NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson spoke for many when he said he started to read "Das Kapital" and gave up on page two. Karl Marx's masterwork is forbiddingly long and dauntingly dense - a book cited more often than read -but unquestionably one of the more influential books in history.
Known as the father of communism, the German philosopher and political economist needed more than 20 years to finish his critique of industrial capitalism, partly because he kept getting distracted by other projects, like learning Russian or figuring out how electricity works.
And while we think of his epic tome as a treatise on economics, Marx's biographer Francis Wheen argues you could also consider it a comedy, a tragedy or a gothic horror story with as much satire as dialectic.
"Das Kapital" is the latest in the series from the Atlantic Monthly Press we featured on Books That Changed the World. Francis Wheen joins us in just a moment.
Later in the program, lessons from the life and the murder of pro-football star Sean Taylor.
But first: Francis Wheen's biography of "Das Kapital." If you've always wondered what Marx intended or what he meant or why he's relevant after the collapse of communism, our number is 800-989-8255. E-mail: talk@npr.org. And you can join the conversation on our blog at npr.org/blogofthenation.
Francis Wheen joins us from BBC Studios in London. Thanks very much for coming in.
Mr. FRANCIS WHEEN (Biographer, "Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography"): Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm honored to think that you're devoting this time to Karl Marx, the man who was written off some years ago as being no longer of any interest to anyone. It's rather amazing, and it slightly confirms my suspicion that perhaps there may be one or two things still worth considering and reading and thinking about in his work.
CONAN: Well, apparently, that moment when everybody decided, whew, there is a big, fat book we don't have to read anymore, that was the moment when you got interested in Karl Marx.
Mr. WHEEN: Absolutely. Yes, yes. Well, I think, partly just an instinct to think. I always like to stick up for the underdog in the unfashionable course. And when I wrote my biography of Karl Marx back in the '90s, it seemed to me that this was the most unpopular, unfashionable subject, one can possibly choose to write about because at the end of the Cold War, there was this idea put about it. I mean, rather like Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" that we'd now reached the end of history, and that Karl Marx was dead and buried, as you said, in the rubble of the Berlin Wall. And no one need ever think about him again.
And it seems to me that actually, he'd be buried long before that, flattened by all those dreadful Stalinist era icons where, you know, he was part of the Holy Trinity, with Marx as the sort of godlike figure with a big, white beard, and then Lenin as John the Baptist, and Stalin as the Redeemer, the Messiah.
And he'd been buried for most of the 20th century by his self-styled disciples. And actually, it seems to me that the end of the Cold War and the break up of 20th-century style Marxism was a very good moment to dig him out and actually hear what he had to say, what he thought and read and did, rather than what was claimed on his behalf by various spokespersons who might won't necessarily have been very reliable on the subject.
CONAN: In fact, you write that Karl Marx had always been studied much more carefully and closely in the enemy camp, in the West, than he ever was in the communist camp.
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, I think that's right. I mean, he was used in the communist camp. But, I mean, the very fact that's - where it all started in 1917 was in Russia - the Russian Revolution with Lenin and co - slightly shows how little they'd read or understood him, because one of Marx's recurring themes was that revolution - a proletarian revolution, as he put it - could only really break out once you'd reach an advanced stage of bourgeois industrial capitalism. And therefore, according to that theory, if it was going to start anywhere, it would be somewhere like Britain, the home of the Industrial Revolution, rather than in a sort of feudal-peasant society like Russia.
And so in order to get around this problem, the Russian revolutionaries had to do an awful lot of nimble footwork and ignoring large parts of what he have said and actually distorting him in the most extraordinary way. I mean, Lenin was the first offender, but there are many thereafter, basically creating and used of elite vanguard class of revolutionary intellectuals, which is absolutely against the whole nature of what Marx was saying, that the revolution, if there is to be one, must arise from the masses, from the people, from the workers rather than from a handful of people like Lenin.
So from the outset, it was taking a different direction. And certainly, by the time the gulag was created, I mean, Marx's favorite motto was de omnibus dubitandum - everything must be questioned; don't take anything for granted; question everything; challenge everything; criticize everything - which I don't think was somehow the motto of Stalinist Russia. If he'd gone around saying, de omnibus dubitandum, he would have been straightened than they'd become.
CONAN: Or any of the other countries that claimed to be Marxists, as you describe it, from Albania to Zimbabwe.
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, exactly. I mean, the whole essence of Marxism - and people sometimes say to me, would you call yourself a Marxist? And I say certainly not, because apart from (unintelligible), it's meaningless. I mean, the word has been used in so many different - 57 varieties that, you know, if it's -covers everyone from Fidel Castro, to (unintelligible), to Kim Il-Sung, to (unintelligible), to various French theoreticians and academics, then it doesn't really mean very much.
I mean in (unintelligible), Marxism means anything. I mean, in the spirit of Marx himself, it is a process, it's a method, a way of arguing, a way of looking at the world, of trying to understand the world, of criticizing, of arguing. It's a continuing engagement. It's not sort of 10 commandments written on tablets of stone. But unfortunately, that's exactly what it had became.
CONAN: Let's get - we want to get listeners involved in the conversation: 800-989-8255. E-mail: talk@npr.org.
But I did want to ask you one question. We think of Marx's work - well, he has a lot of predictions in his work. Is the genius of his work rather more descriptive of his analysis of capitalism?
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, I think that would be a fair comment, actually. As a prophet, he's - well, actually as prophet, sometimes he's remarkable. But there is a slight problem, which is the tension between, if you like, his intellect and his will. The famous phrase of another 20th-century Marxist, Antonio Gramsci: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Or if you want to put in plain English: Be prepared for the worst, but hope for the best. But it's a bit more complex than that.
Marx, intellectually, I mean, as a student of capitalism, an analyst of it, absolutely understood what an extraordinarily powerful system it was. I mean, in the "Communist Manifesto," the pamphlet he wrote back in 1848, he described it as having surpassed wonders far greater than the Egyptian pyramids or of any other ancient wonders of the world. Having (unintelligible) aside all sorts of old, feudal, sentimental social relations, absolutely ruthless and pitiless and remarkable, I mean technologically remarkable and remarkable. (Unintelligible) want to say he was, you know, he gave capitalism its due. And given the strength for that system, which he described very powerfully, he sort of knew that it wouldn't just keel over and die.
On the other hand, he hoped it would. And so there is a slight conflict in his work when he's - he'll give a long - I mean, actually, in "Das Kapital," nobody ever seems to notice this probably because they don't get beyond page two. But at the very end of volume two, the last chapter of volume two, he actually gives a sort of schematic presentation, an economic model of the capitalist system, which grows steadily and in theory can carry on indefinitely. But I think that's - I mean, he's slightly buried right at the end of volume two because although he can see that's a possibility, he doesn't quite like to admit it.
He - so there's rhetoric coming from time to time. He comes out with his blood-curdling rhetoric about it, creating his own gravediggers and all the rest of it.
CONAN: Vampires, yes.
Mr. WHEEN: And there's an awful lot about vampires and horror stories and ghosts and phantoms and things. And quite right, too, actually, because the other part of "Das Kapital," I mean, it's a very strange book. It's got so many different styles. But part of it is a kind of Dickensian portrait of mid-19th-century capitalism, horrific conditions in the factories, of 9-nine-year children working 13 hours a day and all those sorts of things. So you can see why it's a horror story and why he talks about vampires.
But he does - I think also he does notice. This is why - one of the reasons why I think he is still worth reading and thinking about. He does notice earlier than most champions of capitalism that there is an inherent instability in the system. The…
CONAN: Boom and bust. Yeah.
Mr. WHEEN: It's boom and bust. I mean, the rhythm of it is boom and bust, like breathing in and breathing out. But it has to do that to continue and to grow and that there it's full of contradictions. You see, capitalism depends on competition and failures. Competition is an outfit, but, of course, actually if you get into the system and you want to be a successful capitalist, you do your utmost to destroy the competition.
And so there is this some - well, actually, the mid-20th-century economist, free market economist, great hero to entrepreneurs, Joseph Schumpeter, coined the phrase creative destruction to describe how capitalism works. He said it's a system of creative destruction. Well, actually, when he wrote about that, he gave due tribute to Marx, said Marx was the first person to notice that it's creative and utterly destructive simultaneously, and that its creativity depends on this constant revolution, constantly destroying and creating anew; not just destroying your competitors, but destroying the methods that have been used in the past for making these products - anew technology, anew markets breaking open all sorts of things, creating a global market; and also, in the course of that, destroying all sorts of traditions and social relations.
It's not just economic. It's about people's lives, the habits of their work and their play - all those get torn apart in order to create the new market.
CONAN: Let's get a caller in. 800-989-8255. We'll begin with Donald(ph). Donald with us from - where is that ?
DONALD (Caller): Yeah, yes. Boerne in Texas.
CONAN: Go ahead, please.
DONALD: Hi, I majored in the evolution of economic analysis in the early '70s and I actually labored through a lot of "Das Kapital." A side issue - I recently turned my own political perspective on its head as I read a biography of John Kenneth Galbraith in liberal economics. And have you encountered any reaction lately, given that the new, I guess, polarization of politics in this country, people becoming more cynical about the "market economy," quote, unquote. And I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you.
CONAN: Okay, Donald, thank you.
Mr. WHEEN: Well, it is - I mean, at the same time as Marx was supposedly being buried right about 1990, the end of history and the triumph of capitalism, the - and the market, I mean, market fundamentalism really coming into its own, this new gospel, there is no alternative.
It was some - within a very few years of that, I think about 1998 that George Soros, of all people, a billionaire speculator, wrote a book called the "Crisis of Global Capitalism." And I wrote right about the same time after we'd have the Asian financial crisis and then the Russian meltdown.
Those are - a piece in the Financial Times in London headed Das Kapital Revisited. And only a few years earlier, we've been told the market is supreme, almost a godlike status given to it. It was sort of invisible, but omniscient all the rest of it.
And yet, within a very few years, there were all these crisis erupting all over the place, and even the beneficiaries of the system - the people who understood and played the system like George Soros - were beginning to sound the alarm and say this is getting out of control.
We've created a monster here. If we're not careful, it's going to destroy itself and us at the same time. And it's amazing to me how quickly that happened. The market triumphalism began to be a bit tempered and muted by these warnings. I mean, I think Bill Gates has occasionally said they view some of things not quite as apocalyptic as George Soros. But there has been this slight retreat from it and the feeling that perhaps the markets alone - absolutely unregulated and left its own devices - may not be the best way to ensure stability and prosperity for all and forever.
CONAN: We're talking about Francis Wheen's biography of "Das Kapital," part of our series on Books That Changed the World. More on the book and on the relevance of Karl Marx himself in a moment and we'll take more of your calls, of course: 800-989-8255. The e-mail address is talk@npr.org.
I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
We're talking today about Karl Marx and what's been called his masterpiece, "Das Kapital." It's part of our series on Books That Change the World. You can read about Marx's childhood and find the rest of our series at our Web site npr.org/talk.
We got this e-mail from Sheryl(ph), who writes: our local broadcaster read the promo for this segment as one of the books that change the World Series. So I wondered, did Karl Marx change the play-off between the two top baseball teams in the United States? Funny how one hears things.
Francis Wheen wrote the biography of Marx's "Das Kapital" in addition to a biography of Marx himself. He's with us today from the BBC Studio in London. If you'd like to write us e-mail, that's talk@npr.org. And our phone number is 800-989-8255, 800-989-TALK. And you can also go to our blog at npr.org/blogofthenation.
Let's get another caller on the line, Jonathan(ph) would - joins us, Jonathan calling from Iowa City.
JONATHAN (Caller): Hi. I appreciate this topic and your guest. I think it's an unfortunate irony that we live in an age, especially in the United States, where saying the word Marx is almost like a dirty word because of its link to communism. I think, from my point of view, one of the things that Marx was trying to do was make a link between academia and philosophy and real world and activism, which is sort of a noble goal for many people in the academia.
Unfortunately, because he successfully did that and became associated with the political party, the history of that political party and all of the things that unfolded in history after that have become now retroactively applied to Marx, which is really unfortunate because if - hadn't it been for that, I think people might appreciate Marx a lot more as a philosopher and a historian for everything that he contributed, from historical materialism to dialecticism.
Mr. WHEEN: I think that's very true. Part of the problem also is that he covers so many different disciplines. I mean, he was a philosopher, but he was also dealing with history, with geography, with economics, politics, literature - the dominant part (unintelligible) anything else, "Das Kapital." He set out to create a work of art. He kept referring to it as a work of art. It was, as I said earlier, like a gothic novel, all think about that, or Dante's "Inferno" indeed.
And part of the problem is he falls between disciplines. I mean, I've noticed that schools in England, occasionally, the sort of 18-year-olds, I'll ask them: Do you do Marx if you're doing economics? They'll say definitely. One said, no, I'll ask my teacher. And he said, no, no, ask in philosophy and they asked in philosophy, said, no, I think he's covered by history probably, and he ends up not being read by any of them.
JONATHAN: Mm-hmm. I think it would do more people a service if we took Marx a bit more seriously and didn't dismiss him as some communist trash or something.
CONAN: As a failure, I mean, that's the perception is that he came up with his idea - was tried and it failed.
Mr. WHEEN: Well, it wasn't tried, though. I mean - and also the idea - I mean, the idea was not so much a prescriptive idea. I'm using it earlier. The difference to his description, his prescription - I mean, his vision of a communist society, if you would call it that, is fairly sketchy, and he doesn't really go into much detail about it. What he mainly focuses on is the contradictions and the inherent instabilities in the existing system that he's living in, industrial capitalism.
And on that, he's absolutely matchless, I think. And funny enough, about 10 years ago, there's a piece in the New Yorker all about Karl Marx, saying he was the next big thinker, which was very good news for me because I was just writing my (unintelligible) and the question of old Wall Street banker. Blaker wrote the piece from the New Yorker when he was holidaying with a friend of his from Wall Street.
And so they had Marx books on the bedside table. He said, you don't read Karl Marx. Oh, yes, we'll read him on Wall Street. No one understood capitalism better. And I thought, well, that's sort of very well for Wall Street banks to read him, but why should they have all the fun? Why the rest of us give him a go and learn something as well?
CONAN: Marx himself was a mass of contradictions. You described him as a curious hybrid of ferocious self-confidence and anguish self-doubt. Part of the reason it took him so long to finish this book?
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, yes. Well, it was hopeless trying to get him to finish anything. I mean, part of his problem was that this - what he was trying to write about was so huge and all-embracing. I mean, I know the problem myself, trying to write books. You can't botch, leave anything out. One line of inquiry leads to another.
It's a bit like, you know, if you Google things on the Internet, you go to some Web site, and then there's an interesting link there. So you then click on that. That leads to something else that looks rather promising. So you click on that, and an hour later, you've gone down this chain of consequences and you're miles from where you've started. But you haven't actually got any further in the certain sense.
CONAN: And he also wrote the book, most of it in London, in the British library and - in conditions of just horrible poverty.
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, yes. Well, that was - I mean, the other thing. The passion in his work definitely comes from a sense of resentment about his own conditions that he's living there. I mean, for a long time in London, he was living in two small rooms in Soho with a large family. And they had no money at all, and they were bailed out by his friend, Friedrich Engels, who was a successful industrialist in Manchester.
But half the time - I mean, Prussian spies used to wait outside his apartment, sent over by the king of Prussia to spy on him. And they would report back. You can read their report, saying, we don't understand that he hasn't come out for three days now. What is he plotting in there? And you then read Marx's letters for Engels for the same three days, saying, I can't leave the apartment because my trousers are at the pawnshop. They're in hawk(ph). And so I have no clothes to wear until I can raise some money and send my wife at the pawnshop to get some clothes for me to wear. So that was the scandalous thing. I mean, he could barely afford a loaf of bread half the time.
CONAN: Let's go to another caller on the line and this is Mary(ph), Mary from Portland, Oregon.
MARY (Caller): Hello.
CONAN: Hi, Mary, you're on the air.
MARY: Hi. I am and working on a thesis about sort of capitalism and activism against it. And I have a question for Mr. Wheen. If, that if revolution will happen when a certain point has been reached, I sort of see that we are reaching that point as far as corporate - corporations controlling our economy and sort of hurting the environment, and we are reaching a point where at first the disenfranchised were against it.
And now the intelligentsia, Al Gore and Robert Bare(ph) and those type of people are joining in, saying that capitalism is unsustainable. Do you see the end of capitalism coming soon?
Mr. WHEEN: I think it would be rash to see the end of capitalism coming soon, and perhaps one should heed the lesson of Marx, who every time there was a financial crisis happening particularly in the 1860s, rather - but the succession in the 1970s, succession of financial crisis. And every time, he would lick his lips and rub his hands and say, this must be it. This is the big one. It's all going to come crashing down. And then it didn't.
And we've been through a good many crisis and recessions since then. And it does have a remarkable resilience, the system, which as I say, I mean, in parts of his work, he acknowledges, so I think it would be a mistake to assume that this really is it. But on the other hand, there's no doubt that all of instability he described is as much an evidence today as it ever was. I mean, I mentioned George Soros earlier in his book about the crisis of global capitalism.
He keeps saying, the system left to itself shows no tendency towards equilibrium. I mean, there's a lot of talk about equilibrium in the market economy, but actually there is no sign of - or tendency towards that without some sort of restraining influences, which of course is why. Someone mentioned Galbraith earlier, who was a great Keynesian.
I mean, why Keynesianism came in at the 20th century after the '20s and '30s and all the disasters then. It was clear that acts to system was on the brink of collapse, unless there could be some sort of new deal, some sort of involvement in the market to temper its excesses, its sort of wild speculative manias and things like that, particularly after Wall Street Crash in the Hungry '30s and all the rest of it.
And so for much of the 20th century, it was restrained and tempered. But then, by about 1980 or so, the new era of market fundamentalism came in with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the rest of it. And I think we're now seeing the consequences thereafter and perhaps tiptoeing back towards some form of sort of latter-day Keynesianism almost. I think the ghost of Galbraith would be rather amused to see what's happening.
CONAN: Mary, thanks very much.
MARY: Thank you.
CONAN: Here's an e-mail we got from Joel(ph) in Salisbury, Maryland, I believe Marx predicted the development of capitalism would bring about an ever increasing inequality, concentrating more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Does not the explosive growth and the gap between the rich and the rest of us over the past 20 years or so seem to validate that observation? A silver at the top of the ladder now - a sliver at the top of the ladder now on the percentage of all the wealth twice that of 1980.
Mr. WHEEN: Absolutely. Yes, yes. I think he's utterly vindicated in that, as in many other things. I mean, as in his description of the pattern of boom and bust and recession and growth. And at the heart of "Das Kapital" is an argument that capitalism depends on exploitation. I mean, if you have to summarize it in a sentence, it's very hard, it's a vast work. But that is, at the heart of it, the recurring theme. It's about exploitation and alienation, if you like, as well. I mean, there are many sub themes. And I think that's as true today as it ever is.
I mean, you only have to look at the parasitic(ph) places around the world where actually - where your trainers are made or your T-shirts are made, all the call centers or - that ring you up, trying to sell you things, to see that exploitation is still at the heart of it, and will continue to be so because, of course, that is what drives it.
CONAN: Let's get Mark(ph) on the line. Mark with us from South Bend in Indiana.
MARK (Caller): Hi, Neal. Thank you for taking my call. I was - it is a very interesting discussion. I really appreciate it. I was listening to it, driving home. And I was thinking about my experience when I taught Marx to undergraduates at a college I teach at. And one of the things I tried to stress with them who Marx is a, sort of, relic of, sort of, past in some ways is that as often, the United States that I have real emphasis or at least to get some focus on am I a Marxist or not when I read this?
It's somewhat like with feminism, too, I suppose. But Marx, especially, if I read this, do I have to - and I agree with it, does that make me a Marxist? And one of the things that I think that creates some resistance - and I've tried to encourage students to read - it was a sense of does this help you make sense of the world that you live in today or not?
And maybe, part of it does and part of it doesn't, and you don't have to decide whether you're a Marxist or not based on that. You can just decide does this help us make sense of capitalism, which is, of course, what Marx was writing about. And a couple of things I found, particularly, that students were connected with was one Marx's perception of how radical capitalism was in terms of changing things and how irrelevant tradition and things like religion were.
If they gotten away of capitalism growing - capitalism was paid basically for, you know, removing them. And so why is religion so sort of made fun of on television, on commercials, because it sells things. And likewise, the focus on commodification of so many things including today's lifestyles, revolution and the likes. Students can often find those things very interesting with Marx. They could get something to think about even if they are not necessarily going to become a socialist.
Mr. WHEEN: Yes. I mean, commodification and commodities - actually, the very first chapter of volume one is on commodities. And it was probably a mistake in many ways because it's the most abstract and difficult chapter of that whole volume. And Engels, Marx's friend, actually complained when he saw the manuscript. He said, how could you put this right at the front? No one will get any further in the book. And Marx, rather grumpily, said, well, I assume a reader who's prepared to make some effort. And unfortunately, a lot of readers didn't make the effort and didn't get any further.
But it is a sort of abstract meditation almost on what is a commodity, and he introduces this idea of commodity fetishism as he puts it. I mean, this goes way beyond conventional economics, classical economics. It's almost a work of philosophy or spiritual meditation, as I say. And he talks about the fetishism of commodities. And you only have to look at the cues around the block to buy an iPhone and the sort of the talismanic quality of every new commodity that comes on the market to see that pure economics doesn't necessarily account fully for the extraordinary appeal these things have and the value they acquire.
I mean, it is some - it's way beyond mere the labor theory of value, which he also writes about. There is also this element of magic in it which he describes I think far more vividly. Well, nobody had really described it before because classical economists didn't really go in for that sort of philosophy or the religious element of it. I mean, ascribing fetishistic qualities rather like a religious icon or the bones of a saint or something, but I mean it is like that. And every time a commodity comes on the market, I think about Marx. And I think he would have enjoyed the iPhone.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CONAN: Mark, thanks very much for the call.
MARK: You're welcome. Thank you.
CONAN: We're talking with Francis Wheen about his new biography of "Das Kapital." You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Let's get Elizabeth(ph) on the line, with us from Los Angeles.
ELIZABETH (Caller): Hey. How are you? I actually took a course where we covered Hegel first then Kierkegaard and finally Marx. And I was wondering if you could at all about what it was exactly that he rejected in Hegel. I mean, I don't want you to go too far back…
CONAN: Oh, please don't.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ELIZABETH: Excuse me?
CONAN: I was saying please don't go too far.
ELIZABETH: No, no, no, no. But one thing - I mean, I got the feeling for him that he was this deeply spiritual person and I wasn't exactly sure why I got that feeling. I don't think he's usually painted like that, but I got the feeling that he really wanted to take a closer look at our values as values that don't come from the sky or from God, but from us. You know, he said they were usually the values of the ruling class and…
CONAN: He does write a lot about the soul, doesn't he, Francis Wheen?
Mr. WHEEN: Yes, he does. I mean, he was not a spiritual person in a sense of being religious, but he was fascinated by religion. I mean, he started in a sense as a theologian. I mean, his whole life was a succession of dialectical exchanges if you want to put it that way. So he started by criticizing religion. That then led him into philosophy. And after his argument with the philosophers, including Hegel, he then moved on to political economy and so forth but incorporated all these things into his later work. And so religion does loom large, and he certainly knew a lot about it. And he had a rather interesting religious background himself, coming from Jewish…
ELIZABETH: Right. I also (unintelligible)…
Mr. WHEEN: …long line of rabbis among other things.
ELIZABETH: …but - oh, sorry.
Mr. WHEEN: No, no.
ELIZABETH: I heard he was originally a poet, or he wanted to be a poet.
CONAN: He wrote a novel.
Mr. WHEEN: Yes. He…
ELIZABETH: Right.
Mr. WHEEN: …did write poetry in his youth and he also wrote a novel which was not published. But he wanted to be a poet. And he always revered poets, which is why when, I mean, when as he put it, as he was a student, the realm of poetry collapsed before him and he realized he couldn't be a poet.
For the rest of his life, he adored poets and he was a friend, for example, of Heinrich Heine, the great German poet. And he made allowances for him that he wouldn't make for political opponents or other people who disagreed with him. And as he used to say to his children, poets are strange fish and they must be allowed to go their own ways. They are so special breed. And he was slightly in awe of poets. And if you read any of his work, especially "Das Kapital," it's full of poetry, as I say, from Dante to Goethe, to Heine, Shakespeare - they're all in there. I mean, it is a work of literature as much as a work of economics or anything else.
CONAN: Elizabeth, thanks very much.
ELIZABETH: Great. Thank you so much.
CONAN: Bye-bye. And let me just, in way of conclusion, ask you about his - one of his favorite pieces of literature - a work that you referred to several times in your biography of "Das Kapital" and that's "Frankenstein."
Mr. WHEEN: Yes. Well, it's actually obvious when you think about it that he's writing about a monster created by humans that then comes to life violently and starts menacing its own creator. And this is a very good analogy for how he looks at commodities. They are these inanimate objects which human beings create. But in the process of creating the commodities, the human beings, the workers in the factories are reduced to the level of machines, of inanimate objects, while the commodities assume this extraordinary vigor and life and indeed menace, and become far more lively than the supposedly human people who've created them, who were reduced to the status of objects. And so you can see why again and again he came back to the Frankenstein image that we have created our own monster.
CONAN: I think he also liked the image of the tortures and pitchforks going after it.
Mr. WHEEN: Oh, yeah, yeah. He liked a bit of blood-curdling stuff. I mean, the vampires, you mentioned earlier - it's blood and gore. Maybe someday someone will make an epic movie based on "Das Kapital" and it'll be a very much for only 18-year-olds and above, I think.
CONAN: Francis Wheen, thanks very much for being with us today.
Francis Wheen's new book is a biography of "Das Kapital." It's part of the series published by The Atlantic Monthly Press on Books that Changed the World. And Francis Wheen joined us today from BBC studios in London.
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