Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

by Mary Gabriel

Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, LOVE AND CAPITAL is a heartbreaking and dramatic saga of the family side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death.
Drawing upon years of research, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel brings to light the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. We follow them as they roam Europe, on the run from governments amidst an age of revolution and a secret network of would-be revolutionaries, and see Karl not only as an intellectual, but as a protective father and loving husband, a revolutionary, a jokester, a man of tremendous passions, both political and personal.
In LOVE AND CAPITAL, Mary Gabriel has given us a vivid, resplendent, and truly human portrait of the Marxes-their desires, heartbreak and devotion to each other's ideals.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Biography Memoir

709 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2011

About the author

Mary Gabriel was educated in the United States and France, and worked in Washington and London as a Reuters editor for nearly two decades. She is the author of two previous biographies: Notorious Victoria: The Life of Victoria Woodhull, Uncensored, and The Art of Acquiring: A Portrait of Etta and Claribel Cone. She lives in Italy.

Reviews

[Isadora Paiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a daughter of two Marxist political economy professors, I grew up with this picture on the wall of our living room, which we called "uncle Marx". No joke.

A couple of years ago, my mom and dad read this biography and couldn't stop talking about it for months. I said I'd read it eventually, so they'd stop telling me about every single thing in the book, but to be honest I wasn't really looking forward to it. It's so looong. I'd never read a biography before (plenty of autobiographies and memoirs, though), because it seemed like they could either be boring recitations of facts, or go way overboard in the other direction and speculate in a sensational manner over things the author just can't know about. Boy, am I glad I decided to give it a go.

This is one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read. A story of deep commitment to a cause, but also to other people. As a feminist who writes about the fact that the public/political and the private/personal are actually one and the same, I was so happy to find that this biography did not erase the women in this family, quite the contrary. Marx's wife Jenny and their daughters, together with their housekeeper Lenchen, all worked tirelessly to further the socialist cause, but in a way that is usually overlooked. Though Engels certainly receives a lot more credit, he is still not given his proper due. What a man! I think I fell in love. What to say of someone with so little vanity he sacrificed his life to furthering his friend's work, both economically and in editing Marx's writings instead of his own. He would say: "I simply cannot understand how anyone can be envious of genius; it's something so very special that we who have not got it know it to be unattainable from the start; but to be envious of anything like that one must have to be frightfully small minded".

I don't think I've ever heard of a friendship as deep as Engels and Marx had for each other, and a love like what he had for his wife is almost equally as rare, especially at that time. Though their lives were not without hardship, and Marx could be an insensitive asshole, it is undeniable that this was a group of people who shared an incredibly close bond. This is what Marx had to say in a letter to his wife, over 20 years after they had first fallen in love: "There are actually many women in the world, and some among them are beautiful. But where could I find again a face whose every feature, even every wrinkle, is a reminder of the greatest and sweetest memories of my life? Even my endless pains, my irreplaceable losses I read in your sweet countenance, and I kiss away the pain when I kiss your sweet face".

Though I'm sure a lot of biographies do fall in either of those camps I mentioned, Mary Gabriel's work on the Marx family is masterful. There is precious little speculation, and when it is unavoidable the bases for her thinking are clearly stated in a way that leaves the final say to the reader. It reads like a perfect mix of history book (lengthy portions are concerned with giving the reader the historical context for their lives, especially on big events such as The Springtime of Peoples in 1848), classic novel (the tone of the writing is as engaging, and there is certainly enough love and tragedy in this to compare to the greatest 19th century classics), and political and economic theory (the air that the Marx Family lived and breathed). Though a book of this size and subject could have easily become boring, I was gripped throughout. I fell in love with these people, and each death left me sobbing uncontrollably, in a way I faintly realized was ridiculous (these people have been dead for over a hundred years!), but I didn't care.

The one criticism I have of the book is that the footnotes are not very illuminating. Whenever the author quoted a letter that was published in Marx and Engels' Collected Works (and most of them are), she just points to the page, and we're often left to guess who the letter was sent to and when. As an obsessive checker of footnotes (I just can't ignore them), it started driving me nuts after a while.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was amazing. Highly, highly recommend this for anyone with an interest in left wing history.

A surprisingly heartwarming book. Reads like a 19th century novel. You struggle along with the Marx family when they're suffering (which is most of the time) and feel a great catharsis on their few triumphs. It explains all the famous anecdotes and provides context for the life and times of not just Marx and his works but also for his whole family. That's no small feat when you consider that Marx has always been surrounded by bad writing: there are the scurrilous attacks of reactionaries, the censorship and self-censorship of his defenders, not to mention the various language barriers. The story is mostly told through the letters Marx et al were constantly sending each other, and the amount of research the author put in is insane.

A surprisingly non-ideological look at Marx (settle down, Zizek). Published in 2011 at the end of the end of history, that was probably the last time you could get away with a bio that isn't really a defence or attack. Her criticisms of Karl are basically of what she sees as his sexism, despite also being a loving family man. First off, I don't think it's really fair to imply that anyone chooses the kind of poverty that they lived through. What's more, his wife and daughters were both highly literate and at the forefront of what was possible for women at the time, but you don't see them pinning the blame on Karl. As for Freddy, yeah Karl was in the wrong for cheating on Jenny, but considering the hate that his enemies still have for him to this day, I don't really see what other option there was than to occlude the Freddy's origins.

That said, I found the subtitle a bit misleading, Jenny inevitably doesn't have a whole lot to do once they're married and the children are along. Her voice is all over the book, because she's as much a correspondent as the others, but mostly she's just helping Marx. The focus is more on Marx and his three surviving daughters. His sons-in-law all come off like grand Victorian villains, btw. Especially Lafargue but especially Aveling.

I've gotta get better at taking notes, because there were so many parts of this I knew I should be jotting down, but my kindle is old and doesn't handle highlighting well and I'm too lazy when I'm reading on it to write with a pen. Alas.

[Matthijs Krul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The genre of the personal biography, when applied to famous historical figures, more often than not falls in the traps of sensationalism, moralism, or hagiography. This is not least the case when it comes to persons of considerable political controversy, such as Karl Marx and his friends and family. However, Mary Gabriel’s personal biography of the Marx-Engels clan studiously and brilliantly avoids all cliches and all sensationalism, portraying the characters ‘warts and all’, sympathetically but without making saints of them. Its almost 600 pages are unflaggingly interesting, intelligent, and informative even to those who are very well acquainted with Marxism’s theory and the chronology of its origins. But what’s more important is that it is virtually unique in its emphasis on the personal life of Karl and Jenny Marx, their children, their friends (not least of course Engels), and their many associates.

Although Gabriel makes sure to make clear the significance and substance of the various works Marx, Engels, and the family wrote or worked on during their life, this is not yet another political-romantic biography of the theoretical heroes of socialism. On the contrary, this book is a chronicle of their private hopes and pleasures, their struggles, and their difficulties. Also uncharacteristic for the many biographers of the Marx-Engels extended family is Gabriel’s courageous and timely decision to emphasize the significance of the lives and work of the women of the group: Jenny Marx, Karl’s wife; their three daughters, their only children to survive infancy; Freddy Demuth, the illegitimate son of Karl Marx; and the daughters’ partners, children, and friends. In the usual biographies of Marx and/or Engels, his wife appears merely in the background and his daughters are a footnote, but in Gabriel’s biography, they come into their own as serious and dedicated revolutionary thinkers and doers in their own right. In the process Mary Gabriel finally also clears up a number of small errors and confusions that have been copied from one biography to another, and she is to be commended for the great thoroughness with which she has conducted and presented her research on a topic many would think has been too fully mined to lead to any new gold.

In an era when both Marxism and the cause of women’s equality seem more under attack than ever before, and yet are more needed than ever, it is fitting and just that a great new biography should revive the founders of Marxism as human beings in all their glories and failings, and that for the first time the women in the family should play an equal role in the narrative. While the political and theoretical histories of Marx and Engels’ lives tend to be a story of triumph against adversity, Gabriel’s book makes it clear that this cannot by any means be said of the private lives of the family. More than anything else, it stands out clearly for the first time what a sad, difficult, and often despairing life they led, the women of the family especially. It has often been remarked on, but it only becomes clear from this work why the Marx women all died early, several to suicide; and it is clear that their lives were not as happy or as fulfilling of their own great talents, no less than those of the men, as they should have been.

Two great forces of their age made their lives more confined and more frustrated in its potential than anyone ought to accept of any society: on the one hand, Victorian moralism and the enduring power of patriarchal values; on the other hand, the more physical but no less destructive power of disease. The former held the women in restricted positions, endlessly sacrificing their wishes, their talents, and their very happiness to the cause of the men; the latter robbed them – the men no less than the women – of their strengths, energy, and future. In Gabriel’s book, there is rarely a moment that some member of the great Marxist family is not gravely ill. Many of Marx’s children as well as of his grandchildren died in childhood of vague diseases, caused by the poverty and inequality of their times, and incurable by the low level of medical expertise and the difficulty of affording it. In a time when both these great hostile forces, patriarchy and disease, are the prime enemies of the emancipation of humanity in most of the world, it is a sad but useful reminder of their impact to read about how they destroyed the Marx family. Even Marx himself may well have lived longer and been much more productive, to the lasting benefit of our knowledge of socialism, had he not been perpetually ill and taken such medication as mercury and arsenic, never mind much alcohol, to alleviate it.

Love and Capital is therefore not necessarily a happy read. But it is a fascinating read, full of lively detail, engaging writing, and sound judgements. It does without the hypocrisy or moralism of many hostile biographers but also free of the pretense that the Marx family was flawless in their personal life. The author also does not shy away from the real revolutionary commitment of all the participants, not just Marx and Engels but their wives, Marx’s children and husbands also, and does not try to reinvent them as ‘democratic’ egghead theorists or irrelevant Victorian ranters. If one has to have an objection, it is some very minor errors and that the copious endnote apparatus often contains no further explanation of the many interesting and illuminating details first mentioned in the text. But those are just quibbles. On the whole, this book by a respected Reuters editor (of all people) is of enormous benefit to our understanding of the historical reality of the founding family of Marxism, and in particular of the real contribution of Marx’s wife and daughters to setting this great movement of history in motion. It deserves to be widely read and will surely become a classic in the history of Marxism.

[Clif · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any useful history must be written with thorough knowledge of the subject but this one adds sensitivity and affection to make the subjects breathe.

I was given this book and opened it with little more knowledge of Marx than of his appearance on the marker at his grave and the fact that he wrote a huge book. Engels was his sidekick.

Such "knowledge" is typical. It's a big world and we have only the most superficial concept of most things in it. Love and Capital was a wonderful revelation and education for me.

The Marx family endured poverty for decades but was tightly knit and dedicated to the success of the man and his ideology. But far from merely enduring in the face of adversity and continual disappointment, the family had many happy moments and the rich intellectual environment produced children with exceptional talents.

The book succeeds on many grounds - you will learn of the plight of women in 19th century Europe as Jenny Marx and her three girls deal with the limitations on their sex, the high infant mortality rate and the often cavalier behavior of men allowed by society to do as they wished within or without marriage.

In the background, the awful conditions for the masses resulted in violence continually as royalty and the business elite struggled to retain wealth and privilege. Revolutions, labor strife and fierce repression by reactionary forces all swirl about the Marx family.

Friedrich Engels is revealed as a man who lives a life guided by his philosophy. Though he is a businessman and makes good money at the head of a firm inherited from his father, he has no sense that his income is his alone, unstintingly sharing it to support many others in the service of socialism. Without him, Marx would not have been able to write Capital (over 17 years!) or his other works. Engels, from the start, had complete faith that Marx was uniquely qualified to describe the capitalist economic system in a scientific manner that would educate the world, but particularly the proletariat, and bring the revolution necessary to better their lives.

The bond between all members of the Marx household and Engels is strong and withstands every adversity over decades. His patience is phenomenal and when tragedy strikes he is always on hand, one of the most admirable men I've encountered in my readings of history.

And Karl Marx! What a character. Obsessed with his work, he is also a loving father ever willing to play with his children. He and his wife impart their love of Shakespeare to the children, who learn scenes so well that family enactments are common and a source of fun and laughter. Marx and his wife Jenny deeply love each other - one account telling of how it wasn't uncommon to find them avoiding each others gaze for fear of breaking into uncontrollable laughter. For several years the family is crammed into a two room unit when the children are very young, yet they support each other as a tight unit even through the death of a male sibling. One is made aware of the constant presence of death brought on with what might seem the most minor ailment, and of course there is routine infant mortality.

Characters are always dropping in on the Marx home and often stay for some time to enjoy the company or enjoy the food. You couldn't be more involved with it all, or feel the emotion more deeply.

The pairing off of the three daughters to questionable suitors is a story in itself.

There is intrigue. Marx is unfaithful in one instance, Engels comes to his aid and the family continues to thrive though a child is abandoned by his mother.

Far from being an advocate of violence, Marx is dismayed when violence occurs, believing that only by working democratically can the change he hopes to see arrive.

I couldn't help noting that such things as daycare for infants of workers was being asked for even in the 1840's!

One wonders about the durability of the elite. At one time it was royalty, then those in business. Here we are still dealing with the same inequality of wealth (growing in fact) in the 21st century and just now with a huge economic plunge that those of the 1800's would instantly recognize, and it arrived for reasons that Marx described as endemic to capitalism. The great rise of the unions has been rolled back and the 1% are firmly in the saddle again. The name Marx brings revulsion to many Americans. Socialism is a dirty word. Love and Capital will have you thinking about the present as well as the past.


Mary Gabriel easily earns five stars for this great read.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not even particularly interested in Marxism, but it's impossible not to be fascinated by the story of Marx and his wife, and the writing is absolutely first-rate.

One of the more surreal sections involves an account of Marx's father-in-law -- Ludwig von Westphalen, a liberal aristocrat -- converting an impressionable teenage Karl Marx to socialism (you have to wonder how Ludwig would have felt about the historical results of this decision!) . . . somewhat similar to whichever Tsarist official ordered the killing of Lenin's brother, thus radicalizing him and indirectly causing the destruction of his own country.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars should be reserved for books like this.

A marvelous, beautiful and utterly amazing work by Gabriel, this book is without question the best book I have read in years. Written with wry humor, engaging tone, and incredible suspense that builds up to the magnificent tragedy that was the private life of the Marx family. One would be hard-pressed to find a more fitting reminder of the immense power of nonfiction. The book has all the trappings of a Jane Austen or even Tolstoy - a family, devoted to a single altruistic vision, who ironically struggle to find happiness for themselves. And yet, what makes it even more incredible is that it is all true. The author's impeccable research is evident in the brilliant use of source material to structure this grand epic. Ostensibly initiated as a biography of Marx's wife Jenny, the author traces the Marx family from its early beginnings in Trier between two family friends who become unlikely lovers, to the mysterious and untimely death of the last of Marx's daughters.

There is no shortage of gripping plot in this work. Perhaps most incredible of all is the ordeal that Marx's daughters and grandchildren had to go through in the Pyrenees. Their midnight escape from France to Spain following the fall of the Paris Commune, their attempts to sneak back into France, and how they played a cat and mouse game with the murderous French regime until they reached the safety of England - it is all the more incredible that these were a bunch of young women in their teens and twenties in an era when polite ladies were to be locked up in their gilded cages.

Indeed, as engaging as these incredible adventures are, the most striking aspect of this book is its characters, in all their glorious humanity.

The book is deeply respectful of all the family, but there are heroes with whom the author's admiration cannot escape the reader's attention that really make this book shine. Perhaps more than anyone before or since, Gabriel once and for eternity cements Friedrich Engels as the giant that he was. A towering intellect in his own right and an Atlas, the constant theme throughout the book is Engels' humanity. Where Marx could be self-absorbed and narcissistic, and Jenny Marx stoic as would befit an aristocrat, Engels was a man who wore his emotions on his sleeves. What makes him even more incredible in this book is the fact that unlike Marx he found a job, and never begrudged anyone else for relying on him to be the family breadwinner. His devotion to Marx extended to Jenny and Marx's daughters and knew no bounds. Engels was a revolutionary and a dreamer, but he had his foot firmly planted in the affairs of the world, becoming a skilled businessman. And yet he never lost sight of his ideals, and well into his old age he fought for the dream of his youth.

Yet for all the praise the book subtly bestows on Engels, Engels is ultimately not without his blindspots, which become most apparent with the book's second hero: Eleanor Marx. The author relates how Marx characterized his daughter Jenny as being most like him, but characterized Eleanor as him. Yet Eleanor lacked two important advantages of her father: his gender, and a loving spouse. Eleanor Tussy Marx ultimately broke off an engagement to pursue a life with Edward Aveling, a charlatan and, aside from Bismark and Marx's persecutors, the clear villain of this work. All of Marx's daughters married charlatans, but it was with Aveling that Engels failed his friend most by failing to protect Eleanor from him. A precocious revolutionary who was a rebel to the bone, but who also harbored an immensely compassionate soul, Eleanor emerges as the true heir to the father she so revered throughout her life. It is in one of the final chapters that we see Engels forced to reckon with the damage he had wrought and the disastrous consequences many of Engels' rare shortsightedness had for Eleanor Marx.

This is what makes this book such a delight - Engels is not perfect, and neither were any of the characters of the book. But they all meant incredibly well. Which is why the book is such a painful retelling of an incredible tragedy. People of such incredible compassion, who had their admirers, but yet none appear to have achieved much private happiness. Their lives, beginning with Jenny Marx who gave up her considerable upper-class privileges to marry the man of her dreams, were ultimately sacrificed for the calling of a man who, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, managed to change the world's mind. For this incredible contribution, they were rewarded with contempt, betrayal, poverty, and in the end what shines through is how the only thing that kept them going was each other.

That all this is told so lovingly and respectfully, yet engagingly, is a credit to the author. Easily one of my favorite books of all time, Love and Capital will be a classic that will be admired by many for decades to come.

[Christine Bonheure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vorig jaar zag ik Johan Heldenbergh aan het werk als Karl Marx. In een verbluffende epiloog oreerde hij dat de theorie van Marx nog springlevend is, de eeuw waarin we leven een foute kopie is van de negentiende en er een nieuwe revolutie op til is. Reden genoeg om me te verdiepen in het leven van Marx, zijn vrouw Jenny, kinderen, vrienden en vijanden. Wat een verschrikkelijk leven heeft dat gezin geleid! Armoede, ontbering, ziektes, kindersterfte, zelfmoord… Arbeiders waren de speelbal van de kapitalisten en er bestond nog niet zoiets als sociale zekerheid. Friedrich Engels, vriend van Marx, bleef gelukkig zijn hele leven lang een financieel vangnet voor de familie. Marx leven stond volledig in het teken van zijn revolutionaire ideeën. Met zijn werk stond hij aan de bakermat van het opkomende socialisme en veranderde daarmee de geest van de tijd, een verdienste die kan tellen. Indrukwekkend tijdsbeeld én familiegeschiedenis.

[BookishStitcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, I now know so much about Karl Marx and I like him a lot less than I did before I read this book. What he put his family through was awful. Engels was a much more interesting character and as involved in the movement. I much preferred the parts about him and Marx's daughters. Poor Jenny, his wife had such a hard life because of his refusal to get an actual job.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my all-time favorite books, perhaps because my partner and I read it aloud to each other over the course of about three years.

Marx, Jenny, Engels, and the whole crew built a web of relations around them in their journey through life and revolutionary politics that spanned the full breadth of human experience.

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know how you can feel quite comfortable you know a reasonable amount about a topic, say, for example, socialism and Marxism - enough, anyway, to get you through a casual conversation - and then you crack open a biography of Karl Marx and your first discovery is that he's not Russian like you always thought, but actually German? Yeah.

The fact that I clearly actually know NOTHING AT ALL about this period of history or basic economic theory is what kept me ploughing through this 600 page behemoth. It certainly wasn't because I'd developed a liking for Karl Marx or his wife Jenny von Westphalen, because they increasingly incensed me.

Karl and Jenny spent most of their married life running from creditors, borrowing money off friends, living off the capitalist spoils of Friedrich Engel's father's cotton business, and bringing up their three daughters in a nice bourgeois style. And being ill - god, these people spent a lot of time being ill.

[London, 1880] Marx, Jenny, Lenchen [Helen Demuth, the woman who lived with them for decades, helping Jenny run the household and mother of Marx's unacknowledged illegitimate son], and Tussy [Marx and Jenny's youngest daughter, Eleanor] were also ill and considered going to [the spa at Karlsbad] but the cost was too dear even for Engels, who paid the Marxes' medical bills on top of a living stipend. Marx's doctor suggested a less expensive spa at Bad Neuenahr, in western Germany. Marx delivered Lenchen to her family nearby and then he and Jenny and Tussy proceeded to the resort in the Ahr Valley and later farther into the Black Forest. The family was gone from London for a full two months, but Jenny and Marx returned in not much better health than when they left.

When he wasn't being ill (and, to be fair, when he was - especially with particularly unpleasant sounding carbuncles) Marx was hanging out in his study and the reading room at the British Library, teaching himself languages, researching more and more recherche subjects, and successfully failing in getting his pamphlets and books out in time to capitalise (hah!) on the events they chronicled. Volume I of Das Kapital, for example, was reluctantly delivered 16 years after Marx said it would be ready, and sold about 80 copies.

Snarkishly, I began to feel that Marx really lived out 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' vis-à-vis Engels and Jenny. He took and took and took, and seemed to give very little in return. He did truly love Jenny, but that didn't stop him from spending several extended periods overseas and writing home (very occasionally) with accounts of the charming young ladies who were keeping him amused and well looked after. Engels bailed the family out over and over again, not just financially, but also by completing and taking over writing jobs that Marx had committed to but characteristically couldn't finish.

Having said that, Marx was a devoted father (you can't help but be Freudian about the fact that all three of his daughters tied themselves to men who were equally hopeless at real life and ground them down: one daughter died at 38, worn out by tough living and childbirth; another committed suicide; the third died in a suicide pact with her husband in her late 60s) and an even more devoted grandfather. The Marx family offered endless help to other refugees in London, and Marx's friendships were deep and close, if few: he was a deeply divisive personality, and it seems to say a lot that there were 11 people at his funeral, but 6,000 at the memorial of the second anniversary of his death.

Every time I got pissed off with Marx and Jenny, something tragic would happen - usually the death of a child or grandchild. This extract captures both reactions - from 1855, it documents the weeks after their six year old son, nicknamed Musch, died:

Marx called their situation agony, observing that even the "unremittingly awful" weather seemed one with the family's consuming grief. But there was one bright spot. They had learned that Jenny's uncle, the "cur" Marx had hoped would die earlier, finally died. With his passing they anticipated an inheritance of at least one hundred pounds, enough to see them through the year if they stayed within a budget. The inheritance, though, was bittersweet. Had it come earlier, who knows what could have been done to save Musch?

At two thirds the length (Gabriel could have, for example, sacrificed some of the repeated references to Jenny and her daughters' beauty, Marx's appearance) this could have been a very interesting book. And on quick reflection, it occurs to me that I would have enjoyed a dual biography of Marcx and Engels more (although I doubt it would have been as easy a sell for the publishers). I've learned a lot, but I've not enjoyed the process much, and I'm really just rather relieved it's over.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have decided to not continue with Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution. It is not a bad book, but it deals primarily with Marx and his philosophy, not his family relationships nor his personality. It is very factual, a bit dry, filled with quotes and footnotes, a good history book. I read 20% and felt it was not giving me what I personally was looking for - who was he as a person?

My husband is going to read it instead, and then we can discuss it.

I have removed it from my "relationships" shelf. Now you know why.

[Charles Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of an unusual focus for a book on Karl Marx, so I guess that's what piqued my interest. Gabriel's descriptions of the squalor of the working classes in Manchester, England, where Marx visited in 1845, connect in my mind to the decline of the middle class that we've been experiencing in recent decades from increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

Brilliant in the last 100 pages where Gabriel wove to a knot the lives of all Marx's offspring. The only one to witness Marx's impact in Russia was his illegitimate son, Freddy DeMuth, who lived until 1929.

[Nathan Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of an odd duck of a book — exhibits very little interest in Marx’s ideas (one won’t learn very much about ‘Marxism’ by reading it) but is incredibly exhaustive in its restricted scope, mainly though a voluminous knowledge of the correspondences. Filled often with (to my mind) inappropriate asides and misleading editorializing, it still gives one a very detailed walkthrough of the Marx family’s life. For the amount of information — reading against its melodramatic impulses — I found it somewhat endearing and certainly compulsively readable.

[Victor · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a narrative, among the top tier of the Marx biographies, very much inclusive of Jenny and the rest of the family. More politically focused works like the Fritz J. Raddatz biography may offer additional insights, and Sven-Eric Liedman’s is more Marxological; this book however is a finely crafted story that pulls on the heartstrings without it in any way feeling forced or trite.

[Keith Akers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written like a novel, beginning from the time that Karl and Jenny met, this book traces the history, in nearly 600 pages, of Karl Marx and his family. You learn more about “Marxism” from this book than from reading a lot of Marx’s actual writings. It turns out, as this book shows, that during his lifetime Marx’s primary influence on the world was through his activity supporting the working class movement. His writings — including Capital — played only a supporting role in this process. Mostly this was through his work with the International Working Men’s Association. This was the “First International” — a predecessor to the Second and Third International, the latter of which resulted in the Russian Revolution — and if you’re a Trotskyist, the Fourth International.

The picture of Marx’s beliefs presented here is somewhat different than that presented by 20th-century Marxists, especially from “Marxism-Leninism.” It’s not necessarily opposed, just different. Marx and Engels knew and seemed to get along reasonably well with other socialists later condemned as “revisionists” of one form or another, like Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein. This isn’t to say they saw eye to eye on everything, but seemed to treat them as just other travelers along the revolutionary path. Perhaps Marx would have preferred a more “social democratic” path to the course of violent revolution. Indeed, though the author does not mention it, if we follow Kohei Saito’s book Marx in the Anthropocene, Marx may have preferred a version of “degrowth communism.”

And in this book, it’s not only Jenny, but his whole family that plays a role in the early movement. Karl and Jenny were dirt poor, though Jenny started out in the upper class. Only three of their children, three daughters (Jenny or “Jennychen”, Laura, and Eleanor or “Tussy”) survived to adulthood. Friedrich Engels, who started out as an industrialist’s son, provided much of their support, sending money to keep them off the street. And Karl and Jenny were hardly leeches! All of them, including their surviving daughters, were devoted to the cause and tireless workers. Engels, also, was absolutely devoted to the cause.

The Marx daughter’s husbands tried to help, but were not so devoted or as talented. Of the three daughters, only the eldest (also named Jenny, or “Jennychen”) left descendants, although their names were passed down not as Marx but with her husband’s last name, Charles Longuet, a French socialist and a journalist.

Laura, the second daughter, married Paul LaFargue. The author depicts him as not entirely as competent as Laura and evidently not much of money manager. All of Laura’s three children died young, which greatly saddened her, and thereafter (as the author presents it) while she was quite loyal to the cause, she treated her work as more of a family obligation than allegiance to the cause. Many years after Karl and Jenny had passed on, she died in what was likely a murder-suicide, when her husband Paul began to run into financial difficulties. (It might have been a double suicide, but the author makes this difficult to believe, as Laura left no note and was reported by her friends to be happy.)

The third daughter, Eleanor or “Tussy,” died somewhat earlier than Laura, but it was clearly a suicide, following her breakup with her common-law husband, Edward Aveling. Aveling is the real villain of this book. He appears to have been, while outwardly devoted to socialism, at heart a sociopath who was using the “cause” to advance his own name. He habitually lied and borrowed money from people without ever repaying them. He was actually married to someone else when he met Tussy, and remained married during his whole relationship with Tussy! As he presented it to Tussy and others, his heartless (first) wife wouldn’t grant him a divorce; but in reality, he was hanging on to the marriage because he stood to inherit her wealth when she died. This eventually happened, but Aveling only lived a few months after that himself.

In the meanwhile, people who should have known about this, most notably Engels, continued to support Aveling. Aveling was quite unpopular in the movement because people caught on to his game (notably his inability to repay debts or tell the truth) pretty quickly — well, except for Engels. As the author presents it, Engels was used to being slandered by opponents of socialism, and took the attacks on Aveling to be just another baseless slander, but in this case the “slander” was fully justified.

The real “soap” in this book concerns Marx’s illegitimate son. Yes! Marx had an affair with their housekeeper, “Lenchen” or Helene Demuth. The author doesn’t make it clear, but evidently no one except Marx, Engels, and Helene themselves knew about this at the time. At the time, Engels accepted paternity for “Freddy,” as he was best able to support a child, and Freddy was raised by neither his father nor his mother. Also, Engels was already known as a “womanizer” and so his reputation would not be made that much worse by acknowledging an illegitimate son; but Marx’s reputation, not to mention his marriage to Jenny, could be severely damaged. It’s possible, though, that Marx told Jenny and they reconciled over it. In any event, it was only after Marx and Jenny had both died that the truth came out. When Engels was dying, Tussy was very concerned about Engels’ will, as she wanted to make sure that Freddy (Engels’ presumed son, whom they continued to know through their acquaintance with Lenchen) was included in his will. The day before Engels died, Tussy confronted him, wanting to know whether Engels was really the father, and Engels told her (via a chalk slate! he had lost the ability to talk at that point!) that Karl was the father. This probably contributed to Tussy’s depression and her ultimate suicide shortly thereafter.

Marx never received real recognition for his literary work during his lifetime. Capital was ignored when it came out, and it was only slowly that it became better known. The Russian translation was better received and as he was dying, some positive reviews were coming in. There’s nothing in the book (written in 2011) about anything discussed in Marx and the Anthropocene, a book which posits with considerable evidence that Marx had quite a few ideas about environmental topics and perhaps delayed publishing volumes 2 and 3 of Capital because he was trying to work his environmental research into the rest of his theory. He was aware of resource depletion, through Liebig’s work on soil erosion and Jevons’ book on The Coal Question (showing depletion of fossil fuels). I wonder if Mary Gabriel, who is a marvelous author, knows anything about this.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary work of scholarship which clearly earns its position as a National Book Award Nominee. It tells the story of the love between Marx and his wife Jenny. It is a story of the Marx family too, and of the love, loyalty, interconnection and the enduring friendships of this family with Friedrich Engels and Helene (Lenchen) Demuth.

Karl Marx's reputation of the villain of history doesn't square with the portraits of a bearded intellectual with the Santa Claus cheeks and eyes. This book shows the person behind those eyes.

Mary Gabriel documents through letters, contemporary journalism and even the reports of spies, that Karl Marx WAS a family man. He and his long suffering wife Jenny had 3 surviving children. They deeply mourned 4 others (and as many grandchildren) who died from causes relating to the poverty which both parents knew resulted from Marx's work as a labor activist. Marx said that he would have worked on the struggle regardless, but his biggest regret was thrusting its resulting poverty on his family.

For family life, I could not help but draw comparison to the contemporaneous American idealist, philosopher and sometime "commune-ist", Bronson Alcott. Alcott similarly threw his family into poverty as a result of his all consuming commitments. Like the Marx family, Alcotts lived off charity of family and friends. Both families educated their daughters beyond the expectations for women of the time. As a father, Alcott, despite his modern teaching philosophies, compares poorly with Marx. He was a self-righteous and judgmental parent (Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography and Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women) whereas Marx as portrayed here was a loving, playful, involved and sympathetic. Marx regrets the things his family cannot enjoy due to his work. Alcott never seemed to mind the suffering of his family and there is no evidence that he took responsibility for it.

In thinking of Jenny's life, I could not help but think of another copyist spouse of a radical thinker of a generation later, Sophia Tolstoy. Again, Karl, as a husband, is head and shoulders above Lev. While Marx had not always been faithful, he was caring, thoughtful, appreciative, respectful and the Marx's seemed to raise the children as a team. Tolstoy (Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography) never acknowledged his wife's sacrifices and played emotional games with her and encouraged their children to defy her.

The Marx-Engels friendship is amazing. Engles, the capitalist womanizer, and Marx, the impoverished family man, drank and broke new ground in philosophy - all in good humor. The book follows Engels through the ups and downs of the cotton industry (US Civil War) his relationship with Mary Burns, an Irish Freedom supporter, his later companion, and his devoted mentorship of the Marx daughters.

Besides a portrait of a marriage this is a history of Europe at this tumultuous time. It contains the best description of the 1848 uprisings, the 19th century English-Irish conflicts and the Paris Commune that I have read. There is also a clear description of Hegelian thought and how it influenced both Marx and Engels.

There is an amazing cast of characters: political exiles, revolutionaries, thespians, spies, bohemians, bomb throwers, poets and prisoners. The back story on Mikhail Bakunin was eye popping and was so much of Marx's private life: Karl Marks hitched to a chair in a makeshift sleigh to play with his children ... binge drinking.... suffering from carbuncles... trying to effect a bourgeois lifestyle for the sake of family be it his daughter Laura's engagement or his wife, Jenny's relations with her family...listening to gossip about Wagner's private life at a spa... etc.

The last 100 or so pages follow the family (including Engels and Lenchen and her son) following the Marx's death. The end has some sad surprises for those who don't know the story of the Marx daughters.

Biographers have the challenge of taking the historical facts and weaving it into something readable. Mary Gabriel has this talent and has produced not only a record, but excelled in creating such an interesting and highly engaging biography.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Gabriel intended to write a biography of Karl and Jenny Marx's three daughters. This turned out to be impossible without an account of Jenny, which in turn required an understanding of Karl. Exhaustive research into correspondence and writings brings to life the personal struggles of the extended 'Marx family', including Engels, Jenny, Lenchen, Laura (and Paul Lafargue), Jennychen (and Paul Longuet) and Eleanor in writing, transcribing illegible handwriting, translating, publishing and supporting Karl Marx.

Mary Gabriel places the intellectual work of Marx and Engels into the social and political context which she has so thoroughly researched. Each chapter is titled by place and year. It was a revelation for Marx when Engels took him on a tour of Manchester's working class slums in 1844, where he could see first hand the human conditions that he had been theorising. The 1848 revolutions, 1871 Paris Commune and the early years of the British labour movement figure. Whilst the proletarians were the driving force of the Paris Commune, Mary Gabriel points in an interview to the achievement of these 19th century struggles as the ending of feudal monarchies, rather than in challenging the very young capitalist system. The chapter London 1889 movingly tells the stories of the first and second major union victories, of the gas workers and the dockers in London.

Marx's drive was to study, analyse and produce a comprensive explanation of the hidden workings of capitalism. Gabriel depicts how this was the core of his work. Other political activity, German refugee relief, being secretary of the International Working Men's Association, accommodating fleeing Communards, were necessary but felt by Marx as distractions from what he really needed to do. Capital Vols 1-3 appear as a particularly extended labour of love. Marx's repeated failure to meet promised deadlines for the first volume of Capital is legendary, it took 16 years to write. Volume 1 covered industry "microscopically". Volume 2 took even longer, published in 1885, 18 years after Marx had promised it, posthumously completed by Engels. Marx had analysed commercial transactions in order to explain "the circulation of capital in business and society", and its creation of markets, and extended "reach into every household and onto the land itself". Engels then managed to decipher Marx's notes for and complete Volume 3 which "examined in brilliant detail monopoly capital and the creation of the world market." Marx's was meticulous, thorough and painstaking in examining evidence and records about the operation of capitalism. He had suffered the pressures of expectations to complete work as physical illnesses and painful staph infections.

As with other great creators, Marx could not have managed without the support of others relieving him from the burden of having to earn a living. Engels sacrificed his own desires and interest in writing, by managing a Manchester factory for years, so that he could support the Marx family and Marx would be free to write. The personbal cost to Engels is made most evident with his jubilation and several weeks of celebration when he finally was able to quit. The women of the Marx family provided the personal care and necessities of Marx's life. At the same time though these supporters of Marx are far from appendices to his efforts, and their own motivations and interests are central to Mary Gabriel's telling of this story. The Marx women were all intellectuals in their own rights, widely read and multi-lingual. Yet they each suffered from prevailing legal and social restrictions on women, and the lack of effective contraception. Infant mortality was keenly and bitterly felt by the whole family. All three of Marx's daughters suffered from lack of independence in their marriages, and from tragic endings to their lives. Eleanor particularly resisted these pressures and was critical of the subordination of women to men.

A one hour interview with Mary Gabriel about Love and Capital - http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Ma...

[Nate Krinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really readable and accessible personal history that's is a good supplement to (but not a replacement for) political history and theory. I didn't realize quite how invested I was in everyone as characters until I had a very emotional response when they all started dying. I want to give all the Marxes and Engels a hug and murder all the Marx daughters' husbands. Also we need to start writing letters to each other again. What are our future biographers going to do when all our texts are deleted because we didn't want to pay for icloud?

[Gonzalo Zamora Galleguillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

No, no me había olvidado de este libro, llegué más o menos al 80% de este, pero me terminó por cansar. La vida de Marx es interesante, pero no todo es tan interesante. Valoro mucho el libro por darnos una visión más humana y menos deificada de este gran filosofo. Pero a ratos fue demasiado texto.

[Sajith Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

To say that the fall of Napoleon was a turning point in European history would be an understatement. Alongside the political changes, it wrought a profound transformation on economy with the rise of capitalism. Capitalism created a class called bourgeoisie which employed its capital in enterprises that utilized the physical effort of the proletariat to generate profits. In the early stages, the working class was a thoroughly exploited lot who stood even lower in status to machines. Replacement of a machine cost money but a worker could be easily substituted because there were so many of them waiting outside the factory gate for a chance to work. Workers began to unite in many countries under various guises. In Europe, Karl Marx created a theoretical framework that tried to explain the relationship between the modes of production and its effects on the development of social classes. At capitalism’s infancy, Marx set to work chronicling its rise and predicting its fall. As we now know, he was only partly right. But this book is not about his theory – this is all about his personal life. It is the story of a love between a husband and wife that remained passionate and consuming despite the deaths of four children, poverty, illness, social ostracism and the ultimate betrayal when Marx fathered another woman’s child. Scores of biographies of Marx exist, with every possible political perspective. However, there was not one book in English that told the full story of a family that sacrificed everything for an idea the world would come to know as Marxism. This book satisfies that function admirably. Mary Gabriel worked as journalist at Reuters for two decades and authored two more biographies. She now lives in Italy.

Marx was the son of a Jewish lawyer who was forced to convert to Christianity to keep his profession in the face of rampant anti-Semitism in Germany. His wife Jenny von Westphalen belonged to an aristocratic family and was four years his senior. Close proximity to her younger brother enabled Marx to fall in love and obtain her hand in marriage. Undoubtedly, Marx was the lucky partner in this union. He was without work or income many times in his family life. He spent his life stressing the primacy of economics but was chronically irresponsible when it came to his own finances. Jenny never appeared to lose patience with him. Marx devoted his time to study and Jenny facilitated his work wholeheartedly. The book includes an amusing incident which throws light on Marx’s scholarly inclinations. After marriage, his mother-in-law paid for a short honeymoon for the couple in Switzerland. He went along with 45 volumes of books on Hegel, Rousseau, Machiavelli and others to read during his spare time. His honeymoon studies and reflections produced two of his most famous declarations: religion is the opium of the people and the heart of the emancipation of mankind is the proletariat. However, his literary pursuits did not otherwise seem to impede their relationship as Jenny became pregnant the next month itself!

Gabriel treats her subject – the giant of communist thought – with respect and sympathy but never tries to hide or obscure some flaws in his personal life. The greatest of them would be his illicit liaison with Helene Demuth, his wife’s maid, who was sent by his mother-in-law to their Brussels home. She was to help Jenny devote more time to assist her husband with his work and prepare for the second expecting baby. A son was born to Demuth whose paternity Marx was loathe to bear. As always, his dear friend and benefactor Engels came to his rescue and shouldered that vicarious responsibility. He was sent away and grew up to become a friend of Marx’s daughters. It was on Engels’ deathbed that he confessed to Marx’s daughter that her father was indeed this man’s father too. The author had made a thorough search of the extant letters and other correspondence between the Marx family members, some of which contained racist remarks which are not included in the book. She claims that they were not germane to the story and entirely consistent with the norms of that period.

Marx did not aspire to be a popular leader. He considered the masses ‘a brainless crowd whose thoughts and feelings are furnished by the ruling class’. But he wanted to teach them because only they could defeat the ruling class. This book is remarkable for its poignant portrayal of the first half of Marx’s wedded life. Poverty and misery were the hallmarks of their existence as Marx eagerly awaited financial returns for the articles and books he produced. Often he took advance money from the publishers and then quickly spent them only to be in hot water with the lender later. He borrowed freely from others and when that source dried out, suffered the pitiless episodes fate threw in his way. One of his infant daughters died due to disease and he had to keep her lifeless body in a room till he could find the money to buy a small casket for that unfortunate child who could not enjoy a moment of comfort while she lived. Such moving incidents there are many in this book. Once a journal under Marx’s editorship collapsed with the very first issue. Its proprietor declined to pay salary and instead offered him unsold copies of the journal. However, the Marx family entertained fellow-travelers of the movement who knocked on their doors in a dignified manner. Both Marx and Jenny were never reluctant to share whatever little they had with their friends and accomplices. When some of his wealthy relatives were nearing their end, Marx keenly looked forward to the share of his inheritance from them. Sometimes he borrowed money pointing to such inheritances as a kind of collateral.

An area in which this book excels in is the highlighting of Marx’s role in the organisation of working men of Europe. Marx himself belonged to the class which he pejoratively called bourgeois, but worked for the emancipation of the working class. He was a profound scholar who could not mingle freely with the workers. Despite the severe and scornful public façade, Marx had a depth of feeling for his fellow men that his detractors have not recognized. Many remark that Marx had more hate in him than love. This may not be entirely true and we might have to conclude that he had a healthy dose of each. The masses did not even recognize themselves as having a political voice much less power. They had no conception of how the economic or political system worked. Marx was convinced that if he could describe the historical path that led to their condition, he could provide a theoretical foundation on which to build a new, classless society. He believed that a sustained and successful revolution was impossible without a clear understanding of the history that had brought man to that juncture and a blueprint for the future once the old system was obliterated. Marx’s path to communism consisted of distinct phases such as the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property.

After reading the book one can’t help envy at Marx’s good fortune to meet two people without whom he would not have risen to the stratosphere of Leftist thought. One is his totally devoted wife Jenny and the other was his unbelievably selfless friend Friedrich Engels. Jenny was not just his wife, but acted as secretary too, copying and drafting his voluminous papers. She, her daughters and Engels were the only people who could decipher Marx’s handwriting. She helped in the editorial offices of newspapers Marx was running and took care of sundry tasks like attending to personal requests from party refugees and those in jail seeking help for their families. Jenny truly understood the needs of the rare genius she had chosen as a husband. For all his faults, she loved Marx deeply and trusted him completely. She saw his life’s work as her own. Engels was a rich man who ran a textile mill that earned good profit. He financed Marx and his family and never asked to return his money. Marx family always received a good share of Engels’ income, including that of the final settlement when Engels sold the mill off so as to be free to work in politics. When he died, a large portion of his wealth was distributed among the Marx children. Of the two men, Engels had the more successful writing career up to Marx’s move to London. But he regarded Marx so highly that he volunteered to put his own aspirations aside so his friend could write without hassles. Engels even claimed to be the father of Marx’s illegitimate child. He cared nothing about his reputation, especially with regard to women.

After several decades of loving companionship, Jenny died in 1881 followed by Marx in 1883. However, the book continues its narrative till 1910 when the last of the three Marx daughters died. These were the only children of Marx who reached adulthood and two of them committed suicide. These children had a very difficult childhood raked by biting poverty. Poor nutrition and unhealthy living conditions caused four children to die in their infancy. Marx needed the anchor Jenny and the children provided. All of them substituted Marx’s scholastic interests above their own preferences. He ordered his thoughts only in the midst of their disorder. Throughout his life, theirs was the society he craved. There is a moving section in the book in which Marx acknowledged the sacrifices made by his wife and daughters. In a letter to his daughter’s fiancé, Marx wrote: “You know I have sacrificed my whole fortune to the revolutionary struggle. I do not regret it. Quite the contrary. If I had to begin my life over again, I would do the same. I would not marry however. As far as it lies within my power I wish to save my daughter from the reefs on which her mother’s life was wrecked”.

The book has a fine diction which is witty, direct and incisive. The author possesses a fine capability to take the readers along the vicissitudes and ecstasies of the book’s protagonists. Readers get absorbed in the narrative and that’s what makes this work a page-turner. The book is somewhat big with 600+ pages, but we don’t feel the fatigue. However, the book begins with an intimidating character list of 353 individuals which even includes infants who died while four months old. Gabriel takes special care not to delve deeper into Marx’s theoretical work. She is only interested in what the man is and not what he did. In spite of this, there are concise, informative references to labour unrests in Europe and a very good description of the 1871 Paris Commune. Whatever theoretical aspects the author has handled is tempered to suit the general reader. She transforms the forbidding scholar which a portrait of Marx shows into a loving father and husband who had to rush through the backdoor of his house to fetch food and comforts for his daughter’s fiancé who was waiting in the front room to meet him. I think that if the twentieth century communist revolutions had not taken place, Marx would have been revered as a great thinker cutting across political affiliations. At least, that is the man Mary Gabriel introduces to us in this book.

The book is strongly recommended.

[Lindsay B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenally well researched and written book. Gabriel's writing makes the Marx's family and theories come alive. I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who has an interest in Marx, or for those who love well-written biographies.

Though I gave it a 5/5, the middle of the book is a bit sluggish and I admit to abandoning it on several occasions to read something else.

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hard to view Karl Marx objectively regardless of where you lie on the political spectrum. One tends to see him only in terms of his political and economic theories and rarely gets a glimpse at the man behind these theories. It is even rarer to get a glimpse of his home life, his family, his friendships, or his faults. In Love and Capital, author Mary Gabriel takes us on a highly readable stroll through the Marxes' private lives and gives us a peek at a very complex and also very human man and the woman he was married to.

She gives us a portrait of a man who dearly loved his wife but had an illegitimate child with their housekeeper; who was a loving and patient 'papa' with very advanced views on child rearing but failed to ensure they had a stable home life; who grieved at the deaths of several of his children but was indifferent towards the grief of his best friend, Friederich Engels when his common-law wife died, showing a glaring lack of empathy and tact at the very least, especially given that the Marxes depended on Engels most of their married life for financial support; who raised his daughters to be well-read and independent at a time when women had little freedom. Perhaps not surprisingly, two of his three daughters would eventually commit suicide. But we also see a man who loved a good party, drank too much on occasion, was considered a damn fine dancer and once, upon reading a critique of his theories, exclaimed, "I am not a Marxist!"

The picture of his wife, Jenny, is less clear perhaps, again, not surprising. What we do see is a beautiful woman born into a fairly wealthy and titled family (she was a baroness) but who showed little class bias and seemed to attract the love and respect of everyone who knew her including her extremely conservative half-brother who was very influential in Bismark's government in Prussia; a woman who was very well-educated, well-read, and extremely intelligent in her own right but who was willing to follow her husband across Europe and was willing to sacrifice everything for him including her pride; a woman who loved her children and, like her husband, had advanced ideas about what a woman could accomplish but was content, herself, to play the role of dutiful wife. She was also generous, kind, welcoming to all of the displaced immigrants who showed up on their doorstep (and it seemed like everyone trying to escape the crushing tyranny in the rest of Europe did), and was always willing to help anyone she could despite the Marx's own poverty.

We also get a very accurate picture of the tumultuous times in which the Marxes lived. Gabriel discusses many of the horrors of early industrialization and looks at some of the factors which led Marx and, for that matter, many other writers of the time to condemn the excesses of the wealthy classes and the hypocritical and self-serving morality they used to justify the horrible working conditions of the time. She also discusses the actions members of the burgeoning working class all across Europe took to combat these conditions.

In Love and Capital, Gabriel gives us a well-researched and well-documented portrait of a very complex man and the woman who loved him. Even better, she gives us an extremely engrossing and surprisingly entertaining glimpse of who the Marxes were when they were at home.

[David Curry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Gabriel’s LOVE AND CAPITAL: KARL AND JENNY MARX AND THE BIRTH OF A REVOLUTION is distinguished by the same meticulous research and accomplished prose that distinguished NINTH STREET WOMEN, her book about five female artists who secured their place in the male-dominated mid-century New York City art world.


Here is Gabriel making Charles Dickens sound like a maiden aunt in describing social conditions young Marx and Engels witnessed among workers, soon to be called the proletariat, in Manchester and London in 1845:



“In Manchester the workers’ districts spread like weeds along the length of the river, but in London the slums were vertical, and the poor crammed the four-story houses from cellar to garret. Every inch, including the staircase, was occupied. Some people rented only a place on a bed, not even the whole bed. Others rented space on a rope strung along the wall, where they could sleep sitting up. Boys and girls, men and women, strangers piled together in a mass of humanity each night, looking for the warmth and rest that the upper classes took for granted. Because of that crowding, and because more people were competing for ever less work, the level of depravity in London was immeasurably worse than in Manchester. The sex industry where the poor congregated in Soho Square, St. Gales, and the Strand, was legendary. Young children mimicking adults uttered vile propositions to any passerby who might give them a farthing.

‘“These children, whose families had been driven off their farms or out of their villages for lack of food and work, had learned how to survive in the street. They were the resilient proletariat of the slums. Society asked what they had to sell , and they answered, like those in the factories in Manchester, with the only thing that belonged to them — their bodies.”

The author’s undisguised identification with her subjects is at its clearest when she writes: “The poor stole what they could from the rich, and the rich stole what they could from the working poor — one act called crime, the other industry.” That sentence could have been written by either Marx or Engels.

Gabriel’s most appealing sympathy, however, is not with the struggling masses or the earnest revolutionaries who championed their cause but with Marx’s wife Jenny, a baron’s daughter who stood by and supported Marx through persistent poverty, persecution, eviction, upheaval and relocation, illness including multiple deaths of children— and even eventual betrayal, when Marx impregnated the family’s live-in housemaid.

The calamity Marx endured, including chronic boils all over his body, is relentless. At one point he wrote to Engels: “As you can see, I am tormented as Job, though not as god-fearing.” Yet there are some unforgettably appealing domestic details, as when we learn that the Marx children referred to Engels, who was often the source of urgently needed funds for the struggling Marx family, as Uncle Angels.

Engel’s ability to provide financial assistance was severely limited when the American Civil War caused a sharp rise in the price of cotton, on which the Engels family business was dependent. Gabriel reminds us that there was a brief period, around the time of the Trent incident, when it appeared that Britain might go to war against the United States in support of the Confederacy.

Marx was earnest, headstrong and self-centered, but not incapable of compromise if it could lead to a desired result such as obtaining needed funds. He once wrote: “In politics a man may ally himself with the devil himself — only he must be sure that he is cheating the devil instead of the devil cheating him.” As Gabriel presents him, we can be fairly certain that Marx would have realized the slippery slope of that statement.

Nowhere is Gabriel’s sure hand with prose more evident than in the opening paragraph of Chapter 21, London, Winter 1851:


“In 1851 Queen Victoria proudly declared that her beloved husband, Prince Albert, had successfully united the world behind peace and prosperity. Albert was president of the commission of notables who created the world’s first Great Exhibition, a triumph of trade, industry, and inventiveness. On opening day, May 1, one-quarter of London’s population gathered in Hyde Park to witness the event. The thirty-two-year-old queen, awestruck by the marvels around her, was among them. Inside the Crystal Palace, which was built to hold the expo and whose dome was larger than that of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, some hundred thousand exhibits displayed the wonders of the age, from Foucault’s Pendulum to the flush toilet, from the cotton spinning machine to a daguerrotype of the moon. The exhibition marked the birth of the shopping mall, with multi-story shops that moved merchandise with exceptional ease. It also included the world’s largest indoor greenhouse, demonstrating man’s dominance over nature, With Handel’s’Hallelujah Chorus’ sung by a thousand-member choir swelling in the background, the queen said, ‘One felt … filled with devotion, more so than by any service I have ever heard.’ Thus the head of the Church of England declared industry to be the new religion. Britain’s Golden Age of Capitalism — a word that had just begun to be used among the cognoscenti, along with its glorious counterpart, imperialism — was born.”

When Marx’s major work, DAS KAPITAL was finally published, it brought neither acclaim nor remuneration during the author’s lifetime. Marx wrote to Paul Lafargue “Kapital will not even pay for the cigars I smoked writing it.”

Marx’s children who survived tended to inherit his revolutionary spirit. Jennychen Marx wrote: “One could afford to treat with silent contempt a government run mad, and to laugh at the farces in which the pottering pantaloons employed by the government play their muddling and meddling parts, did not these farces turn out to be tragedies for thousands of men, women and children.”

The book abounds with enjoyable tidbits Gabriel uncovered in her research, as when Engels sent Marx a toast on the occasion of his 50th birthday; “I congratulate … on the half century, from which, incidentally, I am also only a s short span away. Indeed, what juvenile enthusiasts we were twenty-five years ago when we boasted that by this time we would long have been beheaded.”

It is fashionable in some if not most circles to consider Marx superannuated, but Gabriel keeps hitting us with observations and quotations that show his continuing relevance. For example, the epigraph from Marx that opens chapter 30: “The lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economic monopolies … To conquer political power therefore becomes the great duty of the working classes …. One element of success they possess — numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance if united by combination and led by knowledge.” Surely we can still hear that.

Summarizing the first volume of DAS KAPITAL, Gabriel writes: “Marx also foresaw antagonisms among capitalists, who would devour one another in their pursuit of wealth by hungrily absorbing their competition to create monopolies and business empires stretching across countries and continents.” Surely we can also hear that.

The final section covers the completion of volumes two, three and four of Marx’s masterwork after his death and the growth of his reputation and influence. The final voice heard in the book is Lenin’s.

Gabriel’s admirable book is a compelling, challenging, perplexing read as history and the social and economic dialectic march on.

[Virginia Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seems an especially appropriate time to review seeds of former revolutions, for in knowledge of history there is wisdom. In the minds of the masses, the ideals and concepts of Marxism have been pretty much destroyed by Lenin and Stalin. No conceptual framework for new forms of living can succeed without a corresponding change in our values toward the the sacral spirit in all life, which is another subject. That said, those with the most power have consistently and successfully sought to spoil the potentials of this theory and related movements by associating them with those that were only too eager to use its rhetoric partially to assume more of the same power themselves.

This is a fascinating story of the price society extracts from those compelled to change it. This is a wonderfully historic and personal view of europe and england in the 1800's, which were very hard times to live in indeed, with horrible living conditions for most.. "Das Kapital" was the first searing indictment of capitalism and its crimes against nature, made much more comprehensible with inclusions of the well researched personal lives of Karl & Jenny Marx and their children.

From "Capital" Marx wrote, "Capital is dead labor, that, vampire like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."
From his beginnings as a Hegelian philosopher, through constant battles with various repressive presses, to the start and growth of the communist party, (which is nothing so malevolent as we've been led to believe) through labour activism and how his children carried that on, and especially his partnerships with his patron Engels, this is a great look at a unique individual and his effect on history.

"Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it" and, on "revolutionary transformation".... "a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but (highlighted in the text) the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". Is this not similar to what we are still struggling to achieve? We can only hope it is possible!

Throughout this work, Marx's solidarity with the proletariat is highlighted again and again, though it is true he tried to position his daughters in a more conventional position, having no desire to have them experience the agonies of poverty he had experienced as a result of commitment to revolutionary ideals.

I had tried to slog through "CAPITAL" and it was agonizingly difficult. I was glad to get a more humanly understandable take on his work through this book. Highly recommend.

[Karthick · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a journey through the eventful life of the mammoth of a man called Marx. In my opinion, this is the best biography of Marx and Jenny - and of Engels too - that is available on the market. The book reads like the Biblical tragedy of the book of Job; of Marx putting himself and his loved ones through endless pain and suffering for his faith in the Divine of the Revolution. Few other works have recorded the personal sacrifices of the Marx family with such an eye for detail and with such loving concern. Even Isaiah Berlin's celebrated biography of Marx does not come anywhere close to Gabriel's work of love.

While providing a 'human' account of Marx and co, the author also has demonstrated great familiarity with the theoretical works of Marx and Engels and their socio-intellectual context. Most important is the author's (correct) inference that Marx was an intellectual more concerned with getting a correct interpretation of historical events and a revolution based on such a robust theoretical approach, rather than an activist jumping blindly for anti-capitalist change. At a time when infantilism is plaguing all shades of left, this book shows that Marxism has nothing to do with a glorification of nihilistic violence, a contempt for philosophy and a denial of the achievements of Western civilization. Instead, Marx's work is shown as a noble and rigorous attempt to change the world by understanding it better. Marx emerges here as a figure who, in a Zizekian sense, resisted the temptation to act, disciplining himself to do the more radical act of thinking.

A 'human' note: What touched me much more than the love between Marx and Jenny, which was poetic in itself, was the love between Marx and Engels. That sort of a genuine and unconditional intellectual and emotional bromance is really hard to find. Among other things, this book is also a tribute to their platonic friendship.

Hear about the chemistry between them in Gabriel's own words:

"As intellectuals they were brilliant, incisive, prescient, and creative (but also elitist, cantankerous, impatient, and conspiratorial). As friends they were bawdy, foulmouthed, and adolescent. They loved to smoke (Engels a pipe, Marx cigars), drink until dawn (Engels fine wine and ale, Marx whatever was available), gossip (mostly about the sexual proclivities of their acquaintances), and roar with laughter (usually at the expense of their enemies, and in Marx’s case until tears streamed down his cheeks)."

This book is a must read for all on the Left.

[Mark Desrosiers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karl Marx figured out how capital works, but the other half of this title -- that's still a mystery after reading this unrelenting account of the tragedies that befell the marriage of Karl and Jenny Marx, not to mention their fascinating daughters. The repetitions of debts, hemorrhoids, carbuncles, drunken binges, letters to Engels, and dead children that mark this narrative make this a tough slog overall. But Mary Gabriel does provide a better picture of the mechanics of Marx's influence and infamy than I'd seen in previous bios: really he didn't hit the international stage, beyond security-state paranoia, until the Paris Commune of 1871 (and descended back into obscurity quickly thereafter). And here I was thinking the Communist Manifesto meant something in the intervening years.

Weirdest part: as an intellectual, his mindscape appears much more like a majestic concatenation of epiphanies and brainfarts as we actually watch him working at his tiny, cluttered home desk, or shambling into the British Museum reading room.

As much as Mary Gabriel wanted to foreground or at least interweave the women in Marx's life into a better story, Karl Marx still remains dominant, and -- again this mystery of "love" -- we see loyalty and duty emerging as standard nineteenth century norms for women, this time surrounding a patriarch who was a huge failure as a provider. I have a guess how "love" may have worked here but I don't think Gabriel probes deep enough into a what really was a concept that got shifted and stirred by early 19th century romanticism.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like almost everyone I have heard a lot about Marxism and Communism, but I knew very little about the man who started it all. This biography is excellent examination of the life of Karl Marx. Now, there are many biographies of Marx but what I think makes this book so interesting is the focus, by the author, on Marx's wife Jenny and his day-to-day life and family. I had no idea that Marx lived most of his life in obscurity and poverty. He was know from some of his writings among those radicals, but he did not gain the great name for himself until very late in his life.

That is all beside the point. What really gives this book its punch is the fascinating and lovely relationship that Marx had with his wife and children. He was not perfect, by a long shot, but he truly did love his wife and daughters and they loved him. They struggled on the edge of poverty and starvation for so long. It was difficult to read just how hard life was for the Marx family and so many others at the time. I also learned just how close Marx was to Friedrich Engels. They had a very close and interesting relationship.

Finally, I know this is a good book because it has kindled in me an interest in so many other topics. The Paris Commune of 1871, I now want to read a biography of Engels as well as his book, The Condition of the Working Class in England. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in history.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

February 2012: Fascinating, but a bit long. And so sad -- I lost track of all the different people (especially children) who died of mysterious flulike illnesses. This is the first time I remember openly sobbing over a biography. (Also, I had a fever last night and between this and Downton Abbey, I was more than a little freaked out.)

December 2019: This remained a compelling, thought-provoking book on a reread. Oddly, I found its themes reminiscent of the themes in the Sontag biography: Is "greatness," or its pursuit, really worth it? Marx's relentless devotion to his ideas, his desire to change the world, arguably ruined not only his life but the lives of his wife and children. And all three of his legitimate children who survived him had tragic adulthoods for much the same reason. (You know who doesn't seem to have had a tragic adulthood? His illegitimate son, who didn't quite grow up in Marx's thrall and was never even completely sure who his father even was.)

[Lorenzo · Rating 4 out of 5]

É difícil uma biografia que não fique buscando na versão jovem do biografado indícios do que ele viria a ser depois, em outras palavras substituindo o passado realmente vivido por uma narrativa com um quê de predeterminação. Felizmente, esse não é o caso do livro de Mary Gabriel. Talvez pelo fato de não ser sua primeira biografia, talvez por não ser uma biografia apenas de Marx, mas de sua esposa, filhas e filhos, talvez porque em suas próprias trajetórias não houve muito tempo para coisas desinteressantes, o livro olha para todos os biografados sempre em contraste com o momento histórico em que viveram, o que enriquece a leitura e humaniza os acontecimentos relatados.

São mais de 600 páginas de texto, divididas em 53 capítulos, cada qual centrado em um local de importância nas trajetórias. A opção por essa divisão, mais o texto de Gabriel, que corre fácil, faz a leitura do livro ser muito agradável, sem que isso se reverta em perda de conteúdo. Inclusive, a pesquisa feita, em termos de documentação, é monumental: o número de cartas citadas ao longo do texto deve passar de mil e as referências à bibliografia especializada, o que inclui outras biografias, é também bastante volumosa. (Fiquei pensando, aliás, como serão escritas as biografias daqueles que vivem hoje, uma vez que não há mais cartas, e e-mails e mensagens de texto são documentos de natureza muito distinta.)

O Marx de Gabriel é um homem tão inteligente quanto suscetível a bloqueios, procrastinações e, quando não, incapaz de estabelecer uma linha de chegada para seus próprios trabalhos. É, também, tão apaixonado por Jenny quanto dependente dela, o que não quer dizer que Marx não tenha arrastado e feito suas bobagens enquanto marido. Marx também era profundamente amado por suas filhas e todas, cada qual à sua maneira, aderiram às ideias do pai e o ajudavam com seus problemas.

Jenny, por sua vez, é descrita como alguém que, por toda a vida juntos, foi absolutamente leal a Marx. Não apenas quanto ao seu casamento, mas também quanto à política. Para Marx seria inimaginável enviar um texto sem que fosse revisto por esposa antes. Ambos tiveram de mudar de cidades às pressas por diversas vezes, sempre em circunstâncias de perseguição por parte do governo do país em que se encontravam no momento, até irem parar na Inglaterra, mais por falta de opção do que por escolha pessoal. E, apesar da falta de renda ser um problema cada vez maior, a relação entre ambos só se estreitou.

Já suas filhas cresceram e amadureceram no caldeirão político vivido pelo pai, o que incluía a casa sempre com estrangeiros, principalmente exilados por sua posição política, bem como a constante falta de recursos. A casa dos Marx não deixava de ser a casa de uma família de classe média (algo bastante distinto do que é a classe média hoje), porém sem que fosse exatamente tradicional: muitas pessoas, por um motivo ou outro, viveram com os Marx e estabeleceram laços que não raro ultrapassaram a amizade.

Há um personagem final, que também é quase biografado oculto, porém Gabriel opta por não avançar demais em sua vida pessoal: Engels. É difícil encontrar uma palavra que defina a importância de Engels para os Marx, e principalmente para o Karl. Seria justo, talvez, definir a ambos como irmãos, porém isso também reduz um tanto a coisa: Engels era também visto como um irmão por Jenny e, para além das relações de afeto, Engels é provavelmente o responsável por manter o núcleo da família Marx inteiro, seja com as infinitas e para lá de generosas contribuições financeiras, seja com a parceria de trabalho com Marx, seja por resolver os pepinos que este lhe deixava (um deles, inclusive, tem que ser muito, mas muito amigo, para topar). E era amado também pelas filhas dos Marx, para as quais nunca deixou de estender a mão. Engels é uma figura por si só genial, e assim que der quero ler uma biografia dedicada a ele.

No fim, alguns probleminhas do livro: a autora por diversas vezes, diante de uma indefinição sob o que teria motivado alguma desavença, toma o lado de Marx. Ela também não se isenta de passar aquele paninho quando algo que Karl faz é, de acordo com a própria descrição dela, bastante duvidoso. Isso fica bastante evidente no trecho em que Marx tem que pedir o FAVORZAÇO que citei acima para Engels: há uma opção por não deixar circular certas informações ali, o que bate de frente com a lealdade que sempre existiu, mas Gabriel faz um esforço um tanto exagerado para justificar o ocorrido. Isso me leva a questionar, portanto, se na escolha dos trechos citados também não há um viés excessivamente favorável a Marx.

O resultado, porém, não deixa trazer um profundamente Marx humano, não idealizado, que precisou, em determinado momento, sair da casa pelos fundos, para fugir dos infinitos credores. Também deixa claro como a crítica de que os Marx falavam pelo proletariado enquanto viviam uma vida burguesa é para lá de exagerada: basta dizer que se trata de uma família que não apenas perdeu um filho com um ano de idade porque não tinha como pagar por um tratamento decente, como tampouco teve recursos sequer para pagar seu caixão. Além disso, nunca conseguiram adquirir sua própria casa. O pouco que tiveram, com raras exceções, deveu-se, mais uma vez, a Engels.

Não sou marxólogo e imagino que em algum lugar da internet deva existir uma discussão sobre todas as coisas que o livro de Gabriel ou não citou ou o fez de maneira indevida. Não creio, porém, que esse seja um grande demérito. Falar de alguém como Marx é uma tarefa que irá, inevitavelmente, dividir o público. O importante que o livro faz justiça à grandeza humana das pessoas ali envolvidas, uma vez que, sendo hoje um momento no qual os países capitalistas dão sinais de regressão social, Marx continua sendo indispensável, quase 140 anos após sua morte.

[Jbondandrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say about this beautiful book! Such a riveting story! I could hardly put it down. Such poverty did people live in in those days and how little has changed for anyone since those times. Karl's daughters were such brilliant women and yet they suffered so because of who they were and the ungrateful men they associated with. If only they could have been treated as true equals or not felt that they needed someone that much that it compromised their own lives. Women should know themselves fair and square and be strong enough not to compromise too much to find a companion and to deal with life on an equal footing. Yet in this day and age such a thing is neigh impossible no matter how hard one tries yet one must continue to strive for this and no less than equality always.