Marx the Man
The importance of such issues is also addressed in Francis Wheen's Karl Marx: A Life, the first
English
-
language Marx biography to appear in almost two decades. In Wheen's portrait Marx the
man comes across as
embodying in many respects the dialectic, a concept Marx drew from Hegel,
that every unit contains its opposite within itself. Marx came from a family of renowned rabbis, yet
showed not the slightest inclination toward religion. He was a loving husband an
d father whose
daughters became important spokeswomen for socialism in their own right, yet he once sighed
"blessed be he that hath no family." He preached the virtues of communalism and railed against
egotism, yet he was such an individualist himself that
when a friend said that she couldn't imagine
him living happily in an egalitarian society, he responded: "Neither can I. These times will come, but
we must be away by then." He spent more time thinking over the origins, nature, and function of
money than
perhaps anyone, yet he was continuously unable to earn any himself.