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• Born: 5 May 1818
• Birthplace: Trier, Germany (Prussia)
• Died: 14 March 1883
• Best Known As: Founder of modern communism

Karl Marx studied law and philosophy, and was initially influenced by the works of G. W. F. Hegel. Marx rejected the idealism of Hegel and developed a more materialistic theory of history as science, ultimately predicting that the triumph of the working class was inevitable. With his collaborator Friedrich Engels, Marx published the Communist Manifesto in 1848. Exiled from Europe, Marx lived in London, England and earned money through contributions to various newspapers, including the New York Tribune. Marx devoted the last decades of his life to working on Das Kapital, and was active in early communist organizations. His work greatly influenced modern socialism, and he is considered one of the founders of economic history and sociology.

Marx's theories were put into action in Russia by revolutionary V.I. Lenin... Marx is no relation to comedian Groucho Marx.

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The German philosopher, radical economist, and revolutionary leader Karl Marx (1818-1883) founded modern "scientific" socialism. His basic ideas - known as Marxism - form the foundation of socialist and communist movements throughout the world.

Karl Marx spent most of his life in exile. He was exiled from his native Prussia in 1849 and went to Paris, from which he was expelled a few months later. He then settled in London, where he spent the rest of his life in dire poverty and relative obscurity. He was hardly known to the English public in his lifetime. His reputation as a radical thinker began to spread only after the emergence of the socialist parties in Europe, especially in Germany and France, in the 1870s and 1880s. From then on, Marx's theories continued to be hotly debated in the growing labor and socialist movements everywhere, including Czarist Russia.

By the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, socialist parties everywhere had by and large accepted a considerable measure of Marxism, even though with modifications. This was especially true of the idea of the class struggle and the establishment of a socialist society, in which economic exploitation and social inequality would be abolished. Marxism achieved its first great triumph in the Russian Revolution of 1917, when its successful leader, V. I. Lenin, a lifelong disciple of Marx, organized the Soviet Union as a proletarian dictatorship based on Marx's philosophy, as Lenin interpreted it. Henceforth, Marx became a world figure and his theories a subject of universal attention and controversy.

Early Life

Marx was born in Trier, Rhenish Prussia, on May 5, 1818, the son of Heinrich Marx, a lawyer, and Henriette Presburg Marx, a Dutchwoman. Both Heinrich and Henriette were descendants of a long line of rabbis. Barred from the practice of law as a Jew, Heinrich Marx became converted to Lutheranism about 1817, and Karl was baptized in the same church in 1824, at the age of 6. Karl attended a Lutheran elementary school but later became an atheist and materialist, rejecting both the Christian and Jewish religions. It was he who coined the aphorism "Religion is the opium of the people," a cardinal principle in modern communism.

Karl attended the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Trier for 5 years, graduating in 1835, at the age of 17. The gymnasium curriculum was the usual classical one - history, mathematics, literature, and languages, particularly Greek and Latin. Karl became proficient in French and Latin, both of which he learned to read and write fluently. In later years he taught himself other languages, so that as a mature scholar he could also read Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Russian, and English. As his articles in the New York Daily Tribune show, he came to handle the English language masterfully (he loved Shakespeare, whose works he knew by heart), although he never lost his heavy Teutonic accent in speaking.

In October 1835 Marx matriculated in Bonn University, where he attended courses primarily in jurisprudence, as it was his father's ardent wish that he become a lawyer. Marx, however, was more interested in philosophy and literature than in law. He wanted to be a poet and dramatist, and in his student days he wrote a great deal of poetry - most of it preserved - which in his mature years he rightly recognized as imitative and mediocre. He spent a year at Bonn, studying little but roistering and drinking. He spent a day in jail for disturbing the peace and fought one duel, in which he was wounded in the right eye. He also piled up heavy debts.

Marx's dismayed father took him out of Bonn and had him enter the University of Berlin, then a hub of intellectual ferment. In Berlin a galaxy of brilliant thinkers was challenging existing institutions and ideas, including religion, philosophy, ethics, and politics. The spirit of the great philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was still palpable there. A group known as the Young Hegelians, which included teachers such as Bruno Bauer and bright, philosophically oriented students, met frequently to debate and interpret the subtle ideas of the master. Young Marx soon became a member of the Young Hegelian circle and was deeply influenced by its prevailing ideas.

Marx spent more than 4 years in Berlin, completing his studies there in March 1841. He had given up jurisprudence and devoted himself primarily to philosophy. On April 15, 1841, the University of Jena awarded "Carolo Henrico Marx" the degree of doctor of philosophy on the strength of his abstruse and learned dissertation, Difference between Democritean and Epicurean Natural Philosophy, which was based on Greek-language sources.

His Exile

Marx's hopes of teaching philosophy at Bonn University were frustrated by the reactionary policy of the Prussian government. He then turned to writing and journalism for his livelihood. In 1842 he became editor of the liberal Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, but it was suppressed by the Berlin government the following year. Marx then moved to Paris. There he first came in contact with the working class, gave up philosophy as a life goal, and undertook his serious study of economics.

In January 1845 Marx was expelled from France "at the instigation of the Prussian government," as he said. He moved to Brussels, where he lived until 1848 and where he founded the German Workers' party and was active in the Communist League. It was for the latter that he, with his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, published, in 1848, the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party (known as the Communist Manifesto). Expelled by the Belgian government for his radicalism, Marx moved back to Cologne, where he became editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in June 1848. Less than a year later, in May 1849, the paper was suppressed by the Prussian government, and Marx himself was exiled. He returned to Paris, but in September the French government expelled him again. Hounded from the Continent, Marx finally settled in London, where he lived as a stateless exile (Britain denied him citizenship and Prussia refused to renaturalize him) for the rest of his life.

In London, Marx's sole means of support was journalism. He wrote for both German-and English-language publications. From August 1852 to March 1862 he was correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune, contributing a total of about 355 articles, many of which were used by that paper as leading (unsigned) editorials. Journalism, however, paid wretchedly (£2 per article); Marx was literally saved from starvation by the continuous financial support of Engels. In 1864 Marx helped to found in London the International Workingmen's Association (known as the First International), for which he wrote the inaugural address. In 1872 he dissolved the International, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the anarchists under the leadership of Mikhail Bakunin. Thereafter, Marx's political activities were confined mainly to correspondence with radicals in Europe and America, offering advice and helping to shape the socialist and labor movements.

Appearance and Personal Life

Marx was short and stocky, with a bushy head of hair and flashing eyes. His skin was swarthy, so that his family and friends called him Mohr in German, or Moor in English. He himself adopted the nickname and used it with intimates. His physique gave an impression of vigor, despite the fact that he was a latent tubercular (four of his younger siblings died of tuberculosis). A man of immense learning and sharp intellectual power, Marx, often impatient and irascible, antagonized people by his sardonic wit, bluntness, and dogmatism, which bordered on arrogance. His enemies were legion. Yet, despite his deserved reputation as a hard and disagreeable person, he had a soft spot for children; he deeply loved his own daughters, who, in turn, adored him.

Marx was married to his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen, who was known as the "most beautiful girl in Trier," on June 19, 1843. She was totally devoted to him. She died of cancer on Dec. 2, 1881, at the age of 67. For Marx it was a blow from which he never recovered.

The Marxes had seven children, four of whom died in infancy or childhood. Of the three surviving daughters - Jenny (1844-1883), Laura (1845-1911), and Eleanor (1855-1898) - two married Frenchmen: Jenny, Charles Longuet; Laura, Paul Lafargue. Both of Marx's sons-in-law became prominent French socialists and members of Parliament. Eleanor lived with Edward Aveling and was active as a British labor organizer. Both Laura and Eleanor committed suicide.

Marx spent most of his working time in the British Museum, doing research both for his newspaper articles and his books. He was a most conscientious scholar, never satisfied with secondhand information but tracing facts and figures to their original sources. In preparation for Das Kapital, he read virtually every available work in economic and financial theory and practice in the major languages of Europe.

At home, Marx often stayed up till four in the morning, reading and making voluminous notes in his tight handwriting, which was so crabbed as to be almost unreadable. He was a heavy smoker of pipes and cigars, using up quantities of matches in the process. His workroom was densely smoke-filled. "Das Kapital," he told his son-in-law Paul Lafargue, "will not even pay for the cigars I smoked writing it."

Marx's excessive smoking, wine drinking, and consumption of heavily spiced foods may have been contributory causes to his illnesses, most of which would appear to be, in the light of modern knowledge, allergic and psychosomatic. In the last two decades of his life he was tormented by a mounting succession of ailments that would have tried the patience of Job. He suffered from hereditary liver derangement (of which, he claimed, his father died); frequent outbreaks of carbuncles and furuncles on his neck, chest, back, and buttocks (often he could not sit); toothaches; eye inflammations; lung abscesses; hemorrhoids; pleurisy; and persistent headaches and coughs that made sleep impossible without drugs. In the final dozen or so years of his life, he could no longer do any sustained intellectual work. He died in his armchair in London on March 14, 1883, about two months before his sixty-fifth birthday. He lies buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, where the grave is marked by a bust of him.

His Works

Marx's writings fall into two general categories, the polemical-philosophical and the economic-political. The first reflected his Hegelian-idealistic period; the second, his revolutionary-political interests.

Marx wrote hundreds of articles, brochures, and reports but few books as such. He published only five books during his lifetime. Two of them were polemical, and three were political-economic. The first, The Holy Family (1845), written in collaboration with Engels, was a polemic against Marx's former teacher and Young Hegelian philosopher Bruno Bauer. The second was Misère de la philosophie (The Poverty of Philosophy), written by Marx himself in French and published in Paris and Brussels in 1847. As its subtitle indicates, this polemical work was "An Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon."

Marx's third book, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, published serially in a German publication in New York City in 1852, is a brilliant historical-political analysis of the rise and intrigues of the Bonaparte who became Napoleon III. The remaining two books, both on economics, are the ones on which Marx's worldwide reputation rests: Critique of Political Economy and, more particularly, Das Kapital (Capital).

Critique was published in 1859, after about 14 years of intermittent research. Marx considered it merely a first installment, expecting to bring out additional volumes, but he scrapped his plan in favor of another approach. The result was Das Kapital, subtitled Critique of Political Economy, of which only the first volume appeared, in 1867, in Marx's lifetime. After his death, two other volumes were brought out by Engels on the basis of the materials Marx left behind. Volumes 2 (1885) and 3 (1894) can be properly regarded as works by Marx and Engels, rather than by Marx himself. Indeed, without Engels, as Marx admitted, the whole monumental enterprise might not have been produced at all. On the night of Aug. 16, 1867, when Marx completed correcting the proof sheets of volume 1, he wrote to Engels in Manchester: "I have YOU alone to thank that this has been made possible. Without your sacrifices for me I could never possibly have done the enormous work for the three volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks!"

A fourth volume of Das Kapital was brought together by Karl Kautsky after Engels's death. It was based on Marx's notes and materials from Critique of Political Economy and was published in three parts, under the title Theories of Surplus Value, between 1905 and 1910. A Russian edition, also in three parts, came out between 1954 and 1961, and an English translation in 1968.

Two of Marx's books were published posthumously. The Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850, written in 1871, appeared in 1895. It was, Engels wrote in his introduction, "Marx's first attempt, with the aid of his materialist conception, to explain a section of contemporary history from the given economic situation." The second posthumous work, The German Ideology, which Marx wrote in collaboration with Engels in 1845-1846, was not published in full until 1932. The book is an attack on the philosophers Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach and Max Stirner and on the so-called true socialists.

The rest of Marx's publications, mostly printed posthumously, consist of brochures. Herr Vogt (1860) is a furious polemic against a man named Karl Vogt, whom Marx accused of being a police spy. Wage-Labor and Capital (1884) is a reprint of newspaper articles. Critique of the Gotha Programme (1891) consists of notes which Marx sent to the German Socialist party congress in 1875. Wages, Price and Profit (1898) is an address that Marx delivered at the General Council of the International in 1865.

His Ideas

Marx's world importance does not lie in his economic system, which, as critics point out, was not original but was derived from the classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Das Kapital, indeed, is not primarily a technical work on economics but one that uses economic materials to establish a moral-philosophical-sociological structure. Marx's universal appeal lies in his moral approach to social-economic problems, in his insights into the relationships between institutions and values, and in his conception of the salvation of mankind. Hence Marx is best understood if one studies, not his economics, but his theory of history and politics.

The central idea in Marx's thought is the materialistic conception of history. This involves two basic notions: that the economic system at any given time determines the prevailing ideas; and that history is an ongoing process regulated - predetermined - by the economic institutions which evolve in regular stages.

The first notion turned Hegel upside down. In Hegel's view, history is determined by the universal idea (God), which shapes worldly institutions. Marx formulated the reverse: that institutions shape ideas. This is known as the materialistic interpretation of history. Marx's second notion, that of historical evolution, is connected with his concept of dialectics. He saw in history a continuing dialectical process, each stage of development being the product of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Thus thesis corresponds to the ancient, precapitalist period, when there were no classes or exploitation. Antithesis corresponds to the era of capitalism and labor exploitation. Synthesis is the final product - communism, under which capital would be owned in common and there would be no exploitation.

To Marx, capitalism is the last stage of historical development before communism. The proletariat, produced by capitalism, is the last historical class. The two are fated to be in conflict - the class struggle, which Marx proclaimed so eloquently in the Communist Manifesto - until the proletariat is inevitably victorious and establishes a transitional order, the proletarian dictatorship, a political system which Marx did not elaborate or explain. The proletarian dictatorship, in turn, evolves into communism, or the classless society, the final stage of historical development, when there are no classes, no exploitation, and no inequalities. The logical implication is that with the final establishment of communism, history comes to a sudden end. The dialectical process then presumably ceases, and there are no more historical evolutions or social struggles. This Marxist interpretation of history, with its final utopian-apocalyptic vision, has been criticized in the noncommunist world as historically inaccurate, scientifically untenable, and logically absurd.

Nevertheless, Marx's message of an earthly paradise has provided millions with hope and new meaning of life. From this point of view, one may agree with the Austrian economist Joseph A. Schumpeter that "Marxism is a religion" and Marx is its "prophet."

Further Reading

The first volumes in the 13-volume Karl Marx Library, edited and translated by Saul K. Padover, have been published: Karl Marx on Revolution, vol. 1 (1971) and Karl Marx on the First International, vol. 2 (1972).

There are no scholarly, comprehensive, or objective biographies of Marx. The best is Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (1935), but it is now outdated. Also outdated are Otto Rühle, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (1929), and Karl Korsch, Karl Marx (1938). A more recent book, Robert Payne, Marx (1968), lacks analysis, and John Lewis, The Life and Teaching of Karl Marx (1965), is slanted. Sir Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939), is recommended as an acute interpretation of Marx's life, although it is not a biography. A political and intellectual biography of Marx and Engels is Oscar J. Hammen, The Red '48ers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1969). See also Edward Hallett Carr, Karl Marx: A Study in Fanaticism (1934), and Leopold Schwarzschild, The Red Prussian: The Life and Legend of Karl Marx (1947).

Recommended for the treatment of various aspects of Marxism are Sidney Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (1933); Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942); Henry B. Mayo, Democracy and Marxism (1955; published in 1960 as Introduction to Marxist Theory); Erich From, ed., Marx's Concept of Man (1961); Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour Movement: Years of the First International (1965); Bertram D. Wolfe, Marxism: One Hundred Years in the Life of a Doctrine (1965); Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought ofKarl Marx (1968); Henry Lefebvre, The Sociology of Marx (1968); Raymond Aron, Marxism and the Existentialists (1969); and Louis Althusser, For Marx (1969).

(1818-83) German philosopher, sociologist, socialist, and economist. Marx was born in Trier in the Rhineland of Jewish parents who had converted to nominal Protestantism in order to escape legal restrictions. He was educated at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, and completed a doctorate on classical philosophy. He became an ardent Young Hegelian, especially influenced by Feuerbach's materialist analysis of Christianity, which saw religion as a form of alienation. In 1842 Marx began his career as journalist and propagandist, moving around frequently as his newspapers were suppressed. In Paris in 1844 he met his lifelong collaborator Engels. Intellectual landmarks from this period are the ‘Paris Manuscripts’ (usually known in English as Economic-Philosophical MSS of 1844), Theses on Feuerbach (1845), and The German Ideology (1846). These works are essentially about alienation, discussed in a materialist way but with little reference to the proletariat and without Marx's later ‘scientific’ analysis of capitalism. Marx became more directly political with the Communist Manifesto (1848), with its peroration ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. working men of all countries, unite!’ 1848 was the ‘year of revolutions’ in Europe, but Marx was unable to have any practical influence on them. In 1849 he was expelled from Prussia and settled for the rest of his life in London. Here he produced his main economic works: Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (vol. i, 1867; vols. ii and iii published after Marx's death by Engels). He also wrote barbed and spiky comment on current affairs, especially in France, such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and The Civil War in France (about the Paris commune of 1871). Marx and Engels helped to found the International Working Men's Association (‘First International’: see international socialism) in 1864, but it became divided between their followers and those of Bakunin (expelled in 1872), and it was dissolved in 1876. However, socialist parties on Marxian lines emerged, especially in Germany, although in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx fiercely criticized the programme of the German socialist party for adopting slogans from Lassalle that Marx regarded as simplistic.

Marx's health was poor, as was his family, especially in the early London years when he depended on Engels's generosity. Only three of his seven children survived to adulthood.

Marx's influence has been immense in all the social sciences, and concepts associated with him are scattered throughout this Dictionary. Discussion of these concepts is therefore not repeated here, but see especially alienation; Asiatic mode of production; base/superstructure; capitalism; class; class consciousness; commodity-fetishism; communism; contradiction; dialectical materialism; dictatorship of the proletariat; factors of production; false consciousness; feudalism; forces of production; hegemony; historical materialism; ideology; imperialism; iron law of wages; primitive accumulation; primitive communism; reification; relations of production; relative autonomy; revisionism; surplus value; syndicalism; and withering away of the state. For Marxists and schools of Marxism, see also Althusser; Bolshevism; Bukharin; Fanon; Frankfurt School; Gramsci; Guevara; Kautsky; Leninism; Lukács; Luxemburg; Mao; Marcuse; Plekhanov; Poulantzas; Shining Path; Spartacists; Stalinism; and Trotskyism.

Marx's sociological insights (especially the importance of alienation in industrial society) are alive and central to political sociology. His economics, which he regarded as his most important work, is dead except to a few devotees. Most economic analysts agree that the Marxian labour theory of value, including of surplus value, cannot be rescued from its internal contradictions. Marx's historical materialism remains an influential approach to both history and philosophy. His work on French politics combines insight with invective, and destruction of myths with their creation, in a way that will continue to fascinate readers for generations to come.

For more information on Karl Heinrich Marx, visit Britannica.com.

Marx, Karl (1818-83). German revolutionary socialist. Born in the Rhineland to Jewish parents, Marx was educated in law, history, and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin before obtaining his doctorate on Greek philosophy at Jena in 1841. A radical young Hegelian, he turned to journalism, editing the liberal Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne until it was suppressed by the Prussian authorities in 1843. From then on Marx became virtually an exile, fleeing first to Paris where he began his lifelong partnership with Friedrich Engels, then to Brussels to meet workers' groups, where he and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848) as a rallying call for the proletarian class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. In 1849 he was tried for sedition, and though found not guilty, he was exiled once more, and made his home in London, studying and writing in the British Museum, and living off Engels's generous allowances. His most important book was Capital in which he set out to expose the flaws in classical political economy by showing how capitalism was not a neutral economic system, founded on timeless laws of supply and demand, but a highly exploitative system, characterized by contradictions that would eventually undermine and destroy it.

Marx, Karl Heinrich (Trier, 1818-1883, London), the son of a Jewish lawyer converted to Protestantism, studied philosophy and law at Bonn and Berlin, where he came under the influence of Hegel. He took his PhD at Jena in 1841, but his radical political views debarred him from an academic career. When he worked as a journalist in Cologne his newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, was suppressed by the censor. He left Germany for Paris, where he met H. Heine, L. Börne, and Arnold Ruge (1803-80), with whom he edited the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, in which he introduced his major polemics against Hegel, Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie (1844). From his stay in Paris dates his friendship with F. Engels. His reactions to the representative of the Hegelian Left, Bruno Bauer (1809-82), are reflected in Die Heilige Familie. In 1845 he wrote (again jointly with Engels) the eleven Thesen über Feuerbach, which criticize L. Feuerbach for totally failing to establish a link between materialism and history, and Die deutsche Ideologie, which prepares the way for Marx's conception of historical materialism. His tract Misère de la philosophie. Réponse à la philosophie de la misère de M. Proudhon was composed in Brussels (1847, published in German in 1885 as Das Elend der Philosophie) after the Prussian government had effectively pressed for his expulsion from France. The tract links him with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), whose views on the function of economic forces in social revolution Marx considered to be insufficiently radical. French socialism represents the third major influence upon Marx's work.

Marx and Engels joined the Communist League in Brussels, and together they drafted the Manifesto (see Kommunistisches Manifest) at a conference held in London in 1847. In the year of revolution (see Revolutionen 1848-9) Marx promoted his socialist and republican ideas for the last time on German soil by editing the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. For the remaining thirty years of his life he settled in London, from where he kept in touch with international affairs and expressed his views in journalistic and polemical writings. He disagreed with the Darwinist Karl Vogt (1817-95) and with Ferdinand Lassalle. From 1864 he headed the General Council of the International Working Men's Association (Internationale Arbeiterassoziation), which dissolved in 1876 in New York. In 1875 he criticized the relatively moderate programme of the German Socialist Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, see SPD).

The systematic reappraisal of materialistic socialism, at which Marx aimed, progressed in fragmented form. In 1859 he published Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, which contains the seed of his principal work, Das Kapital. Marx himself only published the first volume (1867), but Engels, using Marx's notes and drafts, completed vols. 2 (1885) and 3 (1895). In his theory of production, based on a dialectical triad, his only concession to Hegel, Marx distinguishes between the condition of production (Produktionsverhältnisse) and the efficiency of production (Produktionskräfte). He traces their historical development in Hegelian fashion and speculates on their function in an age of rapid industrialization, in which the ‘material’ threatened to become more important than Man. He sees the beginnings of the expansion of productivity in the slavery of antiquity, and in feudalism he sees the precursor of capitalism. In each phase the individual worker has been exploited, the difference being only one of degree and manner of exploitation. Marx sees in the surplus value (Mehrwert) the crucial margin by which the class owning the material and controlling the process of production exploits proletarians. Marx's appeal for a classless society in which all shared in the process of production on an equal basis determines his rudimentary theory of revolution.

Marx took a firm stand against the charge that his ideology represented an ‘abstract utopia’. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth, Ernst Bloch reviewed it in terms of a ‘concrete utopia’. The chief advocate of Marxism in German literature in the first half of the 20th c. is Brecht and in literary criticism and aesthetics G. Lukács. Marx's own sustained interest in literature and aesthetics (re-examined by S. S. Prawer in Marx and World Literature, 1976) resulted in his appraisal of ‘realistic’ (as distinct from ‘naturalistic’) literary production, and in all manner of imaginative writing he insisted on the congruence of form and convincing substance. Werke, Schriften, Briefe (7 vols.) ed. H. J. Lieber, P. Furth, and B. Kautsky, appeared 1960-9. A complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels (some 100 vols.) began to appear under the auspices of the Institute for Marxism-Leninism of the German Democratic Republic in 1975.

Marx, Karl (1818-83) The founder of revolutionary communism. Marx was born in Trier, and studied law at the university of Bonn, then history and philosophy at Berlin. From 1841 he worked on a radical newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung. In 1843 Marx married and moved to Paris, where he met Engels. His principal work of this time was the text now known as The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, which were published in the 1930s. During the period he was distancing himself from the young Hegelians, and studying the work of the British political economists, Adam Smith, David Ricardo (1772-1823), and James Mill. In the Manuscripts Marx introduces the pivotal concept of alienation, and takes issue with the tradition of political economy that takes inequality as a natural fact, failing to understand its social creation. The Theses on Feuerbach (written 1845) and The German Ideology (1846) begin Marx's concern with the different forms of human society, and their evolutionary succession in response to ‘contradictions’ or irresoluble tensions between the different classes, or productive forces, in society. In 1848 Marx settled in London, where the most famous of his writings, The Communist Manifesto, was completed. Marx's theoretical account of human society and its economics found its final monument in Capital, whose three volumes appeared in 1867, 1885, and 1893. See also base and superstructure, dialectical materialism, historical materialism, labour theory of value.

1818–83, German social philosopher, the chief theorist of modern socialism and communism.

Early Life

Marx's father, a lawyer, converted from Judaism to Lutheranism in 1824. Marx studied law at Bonn and Berlin, but became interested in philosophy and took a Ph.D. degree at Jena (1841). He early rejected the idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and turned toward materialism, partly through the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach and Moses Hess.

Early Work

In 1842 he became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, but his demands for radical reforms led to its suppression in 1843. He then went to Paris, where he began his lifelong association with Friedrich Engels. At this time Marx became a socialist. He devoured the works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, the comte de Saint-Simon, and many others. Antagonized by the individualistic radicalism of Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Marx attacked him in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847, tr. 1910), an early attempt to systematize his own thought. In this period also he wrote, with Engels, The German Ideology (tr. 1933), which provided an exposition of his dialectical materialism. Breaking with the tradition of justifying social reform by appeal to natural rights, he invoked “inevitable” laws of history to predict the eventual triumph of the working class.

Later Work and Life

In 1847 Marx joined the Communist League and with Engels wrote for it the famous Communist Manifesto (1848), which strikingly expressed his general view of the class struggle. The failure of the revolutions of 1848 convinced Marx of the need to stimulate the consciousness and solidarity of the working class through the founding of open revolutionary parties. Exiled from most continental centers, he settled permanently in London in 1849. He lived in poverty, made more bitter by his own chronic illness and the death of several of his children. At times he was able to earn funds as a correspondent for the New York Tribune, but he was continually dependent on Engels for financial aid. Nonetheless, he pursued research in the British Museum and continued to write steadily.

In 1864 Marx helped to found the International Workingmen's Association. Through this First International and through the work of Ferdinand Lassalle and others, Marx's ideas began to gain primacy in European socialist and radical thought. This primacy was greatly furthered with the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital (Vol. I, 1867, tr. 1886; Vol. II–III, ed. by Engels, 1885–94; tr. 1907–9). The manuscript for the fourth volume was edited by Karl Kautsky and published as Theorien über den Mehrwert (3 parts, 1905–10; tr. of 1st part, A History of Economic Theories, 1952). A monumental work, Das Kapital provided a thorough exposition of Marxism and became the foundation of international socialism.

As Marx's reputation spread, so too did public fear of him. He insisted on authoritarian sway within the International, and finally, after controversy with Mikhail Bakunin, virtually destroyed the International for fear of losing control over its direction. He remained the prophet of socialism and was often consulted by the various socialist party leaders. His role was frequently that of urging more hard-minded policies, further removed from bourgeois embellishments; The Gotha Program (1891, tr. 1922), a critique, illustrates this position. The complexity and vituperation of this polemic characterize much of Marx's prose. In his last years Marx's great intellectual vigor continued unabated. The importance of his dialectical method and of his theories goes far beyond their immense political influence; many scholars consider him a great economic theoretician and the founder of economic history and sociology.

Bibliography

There are many translations and editions of Marx's best-known works and of his and Engels's selected correspondence. See the Collected Works of Marx and Engels (40 vol., 1975–83). The standard biography of Marx is that by F. Mehring (tr. 1935); other notable works include those by O. Rühle (tr. 1929), E. H. Carr (1938), C. J. S. Sprigge (1938), K. Korsch (1939), and I. Berlin (4d ed. 1978). Recent biographies include those by R. Payne (1968), D. McLellan (1973), P. Singer (1980), A. Wood (1985), and F. Wheen (2000). See also bibliography under Marxism.

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Karl Heinrich Marx was a nineteenth-century German intellectual whose works have had great influence on the world. Largely ignored during his lifetime, Marx's writings on economics, politics, social science, and revolution eventually led to the founding of two political movements, socialism and Communism. In addition, his views have influenced many legal philosophers.

Marx was born May 5, 1818, in Trier, in what was then the state of Prussia. His father was a successful lawyer. A bright student, Marx studied law at the University of Bonn in 1835. The following year he transferred to the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy. While at Berlin, Marx joined a group of students and teachers who were opposed to the Prussian government. At that time citizens of Prussia enjoyed few civil liberties and were prevented from participating fully in public affairs.

Marx's political activity proved harmful for his academic career. After obtaining his doctorate in philosophy in 1841, he tried to get a teaching job. The Prussian government barred him from teaching. He then became a freelance journalist.

Following his marriage to Jenny von Westphalen in 1843, Marx moved to Paris. In 1845 he moved to Brussels, where he remained until 1848. In 1848 he returned to Germany to become the editor of a radical paper in Cologne. He used the newspaper to rail against the Prussian government, and he encouraged the German Revolution of 1848, which failed to topple the regime.

During the days leading up to the revolution, Marx first articulated his political and historical theories. In the Communist Manifesto (1848), a pamphlet written with his friend Friedrich Engels, Marx argued that history is a series of conflicts between economic classes. He predicted that the ruling middle class would be overthrown by the working class, and a classless society would be created. This classless society would be characterized by the public ownership of all means of economic production. Marx and Engels had previously written The German Ideology (1845-46), a seven-hundred-page book that dealt in more philosophic terms with economics and politics.

Marx's participation in the failed revolution forced him to flee Germany. In 1849 he settled in London, where he remained for the rest of his life. He and his family lived in abject poverty. He refused to work, except for a stint as a political reporter for the New York Tribune. Instead, he spent his time researching at the British Museum library. Friends contributed to his support, especially Engels, who owned a textile manufacturing plant in England. In 1864 Marx founded the International Workingmen's Association, a group dedicated to preparing the way for a socialist revolution. He died in London on March 14, 1883.

Marx spent most of his life in England working on Das Kapital (Capital). The first volume was published in 1867, the second and third volumes after his death. He considered Das Kapital to be his major work, because it described the functioning of industrial capitalism. Marx saw capitalism as an efficient way of producing wealth, but also saw a fatal flaw in how this wealth was distributed: those who owned the means of production retained most of the wealth, whereas the working class had to get by on fluctuating wages. Marx argued that this inequality would eventually lead the working class to revolt.

Marx's writings had a great effect on the socialist and Communist revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He cast his theories as historically inevitable, providing revolutionaries with a way of explaining the world that appeared to be scientific.

Marxist ideas became the core intellectual tradition for Communist countries in the twentieth century. Social science, history, and philosophy were shaped by his views. U.S. intellectuals generally ignored Marxism until the 1960s, in part because many people believed that it was a subversive political doctrine.

In law, the field of Marxist jurisprudence has grown significantly. A Marxist analysis of law places more importance on the power of economic forces in society rather than on the concept of an impartial, neutral rule of law. Marxists believe that the material forces of a society and those that control these forces shape the society's legal system.

See: Cold War; Stalin, Joseph.

A German scholar of the nineteenth century; the founder of Marxism, the fundamental theory of communism. Much of his work, including Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, was done with Friedrich Engels. Marx lived outside Germany most of his life, notably in London, where he wrote Das Kapital. He organized the first International in the 1860s.

A German scholar of the nineteenth century; the originator of Marxism, the fundamental theory of communism. Marx viewed political, social, and economic reality as based in the class struggle and predicted that capitalism would destroy itself. With the downfall of capitalism, the workers of the proletariat would come to power and begin a new age, free of economic exploitation. Much of Marx's work, including The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, was done with Friedrich Engels. (See also socialism.)

Quotes:

"The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison."

"Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy."

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."

"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

"Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Hero-like slaughter of the innocents."

"On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects."

See more famous quotes by Karl Marx