Historical Notes: Cursing the Carbuncles

Karl Marx labored single-mindedly for 15 years to produce his monumental Das Kapital, and all the while he was in pain. He suffered from an enlarged liver, hemorrhoids, recurrent eye infections, insomnia and boils. But Marx's bitter prophecy that the bourgeoisie would "have cause to remember my carbuncles" hardly applies today. Last week, on the 100th anniversary of the publication in Hamburg of the first, and most important, volume of Das Kapital, the only people who seemed to be in agony over Marx's ideas were his own Communist heirs.

The Chinese and...