Carl Remick talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk> >
>
>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."
Carl
_ ^^^^^^^ CB: Yea, but now that my speculation is corroborated with some evidence from some biographer that Marx did carouse in London and probably with workers, I'm thinking he might have been a lot more fun guy around workers, since he'd probably get his arse kicked if he inserted , you know, pubcrawlers from the docks or whatever, factory mechanics. Schurz, whom I respect as a Union General in the U.S. Civil War, I don't have any evidence, but, we might want to check out his personality factors as well. Not to make an ad hominem argument or anything - in fact someone might say it takes one to know one -, but there is some question of who is the asshole , and who isn't. A German General might be somewhat uptight "hisself", just making a wild guess. Marx and Schurz were in different sects of the "48'ers". The True Communists are explicitly criticized in the Manifesto ( if Schurz was a True Communist). All this does not prove that Schurz's criticism is not accurate, but it is evidence of potential bias.
However, as Lou Pro says, "Marx is not God". He was a regular human. I'm not claiming that he didn't commit morally bad acts, but not such that he was a horrible or very immoral person. Let he who has not sinnned...
I think when he said he wasn't a Marxist, he was demonstrating elementary humility and anti-pomposity. I'm sure he included workers in his social life, and in that probably had a better personality than the pompous middle and boojies of his day; there were arisotocrats in his day. His wife was from an aristocratic family. It's like John Brown with Queen Victoria in 1866. Just kidding.
I gotta say I always find Marx's writing to be riddled with jokes ( and joking with riddles). He seems hilarious to me. Almost the first Marx brother, and in the middle of all that erudition. I know he must have been a one-man show up there in the British Museum. Then leave when the library closes ,and go to the speakeasy sometime with the boys.