A Marx for Murdoch

Karl Marx, by Francis Wheen

As you've by now realized, I have a policy of not linking to books published by companies owned by Rupert Murdoch—you can find the book yourself if you want to: I feel bad enough for having bought the book myself. Having read it, frankly, I can understand why Murdoch was happy to publish it.

In Wheen's defence, because this is a biography rather than an outline of Marx's philosophy, this is not the place to look if you're expecting a detailed explanation or justification of Marxism; there are some half-hearted stabs at defending the arguments advanced in Capital vis a vis crises of overproduction, for example, but these are undermined by Wheen's contention that Capital should not be read as a scientific work in any case but as a work of art akin to Sterne's Tristram Shandy or Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

In fact, Wheen makes a better case for this view than he does for the validity of Marx's arguments. He spends several pages showing how the text of Marx's grand opus is laced with abstruse syllogisms, daft paradoxes, obscure metaphysics, and ironic or satirical passages of no small literary merit, all of which render the work far more readable than any normal, dry economics text of the period, even if this is at the expense of rigour. More use-value and profit can be derived from Capital, Wheen asserts, if it is read as a work of the imagination: a Victorian melodrama, or a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved and consumed by the monster they created . . . or perhaps a satirical utopia like Swift's land of the Houyhnhnms . . ." (I was always given to understand in any case that Marx was more concerned that Capital be an overwhelming book in terms of its size than its scientific validity.) Not touched upon by Wheen, but a rumour I once heard from a fellow Counagian, is the argument that there is supposed to be a Hegelian structure to the entire text (the three volumes) so that it can be read like some massive unfolding of the dialectic. Little help, anyone?

So, then, this is a work of biography, not exegesis. But as such, the narrative throughout is somewhat insipid. Whether this is to do with Wheen's style (see previous review) or the chosen subject is difficult to say. It's an appalling cliche to use but never has it been more apt: Reading Francis Wheen is like eating a Chinese meal—it all goes down very easily and seems to be substantial, yet ten minutes later you're hungry again.

You come to this book assuming that Marx's life story will arouse a sense of awe, that because he was present at events that later proved to be of world-shattering importance, they will appear less than mundane in their retelling, yet you are is left feeling that this man can be a hero for no one other than librarians for all the time he spent reading and writing. Indeed, it's a biography for people whose heroes are librarians and novelists rather than fighter pilots or drug smugglers (Given Lenin's well-known cowardice in the face of physical violence, these are probably the same people). Even in the book's most exciting passages, all Marx seems to do is drink, sit on committees, destroy workers' organizations when they look like falling beyond his control, or engage in common vandalism and get chased by the police (to be fair, he was a tad more adventurous during his student years, but then weren't we all?)

The conclusion to draw from this book might be that it is for his writings that Marx should best be remembered, since as an individual he was prone to jealousy, petty rages, vulgar name calling, and begrudgery of such incredible force that the merest slight could not go unpunished: viz Herr Vogt and The Great Men of Exile. Moreover, he was an unbelievable scrounger, not just receiving off cash handouts from Engels but living off a handsome sum every year so that his daughters could live respectable bourgeois existences and attend the best schools. It was not that Marx had nothing to live on but that he spent money so lavishly and wastefully that explains the hardships that are often cited as proof of Marx's sacrifice on the workers' behalf. Any sacrifice was made not for the workers but for his daughters, and if it was made by anyone, it was made by Engels—or the people who worked for him.

It's Freddy Engels who comes out this biography with the most credit, and it surprises me that we still do not have a definitive biography of him in English. He is a far more simpatico character, and his long relationships with both Marx and Mary Burns are indicative of his capacity for selflessness and loyalty. And a good laugh he seems to have been, too (we'll leave aside for the time being his regular participation in the Cheshire Hunt).

As a final comment, let me just add that Wheen's treatment of the anarchists in the International is strangely underdeveloped. A chapter that one expects to be devoted to Bakunin spends only the first few pages discussing what a thoroughly bad egg he was, and there's no acknowledgement that Marx's position on the Franco-Prussian war and the Commune were affected by the significance they might have in the battle between Marx's "German socialism" over the rival "French socialism" of the Proudhonists in the International. These are not negligible aspects of Marx's career, since both he and Lenin successfully presented themselves as liberators in their words and dictators by their deeds. And it's by their deeds that ye shall know them.