Marx Returns by Jason Barker

Author:Jason Barker [Barker, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78535-661-2
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2018-02-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

There came a knock at the door and this time Marx rose in a new frame of mind. His sense of shame lingered. But Helene’s handiwork had channelled those negative feelings in such a way as to bring about a novel set of forces and relations. The pain hadn’t so much been destroyed as repurposed.

Even though it was pitch-black outside, Marx could see colour everywhere and detect phenomenal minute contrasts as if everything around him were being viewed under a microscope. But it wasn’t to do with the infinitely small, where every portion of matter can be thought of as a garden full of plants, or as a pond full of fish, and every branch of the plant, every part of the animal, and every drop of its vital fluids, is another such garden, or another such pool. There lay the road to madness. He grasped the substantial forms, the modes striving to attain perfection only through themselves. As Helene’s hand had crossed the dentate line and ventured up toward the Columns of Morgagni, the arrangement had surpassed pleasure and pain, good and evil. He and she. Once the new society had been attained free association would collapse such philosophical distinctions, would render all such “properties” redundant, since that was all they were, in essence: properties. Which, in essence, was not what they were.

‘Dr Marx?’ said the man at the door.

‘Who are you?’ he replied, adjusting his trousers.

The man removed his hat. ‘My name is Dr Weiner and I’m in London on an urgent family matter. Please forgive the intrusion, Doctor. I’m trying to locate my brother, Heinrich. Our father fell gravely ill two weeks ago. He must be alerted to the news right away and brought back to Berlin.’

Marx blinked at the man, who was dressed matter-of-factly in a dark suit. He wore a thick moustache and wire spectacles, behind which were very narrow eyes. There was a badge on his lapel with writing on it too small to decipher.

‘How did you find me here?’ enquired Marx.

‘Your landlady mentioned that a “Dr Mark” had just moved in to number 64. Previously I was told by several German artisans that you were a most helpful man to know. Trustworthy and considerate; a respectable gentleman. The men are all refugees and claim to have received financial assistance from the German Workers Society, of which the good doctor, I was informed, is one of the principal organizers. My brother knows of the Society’s activities and wrote to my mother about it in one of his letters. He says he attended some of its meetings.’ The man held out his card.

‘Helene! Bring my loupe, will you?’

‘In the course of my enquiries it was also brought to my notice that the Manifesto of the Communist Party, that landmark of socialist literature which, if you’ll forgive the comparison, stands alongside the works of Saint-Simon, Weitling, Cabet, Owen, Fourier, to cite—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Marx, ‘don’t overdo it.’

‘—only the principal names,’ the man went on, producing a copy of the green pamphlet from inside his jacket, ‘was authored by the very same Karl Marx.

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