Welcome to significant others.

I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in our final episode of season two,

we are talking about a figure who looms so large

he is both overly invoked and commonly misunderstood.

His ideas were so potent they have been named as the cause of everything from the French

socialist revolts and the Russian Revolution to political correctness and the January 6th

insurrection. Arguably the world as we know it would truly be different without

him. He was a massive force in our shared history and yet he was also a human being.

He drank and smoked and laughed with his friends.

He played games with his kids.

He loved his wife. He also kind of ruined their lives. It makes sense in a way that a

figure so titanic would not have simply one significant other, but many, and they all tell a similar story, one of endearment and

sacrifice.

This time, on significant others, meet the Marxes. There's only one source that provides a clear view of Carl Marx's family universe. The book Love and Capital by Mary

Gabriel is a fantastic read and a truly stunning work of historical reporting.

At best this will all just be a teaser for that main event, so if you're

curious to learn more, do go check it out. I'm embarrassed to admit that I came to

this story with the expectation and maybe even the hope of discovering the

tale of a hypocrite, an anti-capitalist theorist who married an aristocrat and lived

in bourgeois luxury while preaching the abolition of the upper class.

Of course the story is far more complex than that and I was really wrong on both counts.

For Karl Marx's family, life was barely survivable, let alone luxurious.

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