Talk:Karl Marx
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Marx, Engels, Lenin and Bellamy influenced each other and influenced socialism in the USA, and the world. The book Das Kapital (1867) by Karl Marx and the book Looking Backward (1887) by Edward Bellamy were ranked as the most influential books (first and second respectively) in a Columbia University survey of 1935. The scholars surveyed compared Bellamy and Marx for blending or as alternatives.
A weekly publication that promoted Bellamy’s ideas was sold in advertisements that combined it with Karl Marx's book Capital as a package deal (see The New Nation, 1891-94)
Advertisements listed together the books of Charles Bellamy, Edward Bellamy and Karl Marx (1891).
The writer Gail Collins stated: ...far more American workers read Looking Backward than ever made it through Marx... (Tomorrow Never Knows, The Nation, Vol. 252, Issue # 2, January 21, 1991).
Merritt Abrash described the Bellamy philosophy as Marxism americanized (see Looking Backward: Marxism Americanized, In M.S. Cummings & N.D. Smith (Eds.)., Utopian Studies IV (pp. 6-9). Lanham, MD: University Press of America (1991).
In 1886 Dr. Edward Aveling and his wife Eleanor -the daughter of Karl Marx- wrote that when they toured the U.S. and preached the gospel of socialism as far westward as Kansas, they were surprised by the prevalence of what they termed: unconscious socialism. They said: the American people ... were waiting to hear in their own language what socialism is. Edward Bellamy then wrote Looking Backward in 1887 and it became an international bestseller.
Looking Backward was translated into every major language including Russian. It inspired the creation of 167 “Bellamy Clubs” worldwide. In its time, it was outsold only by Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur. The book appears by title in many major Marxist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement." (Eric Fromm, p vi) 165. The book was popular in pre-revolutionary Russia, and Lenin’s wife was known to have read the book, because she wrote a review of it.
Edward Bellamy was the cousin and collaborator of Francis Bellamy (author of the "Pledge of Allegiance"). Francis Bellamy and Edward Bellamy and Charles Bellamy (author of "A Moment of Madness") and Frederick Bellamy (who introduced Edward to "Fourierism") were all socialists. Edward, Charles and Frederick were brothers, and Francis was their cousin.
When Francis Bellamy wrote the original Pledge of Allegiance it had a different hand gesture that was not the modern hand-over-the-heart. Research by Dr. Rex Curry upon the Bellamys led to other amazing discoveries about the Bellamy influence upon socialists in Germany and worldwide.
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