ABSTRACT
Behind every great man, so they say, is a great… carbunclc. In Karl Marx's ease, at least. As his most recent biographer makes clear (Wheen 1999), the carbuncle on the backside of capitalism suffered from painful pustules on his own protuberant posterior. So bad was this plague of suppurating boils that the revolutionary's revolutionary often found himself unable to sit down, which was a bit of a bummer in the British Library Reading Room, as you can well imagine. On doctor's orders, indeed, he once repaired to his boudoir for three weeks' rest, recuperation and (temporary) renunciation of revolutionary thoughts. Marx, in short, wasn't so much a red under the bed as a red on top of the bed, writhing in agony for good measure. God is a capitalist, after all.
