Profit" (1865). Proof that, like William Faulkner, Marx could express himself in a straight-forward manner on those rare occasions when he chose to do so.
If Marx's ideas are better explored elsewhere, then the proper subject of a biography should be his life and times--and it is in this realm that Wheen shines. But beware: if you have an aversion to droll wit, go elsewhere. When describing Europe on the eve of the stillborn proletarian revolution of 1848, the author cribs a line from Bob Dylan, "There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air." Marx in his prime could unleash wit as well as massive erudition at his (many) opponents. So I find it nice that the author is similarly inclined--even when the target is occasionally his subject.
Wheen clearly has a fondness and respect for Marx, but this never descends into mere hagiography. One feels the result is a clear-eyed view of Marx, carbuncles and all. The picture that emerges is of a brilliant polymath who evolved into a social revolutionary due to his personality and his times. These times consisted of oppressive, reactionary governments (royalty still reigned) and draconian exploitation of labor in newly established factories. In his prime Marx was a man of vast self-assurance. He directed withering scorn at anyone who disagreed with him. Agreeing with him often yielded the same result. He carefully avoided delineating the contours of the society he anticipated in the wake of the proletarian revolution. When someone asked him who would shine shoes after the revolution, he snarled, "You should."
Marx's lifestyle was curiously at odds with his ideals. Aside from meager earning as a journalist, he depended on stipends from his comrade Engels. To do so, Engels sacrificed his own revolutionary ambitions and became a manager in a family cotton mill. Whereas Engels lived with a former factory girl, Marx married a baroness. By the 1850s Marx was banned from most European countries, so he settled his family in dowdy England. He became a denizen of the British Museum reading room and participated in occasional pub crawls. Aside from the largess provided by Engels, he impatiently awaited family inheritances (!) while perpetually outstripping his income. Marx consistently advanced up the bourgeois social scale by inhabiting residences one or more steps beyond his means, even while his winter coats and his wife's silver languished in pawnshops. He claimed it was necessary in order to allow his daughters to marry well.
Marx seems to have reversed the usual progression from youthful curiosity to later dogmatism. The more he learned, the more he felt he needed to know. He taught himself calculus to develop economic formulas and Russian in order to study developments there. This prodigious mental activity resulted in thousands of pages filled with nearly illegible scribbles, but only glacial progress on "Das Kapital." The first volume finally limped off his desk in 1867; two more were assembled by Engels from the mountain of notes after Marx's death.
He witnessed the social upheavals of 1848 and 1870 be ruthlessly suppressed. The International he helped found eventually floundered in a sea of intrigue and bickering. As he aged, Marx seemed to accept that his attempts to manipulate both the pace and trajectory of history had failed. His secret wish that his daughter marry upward into English society was cruelly dashed when two of them instead wed French Socialists. Nevertheless, the last accounts of him depict a genial, devoted grandfather.
Francis Wheen's "Karl Marx: a life" is a fine biography.
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Enjoyable!
By Chad Bagley
Enjoyable and witty read on the life of Karl Marx. If I have any complaints it's that when I finished the book I still didn't have a very good grasp of his economic and political philosophy or how he came to his conclusions within a historical context. Nevertheless, Francis Wheen does give a good view of Marx's family life and helps to clear up some common misconceptions about Mark's overall character.
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Karl Marx - the first biography to describe the person
By Frances E. Kinsella
This is the first book to describe Marx as a person, a father, husband, friend and individual. Previous books have focused on his theories and/or philosophy. Thus they describe him as a genius or a devil depending on the author's political persausion. Well worth reading. Full of humour, and interesting anecdotes. Marx comes across as being very much more a man than a monster!
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