Such complacency is, I feel, alien to Marx who is at once too humorous and too passionate to have room for self-congratulation. Thus one often observes a sarcasm uttered in a tone of didactic complacency, as if the speaker were somehow privileged always to be in the right. But even his admirers may in part be responsible for the misconception in that their own practice on occasion emulates this stereotype rather than Marx’s own manner of writing. I feel that it is based on a misunderstanding, often wilful, on the part of his detractors. It is when, as here, his heaviest cannon are summoned up to demolish unimportant, perhaps mistaken but often very sincere fellow revolutionaries, that his irony is called in question.This view of Marx is perhaps more often felt than stated, more often stated than reasoned. Of course, it is thought permissible for him to inveigh against the evils of the capitalist system. That is to say, his scorn, often couched in scatological imagery, is held to be violent and authoritarian, and rooted in an emotionally impoverished psyche. His talent for polemic is then seen as springing from an almost obsessive compulsion to win, to be in the right, to beat down all opposition. It is often supposed that Marx was essentially a heavy, humourless man and that if his works contain humour it is the expression only of a ponderous, “Germanic” predilection for sarcasm without true wit or feeling.
Crusader no remorse marxis series#
Its excellence as satire stands out all the more clearly for the fact that, unlike many of his other works which have a satirical element, the prime purpose of the work is satirical: a polemic on the world of German emigres with its venomous internecine struggles, its petty personality conflicts, complicated intrigues, pretentious political manoeuvres and sordid compromises with the realities of living in exile with “dubious sources of income”.It would be a mistake to suppose that the work was actuated by malice, that it was merely a series of personal attacks on people who irritated Marx. Wasn’t published in his lifetime, though he intended it to be… (that is, it wasn’t an “unfinished work” in the sense the Economic and Philsophical Manuscripts were, say).Here’s a snippet from translator Rodney Livingstone’s 1970 intro to Heroes - This pamphlet is one of Marx’s most brilliant satirical achievements. Not often one can use a word like hilarious with Karl and Fred (though Fred was usually a much more lively and rapid writer), but Heroes of the Exile can be very funny. Proofed and corrected by Mark Harris, 2010. First Published: In Russian 1930, German MEW 1960
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