The Boy Who Would Rather Mooch Off His Mother Than Work : A Study of Communism

Nadene Goldfoot                                                     

A mother was complaining to her neighbor that her fully grown son was so lazy that he wouldn't get out to look for a job.  He just wanted to mooch money off of her.  He had turned out to be a freeloader who had little interest in work and was now constantly in debt to moneylenders.  She told her neighbor about telling him that she wished he was more interested in accumulating capital instead of writing about it, for journalism was his only accomplishment but it didn't pay enough.  "Maybe he would stop asking me for it," she told the neighbor.  The neighbor told her not to give him any more money.  The mother took her advice and refused to finance her son's sloth which ultimately led to their estrangement.  He continued to live a life of perpetual poverty.

This was the motivating factor in the development of his political philosophy and his anti-Semitism. He was infuriated when his note was due and he was expected to make payment to a money-lender.  That leads me to think that his parents were to blame and had been giving him spending money without expecting him to pay any part of it back.  He asked and they gave as he was growing up, which is wonderful for him but didn't teach him a thing except to expect the same thing in grown-up life.   His anti-Semitism came from knowing that many Jews were in the profession of lending money, and therefore, he had hit up too many friends of the family and felt a lot of guilt around them, causing him to avoid them with hatred.
                                                        

grandson of 2 Rabbis

The sad part of this story is that his maternal and paternal grandfathers were rabbis!  He was the new kid on the block of a rabbinical dynasty!  They were orthodox rabbis in Germany.  His father, Hirschel Halevi, later called Heinrich, did not follow in his father's footsteps.  He had married a Jewish girl in a Jewish ceremony but the practice of Judaism stopped at that point.  Heinrich was trying to get ahead in the business world as a lawyer and found that being Jewish was a hindrance.  Then men he dealt with belonged to clubs, had a social life that entertained their whole family, and seemed so happy.  They made ugly remarks about Jews, not realizing that he was Jewish since he didn't say anything but usually added more disparaging comments to the conversation about Jews. 

This could be the story of many Jewish sons at any given time in history since this period which was in the early 1800s in Germany and still is today in the USA.  In fact, you don't have to be Jewish to be the mother in this story.  It's happening to mothers all over the world.   It happened in Trier, Prussia.  "Trier was one of the three Regierungsbezirke of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, located in the west of the state. The region was created in 1815 as part of the Prussian Rhineland.

Heinrich made the decision to convert to Lutheranism before his expected first baby arrived and be done with Judaism.  He didn't want his child to go through the sufferings and humiliation that he was feeling.  This would most certainly advance his career if his friends saw him in a church on a Sunday.  "Any god would do," thought Heinrich.  He knew nothing about Lutheranism but it was the going religion in Germany where the Prussians ruled.  The baby was due in 1818.  

"Heinrich Marx was born in Saarlouis, with the name Heschel Levi, the son of Marx Levy Mordechai (1743–1804) and Eva Lwow (1753–1823). Heinrich Marx's father was the rabbi of Trier, Prussia, now a part of Germany, a role which his older brother would later assume.  Heinrich also lived in Trier with his wife, Henriette Pressberg.  

Heinrich Marx qualified as a lawyer in 1814, called a barrister, but upon Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Rhineland came into the conservative control of the Kingdom of Prussia, from its more detached French administration. An 1812 edict, unenforced by the French, asserted that Jews could not occupy legal positions or state offices, and Prussian enforcement of the law led to trouble for Heinrich Marx.

Marx's colleagues, including the President of the Provincial Supreme court, defended him and sought an exception for him. The Prussian Minister of Justice rejected their appeals. In 1817 or 1818, so he changed his name to Heinrich Marx and converted to the state Evangelical Church of Prussia (Lutheran)  to be allowed to practice law in Prussia. 

 His wife and children were baptized in 1825 and 1824, respectively." Heinrich's wife, Henriette had converted after her parents had died.  She was not really for this move and knew that the change would cause her parents to consider her and her husband dead to them anyway if they knew. 

                                                         

Karl and his wife, Jenny Von Westphalen.  They became
engaged in Trier, Prussia.  They married in 1843. 

One of his five daughters, possibly Eleanor

 Karl's favorite daughter, Eleanor, ironically went against her father's philosophy and admired Judaism, considering herself Jewish, though by Jewish law now was not.  However, she had 100% Jewish genes from both her parents.  She had taken "great interest in her Jewish ancestry."  I hope it drove Karl crazy.  

However, this lack of belief is also happening in the USA today to Christianity as well.  Science and technical changes have taken away the need for religion.  Even in Israel, their ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, said that the Bible proves the case for Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel  in a debate and the audience was probably in shock with his chuztpah of someone believing the Bible.  Israel does, and so do the Orthodox Jews in the USA.  The New York Times keeps printing anti-Semitic cartoons no matter what letters to the editor say.  The Democrats of the USA have turned their back on Israel many a time with the J Street leading the way.  

The baby Heinrich was expecting was born on May 5, 1818, and was named Karl Heinrich Marx.  Karl was baptized when he was 6 years old.  He would grow up to be a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary .  His ideas are regarded as the foundation of modern communism.  He's the biggest anti-Semite there has been in centuries, a real self-hating Jew, probably causing more anti-Semitism in the world than the Amaleks ever thought of causing. He probably started Hitler on the road to hating the Jewish people.
                                                              

 Trained as a philosopher, Karl Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics; Communism. It
was his father who had turned away from Judaism.  He said,
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

He tried to get a teaching profession bu was turned down not because he was Jewish but because of his radical views, so he turned again to journalism and edited the liberal Cologne Daily called Rheinische Zeitung in 1842-43. 
                                                      

 Then he moved to Paris where he struck up a friendship with Friedrich Engels. Friedrich Engels (; German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈʔɛŋl̩s]; sometimes anglicised Frederick Engels; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, communist, social scientist, journalist and businessman.  Engels developed what is now known as Marxist theory together with Karl Marx and in 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research in English cities. In 1848, Engels co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx and also authored and co-authored (primarily with Marx) many other works. Later, Engels supported Marx financially, allowing him to do research and write Das Kapital.  Engles
became Karl's mother figure he could mooch from. He used Engels like he had used his mother.   Old habits die hard.  

He attacked the Prussian government and was expelled from France for it, so went to Brussels where he renounced his Prussian citizenship and became STATELESS. 
                                                     

Jenny and Karl Marx with friends

Marx cooperated with the LEAGUE OF THE JUST, later called COMMUNISTS before becoming a member in 1847.  The League invited Marx and Engels to speak on their new program at their 2nd Congress in London at the end of 1847.  He became renowned as a champion of the working class but was a man who knew nothing about real work, so often in debt.  His regular practice was to denounce the oppressors of the weak, and remained silent when the oppressors were said to be the Jews.  Usually the oppressed victims were the Jews themselves who suffered during the surges of Russian pogroms during the last years of Marx's life.  He practiced HOSTILE SILENCE, said to be an attempt to avoid all reminders of his own Jewish heritage.  

Marx wrote with many different anti-Semitic statements, including frequent references to Judaism as a pseudo-religion whose god is money.  He would write, THE JEW"  Baumberger, using Jew as an epithet.  He felt that Baumberger had the unmitigated gall to demand repayment from Marx.  

Marx's anti-Semitic writings are legion.  On holidays in 1879 he wrote to Friedrich Engels that the resort he was at contained "many Jews and fleas."  In another etter to Engels, he described the Jewish founder of German Socialism and Marx's political opponent, Ferdinand LaSSalle, as a JEWISH NIGGER.  
                                                                                 

The basic assumption of Marxism is that history is essentially the account of class struggles between the oppressing and the oppressed.  He had no knowledge of problems Jews faced as he stayed away from the subject of Jews.  His attitude towards his ex-people was characterized by antipathy and contempt and he described Judaism and the Jews in terms similar to those used by many anti-Semites.  From 1848 on, Marx envisaged the Jews chiefly as the financial reactionary group.  He joins the social group of two with Haman and Hitler.  How funny that Hitler wound up fighting against the Communists.  The Nazi political party was called "The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (help·info), abbreviated NSDAP)

 "Under socialism, Marx argued that society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." He believed that socialism would eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called communism." 

Heinrich, a product of two rabbinical families, most likely of Cohens, could have produced the Messiah.  Instead, the  political environment of Germany in those days twisted the genes into producing  such a contradiction of goodness; a man who hated his own kind.  Whereas most Jews would have given their lives if forced into converting from Judaism to Christianity or any other religion such as the Spanish Jews caught in the Inquisition of 1492 who at least kept practicing Judaism in secret, or others who were burned at a stake rather than convert, which would have caused others to follow suit and convert easily, Heinrich did it easily and caused his wife to do it.  

This German Heinrich never stopped to learn that money-lending was the ONLY profession allowed Jews in Europe.  The Christians were competitors of religion and through the Romans, had the upper hand.  They worked to drive out Judaism by depriving Jews of work and wouldn't allow them in any of the professions.  Money-lending was a hateful but much needed practice, even for the kings and queens on this planet, so they gave this distasteful profession to the Jews.  

I've since learned that I have relatives on my tree who were rabbis that lent money to royalty; Rabbi Samson Wertheimer and his uncle, Rabbi Oppenheimer.  They used their own money to help needy Jews.  

Had there not been any anti-Semitism, the world would not have experienced Karl Marx's aid in creating the hateful Communism that has wracked countries beyond belief.  It would have been a kinder world.  

Karl died March 14, 1883 in London, England of natural causes.  He was 64 years 10 months and 9 days at death. He had 6 children.  All together he had 4 daughters and 2 sons which all stayed with him until he passed in March 14, 1883. At age 64 he was laid to rest at Highgate cemetery.  " He published numerous works during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894). 
                                                                             

The short Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1922 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Lenin's mother's father had been a Russian Jewish doctor but also had converted to Christianity.  " His grandfather, Ilya,  married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a relatively prosperous background, she was the daughter of a wealthy German–Swedish Lutheran mother, and a Russian Jewish father."

Vladimir Lenin wrote: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world.... In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others."

The mother in my story  who was Jewish and converted to Lutheranism was Henriette Marx nee Pressberg.  "Henriette Pressburg  was born on 20 September 1788 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She was the second of the five children of Isaac Heymans Pressburg (1747–1832) and Nanette Salomons Cohen(1754–1833). The Pressburgs were a prosperous family, with Isaac working as a textile merchant. They were prominent members of Nijmegen's growing Jewish community, living first in Nonnenstraat then, when Henriette was 19, in Grotestraat. Isaac was the cantor of the synagogue in Nonnenstraat where his father, Hirschl (or Chaim) Pressburg, had been the rabbi. There had been rabbis in the family for at least a century."  It appears that she came from a contented Jewish family and had no remorse as to her parents and relatives. 

What this threesome did not see was that Socialism is the death  of progress.  What they saw and called a class struggle was something happening in the animal world, survival of the fittest.  Democracy produces creativity.   We would all be still living in caves, and of course there would be very few of us surviving to this point, if mankind had not participated in class struggles.  Democracy got us where the USA is.  We keep tweeking it and making it even more proficient.  Let's not throw out the baby with the bathtub.  No Communism or Socialism, PLEASE!  

Resource;  The Jewish Press, May 10, 2019: Karl Marx:  A Self- Hating Jew by Saul Jay Singer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Marx
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 633-634.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/marx/lifeandwork.htm
https://everloved.com/life-of/karl-marx/obituary/
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
https://www.thoughtco.com/karl-marx-biography-3026494?utm_term=karl+marx+biography&utm_content=p1-main-1-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=msn_s&utm_campaign=adid-6e91af04-c3bd-49e5-a6eb-073e21a64d29-0-ab_msb_ocode-29658&ad=semD&an=msn_s&am=broad&q=karl+marx+biography&o=29658&qsrc=999&l=sem&askid=6e91af04-c3bd-49e5-a6eb-073e21a64d29-0-ab_msb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henriette_Pressburg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trier_(region)


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