FATHER OF COMMUNISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26775, 19 May 1948, Page 2

FATHER OF COMMUNISM

A NEW MARX BIOGRAPHY

The Red Prussian: Karl Marx. By by Leopold Schwarzschild. Hamish Hamilton. 20s. Marx’s latest biographer claims that only now, three-quarters of a century after the subject was at the apex of his career, can a proper evaluation be made of his works, basing this assertion on the ancient truism that a tree is known by its fruit. From this point the author proceeds to expatiate on the manner in which Marx almost drifted, after an indolent adolescence, into becoming, with Friedrich Engels, a vociferous pioneer of Communism, though the name was coined by neither of them. Marx is depicted as a person of little genius and still less energy in his early manhood. He was a spendthrift, a conscienceless despoiler of his

father’s limited means and a confirmed procrastinator. Shortly after his marriage he secured money from his wife’s relations, and for the rest of his life was content to live on money supplied by the disciples of his ultra-socialistic creed. In later years, though obsessed by broils, he showed remarkable energy in expounding his theories and still more in scourging those of his erstwhile companions who dared to differ from him. He was at all times animated by a lust for power. The Communism propounded in Marx’s day was usually labelled Socialism, but its objective was the same—its establishment in control of nations by revolutionary force. There were no half measures in those times, and there was little or no attempt to disguise the true objective. Mr Schwarzschild is a severe critic, but not merely a captious one. He confirms his assertions concerning Marx’s weaknesses and other unlovable qualities with a wealth of annotation the authenticity of which cannot be disputed. In fact, an important part of the general condemnation is supplied in Marx’s own letters to Engels, only a selected few of which have been available to earlier biographers. E. C. C.