Love and Capital

[TBF]

None of Karl Marx’s major political works would have been possible without Jenny. She believed in her husband, but, more importantly, she believed in the ideas of revolutionary socialism.

The Life of Jenny Marx
by Harrison Fluss & Sam Miller ~ 2/14/16

Jenny Marx, the wife of Karl Marx, was first and foremost a woman with a steadfast commitment to revolutionary socialism. Not a mere cipher for her husband’s views, she genuinely believed in the struggle for working-class emancipation from capital.

Jenny was an active force throughout her difficult life, tirelessly devoting her energies to organizing communist meetings, providing shelter and relief for refugees, and helping her husband produce his philosophical and economic works. She gave up her privileged position as a baroness and made wrenching sacrifices to achieve her vision of a better world.

Born in 1814 to Prussian aristocracy, Jenny von Westphalen was well known in Trier’s social circles. She was expected to fulfill class expectations by grooming herself for marriage to a Prussian officer or a man of high birth. Instead, Jenny pursued her interests in French socialism and German romanticism, a path encouraged by her father, Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, Trier’s government counselor. Though the leading Prussian authority in a town of twelve thousand, Ludwig von Westphalen harbored a deep fascination with French liberalism and socialism.

Jenny’s studies taught her to value ideals for their own sake. Commitment to a progressive cause and the dedication to fight for it, regardless of the failures endured, was the highest undertaking. From a young age, she latched onto early feminist views on women’s equality ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/jenny-karl-marx-mary-gabriel-love-and-capital/


Jenny von Westphalen Marx