Fitzgerald E. - Karl Marx The Story of His Life

Routledge Library Editions Economics

HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT

In 23 Volumes

First published in 1936

Reprinted in 2003 by
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Karl Marx
ISBN 978-0-415-31333-9 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-60726-1 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-31320-9 (set)
eISBN 978-1-134-55890-2

Miniset: History of Economic Thought

Series: Routledge Library Editions Economics

THIS BOOK IS THE AUTHORISED ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE GERMAN VOLUME : KARL MARX : GESCHICHTE SEINES LEBENS , BY FRANZ MEHRING

ENGLISH EDITION FIRST PUBLISHED 1936 SECOND IMPRESSION 1948

A reproduction of a little-known Marx portrait done in oils

TO CLARA ZETKIN

T HE author of this biography was born in 1846 in Pomerania of a well-to-do middle-class family. He studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig, taking the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the latter. From the beginning his leanings were democratic and liberal, and when the time came for him to submit himself to the stupidities of the Prussian drill sergeant he left Prussia and went to live in Leipzig, which in those days was foreign territory . This deliberate revolt caused the breaking off of relations between him and his family. Whilst still a young man he began to take an active part in public life and in the political struggles of the day. At the age of 25 he was a member of the small band of democrats led by Guido Weiss and Johann Jacoby which had sufficient courage to protest openly against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Bismarck after the Franco-Prussian War.

Mehrings chief activities were journalistic and literary, and for many years he was a contributor to prominent liberal and democratic newspapers, and later on an editor. All his life he had a keen sense of justice, and the feeling that injustice was being done was always sufficient to bring him on the scene. He defended Platen against Heine, Lassalle and Bakunin against Marx and Engels, Schweitzer against Bebel, and Bernstein against Liebknecht, and together with Rosa Luxemburg he fought a brilliant polemic against Kautsky and Riazanov. That he was not always on the side of the angels the reader of this book will discover for himself, but wherever he was to be found it was not because he had first considered the consequences to himself, but because his own sense of justice had compelled him with imperative logic.

At about the age of 30 he became a socialist of the Lassallean school, appearing in the arena with a pamphlet against the historian Treitschke. It is to this period of socialism strongly tinged with nationalism that his attacks on Social Democracy and on Marx belong. Like many another well-meaning and liberal-minded man from the ranks of the possessing classes, he approached the working-class movement equipped with democratic and liberal principles and a desire to assist the workers, and he suffered the failure and disappointment which such an approach inevitably brings with it. However, unlike many others, he did not then withdraw to nurse his wounded dignity and bemoan the proletarian lack of gratitude, but, spurred on by his initial failure, he came to grips with the problem and emerged as a Marxist.