German Biographies of Marx between the Two World Wars: A Comparative Study

ABSTRACT

This article offers a comparative study of seven German biographies of Karl Marx (1818–1883) that were published between the two world wars. The interpretations of Marx’s theory of historical materialism presented in these biographies fall into three groups or approaches: the orthodox, the neo-Kantian, and the psychological. Some biographies place Marx the revolutionary above Marx the theorist, while others reverse this order. Similarly, some of the biographies explain the relationship between Marx’s life and thought by adopting the “experience–psychology–thought” framework. The orthodox approach emphasizes the objectivity of cognition in the base–superstructure relationship. Yet both the orthodox and the neo-Kantian approach, which stresses Kant’s cognitive critique and the “is–ought” dualism, fail to grasp Marx’s subject–object dialectics, while the psychological approach undermines the theoretical significance of historical materialism. In comparing and assessing these works I argue that the biographers’ historical and scholarly horizons are dictated by their political standpoint and academic perspective and thus determine their choice of approach, which not only indicates if they will lean toward the theoretical or the revolutionary Marx, but also why they fail to adequately deal with the relationship between Marx’s life and his thought. Nevertheless, I conclude that these biographies, despite their various shortcomings, establish the basic paradigm and parameters of any biography of Marx.

KEYWORDS:

• biographies of Karl Marx
• Marxism
• neo-Kantianism
• historical materialism
• subject–object dialectics
• individual psychology
• revolution

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

References to the following seven biographies of Marx appear in the text citing the biographer’s name and page number(s):

Max Beer, The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx (1918)

Alfred Braunthal, Marx as Philosopher of History (1920)

Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (1918)

Otto Rühle, Karl Marx: His Life and Works (1928)

Ferdinand Tönnies, Karl Marx: His Life and Teachings (1921)

Karl Vorländer, Karl Marx: His Life and His Works (1928)

Robert Wilbrandt, Karl Marx (1918)

1. See, among others, Hosfeld, Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography; Sperber, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life; Stedman-Jones, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion; Heinrich, Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society.

A brief note on Karl Marx’s life. Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia in 1818, Marx studied law, history, and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, receiving a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. He moved to Cologne as editor of the radical paper Rheinische Zeitung in 1842. In 1843 he married and left for Paris where he wrote The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and where a year later he met Friedrich Engels who became his lifelong friend and collaborator. From 1845 to 1848, Marx lived in Brussels where he wrote with Engels The German Ideology (1845–46) and The Communist Manifesto (1847–48), set up communist correspondence committees and joined the Communist League. He became editor-in-chief of Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne in May 1848 but was expelled from the country for political reasons. In August 1849 he moved to London where he lived until his death. In 1864 Marx helped found the International Workingmen’s Association (First International) and in 1867 the first of the three volumes of Capital was published. Marx died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

^2. Heinrich, Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society, 331–37.

^3. Carver, “Methodological Issues,” 12; Carver, “Mere Auxiliaries to the Movement.”

^4. Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party: Preface.”

^5. Marx, “1867 Preface to the First German Edition of Capital.”

^6. Ibid.

^7. See also Xu, “The Four Divisions in Marxist Dialectics,” 19.

^8. Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA¹) (1927–1935). Der Briefwechsel zwischen Friedrich Engels und Karl Marx (1913).

^9. Mehring, On Historical Materialism.

^10. Goller, Marx und Engels, 37.

^11. Ibid., 36.

^12. McDougall, “Franz Mehring,” 241.

^13. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, 36.

^14. Lukács, “Franz Mehring 1846–1919,” 368.

^15. Tönnies,Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 220–21.

^16. Lukács, “Franz Mehring 1846–1919,” 351.

^17. Engels and Marx, The Holy Family, 36.

^18. Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, 20–21, 21.

^19. Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, 267.

^20. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 327.

^21. Marx, The Civil War in France, 335.

^22. Hoffman, Marxism and the Theory of Praxis, 73.

^23. Mattick, “Otto Rühle.”

^24. Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, 238.

^25. Mattick, “Otto Rühle.”

^26. Lukács, “Franz Mehring 1846–1919,” 370.

^27. Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 36–37.

^28. Heinrich, Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society, 332.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 20AZD004].

Notes on contributors

Feixia Ling

Feixia Ling, PhD, is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Marxist Philosophy and Chinese Modernization and at the Philosophy Department, Sun Yat-sen University, China. From November 2017 to February 2019, she was on a doctorate exchange program and studied at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent, UK. Her main research fields are Marxism and political philosophy.