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Karl Marx

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

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Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a 19th century German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist and socialist revolutionary. Marx, alongside his friend and long-time collaborator Friedrich Engels, discovered the laws of development of human societies based on the dialectical materialist method and in doing so creating Marxism.

Marx is the most important thinker of the communist movement. He highlighted the contradictions and intrinsic exploitation in capitalism, and helped develop socialist economic models. His most famous works, the Communist Manifesto, which he co-wrote with Engels in 1848, and Capital, the first volume of which was completed in 1867, have had enormous international influence.

Life

Early life

Marx was born May 5, 1818 in the small rural town of Trier, in the south of Rhenish Prussia, in what is today Germany, closely bordering France. At the time, Trier had about 11 thousand residents,[1] and from 1794 to 1815, the city belonged to France, which changed after Napoleon's defeat and Prussian annexation of the region.[2] He was the third child of Heinrich and Henriette Marx, growing up with seven siblings. By 1847, at the age of 29, most of them would have died of tuberculosis, except his three sisters who eventually outlived him: Sophie (1816 – 1886), Emilie (1822 – 1888) and Louise (1821 – 1893).[3]

The family of Karl Marx belonged to a prosperous petty bourgeoisie of Trier, and he had Jewish origins both from his mother and father, but his family converted to Protestant Christianity in 1824.[4] Karl's father Heinrich was a well-to-do lawyer which had a good reputation among the upper strata of society in Trier, and had accumulated a certain level of wealth.[5][6]

Karl Marx and his sister Sophie became acquainted with Edgar and Jenny von Westphalen, who later became Marx's wife. This friendship began either through Karl and Edgar, who studied at the same school, or through a friendship between their fathers.[7] The von Westphalen family was also a petty bourgeois family.[8] The young Karl had a friendship with the baron Johann Ludwig von Westphalen, Jenny's father, and he became an influence on Marx through their intellectual exchange.[9]

From 1830 to 1835, Marx studied on the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium, a public secondary education school which prepared students to university. There, he studied with several teachers, some of them critical of the political state of things including Johann Hugo Wyttenbach, the school director.[10][11] At the time, liberalism was associated with revolutionary ideals and a romantic sentiment towards the French Revolution, both of which was frowned upon by the Prussian government. At Trier Gymnasium Marx studied the Greek, Latin and French languages.[11]

University education

Marx in 1839

After graduating with a good school performance on the Trier Gymnasium, Marx entered the university, spending two semesters in the University of Bonn from 1835 to 1836. At the time of Marx's education, female students or professors weren't present in universities as they were purely male institutions, this would be the case until the end of 19th century when Prussia started allowing women to study.[12] Marx's father was not satisfied with the level of quality Bonn offered in areas of natural science and persuaded him to transfer to the University of Berlin, at the time a well-established and highly respected university.[13] There, he studied Law, majoring in History and Philosophy and concluded his university course in 1841, submitting a doctoral thesis on the philosophy of Epicurus. At the time Marx was a Hegelian idealist in his views and belonged to the circle of “Left Hegelians”, along with Bruno Bauer and others.[14]

Early Journalism

After his graduation from Berlin university, Marx was hoping to become a professor at Bonn, which he eventually lost interest in after witnessing how the reactionary Berlin government deprived Bruno Bauer, a friend of Marx, of his position in Bonn university.[14][15] Marx, through seeing the battle and struggle between the growing anti-feudal movement and reactionary Prussian government decided to take part in the most important field of battle between progress and the reactionary forces, that of a political journalist.[16]

In 1842, Marx who by this point had expressed criticism towards the Prussian government's censorship several times, alongside Bruno Bauer, was offered to be chief contributor of an opposition newspaper founded in Cologne named Rheinische Zeitung, which he would become editor-in-chief of in the October of 1842. Under Marx's editorship, the revolutionary-democratic properties of the newspaper were highlighted more and more which at first caused its censorship and later its suppression by the Prussian government in the January of 1843. Even after Marx's attempt to save the paper with his resignation, the pressure from the reactionary Prussian state did not stop and eventually resulted in the newspapers suspension in march of 1843.[14][17]

Marx and Jenny von Westphalen, a childhood friend of his, after years of separation, economic hardships and social pressure from Jenny's aristocratic relatives got married in 1843.[14][18] In the same year, due to political censorship by the Prussian government which didn't allow Marx to express his philosophical and political ideas, they accepted exile and moved to Paris.[19]

Later years

Marx in 1861

In 1882, Marx traveled to Algeria and wrote that inequality and subordination are abominations to all true Muslims.[20]

Marx died in his home on March 14, 1883 and was buried alongside his wife in Highgate Cemetery in London.[21]

Ideological sources

The intellectual traditions that Marx drew on most were German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.[22]

His main sources in German philosophy were:

  1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
  2. Ludwig Feuerbach
  3. Bruno Bauer
  4. Max Stirner

in English political economy:

  1. Adam Smith
  2. David Ricardo

and in French socialism:

  1. Henri de Saint-Simon
  2. Charles Fourier
  3. Robert Owen

Library works

See Also

Timeline of Marx and Engels

References

  1. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  2. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  3. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  4. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  5. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  6. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  7. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  8. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  9. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  10. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  12. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  13. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Lenin (1914). Karl Marx: A brief biographical sketch with an exposition of Marxism. marxists.org link
  15. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  16. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  17. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  18. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  19. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  20. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  21. ↑ Lua error: Cannot create process: proc_open(/dev/null): Failed to open stream: Operation not permitted
  22. ↑ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1913-03) The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
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