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Larry Willmore quoted Popper on Marx: 
 
"one cannot do justice to Marx without recognizing his sincerity.   
His open-mindedness, his sense of facts, his distrust of verbiage,  
and especially of moralizing verbiage, made him one of the world's  
most influential fighters against hypocrisy and pharisaism. ... His  
sincerity in his search for truth and his intellectual honesty  
distinguish him, I believe, from many of his followers."   
 
Well, I'm quite sure Karl Popper was right about many things, but I  
can't believe his opinions on Marx fall in that category.  His "sense  
of facts"? Anyone who believes that Marx marshalled facts  
correctly, or even honestly, should read George Boyer's "The  
Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto" (Journal of  
Economic Perspectives 12, Fall 1998) for starters. Marx chose his  
facts carefully, and later in life chose to ignore lots of obvious facts  
that didn't suit his views.  I also have a hard time understanding  
how Popper could praise Marx for distrusting verbiage.  As regards  
hypocrisy, Paul Johnson's chapter on Marx in *Intellectuals*  
demonstrates how Marx treated the few members of the proletariat  
he ever had direct contact with.  I recognize that ideas and  
personalities must be separated, but when the issue of hypocrisy  
is raised . . . .  Whatever Marx's merits, I don't see them falling in  
the categories cited by Popper.   
 
Neil Skaggs 
Illinois State University 
 
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