I long wondered if I would ever prove Marxism is rooted in alcoholism. Proof at last.
Karl Marx, Alcoholic
A historian fails to diagnose the obvious
Alcoholics have had an enormous effect on human history, with both positive and negative results. As I’ve argued throughout my work (beginning with Drunks, Drugs & Debits), the effect is so immense it’s impossible to make sense of our past without understanding alcoholism. The great includes the likes of Thomas Paine, Ignaz Semmelweis and Ayn Rand. The horrific includes Jeffrey Dahmer, Ivan the Terrible, Josef Stalin and Kim Jong-il. I’ve long suspected that, if able to dig deep enough, we would find alcoholism explaining the life and thinking of Karl Marx, but until I stumbled upon historian Paul Johnson’s book, Intellectuals, I had been stymied.
The book, described by Johnson as “an examination of the moral and judgmental credentials of certain leading intellectuals to give advice to humanity on how to conduct its affairs,” includes brief vignettes of a dozen of these intellectuals. They include Jean-Jacques Rousseau (“an interesting madman” and, therefore, almost assuredly alcoholic), the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (husband of Frankenstein’s Mary Shelley), Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemmingway (discussed among others in the review of the month in the October-November-December 2011 TAR), Jean-Paul Sartre, Lillian Hellman and Karl Marx. That we have positively identified at least five of the twelve intellectuals as alcoholics —who this great historian believes have made their mark—demonstrates the staggering effect alcoholism has had on history.
The 30 pages devoted to Marx are a fascinating chronicle of a previously undiagnosed alcoholic’s life. It’s especially powerful given that, as Johnson says, “Marx has had more impact on actual events, as well as on the minds of men and women, than any other intellectual in modern times.” Moreover, his influence created more pain and suffering than anyone else—ever—by giving totalitarian despots, including Stalin and Mao, a pretext for murdering tens of millions.
Marx’s most important theme and foundation for the mass of his ideas was that the more capital employed, the greater the exploitation of workers. In Johnson’s words: “capitalism produces ever-worsening conditions; the more capital employed, the more badly the workers had to be treated to secure adequate returns.” This is the opposite of the truth (and entirely at odds with the views explicated in “The Wealth of Individuals: Part 2” in issue # 34 of Wealth Creation Strategies). Twisted logic is a key behavioral clue to alcoholism in an intellectual, and this is about as twisted as it gets. So is intellectual dishonesty—he justified this absurdity by citing one work published twenty years earlier (Engels’) which, in turn, was “based not on primary sources but on a few secondary sources of dubious value” and which was itself as much as forty years out of date, even though Marx cited it as contemporary. His evidence included “small, inefficient, undercapitalized firms in archaic industries which in most cases were pre-capitalist….[where] conditions were bad precisely because the firm had not been able to afford to introduce machinery, since it lacked capital….[Marx ignored] the truth which stared him in the face: the more capital, the less suffering.”
Another extraordinary instance of intellectual dishonesty involved the deliberate falsification of a sentence from W. E. Gladstone’s Budget speech of 1863. Gladstone said, “I should look almost with apprehension and with pain upon this intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power if it were my belief that it was confined to the class who are in easy circumstances; [however,] the average condition of the British laborer…has improved during the last twenty years in a degree which we know to be extraordinary, and which we may almost pronounce to be unexampled in the history of any country and of any age.” However, Marx claimed Gladstone said, “This intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power is entirely confined to [the propertied class].” As Johnson points out, “it would be hard to conceive of a more outrageous reversal of his meaning,” and almost unimaginable that after his misquote was pointed out, he nevertheless reproduced it in his book Das Capital. Later, “when the falsification was again noticed and denounced, he let out a huge discharge of obfuscating ink,” a debate he (and later his codependent heirs) carried on for at least two decades. As readers of my books know, alcoholics can be great and persistent liars.
Johnson asks, if a love of truth didn’t motivate Marx, what did? Johnson believes four aspects of character “deeply rooted in the personality” supplied his “energizing” force: “his taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to handle money and, above all, his tendency to exploit those around him.” All of these character flaws are manifestations of alcoholism; if true, they lie at the root of all of his thinking and behaviors.
Marx exhibited fury, especially when his views couldn’t be supported by facts. He was extraordinarily hostile to his fellow revolutionaries, particularly when they experienced real life, something Marx wasn’t interested in—“he never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life.” In fact, Marx looked only for facts that fit his preconceptions and, when the facts didn’t support his ideas, falsified, misrepresented and deceived.
Marx used violent expressions throughout his writing and speech and, in real life, engaged in “huge bursts of rage.” While a journalist, he held “editorial meetings…behind closed windows so that people outside could not hear the endless shouting.” He quarreled with everyone “unless he succeeded in dominating them completely” and spent much time, in anticipating Stalin, by “collecting elaborate dossiers about his political rivals and enemies.” He often used the phrase, “I will annihilate you” which, along with his actions, suggests to Johnson he “would have been capable of great violence and cruelty” had he ever gained a true position of power. Because he was never in such a position, “his pent-up rage therefore passed into his books.” Each of these behaviors is consistent with a diagnosis of alcoholism.
In fact, almost every description by Johnson of Marx’s thinking and behavior is indicative of this brain disease, which becomes nearly incontrovertible when there are dozens of examples. Johnson describes Marx as having a “withering contempt for all non-scholars” and hatred of “usury and moneylenders.” Marx endorsed and quoted anti-Semitic views with approval, asking “What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money.” Johnson argues Marx’s philosophy was created around his desire to “make the Jew impossible” by abolishing “the preconditions, the very possibility of the kind of money activities which produced him.” Capricious hatred of others, including classes of people, is common among alcoholics. It allows them to wield power by keeping others off balance and serves to deflect blame.
What might have triggered such hatred in a brain-damaged individual? Marx was often driven “into the hands of moneylenders at high rates of interest,” which Johnson surmises could explain “why his entire theory of class is rooted in anti-Semitism, and why he included in Capital a long and violent passage denouncing usury….” His money problems “began at university and lasted his entire life.” His attitude about money was, in fact, “childish”: he “borrowed money heedlessly, spent it, then was invariably astounded and angry when the heavily discounted bills [!!!], plus interest, became due.” He “adopted a pattern of living off loans from friends and gouging periodic sums from the family.” He inherited what were then sizeable amounts from both parents and various other relatives; at no point did his income fall below “three times the average wage of a skilled workman” and yet he was “always in debt, often seriously….” Alcoholics often spend more than they earn their entire lives.
The sick mind usually extends hatred from groups to individuals. He ended up in a “total breach with his mother” and suddenly cut off other friends, especially after they questioned him; when a devoted colleague suggested “he would find no difficulty in finishing Capital if only he would organize his life a little better, Marx broke with him for good and subjected him to relentless abuse.” He exploited his wife, whose jewelry and silver he pawned, as well as his three daughters, since although he could have afforded the expense (and the girls were clearly “clever”) “he denied them a satisfactory education, refused to allow them to get any training, and vetoed careers absolutely.” And although he feigned defending the “working class,” he never paid his cook and maid Helen Demuth (known as “Lenchen”) from the time she came to work for him in 1845 (she worked for the family for 45 years). Further, Lenchen became Marx’s mistress and conceived a child, whom Marx “refused to acknowledge [as] his responsibility, then or ever,” terrified that if his son’s paternity was discovered he would suffer irreparable damage as “revolutionary leader and seer.”
All of these read like a catalogue of behaviors indicative of the alcoholic need to wield mercurial power over others. Contempt, hatred and blaming others are all, as described in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics, typical ways by which the alcoholic inflates his ego at the expense of others. Violent rages, hostility and lies—especially twisted logic and intellectual dishonesty—are hallmarks of the disease. The purposeful misquote of Gladstone is similar in vileness to the false accusations that I have suggested elsewhere are rarely if ever made by non-alcoholics. The four “energizing” forces Johnson avers are all consistent with alcoholism—the alcoholic must wield power over others in a bid to inflate the ego and often displays poor judgment in financial affairs, having a need to spend money even while bankrupting himself and often those around him. This is frequently accomplished by exploiting well-intentioned (but naïve) family and friends. Unreasonable resentments and the instantaneous cutting off of long-cherished relationships are also classic alcoholism-fueled behaviors, as is acting like a child.
Utilizing Appendix 1 in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics, 25 of 35 early-stage non-use-related behavioral indications of alcoholism are satisfied: behavioral clues 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-17, 19-22 and, 25-30 can all be answered in the affirmative, while several others could not be answered in the 19th century, since telephones and automobiles weren’t invented. However, without confirmation of heavy drinking we cannot be absolutely certain of a diagnosis of alcoholism.
Despite this evidence, Johnson displays a typical ignorance of alcoholism when he flatly states, “Marx was not an alcoholic.” He finishes this sentence by adding, “But he drank regularly, often heavily and sometimes engaged in serious drinking bouts.” Three pages later, he continues: Marx “smoked heavily, drank a lot, especially strong ale, and as a result had constant trouble with his liver.” In addition, Johnson describes Marx’s suffering of boils for a quarter century, including carbuncles, boils that merge to form a single deep abscess with several heads. According to diagnose-me.com, both boils and carbuncles “are more likely to develop in those with…alcoholism or drug abuse.” Finally, putting the nail in the coffin Johnson cites a “clever Prussian police spy describing in great detail the activities of the German revolutionaries centered around Marx,” including the fact that Marx was “often drunk.” Even though Johnson presents clear, undeniable evidence of alcoholism to his readers, he fails to explicitly recognize and diagnose the disease in his subject. Had he understood alcoholism, he would might written, “Marx exhibited thinking and behavior patterns consistent with early-to-middle stage alcoholism. He also drank heavily. He was, therefore, an alcoholic—and, perhaps, the most destructive in history.”
I often say, alcoholism explains “only” 80% of society’s ills, woes and dysfunctions. However, now that we’ve confirmed alcoholism in the man who is alone responsible for perhaps 80% of the horrifying tragedies that fill books of recent history, we might up this to 90%.