1854 Of all the Marxists, the most literary – in taste and breadth of reading – was Karl Marx himself. Had he not made his name in economics he might well rank as a literary critic of some note. Not one to keep his learning in separate compartments, Marx mustered a barrage of literary allusion to vent, in the New York Daily Tribune, 17 March 1854, his disgust at the War Debate in the British Parliament of that week, committing the country to join with imperial France against Russia in the Crimea:
A singularity of English tragedy, so repulsive to French feelings that Voltaire used to call Shakespeare a drunken savage, is its peculiar mixture of the sublime and the base, the terrible and the ridiculous, the heroic and the burlesque. But nowhere does Shakespeare devolve upon the clown the task of speaking the prologue of a heroic drama. This invention was reserved for the Coalition Ministry. My Lord Aberdeen has performed, if not the English Clown, at least the Italian Pantaloon. All great historical movements appear, to the superficial observer, finally to subside into farce, or at least the common-place. But to commence with this is a feature peculiar alone to the tragedy entitled, War with Russia, the prologue of which was recited on Friday evening in both Houses of Parliament, where the Ministry’s address in answer to the Minister’s message was simultaneously discussed and unanimously adopted, to be handed over to the Queen yesterday afternoon, sitting upon her throne in Buckingham Palace.
Marx (who had been in England for only five years, and whose reverence for Shakespeare had been acquired in his native Germany) had complex views on the Crimean War. He was impressed by the solidarity (particularly among the British working classes). He loathed tsarist Russia, and was – with reservations – in favour of anything that might do it damage. As the war progressed, he noted the cooling of the bourgeoisie’s enthusiasm ‘as it began to affect their purse’. In the end, it all came down to capital.