A Requiem for Karl Marx

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

A Requiem for Karl Marx

Frank E. Manuel

Harvard University Press, 1995

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Note

Includes bibliographical notes (p. [243]-250) and index

Plates: between p. 120-[121]

Paperback ed. (1997, c1995): NCID=(BA33606331)

Description and Table of Contents

Description

As Karl Marx the icon has fallen along with so many communist regimes, we are left with the mystery of Karl Marx the man, the complexities of a life that has affected millions. "A Requiem for Karl Marx" is Frank Manuel's meditation on that life, a written engagement with the man and his work. Manuel gives us a psychological portrait, a look at the connections between the private drama of Marx's life and his revolutionary ideas. Manuel pursues these connections from Marx's adolescence and education in Trier through his university studies, marriage to a German baroness, and early affiliation with French and German radical groups. Here we see Marx in moments of youth, in periods of despair, in manoevres of blatant hypocrisy, in outbursts of self-mockery. We follow his involuted response to his status as a converted Jew, observe the psychic toll of debilitating bouts of illness, and witness the effects of his aggressive, often brutal conduct toward friend and foe alike. Manuel analyzes in detail the central role of Marx's enduring relationship with Friedrich Engels, which appears to transcend the bounds of friendship, and his changing behaviour toward his wife, Jenny, the neurotic and tragic figure who shared his dismal London exile. What becomes clear in this narrative is the link between Marx's personal life and his ideas about class struggle, revolutionary strategy and utopia - as well as the impact of his personal vision and political tactics on the movements that followed him, down to our day.

Table of Contents

  • The alien of Trier
  • Joanna Bertha Julie Jenny von Westphalen
  • the dioscuri - old moor and the general
  • emigre cannibalism
  • the albatross - "das kapital"
  • the arena of class war
  • the ambiguities of nationhood
  • utopias - the approved and the forbidden
  • enemies within the gates
  • shearing of the beard
  • vicissitudes of an icon.

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