How Karl Marx Did Money

by B. Traven

Karl Marx, communism’s founding father, famously had some problems with the way we all Do Money. But he also faced the same mundane money issues as all struggling writers: pleading letters to his mother asking for cash, missed deadlines, and fraught relationships with his rich friends.

A new biography by Jonathan Sperber aims to bring Marx the man to the forefront, including fascinating details about his personal finances. Sperber presents “a comprehensive reading of every Marx-related text — whether speeches, letters, articles, grocery bills or invoices — in a winningly informal, readable style,” says The New York Times.

We hear of the sleepless nights that follow the start of the American Civil War: Marx is troubled not by the fate of the Union, but by the loss of freelance income from The New York Tribune, which, consumed by matters closer to home, no longer requires his services as a European correspondent.

Is the next great revolutionary thinker lurking among the ranks of today’s broke, underemployed writers?

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