KARL MARX has long held the title of gloomiest philosopher in history. He sees human existence not as grand tragedy but squalid farce, with men and women writhing in the grip of appetites that are both pointless and insatiable. Their chief motive in coming together is fear of boredom. He writes of ‘this world of constantly needy creatures who continue for a time merely by devouring one another, pass their existence in anxiety and want, and often endure terrible afflictions, until they fall at last into the arms of death’.
There is no exalted purpose to this ‘battleground of tormented and agonised human beings’, only ‘momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure
Witness . . .
Karl Marx, Capital, Volume One, Part II: The Transformation of Money and Capital CHAPTER FOUR: THE GENERAL FORMULA FOR CAPITAL: "The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money. . . "
The MATURE Marx . . .
A general prohibition of child labor is incompatible with the existence of large-scale industry and hence an empty, pious wish. Its realization -- if it were possible -- would be reactionary . . ."
MARX was not unaware of this historic shift. ‘To enter at the age of five a cotton-spinning or other factory,’ he writes, ‘and from then on to sit there every day first ten, then twelve and finally fourteen hours, and perform the same mechanical work, is to purchase dearly the pleasure of drawing breath.’ He himself came from a long line of Hanseatic shipping merchants, was trained as an apprentice in the family business and lived off a share in his father’s estate. Nietzsche considered him one of his most important teachers, and Freud, astonishingly, thought him one of the half-dozen greatest individuals who had ever lived.
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