[lbo-talk] Not A Very Nice Man

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 4/4/07, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com>
> >
> >I said that Marx he had a bad temper and a bitter
> >tongue ...
>
> ... and a fat lot of good it did him.  Marx's frequent idle vituperation was
> counterproductive in the extreme.  E.g., from Carl Schurz's "Reminiscences"
> on Marx in Cologne, 1848:
>
> "[Marx] enjoyed the reputation of having acquired great learning, and as I
> knew very little of his discoveries and theories, I was all the more eager
> to gather words of wisdom from the lips of the famous man.  This expectation
> was disappointed in a peculiar way.  Marx's utterances were indeed full of
> meaning, logical and clear, but I have never seen a man whose bearing was so
> provoking and intolerable.  To no opinion which differed from his own did he
> accord the honor of even condescending consideration.  Everyone who
> contradicted him he treated with abject contempt; every argument that he did
> not like he answered either with biting scorn at the unfathomable ignorance
> that had prompted it, or with opprobrious aspersions upon the motives of him
> who advanced it.  I remember most distinctly the cutting disdain with which
> he pronounced the word 'bourgeois'; and as a 'bourgeois' -- that is, as a
> detestable example of the deepest mental and moral degeneracy -- he
> denounced everyone who dared to oppose his opinion ... it was very evident
> that not only had he not won any adherents, but he had repelled many who
> otherwise might have become his followers."

In contrast, Engels must have been fun to be around:

<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1905/08/engels.htm>
Paul Lafargue 1905
Frederick Engels

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Once Madame Marx heard a lady say in 1848, "Engels is a frivolous
man," and that was the opinion of the Manchester merchants. No learned
man was ever less pedantic than he.

Till the end of his days he remained a hasty traveller and a pleasant
comrade; he loved the society of the young, and he was a model host.
Many London Socialists, passing travellers, exiles from all countries,
have gathered at his friendly table on Sundays, and they all left his
house delighted with the evening they had spent, enlivened by his
cheerful hospitality, his wit, and his great vivacity.
-- 
Yoshie