Karl Marx’s views of England and the English
I have recently been reading a book about Karl Marx. Although I have read some of his works before I have never read a full biography of him. I could heartily recommend, as an interesting and informative read:- KARL MARX by Francis Wheen.
For those interested in Karl Marx’s views of England and the English, he was, of course, one of those refugees, a bit like, Abu Hamza, who lived here for many years but yet never integrated, nor had any great love for us. Just consider the following comments on page 142:-
“After brooding on the lessons of the previous year, (Marx) published a revised revolutionary menu on 1 January 1849:
The overthrow of the bourgeoisie in France, the triumph of the French working class, the emancipation of the working class in general, is therefore the rallying cry of European liberation.
But England, the country that turns whole nations into its proletarians, that takes the whole world within its immense embrace …England seems to be the rock against which the revolutionary waves break, the country where the new society is stifled in the womb.
Every social upheaval in France was bound to be thwarted by the industrial and commercial power of the English middle class, ‘and only a world war can overthrow the Old England, as only this can provide the Chartists, the party of the organised English workers, with the conditions for a successful rising against their gigantic oppressors!. This seasonal game of consequences – which, more than a century later, would come to be known as the domino theory – led to an inescapable and apocalyptic conclusion. ‘The table of contents for 1849 reads: Revolutionary uprising of the French working class, world war.”