Not Going Away

From 1852 to 1862, Marx earned his living as a correspondent for the New-York Daily Tribune, at the time the newspaper with the largest circulation in the world. In his hastily worked-up English, he turned out twice-weekly columns, mainly on European affairs, which the ever-loyal Engels sometimes composed for him. Though Marx would rather have been producing books, his decades as a journalist lie behind much of his special character as a writer, his brash phrase-making and wide and ready command of information setting him apart from other major economic thinkers. (Keynes, who wrote many articles for The Times of London, supplies a partial exception.) If Marx is at once the grimmest and most abstract and the liveliest and most entertaining of theoretical minds, this is partly because the philosopher was also a newspaperman.--BK

An interesting read from The Nation.


TS