Rev Left Radio - The Last Years of Karl Marx

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Author and Scholar Marcello Musto joins the show to discuss his book "The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography". Together, Marcello and Breht explore the last couple years of Karl Marx's life, including his personal tragedies and illnesses as well as his continued study, travels, and theoretical development. They discuss and counter the criticisms that Marx was irredeemably euro-centric, didn't wrestle with the question of colonialism, or was a class reductionist, while also diving into his relationship with his wife and children, his best friend and colleague Engels, his analysis of Russia, and finally, his own death. Marcello Musto is a Professor of Sociological Theory at York University, in Toronto – Canada, where he is the founding director of the Laboratory for Alternative Theories. He is acknowledged globally as one of the authors who has made significant contributions to the revival of Marx studies over the last decade and his research interests also include Socialist thought, the history of labour movement, and alternative socio-economic systems. His work has been translated worldwide in twenty-five languages and among his publications there are four single-authored books and twelve edited volumes. Get 15% off any book in the Left Wing Books Library HERE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow Rev Left on Insta Support Rev Left Radio and get access to multiple bonus episodes a month    

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. We have a really fascinating discussion for you today. Today we have on the scholar Marcello Musto to talk about his book, The Last Years of Karl Marx, an intellectual biography, in which he masterfully weaves together the theoretical intellectual work of Karl Marx, political work of Karl Marx, and his personal life. particularly in the last two years of his life. He corrects a lot of misconceptions about Marks,

the idea that Marx was Eurocentric, the idea that he was a class reductionist, all these critiques we hear about Marx. He corrects a lot of those. He also shows the human side of Marks. Mark's losing his beloved wife. Mark's losing his daughter a few months before Marx himself passed away, the deep relationship that he had throughout his life with Engels

and how Engels beautiful, after Marx's death, not only spoke about Marx, but continue to work the rest of his life to ensuring that Marx and him and Engels' work together would live on. And that a lot of his stuff that wasn't published would get published, that the works of theirs would be translated, that political leaders around the continent would have, you know, the direct access to what Marx actually thought and Engels would continue to clarify Marx's thought. So just a really fascinating interweaving of the intellectual work that Marx was doing at the end of his life as well as his personal life, Marx's health issues, his attempts to travel at the end of his life, to try to find respite from his illnesses, always, always with the ultimate goal being that he would be able to get better so that he could finish capital. Of course, we know now he wasn't fully able to do, but thank goodness that Engels lived another 12 years after Marx's death and could continue to build on his.

his work and get his work out to the world and continue to influence people to this very day. So I couldn't ask for a better guest. This is a really fascinating, wide-ranging discussion. We didn't even get to all the questions. There are some, there are still things I want to talk about. So we're definitely going to have Marcello back on the show sometime soon to continue to talk about his other work, other aspects of Marxist theory as well as his personal life, etc. But this is a real treat. I'm really excited to share this with you today. I also wanted to very briefly that me and the comrades Adnan and Henry from guerrilla history were blessed to be able to write a foreword to a book put out by Iskra books called the historical documents of the Palestine Liberation Organization, a collection for critical organizational study. These are first primary source documents of the PLO talking about their organization, about their theoretical developments, etc.

and we were blessed to be able to write the forward to it. All proceeds go to the Middle East Children's Alliance. So all profits generated from this book actually go to a good cause. And you can support the book, support Iskra Books, support the Middle East Children's Alliance, and support guerrilla history by purchasing this book. So I'm going to link to the show notes for people interested in that. Really wonderful. Huge shout out to Iskra Books.

Huge shout out to Adnan and Henry. And huge shout out to the book. Palestinian liberation in all of its forms and all of its iterations. Last but not least, I want to remind people that we have an ongoing collaboration with our friends and comrades over at leftwingbooks.net where if you type in Rev. Left at checkout, you get 15% off all the books in their ever-growing library. Really good comrades with really amazing resources and they're working with us to make sure that our audience here at Rev. Left can get access to those books. even more easily, even more excessively with the 15% discount. So I will put the link to that in the show notes with the discount code already applied. So you just click that link, find your book, go to checkout, get 15% off.

You support left-wing books, and you get access to books for cheaper than you otherwise would. So huge shout out to left-wing books. Huge shout out to Khrush Blued Deb. We love working with those good folks. All right, without further ado, here is my wonderful discussion with Marcello, on his book, The Last Years of Karl Marx in Intellectual Biography. Enjoy. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for inviting me. It's a big pleasure being together with you. I am Marcelo Muster. I am Professor of Sociology at York University in Toronto, Canada.

And I've been reading Marx for 25 years. I had been writing some books about his theory, but in particular about his intellectual biography. I always thought that it is very important to understand Marx's life and, you know, with the clearer understanding of Marx's life is very useful to better understand his ideas, his theories. So I am glad to be here with you and looking forward for this conversation. And I just want to let people know that the way I found you is I just stumbled across your Twitter.

You had made a post about Marx's personal life and it was really like, you know, in-depth and interesting. And, you know, I've been doing this show for seven years. We've certainly touched on his personal life, but I don't think we've ever given it as much focus as it deserves because it's a full human life. And he has a deep family, you know, friends, connections, travels. There's so much to it.

And as people who take his theoretical work very seriously, you know, me and my audience do. This is a Marxist podcast. I think it also behooves us to understand the man. But, but, importantly, you also are very, very good and familiar and even an expert with his theory. And so you do, you do, it's an intellectual biography. So you weave together these personal aspects of his life, which are fascinating and ground him in his human realness, while at the same time having a really

genuine depth and understanding of his theoretical work. So that's why I knew I had to have you on the show. And it's a real pleasure and honor to have you here today. Let's go ahead and get into the question. So again, for people that might not have heard, the book. is the last years of Carl Marx's intellectual biography. So my first question is to you. Can you talk about, you said that you've been reading him for 25 years. Can you talk about your interest in Marx, how you became interested in him and his work, and why you decided to dedicate so much of your intellectual and professional life to learning and teaching about him? Well, actually, my interest in Marx, you know, at the beginning, nothing to do with work. Again, I started a long time ago. I'm 48, so I was, very young. Actually, I started to read Marx at the high school because I've always been an activist, a militant, right? And, you know, reading Marx back then was, first of all, something that I encountered Marx in this period that perhaps might be interesting in the

mid-40s in Italy when I was born. And when I studied in Europe in the mid-90, in the 1990, sorry, There's a period when there still were, you know, political organization of the, of the radical left. So today, after the recent European election, the left is the space of the so-called radical left is, it's very small, with the exception of a few countries. And back then, and, you know, it's not an organized space, like the organization that exists back then. Of course, I'm talking about daily small organization in comparison with what exists before. Just to mention the example of the country where I was born, the Italian Communist Party had two millions of members in 1970s and was the biggest Communist Party in Europe and, you know, in the Western world, right?

so 33% sometimes at the election. Pasolini, one third of the electoral population vote for the communist, the Italian Communist Party. Pierre Paolo Pasolini wrote that the Italian Communist Party was a country in a country, you know, a really significant community. Of course, I didn't experience this time. By the way, there were so many other leftist organization

and political and social movements back then the Italian Communist Party was only the biggest one and the same was for France for many other European countries I didn't experience this time but at the beginning at the middle of the 90s there were still political organization

with workers and you know you go in the afternoon in the evening in the section of the party in the occupied university when there were some big campaign, you know, like for example against the war in Yugoslavia in 1999 or, you know, in other places. And you had the possibility to, you know, discuss with people, build, you know, politics. And Marx came for this reason. For me, Marx was by far the best option from something.

point of view, the only real alternative to keep anti-capitalism alive. So this was my beginning. Then I started my PhD later and, you know, political activism was

still my priority. But then Marxist studies became so weak because we also have to consider that, you know, usually people say from 1989, of course, the fall of Berlin Wall, but even a few years, before, I will say up to 2008, up to economic crisis, there were more than 20 years of

absolute silence about Marx in Europe. That perhaps was not the case in Latin America, but certainly the case in Europe, in North America, in other parts of the world. If you compare the number of books of Marx or books written, books on Marx or, you know, writings by Marx that were published in 1960s, in 1970s, in countries like, you know, in country like, you know, Germany, the United States, I couldn't make many other examples. And then you compare this number with the 90s, 2000. Well, you know, it's ridiculously low. There was almost no scholarship on Marx and very, very few books of Marx were in the bookstores back then. Perhaps only the Communist Manifest in 1998, right? There was a big anniversary of 150 years. So in this period,

I felt that I had to try to contribute myself, and I also saw that many theories, many ideas back then that were called Marxist, well, that is an old problem, had really little to do with Marx sometimes. So I felt the need to engage this rigorous reading, and then, you know, I went to Berlin and I started there for a few years working on the Marx-Angelskies Amsterdamtogga, which is the new historic story. critical edition of Marx and Engels, perhaps we'll talk about this later. So I also had access to one published manuscripts and thing like this. And I have to say that my perception of Marx changed significantly, right? So I had a much better understanding of how road is the real Karl Marx. Yeah, beautiful, fascinating. I totally agree with everything you said. And you mentioned the Italian Communist Party being described as a country within a country. Is that because of the the deep cultural connections that the Communist Party fostered, even outside of politics

proper, where they would be involved in sports, cafes, intellectual circles, et cetera. Like, it really was a culture within a culture as well as a country within a country. Is that right? Yes, there was certainly this aspect. You know, let's think, let's just mention two things that are actually even bigger than this. You know, first of all, the trade unions, you know, the GGL, you know, general confederations. of workers, it is something unique, I would say, in the history of Europe. You know, France is a much better place, sometimes for, you know, social movements and

riots and protests and demonstration. But there is a much lower, truly much lower affiliations of workers to this organization, to trade you. So in Italy, you know, the trade union said several millions of workers. And I want to insist on this because I want to insist on the element of political organization that is my opinion so relevant, so essential and that was lost in the last couple of the case with this idea that everything that was political organization was bad, was undemocratic, I think it was Stalinist and thing like this.

So this is very, very different in comparison to North America. It's very challenging for me to teach, to discuss this with my students because they really don't understand what it means to have sections of the party of the unions where every day, daily, hundreds of people are meeting, are discussing about the small problem of your street, of your name, and at the same time they are also discussing what's going on in Vietnam, in Chile, and in any other place or the world where an injustice was committed. And the other thing that I wanted to mention is the cooperative movement that was, you know,

significant, very strong, in particular in the center of Italy and, you know, well-known regions like Emilio Romagna, where Bologna, where Bologna, located like Toscan, definitely very, very strong, very big. So the element of, you know, having millions of people, millions of workers organizing themselves within the parties or in the new left that started in 1968 in Italy with the experience of it manifests or with this extraordinary university movement of protest, many people say, you know, 1968 last in France for a few weeks, you know. this was in Italy on the country a big wave that reached until, you know, that was, you know, there until 1977.

So definitely this is an experience that later changed the culture of the country. And in this period, I would say that the majority of the intellectuals, university professors, artists, writers, you know, journalists, I will say that the majority of them will search. certainly called themselves leftist and many, many of them in this majority will define themselves Marxist. I met them a few years after 1989 when many of them actually passed on the other side of the barricade. One famous example is an author that is well known in North America as well, Lucio Coletti, who was also, I don't know, the author of the intro of the selection, the early writings of Marx for Penguin, you know, in England, in the United States. Well, you know, he ended up being a senator for France Italian, you know, the political party of Berlusconi.

So that society dramatically changed and this was the case for many other places in Europe. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I would love to have you back on at some point to dive into that history even deeper because I do find it interesting. fascinating even and I want to learn more. But getting back to the book at hand, in this book, the last years of Karl Marx, you explore the last couple of years of his life, both intellectually and personally. What was the motivation for you to cover these years in particular? How have other biographers failed to really wrestle with the late Marx? And what did you hope to accomplish with this book? Well, in the introduction of this book, I wrote that the final year, of Karl Marx

are a sort of unknown chapter of these life and most importantly intellectual biography. I want to call

the attention of the audience on this you know an unknown chapter of Karl Marx so somebody

who was I don't know studied sometimes also with the wrong perception of reading

a religious books dozens of millions of people. And, you know, with the Institute of Marxist Leninism in Moscow, in Berlin, there were hundreds of people starting in particular from 1960s editing Marxist writing, publishing Marx's writing. There is a long story, but perhaps we'll talk about this later about Marx editions, because Marx left many texts un-published, right? Many manuscripts, they were written by Marx only for himself,

but then, of course, they had a very big importance in order to better understand Marx, or in order to take marks in one way or in another. You know, everybody was trying to say, oh, I know the real car marks, and this manuscript is proving this. I think this is a tendency that is still going on today. So how is it possible that with all this attention for this author, there was an unknown chapter of his intellectual biography?

Well, I will say that old biographers and old scholars, unfortunately, we have to make this distinction. While on the country, I think that, you know, in order to really understand Marx, the intellectual biography is very relevant, sometimes, you know, absolutely essential, indispensable in order to understand Marx's theories. So old biographers, all scholars, they had, in my opinion,

a sort of justification. Let's say that we enter one library today and we ask the librarian where can we find Marx and Engels collected works. When we go there, we will see

many volumes in the 1840s, Marks was born in 1818 and died in 1883. So this book, the book that you mentioned, the last series of Carmarx, focus in particular to, you know, the last two and a half years, 81, 82, 83. But you also tell a little bit stories of research

that Marx started in the late 70s. So we go there and we ask, where are the collected works? And when we are in front of the collected works, we will see many volumes from 1840. many volumes from the 1850s Marx didn't write any books very very few in 1850s

but he was one of the most important journalist for the New York tribute, right? And at some point it was one of the two correspondents for Europe. So Marx actually we should say Marx and English because English wrote one third of these

articles that were more than 500, you know, worked for the New York tribune between 1851 and 1862. It was very poor. We needed money to survive and this was the best option that he found.

And, you know, in the 60s, of course, there is capital, there is the first international. But then when you go to the last decade, there is nothing. There is just one volume from 1875 to 1883, right, with very

few things. So the old scholars and the old biographers perhaps thought, and this was, you know, something that can be found in many, in many books, in many old research, you know, when I say old, I mean until 1950s, 1970s, so several decades, that basically Marx was tired, that Marx was ill, sick, that Marx was having so many problems with this theory that he, reached a sort of theoretical impasse and block, there were many theories, but in any case, all of

them considered that they agreed on the point that Mark didn't work very much or almost no work at all in the last phase of his life. This

justification I cannot give in my opinion to more recent scholars and biographers of Marx because starting from the late 70s there were some

new publication of you know stuff that was not known before unpublished materials and notebooks written by Marx the most important one are the anthropological notebooks

that basically open a new continent for you know scholars of Marx and demonstrated that Marx did not publish for several reasons. One of them is that he didn't have the strength that he had before. This is also connected to the fact that he could not complete volume 2 and volume 3 of capital. He did not publish many things, but he wrote many things. He studied many things, right?

Actually, I want to say that my goal with this book was not only to demonstrate that Marx was alive and actually thinking a lot, but that he was thinking on very relevant issues for us today. Because Marx in this period is studying a lot about the Global South, colonialism, migration. he also, you know, started to take more attention for, certainly in a more emancipated way for, you know, women liberation. And, you know, there are a lot of studies with some connection with ecology as well. So work that he did is actually very, very valuable for us. And there is a lot of things. If you just give me one more minute, I think it's a moment. important this one. Actually, you know, some people might say, okay, but this Marx, you know,

he did not publish these books, so it is perhaps understandable why there was no attention for him. Well, that is actually not true because I would say even most of the books written by Marx that we know today and that were by far the most read and discussed in the 20th century are writings that Marx did not publish by himself or he did not even want to publish. I can make a very, very quick list. Economical philosophical manuscript of 1844, which was perhaps the books of philosophy most sold in many countries in the 20th century. You know, unpublished.

Unpublished also the German ideology that actually was transformed leadership in a sort of Bible by the people of Moscow, but it is a much more fragmentary work than the one that many, many generations taught. We also have the same with the economic writings. I mentioned volume 2 and volume 3 of capital,

but before of this, there are the Grundrisse, The first draft of the critical political economy written by Marx between 1857 and 1858 that was actually written by Marx as self-verstanding, so self-clarification, no intention to publish this. And the same for the theory of surplus value, the same for the thesis on Feuerbach,

the same for such an important book, pamphlet, Neil 1, that was actually a private letter written to some, you know, leaders of the German Social Democratic Party. I'm talking about the critique of the Gota program and many, many, many other texts, right? So there is a continuity in this. And this work that were published about the so-called Young Marx, as I just said, they had a very big relevance.

And in my opinion, there was also an over-report. presentation of this young Marx, not because I always disliked and fully disagreed with this thesis, but because that Marx, the young Marx, was not yet Marxist, as Althusser did, as the dogmatic people in Moscow said. But because, of course, that Marx was only 24, 25 years old and you know mentioning only that Marks or reading only that marks like many people did

including you know many scholars did you know basically brought us to the point of losing 25 more years, 30 more years of you know rigorous analytical

research on capitalist mode of production and you know not understanding that capital is absolutely the most important thing in Marx intellectual production. Absolutely wonderful. Points made, fascinating history to go through. In quick summary, most of the old scholars focusing on the marks of the 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, but it's particularly in his later life where he is still writing a bunch,

although he's not necessarily publishing a bunch, he's writing a bunch specifically on stuff like anthropology, on colonialism, and with all of his ideas behind him. So it's like probably the most refined, sophisticated thinking, the older he gets because he has all that, those previous years of work and theory already worked out. And then the critique could be, well, in his later years, he wasn't publishing them as books, therefore they're somehow less important. And you, magisterially went through all the other works of his that were initially unpublished that we now see as part of the Marxist canon. For those interested in some of those works as an aside me and my co-host alison for our sister podcast red menace we've done full

episodes on works like the economic and philosophic manuscripts of 1844 critique of the gotha program we even did a whole episode on althus there in his analysis of the old marks versus the young marks we critiqued it as well and also advanced some of its positive aspects so if people want to learn more about those texts in particular i'll link to those in the show notes but that's all very fascinating and so you're focusing on these last couple of years you're showing in this work how productive Marx still was, and you're showing that he is opening up new terrain in his theory that some people even, you know,

and we'll get to this in a second about anthropology and colonialism. Some people mistakenly criticize him for not having anything to say on these really important topics, but you're pointing out that in fact he did have much to say. So that's why I love this book. I think it's absolutely fascinating. But for this interview, I want to kind of keep bouncing back and forth between Marx's personal life and his intellectual pursuits.

So let's start with the personal. One aspect of Marx's life that I've always been interested in were his deep relationships, particularly with his wife and his children. Unfortunately, he would live long enough to see the death of his beloved wife and the death of several of his children in infancy, even the death of his beloved daughter, Jenny Chen, whom he was extremely close with. Can you talk about this aspect of his life, who Marx was as a man, as a father, and how the deaths of his closest loved ones in these last couple of years of his life impacted him?

Hey, what a question. What kind of man was Marx? So I would try to say, you know, few things and without being able to be exhausted, right? But perhaps, you know, we can continue the conversation and you will ask me more later about particular aspect. Certainly Marx was, you know, against the system, also in the way that he was lived. But at the same time, I want to say, and this is something that you understand Marx, you understand the intellectual biography of Marx. I didn't mention this so far, but the key word here is correspondence. You have to read the, you know, 2,500 letters that Marx and Angers wrote exchange between

them and wrote to other people. And now with the New German edition, it's very good, the one that started to once again to be published and edited in Berlin in 1998. We are talking about 35 volumes of letters for the first time we can also see, read the letters that they

received. This is so good because Marx and angels are no longer considered gods, right, who live outside all the people, contradiction and, you know, that were only

explaining everything to others. It's very interesting to see on the country how much they learned from other people, how much they learn also from political experience, which is essential for me. Marx is not only a scholar, a very good scholar, but many ideas

that he improved, that he changed in his life, also with relation to his final acquisition and elaboration, they were also made through political experiences. Because, you know, they were activists. I'm not only talking about the decade almost 1864, 1872, when Marx was the leader and the most important representative of the international working men association, but also before, for example, 1848, 1849, and, you know, even before. But I want to say that even though Marx was against the system, a revolutionary, always with self-irony, the same. for Engels, perhaps even more

for the general. The general was the nickname of Engels because it was a big expert on any military issue around the world. Well, Marx was also a sort of Victorian father, I would say,

right? And, you know, in many letters, that's why I mentioned the correspondence, you see this and you see the, you know, the way to being the father that he had of the family, I was saying perhaps also the idea to preserve the daughters, and he was not able to do this, the kind of life that his wife, Jenny from Vespalden did.

Like, you know, when Marx was very, very sad in moments of desperation, dramatic of desperation, because, you know, there were serious financial issues, economic issues. in the family. Then Marx is always writing two angles in this moment and he's also mentioning to angles what a mistake. He wrote this, you know, a couple of time at least was, you know,

to get married and, you know, what the responsibility he felt. Because, you know, there is this very big pressure of writing his masterpiece capital at the same time, the political activism and at the same time, of course, taking care

of a big family. we only know Janice and Jenny the daughter at the same name of the mother and then Laura and Eleanor but you know they also lost three children and it was complicated for several years

so we can say that this is something that impacted Marx's life and impacted even more the existence of Marx. And I will also see the production, the intellectual production of Marx. First, we are talking about a man who was already 63, 64 years old, and, you know, also with a long life of health issues, in particular related to capital, because Marx healed himself to write capital. That's literally what happened.

And I mentioned this story in another book, another Marx, there is a chapter dedicated to the riding of capital. And, you know, he lost his wife in 1881, which was a very real tragedy in Marx's life. I just want to mention what Engel said when he knew, right? When they told him a few minutes after Engel said, Marx is also dead now. this is what basically happened because, you know, Marx just survive a little bit more with this love for the daughters. But then when also its first daughter died in 1882, she was living in France, in the periphery of Paris, this was a very, very severe, you know, clash for Marx. perhaps something nice

that I want to mention in this period that had a sort of counterbalance this heaviness of life having your body with so many issues and you know

deaths of your beloved where the children the nephew so Marx loved being with these nephews with children in general love them and they love Marx because Marx was very fun and even though there are some really

wonderful quotations from his correspondence with Engels, imagine this Marx 64 years old. He had many, many severe respiratory issues and, you know, when he was traveling to Paris to see Jenny

and his nephews, they were playing with Marx, they were screaming so much that Mark said, well, actually you know what, this is the only thing that is even more difficult than reading the phenomenology of the spirit of Haig, which is a classic reference in Marx's family. You know, Marx's family is not only the wife, the daughters, but of course Engels is a part of the family, always was.

But there were also these people lived in London. Then some of them went away. One of this was a Bill M. Leeknecht, who was later the... you know, member of parliament for the SPD, the first of two, Lipknet and Babel. And he was also, you know, a very well-known leader of the party who never listened to what Marx and Engels taught him before or used to ride him when he was in Germany. And the William Lipknecht was also the father of Karl Lipknecht, who was, you know, the person

who was doing the revolution with Rosa Luxembourg a few decades. later. So these people like Lipknet and later many other people, they joined the family because Marx's family was open to guest on Sunday. It was the rare moment to see Marx leaving his room

and there was a wonderful lunch and then after lunch London Times weather for meeting. They were going out and they were going for walking in a high park and that zone of the north of London. So there are some

moments of happiness. And, you know, another one, I mentioned this because I was mentioning Hegel, so the reference to the difficulty of the phenomenology of the spirit is a classic in Marx's house. But another one was also

when the daughters of Marx and their friends they loved Shakespeare. And Eleanor also tried to be an actress for, you know, many, many years. And they knew Shakespeare, not only Shakespeare, but Shakespeare in particular, very, very well. So they literally made a sort of internal play in the house. And Parks used to love this.

They were happening in the evening. So you could see him leaving his room and, you know, participating to this wonderful moment. The other question, if I have one more minute, I'm sorry if I'm talking too much, you know, is a day-to-day life. Well, the day-to-day life, I would say that changed a lot depending on which decade are we considering, right? So in the 40s, just mentioning the adult Marx, there was a lot of traveling because Marx, you know, He wanted to be a university professor. No way he could get this. So he was a journalist.

He was the director of the Rhinich Zeitung. But this just lasts for a few months because, you know, censorship wanted to change his writings. And, you know, if there was something that Marx was very, very, I would even say proud, but certainly something that he will not compromise is the style of his writing. So he went to Paris. and, you know, these are very interesting years. It is not a case that the first real movie about Carmarx was entitled and was dedicated to this period.

I'm talking about the young Carmarx. But by the way, the other movie that could be done is about the late years of Car Marks because, you know, he traveled a lot and there is so much that is going on. Then there are, you know, a couple of the cases that are very, very boring for a perspective of a cinematographic perspective. Because basically Marx in the 1850s, in the 1860s, he's living 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. So opening time and closing time in the British library and he spent there most of this time. But in the 1840s, he's basically traveling and living in Germany, in France, in Belgium, then back to France, then back to Germany.

Because he was exposed, right, so he was exiled in all these countries after he started his. political activism, and in the end, the only option that he had after the country revolution won in 1849 and defeated all the democratic movement around the continent, basically Marx had two options, Switzerland or England, and of course he went to England, which was actually very, very good for the future of the revolution, because this reaction that he pushed Marx to go in the country that had the best library in the world back then, the British library, and also where capitalism was developing in such a stronger way. So this was essential for Marx, like it was for Engels, because it was Engels who started

the critique of political economy, not Karl Marx. Max was doing, you know, critique of philosophy, critical religion, critical politics when he was young in this period, 1842, 43, 44. It was also, thanks to Engels, who was, on the contrary, the son of a capitalist who sent him to Manchester. And, you know, Engels met the working class. Engels saw the condition of the working class in England to mention the title of a very well-known book that English published in 1815. 45 at the age of 25, an excellent book, you know, a very strong denunciation of the dramatic effects of capitalism on the working class. And, you know, thanks to Engels, Marx understood that the centrality was the critique of political economy. And that's the beginning of a very,

very long story that ended with capital. Yeah, absolutely fascinating stuff. You mentioned that he loved kids and kids love him. And that's a huge recurring theme throughout his life. And I've read little pieces of his personal life where you'd often have Carl on the ground, you know, pretending to be an elephant while all the kids jump on him and try to tackle him. He was just one of those sorts of guys, which I always just find very, you know, very cute and very endearing. But also, yeah, he deeply, deeply loved his family, was embedded within his family, loved his wife, loved his kids. And there was, I think it was in a book called Loving Capital that I read many years ago where they talked about one of his younger sons who had passed away from, you know,

that happened often in the 1800s where, you know, that happened often in the 1800s where, you young children in infancy or young child, you know, childhood would die of various causes. And he was at the funeral for one of his, one of his just past young sons. And he was so distraught that he was weeping. And during the, during the service, he was overcame by desperation and almost like lurched as if he was going to jump into the grave with his son and had to be restrained by people around him. And I don't know, you know, we often see Marx as this intellectual giant, which he was, but to also situate him as a human being who suffered tragedies.

You know, lots of tragedies that life can throw at you. I think it really humanizes him and adds this different dimension to his life. So just to let people know the chronology here, you're covering 1881, 82, 83. So at the very end in December of 1881 is when his wife dies. And in January of 1883, just a little bit more than a year later is when his daughter, Jenny, who he was very close with, dies, and Marx died that March. So two months after his daughter died, and a little over a year after his wife died, he too passed, ultimately of heart failure, quite literally a broken heart. So that just speaks to the sort of person

he was. But now let's bounce back into the theoretical and economic works, which I want to talk about. And a very common, if lazy critique of Karl Marx, often launch. by those who have never read him, is that he was unsalvigably Eurocentric, even racist, and he did not wrestle with the questions of colonialism or even care about the struggles of the oppressed peoples outside of Europe. Can you please respond to and correct this mistaken critique and highlight Marx's actual thoughts on such matters? Wow, even racist, Marx was racist. It's a common thing you hear.

It's really this identity politics, the way that it turn, it's really a plug at this point. And unfortunately, it's also helping this other crazy in an equal way, new movement that some people who claim to be at the left are taking. Just take, for example, this alliance between far right and far right. And some people are supposed to be part of a far left, which is actually nationalism. I'm talking about all these new groups. And, you know, one example of this is Sarabaknacht in Germany, but it's not only an isolated case, right? So in order to go against this, you know, crazy excess sometimes of identity politics that basically destroy the idea of universalism, which is one of the basis of socialism or, you know, to better.

see this with the world of Che Guevara, you know, every time that there is an injustice in the world committed to anybody is an injustice committed to myself. And of course, I am, you know, part of the struggle to fight against this. You know, there are some crazy Marx racist. Wow. I just want to say something perhaps not interesting, but, you know, let me see a personal experience now as a scholar. I'm editing a book and I'm told you. of Marx and Engels, and I am sitting in front of so many materials on anti-colonialism and, you know, the critique of nationalism and national questions that I don't know how am I going to squeeze all of this in, you know, the few pages that I have. And, you know, I have dozens

of pages for this, you know? And there were so many, there are so many also anthologies. I'm not talking about anthologies today just based on colonialism today that there are so many

new manuscripts so many new documents but you know also stuff that was published back then

in the 70s with hundreds of pages so it's you know really it won't be

really incredible if allow me to do this but is not to promote the book just to have fun

of this people that's why I started the book with the quotation from, you know,

biography of Marx and Angus. And the quotation that I selected is perhaps one socialist in a thousand has ever read any of Marx's economic writings and over thousands of anti-Marxists not even one has read Marx. Unfortunately, this is still the case. And, you know, perhaps even more today

with the lack of political organization with, you know, students who have been, and leave that they are smarter if they get the solution in 150 characters or, you know, in just a few sentences of summary, written by somebody else because they don't want to take the time to read, you know, the text directly. So, you know, this is the case. Marxists, you know, they don't read capital and they believe that Marx was, you know, something else.

And, you know, anti-Marxists, you know, today I'm sure that, you know, the people who did this are who initiated this idea, right, of Marx being Eurocentric, things like this. There is a strong political intention here, which is basically

preventing that Marx, that is once again at the center of a revival with many difficulties and a revival that you know is mostly

theoretical then, then political, but certainly Marx, you know, regained weight after 2008, right? And then, you know, in a North American university, sometimes there are these ideas, well, Marx didn't care about colonialism more, actually it was, you know, Eurocentric. Quoting sometimes, you know, but a few sentences of an article written by Mark when he was 35, you know, without contextualizing everything and, you know, ignoring, completely ignoring the big mass of documents. But most

importantly, you know what, we don't even care about what they wrote. It is very important what they did as a political activist and, you know, look what they did in the first international or in other political experience or any time they had the chance to, you know,

discuss with the activists. Of course, we are talking about 1850s. 1879, so it's not that Mars was going to fly in South America and he was going to join Che Guevara in the guerrilla, right? But of course, you know, there is a very, very clear

position that they took. This position, if you allow me to be brutally superficial, I might be overviewed in this way. Marx and Engels never change their ideas about capitalism and they never change the idea on the fact that capitalism is necessary and is better than other modes of production that exist before capitalism.

Read the Communist Manifesto, right? So they didn't change later in their life as somebody wrote and even today with these ideas you know, Marx became a sort of new Bakuny, new Hertz, and they believe that in the communal property of, you know, ancient society, there is the solution for our society today. But Marx and Engels, and very, very much Marx, had clear that capitalism happened in one country,

happen in one part of the world, and doesn't have to repeat the story in the same way in all the rest of the world. This is something that many Marxists did not understand at all, even though Marx was very clear about this. So the stories that since capitalism emerged, then some other society can take, you know, the technological advances,

but also, you know, the critique to the patriarchal society or, you know, society with such a relevance of, the superstition of religious that capitalism helped to destroy with the contradiction and with, you know, the dialectical movements that

Marx and many others actually explain in their books. So at the same time that this is happening, of course, Marx is more and more and more understanding that the aspects of capitalism in what we call

today in the Global South are not positive as perhaps he and Engels thought when they were very, very young. They always went against, right, the suffering of human beings. But perhaps with the idea that capitalism was going to bring a sort of development. And this is the case of the letter that is quoted by Edward Said in his book Orientalism and that was so contributed so much in the idea that Marx was a sort of economic determinists like all the other liberals and political economists of the time. Well, you know, he was just trying to find something to put in a book

in an architecture of the book that was already prepared without taking attention to what really Marx did. But in any case, Marx later understood even better than before that this is not the case. So the late Marx is writing in such a violent way against this idea that capitalism produced development, that capitalism can produce, you know, improvement, emancipation, liberation for human people, not liberation like socialism. I'm just talking about in comparison to what exists before. This is not the case. Marx said capitalism is only increasing the number and the level.

severity of famine and, you know, destruction, which is, you know, the case of the British domination in India. And not only that one, Marx is very, very strong against the presence of a French colonizer in Algeria. Because Mark said,

these people by, you know, taking the land are not only doing, you know, with privatization, with the process of privatization, you know, destruction. But they are also destroying social life that exist back in those communities and basically are pushing society toward, you know, a competition among people and individualism

in human beings. That is one of the essential characteristics of capitalism. And this is also the case in relation with Central America. Even Australia, there are some laws that Marx wrote about this. So we are not talking to summarize about I don't know Nouvelle Jean-Jacques Rousseau who is interested in this idea of the meat

of the Bonne Sauvage. But you know, the idea here is that capitalism is useful because thanks to capitalism production is dramatically changing. But Marx never taught, never

said, never wrote that capitalism should develop in every country and that the heart of England should be the same for the rest of the world. Actually, Marx never write a sentence like this in relation to anything, in relation to socialism. So many people wrote to Marx, also to delete Marx. Can you please tell us how socialists should be?

We want to build it. We want to make it. And Marx always refused to do something that is actually in very strong opposition with the reason why he did politics because one of the reasons why he did politics when he was young was going against this idea of many French

early socialist I don't like to call them utopians I think this was a mistake that Engels with this famous book Socialism, Utterish, Scientific or Utopians and then became even more dogmatic later with the Moscow

with so that during the 20th century, but well, this early socialist, this pre-Marxian socialism, it's all like this. It's all like, you know, we write a constitution, a man, a single person, writes, you know, some ideas, and then all the other people should just follow what is written here and we will have socialism. The idea of Marx is completely different because as Marx wrote in, you know, the statute of the first international, you know, working class can really emancipate if they will emancipate themselves, right, if women and men will emancipate themselves. And of course, Marx knew that, once again, socialism is indispensable, but it's not at all everything. He's very clear about all the other contradiction

that exist in the world, you know, in capitalist society, and that will not simply overcome when there will be a collective ownership of the means of production. yeah that's incredibly helpful and of course you talk about that in the book itself people can get it and even dive deeper into it but yeah so there's lots of wrong ideas you know a lot of this eurocentric critique will come from this mistaken notion that as you were saying like capitalism's inherently progressive and that it should you know spread throughout the world and you know displace these older customs in the global south but you're pointing out there's many more nuances to it it's progressive in the sense that it's socializing production and advancing the forces of production but in all these other ways. It can actually be regressive. It tears down, it tears, you know, asunder communal bonds. It displaces other ways of living and other ways of being. And he had deep critiques of French, you know, settler colonialism and was very interested in these ideas and the forms and of oppression that they took. And so, you know, this idea that he didn't care or that he was just hopelessly Eurocentric or even racist, these are lies and they're slander and they often

come as you as you pointed out from people who have never actually you know red marks who are not coming across in good faith whatsoever and something you said at the beginning of that answer i think is really really important to remember is the universalism you know you use the cheque quote you know an injustice anywhere is an injustice to all of us and you know if you tremble with indignation at every injustice you're a comrade of mine this universalism this internationalism this human solidarity from all forms of oppression is the essential you know is an essential aspect of Marxism, of socialism, of communism, and identity reductionism, you know, identity fetishism, which is this idea that before anything else, what really matters

is your micro identity. And we've seen that take off in the last couple decades. And particularly what I've noticed here in the United States, especially, but around the world, and especially in Europe and in all of North America, the ruling class neoliberal elite have weaponized identity politics against solidarity, against internationalism, against these universalist ideas of human flourishing, that all human beings deserve freedom, democracy, a say over their own lives, self-determination, and that, you know, through class war, we can come together across different identities, across different experiences, and struggle together for a shared vision of a future that benefits all of us. And when that is rotted away by the cynical

weaponization of identity politics and everybody is now segregated into their tiny silos of identities, you know, with these huge gulfs in between them. You could never understand my life. You can never understand my struggles because I have this, this and this identity and you're that, that and that identity. We have to see that as an attack on universalism, as an attack on solidarity itself. It's not that there aren't differences between different identities, people live different experiences you know being being black being gay it does it does have being a woman it does have you know different experiences it it forces you to have different experiences in life but those are not so insurmountable that we need to continue to use them as wedges between us but we can

understand that we can see that and then we can unite across those differences for our shared goal for a shared world that will benefit all of us and our children and our grandchildren and i think that's really, really important. So I really appreciate you pointing that out. Brett, before you go ahead with your question, let me thank you for this. And I share every word that you said. Thank you. Absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and move forward then. And I want to talk, actually, let's see here. I want to talk first continuing on a related note, which is more critics of Marx, right? So we just talked about colonialism, Eurocentrism, et cetera, other critics of Marx, as well as various chauvinistic class reductionists today argue for a sort of purely

economicistic Marx, right, a Marx that is only focused on class conflict and who dismisses other forms of oppression or conflict as irrelevant or merely epipheral expressions of class conflict. Can you kind of like deepen and add nuance to this view of Marx, how broad Marx's interest and analysis actually were and kind of maybe push back on this, on this class reductionist idea that all he cared about was class struggle and never took into account other forms of oppression. Yeah, this will actually give me the chance to talk a little bit more about this question of the young Marx that I mentioned earlier in our conversation. because the relevance of the young Marx that, you know, we must say it's absolutely brilliant.

The 1844 manuscripts are truly one of the most wonderful manuscripts of Marx, you know, the way he combined, you know, the Eganian and post-Eagalian philosophy with the discovery, with the encounter of political economies meet Ricardo. It's truly wonderful. The first time that Marx is talking about alienation, you know, and strange labor is excellent. But the people who talked about in the 50, 60s and even 70s of the superiority of the young Marx in comparison with, you know, the production of, critique of political economy

and, you know, later production, little their writings, they were actually comparing the young Marx with, you know, the dogmatism, economists of Soviet Union or some, you know,

dogmatic Marxism of the time. Because, you know, Marx is not that, you will not find this kind of approach in Marx. You know, this is also evident sometimes in some translation of Mark's work. For example,

Marx wrote that the base you know conditions the superstructure and not determines the superstructure. So I'm talking about the base economy and superstruction are the realm of

ideas, religions, art and things like this. It's very clear and you can even find that in translation that you know, created problems in misinterpreting Marx. So the young Marx,

the idea of the young Marx is the idea that Marx was a humanist and then he lost himself in this part of the critical political economic, which is absolutely not the case. And we know this today even better

than before because we have access to all this new materials of Marx. So let's Let me tell you how I work with Marx's documents, with Marx writing when I read them. I divide them in categories, right? So the first one is the writings that Marx published. But even in this category, writing that Marx published doesn't mean that they are always superior to the other one.

Because for example, the most famous and read of them, the Communist Manifesto, was written by Marx and Angers in 1848 when they were very young. And they call this as a historical document already in the 60s, right, already then. So you cannot read this text imagining that everything that is written there is the political program of Marx and Anger. This is not true. So you see, this is how intellectual biography is so relevant in order to understand theory. Then there are the manuscripts of Marx and Angus, and you have to understand why this, when this manuscript are. just early draft that don't include at all ideas that Marx would have published or when, you know, Marx did not publish some of these things for sometimes also political opportunity.

The other category, the third one, is journalism of Marx, which, you know, sometimes was for Marx the chance to write and to discuss something that he will not include in capital, because, you know, something that we didn't say in this program so far, this is coming a little bit late. Marx was a human being. You forgot to say this. I forget to say this. So Marx wasn't able to write about everything or to know everything

or to predict what happened in 2024. So sometimes this articles were good because they included things that Marx did could not deal in, you know, the major scientific project in his life, but, you know, things were happening, and Marx had to take position on China, on India, on the economic crisis in the United States, on the war in Crimea,

and many other things. So they are useful. But some of these articles, a source article that he wrote, because he needed $2 to buy some potatoes and, you know, cook lunch and dinner. And, you know, like the case, for example, for the entries of the N6th,

the director of New York Tribune, Charles Dana invited Marx and then also Engels, of course, to contribute. And then, you know, there is this question of the correspondence, the letter that I mentioned, the fourth category before, because this letter are very important, sometimes our continuation of the theory, sometimes are good because you see how Marx and Engels used to,

you know, form politically a new generation, a new international generation of activists because they were in touch with many people. Engels used to write in 12 languages, Marks only in 8, 9. And then, of course, finally, the notebooks, because Marx wrote more than 200 huge notebooks between 1838 and 1882. So in all these documents, there is so much for anybody who wants to read, and the books are just there in, you know, the library,

to understand that, you know, class reductionism is definitely a label that does not apply to car marks. Beautiful. So in quick summary, many categories of writings that he did. You have the published works, which can be historical, very much of their time. They're very specific context around why they're written. The manifesto is a great example of that. You have manuscripts that are drafts for future works.

Some of them that were completed, some of them weren't, but you get a real good view of some of the other ideas that he was working on. his journalism, which allowed him to focus on other topics that he couldn't write about in his major works, various political events, social events that were sort of occurring at the time, but didn't really fit into some of his major published works. And then correspondence in letters, which are really, you know, personal. They show the relationship building behind the scenes with regards to international movements, activists, organizers, thinkers, et cetera, and then the notebooks where you have just marks, you know, writing notes, giving his musings, tracing his ideas, jotting little things to remember to himself.

And really to understand marks and angles, you have to really delve into all of these, which you do. And that gives you a deeper understanding of his work. And that really, once you get into all of these things, it really counteracts these simplistic, one-dimensional criticisms of Marx as a reductionist or as a racist or whatever. And so I find that, yeah, incredibly convincing and wonderful that you, that you, you've done the work to actually dive into that stuff and get the full picture of Marks and his intellectual life throughout his entire development, not just these little snapshots of where Marks was at any given time that his published work often alludes to. Well, going back to his personal

life, there's two things that you talk about in this book in the last couple years of his life that were really irrelevant, which is his physical, his deteriorating physical health and his various travels. Can you talk about and what you cover in the book regarding his traveling and specifically how that was shaped by his deteriorating health at the time? And what that deteriorating health consisted of because he had so many illnesses that he had to fight through and struggle through on a day-to-day basis. It's actually quite sad. Yes. Well, we talk about the 1840s already, you know, the young revolutionary marks. After this, there is a long period of poverty and Marx is not going anywhere

so the only place that Marx visited in the decade of the 50s until the beginning of the 60s is just Manchester when he and sometimes he and Jenny his wife used to you know spend

some times at Angel's house a couple of weeks Marx used to go there to stay with Engels to study to work a little bit we have to remind our audience that Marx had no passport. You know, Marx died without a passport, right? You know, that society is very different from the society today.

So traveling was always challenging. When Mark started to travel in the 1860s, he went to Netherlands to see Uncle Philip, which was the father of the famous Philip, who invented many things in electricity or When he went back to Germany, because when he's mad to visit the mother and then, you know, the mother passed away. So for, you know, trying to get a little bit of money also with this family connection, it was challenging for Mark. So it was never, you know, fully relaxed about this.

Also later when he went to, you know, Germany to... physically bring the manuscript of capital, right? So that's what happened. So this is another reason for Marx to travel. But as you said correctly, like all the other things

that you mentioned, a lot of traveling in Marx is connected with health issues. And I will mention three big categories under this. So Marx and also

Engels, and it was Engels who was actually pushing Marx and, you know, also Jenny. You know, Angus had this capital. Marx was riding capital. Angus had capital. And he used this capital in a very, very communistic way. So it was, you know, the money that he had there to help Marx and all this family, you know, to survive. So they used to go to Ramsgate, to Margate, to Brighton, Harrogate, all these places in the south of England. And this was essential sometimes in the summer in order to take a break. Because Marx was truly struggling a lot.

He had many issues, you know, with the liver, with, you know, bronchitis and things like this. But, you know, the very, very famous one for the specialist biographers of Marx is this dramatic condition of having foreign calls, you know, very, very big one sometimes. And, you know, riding capital was something that sometimes paralyzed Marx from this point of view. Sometimes they have to cut, they really have to do small cases of surgery in order to expel from the body of Marks, this little monster. They used to appear on his back, on his legs, and I'm not going in other details. But, you know, this little trap that he used to doing the summer, you know, with a little bit of salt from the sea, you know, a little bit of British sun,

helped Marx to, you know, take a break from the ordinary routine and also to improve his health condition. Later, later in the 70s, this is becoming something that Marx had to do if he wanted to, you know, literally walk on his legs. And there are wonderful travelers that he did in Kasbad, in, you know, what today would be Czech Republic. And Marx used to go there and there was a spa, you know, to drink this special water. He went there in 74, 75 and 76.

Then he went to Germany to do something similar, you know, without passports. So always having this risky situation and, you know, writing that he was a doctor, Fidoz, sometimes, you know, with the idea that the police were spying him or following him. And at the end of his life, and this is really the one of the, one of the, the central point of my book, of my intellectual biography, Marx went many times to Ventnor, you know, a wonderful island in the south of England,

the one with the better weather condition and, you know, a warmer weather. And then Marx even went to Algiers, you know, to Algeria. This is the only time that Marx left, left Europe. He went there in the winter because his physical condition were really very, very, very more problematic, dangerous. And basically, the idea was going to a warm place and recover as much as possible. Unfortunately, there is not what happened because this spring, winter of 1882 in Algiers was the worst in many, many years.

So Marx had encountered very bad weather conditions. But it's, you know, in any case, interesting that when Marx is traveling with these ideas outside Europe, even more than before, for only one time, most of his body is leaving Europe and is growing to Alger. So it's always connected with basically, you know, this militant idea that he had to. Finnish capital. This is very strong, also in the letter with the daughters. He couldn't in the end. But the idea and the hope of everybody of Paul Lafarg, who was, you know, the husband of Laura, of Engels, of course, of all the, you know, circle of very close friends of Marx, and then, of course, of the daughters, is to, you know, recover and, you know, go back to London and continue, you know, the riding of capital. Yeah, and of course we now know that

that never actually happened. I think you said earlier in this interview that he basically killed himself, writing capital. And so I'm wondering all these health problems, would you say it's fair to say that these are the health problems that he suffered were ultimately a result of poverty, probably an unhealthy lifestyle, and then just the enormous stress of trying to finish his magnum opus? Would you say that those were the three main causes of his sicknesses and illnesses? There was no drinking. Smoking there was, of course, you know, like everybody back then. And Marx used to, you know, smoke, but, you know, that was not an issue for him. And by the way, he was forbidden in the end of his life. But definitely, I will say, the, you know, the complicated

life that they had, because, you know, the poverty that they suffer for several years really hit on his body and then of course on the condition of the family and then you know writing capital was very very very challenging for Marx. It was

a very very difficult book and you know also that is the writing style of Marx that is again very interesting to understand thanks to its letter so the fact that he wants to write the three volumes together and didn't want to publish volume one

without finishing two and three because he had this idea that there is, you know, an organization of the exposition that could be done in a proper way, in a Marxian way, only when the entire material was completed.

So, yes, Marx, you know, literally sacrificed his life to write capital. And this became even more complicated, you know, later when between 64 and 72, as I mentioned, Marx was the leader of the international. So then it was even more complicated because, you know, Marx had to, you know, keep together such a difficult political organization. And this was a lot of work. So

Marx literally divided in itself, but he never thought of, you know, just focusing on capital. He knew that capital was, you know, the intellectual task of his life. But at the same time, he also understood that, you know, this international is serious. And, of course, you know, he gave priority to the real movement, to the concrete movement, as I used to call it. Can you talk very briefly about his acute reaction to his wife dying and then Jenny Chen dying and how that affected him? I know we mentioned earlier how close he was with his family and the chronology of their deaths and his own. But just in the exact wake of losing his wife and then his daughter, what that did to him psychologically. Do you have any insight to that?

Yes, I mentioned what Engels said right after that Marx's wife, Jenny von Desvalent, died. And this was, you know, really very, very strong for Marx. He felt, you know, that he was alone now. And he also had this pressure that he felt for basically not sacrificing his daughters. So in the correspondence with Engels, there is a lot about this. Because they were worried about Marx, you know, in the end he was able to ride to, sorry, to travel alone. but for several months this was not possible and somebody had to accompany Marx

and usually was Eleanor with whom Marks had a very, very close relationship, but you know Eleanor was also having many problems, many issues and Laura also accompanied Marx in 1882, but you know Marx went alone in Algiers

because one element there is, you know, the fact that he didn't want to, you know, become a burden for the family. Another interesting thing is that Marx is also paying attention to, you know, the private sphere of life. This is something that also is possible to understand thanks to the correspondence, right? Of course, Marx is not giving up politics and things, but, you know, it also is very romantic. He's also melanchonic and he's totally. talking about this. That's why perhaps he gave to himself the possibility to enjoy a little bit more the family, the children, the nephews. But unfortunately, when he did this, there were no longer conditions to do this because, you know, two members of the family passed away and, you know, Eleanor had many problems and, of course, he was old. Right. So I think it's beautiful because this last Marx is also the more human. And, you know, in this weakness as a human being, you can also better understand, you know, the real Marx.

And go against this representation of Marx as a statue, you know, in the square of Bucharest or in the square of Beijing that is, you know, looking to people always in this, you know, particular way of indicating what is right, what is wrong, how the future should be. So I think it's good to humanize Marx. Absolutely. Yeah, you take him out of his granite statue and you put him into the human body with a beating heart. And the physical and psychological torment at the end of his life, I mean, you can't have anything but like compassion and sympathy for what he was going through and still trying to to you know reach his goals and and spend what little time he had left on this earth

finishing a capital as best he could of course he ultimately failed but he still provided the the core of it and so i know we're running out of time here so i just have a couple more questions for you a big part of marx's legacy as well as his interests in later life which you spend some amount of time focusing on in this book is wrapped up in that large enigmatic country that we call russia can you tell us about marx's visits to an analysis of Russia in his time and the theoretical aspects of his later work that were centered on or informed by events going on in Russia? Yes, Marx was called by some people sort of russophobic and one of the best scholars

of Marx, Maximilian Rubel, French Marxologists, also spent a lot of time working on this issue. And this is true. This is the case for many years. What I'm trying to say is that Marx was always worried about the strength, the power of Russia, which back then was, you know, the counter-revolutionary force in Europe. And Marx always believed that the stronger Russia is the less chance as a revolutionary movement as in Europe to, you know, organize the revolution and, you know, change the socio-economic relation in an emancipatory way. That's also why Marx and Angers believe that the independence of Poland and taking Poland away from Russia was, you know, a very relevant issue. Just to mention one question, one of the many things, national questions,

that is usually ignored about Marx and Engels, but they spend a lot writing and thinking about this. Later, this idea changed because after Russia, you know, transformed their society in 1861 with the end of serfdom, and then after the beginning of, you know, the populist movement, this war does nothing to do. with the way we use it today.

So the populist movement back then means, you know, sort of radical left that wanted to use the Obshina, the rural commune to create a socialist Russia with a collective form of production. Then in this period, Marx is trying, is understanding that Russia is a very remarkable candidate to not only do the revolution, but even start the revolution. So the revolution can start there in Russia, in the periphery,

and not in England, and not where capitalism was more developed. By the way, both Marx and Angus were very, very sad, very, very, very, you know, polemical against British working class already in the second half of the 60s, because basically they understood that British working class was just, you know, becoming a part of the system, at least, you know, a part of the British working class and accepting the system, which is later, you know, something that will happen in many other countries and parties and ended in such a dramatic way with the World War I, right? So, Marx wrote clearly that the revolution can start in Russia.

Of course, as I mentioned before, then this society is taking... you know, the transformative elements of the production that capitalism brought in England first and then in other countries, and this could help transforming Russia. This is also, you know, the core of this famous letter to Verra Zasulich, who was a populist activist who wrote to Marx and the correspondence of many Russian people, also, you know, the personal friendship with many of them, who asked Marx, you know, what they have to do. If doing the revolution meant just to wait that capitalism was developing Russia and then after many, many decades, basically after they were dead, that somebody else could start the revolution or if the revolution

could happen now. And Marx, differently from many Marxists who said the opposite, and William said, Marx said so, Marx wrote so, Marx always thought that this was possible, that it was possible to actually, you know, start the revolution and transform, you know, the socioeconomic condition everywhere and not only where capitalism was developed. So this is, you know, another proof, another demonstration of the things that we discussed before. Yeah, and I think I misspoke when I said that Marx traveled to Russia. He never actually did, did he?

No, never. Yeah. Really quick before I move on, what do you think Marx would have thought of Lenin? only a couple decades after Marx died, the rise of Lenin and then eventually the Russian Revolution. What a big question. I usually don't like to say things that we cannot prove, right, so on which basis we can say. You know, he certainly would have been happy of the fact that Russia, that was a country in which country in which. which he paid so much attention. In 1869, two years after he published Capital Volume 1,

Marx decided to learn Russian. Instead of focusing on the materials that he already had to finish book two and three, he actually started to learn Russian. He learned Russian very well. And actually, you know, his library is full of Russian books and he's reading many, many statistics about Russia. So he was also happy that Capital, he was translated in Russian. was the second language in which was translated and it was also a big success. It was rebranded. It was debated.

So he was expecting that this society was going to change. And of course, you know, the Russian revolution would have had him and Engels very, very happy. Also, you know, perhaps you know, appreciated the vigor,

the strength of learning as a political leader. I am a little bit more skeptical about, you know, the organization of the party and then of the state because, as I mentioned before, it was very strong for Marx, always very clear, this idea of, you know, self-imaccipation of the working class. So I believe that from this point of view, Marx would have had more than one problem and already, you know, from the beginning, waiting what happened, you know, after Lenin passed away and when Stalin was in power between 1924 and 1953. Yeah, absolutely.

That's a historical counterfactual. We'll never get to know. But if I had to choose, you know, any two historical figures to be able to have a conversation, it would be the mature Marx and the mature Lenin and to see what they would talk about and, you know, and discuss and what their differences would be, what their similarities would be. It would be fascinating. But the overall thrust of the revolution would certainly have made. Marks and Engels smile.

So for the final question I have for you today, and thank you so much for being so generous with your time, so generous with your knowledge. I find this book and just listening to you talk genuinely fascinating and enriching. It's really been a pleasure. But my last question for you before I let you tell people where they can find your work online is the following. How did Marks ultimately die? Where did he leave his uncompleted work upon his death?

And what were the reactions to his death by his closest friends and comrades, Frederick Engels and his surviving daughters. And finally, how did they attempt to carry forward his work after his death? Well, Marks died in London after this very complicated last months, you know, trying to recover. And, you know, it was not possible. It was not even 65 years old. Engels survived 12 years. Angles was two years younger than Marx.

Angus passed away in 1895 at, you know, 75. And this period is very important, in 1883, the year Mark passed away in 1895 when Angus died, because Angus really, you know, build Marxism. He not only published many documents that were known before, thesis on Fireback, Volume 2 and Volume 3, just to mention something, but also, you know, English was very good in republishing old things with new introductions,

and there was, of course, a significant level of translation of their production in many languages, in many countries. So, English also work with Bernstein and with Kowski in order to teach them to read this very, very, very complicated things that was Marx and writings. Because without people reading this, it was not possible to publish later, to transcribe and publish all these several thousands of pages that Marx left uncompleted and that I mentioned were actually published later many decades, sometimes more than 100 years after they were published. And this work was later carried forward by the German social democracy. And then, of course, as I mentioned before, the Marx-Angles Institute and later became Marx-Lenin Institute and then the Institute for Marx and Leninism, you know, in Berlin and in Moscow. I want to say there is always this permanent idea of using Marx in order to

to demonstrate something about contemporary politics, which was very bad. And this is something that did not start at all with Soviet Union. It started in Germany. It started, you know, with the SPD, with German Social Democratic Party, already with Bernstein, you know, just taking a page and not publishing the other one and saying, you know, then Marx agrees with my position. And then, you know, somebody else did the same. So there is a very, very complicated period.

of, and, you know, I also have to say that the German Social Democratic Party neglected, you know, the heritage of Marx and Engels. And later it was because they didn't, you know, put, you know, a structure of scholars, and they had the competences to do this. And, you know, starting from the most important one that was language. But later was even worse because, of course, when Hitler took the power, you know, they wanted to destroy the manuscript of, of Marx and Angus, and they went through many complicated paths. In the end, they were kept in Amsterdam at a very wonderful place, the Institute for Social History, and two-thirds of Marx handwritings are there, and one-third is in Moscow, because Lenin and David Riazanov, another extraordinary scholar of Marx in the 20th century.

They acquired this manuscript. And then it's the beginning of this long story of Marx-Fenghis collected works, which, you know, we have an English edition in 50 volumes, but actually the German edition that is being published now is 114 volumes. And, you know, it's publishing new manuscripts and new documents that help to better understand Marx. They don't change the perception of Marx. This is wrong. You know, some people today, there is a new manuscript, a new page, oh, this is a completely different box. This is absolutely wrong. But they help better understand this author, this thinker, interest in so many topics, interest in so many disciplines, interest in so many countries.

And this idea that there are so many new volumes, so many manuscripts also, you know, it's a sort of guarantee together with an order. their negative guarantee that capitalism is going to be there for a very long time, that Marx will always be read and there would be many new generations that will continue to read Marx and to use his theories and his ideas to fight for a better world. Absolutely. Beautiful said. Thank you again so much for coming on. The book is The last years of Karl Marx and intellectual biography. Can't recommend it enough. Before I let you go, can you please let listeners know where they can find you and your other work online? As you said on Twitter, if they want to find something, but then I also have a website where

there are hundreds of articles, there are also books available for free, and it's just my name, Marcellumust, M-A-R-C-E-L-L-M-U-S-T-O-O-R-O-R-G. So it's a website with publication in many languages, and there is a lot of material and updates about my research that is not only about Marx now I'm preparing a new research that would be based on war and the left,

global history. So, you know, very interesting stuff. Beautiful. I will link to that in the show notes so people can find all those free resources quickly and easily and can find your website and your other work. Thank you so much for the work you're doing.

It is incredibly crucial. It's inspiring. I really love it and admire it. And thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and time with us today. Many, many thanks for the invitation. Once again, that's been a pleasure. Thank you. He said, come wander with me love.

Come wander with me. Come on earth with me. He came from the sunset. He came from the sea. He came from the sea. my sorrow and can love only me. Come on with me, love with me, love. With me

Away from this sad world Come wander with me You know.