What if Karl Marx joined the California Gold Rush? Karl Marx and the Lost California Manifesto by Scott D. Carlson Book Tour with Guest Post & Author Interview
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In Karl Marx and the Lost California Manifesto, Scott D. Carlson delivers a sharp, witty, and unexpectedly moving tale of ideals colliding with reality in Gold Rush California. This is history reimagined through humor and heart—a rollicking literary adventure about reinvention, belief, and belonging.
It’s 1849, and Karl Marx, drowning in debt and desperation, flees London for the promise of California’s gold fields. When he arrives in San Francisco, he meets Sixto—a quick-thinking young man raised by padres and now on the run from a deranged sailor. Together, they embark on a journey through the Sierra Nevada that’s part survival story, part philosophical farce. Pursued by hapless Prussian agents seeking to seize his Manifesto, Marx and Sixto cross paths with a rogue’s gallery of Gold Rush eccentrics: naked argonauts, runaway slaves, rugged miners, and a Miwok tribe whose communal life forces Marx to reconsider everything he thought he knew about revolution and humanity. Through Sixto’s wry and tender narration, this story becomes not just a comic adventure but a meditation on the search for belonging, conviction, and connection in a restless new world.
Scott D. Carlson’s writing brims with humor, empathy, and intellectual spark. Having worked as a taxi driver, cook, hospital orderly, lawyer, and teacher, he writes with a lived-in understanding of both folly and grace. He earned his MA in Creative Writing from New York University and now calls the Bay Area home. Carlson’s fiction blends literary craft with an explorer’s curiosity, examining how ordinary lives intersect with history’s grandest ideas. Find more about the author on his website.
Amazon: https://bit.ly/4nWC6nK
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242443484-karl-marx-and-the-lost-california-manifesto
Excerpt:
From Lt. Junger and Lt. Fischel
to King Frederick William IV
May 14, 1849
To: His Excellency King of Prussia Frederick William IV
Re: Herr Karl Marx
To our most high King, the greatest sovereign in all of Europe—
Ja in all the world! Your servants have cleverly followed, if we do
humbly say so ourselves, Herr Marx and his Junge companion to
this settlement called Sacramento, in the hinterland of California.
It is a place even more remote and Scheiß-ridden than San
Francisco. A flood came and turned the entire settlement into one
great cesspool of Scheiß, mud, offal, garbage, and dead beasts.
There are no wonderful water closets here like those your Majesty
has at Sanssouci—in fact, there are no water closets at all. Always
the whole settlement smells like the hind end of a peasant horse.
Expertly disguised as miners from Chili, we left San Francisco
on the same steamboat as did Marx, the Junge, and their donkey.
Because of our Chilian dress, we met on the boat the hostility
of some drunken Americans, who insisted we must keep first
to the aft, then to the forward part of the boat. This conformed
perfectly with our plan, as we could then stay close to Marx and his
accomplice.
In the morning, we witnessed Herr Marx engage in argument
with some of the passengers and then, as seems to be his habit, with
the boat captain. Marx cannot tolerate anyone other than himself
being the “captain.” As is also his habit of late, he came out on the
losing end. He then ordered the boat captain to deliver him and the
Junge to the bank of the river. The captain resisted but finally gave
in, no doubt thinking it best just to be rid of Marx, and abruptly
deposited them on a spit of sand in the river channel.
Soon after, we asked the captain to bank the boat and we
disembarked. After fighting our way through the bulrushes, we
came out at a point from which we saw Marx and the Junge setting
off overland. On the boat, Marx had been engaging in some very
odd gymnastics, and he continued these as they set off toward
the east. They, and we, did not know that they were headed in the
direction of a native village, which they eventually entered.
From a distance we waited as the subversives conducted in the
village what we believe to be benign business with an American
woodsman. After seeing them leave, we entered the village.
Through the woodsman there, we learned that the natives had
been entertained by Marx, and that they expected us to perform
for them too. Wanting to please, your servants proudly represented
the Prussian nation by performing a very creditable Lauschaer
Galopp, for which we received a standing ovation. The woodsman
also revealed to us Marx’s probable ultimate destination in the
mountains beyond Sacramento. As much as we then wanted to
continue with our surveillance, our native hosts said we must,
before leaving, eat a local dish of mashed boiled acorns garnished
with bits of tuberous material. We acceded, unfortunately, as almost
immediately we were both befallen with, we are sorry to offend your
Excellency, explosiver Durchfall, which disabled us for the rest of
the day and that night.
However, the next day, we were able to muster the strength to
set off for this sorry settlement that makes a Latvian hamlet seem
like Baden-Baden. Here ensued some temporary trouble from
which we will soon extricate ourselves and again be hot on the trail
of Herr Marx, to wit: We eventually located Marx and the Junge in
one of the several houses of drink and gambling—an establishment
charmingly referred to locally as a “café chantant.” This house also
featured music provided by a French woman and an American
piano player who had to be, we are sure, working together for the
first time. The music was not to our taste, nor was the very bad
beer—how we greatly miss the beloved brews of home! The French
woman was an apparent lady of the night posing as a mumbling
chanteuse. The American played in the style of a Lutheran church
organist, and the mismatch resulted in loud catcalls from the surly
patrons.
We followed Marx and companion to a gambling table with
the intent that we might be able to bankrupt him, but quickly
discovered that the table, run by a Mexican card dealer, was
exclusively for speakers of Spanish. The confusion caused by this
language obstacle was compounded by the unfamiliar game being
played, and further so by having to endure the awful music. Oh
how we miss the strain of accordions playing the Hohenfriedberger
Marsch in a Biergarten! In short, we have been unusually frugal
with your Excellency’s money, but we risked an imprudently large
bet in the game and lost. Conversely, Marx, aided by the Spanish-speaking
Junge, bet against long odds with what we believe was one
of his last coins—and won.
Apparently feeling flush, Herr Marx proceeded to drink several
glasses of the lousy beer. Then, in a break in the chanteuse’s “music,”
and presumably inspired by her nationality, Marx stood upon a
table and began singing the revolutionary Marseillaise anthem.
We were alert that this might be a signal or coded message to other
revolutionaries in and around the “chantant,” but the catcalls grew
very loud and Herr Marx was struck by bottles thrown by a table of
Australians. One of the Australians then turned his attention to us.
He wanted to know “what the hell you’re gawkin’ at” and wrongly
accused us of Sodomitic desires. His compatriots soon joined in
abusing us. We could not speak openly without giving away our
identities to Marx. And we are not French puffs “de crème.” One
thing led to another, and we found ourselves outside in a fistfight
with the Australians. We fought bravely but were outnumbered and
were pitched into a mudhole caused by the recent flooding. To add
insult to injury, the Australians exposed us to several lewd gestures
which were of a nature unlike any we have ever seen, even in a
Prussian enlisted men’s barracks. However, the Australians received
a comeuppance of sorts as they—and we, too, unfortunately—were
arrested by constables and arraigned by the local justice of the
peace, who apparently makes his living by taxing foreigners with
outrageous fines, nonpayment of which results in confinement.
We had only a small sum left after the gambling table and thus are
enduring an unpleasant stay in the “hoosegow” with the Australians
but expect to be released shortly.
Your Excellency may be assured that despite losing Herr Marx’s
trail for a short time, we are confident we will be able to find him,
as we know of his intended destination. However, we regret to
report that we are very short of funds. Our accidental gambling
loss has drained our “treasury,” so to speak—please send money,
your Highness! You may send it to Sacramento, in care of our cover
names, “Hozay and Horhay the Chilians.”
We thank you profusely and remain deeply dedicated to your
service.
Your servants,
Lt. Ernst Junger
Lt. Franz Fischel
Guest Post:
While Researching My Story, I Discovered…
There’s a lot that’s been written about the California gold rush, by those who were in it, and then later by historians, etc. Read these accounts and histories and you will be astonished. Tens of thousands of people–mostly men–came from all over the world: Mexico, China, Australia, South America, all kinds of Europeans. And, of course, Americans of all stripes, from farmboys up to doctors and New York lawyers. First, you often see what kind of hope, or desperation, drove someone to choose to leave whatever kind of life they were living and travel thousands of miles for the chance to get rich. And then they had to figure out how to get there. Remember, this is the late 1840s, so their journeys just getting to California are epic. For most, they had to undertake either a long, dangerous sea voyage, or go overland across a continent, much of which was, other than for Native Americans and a very few other Americans, a largely uncharted “wild west.” And you couldn’t do this alone, so you often had to join strangers and travel with them, which would be a challenge itself.
Apart from the huge logistic challenges, there were diseases, storms, hunger, accidents, and conflicts with natives. Once in California, these tens of thousands of newcomers essentially invade the long-existing cultures of the “Californios”--the descendants of Mexicans who settled early California– and the Native Americans. This collision alone was enormous, and had a huge influence on shaping the California we know today. Then you contain this hyper-greedy horde in a relatively small area, in a couple of fast-growing towns and then in the mountains. The mix of races and nationalities, of greed and testosterone and desperation (and let’s not forget whiskey), often produced shocking violence. There was a great disparity of luck–one man gets filthy rich; his neighbor starves and gets scurvy. For me the one word that most comes to mind when reading about the gold rush is “wild.” The whole scene was the wildest of the “wild west.”
Author Interview:
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