A Requiem for Karl Marx

by Frank Edward Manuel

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 profoundly affected millions. A Requiem for Karl Marx is Frank Manuel's searching meditation on that life, a learned & elegantly written engagement with the man & his work. Manuel gives us a psychological portrait rendered with sympathy & critical detachment, a probing look at the connections between the private drama of Marx' life & his revolutionary ideas. Manuel pursues these connections from Marx' adolescence & education in Trier thru his university studies, marriage to a German baroness, & early affiliation with French & German radical groups. Here we see Marx in moments of youthful rapture, in periods of despair, in maneuvers 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 & witness the shattering effects of his aggressive, often brutal conduct toward friend & foe alike. Manuel analyzes in intricate detail the central role of Marx' enduring relationship with Friedrich Engels, which appears to transcend the bounds of friendship, & his changing behavior toward his wife, Jenny, the neurotic & tragic figure who shared his dismal London exile. What becomes clear in this narrative is the link between Marx' personal life & his ideas about class struggle, revolutionary strategy & utopia--as well as the impact of his personal vision & political tactics on the movements that followed him, down to our day.

Genres: Biography

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Edward Manuel (1910-2000), a former member of the Brandeis History faculty, was a specialist in European utopian philosophy, awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957, and won the National Book Award for his Utopian Thought in the Western World. This book takes a contrastive stand, comparing Karl Marx, the person, to his socialist beliefs, with some uneven effort to relate his biography to his beliefs. This is certainly not a hagiography.