At the core of Communism is resentment. A particular sentiment that Nietzsche warns us about.

Karl Marx
was a very angry man. He sought revenge. When one thinks of today’s Communist movement, anger,
jealousy, and of course resentment seem the hallmark. This brilliant observation about Karl Marx by Isaiah
Berlin helps to support my point. When we think of Christianity, we think of Christ. Islam, you know…
And so on. No one ever talks about Marx the man.

Book Title: Karl Marx

Author: Isaiah Berlin
Pg#160

“Marx's own financial position was for many years desperate: he had no regular source of income, a
growing family, and a reputation which precluded the possibility of employment by any respectable
concern. The squalid poverty in which he and his family lived during the next twenty years, and the
unspeakable humiliation which this entailed, have often been described: at first the family wandered from
one hovel to another, from Chelsea to Leicester Square and thence to the disease-ridden slums of Soho;
often there was no money to pay the tradesmen and the family would literally starve until a loan or the
arrival of a pound note from Engels temporarily eased the situation; sometimes the entire dothing of the
family was in pawn, and they were forced to sit for hours without light or food, interrupted only by the
visits of dunning creditors, who were met on the doorstep by one or other of the children with the
unvarying and automatic answer, 'Mr. Marx ain't upstairs.'

A lively description of the conditions in which he lived during the first seven years of exile survives in the
report of a Prussian spy who somehow contrived to worm his way into the Dean Street establishment: '...He
lives in one of the worst and cheapest neighbourhoods in London. He occupies two rooms. There is not one
clean or decent piece of furniture in either room, everything is broken, tattered and tom, with thick dust
over everything... manuscripts, books and news-papers lie beside the children's toys, bits and pieces from
his wife's sewing basket, cups with broken rims, dirty spoons, knives, forks, lamps, an inkpot, tumblers,
pipes, tobacco ash - all piled up on the same table. On entering the room smoke and tobacco fumes make
your eyes water to such an extent that at first you seem to be groping about in a cavern - until you get used
to it, and manage to make out certain objects in the haze. Sitting down is a dangerous business. Here is a
chair with only three legs, there another which happens to be whole, on which the children are playing at
cooking. That is the one that is offered to the visitor, but the children's cooking is not removed, and if you
sit down you risk a pair of trousers. But all these things do not in the least embarrass Marx or his wife. You
are received in the most friendly way and are cordially offered pipes, tobacco, and whatever else there may
happen to be. Presently a clever and interesting conversation arises which repays for all the domestic
deficiencies and this makes the discomfort bearable...' '

A man of genius forced to live in a garret, to go into hiding when his creditors grow importunate, or to lie
in bed because his clothes are pawned, is a conventional subject of gay and sentimental comedy. Marx was
not a bohemian, and his misfortunes affected him tragically. He was proud, excessively thin-skinned, and
made great demands upon the world: the petty humiliations and insults to which his condition exposed him,
the frustration of his desire for the commanding position to which he thought himself entitled, the
repression of his colossal natural vitality, made him turn in upon himself in paroxysms of hatred and of
rage. His bitter feeling often found outlet in his writings and in long and savage personal vendettas. He saw
plots, persecution, and conspiracies everywhere; the more his victims protested their innocence, the more
convinced he became of their duplicity and their guilt.

His mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British Museum reading-room, where he normally
remained from nine in the morning until it closed at seven; this was followed by long hours of work at
night, accompanied by ceaseless smoking, which from a luxury had become an indispensable anodyne; this
affected his health permanently and he became liable to frequent attacks of a disease of the liver sometimes
accompanied by boils and an inflammation of the eyes, which interfered with his work, exhausted and
irritated him, and interrupted his never certain means of livelihood. 'I am plagued like Job, though not so
God-fearing', he wrote in 1858. 'Everything that these gentlemen [the doctors] say boils down to the fact
that one ought to be a prosperous rentier and not a poor devil like me, as poor as a church mouse.' In other
moods he would swear that the bourgeoisie would one day pay dearly for every one of his carbuncles...”

Book Title: Karl Marx

Author: Isaiah Berlin
Pg#160