Portrait an Evil Man; E. von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

"In an ancient bishopric." "What was your citizenship?" "Prussian." "Who was your father?" "A wealthy lawyer." "What was your faith?" "I converted to Christianity." "Not very good. Married? Who was your wife?" "The daughter of an aristocratic Prussian officer and the sister of a Royal Prussian Minister of the Interior who persecuted the So cialists." Dr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer. Sched uled for early 1974 release by Arlington House is his latest book, Leftism: From de Sade to Marcuse. "Awful. And where did you live mostly?" "In London." "Hm, the colonialist capital of capitalism. Who was your best friend ?" "A manufacturer from the Ruhr Valley." "Did you like workers?" "N"ot in the least. Kept them at arm's length. Despised them." "What did you think about Jews ?" "I called them a money-crazy race and hoped that they would vanish from the Earth."

"And what about the Slavs?" "I despised the Russians." "You must be a fascist! You even dare to ask for admission to the Red Paradise - you must be crazy! By the way, what's your name?" "Karl Marx." Man, indeed, is a very strange animal. This has been proved in 525 526 THE FREEMAN September many ways, but especially by the Marx-renaissance of recent dec ades. And yet the ideas of this odd and by no means constructive thinker are responsible all over the world for rivers of blood and oceans of tears. There can be no doubt that without the Commu nist challenge National Socialism, its competitor, would never have succeeded. Hitler boasted' to Rauschning that he was the real executor of Marxism (though "minus its Jewish-Talmudic spir it"); thus the macabre death dance of our civilzation in the past fifty years is due to that scurril ous, evil and unhappy man who spent half his life copying endless passages from books in the Brit ish Museum Library's reading room. Yet, with the exception of numerous pamphlets and the first volume of a book, he left nothing but badly assembled, unpublish able manuscripts and a mountain of notes. It was his friend Fried rich Engels who, with the most laborious efforts, had to bring them into shape.

New Interest from the Left This Marx-renaissance is due largely, but not solely, to the rise of the New Left which argues that the dear old man had been thoroughly misunderstood by the barbaric Russians. Also a number of men and women would be horrifled to be called Socialists or Communists but still have a soft spot in their hearts for a man who "at least was filled with compas sion for the poor and was an ad mirable father and a tender hus band." Surely, Marx was a com plex and contradictory person, and the renewed attention paid to him has produced a number of German books analyzing this most fatal figure of our times. Destructive ideas almost unavoidably derive from a destructive and - in this case - rather repulsive person. Karl Marx was born in Trier, of Jewish parents, in 1818. Only a few years earlier this Catholic bishopric was forcibly incorpo rated into the Kingdom of Prussia and-Karl Marx's father embraced the Lutheran faith of the Prus sian occupants. The children and the rather reluctant mother were baptized by a Prussian army chap lain only at a later date. The deism of Enlightenment was the true faith of Heinrich Marx who, however, was a cultured man and a devoted father. Young Karl fin ished high school-college with fly ing colors at the age of seventeen and set out to study law which he shortly abandoned for philosophy, eyeing the possibility of an aca demic career. He first matricu lated in Bonn, then in Berlin where he fell under the spell of the Heg elians. He received his Ph.D. from 1973 PORTRAIT OF AN EVIL MAN 527 the University of Jena, but re nounced the idea of becoming a professor. He also gave up writ ing his self-centered poetry and his dream of running a theatrical review. He then married into the Prussian nobility and established himself as a. freelance writer in Paris where he soon clashed with the more humanitarian French so cialists. He moved to Cologne, then returned to Paris and, finally expelled from Belgium as an ene my of the established order - he took a permanent abode in London where, with interruptions, he re mained until his death in 1883.

So much for the facts of his life. Within the last decade three books have been published in Ger man analyzing Marx psycholog ically. These tomes are very dif ferent in scope but they hardly vary in their judgments. The au thors belong to no "school" in particular, but all are serious stu dents of our "hero's" works and personal history. These books are Marx, by Werner Blumenberg, a small, but exceedingly readable paperback (1962), Karl Marx, Die Revolutioniire Konjession by Ernst Kux (1967) and Karl Marx, Eine Psychographie by Arnold Kunzli (1966). The last two have not been published in the United States and whoever is acquainted with the tremendous difficulties encountered by translations of learned books in the United States will not be surprised. The reasons for this state of affairs are not solely of a financial nature. This article is partly based on the work of these authors.

A Generation Gap Let us return to the personnli ty of the founder of socialism and communism. Even as a young man Marx does not appear to have been attractive. As a student he is lib erally provided with money by his affluent father, and spends his an nuity of 700 Thalers - a nice mid dle class income would then be around 300 Thalers - in a manner still unexplained. In spite of his love for Jenny von Westphalen he is an unhappy, "torn" person and writes in these terms to his father. Heinrich Marx ticks him off: "To be quite frank, I hate this mod ern expression - 'torn - used by weaklings .if they are disgusted with life merely because they can not get without effort beautifully furnished palaces, elegant carri ages, and millions in the bank." And in another letter the old gentleman, knowing his son only too well, tells him that he suspects his heart. not to have the saIne qualities as his mind. "If your heart is not pure and human, if it becomes alienated by an evil genius ... my life's great hope will be dashed."

528 THE FREEMAN September Karl Marx was impatient. In this connection it is worthwhile to have a look at his doctoral dis sertation on Epicurus, the .ma terialistic Greek philosopher who, as the founder of Epicureanism, made sensual pleasures the main purpose of life. Here Marx quoted several lines from Aeschylus in which Prometheus rants against the gods and ridicules the idea of being an obedient son to Father Zeus. The figure of Prometheus was, indeed, as Kux and KUnzli demonstrate one of the guiding stars. in Marx's life. The revolt against God (and the gods), the rebellion against the entire exist ing order, all quite natural in youth, remained his leitmot1iv un til his death. Marx, as our authors insist, never really grew up. His entire relationship to other peo ple continued to be juvenile, if not infantile. Marx's basic vision was that of a humanity freed from all oppres sion, repression and controls and thus open to an egotistic "self realization" - primarily of an ar tistic order. There was, as he be lieved, a Raphael, a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Bach in every man. This great liberation, how ever, could only be achieved by the rule, the dictatorship of the poorest and most tyrannized peo ple, the working class. These were the ones, he thought, who could be indoctrinated to destroy the existing order entirely - and then to build a new one. They were ordained "by history" to carry out his murderous dreams.

The trouble was that he had no knowledge of the mind and men tality of the workers nor any af fection for them. He only knew "statistically" about their situa tion, their living conditions; and these were humble, inevitably so, because at the beginning of any industrialization (be it capitalis tic or socialistic) the purchasing power of the masses is still low and the costs of saving and in vesting (Le. the buying of expen sive machinery) are bound to be very high. In the period of early capitalism the manufacturers, con trary to a widespread legend, lived rather puritanically and were by no means bent on luxury. But none of this endeared the workers to Marx in any way. He had only words of contempt for them, ex cept as they might be mobilized against the "bourgeois" society which Marx so hated. Glaring Inconsistencies Despite his entirely "bourgeois" background this is the way his lifelong opposition against his family, above all against his par ents, took shape-. Interestingly enough, Marx's anti-middle-class complex was not accompanied by 1973 PORTRAIT OF AN EVIL MAN 529 any marked loathing for the aris tocracy to which his wife be longed. He probably preferred her father to his own. The young lead er of the German Worker's Move ment directed his wife to have her calling cards printed: "Jenny Marx, nee baronne de Westphalen."

He also sported a most feudal looking monocle and was a real snob. His two closest friends be longed to the hated grande bour geois'ie: Friedrich Engels, the Presbyterian textile manufactur er; and August Philips, a Dutch banker, a Calvinist of Jewish ori gin who was his maternal cousin. Apart from these two, Marx had no real friends. Budding friendships he destroyed almost automatically through his petti ness, his envy, his rancor and his urge to domineer. He was one of the greatest haters in modern his tory, and one of the reasons why he never really got ahead in his basic work was his endless hostile pamphleteering. If he felt slighted by anybody, if he saw in some writer a possible competitor, if an innocent author had written about a theme of interest to Marx but with conclusions differing from his, Marx immediately dropped every serious research object, sat down and wrote a vitriolic reply or an entire pamphlet. He had the most poisonous pen under the sun and used the most unfair personal arguments. Even as a scholar he "never could refrain from going off on a tangent. He sometimes cop ied half a book which had nothing to do with his main subject; hence the mountains of undecipherable notes and casual remarks on small slips.

A Vindictive Nature He was a brilliant talker who dominated conversations with his caustic remarks. A Prussian lieu tenant named Techow, a convert to socialism, after visiting Marx said in a letter that he would be ready to sacrifice everything for him "if only his heart were re motely as good as his mind." Marx, needless to say, vilified al most everybody within his reach and despised especially the Ger man refugees, the 48-ers, in whose company he had to live most of the time. (Significantly enough, he had hardly any contacts with genuine Englishmen who probably could not stand his manners and mannerisms.) Marx had nothing but contempt for women in gen eral and never engaged in genuine conversations with his wife who was decidedly an intelligent and sensitive woman with a good edu cational background. Part of Marx's worst ire was directed against the Jews. In this he was not in the least inhibited by his Jewish descent. His hatred 530 THE FREEMAN September for Jews had certain religious as pects but was primarily a racism of the most wicked sort.

No, Marx certainly was not a "good man". In his memoirs, Carl Schurz, the German democratic revolutionary, who later became a U. S. Senator, has given us his impressions of Marx: "The stocky, heavily built man with his broad forehead, his pitch black hair and full beard, attracted general at tention ... What Marx said was indeed substantial, logical and clear. But never did I meet a man of such offensive arrogance in his demeanor. No opinion deviating in principle from his own would be given the slightest considera tion. Anybody who contradicted him was treated with barely veiled contempt~ Every argument which he happened to dislike was an swered either with biting mock ery about such pitiful display of ignorance, or with defamatory suspicions as to the motives of the interpellant. I still well remember the sneering tone with which he spat out the word bourgeoisie. And as bourgeois, that is to say as an example of a profound intellectual and moral depravity, he denounced everybody who dared to contradict his views."

Arnold Ruge, a well-known Ger man essayist, with whom Marx collaborated in Paris in a literary venture and who soon fell out with him, wrote to Frobel (nephew of the famous educator of the same name ) that "gnashing his teeth and with a grin Marx would slaughter all those who got in the way of this new Babeuf. He al ways thinks about this feast which he cannot celebrate." Heinrich Heine, who also quickly learned to dislike Karl Marx, called him a "godless self-god." Unkempt and Undisciplined Karl Marx was in no wayan at tracti ve man; he had no hidden charms. A Prussian detective, sent to London in order to find out what this intellectual wire-puller of Socialism was like, informed his government that Marx was leading "the true life of a gypsy. To wash, to comb his hair or to change his underwear are rare oc currences with him ... if he can, he gets drunk ... he might sleep dur ing the day and stay up all night ...

he doesn't care whether people come or leave ... if you enter his home you have to get used to the smoke of tobacco and the coal in the open fireplace with the result that it takes some time until you can see properly the objects in the rooms." Gainful work was alien to him and when he landed a part-time job as the· correspondent for the New York Tribune (under Charles A. Dana, an early American social1973 PORTRAITOF AN EVIL MAN 531 ist) , it was his friend Engels who had to write most of the articles during the first year. Marx could have earned money by·giving lan guage lessons, but he refused this and continued to sponge on Eng els, who really made Marx. (Once Marx, as a true socialist, tried to gamble at the London Stock Ex change, but failed.) Engels was his "angel" from every imagin able point of view. A Most Unhappy Family The sufferings of the Marx family, and especially of poor faithful Jenny, are difficult to de scribe. Though they did have a housekeeper and though Friedrich Engels spent in the course of the years at least 4000 Pounds on Karl Marx, they lived in abject misery.

The death of one child, a boy, is directly attributable to poverty and neglect. Family life must have been absolutely terrible, but Marx could not be moved - neither by entreaties, nor by tears, nor by cries of despair. For two chapters of Das Kapital he needed fourteen years. No wonder that only the first volume was published during his lifetime and that it was Engels' headache to assemble and to rewrite the rest, so that - as one author suggested - we should speak of Engelsism rather than of Marxism. Yet it would be a mis take to think that Marx suffered silently and proudly. By no means! In· his letters and in his conversa tions he never failed to complain and to lament. He had a colossal amount not only of self-hatred, but also of self-pity, but no human feelings for others, least of all for his wife whose health he had ruined completely. Marx liked his daughters. These were - intellectually, linguistic ally, artistically - extremely gifted girls, but the spiritual background of the family had an adverse in fluence on them. Marx was a fana tical atheist, a disciple of Feuer bach who thus succinctly formu lated his views: "Der Mensch ist, was er isst - Man is what he eats." And in an early poem Marx had declared: "And we are mon keys of an icy god." Jenny, too, had completely lost her childhood faith and her sufferings had made her practically despondent toward the end of her life. She was older than her husband and preceded him in death.

The oldest of his daughters, also named Jenny, the most beloved by the father, died of cancer at the age of thirty-nine. Karl Marx sur vived her only by two months. Laura, for reasons unknown, com mitted suicide together with her husband later in their lives. The French Socialist Party was stunned; at their grave one of the speakers was a Russian refugee, 532 THE FREEMAN September Vladimir Ilyitch Ulyanov, better known under his pen-name: Lenin. y ears later, each time he looked up from his desk in the Kremlin study (now transferred to the Lenin Museum in Moscow) he saw on his desk not a crucifix, an ikon or a picture of his wife, but the statuette of a reddish ape with an evil grin. "We monkeys of an icy god!" Eleanor, the third daughter, a quite hysterical child and later a passionate socialist and feminist, admitted that she "saw nothing worth living for." She also com mitted suicide. Still, in her fare well letter to her nephew Jean Longuet, she exhorted him, above all, to be worthy of his grand father.

Who can explain the influence of this queer and sinister man on the world? Undoubtedly he was talented in many ways, but there is nothing truly valuable about his extremely nega tive, nay, even absurd message. However, history is not reasonable. Mankind is not either. Surely, all the prophecies of Marx in the economic and his torical field have proved wrong. His philosophical insights are totally obsolete. They are not even worth refutation except, maybe, as an exercise for high school stu dents or college undergraduates. They are, above all, proved to be wrong empirically. But what does it matter? Material victories or publicity triumphs are one thing, truth or goodness very different ones. The Children of Darkness have always been more clever than the Children of Light. Socialism, moreover, has always been a "clear, but false idea." A free market economy, on the other hand, is far more complex and cannot be explained in a nutshell.

In the political arena it competes poorly with the notion of collective ownership and central planning until the latter's bankruptcy is proved in practice. The ideas of the hate-swollen bookworm in the library reading room can only be shown up in life. Here the method of trial and error, however, has its terrible pitfalls. To experience Marxism entails a captivity from which, as we know, escape is not so simple. The poor East Euro peans realize all this only too well. More than a hundred years ago the German classic poet and writer Jean Paul wrote that "In every century the Almighty sends us an evil genius in order to tempt us." In the case of Marx the temptation is still with us, but as far as the perceptive observer can see, in spite of the renewed interest in the "Red Prussian,'" it is now slowly, slowly subsiding. ~ IN SPITE of all the hopes and the fears, the planning and the hard work, the promises and rationali zations - it really doesn't matter who they call the winner in N0 vember of a Presidential election year.