I am not Marxist or communist but the life of Karl Marx left a fascinating impression of an extraordinary intellectual and worker. As the leftists may be seen as promoting laziness, Marx is an example showing greatly the contrary. The way he worked and approach his internationalist project, even if you strongly disagree with him, can be an inspiration for a great deal of dreamers, entrepreneurs and politicians who want to achieve great projects.
The first noticeable thing is his long term vision. He overcame a great deal of terrible material conditions to be able to do his work. To this extend it is necessary to build great ideas and to be able to pursue this project. He lived in dreadful conditions in Soho street in London, where he lost some of his children, and he overcame a great deal of deceptions, either linked to the lack of unity of his internationalist movement, or by the reception of his books and articles. But after more than 20 years of extraordinary work Marx has been able to build a very important theorical work and a powerful internationalist movement. Building in the long run, despite everything that could happen to him, was a great way to achieve the great ambitions he had.
Another remarkable thing was the intensity of his work. As his assistant Lafargue wrote, “he was always up between 8 and 9 am. He drank black coffee, read the newspapers and went back to his working cabinet, where he worked until 2 to 3 am in the night.” His great intensity of work made him a great reader, an important writer of newspaper articles, and a great militant and organizer of communist movement. However he never looked for power, even if he was an extremely important inspirer. When he was young his stepfather was amazed by his energy and his culture. Actually, in a very different time than today, he was actually working all the time and died of exhaustion. He spent also a lot of time in the British Museum library. Libraries were for him a great place to express his thought, and they are the reason why they had their role in the extraordinary path of Marx. They will have their importance in Lenin’s ideas, as they were a central place in his life. It is another example of the extraordinary potential impact of libraries, which provide oceans of knowledge for free, and able this way to create revolutionaries.
The intensity of the work of Marx, his vision and focus despite terrible events that happened in his life can greatly inspire those who want to achieve great project, even totally utopists. The life of Marx is an example of the power of long term thinking and hard work. Even if communism was a great failure so far (even if the Parisian commune was closer to Marxist ideas than USSR), anyone can inspire from his life, even if they are liberals, greatly religious or Hegelians, all ideas Marx would hate.
The observer 