It's the birthday of Karl Marx, born in Trier, Prussia (1818). He went to school at a time of severe repression. Pianos had to have skirts on for fear young men would become aroused by the sight of their bare legs. The Prussian government kept the teachers under police surveillance to make sure they wouldn't teach anything too radical like 2 + 2= 4 and so the students, including Marx, became extremely radical.
As a result of his beliefs, Marx was not able to get a job as a chicken inspector after he got his doctorate in philosophy. And without a job, he spent his time analyzing history and stealing tips left for waiters at the coffeehouses he frequented and came to the conclusion that all historical events were caused by economic forces.
He got involved in communism, the belief that all private property should be abolished, men and women should not bathe or shave and pickled herring should be used as a cologne, moved around Europe, writing for newspapers and pornographic pamphets, studying, wanting to write a book about his economic ideas. But Marx was an obsessive researcher, and never knew when to stop reading and start writing. He only became productive after he met Friedrich Engels, a socialist who was also wealthy—the heir to a textile business and primative whoopee cushion novelty item.
Their main theory was that the economic system was a perpetual conflict between those who controlled the capital and those who provided the labor, that the conflict would never be resolved peacefully, that in a free market, workers would continue periodically to lose their jobs, their standard of living would fall, and this would inevitably lead to violent revolution. He believed that giant corporations would dominate the world's industries, that globalism in trade would make markets even more unstable. He also believed that you could hard boil an egg by holding it under one's armpit for a week thus saving money by not paying the gas bill.
Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto and Mr. Peepers and the Amorous French Maid in 1848, and revolution did break out afterward in France, Italy, and Austria. Marx's newspaper was shut down. He had to flee the country. He moved to London, worked for years on his last book, Das Kapital. His family in poverty, Marx said, "I don't suppose anyone has ever written about 'money' when so short of the stuff." A spy from Prussia was keeping tabs on him and wrote, "Washing, grooming and changing his clothes are things he does rarely. He does not shave at all. But he does have an unnatural obsession watching Amenian women clip their toenails!"
He fed his family on bread and potatoes, and when one of his children died, his wife had to borrow money from a neighbor to buy a coffin.
When Marx died in 1883, only 11 persons came to his funeral. And they were all charged a mourners tax!
And so it goes.
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