Father of Socialism

KARL MARX: HIS LIFE AND WORK--By Otto Ruble; translated by Eden and Cedar Paul--Viking Press ($5).

There is a fairest and most illuminating time to look at a great man dead. That time for Karl Marx, holy father of Socialism of all tints, from palest parlor pink to Russianest Soviet red, is his poverty-stricken, voluminously literary period in England (1849 to his death in 1883).

Back of that is his birth (1818) in Rhenish Prussian Treves, son of a Jewish lawyer, with a long line of learned rabbis behind the lawyer. His years at the universities of Bonn and Berlin were studious, lazy-livered, undramatic. He took his Ph. D., fought no duels. He married the daughter of a high government official. His interest always lay in philosophy and the proletariat. After journalistic ventures in revolutionary twilight zones in Cologne, Paris, Brussels, he fled with his wife, three children and faithful servant "Lenchen," to London, world's warmest haven for refugees.

He had been tried and acquitted by a bourgeois jury in Germany on charges of subversive journalism; had been told in Paris to get out or bury himself in a provincial town; had been active in revolutionary talking parties; had met, been insanely jealous of, broken with most other red leaders--except the German banker, Friedrich Engels, his disciple and friend until death. His trustiest weapons were always flaming words and inflaming ideas. Already, before reaching England, he had proclaimed his memorable: "Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

The English years were primarily a book-writing time. He began his colossal Capital: A Criticism of Political Economy and published the first volume in the same year (1867) and the same place (London) as Darwin's Origin of Species.

The Marx family of seven first lived in two rooms of London's shimmy Soho. Father Marx could not write at home. For years he went to the British Museum reading room to work. He had talked much of force, meaning bombs and guns. Henceforth he was busy building a powder magazine of ideas. He had written: "Theory, too, becomes a physical force when it takes possession of the masses." He also observed: "There can be no talk of a real revolution in such a time as this, when general prosperity prevails."

At home, gentle-born Jenny, his wife, descendant of the Duke of Argyle, planned and scrimped and did not whine. "Len-chen'' (Helene Demuth), given to Jenny by her mother as a wedding present, slaved till the end of her life with little or no pay, while the Master was writing tomes about the exploitation of the working class. Friend Engels was at Manchester holding down a job and scheming how to get hold of more and more money. Marx's letters to Engels had one refrain: "Lend me--" Eventually Engels sold his interest in a textile business, settled an annuity of -L-350 on Marx, moved to London to help him still more.

When the first volume of Capital was published (in German) it raised no great storm. It was to do its work later -- in Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Japan, Latin-America, China. It was not a guidebook for revolutionists. It was the fountainhead of a social current.

Boils, hemorrhoids, lazy liver, insomnia and neurasthenia prevented the completion of Vols. II and III of the Marxian masterpiece, though he did much work on them. They were later edited and maneuvered into print by Friend Engels (1885 and 1894). With more money to spend, Marx tried to build up his health. He had sat too long in the British Museum reading room, fought too many losing battles with pawnbrokers and poverty. Faithfully, Jenny died in 1881. He followed within 18 months. They and "Lenchen" and a Marx grandson lie in Highgate Cemetery, outside of London, England.

Psychoanalytical, Biographer Ruehle explains his subject's "arrogance, self-conceit, dogmatism, disputatiousness, irritability" as follows: 1) Karl Marx was the only son of a cultured father who expected much of him, but the boy took no distinguished part in the life of his two universities, felt himself a failure; 2) he was a Jew; 3) he had poor health (chiefly a lazy liver) from his boyhood. Results: 1) inferiority complex; 2) the grand dictatorial manner as protective coloring.

Significance. Author Ruehle's book is published as the "only biography available in English." The translation from German has the feeling of fidelity. It is not a first-rate biography. It contains too much socialism, too little of the man Man and the men and women close to him. The creator of international Socialism's bible deserves better of biography than Herr Ruehle, a retired politician-journalist, has done.