An outstanding piece of research; ambitious and sympathetic to its subject but by no means sycophantic. The life-long work of Karl Marx to unravel the inner workings of capital and to strip away the more fanciful and utopian notions of socialism are more than adequately dealt with by Gabriel, yet Marx and his family are not deified in any way. The self-absorbed, even self-obsessed nature of Marx, probably essential to any pioneer in any field, is carefully unravelled. But equally important are the descriptions of the roles played by Engels, Jenny Marx, their three daughters and their respective spouses.

We are presented with the whole picture, boils and all, and it makes for compulsive reading. Perhaps the very best of the Marx biographies and almost certainly the most readable. But above all, whether Gabriel has painted the picture entirely accurate or not, this book is a timely reminder of just how relevant Marx’s theories are today. In a recent Oxfam report we are reminded that the wealthiest 85 people on the planet have amassed the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion. If that is not a ringing endorsement of Marx’s life’s work I don’t know what is.

I can’t recall a single page where my attention lapsed. My only regret is that Gabriel chose to end her research at 1910. A second volume charting the revolutionary movement throughout the twentieth century is now a must do. She must do for Vladimir and Krupskaya what she has so magnificently done for Jenny and Karl. But enough of the superlatives. Time to get down to the nitty-gritty. Marx understood the dialectic in a way that had not been understood previously, even by Hegel and the Young Hegelians. And Gabriel is more than astute enough to understand the dialectic too. Take for example Marx on the question of free trade Gabriel writes:

Some proponents said free trade was like the monarchs who ruled by divine right that is, God’s will. Trade would bring people together, advance spiritual and social well-being and, as one historian described it, multiply the blessings of civilization. But Marx said free trade simply meant the freedom of Capital to crush the worker. He nevertheless came out in favour of such trade, because only then could industry flourish, which would in turn hasten social change, including the cleaving of the world into two distinct classes the moneyed bourgeoisie and wage labourers. P117

Quite masterly. To be able to see so clearly the line of march in the very midst of battle is a rare achievement indeed. Here we are, some 150 years on and that dialectical analysis is as poignant today as it was in the mid nineteenth century. Still the world is dividing into two giant hostile classes but at this point in history the proletariat is the most oppressed, if not the most conscious of the causes of its oppression, in the developing economies of Asia, Africa and South America. But of course we should add, as the labour aristocracy in the developed economies of Europe and North America lose their privileged position, they too might again see themselves as part of a global working class. The globalised capitalist economy of the twenty first century is certainly hastening that process. Or in the terminology of the Occupy Movement, it’s the one percent lording it over the ninety nine percent. Marx’s analysis by any other name. Even for those today who cannot accept the basic premise of Marx; that private ownership of the means of production is the single most critical feature holding back humanity, they at least must concede that it was Marx that put the question of private property firmly on the political agenda. If for nothing else, Marx will be celebrated in the history of ideas for this one revolutionary idea. Gabriel wastes little time in underlining this point to her readers:

Marx now saw (communism) as the means to recalibrate society. Men would achieve wealth, but that wealth would not be private property but shared. Men would work, but their work would benefit themselves and the greater good, not the property owner. He described communism as the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man. It is the true resolution of the struggle between existence and essence, between objectification and self- affirmation, between freedom and necessity.. If I cannot refute the premise that all men have the right to eat, then I must accept all of what follows from it.

So when we are forced to watch those charity advertisements that endlessly show those acutely distressing images of starving children in the developing world, it is not sympathy and empathy that should be uppermost in our thoughts but rather anger and determination to accept all of what follows from it. The plight of the 3.5 billion citizens currently existing on or around starvation level is either a careless act of a criminally mindless god or a distinctly man-made crime. Marx at the very least has ensured that we cannot remain neutral on this most fundamental of questions. And even if history ultimately condemns Marx’s communism as a nineteenth century idealism, there can be little doubting his deeply held humanist beliefs.

The social advances made during the seventy years of the Soviet Union, as well as the creation of the welfare states in the western European nations, were all built on the foundation of Marx’s analysis. The former, the first substantial attempt to seize back out of private hands the commanding heights of the economy, the latter, an attempt by capital to buy off the working class of western Europe and forestall another soviet style revolution.

Yet private ownership of the means of production is more enshrined today across virtually the entire planet than ever before. Even China’s so called communist leaders and their families are busy squirreling away billions into off-shore tax free banking havens as we speak. And the Russian oligarchs now have their grubby little hands on what used to be collective property, and global capital is more concentrated than ever before. Does that mean we are farther away from Marx’s ideal than ever, or should we conclude that the material conditions for the global expropriation of the expropriators is riper now than at any time in history. Gabriel correctly avoids getting directly into this speculative game but, given the recent global financial meltdown this is anything but idle speculation. And with 50% youth unemployment across Europe the signs for renewed social unrest are ominous.

Marx’s foresight was stunning and I’m fairly certain Gabriel is keen for her readers to acknowledge this foresight. Just consider this passage by Gabriel, clearly intended to be a direct mirror to our present economic predicament.

The economic boom that began in 1849 and continued through the 1850s had been built on speculation. Countless investors had joined the stock craze, acquiring shares in firms that barely existed and railways that went nowhere. The formerly secure banking industry had joined the circus by adopting risky new policies: banks began accepting paper payment in the form of personal cheques and approving loans based on personal credit, not bills guaranteed by individuals on solid financial footing. In many cases finance had become tantamount to gambling. P258

Now that sounds all too familiar and I’m sure Gabriel meant it to be just that. Gabriel continues the parallel between then and now:

In 1856 some experts began to recognise that this soaring capitalist system was built on weak foundations some cases air, and they anticipated a financial crash of global dimensions. These soothsayers were correct: what they were witnessing was the start of the first modern economic crisis to hit the capitalist world. It began with the collapse of a bank in New York, and because all advanced economies were now intertwined, a crisis in one became a crisis in all. P258

Of course, it is one thing to accurately predict the inevitable crises of capital, born of over production and casino style financial speculation, but quite another thing to accurately predict how society may actually move to a more rational, more humane form of organisation. It is here that detractors of Marx try to accuse him of a certain utopianism. Gabriel is at pains to address these detractors by outlining Marx’s revolutionary thoughts that he everywhere attempts to ground within a living and breathing materialism. Firstly here is Gabriel’s summation:

Marx also foresaw antagonisms among capitalists, who would destroy one another in their pursuit of wealth by hungrily absorbing their competition to create monopolies and business empires stretching across countries and continents. But that too, according to Marx, would ultimately help the worker: fewer magnates at the top of the money pyramid expanded the base, and in that larger base would reside more misery and, at the same time, a heightened coalescence among the degraded unfortunates. They would form their own society, one that truly understood the means of production because they were the means of production. That class would in turn become too powerful for the capitalist yoke. The result would be cooperative enterprises and common ownership of natural resources as well as the facilities and equipment needed to keep the wheels of commerce turning. P357

And in Marx’s own words:

The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labor, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent and difficult, than the transformation of capitalist private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property. In the former case, we had the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; in the latter, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people. P357

Clearly Marx has, at best, totally underestimated the difficulty of this latter transformation. Yet the concentration of capital continues unabated and the condition of the world’s working people is a precarious as ever. So what is holding back this revolutionary transformation from private to social ownership? Lenin would no doubt argue it was a crisis of political leadership but I suspect this to be far too simplistic, far too subjective. Could it be that capitalism has yet to fully exhaust its revolutionary potential, that the material conditions for a social advance are still not yet ripe? We see each day capital flexing its avaricious muscles across Asia, Africa and South America. It is a brutal and bloody process but it is dragging countless new millions into the capitalist orbit. The global proletariat is growing numerically as never before as Asia becomes the new workshop of the world. A confrontation, nay a conflagration between the old developed capitalist world and the new looks ever more likely. Finance capital is more moribund and parasitic than ever. Capitalist crises are more intense than ever. Could it be that Marx simply got his timeline wrong?

While Marx was a crystal clear economist he was also a full blooded, life-long revolutionist. It took him a lifetime to lay out his economic theories and even then Engels and his daughters had to complete the task. But his revolutionary zeal never left him. He worked and dreamed tirelessly for a better society for all humans, from his days as a young Hegelian right through to his last breath. Gabriel captures all this perfectly. Marx famously noted towards the end of his life that whatever he was, he was not a Marxist. But whatever he was, he was most definitely a humanist in the sense that he was always and everywhere appalled at the stunted conditions of the working class and humanity in general, and always he looked to a revolutionary solution to that wretched state of affairs. He outlined a future where humans could move from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. From material scarcity, from whence class society emerged, to the realm of abundance where classes and the repressive state would eventually evaporate. He imagined an end to our long impoverished pre-history and the beginning of the real human journey.
Karl Marx, a well-meaning utopian dreamer or the first of the scientific socialists? Either way, Gabriel does the man and his work full justice. And she reminds us that the game is still in play.

Gabriel has little doubt that Marx falls into the latter category. She eloquently concludes:

Marx, the dialectical materialist, reiterated that economics did not exist in the dead realm of formulas comprehensible only to a select few who understood the laws. To believe otherwise would be to shroud the marketplace in mystery, obscure its operations, and condemn the masses to slavishly follow those shamans of finance who claim to hold the keys to its secrets. Mankind would be left quacking in awe at such wonders, and lose the power to extricate itself from such chains. Marx was prepared to show that there was no mystery, though capitalists, like kings before them, hoped the proletariat would not discover that their power was less than divine. P353