The Bible of socialism is the complete work of Karl Marx, an almost illegible, pseudo-scientific gibberish. Why him of all people? How could one of the worst texts of modern social and economic philosophy become the foundation of a worldwide movement? Why wasn’t a better text from another author selected? Why did Marx have a leading status in the communist movement during his lifetime, even though he sabotaged various newspapers and organizations during his career and even though he was always looking for a useless fight with his peers?
Classical conspiracy theorists answer to these questions that Marx was a Jew and inevitably part of the Jewish world conspiracy. But since the Jewish world conspiracy was only an invention of Anglo-American and Russian propaganda, we must find better answers.
There’s only been one serious, detailed study of Marx as a possible agent so far. Apart from that, there are a few articles, half-baked conspiracy theories and a few dubious andekdotes.
The maternal grandmother of Karl was Nanette Salomon (née Cohen) and the maternal grandfather was Isaac Heijmans Presburg (originally from Hungary). They got married in 1785. Nanette was the daughter of Salomon Barent Cohen, brother of the wealthy Levy Barent Cohen, who was a financier in England. Through his children Levy Barent Cohen was connected with almost all leading Jewish families in England. Hannah married banking superstar Nathan Mayer Rothschild, Judith married Moses Montefiore, Jessy married Meyer Davidson (a Rothschild agent) and the other children married into the Goldsmid, Samuel and Lucas families.
This distant connection is interesting, especially because the Rothschilds raised money for Bismarck and Prussia relied on the Rothschilds’ information network abroad instead of setting up their own proper foreign intelligence service. In addition, the Rothschilds handled large sums of money for the British crown and played the role of Jewish nouveau rich upstarts. Classic conspiracy literature believes in the fairy tale that five brothers from the tiny Rothschild clan took control of the British colonial empire undisturbed and with impunity through banking. The whole thing is always garnished with the fake quote attributed to Nathan about not having to worry about who sits on the British throne.
Let us not forget that for decades the first important Rothschild slowly had to tender himself to the noble family Hessen-Kassel (closely related to the British throne) as a kind of elite accountant and wired/smuggled money from the British crown to the troops hundreds of kilometres away. Over time, the men of the tiny Rothschild clan became straw men of the British colonial empire, attracting the attention of ordinary citizens and distracting from the nobility with huge palaces and lavish parties. The royal houses competing with the British in Europe were less suspicious of “Jewish” money than British money.
Through his father Marx got to know Baron Ludwig of Westphalia, who possessed power and prestige, and had connections to the upper classes of Great Britain and Scotland. The Baron was very different from Karl’s subservient father and Karl later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. One has to assume that on the long walks together Ludwig conveyed much more to young Karl than just Shakespeare and other harmless thoughts. The Westphalian family had deep ties to the intelligence services and secret societies, who always wanted to be well informed about revolutionary groups and ideological networks.
Ludwig von Westphalen of all people would have suggested to Marx the ideas of Saint Simon’s socialism. My guess, on the other hand, is that he hired Marx as an informer. At the high school in Trier Karl Marx and Edgar von Westphalen, the brother of Jenny (Marx’s later wife) already knew each other, and there are indications that students at that time spied on their teachers and reported suspicious left-wing revolutionaries or other tendencies.
Philipp von Westphalen became secretary of the Prussian Lieutenant General and Freemason Ferdinand von Braunschweig in 1751, brother-in-law of the Prussian King and Freemason Friedrich II. Ferdinand was also a member of the Order of the Illuminati, where people such as Landgrave Karl von Hessen-Kassel also cavorted. The Hessen-Kassel family was extremely closely related to the British throne, was in all probability responsible for important intelligence activities and built up the Rothschild family in the course of time.
Ferdinand von Braunschweig had supreme command of the allied troops of England, Hanover (the origin of the British royal dynasty) and Prussia. Philip of Westphalia also assumed an important military function and the British King George III of the House of Hanover awarded him a high title for this. Philip married a noblewoman with Scottish ancestors. His son was Ludwig of Westphalia. Ferdinand Otto in turn became Prussian Minister of the Interior and was thus responsible for espionage against revolutionary groups. Ludwig’s daughter Jenny finally married Karl Marx. Ludwig worked as a highly paid court clerk in Trier.
The “League of the Righteous” and finally the “League of the Communists” developed from the secret organization “Bund der Geächteten”, headed by the Freemason Jacob Venedey. These secret organizations were modelled on the Italian carbonari. Marx and Engels were commissioned to write the manifesto of the Communist Party, and Marx later added the ideas contained therein to the basic communist work “Capital”. The ideas in Marx’s work were anything but new. For example, 25 years earlier, in “The Science of Government Founded on Natural Law” Clinton Roosevelt wrote down the most important principles of socialist ideology and even postulated a theory of labour value, according to which the price of goods should not be determined by supply and demand, but by experts on the basis of the working hours that went into their production.
In 1849 Clinton Roosevelt and Horace Greeley, the owner of the powerful New York Tribune newspaper, had raised money for the Communist League in London. Greeley gave Marx regular commissions for articles that were to appear in the newspaper.
The Communist League tried to influence revolutionary movements with actions and publications, including participation in civil war-like struggles in various failed insurgency attempts. There was turmoil all over mainland Europe. In Great Britain there was relative calm. Marx denounced his opponents and critics from leftwing circles as informers and agents. He argued extensively with a Mr. Vogt, who was denounced as a French spy in an anonymous flyer. Vogt accused Marx of blackmailing German revolutionaries for money from London, threatening to supply confidential information to the German authorities. In this context, Marx tried in vain to sue the National Newspaper in Prussia and wrote a lengthy reply to Vogt for almost a whole year.
Wolfgang Waldner published a detailed but left-ideologically coloured study under the title “Der Preußische Regierungsagent Karl Marx”, which contains many quotations for illustration. The core thesis is that Marx took a leading position in the socialist movement on behalf of his noble, married relatives from Prussia to spy on socialists and ideologically drive the movement in a direction that was useful to the Prussian nobles. Marx seemed like the right candidate: Aggressive and narcissistic but engaging if necessary, smart but not too clever, ambitious but without a really persevering work ethic. Marx married Jenny von Westphalen, thanks to his father’s connections.
The Marx-friendly historians try to make it look as if there were tensions between Jenny and her family, even if the facts show rather normal family relationships. Prussia’s police authorities used harsh methods and a lot of informers to break up, destroy, arrest and drive away unwanted political groups. If necessary, evidence was falsified for this purpose and provocateurs were inserted into groups. As the socialists from Europe and Russia cooperated with each other all over the place, various secret services stepped on each other’s feet without knowing about each other. The situation became even more complicated when a socialist spied simultaneously for several secret services or police authorities from different countries and collected money for his information from several handlers. And, of course, a socialist could offer his services as an informer with the intention of deception and only deliver small fish to his commanding officer and feed disinformation.
Karl Marx’s father Heinrich formally converted from Judaism to Christianity because only then was he allowed to continue working as a lawyer because of anti-Semitic laws. Heinrich was certainly not happy, but it did not trigger a revolutionary attitude and the desire to overthrow the Prussian authorities. He was a kind of liaison between the Prussian government and the Jewish community, which of course leaves room for speculation as to whether more information had flowed in one direction or the other than would have been absolutely necessary.
Marx studied listlessly and aimlessly in Berlin and also snooped around the opposition doctoral club. He worked on Bruno Bauer and feigned friendship with him, but drove him into isolation. Marx was a wrecker; he infiltrated organisations, then caused disputes, chaos and legally sensitive provocations and somehow always got away with it himself. This may be due to his narcissistic and/or psychopathic personality, or he did so specifically on behalf of the Westphalens and earned himself extra money. For a really elaborate university degree he lacked the patience and perseverance, and so he quickly obtained a PhD in philosophy in Jena, which had been a quite simple feat at the time. An original of this work can no longer be found. Had someone tipped him off and perhaps helped him in an intermediary capacity? At the Rheinische Zeitung he became an unofficial editor-in-chief, although he had published almost nothing so far, and received an impressive 600 Taler annual salary. Did he get this post with the help of his relatives? Marx used his position for unnecessary attacks, although socialism was still completely theoretical and nobody could really say which of the ideas might actually work. The Rheinische Zeitung was controlled pseudo-opposition under the watchful eye of the Prussian authorities and Mr. Oppenheim from the famous banking family, who had links to Rothschild and worked as an assessor in the Prussian judiciary, was also on board. Together with Bankhaus Mendelssohn from Berlin, Oppenheim was commissioned from 1818 to organise French war compensation for Prussia.
The newspaper was finally banned and Marx set off to woo the wealthy Arnold Ruge, who planned a new magazine. Marx again had his usual effect, which can only be described as sabotage, and he collected donations for his own pocket.
Young Russian aristocrats like Mikhail Bakunin showed interest in socialism, but were probably agents of the tsarist secret service Ochrana. They came across European Communist circles infiltrated by European secret services. It was a real spy orgy.
Some comrades accused Marx of preaching the eternal wait for revolution. Others accused him of dumb provocations at an inopportune time, thereby getting socialist groups into trouble. In 1845 he went to Brussels and infiltrated Wilhelm Weitling’s “Association of Craftsmen”. Marx should have had enough money in the bank for several years, but he was unusually wasteful and begged his friends like Engels for money, who in turn made contact with Robert Owen, a British entrepreneur and early socialist who is considered the founder of the cooperative system. Its factory became a model business, which was also visited by princes, politicians, Tsar Nicholas I. and Austrian princes Johann and Maximilian. Owen even gave lectures to the US Congress.
Marx always flattered his way into a new group and then caused unnecessary arguments and divisions, formulating his attacks against comrades in the same tattled, largely incomprehensible writing style which he used for his treatises instead of saying in clear words what he disliked.
With his close confidants like Moses Hess, he infiltrated Weitling’s secret alliance “Bund der Geächteten” and soon attacked the previously highly acclaimed Weitling. Even Proudhon was fought. Marx and Engels took over the “League of the Just” and turned it into the “League of the Communists”, from which the Socialist International finally emerged. That these two of all people became the prophets of socialism is extremely bizarre, since there were much more competent, diplomatic, understandable and less dogmatic comrades. Marx completed his Communist Manifesto and “Capital”.
The monetary policy of the Bank of England and the resulting crises were hushed up by Marx and the Marxists because they themselves wanted to implement a centralist monetary policy. On the one hand Marx preached gibberish and waiting for the world revolution, on the other hand he spent money from his mother to buy weapons for revolutionary actions that ended in chaos. That is, he sabotaged on both the ideological and the practical level.
In the Cologne Workers’ Association, Marx used his usual techniques to gain control, to radicalize and dogmatize and to disrupt the organization. At the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, he was made editor-in-chief and other confidants were brought on board. The paper had suspicious investors.
In very troubled times Marx and his people polemicized against the Hohenzollern in Prussia. Despite harsh laws, Marx and Engels stirred up radicalism in the audience and drove people into a hopeless fight, whereupon the Prussian authorities had the excuse to intervene rigorously. Attempts at revolution were brutally suppressed, Marx afterwards still blasphemed about those involved in the failed insurrection attempt and Engels was shockingly well informed about the battles. The paper was finished, of course.
Marx and Engels moved from big city to big city in Germany. Afterwards Marx, for whom the territory had became too dangerous, went to London and lived there in luxurious dwellings, with servants and balls. He tried to finance his lifestyle with whining begging letters and appeals for donations, as well as with one or the other author jobs. With a little thrift and accounting, he could have lived comfortably with his family, but his debts ran ever higher. Another project was an aid fund for political refugees who flocked to London, which was strangely successful, while similar organisations from other operators remained unsuccessful. How can we explain this? As a spy, Marx could theoretically have taken information about the political refugees and embezzled some of the money. Maybe Marx got a grant from his commanding officer.
From London, Marx could watch members of the “Communist League”, which he had infiltrated and divided with Engels, gradually being arrested and brought to justice in Cologne.
Marx had a similar contempt for the Russian tsarist empire as the politician David Urquhart and the two theorized in Urquharts magazine “Free Press” about Russian conspiracies and Russian espionage. The Russian secret service gradually infiltrated communist circles in and outside Russia. Marx and Engels published articles against Russia in the most influential newspaper of the USA at the time.
Marx took control of the so-called “First International” and ran the organization reliably into the ground. He died in London on 14 March 1883 at the age of 64. Lenin’s brother had translated texts by Marx and was allegedly involved in an assassination plot against the Czar. Lenin himself referred to Marx and raised him to a quasi-holy figure. Stalin came into contact with Marxist circles in the seminary of Tbilisi in 1893 and was recruited by the tsarist secret service Ochrana.
Bismarck had the Socialists infiltrated and steered. It was probably also due to Prussia’s an Britain’s influence that German social democracy and the international socialists chose Marx’s incomprehensible texts as holy scriptures.
