Who Was Karl Marx?

Last week I asked several people what they knew about Karl Marx. Curtis said, “I only keep up with the Cowboys. I don’t know the names of players on the other teams.”

He’s a typical Texan.

You know I am not typical. I’ve read and studied about a lot of things. (My brother said, “Don’t ever play Trivial Pursuit with her!) In a post-graduate course at TCU, I studied economic systems, including Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. I actually read Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital.” A big, thick book with lots of statistics about British laborers in the 1800's.

Asked what she knew about Marx, Jean said, “All I know is that he was an evil man.” Then she added, “Wasn’t he Russian?”

Marx was German. Forced to leave Germany after the failed revolution of 1848, a time when Germans came to the Hill Country in Texas, Marx and his family went to England. He did all his research on which he based his theory of Communism in the reading room of the British Museum and Library.

When I went to London the first time, I spent a day in the Museum, where I got to see the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, Chinese porcelains, ancient illuminated manuscripts, and a special exhibit on Karl Marx, with pictures of his family and his library card.

In “Das Kapital” Marx describes horrible working conditions: five year old children digging in narrow tunnels in coal mines, factory workers maimed and discarded with no benefits, farm workers barely living on starvation wages. He thought surely the workers would revolt.

He could not foresee what would happen in Russia, where Communism collapsed and there is now chaos. Or China, which is still nominally Communist but which is now becoming our rival as the fastest growing Capitalist economy in the World. .

Marx certainly did not foresee what would happen in England. No violent revolution. Today middle class English people have more comfortable lives than we have in the U.S. (It’s true. I’ve traveled all over England, staying in British homes; also, John and I spent a summer living in Ipswich, England, with middle class neighbors.)

In any case, Marx is dead. He’s buried in Highgate Cemetery. In London I stayed with Margaret and Jack in a handsome house in Highgate. I said, “Let’s go see Karl Marx.” We drove over to the cemetery, but the gates were locked. R.I.P., Karl. He is one whose influence lived after him, but not in the way he expected.