Karl Marx (German: [ˈkaʁl ˈmaʁks]; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, and revolutionary socialist. He developed the theory of historical materialism, analysing societal structure and change, particularly class struggle under capitalism, and predicting the system's ultimate replacement by communism. Marx co-authored The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Friedrich Engels, and undertook a critique of classical political economy in his magnum opus, Das Kapital (1867–1894). His ideas and their later development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence on intellectual, political, and social history, and have inspired revolutionary movements in many countries.
Born in Trier in the Kingdom of Prussia, Marx earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. He became involved in radical journalism and was influenced by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the Young Hegelians, whose ideas he critiqued in works such as The German Ideology. In Paris, Marx wrote his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and began a close collaboration with Engels. After moving to Brussels, they were active in the Communist League, and in 1848 wrote The Communist Manifesto, which lays out a programme for revolution. Expelled from Germany after the Revolutions of 1848, Marx moved to London, where he wrote his Grundrisse notebooks and the three volumes of Das Kapital. He became a leading figure in the International Workingmen's Association (First International), in which he battled the influence of anarchists led by Mikhail Bakunin and celebrated the Paris Commune of 1871. In his late studies and his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx theorized on the transition to a communist society. He died 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 bourgeoisie, the ruling class that controls the means of production, and the proletariat, the working class that enables these means by selling their labour power for wages. Employing his dialectical approach, Marx observed that capital accumulation produced internal contradictions like previous socioeconomic systems, and predicted that these tensions would lead to its self-destruction. For Marx, the exploitative, alienating, and crisis-prone nature of capitalism would eventuate the working class's development of class consciousness, leading to their conquest of political power and establishment of a classless, stateless, moneyless society constituted by a free association of producers. Marx actively pressed for its realisation, advocating for organised proletarian revolutionary action to achieve human emancipation from economic and social domination.
Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures of the modern era, and his work has been both widely lauded and widely criticised. Marxism has exerted major influence on socialist thought and political movements, with Marxist schools of thought such as Marxism–Leninism and its offshoots becoming the guiding ideologies of revolutions that took power in many countries during the 20th century, forming communist states. Marx's work in economics has had a strong influence on modern heterodox theories of labour and capital, and he is often cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology.
Childhood and early education: 1818–1836
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg, at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. Marx's family was originally non-religious Jewish but had converted to Christianity before his birth. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier's rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father was the first in the line to receive a secular education. He became a lawyer with a comfortably upper middle class income and the family owned a number of Moselle vineyards, in addition to his income as an attorney. After Prussia's annexation of the Rhineland in 1815 and the subsequent abrogation of Jewish emancipation, Heinrich converted from Judaism to the state Evangelical Church of Prussia in order to retain his career as a lawyer.
Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, which was then an absolute monarchy. In 1815, Heinrich Marx began working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra. His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jew from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg married Lion Philips and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London.
Little is known of Marx's childhood. The third of nine children, he became the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his surviving siblings were baptised into the Lutheran Church on 28 August 1824, and their mother in November 1825. Marx was privately educated by his father until 1830 when he entered the Gymnasium zu Trier, whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government. In 1832, police raided the school and discovered that literature promoting political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Viewing the distribution of such material as a seditious act, the authorities implemented reforms and replaced several members of the staff during Marx's time at the school.
In October 1835 at the age of 16, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition referred to as a "weak chest", Marx was excused from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx joined the Poets' Club, a group containing political radicals that were monitored by the police. Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society and at one point served as the club's co-president. In August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university's Borussian Korps. Although his grades in the first term were good, they soon deteriorated, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin.
Hegelianism and early journalism: 1836–1843
Spending summer and autumn 1836 in Trier, Marx became more serious about his studies and his life. He became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen, an educated member of the petty nobility who had known Marx since childhood. As she had broken off her engagement with a young aristocrat to be with Marx, their relationship was socially controversial owing to the differences between their religious and class origins, but Marx befriended her father Ludwig von Westphalen (a liberal aristocrat) and later dedicated his doctoral thesis to him. Seven years after their engagement, on 19 June 1843, they married in a Protestant church in Kreuznach.
In October 1836 after arriving in Berlin, Marx enrolled in the University of Berlin's law school and rented a room in the Mittelstrasse. During the first term, Marx attended lectures of Eduard Gans (who represented the progressive Hegelian standpoint, elaborated on rational development in history by emphasising particularly its libertarian aspects, and the importance of the social question) and of Karl von Savigny (who represented the Historical School of Law). Although studying law, he was fascinated by philosophy and looked for a way to combine the two, believing that "without philosophy nothing could be accomplished". Marx became interested in the recently deceased German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose ideas were then widely debated among European philosophical circles. During a convalescence in Stralau, he joined the Doctors Club, a student group which discussed Hegelian ideas, and through them became involved with a group of radical thinkers known as the Young Hegelians in 1837. They gathered around Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, with Marx developing a particularly close friendship with Adolf Rutenberg. Like Marx, the Young Hegelians were critical of Hegel's metaphysical assumptions but adopted his dialectical method to criticise established society, politics and religion from a left-wing perspective. Marx's father died in May 1838, resulting in a diminished income for the family. Marx had been emotionally close to his father and treasured his memory after his death.