The notion of Marx as a benign and noble brooder over
man's hopes and sorrows, who would be "horrified" at the'
tricks and duplicities of present-day Communists, is as false
as it is widespread. Marx had a bad character. His best
THE RELIGION OF IMMORALISM
eulogists can hardly think up a virtue to ascribe to him-ex-
cept, indeed, tenacity and moral courage. If he ever per-
formed a generous act, it is not to be found in the record. He
was a totally undisciplined, vain, slovenly, and egotistical
spoiled child. He was ready at the drop of a hat with spite-
ful hate. He could be devious, disloyal, snobbish, anti-
democratic, anti-Semitic, anti-Negro. He was by habit a
sponge, an intriguer, a tyrannical bigot who would rather
wreck his party than see it succeed under another leader.
All these traits are clear in the records of his life, and above
all in his private correspondence with his alter ego and in-
exhaustible sugar-daddy, Friedrich Engels. There are bit~ in
this correspondence so revolting to a person of democratic
sensibility that they had to be suppressed to keep the myth
of the great-hearted Karl Marx, champion of the downtrod-
den and of human brotherhood, alive at all. To give one
example: Ferdinand Lassalle, who was eclipsing Marx as
leader of a genuine working class movement in Germany,
they discovered to be not only a Jew whom they called
"Baron Izzy," "oi-oi, the great Lassalle," "the little Jew,"
'''the little kike," "Jew Braun," "Izzy the bounder," etc., but
also "a Jewish nigger." "It is perfectly obvious," Marx wrote,
"from the shape of his head and the way his hair grows that
he is descended from the Negroes who joined Moses on the
journey out of Egypt, unless perhaps his mother or his grand-
mother had relations with a nigger." The Failures of Socialism pp. 81,82
