The Marx Family.

 

Paul Lafargue and Laura Marx

Karl Marx's maternal uncle was the Dutch tobacco merchant Lion Philips, the grandfather of Gerard and Anton Philips, who founded Philips Electronics. Leon Philips was a financial supporter of Karl Marx. Laura Marx and her husband Paul Lafargue, committed suicide together in 1911. Marx's eldest daughter, Jenny Marx (Longuet), died of bladder cancer in 1883 aged 38.

 In the 1970s, the British Socialist Worker Party (SWP), used to organise 'Right to Work' marches or as some of us, argued at the time, the right to be exploited marches. The Cuban-born, French revolutionary Marxian socialist, Paul Lafargue, believed in the right to shirk. He wrote an interesting book entitled 'The Right to Be Lazy' where he opposed the labour movements fight to expand waged labour or (wage slavery). He argued for its abolition or at least its limitation.

 Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor (Tussy) Marx, committed suicide in March 1898 aged 43, after drinking prussic acid (cyanide). She lived with a slime ball called Edward Aveling. Eleanor discovered that he'd secretly married another woman while he was living with her. He'd also squandered most of the money that she'd inherited from Fred Engels.

 In 1886, Eleanor Marx visited the USA with Aveling and campaigned for the Chicago Anarchist who had been sentenced to death for a bomb attack during a meeting at the Haymarket in Chicago in May 1886. The bombing was believed to have been done by an agent provocateur. She visited the men in gaol. After their execution, they became known as the 'Chicago Martyrs'. Eleanor also helped to set up with Will Thorne, the General Union of Gas Workers and General Labourers founded in 1889. This became the GMB trade union.