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Karl Marx

Karl Marx (German: [maʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German-born philosopher, economist, political theorist, historian, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His best-known works are the 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels) and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867–1894); the latter employs his critical approach of historical materialism in an analysis of capitalism and is the culmination of his intellectual efforts. Marx's ideas and theories and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have exerted enormous influence on modern intellectual, economic and political history.

"Marx" redirects here. For other uses, see Marx (disambiguation) and Karl Marx (disambiguation).

Karl Marx

Karl Marx[a]

(1818-05-05)5 May 1818
Trier, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation

14 March 1883(1883-03-14) (aged 64)

London, England
(m. 1843; died 1881)

At least 7,[3] including Jenny, Laura and Eleanor

  • Philosophy
  • economics
  • history
  • politics

Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx studied at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena, and received a doctorate in philosophy from the latter in 1841. A Young Hegelian, he was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and both critiqued and developed Hegel's ideas in works such as The German Ideology (written 1846) and the Grundrisse (written 1857–1858). While in Paris in 1844, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and met Engels, a lifelong friend and collaborator. After moving to Brussels in 1845, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which expresses Marx's ideas and lays out a programme for revolution. Marx was expelled from Belgium and Germany, and in 1849 moved to London, where he wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852) and Das Kapital. In 1864, Marx helped found the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he sought to fight the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx wrote on revolution, the state and the transition to communism. He died stateless in 1883 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.


Marx's critiques of history, society and political economy hold that human societies develop through class conflict. In the capitalist mode of production, this manifests itself in the conflict between the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that enable these means by selling their labour power in return for wages.[4] Employing his historical materialist approach, Marx predicted that capitalism produced internal tensions like previous socioeconomic systems and that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system known as the socialist mode of production. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism—owing in part to its instability and crisis-prone nature—would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and eventually the establishment of a classless, communist society constituted by a free association of producers.[5] Marx actively pressed for its implementation, arguing that the working class should carry out organised proletarian revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic emancipation.[6]


Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and his work has been both lauded and criticised.[7] Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, and during the 20th century revolutionary governments identifying as Marxist took power in many countries and established socialist states including the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. A number of theoretical variants such as Leninism, Marxism–Leninism, Trotskyism, and Maoism have been developed. Marx's work in economics has a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and its relation to capital,[8][9][10] and he is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science.[11][12]

's philosophy[212]

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The classical political economy (economics) of Adam Smith and ,[213] as well as Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi's critique of laissez-faire economics and analysis of the precarious state of the proletariat[214]

David Ricardo

,[213] in particular the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Charles Fourier[215][216]

French socialist thought

Earlier German philosophical materialism among the , particularly that of Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer,[70] as well as the French materialism of the late 18th century, including Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius and d'Holbach

Young Hegelians

analysis of the working class,[66] as well as the early descriptions of class provided by French liberals and Saint-Simonians such as François Guizot and Augustin Thierry

Friedrich Engels'

Marx's Judaic legacy has been identified as formative to both his moral outlook and his materialist philosophy.[218]

[217]

(doctoral thesis),[299] 1841

The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature

, 1842

The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law

, 1843

Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

1843

On the Jewish Question

1844

Notes on James Mill

, 1844

Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

, 1845

The Holy Family

written 1845, first published posthumously 1888 by Engels.

Theses on Feuerbach

, 1845

The German Ideology

, 1847

The Poverty of Philosophy

1847

Wage Labour and Capital

, 1848

Manifesto of the Communist Party

, 1850

The Class Struggles in France

, 1852

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

(Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy), 1857

Grundrisse

, 1859

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

, 1861

Writings on the U.S. Civil War

, (posthumously published by Kautsky) 3 volumes, 1862

Theories of Surplus Value

, 1864

Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln

1865

Value, Price and Profit

(Das Kapital), 1867

Capital. Volume I: A Critique of Political Economy The Process of Production of Capital

1871

The Civil War in France

1875

Critique of the Gotha Program

1883

Notes on Adolph Wagner

(posthumously published by Engels), 1885

Das Kapital, Volume II

(posthumously published by Engels), 1894

Das Kapital, Volume III

at Project Gutenberg

Works by Karl Marx

at Internet Archive

Works by or about Karl Marx

at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Works by Karl Marx

at the Marxists Internet Archive.

Karl Marx

Marx and Engels (1973). . Vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Selected Works

Marx and Engels (1973). . Vol. 2. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Selected Works

Marx and Engels (1973). . Vol. 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Selected Works

Marx and Engels (1982). (3rd rev. ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Selected Correspondence

Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1989). (4th ed.). Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Karl Marx: a Biography

Krader, Lawrence, ed. (1974). (PDF) (2nd ed.). Assen: Van Gorcum.

The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx

Archive of at the International Institute of Social History

Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels Papers

The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, in English translation and in 50 volumes, are published in London by Lawrence & Wishart and in New York by International Publishers. (These volumes were at one time put online by the , until the original publishers objected on copyright grounds: "Marx/Engels Collected Works". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 3 March 2018.) They are available online and searchable, for purchase or through subscribing libraries, in the Social Theory (Archived 3 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine) collection published by Alexander Street Press in collaboration with the University of Chicago.

Marxists Internet Archive

BBC Radio 4 discussion with Anthony Grayling, Francis Wheen & Gareth Stedman Jones (In Our Time, 14 July 2005)

"Marx"

The 1887 NY Times review of Das Kapital

in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Newspaper clippings about Karl Marx