Manifesto of Marx’s mum
QUESTION Did Karl Marx’s mother tell him to accumulate capital instead of writing about it?
THIS was an anecdote that Karl Marx trotted out when referring to the poor state of his finances.
Marx and Friedrich Engels were mid19th century German philosophers and critics of capitalism. Their ideas laid the groundwork for communism, which advocates for a classless system in which all property and wealth are owned communally rather than privately.
Marx was constantly in debt. His main source of income was Engels, whose father was a wealthy industrialist.
In his 1973 biography of Karl Marx, David McLellan states: ‘During 1867, Marx recognised that Engels had given him “an enormous sum of money”, but claimed that its effect was negated by his previous debts, which amounted to £200.
‘The next year, on his 50th birthday, he bitterly recalled his mother’s words: “If only Karl had made capital instead of just writing about it.” ’
McLellan’s source for the quote was volume 31 of Marx And Engels Collected Works, which included unpublished manuscripts and letters.
A variation of the quote appears in a letter from Marx to Engels: ‘As that Prussian lieutenant said to you: “Twenty years of service and still lieutenant.”
‘ I can say: Half a century on my shoulders and still a pauper. How right my mother was: “If only Karell had made capital instead of etc.” ’
Since he shortened his mother’s quote in a letter to his long-time friend and financial benefactor, we can assume that this wasn’t the first time he had repeated the anecdote.
Debbie Westwood, Reading, Berks.
QUESTION Who is the highest-rated female chess player of all time?
HunGArIAn Grandmaster Judit Polgar is the only woman to have been ranked in the world’s top ten and is widely considered to be the strongest female chess player of all time.
She was never women’s world champion because she was too strong a player to
enter the competition. She won games against Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen when they were world no. 1.
Polgar was born on July 23, 1976, in Budapest. In 1991, she achieved the title of Grandmaster aged 15 years and four months, breaking the record held by Bobby Fischer.
In 1993, she defeated former world champion Boris Spassky. She reached top-ten ranking in 1996.
In 1998, she defeated the International Chess Federation (FIDE) world champion Anatoly Karpov in a match of ‘action’ chess (30 minutes per game).
Polgar is the only woman to have been a serious candidate for the World Chess Championship, in which she participated in 2005. She is also the only woman to have surpassed FIDE 2,700 ranking points, reaching her peak world ranking of no. 8 in 2004 and peak rating of 2,735 in 2005.
She was the top-rated woman in the world from 1989 until her retirement in 2014.
Kasparov said that, based on her approach: ‘If to “play like a girl” meant anything in chess, it would mean relentless aggression.’
The strongest female chess player since Polgar retired is Hou Yifan of China. At 14 years and six months, she became the youngest female player to become a Grandmaster. In 2010, aged 16, she became the youngest women’s world champion.
She won the championship again in 2013 and 2016 before shifting her focus to open events. Her peak rating was 2,686 and she is ranked 98th in the world.
She attended the university of Oxford as a rhodes Scholar in 2018 and became a professor at Shenzhen university at the age of 26.
C. J. Hofer, Goring, Oxon.
QUESTION Did more people die making the V2 rocket than were hit by it?
IT IS estimated that more than 20,000 slave labourers died building V2 missiles — many more than were killed by it.
There were 3,172 V2 rockets launched against Allied targets, of which 1,402 were fired at Britain — mainly London.
The remainder were launched at Belgium, France and the netherlands. Eleven were fired at remagen, Germany, to counter the American crossing of the rhine in 1945.
It is thought 2,754 civilians were killed (nearly two for each V2 strike) and 6,523 wounded in the London attacks.
Some workers died in accidents with the missiles and in Allied bombings of construction and launch sites, but most perished due to ill treatment.
One of the main construction sites was an underground factory at Mittelwerk near Buchenwald concentration camp in central Germany.
Prisoners with technical skills, especially metalworking and welding, were transported there from other concentration camps.
Conditions at the camp and factory were appalling, with poor accommodation, food and sanitation. The labourers were often forced to work around the clock. Exhaustion and poor conditions led to a short life expectancy. Eyewitness accounts report that prisoners were hanged from cranes above the assembly lines for minor transgressions.
The V2 was the first ballistic missile, and its invention accelerated rocket development for military and civilian use. It enabled the Moon landings and satellite communications, but these came at a terrible human cost.
Robert Sutherland, Northampton.
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