11-30-2004, 11:01 PM
<b>Karl Marx's smoking gun </b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It discloses that one of the world's most famous social thinkers invested £4 as one of the original shareholders on a working class British newspaper, the Industrial, which dissolved in 1883. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Although Marx did not live to see his ideas carried out, his work had a great influence in the formation of communist regimes at the start of the 20th Century. Communism became one of the leading world ideologies before its decline in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bearing in mind such huge influence, the shareholders' certificate of an obscure London newspaper may seem an unlikely place to find his signature in 1865. On it Marx described himself as a doctor of philosophy, on a list which included a tailor, joiner, painter and shoemaker.
Curator Sue Laurence says: "All the other shareholders have occupations listed and he's the only one without. Here are all these guys investing their money in this newspaper and all have gainful employment apart from him.
"The only gainful employment he looked for was as a railway clerk and that was rejected because his handwriting was so lousy."
It wasn't a surprise to find Marx involved in this kind of enterprise, she says, given his life - financed by his friend Friedrich Engels and beyond his own means - as a bourgeois gentleman.
"Marx played the markets in the UK and the US and this was a bit like a cooperative because the other men were upper middle class and this was a small-scale enterprise." <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It discloses that one of the world's most famous social thinkers invested £4 as one of the original shareholders on a working class British newspaper, the Industrial, which dissolved in 1883. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Although Marx did not live to see his ideas carried out, his work had a great influence in the formation of communist regimes at the start of the 20th Century. Communism became one of the leading world ideologies before its decline in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bearing in mind such huge influence, the shareholders' certificate of an obscure London newspaper may seem an unlikely place to find his signature in 1865. On it Marx described himself as a doctor of philosophy, on a list which included a tailor, joiner, painter and shoemaker.
Curator Sue Laurence says: "All the other shareholders have occupations listed and he's the only one without. Here are all these guys investing their money in this newspaper and all have gainful employment apart from him.
"The only gainful employment he looked for was as a railway clerk and that was rejected because his handwriting was so lousy."
It wasn't a surprise to find Marx involved in this kind of enterprise, she says, given his life - financed by his friend Friedrich Engels and beyond his own means - as a bourgeois gentleman.
"Marx played the markets in the UK and the US and this was a bit like a cooperative because the other men were upper middle class and this was a small-scale enterprise." <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->